This game has gone through development hell and back two times over! Sony has unlisted the KOTOR Remake announcement trailer from their own YouTube page as the game takes another turn down development hell!
Will this game ever get made?
In another twist in the development tale, the Knights of the Old Republic Remake has just gotten another blow in its chances of seeing the light of day as Sony TOOK DOWN the two-year old announcement trailer for the game from their own YouTube channel. And, to be honest, I think this game is pretty much dead in the water right now.
Okay, I know Sony’s explanation for taking down the trailer due to a music licensing issue arising is pretty tame and unrelated to the game itself, but it’s just another bad example of this game’s development being mired with setbacks and controversies.
From the game being officially announced two years ago to now seeing its parent company, Embracer, undergoing huge budget cuts and giving practically no updates on the game, it’s pretty much assured that this game has been stalled out from the very beginning and isn’t too much beyond the initial developing phases. And, if the reports are to be believed, it’s mainly down to the Embracer developers just simply failing to conceptualize and code their ideas and being forced to shift the project around to its different studios.
I mean, Embracer has already shifted this game from Aspyr, the original lead studio developer, to Saber Interactive since that 2021 trailer came out, and the game is still yet to have a single update about it. That’s bad news!
Now, I don’t want to say this game is completely done and dusted as there is tons of cases of games taking a long time in development, but still being all-time classics when they release. Take a look at Rockstar and its two main franchises, the Grand Theft Auto series and the Red Dead series, for example.
Grand Theft Auto V (Golden Joystick) and Red Dead Redemption 1 (The Game Developers Awards) were Game of the Year winners, while Red Dead Redemption 2 was a Game of the Year finalist and saw many of its voice actors and sound designers win awards. Moreover, all three of these games are in the Top-50 all-time selling games list with RDR1 having sold 23M copies, RDR2 with 55M copies, and GTA V at an incredible 185M copies (2nd all-time).
Apart from being Rockstar games, what do these all have in common? They had at least three years of development, with the two Red Dead games (RDR1: 5 years; RDR2: 8 years) being in development for over 5+ years.
And, if we’re being generous and saying KOTOR started its development in 2019 or 2020, then this game has been in development anywhere from 4-5 years. Yes, that’s a long time for a lot of games, but it’s definitely not unheard of.
Though, what usual is unheard of for a competent game, let alone a Game of the Year winner like the OG Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic game was (2003-The Game Developers Choice Awards, IGN), is the game being mired with publisher cash-flow problems, a lack of development and outside investment, complete failures at a conceptual level, shifting between multiple development studios, and its own announcement trailer being taken down due to music licensing difficulties.
That’s usually a sign a game is a dead game walking, and I fear that is sadly the case for the KOTOR Remake.
Images Source: Featured Image: (BioWare/Aspyr/Lucasfilm Games) (STAR WARS: The Old Republic – ‘Disorder’ Cinematic Trailer – YouTube
