The highly anticipated Star Wars KOTOR remake is delayed to an unspecified time, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier says in a new report. The news comes from several people close to the project who spoke with Schreier anonymously and also said the delay was unexpected for much of the team at Aspyr working on it, who believed development on the space game was proceeding smoothly.
loomberg’s sources said Aspyr management held a number of meetings throughout July before arriving at the decision to “pause” development and decide on the KOTOR remake’s future direction. Aspyr also fired creative director Brad Prince and art director Jason Minor early in July, another move which Schreier’s sources said they didn’t expect.
The catalyst for this reportedly drastic change in direction was apparently a demo the team presented to Sony and Lucasfilm on June 30. Bloomberg says the developers who worked on the demo were satisfied with the game’s progress at that point, but Aspyr thought otherwise. Schreier said the clash in visions stems in part from the project’s outset, when Aspyr’s leads thought the game could release in 2022, but the development team said now, it would be more realistic to release it in 2025.
Beamdog, the studio Aspyr recently acquired, is meanwhile busy with its own projects, for now at least.
Another source told Bloomberg that management may see the project as unsustainable, after the team spent more time and money creating the demo than they expected.
KOTOR takes place during the High Republic period, when the Jedi reigned supreme centuries before the events of George Lucas’ film saga, and is often regarded as a major milestone in RPG world building.The original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is still playable on PC, though naturally, it looks rather dated compared to what a modern reimagining of the saga would be. For now, though, it looks like that’ll have to tide us over for a while.