If you’re a huge fan of the beloved Knights of the Old Republic franchise and you’ve played it more times than you can remember, you might resent the idea that the world doesn’t need a KOTOR remake – it absolutely does need it.
Sure, Saber Interactive might be a bit slow in releasing its remake of the classic 2003 Bioware RPG (which it announced back in 2021), but the company’s CCO Tim Willits has confirmed that “everything that we have talked about is still in development,” as he said in an X post on March 14.
Now let’s see why the gaming community hasn’t really moved beyond the need for a KOTOR remake and why these oddly pessimistic arguments about not needing it are so wrong.
‘There are plenty of Star Wars games to play’
True, there are lots of other Star Wars games out there (even the truly exciting one in the making that brings XCOM elements to it), but the ‘other fish in the sea’ isn’t a good enough argument to simply give up hope that there’ll be a KOTOR remake any time soon.
And while they’re all more-or-less fine and dandy, catering to players across many different genres and consoles, we do need a KOTOR remake, even if it’s for purely sentimental reasons. By the way, we’ve already been waiting for years for the new Mass Effect (first revealed back in 2020, before the KOTOR remake even), and it’s coming. So, we can wait.
‘We already have KOTOR’
Yes, there’s already the original version and, sure, we can play it. So… let’s just forsake a more modern version with better graphics, richer dialogues, and other improved areas? Many other classics have gotten their own remakes or remasters or they’re about to, in line with all the new technological advances.
Just think of the likes of Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Baldur’s Gate, The Last of Us, Mafia, Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life, Tomb Raider – the list goes on. You can say that the issue here is actually in the semantics (as in ‘want’ versus ‘need’), but arguing that we don’t need a KOTOR remake and that a successor would be better is simply not viable.
There’s plenty to be done with the original and, after all, why not have both? Let’s remake the originals and then make a sequel – that way we all get what we want, nay, what we need. It would be worth the effort and the gaming community would appreciate it, even if it takes a few years.
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