Since video games were invented, they’ve been frequently used as a space to allow players to immerse themselves in fantastical worlds from film and television franchises, and one could argue that no expansive universe has benefited more from this than Star Wars. Straight–forward adaptations of the films have been a mixed bag, but the series really thrives in gaming when developers are allowed to tell their own story in a slice of Lucas’ massive galaxy. Games such as The Force Unleashed, Knights of the Old Republic, or even the recent Jedi: Fallen Order are enjoyed not simply because they have the Star Wars branding, but because they inhabit the world in ways that are simultaneously familiar and fresh.
So many different subgenres have gotten the chance to play around in the Star Wars sandbox – traditional action-adventure games (Jedi: Fallen Order), dogfighting combat simulators (Star Wars: Rogue Squadron), even the puzzle-solving Lego games have gotten a turn. But arguably the franchise’s best pairing has been the RPG, which makes sense – in a universe filled with so many different alien species and a variety of moral and political factions, naturally players would want to inhabit a character from the ground-up, an ethos that led to the creation of Knights of the Old Republic, one of the best Star Wars video games and one of the best RPGs ever made. And now, the developers at Bit Reactor are putting their own spin on an RPG in a galaxy far, far away…and from the sounds of it, they’re giving players a perfect combination of elements from two eras of the franchise.
