Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is the upcoming spiritual successor to some of the best RPGs of all time, and thankfully spearheaded by the same lead dev. Casey Hudson, known for his work on KOTOR and Mass Effect, is leading the charge with FOTOR, and aims to keep player freedom at its center.
Speaking today for the official Star Wars website, Hudson said FOTOR is "equally ambitious" as KOTOR, which he said strove to be the "definitive Star Wars experience."
"Fate of the Old Republic represents an opportunity to explore a contemporary vision of a definitive Star Wars experience," he said, adding that the team is "using state-of-the-art technology and game design, and an all-new story crafted specifically to deliver on the combination of player agency and immersion in Star Wars that was at the heart of KOTOR."
Hudson pointed out that player agency and freedom are crucial to this new experience, much as they were in KOTOR way back when. "Our goal is developing the kind of games I love making: emotionally powerful, cinematic adventures driven by player agency, narrative depth, and immersive world-building," he said.
Fate of the Old Republic is still very early in development, with the studio behind it forming just this year. This would imply we won't be seeing the game on shelves before 2030 or thereabouts, so there's plenty of time for the studio to expand on these initial ideas and, hopefully, provide us with an experience that is player-focused and player-driven, and not prescriptive.
Baldur's Gate 3 and other recent RPGs really set in stone the old-new tenets of role-playing games, all of which revolve around replayability, variation, and experiential breadth, with the entire narrative unfolding at the behest of the player, so the bar is now quite high.
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