The Star Wars KOTOR remake has had a rough time these past few weeks, but rumors of the Star Wars game’s untimely demise are, reportedly, inaccurate. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier says that his sources with Saber Interactive – the studio that Embracer passed the remake off to – tell him the remake isn’t completely dead. Not yet, anyway.
The story goes back several months. Aspyr was working on the KOTOR remake and presented a vertical slice demo – a demo meant to showcase several aspects of a project. That demo didn’t go over well, and Embracer reportedly moved development to Saber. Trailers then disappeared from Sony’s social media channels, though a PlayStation representative said that was a result of copyrighting issues, nothing indicative of the game’s development progress.
More recently, reports started emerging that Saber had canned the project and that no one was working on it.
Can't say whether the KOTOR Remake will ever actually *come out*, but yes, two people from Saber Interactive tell me they're still on it, despite recent rumors that nobody is working on the game. (Saber took the project from Aspyr last year, as Bloomberg reported then) https://t.co/prNTT6iVAy
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) November 22, 2023
It seems the supposed insiders jumped the lightsaber, so to speak. Schreier said two people at Saber told him two people are working on the remake, which is possibly stranger than canceling the project entirely. Sure, it’s alive – but there probably isn’t much happening. Even smaller indie games need more than two people to work on them. Such a small team for a full-blown AAA-scale remake of a large RPG still raises questions about its future and what Embracer plans on doing with it.
Embracer is keeping those plans close. CEO Lars Wingefors said in a recent interview that he refused to comment on it, as every time he did, it turned into a headline. When there’s this much secrecy around a project, though, it’s hardly any wonder why that happens.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF