It's been yet another rollercoaster week for Embracer's beleaguered remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which was "delayed indefinitely" last year after Texan studio Aspyr Media was relieved of development duties. On Friday, reports emerged that Embracer's boss had refused comment on the fate of the game, stating with exquisite irony "I notice that anything I say to this becomes a headline."
This triggered a fresh wave of speculation about the game, speculation that was further fuelled by claims from Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb that the remake "is not being worked on right now". Now, though, two developers at Saber Interactive, Asypr's parent company, have stated that the game is still in production.
These claims were themselves shared by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, initially on Resetera. Asked by other forum members "Is it alive, Jason?", Schreier commented "I've talked to two people at Saber who both say they're still currently working on it, so I don't believe the comment that it isn't being worked on 'in any way' right now is true."
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Schreier then confirmed this statement in a post on the website formerly known as Twitter, writing "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 rumours that nobody is working on the game". Schreier's sources tend to be sold, so it's likely that the Kotor remake is still currently happening in some form.
Schreier also provided some clarification about why the remake was taken off Aspyr in the first place. The prevailing narrative is that a demo of the remake shown off by Aspyr was disappointing to the extent that the project was taken off them, but in a follow-up to his initial post, Schreier says this wasn't the case. "The demo wasn't egregiously bad," he writes. "The biggest issue was misalignment between all the parties about scope, and how much progress they could make within a given timeline".
Nonetheless, after all those ups and downs, we're right back where we started. Embracer is still doing something with KOTOR, but we don't know exactly what, or if we'll ever see it. Then again, that is how rollercoasters work. At least in brighter Star Wars news, we know that the Dark Forces remaster is in safe hands, as Nightdive Studios discussed with PC Gamer in our 30th anniversary issue.
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