The History of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

uh during the early 2000s star wars video games can be found in nearly every genre under the sun cart racers flight simulators real-time strategy games and all manner of other titles burst out of lucasarts and its licensees at light speed bombarding fans with exotic new ways to experience the world of george lucas's famed space western some of these titles managed to carve out a place for themselves and players hearts others were forgotten by the wayside only a few however went on to stand the test of time as classics and had a substantial influence on the industry as a whole star wars knights of the old republic was one of these titles the masterwork of canadian developer bioware knights of the old republic sent players on a role-playing theme journey to the space western's distant past to uncover a dastardly conspiracy its wealth of intriguing characters and gameplay scenarios proved immediately popular with fans as well as provided star wars lore masters with prime material to incorporate into future stories yet perhaps most importantly its development enabled bioware to hone its talent as a master storyteller and become an industry rock star a direct sequel helmed by obsidian entertainment with sea release a short while later as wood and mmo from bioware set 300 years after the sequel's events the former came out less than ideal due to the rush timeline in which it was crafted while the latter for better or for worse offered a very different experience than either title before it but in the end these grievances would do little to dampen its popularity or legitimacy within the star wars universe even after its events were declared non-canon this is the history of star wars knights of the old republic as the 20th century was winding to a close bioware found itself facing a hopeful yet uncertain future since its founding in 1995 the edmonton based studio had proven its metal with high quality experiences like baldur's gate and mdk2 with the former earning it widespread recognition as one of the most talented rpg developers in the western hemisphere but by the end of the 90s interplay bioware's steadfast publisher was in dire financial straits while bioware staff had reason to believe that they would survive no matter what happened to interplay everyone was nervous and keenly aware that they needed to further diversify their portfolio if they wanted to draw fresh eyes towards their work and survive another five years they needed to work with other publishers bring their titles to new platforms and continue exploring new settings and genres it was at this point in time that lucas arts came knocking at bioware's door the california based studio had been dealing with a crisis of its own buoyed by the popularity of the phantom menace its staff and licensees were outputting more games than ever before but the overall quality of its titles was on the decline eager to refocus on quality and intrigue to see what a laboriously created star wars rpg would look like lucasarts believed that it had nothing to lose by offering the canadian developer the chance to realize such a project bioware accepted the offer almost immediately everyone in the company had a soft spot for star wars and taking on such a project would provide the studio's portfolio with the diversity it so desperately craved less immediate but still fairly quick was deciding what time frame they wanted the project to be set in because attack of the clones was only a few years away lucasarts offered to let the canadian studio tackle a game set during the onset of the clone wars or 4 000 years into the universe's past after weighing its options bioware ultimately decided to go with the latter scenario exploring the galactic republic during its twilight years had its appeal but delving 4 000 years in the past meant that the studio could explore an entirely new era of the galaxy one where a daunting sith lord would rattle the republic using an ancient superweapon and an amnesiac young jedi would recruit a team of like-minded individuals to confront the menace bioware soon realized that if it was going to nail the epic scope and cinematic drama that such a scenario called for it was going to need to drastically upgrade its presentation skills building a better engine to accommodate the depth and detail of the game's environments wasn't going to be enough it needed to ditch the isometric camera angle that it had used for the baldur's gate series and replace it with a fully 3d camera view and once it had done so it was going to need to ensure every single line of dialogue spoken within these fully 3d environments was voice acted without exception these ambitions alone were considerable for a studio of bioware's level of experience and they were made all the more challenging once development kicked into high gear and the project's role-playing nature further took form more than just wanting to provide players with an entertaining story bioware's writers wanted players to be able to craft their story they wanted one to be able to make non-linear narrative decisions that would deeply impact the direction of their own personal story and allow them to go down whatever alignment of the force spoke to them this meant that what would normally be a single line of dialogue became multiple that needed to be written and recorded and entire scenes that would normally play out one way would need to have many many possible outcomes equally challenging for the team was making his gameplay which they decided to base on the wizards of the coast star wars role playing game feel satisfying on a moment-to-moment level while the team wanted to make sure that long-time fans were presented with an rpg that they could sink their teeth into they also wanted to ensure more casual star wars fans weren't intimidated by it it wasn't enough for combat encounters to be deep they needed to flow and not appear from the naked eye as if they were deeply turn-based and stilted bringing all of this together to assemble what eventually became known as star wars knights of the old republic represented a massive undertaking yet reflecting back on the experience most that were involved with it would recall their time on the project fondly being able to contribute to the star wars universe a universe that so many of them had grown up loving was unlike anything they had previously experienced and it was made all the more special by the studio's relationship with lucasarts which from beginning to end proved itself an extremely professional and cooperative development partner by nearly all accounts the california-based studio very rarely interfered or attempted to micromanage bioware's work it trusted in the canadian developer's decision making and only interjected or offered criticism when it was absolutely necessary bioware finally released knights of the old republic in 2003 this cooperativeness could be tangibly felt in every inch of the finished product players found its combat engaging its narrative riveting and its depiction of the galaxy far far away to be sublime many prior games has succeeded in taking one type of set piece within the star wars universe such as dogfighting or pod racing and making said action feel satisfying but knights of the old republic was one of the very first that succeeded in making one feel like they were exploring a living breathing version of george lucas's universe that this version of the universe also had an immensely memorable and well-acted cast of characters was practically a bonus with many heralding darth revan one of its central antagonists as a particular standout more than just a cool looking nemesis revan proved himself a figure to be remembered by spearheading a shocking late-game twist one that directly implicated the game's player character in an unexpected way as well as called back to vader's own stunning revelation in the empire strikes back to many a fan knights of the old republic wasn't just a great star wars game it was a great piece of star wars fiction period one that was on par with the best that the entire franchise had to all offer voices established forward command is that really who i think it is in the star wars universe few characters exemplify the light side of the force more strongly than yoda even in the bleakest of moments the jedi grand master serves as a paragon of acuity and righteousness but what if yoda's benevolent exterior secretly obscured a dark and twisted personality what if the galaxy's most famous jedi grand master was secretly a sith lord and everything that he did was all part of an elaborate scheme to bring one of his pupils over to the dark side if history had gone differently this unlikely concept could have become the premise of knights of the old republic too bioware's james olin would reveal as much in a 2017 eurogamer article explaining how the team wanted to produce a sequel with a twist on par to that of the first game and believed that they could do so by revealing halfway through the game that the player's guidance conscience a yoda-like character and all but name was secretly training them to become their dark enforcer in the end however bioware's higher-ups decided against making the sequel lucasarts wanted knights of the old republic too to be made relatively quickly and the studio neither wanted to rush its next project nor did it believe continuing to work within the star wars universe would be to its benefit as much as it had enjoyed using lucasarts sandbox it wanted to be able to fully control its own destiny and those in charge at the studio understood that in order to do so they were going to need to helm their own intellectual properties going forward as a result the next several years would see bioware funnel all of the experience that it cultivated developing at star wars rpg into original titles like mass effect and dragon age while obsidian entertainment handled development duties on knights of the old republic to the sith lords obsidian entertainment had just been formed at the time by a menagerie of former black isle studio developers and was eager to prove its worth as soon as possible when they got their hands on bioware's game to properly prepare themselves however the studio realized that the task ahead of them was monumental while the studio's founders all had plenty of experience to draw from their numbers were few and the time that they had been allotted to complete the sequel was short with lucasarts wanting the finished product by christmas of 2004 it would have been difficult for any studio to follow bioware's opus and they were doing so while building their studio from the ground up nevertheless obsidian staff would try their best over the next few months to deliver something worthy yet different and darker from what bioware had produced instead of playing as a doe-eyed jedi finding their way in a curious world the studio decided that players would play as the exile a surviving jedi that was cut off from the rest of their kind after an unspeakable act and be forced to reckon with a trio of elite sith that would have all but wiped out the order conversations between the player and their companions would be greater and most morality choices that they would be presented with would have far more drastic after effects by early 2004 development on the sith lords was progressing well enough that lucas arts proclaimed they could shift over its release to the following year eager to take advantage of this extra time obsidian ceo fergus urcard changed up the project's schedule to reflect this shift and made a critical error in a 2012 katanko article irkhart would explain how breathing a sigh of relief he forgot to officially make sure that this change of plan was in writing which resulted in lucasarts defaulting back to having the game done by the end of 2004 only a few months before release not wanting to disappoint their first client the team sucked up their frustration and cut out as much content from the game as they could to ensure that it was out the door on time it was a soul-draining turn of events but those that worked on the sith lords have maintained in the years since that miscommunications aside lucasarts was otherwise as great as ever to work with that had they themselves been more particular about cutting certain pieces of content that weren't cut they could have relieved themselves of a fair amount of stress during the sith lord's final crunch and potentially arrived at a better end product when the sith lords released towards the end of 2004 most players were quick to appreciate the ways in which obsidian sequel outdid its predecessor the quality of his writing was even stronger than before while its moral choices felt far more impactful and even though its narrative didn't offer up a gigantic twist comparable to the first game's darth revan reveal players were equally smitten by darth nihilus the most unusual and voracious of the game's titular sith lords yet despite all this evidence of the game's cramped development could be felt throughout its design especially once players arrived at the game's final few hours and found themselves confronted by a conclusion that was desperately lacking in both content and context this along with the game's assortment of glitches and lack of gigantic sweeping gameplay changes compared to its predecessor resulted in many coming out on the other side feeling a touch underwhelmed the sith lords was far from a bad game if anything it was extremely impressive given the circumstances in which it was made but by the standards of its predecessor it was hard to argue that it wasn't lacking in the years that would follow tech savvy fans would use mods to make up for the sith lore's shortcomings fixing bugs and even restoring cut content wherever possible a few of these mods managed to provide players with a better more complete rendition of how obsidian originally wanted to end the sith lords yet exactly what obsidian had planned for the world of the ancient republic after the sequel's ending in knights of the old republic three will likely never come to light in this unproduced three-quarter obsidian planned on having players go toe-to-toe with a new cadre of sith lords of monstrous power all the while exploring the planets and solar systems that had been left ravaged in their wake and learning of darth revan's fate the studio believed that it would have been an epic conclusion to the trilogy that bioware had started but due to murky internal politics this conclusion ended up never coming to light nevertheless obsidian sequel would see its narrative continued a little over half a decade later with the release of bioware's star wars the old republic a massively multiplayer online game set 300 years after the sith lords for bioware setting its premier mmo within the pocket of the star wars universe it had already created was seen as a no-brainer as it meant that its staff wouldn't have to overwork themselves coming up with an original universe instead while the resulting game was and still remains a very different beast than its single-player-centric predecessors its story has provided players with ample opportunities over the years to see what became of revan and the exile after their respective journeys ended and put their demons to rest while the future of the knights of the old republic brand remains uncertain there's reason to be hopeful in a medium where so many once beloved video game series have been all but forgotten bioware's offshoot series remains incredibly popular with both star wars fans and the creatives currently in charge of the overall franchise even after disney's acquisition of lucasfilm resulted in the old republic games being firmly designated non-canon the franchise's lore keepers have allowed plenty of aliens planets and other fiction introduced in the series to officially become part of star wars continuity including darth revan all of this has allowed knights of the old republic to attain a level of legitimacy that few other star wars video games can claim to share enough so that lucasfilm has seriously considered adapting it for the silver screen and television yet in the end no amount of legitimacy will bring a new game into existence until bioware and ea get their acts together for all this past critical acclaim the former is unlikely to return to the star wars universe so long as mass effect and dragon age occupies time and while the latter could theoretically assign the series to another studio the corporation has been endlessly forthcoming about it no longer believing in traditional single-player experiences a new hope may yet be on the horizon but it might take a while before this new hope emerges thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons 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Channel: GVMERS

Views: 330,612

Keywords: KOTOR, Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic, KOTOR 2, KOTOR 3, The Sith Lords, The Old Republic, Obsidian, Bioware, EA, Documentary, Rise and Fall, Knights of the Old Republic 3, Remaster, Gameplay, 4K

Id: yESGaDTbwRA

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020