According to a new report over at Bloomberg, development on the announced Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake has been paused and indefinitely delayed after development studio Aspyr Media fired key members of the team.

The game's art director and design director to be exact. Not only that but it's said that a recent vertical slice (a playable bit of proof of concept) wasn't quite where it needed to be and that so much time and resources had been put into the demo, the development timeline for the full release blew out to 2025 at best. The original plan was apparently a late 2022 release.



With the backing of Lucasfilm Games and Sony (which would probably make it a timed PS5 exclusive), the high-profile massive project was met with open arms by fans when it was announced in September of last year. The big question mark though was always the studio behind the project, Aspyr Media. Whose portfolio is essentially all ports. Its Star Wars credits include bringing Star Wars: Republic Commando, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and other games to the Nintendo Switch.

Remaking - that is rebuilding from the ground-up - Bioware's classic RPG using modern tech would be a massive undertaking. The sheer number of planets, cities, towns, and environments is one thing - throw in cinematic characters, real-time action, and everything else you'd expect to see in AAA titles, and, well, the scope grows exponentially. As BioWare shifted to more detailed worlds and animation with Mass Effect the number of explorable story-based locations shrunk compared to KOTOR. Just to accommodate all of that detail.

Anyway, this report basically makes it sound like Aspyr Media wasn't quite aware of just what would be involved in remaking KOTOR with a modern look and feel. As the Austin-based Aspyr was absorbed by the Embracer Group last year, fellow studio Saber Interactive was announced as a co-developer earlier this year. With development on the remake paused and delayed indefinitely, there are also signs that it'll be outsourced or given to another studio entirely.

Based on how long we've been waiting to hear about a KOTOR remake, we're hoping it doesn't get cancelled.