Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II remake project seemingly confirmed by fascinating new report

It seems to have been confirmed that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II — The Sith Lords has a remake in development. Or, at least, a remake was being worked on at some point.

Of course, KotOR fans are already expecting one remake. A new version of BioWare’s brilliant 2003 role-playing game, Knights of the Old Republic, has been in the works for years (firstly at Aspyr, and more recently at Saber Interactive).

Obsidian’s 2004 sequel, KotOR 2: The Sith Lords, seems to have been lined up for a similar treatment, although the current status of that project is unclear.

This news comes from a stunning piece of investigative journalism by Stephen Totilio at Game File.

Totilio’s report is largely focused on a recent lawsuit involving Aspyr. The game-development company, best known for its ports of classic Star Wars games, was sued by one fan, Malachi Mickelonis, over allegations of false advertising.

You might remember the story. Aspyr had announced that it was working on porting The Sith Lords to Nintendo Switch, with a big added bonus – it was going to restore the game’s cut content, which was missing in the original 2004 release but subsequently rebuilt by dedicated modders.

Ultimately, Aspyr didn’t manage to restore this content and were forced to break the disappointing news to players who’d already paid for the product.

Totilio’s report dives deep into all of the official documentation from this lawsuit, going into great detail to try to understand what happened to the plans to reinstate the cut content. It’s well worth a read, and you can get a free trial to the Game File Substack to do just that for free.

One detail jumps out from the report: “A mystery project codenamed Juliet is described as a full, modern remake of KOTOR II, that is/was in development alongside the previously reported remake of KOTOR I, at least as recently as March.”

At one point during the back and forth about the cut content for the Switch port, an unnamed Lucasfilm exec is quoted as saying: “More important to me anyway is Juliet.”

After prompting from an attorney, Lucasfilm Games vice president Doug Reilly explained for the record: “Juliet was the code name for a project where we were going to do a full remake of KOTOR II with modern art, modern gameplay, you know, keep the story and the characters and the general content of KOTOR II, but remake it for modern hardware and modern machines with updated graphics and all those kind of things. It was something we were discussing with Aspyr.”

So, Juliet is a full-blown remake of KotOR 2, which was seemingly a bigger deal to Lucasfilm than the Switch port that Aspyr was working on.

And would Juliet include the cut content in question? In Reilly’s words: “The plan was [that] we would remake the content.”

Totilio notes at this point: “I can’t confirm the status of the remake.”

Totilio adds: “[Lawyer Ray] Kim’s deposition of Reilly happened this past March. Juliet ‘is still technically on the road map.’ Reilly told Kim, noting that ‘we’re starting with the remake of KOTOR I.’

“Aspyr isn’t working on those games, he added. When Kim asked who is, Reilly said the studio handling them is Saber-owned Mad Head Games (which tracks with prior reporting; a rep for Saber did not jump at Game File’s request to provide an update on the project).”

So, what’s the takeaway with all this? That Saber hasn’t just been working on remaking the first KotOR. Remaking the second game was also, at some point, on their to-do list.

Here’s hoping that it does eventually get made, with the cut content included, putting this matter to bed at long last.

Once all that’s done, we can get back to campaigning for a KotOR 3. On all of those, we’ll bring you more news when we have any to share.

In the meantime, check out the video below – or watch the clip on our YouTube channel – to see me arguing why KotOR is the greatest game of all time.

Read more on KotOR 2:

• Star Wars KotOR 2 cheats: All cheat codes for Switch, PC and Mac
• KotOR 2 planet order: Best way to visit the Star Wars planets

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