Ever since Mass Effect: Legendary Edition was announced in November, BioWare fans have been increasingly hopeful that a remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic could be released in the not-too-distant future. Their wishes seemed to be granted earlier this week, with industry insider Jason Schreier reporting that a remake was in development at Aspyr Media.
The original RPG was hugely influential, but having released in 2003 it has many features that are now extremely dated. A Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake would need to make some significant changes to bring the game into the 2020s. Though any changes are bound to be controversial, here are just some of the improvements a remake could make over the original game.
Character Models
One change that most Knights of the Old Republic fans would likely get behind is a full overhaul of the game's character customization system. The original game gave the player 15 preset character models for each gender option. Though every model and portrait had several variants it would cycle through if the player descended into the Dark Side, the inability to customize the player character in detail wouldn't hold up in a modern remake.
The same can be said for many of the NPCs players can find throughout the world. All of KOTOR's characters would need updated models, but a remake would also need to shake up some of the generic NPCs' appearances. Though many story-central characters in the original KOTOR had unique designs, a lot of the secondary human and alien NPCs had to share a limited pool of models across the rest of the game.
KOTOR is set long before the Clone Wars, but it's easy for players to run into identical NPCs throughout the world. A remake could solve this by using a single character creation system for the player character and the world's secondary human NPCs. While they wouldn't need to be fully customizable, KOTOR's alien characters could also do with several more unique skins to help diversify their appearances in the game.
Combat
Changing the game's combat system could be one of the most controversial updates made in a KOTOR remake. However, the game's combat is also one of its most noticeably dated features, and is one of the biggest areas a remake could stand to improve. There are a few different ways a remake could approach improving combat, depending on how much the developers were willing to risk changing.
The original KOTOR used a TTRPG-style turn-based combat system that would judge the likelihood of a player landing a hit based on a d20 role modified by the player's stats. Though combat ostensibly played out in real-time when the game was unpaused, that time was actually divided into distinct rounds. On the one hand a remake could attempt to bring the game fully into the 2020s with real-time combat based on games like Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. However, there are a few reasons that solution might not be as simple as it seems.
Modern real-time combat would likely require many of the areas in KOTOR to be redesigned from the ground up to factor in elements like dynamic enemy sightlines and cover. In the original release of KOTOR, many NPCs would only attack the player once they were within a certain range, unlike later BioWare RPGs which used more realistic lines of sight. The kind of combat found in games like Fallen Order would also require KOTOR's skill and levelling system to be completely overhauled.
KOTOR could be updated with a Mass Effect-style combat system which has real-time combat but also allows the player to pause to give orders to companions. Introducing real-time shooter elements into the game, however, would also require area redesigns, and could cause a significant imbalance between ranged and melee combat. It would also require the stat system to be overhauled, with in-game aiming replacing the attribute-modified roll that determines whether the player successfully hits an enemy.
To avoid redesigning each area from the ground up, a KOTOR remake would likely have to avoid totally modernizing its combat system. There are still significant improvements that could be made, however. Player character and KOTOR companion controls could be made far more responsive, for example. Otherwise, the extent to which KOTOR's combat can be improved will depend upon the studio's willingness to redesign other aspects of the game as well.
Roleplaying Options
While KOTOR's combat struggles to live up to the standard of later BioWare RPGs, the same cannot be said of the story. However, there are still some small edits that could be made to KOTOR's story to increase the variety of roleplaying options. A female character who goes down the Dark Side path, for example, has no romance option which will stay with them until the end of the game. A male player character doesn't only have romance options for both a full Light Side and Dark Side playthrough, but has Bastila Shan as a romance option whose romantic plot will progress even when the player switches sides.
A remake could make more companions romanceable by male and female characters, or it could give more characters romance quests. If the game wanted to avoid making too many changes, it could restore some cut content to give a greater variety of endings. The original KOTOR had a cut ending where a female Dark Side character who had romanced Carth wasn't forced to kill him to progress through the game. Instead, players could turn on Bastila Shan and side with Carth at the last moment to help destroy the Star Forge. This dialogue was already recorded, and could be restored as an option in the remake.
No matter the route it goes down, a KOTOR remake will have a difficult balancing act to perform. Unlike the original Mass Effect trilogy, some of the core systems in the game from combat to character creation are from completely bygone eras. Any remake will have to choose whether it tries to rebuild and improve those old systems, or deviate significantly from the design of the original game.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is available for Android, iOS, PC, and Xbox.