Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic announced as a KOTOR spiritual successor

Over two decades after the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, a new project described as a “spiritual successor” to that seminal RPG series was announced at The Game Awards Thursday night. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic will be a collaboration between Lucasfilm Games and Arcanaut Studios, a new development house being launched by original KOTOR director Casey Hudson.

Hudson, who will serve as director on the new game, said in an interview with StarWars.com that he has remained in contact with Lucasfilm since the KOTOR days, in the hopes of being able to collaborate in the Star Wars universe again. “It took the right conditions to get everything to line up,” he told the site.

Calling KOTOR “one of the defining experiences of my career,” Hudson said he wants to “explore a contemporary vision” of the Star Wars universe, and “deliver on the combination of player agency and immersion in Star Wars” that defined the original games. As director on the upcoming game, Hudson said he sees his role as “to gather and shape a cohesive vision that the entire team contributes to. Ensuring that everyone shares that vision and understands their part in creating it, is critical to the success of a project.”

Though Hudson said game is described as “early in development,” a short teaser trailer helps establish at least a partial tone of the project, showing a small crew investigating the ruins of an ancient starship on a desolate, rain-soaked planet.

Lucasfilm Games’ VP and GM Douglas Reilly clarified to StarWars.com that Fate of the Old Republic is not a direct sequel or continuation of BioWare’s KOTOR series. That said, being similarly set well before the events of most Star Wars movies and other stories will give Fate of the Old Republic “an immense amount of open space to tell new original Star Wars stories, while staying true to the spirit of the galaxy we all love,” Reilly said. “There are, quite literally, infinite stories to tell.”

After joining BioWare in 2001, Hudson was instrumental to the creation of KOTOR and the Mass Effect series. Hudson left Bioware in 2014 before returning to the company in 2017, then departing again in 2020.