What a Knights of the Old Republic Remake Would Mean for Star Wars Continuity

[Winter]

Disney is... Kinda obsessed with making everything in their continuity of Star Wars "In Canon" even if it doesn't make any sense or outright contradicts something else in canon. Case in point, the Visual Dictionary of the The Force Awakens was stated SEVERAL Times by Disney and Lucas Film to be completely in canon with the series and it made clear that Snoke was older then Palpatine and, last time I checked it could have been changed, that is still the case POST Rise of Skywalker.

But, let's be honest, this has been the case for Star Wars for a while as everything in the Old EU had the same problem with several people at Lucas Film saying that everything in the Old EU was canon regardless of how little sense it made. Lucas himself only considered parts of the EU canon to his story, The Force Unleashed for example Lucas sees as 100% canon while The Thrawn Trilogy (which I do think he was at least partly inspired by given how much his Prequel Trilogy had in common with TTT) he never said as canon no matter how often he was asked.

As some of you have no doubt heard there are rumors of a Knights of the Old Republic Remake being made one that will, for all intense and purposes, be completely loyal to the story of the Original and only be a remake for the gameplay, level design and graphics while also POSSIBLY getting the old cast back to reprise their old roles along with giving Revan a voice.

KOTOR is interesting as it used SEVERAL ideas that were born from the Original EU the most notable being TTT. Both battle meditation and Force Bonds weren't invented by KOTOR but, to my knowledge it was the one to both name and popularize these concepts in the major Star Wars fandom. The Disney Era has since tried to utilized one of these ideas in The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker which was the Force Bond... and in my opinion kinda butchered it, at least ROS did.

Original all the Force Bond was... Exactly what it said on the tin, a Bond between two people who were Force Sensitive. This bond allowed them to feel each other across the galaxy and communicate in a way that was beyond the usual means of Force Communication. For all my issues with TLJ this was pretty well done in that film as it allowed for the villain and hero to interact in a way that didn't require either side to enter a truce, one to be captured AND was overall pretty accurate to how it was done in the OEU... And then ROS came along.

And BOY did this film miss the mark on this, not using it as a... sigh... means of Teleportation (I just assumed that Kylo Ren was feeling the water in TLJ not that it was actually transferred over to him) and it's also an attempt to explain why Rey is so OP because a Dyad is more rare and more powerful then even the Chosen One... This is something stated in one of the original Leaks for the film BTW...

The Force Bond wasn't a power up or anything and ROS just turned it into yet another way to try and make Super Special... In addition to trying to use her being Palpatine's granddaughter/Nice due to her father being a clone that was somehow different because he didn't have powers because Shut Up.

But anyway, what would a Loyal Remake of KOTOR mean for Star Wars. The Force Bond is that story is a regular Force Bond so how will that effect the series moving forward. For the record, Luke and Mara had a Force Bond and I'm pretty sure Leia had one with Han despite him NOT being Force sensitive. It was used as a means to A) Use as a plot device/Deus Ex Machina and B) As a means to further explore and develop characters regardless if they were romantically involved or not (Revan's and Bastila's bond is used to for both characters regardless if they end up together romantically or not).

Thoughts?

[CharlesPhipps]

The problem with Disney's EXCELLENT committment to continuity is the fact that there was no story Bible for the sequels.

Snoke didn't HAVE a backstory.

Which is just so....grr!

[Thebestoftherest]

Is it okay that I don't care about if it canon or not, that I just wants to play it on my switch?

[Captain Crimson]

The KOTOR games were made for the SWL continuity in the C Canon. To remake it would be inherently challenging since first up, there's gonna be bad blood carried over from KOTOR Apeiron they shut down, second is does this fit into SWL or DSWC, or both? Without TOTJ, there is no KOTOR games, and I doubt very few creatives there now are actually aware of it. IMO, without Mr. Anderson or Mr. Karpyshyn, it is not Old Republic, it's just someone else's fanfiction. They made the verse and fleshed it out so richly. And it's not just the games, it's the comic series, it's the short stories and far more that make up the timeline of the Old Republic era.

The simple solution would just be remake the game with the updated graphics, change nothing story-wise, and remarket them as SWL. That's what they are, and yet despite the fact they like to obfuscate canon status to get normies confused for marketing reasons, the creatives still adding to TOR updates admit they are writing firmly for the SWL universe. To remake it and market it as anything but SWL would be weird and pointless and just generate more bad blood in the fandom now. Look at how HOTJ got so much buzz and hype in my EU communities. No one there I know wants a KOTOR remake, they don't trust Disney with it. And neither do I, TBH. We turned out in droves to buy up HOTJ, and if they're smart, they'd remarket a KOTOR remake as SWL unless they just plan to strip it down for parts like they have everything else.

Makes me long more and more the days of Mr. Lucas's administration. Sure, it wasn't flawless, but I remember the times at SW cons where they'd tout out fan-made movies. He encouraged that, he supported it. DSW just wants to smother art at the expense of the bottom line.

BTW, controversial opinion, I think the KOTOR games should have followed the TOTJ artwork.

[Thebestoftherest]

Personally I think it would be best to just have it be a legend in canon. Have it be a story that happen but it was so long ago that you can basically say weather it happened like that or not almost doesn't matter.

[Captain Crimson]

Personally I think it would be best to just have it be a legend in canon. Have it be a story that happen but it was so long ago that you can basically say weather it happened like that or not almost doesn't matter.

That is exactly what a lot of movers and shakers at LF want and I'm not a fan of that. Just treat it as a parallel universe, one that can still be added to alongside the DSWC. If we actually use Mr. Lucas's words under a certain interpretation that was the EU in spades, so it makes LF look even worse since they came in and put the squeeze on their business associates who'd love to continue SWL in the more limited form of literature and comic books, which I'm fine with.

Marvel #108 wasn't a legend, it fit into the timeline. So, too, should the KOTOR games.

[McAvoy]

Simple answer is Disney will do what Disney will want to do.

Slightly more complicated answer, it's a video game. Update the graphics and hopefully don't make it P2P and I think fans will play it even if it doesn't keep up with the previous versions.

There may be a bit of an issue with the hardcore fans of the original series and other fans who are done with Disney Star Wars but I think they will still make money.

[Captain Crimson]

The canon status HAS to be resolved if we are to have long-term growth and not short-term gains for the topmost executives, but these are people who don't care about canon, they don't care about what came before, they've broken continuity before, and they will do it again.

Something else I'd like to add. It's not just TOTJ. Without the JA YA novels, there is no KOTOR 2, that game referenced the books so much, it enhanced the shared-universe aspect.

[Thebestoftherest]

Yes, heaven forbid they just try to tell their own stories.

[Captain Crimson]

And that's another thing, it's just standing in the shadow of what others have already done far better and they can't replicate, so it's a fool's errand to even try, but it does make the studio suits very rich, so that's something, I guess.

I'd genuinely prefer a new take on the period prior to the six movies, their select period in history. Something that isn't anything like what we've seen in the Old Republic of SWL. A new exploration into the nature of the Force, the precursor races out there, galactic history. But that's not what they're interested in.