Star Wars Fans Rejoice! Knights Of The Old Republic Is Getting A Remake On The PlayStation 5

Sony Interactive Entertainment, Lucasfilm Games, and Aspyr Media have announced that "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic," the beloved role-playing game from the early 2000s, is getting a remake exclusively for the PlayStation 5. There had been rumors about a remake possibly being in the works, but now it's official. According to a press release, the companies are "remaking the classic RPG from the ground up for the modern age," adding the latest technology but "staying true to its revered story." Check out a brief teaser below.

If you were a gamer in the early 2000s, "Knights of the Old Republic" was a very big deal. A defining role-playing game for its era, "KOTOR" (as the fans call it) was an open world game set nearly 4,000 years before years before the formation of the Galactic Empire, when the Jedi were engaged in a war with the Sith. Players were able to customize their Jedi characters and visit multiple planets across the galaxy to try to track down the evil Darth Malak, who launched a Sith armada against the Republic. The game allowed the player to have agency over the story and their character, making it feel like your decisions and actions actually mattered in a real, feasible way.

That special feeling of legitimately influencing the narrative has become commonplace in mainstream video games, with BioWare, the company who helped make the original game, capitalizing on that feeling and essentially turning it into its own genre with games like "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age." But in 2003, it felt like a seismic shift in the way games were designed. The question is: now that it's 2021, does a "KOTOR" remake try to redefine what an RPG can be once again? Or do they simply lean into giving it the fanciest visual upgrade possible?

The original story was booted out of the "Star Wars" canon in 2012 when Disney purchased Lucasfilm, angering many fans at the time. Does the fact that this new remake is being released in the Disney era mean that the events of the game will now be considered canon? And what does canon even mean in the context of a story in which the player can vastly influence the outcome of certain events? Which parts would be canonical, and which would be up to individual players to mess around with? Could such a combination even exist?

Regardless of whether or not it makes its way into the official Lucasfilm narrative, it's clear the company is interested in this part of the "Star Wars" timeline (likely because the original game was so beloved). In 2019, a rumor spread that "Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were going to make a series of "Star Wars" films set in that time period, thousands of years before the Skywalker Saga. Those two eventually parted ways with Lucasfilm without making anything, but only a few days after that rumor about their involvement picked up steam, another report said that "Shutter Island" and "Alita: Battle Angel" writer Laeta Kalogridis was writing a film script set during the Old Republic era. So far, nothing has come of that project either, but early rumors about this game indicated that it would be a "a Knights of the Old Republic project that would integrate elements from the first two games in order to bring certain things into the current Star Wars canon." If that's true, this remake could pave the way for a new movie or TV project, cherry-picking the aspects that the Disney overlords want to keep and jettisoning those that are inconvenient or don't fit into their larger plans for the franchise.

Either way, fans are going to be very pleased at the idea of returning to this corner of the universe and these beloved characters. Let the hype officially begin.