Many consider it the finest Star Wars game ever made. It was also the first game to truly bring the Star Wars universe to life, allowing players to zip from Dantooine to Kashyyyk in the Ebon Hawk, assassin droid and Wookie warrior in tow. It was the prequel that everyone truly wanted, effectively capturing the flavor of the original stories despite being set thousands of years before the rise of the Galactic Empire. It would have saved BioWare the misery of Mass Effect : Andromeda and Anthem.Įven now, close to 20 years after its original release on the original Xbox, the series looms large in the consciousness of Star Wars fans. In an era where RPGs are big business, it would have instantly been one of the biggest games of the year. For as much as EA pushed Star Wars Battlefront and even Jedi: Fallen Order, neither could have possibly hit as hard as a KOTOR sequel. KOTOR 3 was the anchor that EA’s Star Wars lineup badly needed, but never really mustered. Its biggest missed opportunity? Knights of the Old Republic 3.

The door was open for BioWare to complete the trilogy and earn some much-needed goodwill.Įarlier this week, EA’s fraught tenure as the exclusive purveyor of Star Wars games effectively came to an end. EA’s deal technically runs through 2023, but in rolling out the Lucasfilm Games label and announcing that Ubisoft was making an open-world Star Wars game, Disney effectively announced that EA’s time was up. The run was disappointing at best, disastrous at worst, and (with maybe a few exceptions) will be remembered as an overall failure. Star Wars: The Old Republic - its much-hyped attempt to compete directly with World of WarCraft - had proven to be a bust, but the studio had yet to suffer the exodus of talent that would come a few years later. Still more exciting was that the deal appeared to give BioWare another crack at the Star Wars license. Between DICE bringing its long experience with the Battlefield series to Star Wars Battlefro nt, and Visceral making what was assumed to be a third-person action game in the vein of Star Wars 1313, the future seemed brighter than Tatooine’s twin suns.

It’s easy to forget now, but when EA acquired the exclusive rights to make games under the Star Wars license in 2013, fans were optimistic - even kind of excited.

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