Development of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake has reportedly been paused with the future of the game said to be up in the air.
That’s according to Bloomberg, which claims developer Aspyr Media fired the game’s design director Brad Prince and art director Jason Minor earlier this month.
The pair were reportedly dismissed shortly after the studio finalised a demo of the game to show to its production partners Lucasfilm and Sony.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake Trailer | PS5
Aspyr’s studio heads are said to have informed staff this month that the demo hadn’t met internal expectations and work on the game was being paused, with the company planning to seek new development opportunities.
Announced last September for PS5 and PC, the game had been in development for three years at Austin, Texas-based Aspyr, which originally planned to have it ready for release by the end of 2022.
One Bloomberg source suggested too much time and money had been invested in the demo and that a more realistic release window now would be 2025.
Aspyr is a subsidiary of World War Z and Witcher 3 Switch port studio Saber Interactive, which is also working on the KOTOR remake.
Some at Aspyr reportedly believe that Saber could now take over development of the project completely.
“Aspyr has gone full in to make this the best game that they can make,” Saber CEO Matthew Karch said in May.
“When we acquired Aspyr, we knew from the start that they would require our assistance.
“Saber has tremendous expertise in creating these types of products. We’ve done it on Halo – on multiple Halo products – so we’ve been spending a lot of time working with them to bring this title over.”
Karch added: “We’re fully confident that the game is going to be fantastic, but it’s a massive product and massive products require a lot of effort and a lot of time to make good, and especially when you’re talking about a game that’s very old, we’ve basically had to remake that game from scratch.”
Released in 2003, Knights of the Old Republic tells a Jedi versus Sith story set some 4,000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire featured in 1977’s Star Wars film.
