Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 3 in development – but not at EA or BioWare

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Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic key art — Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic – who’s making the new game? (pic: LucasArts)

Ever since EA got the Star Wars licence eight years ago, it’s seemed a non-brainer that they would make a new Knights Of The Old Republic. After all, it was one of the most popular older games and EA already own original developer BioWare.

In all this time they’ve never announced anything though and while there are now rumours that a new game is underway, supposedly it has nothing to do with either company.

Over the weekend, Star Wars source Bespin Bulletin stated that the new game is ‘not with EA’ and ‘we’ll never guess’ what developer is working on the project instead.

‘Amongst my digging, I heard there is a Knights of the Old Republic project in development somewhere,’ said Bespin Bulletin. ‘I talked to a couple of people, and I also found out that Jason Schreier said that it’s not with EA, and we’ll ‘never guess’ who the studio is that’s making this game.’

Bespin Bulletin seems to be referring to a comment by Bloomberg reporter Schreier on forum ResetEra, where he commented that ‘Nobody’s going to guess right that’s for sure’.

Nate Najda of Wushu Studios, aka rumourmonger Shinobi602, backed up Bespin’s claims, adding ‘It’s not as mysterious as you think. It’s just not a household name most people are aware of.’

‘I don’t know if the bounty hunter game is with them or if it’s with Ubisoft’, said Bespin Bulletin ‘But EA is working on stuff and there’s another unannounced game at EA, which I have no idea what it is. I don’t think it’s Battlefront 3.’

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords key art — Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2 – original creators Obsidian are currently busy (pic: Aspyr)

EA’s exclusive use of the Star Wars licence was supposed to run for at least another two years but earlier this month Disney announced the return of Lucasfilm Gaming as a publishing label and that Ubisoft are working on a new open world game – already assumed by many to be related to bounty hunters and/or The Mandalorian.

At the same time EA confirmed that they are still making multiple Star Wars games, heavily hinting that one of them would be Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2.

The original two Knights Of The Old Republic games were released only for the original Xbox and PC, getting on for two decades ago now, with ongoing MMO The Old Republic acting as a prequel to the series.

The games are set several thousand years before the events of the original movies and since Disney reset the expanded universe most elements of them have become non-canon, although there have been constant rumours of a revival and possibly even a movie or TV series.

BioWare made the original and The Old Republic but the second game was by The Outer Worlds developer Obsidian Entertainment, who are now owned by Microsoft.

Normally that would preclude them from working on what would presumably be a multiformat title but Lucasfilm’s new Indiana Jones game is by Wolfenstein developer MachineGames, who Microsoft also own, and so far there’s no suggestion that will be an Xbox exclusive.

Obsidian is currently working on role-playing game Avowed though and it seems unlikely they’d be able to handle two major projects at once, especially as they continue with other smaller projects such as Grounded and are rumoured to be planning The Outer Worlds 2.

The comments of Nate Najda imply a less well-known studio, but they’d have to be of a significant size to take on such a project. At the very least they’d probably need some veteran developers, which could mean one of various new studios set up by ex-BioWare staff – such as Canadian company Yellow Brick Games.