Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is considered not only a classic Bioware RPG, but a classic Star Wars game in general. Thanks to this long-lived fan adoration, a new effort has been launched to not only remake but remaster the original game.
According to their website, Apeiron is a team consisting of “dedicated programmers, artists, voice actors, world builders, and writers” with core creators, and indie game group, Poem Studios. The group plans to not only “remake and remaster” the original game, but also create “added content, new worlds, missions, HUD, inventory, items, and companions” in the Unreal Engine 4.
So far, the website has several shots of remastered environments, along with a few side-by-side comparisons.
Their Twitter also features some prototype shots of their combat AI.
Now that Star Wars is Disney’s intellectual property, the question of “is this legal?” certainly comes into play. However, the team has addressed this on their site – they pointed out games like Black Mesa, which was remake of Half-Life, and Renegade X, a rebuild of Command and Conquer in Unreal Engine 3.
The game, as a result, will be absolutely free, in order to dodge the question of intellectual property. The dev team has plans to accept donations once a larger portion of the game is “finished and polished.”
The project hosts a live development stream on Twitch, where they stream on a pretty regular basis.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was released by Bioware in 2003 for Xbox & PC, along with a 2004 release for Mac and a 2013 release for iOS. The RPG takes place 4,000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire, and secured critical and commercial success, even winning several game of the year awards at the time of its release.