By now you may have seen a rumor floating around about BioWare Austin developing a new Knights of the Old Republic game. Don’t get your hopes up too much: It’s based on old info. If BioWare ever does make a new KOTOR, it won’t be for a very long time.




The rumors originated from Liam Robertson, who helps operate the channel Unseen64 and said on a podcast last week that he’d heard BioWare’s Austin-based studio was making a new version of the classic Star Wars RPG. As transcribed by a Star Wars fan site, Robertson said: “I’ve learned now that [BioWare Austin is] pretty much now exclusively working on Star Wars games and they’re going to be doing that for the indefinite future. What they’re currently working on right now—and I have this on good authority—is a sort of remake/revival of Knights of the Old Republic. I don’t know when this is set to come out, but it has been in development for a little while now.”

Rumors like this pop up all the time, often fizzling just as quickly, but this one saw traction, making its way to the front of r/games as well as major video game websites like PC Gamer and GameSpot. Those sites combined Robertson’s rumor with a vague tweet from BioWare writer Drew Karpyshyn and voila: news. By now the internet regurgitation machine shouldn’t be too shocking:


Problem is, this is old info. What I’ve heard separately, from people familiar with goings-on at the studio, is that BioWare Austin did indeed play around with a Knights of the Old Republic prototype, but that it hasn’t been greenlit and is not currently in development. I’ve also heard that the majority of BioWare Austin is working on the company’s new IP, which is headed up by BioWare’s Edmonton studio and should be officially announced at E3. That new IP is a Destiny-ish game code-named Dylan, as Liam Robertson correctly reported in a separate Patreon post.



I reached out to Robertson this morning to clear things up and he sent over the following e-mail:

Going to hold my hands up here - I think I just misheard some of the Austin stuff when I was talking on Skype, so I may have misspoke there. There’s also the element that I had no notes in front of me and just sort of rambled on from memory. I did not expect these few select statements to blow up (oops). I’m used to having the opportunity to just release follow-up notices on the Patreon with any updates and corrections. My bad there. Let me clarify that I don’t think KOTOR’s a current project. From the same people I learned about Dylan from, I did hear that they prototyped a KOTOR revival at Austin a while back. I believe it may have evolved into something else since then or fizzled out since then. I’m still confident Austin is doing something Star Wars related though and I’m confident in that. I actually did know that they were contributing towards Dylan since I originally found out about it when I was researching Austin’s Shadow Realms, so if I said exclusively, then that was admittedly a mistake.

BioWare didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment. Don’t let the headlines get your hopes up too much, though. And, yes, I apologize for delaying this game.