It’s a fascinating thought – the idea of changing tack and making Star Wars: The Old Republic more like the classic Knights of the Old Republic. Well, that almost happened a decade ago according to former BioWare lead designer James Ohlen, but the plan never came to fruition due to the intervention of the EA board, as Ohlen explains.
Speaking to PC Gamer in a wide-ranging interview, Ohlen, who was lead designer on KOTOR as well as Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, said he spent six months in 2015 – four years after Star Wars: The Old Republic was released – compiling a design he referred to as The New Republic. Ohlen described the project as a “chance to do [SWTOR more like] Knights of the Old Republic online, it was a chance to [put right] everything I’d said that we’d messed up.”
With the help of a mock-up trailer, Ohlen managed to convince a handful of key people that The New Republic was the right direction for SWTOR. He convinced then-Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy about the idea, and now-Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni. Filoni was reportedly so enthused that he said, “If you set it a couple hundred years before the fall of the Republic, we can have a tie-in,” Ohlen recalled.
For Ohlen, only one hurdle remained: EA’s board of directors, and sadly here, the game’s original eye-watering budget came back to thwart him. “We were going to be able to have a Star Wars: The New Republic until the board of directors of EA, who all remembered the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and remembered spending $300m… They’re like, ‘Why the fuck are we gonna spend a bunch more?'”
