Former BioWare lead designer James Ohlen has revealed that EA canceled plans for a major reboot of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the long-running Star Wars MMORPG. The project would have completely changed the direction of the game and pushed it much closer to the style of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).
Ohlen explained in an interview with PC Gamer that, in 2015, four years after Star Wars: The Old Republic launched, he spent six months working on a relaunch plan called Star Wars: The New Republic. According to him, the goal was to turn Star Wars: The Old Republic into something that felt more like an online KOTOR instead of what he described as “World of Warcraft in space.” He believed the original game moved too far away from what made KOTOR special, so the reboot was also meant to fix several mistakes from the original launch.
The project also received support from Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and Dave Filoni, who were especially interested in the idea. Filoni even suggested connecting the story to a timeline set a few hundred years before the fall of the Republic.
One of the biggest surprises, however, was that Ohlen also managed to convince Patrick Söderlund, then head of EA Worldwide Studios, to support the reboot. Ohlen admitted this was difficult because he believed Söderlund strongly disliked SWTOR.
Despite getting support from important people inside both Lucasfilm and EA though, the project was ultimately stopped by EA’s board of directors and the main reason was money. He explained, “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 $300 million, they’re like, ‘Why the f*ck are we gonna spend a bunch more?'”
And that moment became “the beginning of the end” for him at BioWare. He eventually left the studio in 2018 after spending 22 years there. For more Star Wars related coverage, keep checking GameObserver.
