A new report on a lawsuit over canceled DLC for Aspyr's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 remaster has revealed some much bigger details about the KOTOR remake and what Lucasfilm Games has planned afterward. It seems a full remake of KOTOR 2 is also in the planning stages, complete with an array of fixes for the game's original, infamously unfinished ending.
That's according to Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly, who spoke about the project as part of a deposition over the missing DLC this past March. Reilly's comments have just surfaced in a new Game File report, where he discusses "Juliet," the codename for the KOTOR 2 remake.
"Juliet was the code name for a project where we were going to do a full remake of KOTOR II with modern art, modern gameplay, you know, keep the story and the characters and the general—the general content of KOTOR II, but remake it for modern hardware and modern machines with updated graphics and all those kind of things," Reilly explained. "It was something we were discussing with Aspyr."
The remake of KOTOR 1 was announced way back in 2021, but soon seemed to hit development troubles at Aspyr. Reports suggested that work had shifted to a Saber Interactive studio, but the details of the developer were never actually revealed at the time. However, Reilly confirmed that it has moved to Mad Head Games, the studio behind the upcoming Hellraiser: Revival.
Notably, the official site for Mad Head Games says that the studio has another "unannounced AAA game based on a famous and beloved IP" in the works, and a KOTOR remake would certainly qualify there. There have also been stirrings recently about an Old Republic-flavored game being revealed soon, and while those rumors have not been substantiated, the impending Game Awards on December 11 would be a perfect venue for the KOTOR remake to reemerge.
Such an announcement would be even more exciting if a remake of the sequel were to follow. KOTOR 2 launched in 2004 with an ending that many players – myself included – felt at the time was anticlimactic and unsatisfying. Soon after the game hit PC, modders discovered evidence in the game files suggesting that much of the ending's content, and some other elements of the game, were cut before release, likely due to time constraints put on developer Obsidian.
After years of work, fans eventually released the Restored Content Modification, which implements many of the story elements and other features the original devs cut from the game. When Aspyr released a KOTOR 2 remaster for Switch in 2022, it had plans to also release the RCM project as DLC – the first time console players would ever get the chance to play it. That DLC release was eventually canceled, prompting a false advertising lawsuit against Aspyr.
The details of that lawsuit are the primary subject of the new Game File report, but in short, it seems the DLC was canceled because Disney's lawyers got cold feet about their ability to fully secure the rights to the modders' work.
Even with the disruption to the KOTOR 1 remake's development, the project "is still technically on the road map," according to Reilly, and it won't be subject to the same legal issues that killed the restored content DLC. "The plan was we would remake the content that was in the RCM as it relates to Star Wars in that Juliet project," Reilly said. Here's hoping that plan remains intact.
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