• azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    As a person that worked at BioWare for 10 years. This is my theory. They just laid off 50 people src: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/23/23843096/bioware-layoffs-dragon-age-dreadwolf-mass-effect Based on my current knowledge, Dragon Age and Mass Effect are still on; however, kotor 3 was pretty early. Some people suggested the 50 people were from swtor, however, BioWare Austin was sold to another publisher Broadsword: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929816-an-update-on-the-development-of-swtor/

    When i was at EA, support orgs were moved to internal EA and only the game team was specic to the studio. 50 people does not equal support, 50 people is a new project.

    I theorized they cancelled kotor 3 then laid off a bunch of people, then transferred a bunch of people to mass effect and dragon age. I’ve been through 2 layoffs with EA and this is exactly what they do. It’s a shame because it was a long held passion project for a lot of the devs.

  • Jarmer@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    We knew this was happening a long time ago though. This is probably just Sony making it “official” in an unofficial way. This project has been dead for ages since the dev team was pulled off it long ago.

    • hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      It was given to another team, but obviously radio silence ever since.

      Part of me is wondering if the success of Baldur’s Gate has impacted the approach to it at all, given it falls roughly in the same genre space.

      Embracer’s financials probably impacting it more, though.

      • azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        It was definitely an EA call. They’ve been talking about kotor 3 for years internally. The devs want it, but you gotta keep up that stock price…:⁠-⁠\

        • hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          EA/Bioware had nothing to do with this remake. It was in development at Aspyr at first, followed by Saber Interactive — both owned by Embracer Group.

          This was/is? a remake of KOTOR 1, not a KOTOR 3 which has never been announced.

  • TommySalami@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    A damn shame. KOTOR 1 & 2 are still, IMHO, one of the greatest Star Wars stories/experiences. I’d really love for something to revisit the time period.

    • CordanWraith@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Not a shame, imo. Any remake would ruin it by changing things, I’m glad this has happened as you are right that the games are the best star wars stories. They’re also my favourite games in general, especially TSL.

      • SugarApplePie@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Even if the remake was worse in every way, why would it matter when you can still buy and play the originals without any issue? The KOTOR games are some of my favorite video games so I can understand not liking a remaking that (hypothetically) changes some things, but I don’t know why it’d be a positive to not get a new version of it that might have gotten more people interested in the originals.

      • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I have no idea why you think that, it’d make it much better. The environments, the characters, the cutscenes will all be much better in a remake.

        • CordanWraith@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          No, I doubt it. Because they wouldn’t keep it true to the originals. They’d change the characters and the story and cut out sections and add in new things and replace the combat and make it fundamentally not the same game anymore. Especially when it’s not being made by the original makers.

          Also, graphics aren’t a selling point for me in games.

          • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Why would they have to do that

            Why do you assume they’d change anything besides modern QoL stuff like that

            Where are all of these assumptions coming from that they have to change stuff?

    • zeekaran@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      If you’ve played it before that’s doable. Someone who has never played it will have a bad time. It’s seriously outdated.

        • EsteeBestee@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          As someone who loves RPGs and Star Wars, it took me about 10 attempts to actually get more than an hour into the game before turning it off. It’s just that dated. I did eventually power through the first few hours and then the non-aged moments (story and writing) became good enough for me to stick around. I can definitely see how most people wouldn’t want to play it for the first time at this point though.

        • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          it is a star wars game, id expect lightsaber combat to be at least passable lol. i love kotor 1 but my god the combat is horrible

            • mcforest@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              It’s not that long ago that I played both KOTOR games for the first time and I have to agree that the game might not be that intuitive by today standards. But now after a lot of people played BG3 it might be not that hard anymore to figure this game out.

    • OfficialThunderbolt@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I do. The originals were locked behind an anti-consumer EULA once Disney got ahold of them. Since I won’t agree to their EULA, I was holding out hope for the remake.

      • SirSauceLordtheThird@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m not sure if id trust the remake to have a more reasonable EULA tbh, and frankly with the originals if you want to play and don’t like the EULA i’d say pirate it, KOTOR is 20 years old now at this point.