Obsidian's STAR WARS: KNIGHTS: OF THE OLD REPUBLIC III Was Focused On Ancient Sith Lords

There's no denying that BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic and Obsidian Entertainment’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords truly are all-time role-playing classics.

According to Chris Avellone, who was involved in the development of KOTORII, Fallout: New Vegas, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (you can watch its reveal trailer below), KOTOR3 was Obsidian’s top priority once work wrapped on the sequel. As we know it, the game has been canceled, but its legacy lives on – and it sounds like the promising threequel that never happened could’ve been something special.

In an interview with VG247, Avellone revealed some new juicy details on KOTOR3. According to the award-winning writer, when they finished KOTOR2, Obsidian and Avellone were "trying to restore our lives back to sanity. We did start working on the third game pitch, because we always imagined the trilogy. Even when working on the second game, we [tried] to foreshadow what Darth Revan was doing in the second game, and he wasn’t always just ruthlessly and mindlessly blowing everything up. He actually had a larger plan because there was some greater manipulation and threat going on."

“The third game involved you, as a player character, following where Revan went and then taking the battle to the really ancient Sith lords who are far more terrifying than the Darths that show up. These guys would just be monsters,” Avellone added. "These would have a level of power that was considerable, but at the same time you’d be able to dig more into their psychologies, and their personalities, their history, and even how they dealt with the player, how they talk with the player, the different powers they cultivated and developed, and for some of them like – they’re the ancients, so they’re not just ruling a solar system, [but] swathes of the galaxy."

“So the places you travel to [you’d see] how they left their stamp on that world, or that solar system, or whatever collection of moons. You’d see how horrible that was. Part of that environment would tell a story about that. [That] would be a great, epic way to end the trilogy. The Old Republic are out there. We just didn’t get a chance to do it,” Avellone continued. While those ancient lords would be enigmatic, the player would be able to learn more about their origins the more they played the game.

It's unclear why LucasArts put the title on hiatus in 2015, but he thinks that "part of the reason, and I’m just speculating, is that I think there was a team internal at Lucas Arts at the time that wanted to do it. So obviously they would have gotten priority over us. So I think that was one factor. Another factor is I think that BioWare tried to do it a few times. They tried to pitch it and tried to pitch it, and were like, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a third game.’ But it just never seemed to actually go anywhere."

“So I don’t know whether people didn’t think there’d be enough sales, [or if] they didn’t care about doing a single-player game. I know a ton of people who would want to play it, but obviously, maybe those numbers aren’t big enough, or whatever, so I don’t know what the deal was. So [the answer] is ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t us!,” Avellone concluded, leaving the fandom with some burning questions.

As a reminder, Avellone has recently had a chance to work on System Shock, Dying Light 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, and the aforementioned Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Take a look:

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