Player freedom and choice is central to Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, lead dev says

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is the upcoming spiritual successor to some of the best RPGs of all time, and thankfully spearheaded by the same lead dev. Casey Hudson, known for his work on KOTOR and Mass Effect, is leading the charge with FOTOR, and aims to keep player freedom at its center.

Speaking today for the official Star Wars website, Hudson said FOTOR is “equally ambitious” as KOTOR, which he said strove to be the “definitive Star Wars experience.”

“Fate of the Old Republic represents an opportunity to explore a contemporary vision of a definitive Star Wars experience,” he said, adding that the team is “using state-of-the-art technology and game design, and an all-new story crafted specifically to deliver on the combination of player agency and immersion in Star Wars that was at the heart of KOTOR.”

Hudson pointed out that player agency and freedom are crucial to this new experience, much as they were in KOTOR way back when. “Our goal is developing the kind of games I love making: emotionally powerful, cinematic adventures driven by player agency, narrative depth, and immersive world-building,” he said.

Fate of the Old Republic is still very early in development, with the studio behind it forming just this year. This would imply we won’t be seeing the game on shelves before 2030 or thereabouts, so there’s plenty of time for the studio to expand on these initial ideas and, hopefully, provide us with an experience that is player-focused and player-driven, and not prescriptive.

Baldur’s Gate 3 and other recent RPGs really set in stone the old-new tenets of role-playing games, all of which revolve around replayability, variation, and experiential breadth, with the entire narrative unfolding at the behest of the player, so the bar is now quite high.

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Last night’s The Game Awards show wasn’t the greatest of all time, but it sure did give us a glimpse of some potentially awesome games. One title in particular, however, stood out for a wrong reason: being similar—too similar—to CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077.

And that would be No Law, developed by Neon Giant of The Ascent fame, and published by the self-proclaimed AI-first pioneers, Krafton. Neon Giant’s track record is genuinely great, with The Ascent being one of the most visually striking games I’ve ever seen and played. It’s also set in a cyberpunk environment, one that delves deep into the realm of science fiction, making its cyberpunk vibes more of an artistic choice than an actual setting.

Even so, the studio has established itself as a proper sci-fi and cyberpunk-oriented team of creatives, which naturally led into a more ambitious, larger-scale game such as No Law is supposed to be. And that’d be all fine if the game didn’t bear so much similarity, eerie similarity, to CDPR’s 2020 title, Cyberpunk 2077.

While watching the TGA show last night, seeing No Law made me think it was something Cyberpunk 2077-related. The first-person perspective, the animations, the way the combat unfolds, all reminded me of CDPR’s game, not to mention the segment that showcases a certain location that is exceptionally difficult to tell apart from Cyberpunk 2077‘s Afterlife.

Now I get a first-person cyberpunk title is bound to bear some semblance to what was already made, but I for the life of me couldn’t tell you this wasn’t Cyberpunk 2077 if you didn’t tell me. That brings me to my biggest fear regarding Neon Giant’s upcoming title: it could fall into the same situation that Tencent has caught itself in with Lights of Motiram.

Sony sued the company for ripping off its assets, ideas, and style, and is currently embroiled in a massive legal battle that saw Light of Motiram grind development to a halt. If No Law doesn’t showcase more unique elements in the near future, I have a feeling CDPR might not like what the studio has done here, and could pursue legal action much in the same way as Sony.

This could eventually result in a potentially good game being bogged down by a lawsuit because it decided to pursue established styles instead of developing a new one, even if derivative of the one CDPR itself had made.

No Law posits an interesting setting and story, such as its Port Desire city that is an anarcho-corporatist hellscape, but how it executes things brings it way too close to an existing game, so much that telling them apart becomes a real headache.

We’ll have to wait and see how the game develops further and how its style evolves and translates into actual gameplay. But so far, its future seems to be hanging by a thread, one that CDPR could decide to slash at any moment.

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