Waiting for KOTOR 3? Check Out KOTOR 1 Remade in UE4

[Steven Bogos]

Waiting for KOTOR 3? Check Out KOTOR 1 Remade in UE4

Knights of the Old Republic: Apeiron is a remaster of the original KOTOR, with added features and companions.

It's quite a week for mods that remaster classic games in new engines. Yesterday, we saw the alpha release of a Knights of The Old Republic: Apeiron [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/166420-Warcraft-3-Recreated-in-StarCraft-2-Mod], which is a remaster of the original KOTOR in Unreal Engine 4.

The game is being developed by indie gaming group Poem Studios with help from fans of the Star Wars RPG. As well as faithfully recreating the original game, Apeiron will add plenty of new goodies, including new worlds, missions, HUD, inventory, items, and companions.

The game is in a very, very pre-alpha stage at the moment, but you can check it out in all its glory below:

[gallery=5712]

As for the two most important questions you no doubt have (how much does it cost, and is it legal?), the Apeiron team assures us that the game will be released as a 100% free download, and that it is completely legal with no danger of Disney shutting it down.

There's no release ETA at this point, but the team is looking for more members if you are insterested in that sort of thing.

Source: Apeiron Game [http://www.apeirongame.com/]

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[Nurb]

In my opinion I think a lot of KOTOR's art style is lost when showing the comparison.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Might be interesting. Will need to see how they handle combat in game first.

 

[Mahorfeus]

The stills look nice, I guess.

I have to admit though that the thought of new worlds and companions sounds a little overambitious, and well, worrisome.

 

[Stupidity]

Might be interesting. Will need to see how they handle combat in game first.

Yes this is true. All the pretty backgrounds and props are wasted if the characters and animation are bad.
Also, though I loved me some KOTOR and it's sequel, I'm not sure a graphical update, no matter how pretty, would be enough to get me too play a decade old game iv'e already beaten like 12 times.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

As well as faithfully recreating the original game, Apeiron will add plenty of new goodies, including new worlds, missions, HUD, inventory, items, and companions

this makes me feel a bit relieved, I'm assuming those screenshots are just in first person for the alpha build while they tinker with stuff. As much as some people like to ***** about kotor's combat, I really wouldn't want it changed too immensily, maybe smoothed out/updated more akin to dragon age origins would be nice with more depth.


either way, fucking stoked for this, been playing TOR recently for the class stories and I'd love to go back to kotor.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

The stills look nice, I guess.

I have to admit though that the thought of new worlds and companions sounds a little overambitious, and well, worrisome.

did you ever play the brotherhood of shadow mod? rough around the edges and it's old, but it did a pretty damn good job piecing together existing pieces to make them look like new worlds/ships, I think it took me a solid 6-8 hours to complete, so depending on how the team is handling this, it could be easier than you'd think.

 

[ChaplainOrion]

I was thinking about this not too long ago, this sounds amazing! Though there is still a chance of them being shut down though. I remember that there was a large project for Skyrim to recreate Middle Earth for a LotR RPG mod, they were really brought down by Warner Bros' Cease and Desist. I believe it actually said the game was a threat to future sales of LotR video games, even though the game was free. So I think we will truly have to wait and see how this goes.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Might be interesting. Will need to see how they handle combat in game first.

Yes this is true. All the pretty backgrounds and props are wasted if the characters and animation are bad.
Also, though I loved me some KOTOR and it's sequel, I'm not sure a graphical update, no matter how pretty, would be enough to get me too play a decade old game iv'e already beaten like 12 times.

Since you play a Jedi in Kotor, I just hope they don't decide to use a system similar to the new Battlefront, but more along Jedi Academy lines.

 

[Metadigital]

That looks like it took a ton of work, and I can tell a lot of talent went into it, but if I wasn't told those were pictures of a Star Wars game, I'm not sure I would have known.

 

[The Enquirer]

Might be interesting. Will need to see how they handle combat in game first.

Yes this is true. All the pretty backgrounds and props are wasted if the characters and animation are bad.
Also, though I loved me some KOTOR and it's sequel, I'm not sure a graphical update, no matter how pretty, would be enough to get me too play a decade old game iv'e already beaten like 12 times.

Since you play a Jedi in Kotor, I just hope they don't decide to use a system similar to the new Battlefront, but more along Jedi Academy lines.

I've said it for quite some time, the combat system mass effect or the Jedi academy games have would do wonders for KOTOR.

 

[Callate]

I would like to know a teensy bit more about how they're so certain that this is legal... EA might have more than a word to say about competing with a resurrected Bioware product after wrangling the rights to make games for the new incarnation of the franchise, and Disney has a past suggesting they have an incredibly short fuse when it comes to "infringing" on their intellectual property.

Frankly, without concrete word in bold from both Disney and Electronic Arts that this project has their blessing, I can all too easily see it getting shut down at any time.

 

[Shocksplicer]

Yeah, this is absolutely not legal and these poor fools will be receiving a cease-and-desist letter in the very near future.

And what do you mean "Waiting for KOTOR 3"? Does anyone actually think KOTOR 3 is happening? It isn't.

 

[Barbas]

Smashing. I do love following the progress of such things and I hope their efforts meet with considerable success.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Looks amazing, but are they going to add some FPS elements? Not sure how I feel about that.

 

[Dalisclock]

The only way this comes close to legal is if they write some sort of checksum to make sure you have KOTOR installed as complex as the original DRM. At which point you could at least argue that it's just a really, really big mod.


Of course, if their plan is to remain anonymous and just dump the project onto the net when finished, it's legality doesn't really matter.

I think that plan is kind of dead at this point. If it's making the news on the net, chances are Disney/EA knows about it. It's only a matter of time before they drop the hammer.

 

[voltair27]

The aesthetic doesn't really match up with KOTOR or Star Wars at all, more Mass Effect-esque than anything. I'm still interested in seeing how this progresses though.

As for legality... technically, they can just release the game as a mod for KOTOR, have it be installed to the KOTOR directory, and only have it work if it detects the original KOTOR executable. I can still see EA or Disney shutting it down though.

Edit: Anyone else notice all the typos on the game's site?

 

[mad825]

Seems like someone cannot understand the difference between a remastering and a re-imagining. Sorry but fuck this shit, the additional content is only going to bastardised the overall feeling of the game.

 

[Quellist]

I've seen so many remixes/remasters/re-imaginings of games start out. Finish, not so many.

I'll take an interest in this when they have a fully playable version, until then its just a pipe dream