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"He was training you to essentially be his enforcer, a Dark Lord to conquer the universe, and he was going to become the main villain." Dun dun duunnn!īut this KOTOR 2 concept never made it any further. That character was going to train you in the first part of the game but then you were going to discover this Yoda figure was actually not the good Yoda you expected. "The initial twist in the first two-page concept we had for Knights of the Old Republic 2 was you were going to be trained by a Yoda-like figure," Ohlen says, "someone from the Yoda race. "It feels like Star Wars, an episodic movie series, needs cliffhangers and twists, so we wanted a twist from the start" Yes, Yoda would have been the perfect tool for deceiving you. These days he's creative director of BioWare Austin, and he's working on Anthem. James Ohlen was also lead designer of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins, and director of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the online game. "We felt like Yoda was the ultimate - everyone trusts Yoda," James Ohlen tells me, lead designer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Not the actual Yoda, because canonically he's untouchable, but someone a bit like him we know so little about Yoda's almost nonexistent species even someone in his likeness would have the same effect: trust. Because once upon a time BioWare was - and it came up with an idea. How do you follow a game like Knights of the Old Republic, the most famous original Star Wars tale a video game has ever told? Forget about Obsidian's sequel for a moment and imagine it was BioWare staring at a piece of paper wondering how to follow a twist like Revan's. There are spoilers ahead for Knights of the Old Republic. This piece was originally published in December 2017. With the recent news of a Knights of the Old Republic remake, we thought it'd be fun to return to this look behind the curtains of BioWare's groundbreaking original.
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