Star Wars' High Republic Complicates KOTOR's Canon Timeline
Although it’s based on a Legends-era video game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake might be used to add the iconic Expanded Universe lore to the Star Wars canon timeline, though the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project would complicate this process. The original Knights of the Old Republic was released in 2003, at a time where the Expanded Universe was the official Star Wars continuity. The game is still extremely popular almost twenty years later, with the player character Revan being a particular fan favorite. Could the KOTOR Remake be used to introduce the game into the current canon continuity, and how would the ongoing High Republic material impact this endeavor?
In 2014, two years after Disney purchased Lucasfilm, the Expanded Universe was rebranded as “Legends” and designated an alternate continuity in preparation for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with the original six films carrying over into the new canon. While the sequel trilogy was highly anticipated, many longtime Star Wars fans were upset that the comics, novels, video games, and screen media they’d loved from the Legends universe were no longer part of the ongoing mainstream canon. This included the highly popular KOTOR games, which were among the few pieces of Legends-era media that were considered mainstream.
Over time, the canon continuity has gradually added Legends-era lore to the Star Wars timeline, sometimes in significantly reimagined forms. This includes Dark Troopers, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Durge, Palpatine’s resurrection, and, thanks to a hidden Easter egg in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Darth Revan himself. The KOTOR Remake will see Jennifer Hale reprise her role as the Jedi Knight Bastila Shan, but it won’t be written by the original KOTOR scribe Drew Karpyshyn. Sam Maggs, whose work includes stories in the Star Wars Adventures comics, will write the remake, indicating that the game will have more than just updated graphics and gameplay. With Revan already part of both continuities, the KOTOR Remake might be a canon iteration of the classic Legends story, though the High Republic era will require it to have significant differences from the Legends version to avoid continuity snarls.
The High Republic books and comics, which take place only a few centuries before the events of the Skywalker Saga, show the galaxy in a developing state that, along with the rest of canon lore, would present problems for a faithful KOTOR adaptation for the canon timeline. The galaxy’s Outer Rim Territories were still being mapped and explored, which would mean that many of the original game’s key planets, such as Tatooine, Korriban (called “Moraband” in canon), Taris, and Dantooine may need to be changed. Red lightsaber crystals couldn’t be synthesized or found in nature as they are in Legends, and would need to be “bled” (corrupted with the dark side) to be usable in a canon game.
Considering that the High Republic era began in 300 BBY (before the Battle of Yavin in the original trilogy) and the original KOTOR game took place in 3956 BBY, a hypothetical canon version could solve the Outer Rim issue by moving the events of Knights of the Old Republic further up the Star Wars timeline and into the High Republic era, but this presents a different problem: The Sith are the main antagonists of KOTOR, but the High Republic era takes place after the Sith Order’s seeming defeat. The canon timeline has a much less consistent continuity than Legends, but fitting a new version of KOTOR into it might prove too difficult without massive changes.
In all likelihood, the KOTOR Remake will honor the Legends version and stay as faithful to the original as possible. KOTOR makes numerous references to Legends lore, including the Tales of the Jedi comics through mentions of Nomi Sunrider and Ood Bnar. Canon lore, especially the High Republic material, makes it almost impossible to fit Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake into the current Star Wars timeline, so the game will likely simply serve as a loving homage to the classic Legends continuity and one of the Star Wars franchise’s most popular video games instead.
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