the game awards – Trekking with Dennis

Fate of the Old Republic: Thoughts and Concerns

A Star Wars-themed spoiler warning graphic.

Spoiler Warning: Beware minor spoilers for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Knights of the Old Republic II.

The so-called Game “Awards” was pretty shit, wasn’t it? I didn’t watch the actual broadcast, because if the organisers don’t actually care about their made-up trophies at this glorified marketing event, why should I? But I did check out the announcements and a few of the trailers after the fact, as I usually do, and there was one that caught my eye. As you probably guessed, it was Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.

I was huge Knights of the Old Republic fan during the original Xbox era, and I still consider both that game and its sequel to be among the best RPGs I’ve ever played – as well as two of the best pieces of Star Wars media, too. KotOR II left things open-ended more than twenty years ago, but the story was never continued. More recently, a remake of the first KotOR had been announced, but that project seems to have suffered from a difficult and troubled development process, with a publisher withdrawing, a development studio being kicked off the project, and no official word on it for a long time.

So Fate of the Old Republic’s announcement should be a time of joy! Right?

Still frame from the Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic teaser showing the pilot's seat. — *Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic* has been teased.

Well, let’s talk about that.

Truthfully, I’m not exactly blown away by this announcement. We didn’t actually see Fate of the Old Republic with our own eyes at the Game “Awards.” We saw a CGI trailer that told us next to nothing. That’s not unexpected for a game which is clearly at a very early stage in its development, but after being burned once by a cinematic KotOR remake trailer that hasn’t actually gone anywhere… well, there’s less to get excited about the second time around.

But if Fate of the Old Republic is, as has been reported, five-plus years away from its potential release window… I can’t be alone in thinking that its announcement has come too early, can I? Star Wars has been guilty of this before, not just with the aforementioned KotOR remake, but also with Eclipse – another single-player title we haven’t so much as glimpsed in over four years at this point. So… why announce this now? It wasn’t like Fate of the Old Republic was being leaked, and teasing fans with a nothing-burger cinematic clip five years or more ahead of release feels almost mean. I might not still be here (or still able to play games if my arthritis gets worse) come 2030.

*Fate of the Old Republic* still seems a long way off.

So far, I haven’t been able to find out what Fate of the Old Republic’s existence may or may not mean for the status of the KotOR remake and – potentially – a KotOR II remake that I’d want to see follow it up. Is the KotOR remake still happening? Or does this announcement mean that Disney, Lucasfilm, and their development/publishing partners are now going in a totally different direction? I wouldn’t expect the developers of Fate of the Old Republic to discuss that – but hopefully soon, someone from Disney, Lucasfilm, or Saber Interactive can clear things up.

I want a new KotOR game, don’t get me wrong. But having been excited about the remake – and having deliberately not played KotOR or KotOR II since the remake was announced – I don’t like the idea of losing that game. In an ideal world, I’d like to see both titles release: the KotOR remake first, then hopefully KotOR II, and finally Fate of the Old Republic. But it would be nice to get some clarity from the people involved whether the remake is still happening… because it seems odd to me to announce this new game if the remake is also going ahead. The KotOR remake, with the best will in the world, isn’t launching in 2026. So if that game would be 2027 or later, then it starts to butt up against Fate of the Old Republic if it might make a 2030 release. The timings of all these things leaves me scratching my head.

Still frame from the KotOR Remake teaser showing Revan. — What does this mean for the *KotOR* remake?

Then there’s the typical Star Wars “oversaturation.” Will people pick up the KotOR remake knowing that Fate of the Old Republic might be just a couple of years away? And if the KotOR remake does well, will that risk overshadowing Fate of the Old Republic, given how strong the game’s story is and the incredibly powerful impact of its big twist? It just feels like a totally unnecessary risk.

The ideal way to do this would’ve been to launch the KotOR remake, then get straight into remaking KotOR II using the same team and the same process. Only then would work on a new entry commence. But my biggest concern at this stage, really, is whether the KotOR remake is still happening at all. If I had to choose between a remake and a new game, I’m always gonna pick a new game! But having been teased with the idea of replaying one (or perhaps two) of my favourite RPGs of all-time… I’ll be a little disappointed if the promised remake now isn’t happening.

Still frame from the Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic teaser showing the protagonist's eyes. — A mysterious character.

Much has been made of KotOR director Casey Hudson’s involvement in this project – and I’m definitely pleased to see him back in the director’s chair. Hudson – who also directed the fantastic Jade Empire and all three games in the original Mass Effect trilogy – is fantastic, so any game he’s involved with, even if it wasn’t Star Wars, would have attracted my attention! But can the same be said for any of his colleagues at the brand-new Arcanaut Studios?

Fate of the Old Republic will be Arcanaut’s first-ever video game. And it isn’t easy to build up a brand-new studio from scratch in the modern games industry. Building a studio around a talismanic figure from the past doesn’t always work – just ask Build A Rocket Boy and their failed game MindsEye. Even in the Star Wars franchise, such things don’t always work out – Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game ended up being cancelled before it even launched, and that was coming from an established studio with a track record. So… there are causes for concern, unfortunately. One big name, no matter how influential they may once have been or what their track record may look like, is not a guarantee of success on its own, and a game like Fate of the Old Republic feels like a massive project for a brand-new studio to be tasked with.

This will be Arcanaut Studios’ first game.

Finally, there was one phrase in Fate of the Old Republic’s marketing material that I didn’t like to see. The game is being described as a “spiritual successor” to Knights of the Old Republic. But a “spiritual successor” is not a true sequel, is it? So will this game pick up the stories of Revan and the Jedi Exile? Or will it be a brand-new thing that doesn’t continue their storylines at all? The studio’s website promises “new characters for an all-new story,” which sounds to me like they’re not planning to even touch on what happened to Revan and the Jedi Exile. And I would add that nothing in the Fate of the Old Republic trailer looked familiar – the character, the starship, the planet… none of it.

And that leaves me baffled, to be honest.

Why make a big deal of Casey Hudson’s involvement, name-drop KotOR so often, and even use the “of the Old Republic” branding in the game’s name if it’s gonna be a different thing altogether? It almost feels like it could be a bait-and-switch; using the KotOR name to entice fans of those games to show up for a new, unrelated project.

Still frame from the Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic teaser showing the character entering a door. — Is this game going to connect back to *KotOR* in a big way? Or… at all?

I’m still hopeful that Fate of the Old Republic will be a solid and enjoyable game in its own right… when it’s ready in 2030 or beyond. And if I’m still here and still capable of writing and gaming, I’ll do my best to play it and review it right here on the website! But, for all the reasons discussed above, I’m not exactly “hyped” for this new game at this too-early stage, and I’m more concerned, in some ways, for what this announcement could mean for the KotOR remake that I’d been looking forward to.

So I realise this was a dump of negativity, and I apologise for that. But KotOR and KotOR II are still games I’m passionate about, and I’ve longed for a continuation for literally decades at this point. I’m not sure, based on what I’ve seen and read, whether Fate of the Old Republic will be that game. It certainly won’t be KotOR III. However, it could be a fantastic standalone title, and maybe there will be more connections to Revan and the Jedi Exile, even if those characters and their friends don’t end up forming a core part of the new story. In any case, I will check out Fate of the Old Republic when it’s ready, assuming I’m able to.

Stay tuned here on the website, because I’m currently writing up my thoughts on The Force Awakens ahead of its tenth anniversary. And later in the month, I’ll be handing out some of my own made-up statuettes and trophies to some of my favourite entertainment experiences of 2025! I hope you’ll join me for that. Until then… may the Force be with you, friends!

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is in early development and may not launch for several years. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is the copyright of Arcanaut Studios, Lucasfilm Games, and The Walt Disney Company. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the copyright of BioWare, Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm Games, and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The Game “Awards” – Please Wrap It Up

Thu 14.12.23Thu 14.12.23Dennis

If you missed it, the so-called Game “Awards” was broadcast a few days ago. I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to the event – I have my own End-of-Year Awards to prepare for, after all! – but one particularly striking image has come out of the highly-commercial event, and I wanted to share my two cents.

Overshadowing the awards ceremony itself, and even many of the award winners, was a simple phrase that was shown on a massive prompt facing the stage: “Please Wrap It Up.” After being given as little as thirty seconds to speak upon receiving an award, the message would be displayed to developers and award-winners – before music would begin to play and they’d be ushered off-stage. Out of the entire three-hour broadcast, barely ten minutes was given to the award-winners themselves – who are, surely, supposed to be the stars of any awards ceremony. The rest of the time was dedicated to advertisements, trailers, speeches by the presenters, and even musical acts. Some awards weren’t even presented at all, being skipped over in a mere couple of seconds.

I’m far from the only person to have noticed this, and that’s surely because the Game “Awards” has become incredibly unbalanced. By prioritising trailers and presenters plugging upcoming games live on stage over the actual awards, the Game “Awards” is in danger of losing its audience. People turned up hoping to see their favourite titles of the year being honoured, not ushered off-stage after thirty seconds to make way for an incoherent ramble from an overhyped developer about his latest (completely unseen) title. Yes, I’m talking about Hideo Kojima. Or to make way for yet another trailer or commercial – practically all of which, this year, were entirely CGI creations that didn’t show any gameplay.

There’s a line to walk here. I think a lot of folks would agree that the likes of the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, which honour the best films of the year, can be pretentious and can feel like an industry congratulating itself and inflating the egos of its stars a little too much. Fewer and fewer people pay attention to the Oscars and Golden Globes as a result; those broadcasts have been losing viewers by the boatload over the past few years.

But would more people tune in to the Oscars if half of the awards weren’t presented on-screen, actors and directors were given less time to speak, and the broadcast was overstuffed with adverts and trailers? I mean, more than half of the Game “Awards” three-hour presentation consisted of trailers and adverts. That seems excessive, and there has got to be a way to strike a better balance.

The creators and producers of the Game “Awards” are trying to frame the event as video gaming’s equivalent to the Oscars or the Golden Globes… but if the games industry wants that kind of prestige, the ceremony has to be handled better. Right now, it’s an overblown advertisement – worse, somehow, than the likes of E3, because at least with E3 I knew from the start what I was getting into. The Game “Awards,” by putting its emphasis on the statuettes it plans to hand out, feels deliberately dishonest in its marketing. But at least it has that in common, rather ironically, with many of the video games it advertises.

It feels incredibly disrespectful to developers to invite them to a fancy ceremony under the guise of potentially receiving an award – only to then give them in some cases literally no time whatsoever on the stage to accept that award. If these awards are, as the organisers would like you to believe, the most prestigious in the industry… shouldn’t they want to see people receiving them? Shouldn’t that part of the broadcast be the biggest deal? After all, if receiving a Game Award is so unimportant that it’s relegated to a footnote in its own live presentation, why should anyone give a shit about who the winners or nominees are? If the titular trophies are so meaningless to the Game “Awards” itself… what’s the point?

I don’t like to throw the word “scam” around lightly; I think too many people do that these days, leading to the word’s impact and severity being diminished. But if you entice audiences to turn up to your event under false pretences… we’re definitely getting close to “scam” territory. The Game “Awards” pretends to be an Oscars-style ceremony with fancy suits and statuettes, then it flips the script on viewers and shows them basically two-plus hours of ads and barely ten minutes of actual award-winners. What else can we call such duplicity?

Geoff Keighly, principal organiser and presenter of the Game “Awards.”

Maybe some folks like tuning in to watch the trailers – and that’s okay. I like a good trailer as much as the next person, and it can be fun to look ahead to games that we might hope to enjoy in the months and years to come. Some of these trailers can be well-made, with creative visual effects, great soundtracks, celebrity endorsements, and much more. But that isn’t the point I’m making. If I choose to watch ads and trailers, that’s up to me and I can do that all I want. But if the Game “Awards” pretends to be an awards ceremony just to trick me into watching two hours of ads… well, I don’t appreciate that.

And let’s be honest: that’s exactly what’s happening here. The organisers of the Game “Awards” would ditch the statuettes in a heartbeat and make the entire event nothing but trailers, celebrities, and advertisements if they could get away with it. They don’t give the tiniest of shits about handing out awards or honouring the best and most creative titles of the year – all they care about is selling more and more advertising space and making a metric fuckton of cash, and they’ve done that by diminishing and minimising the actual awards portion of the broadcast so much that it feels like a footnote.

*Baldur’s Gate 3* won “game of the year.”

So what’s the solution? I don’t really have one, if I’m honest. Maybe the complaints received about the “Please Wrap It Up” screen will prompt some minor changes, and perhaps for the next year or two you might see award recipients being given sixty or perhaps even ninety seconds to speak. But sooner or later the desperation to grab as much cash as possible will overwhelm the Game “Awards” organisers once again, and the excessive ad-to-award ratio will be back.

The only thing we can do, as consumers in this marketplace, is register our disapproval. Don’t tune in to the next Game “Awards” and let the organisers know that we care as little about their made-up trophies as they seem to. If fewer and fewer people tune in, and make it clear that the reason we aren’t bothering to watch is because of how unbalanced the broadcast is in favour of trailers and ads, maybe the message will get through. As we’ve seen with the collapse of E3, no event in gaming is sacred or safe – they rely on our viewership and patronage to remain relevant.

I won’t bother watching another Game “Awards,” because what’s the point? If the organisers care so little about the actual awards, why should I?

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. The Game Awards can be streamed now on YouTube. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Let’s get hyped for Star Trek: Resurgence!

Mon 13.12.21Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There may be minor spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise.

I was blindsided by the recent announcement of Star Trek: Resurgence – a brand new video game set in the Star Trek galaxy. Though there have been a couple of crappy mobile games and the ever-present Star Trek Online, it’s been almost a decade since the last single-player video game in the Star Trek franchise… and that didn’t go too well!

On the whole, Star Trek as a franchise hasn’t been especially well-served in the video game realm, despite the fact that there’s always been a significant crossover between Trekkies and gamers. When compared to the Star Wars franchise, which boasts some truly excellent games, Star Trek titles have never really managed to cut through, and with only a couple of exceptions even the best Star Trek games have mostly been the preserve of existing fans.

A new Star Trek game is warping onto our screens!

Here’s hoping that Resurgence can change that! Early indications are actually pretty good: the game’s announcement came at the Game Awards, one of the biggest industry events outside of E3. Resurgence has been picked up by a number of gaming publications and websites, featuring on several lists of the “best announcements” made at the event. Because it’s been a while since there was a Star Trek game, I think that might actually work in Resurgence’s favour to an extent!

One of the main things that seems to have piqued the curiosity of many players is the pedigree of the developer: new studio Dramatic Labs. Dramatic Labs is a studio comprised of former writers and developers at Telltale Games, the studio behind titles like the incredibly well-received The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and the Batman adaptation. Many Telltale titles were exceptionally popular, with fans praising the quality of the writing and the unique branching stories that led to multiple narrative paths and several different endings.

I played through Telltale’s Batman game a few years ago and it was an enjoyable experience that was something different from many other titles. These narrative adventure games put storytelling and dialogue front-and-centre, allowing players to choose what to say at key moments and to influence the direction of the story through the choices they make. When I played through Batman it felt almost like an interactive film: a deep story, well-animated cut-scenes and sequences, but with many different moments at which I could choose what happened and which way the story would proceed.

The choices in games like these aren’t always obvious. In games like Mass Effect or Fallout, for example, there’s usually a “good guy” choice and a “bad guy” choice, sometimes with a neutral option thrown in for good measure. In Mass Effect you can, for example, choose to punch a news reporter or answer her questions, and in Fallout 3 you can choose to defuse a bomb or arm it and blow up a settlement. Both examples show how players can influence the story and shake up the game world, but in both cases it’s clearly telegraphed which are “good” and “bad” options. Telltale/Dramatic Labs titles don’t always make it so obvious!

For example, in the Batman game I mentioned, there are several points at which you have to make decisions that can have ramifications for the rest of the game but where the choice isn’t obvious. Choosing whether to save one character or another can end up creating a new villain to fight, or choosing to attend an event in costume as Batman can lead to a wholly different outcome than if Bruce Wayne attended without his disguise. These are just examples of the kind of branching narrative choices that Dramatic Labs is teasing us with in Resurgence.

We’re also promised third-person action sequences throughout Resurgence, and we saw examples of this in the trailer too. The official announcement also lists “shuttle piloting, phaser fights, tricorder scanning, stealth, and micro-gameplay mechanics” as things we’ll be able to do in the game. I’m not sure what “micro-gameplay mechanics” means in this instance; it sounds like it could be mini-games, and things like picking locks or computer hacking spring to mind as examples from other franchises. But it all sounds like a ton of fun!

From the trailer we got a glimpse of some of these systems in effect. There was a sequence with a character wearing an EV suit on what looked like the outer hull of a starship firing their phaser, a tricorder scanning sequence that looked like a lot of fun, and some sneaking around that was potentially representative of one of the stealth sections.

The idea of having two playable characters is fun, too, and we’ve seen a number of recent games do this to great effect. While we don’t know much at all about either of the playable characters, the fact that one is a senior bridge officer and the other is a non-commissioned engineer should mean we get to see two very different perspectives on the same story. Both characters should be approaching the situation from very different starting places, and that already sounds like something that could be a lot of fun. Aside from Chief O’Brien, we haven’t spent a lot of time with enlisted personnel before, and Resurgence might actually be the first time we’ve seen an enlisted crewperson as a playable video game character.

It was so great to see Spock in the trailer, and I felt that the voice actor did a creditable job at imitating Leonard Nimoy’s iconic performance. Whether Spock will have a major role to play in the story isn’t clear at this stage, but as one of Star Trek’s most legendary characters his presence should be interesting at the very least. Dramatic Labs has also teased that there may be other “fan-favourite” characters included in the game, but no details yet on who those characters could be.

Dramatic Labs promise that players will “make those similar tough choices that iconic Star Trek heroes have been forced to contend with.” This is emphasising the narrative choice aspect of the game, and reinforces what I said earlier about the difficulty of some of the choices in games of this nature. The story seems to involve two alien races “on the brink of war” – I didn’t recognise either of the alien races seen in the trailer. Resurgence sounds enthralling, and I’m really excited to get stuck in.

Players will have to make some pretty tough calls in *Resurgence*…

We need to set appropriate expectations, though, no matter how exciting it may be to finally get a new Star Trek game after such a long time! This isn’t going to be a sprawling adventure on the scale of something like Mass Effect, nor will it be an open-world title like Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a narrative adventure game, and that (hopefully) means that we’ll get a very strong and engaging story with a good degree of choice over how it proceeds. The third-person adventure elements look fun too, and I’m excited to try out things like phaser combat and tricorder scanning.

So keep an eye out for Resurgence when it arrives in the spring. Given the developers’ pedigree, I think Resurgence has the potential to appeal to fans of narrative titles and Telltale Games as well as Star Trek fans, and as long as the game is released in a bug-free state it has a lot of potential. Star Trek feels like a natural fit for a narrative adventure title, and it reminds me in some ways of games like Deep Space Nine: Harbinger and Hidden Evil from the late 1990s/early 2000s.

I’m trying not to get over-excited! I’ve been hoping for a new single-player Star Trek game for years, and hopefully Resurgence will be the first of many as the franchise continues to grow and expand. Regardless, I’m eagerly awaiting its Spring 2022 release! I hope you’ll come back when Resurgence is out for a full review.

Star Trek: Resurgence will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X in Spring 2022. Star Trek: Resurgence is the copyright of Dramatic Labs and ViacomCBS Consumer Products. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.