It’s Star Wars week, and while many of us here at ComicBook are shaking with anticipation when faced with the prospect of celebrating all things our favourite franchise, the celebration continues in all aspects viva la fandom! That also includes the popular game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, which according to the first game’s original designer – almost took a completely different approach … including an evil Yoda!
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James Ohlen sat down recently in a new interview to talk about the franchise and what could have been in between the BioWare/Obsidian exchange. The BioWare creative director divulged some hidden details about the title, and stated that the studio was interested in creating an epic plot twist concerning the franchise’s paragon of good. To have Yoda be revealed as an evil mastermind all along certainly would have been a twist, it wasn’t practical with character expectation and with the already set canon. Because of this, the creative team decided to do the next best thing and pull from Yoda’s race, instead of the mentor himself:
“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, someone from the Yoda race. 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… 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.”
Thankfully, the powers that be on the exec level of BioWare axed the idea before it could see fruition. As much as we adore a good twist, it still needs to make sense. Regarding the decision to scrap the idea altogether, Ohlen added, It was a very smart decision on their part. In order for a company to be successful and control its own destiny, you need to own your own IP, and we didn’t own Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars. Mass Effect was something we decided we had to do instead of another Star Wars game.”
To read more about the Star Wars game and what could have been, and more on other popular franchises, you can check out the full interview here.
