Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic might be the most exciting new Star Wars game on the horizon, and while we’re not expecting it any time soon – though director Casey Hudson has promised it’ll be out before 2030 – it appears newly founded developer Arcanaut Studios is bulking up fast.
In early March, we learned that Ubisoft veteran Pascal Blanché had joined the project as studio art director, and now the Arcanaut’s website has been updated with profiles of the key creatives making the new Star Wars RPG.
Arcanaut’s chief technology officer is Ryan Hoyle, who worked on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the original Mass Effect games. The production and performance director is Caroline Livingstone, who was also at BioWare on Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. Melanie Faulknor is serving as the director of external development; she worked on ME3 and the second and third Dragon Age instalments. The latest additions end with Dan Fessenden, senior technical designer, who worked on KOTOR as well.
Studio founder and project leader Casey Hudson directed KOTOR, incidentally, and directed the Mass Effect trilogy.
It’s an encouraging update, but it’s early days, so we’ll see where Fate of the Old Republic is in a few years from now. At the time of writing, nothing is known about the story, its canonicity, or the gameplay approach, though we know it won’t be a direct continuation of Obsidian’s KOTOR 2. Incidentally, BioWare once had its own ideas for KOTOR 2 before shipping it out to Obsidian.
Meanwhile, Saber Interactive is still working on the KOTOR remake that was announced back in 2021, and went through a major studio shakeup a few years ago. At this point, we can’t help but wonder which game will make it out first – the remake or FOTOR?
