With the growing costs to make an appearance at the Video Game Awards, I find it consistently weird when, amid all the updates and announcements, a two-minute CGI trailer is thrown in for a new game, from a new developer, that has yet to enter development, and has nothing it can explain. Why would you spend at least $500,000 that could be spent anywhere else for a brief spot so you can make the rounds three years from now, spending about as much trying to remind me that, oh right, that was a thing? While there were a few moments that stood out for me last month at the VGAs, Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was the one eating away at me.
Why has it been doing that? Well, I could have sworn we did this whole thing before. A high-quality CGI Star Wars trailer opens the show and offers us a glimpse at exploring long since forgetten settings outside of the familiar, despite the game not even being in development. I could not figure out why this felt familiar. Just kidding, Star Wars: Eclipse did it four years ago, then vanished off the face of the planet. I’m aware, before we start this up, that there were outside factors at play in that case, such as a toxic work environment that, even two years later, developer Quantic Dream was struggling to overcome, with rumors persisting that the studio was having trouble hiring new developers, but the situation feels telling.
The trailer in question for Fate of the Old Republic offers nothing, despite looking cool. It features a ship flying along several landscapes, both space and planetside, before landing with a female Jedi walking along the planet to another ship that has seemingly crashed there. Something appears to move in the fog of the ship before we get an extreme close-up of her face, and offscreen, we hear the telltale glint and noise of a lightsaber springing to life, and we cut to the title card. There you have it, $500,000 worth of advertising. The best part of the course is just how literally everything about this advertisement is vague enough to change later, almost as if they haven’t finalized anything yet.
This is sarcasm, since they have confirmed the game is in pre-production, so most likely nothing is finalized. There may not even be a story outline yet; who knows? Not us, at least for a few years. But this seems to be the Star Wars way: announce with a flashy trailer, realize you took on more than you thought, disappear, promise the game is still in development, wait. The remake of Knights of the Old Republic has been doing the same thing since it was announced back in 2021, so this concern isn’t based on a one-time situation. Say what you will about Ubisoft, at least they waited to showcase their Star Wars game, Star Wars Outlaws, until they had an actual game to promise.
The crux of the problem here is Arcanaut Studios, which was founded in 2025 specifically for the task of making a spiritual successor to one of the most beloved RPG games of all time. What they can manage to boast is that Casey Hudson, the director of the original Knights of the Old Republic, founded the studio, so there is a personal connection to the project, I’m sure. If you listened to anybody involved talking about the game, though, they REALLY want you to know Casey Hudson is involved. In fact, I would venture to say the only two things we really know about the game are that Casey Hudson is involved and it is set in The Old Republic. I get the sense that those are the only two things the developers know, too.
Which begs the question, where is Disney in all this exactly? Again, this has happened twice so far that I know of, and the thought process is, we should do it all again? You would think Disney would bring some consistency to their treatment of the franchise as a whole, rather than just approve projects and vanish into a puff of smoke back into the house of mouse. Wouldn’t you want to clear up all your other projects before another pre-production title makes big noise, lest the hurt from the other two sour anybody’s ability to form an attachment to this new IP? And here we are, banking on people caring in the, at least, three years it will take to showcase something new.
I could be wrong about all of this. I hope I am. I loved Knights of the Old Republic, so the very idea of getting a new game to continue the legacy SOUNDS amazing. We have been around this merry-go-round one too many times, though, so seen the red flags when they are as glaring as they are. This practice rarely leads to anything substantive, though there have been exceptions in the past.
And to those I hear saying, what about Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the other Star Wars game announced during the Video Game Awards? While I’m here, let me give my prediction for that. It disappears for two years, then returns as a barely recognizable live-service title, as is tradition. Again, feels like we have seen that before, but that is neither here nor there.
Remember to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky to keep up to date on everything we have going on!
