Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is making a comeback in the best way possible, as a fully-fledged remake rebuilt from the ground up for modern consoles. Opening the PlayStation Showcase with a weird chess advert followed by a KOTOR reveal was a bold move but, for the most part, the response has been positive. However, the biggest concerns have been around the issue of canon - is KOTOR now part of Disney’s Star Wars?
Here’s the truth - it doesn’t matter. Trying to organize what fictional stories are in the same universe as other fictional stories is an asinine task that benefits nobody. None of them are real. If they contradict each other, it shouldn’t really matter. Big whoop. It’s time to pull off the canon discourse’s band-aid. It’s a tired conversation. Fans constantly circle back to it every single time something from Star Wars’ history gets dredged back up, but does a story not being in the same world as another truly diminish your enjoyment?.
Knights of the Old Republic is so distinctly set apart from the films, comics, novels, other games, shows, and Angry Birds tie-ins that any narrative it tells means little to ‘modern’ Star Wars as we know it. It’s a historical deep-dive into what the Sith and Jedi used to be like prior to the infamous rule of two. There’s no familiarity in the footsoldiers and the dynamic between the opposing forces is unlike anything we’re used to. KOTOR is very much its own thing and that’s thanks to BioWare bringing its RPG Midas Touch to George Lucas’ fictional world.
The childish fairy tale of good versus evil is swapped out for an inward glance at one’s self and identity, our own ‘dark side’ and ‘light side’ so to speak. It encapsulates what an interactive medium can offer in a way film and TV cannot. It does so in a way that even modern EA titles like Jedi: Fallen Order failed to. It is the perfect Star Wars game for that exact reason. The choices and shaping of your own destiny make it a story personal to you, and trying to fit that into ‘canon’ (a growingly meaningless term) is nigh impossible.
Dictating whose personal journey is canonical isn’t feasible in the modern, tight-ship that Disney is running. It’s not the Wild West anymore where there are six different interpretations of the Clone Wars. What some fans want instead is the world of KOTOR to be canon, and the surrounding environments, political conflicts, and sociological structures that are in place. The way the Jedi and Sith are presented, for instance, is something many want to see brought back into Disney’s world. However, there’s no real point.
Right now, Star Wars is a mix of post-Original Trilogy content and the High Republic. The sequel era is done and dusted and there seems to be no inclination of Disney moving past it. It’s increasingly expanding on what happened after Return of the Jedi whether that’s through Ahsoka, The Book of Boba Fett, or The Mandalorian. Many of the Disney+ shows and upcoming films seek to explain how we went from the Rebels winning to the New Republic falling. It’s an intriguing idea that has paid off so far, but aside from that, the only era of interest is an entirely new one, set a little while before The Phantom Menace with a youthful Yoda tying it all together.
It’s called The High Republic, and we’ve had novels and comics so far with an upcoming series set to bring it to live-action. Disney isn’t going to dive so far back into the past that it rips from the storyboards of The Old Republic, and there’s little point in it doing so. Constantly padding out Star Wars’ narrative with prequels and needless explanations for the tiniest of details is what drags the franchise down. Disney can only do so much before it treads on the hallowed ground of the ‘80s, where Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine reigned supreme, and that’s with the High Republic, let alone the Old Republic. Going even further back would be ill-advised for that exact reason, but by not going back, it leaves the past open to interpretation.
Canon is fickle. It’s ever-changing and hard to keep track of, especially with so many producers, writers, and directors swapping it around like a game of pass the parcel. It’s never going to be an intricate, perfectly built world a la The Lord of the Rings. It will forever be a mishmash of different creators’ ideas smushed together into one cohesive universe. Doctor Who has managed that for 60 years now, but it has constantly contradicted itself, treading back over old ground with a new face, but it never bothers to explain why. That’s because canon isn’t something worth putting much stock in. Don’t overthink it, just enjoy the new game and leave it at that. If it isn’t canon, it isn’t - that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.