star wars

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PC]

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 3 is the cancelled third chapter in the popular RPG series developed by BioWare and published by LucasArts. The project was started by LucasArts in 2003 / 2004 when they canned another Star Wars MMO for console named “Proteus” and planned to reuse the same team and part of the already created designs to develop a new KotOR game. Unfortunately KotOR 3 followed the same fate and they later decided to cancel the project because of LucasArts’ financial problems, when the management did not want to invest money and time in such an expensive game.

A few KotOR 3 concept arts created during the design phase were leaked online and we can see new robots (Q-10), spaceships (Dashaad Fighter, Sith Troop Transport, Coruscant Vehicle) and characters. Some more details on KotOR 3 were published in 2008 in the bookRogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts”, in which they revealed that one of the new characters was a woman named “Naresha”.

“Upon the cancellation of the Proteus project, team and elements of the designs were applied to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3, which, according to designer John Stallford, “got quite a bit of traction… we wrote a story, designed most of the environments/worlds, and many of the quests, characters, and items.” However, this new game direction fell victim to LucasArts hitting possibly the most difficult period in the company’s history.”

We can only hope that one day someone could share more artworks and info from the early development of KotOR 3.

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KotOR 1 & 2 beta restoration mods

The original Knights of the Old Republic had a lot of beta / unused stuff and KotOR 2: The Sith Lords, so many fans decided to work together to create a couple of mods for the PC version of the game to be able to play some of those beta elements that were changed or removed before the final version!

The KotOR 1 Restoration is an attempt to restore almost all the content that was cut from the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic by BioWare Corp. Of course, these restorations will be within reason and things that were cut because they did not fit with the plot, and cannot be made to fit with the plot, will most definitely NOT be restored. Remember, this is only the demo, not the full mod.

Most of the content that has been released in this demo is from Taris. However, there are few pieces of restored content that pertain to Dantooine as well as a difficulty option restoration.

– Impossible Difficulty, a cut option for difficulty that is harder than the Vanilla “Hard” difficulty
– Carth dialogue when the PC first awakens on Taris, Carth makes a few comments about the PC’s injuries. (Thanks to zbyl2 for this!)
– Lower City, numerous restorations to the Lower City
– Under City, numerous restorations to the Under City
– Restoration of the Black Vulkar Base Sublevel
– Restored Droid Items
– Restoration of some dialgoue with Niklos in the Uppper City Cantina
– Restoration of the Duel Ring announcer in the Taris Upper City Cantina. The announcer will be available to speak to in between fights.
– Zaerdra Swoop Platform Dialogue, Zaerdra will make some final comments to the PC on the prototype accelerator before intitiating your first run with it
– Sith Base, numerous restorations
– Sarna and Yun Genda are available to talk to members of the same sex and can be used to further the plot of Taris. Albeit, in different ways than they normally do.
– Iriaz Restoration, returns the Iriaz to the plains of Dantooine. (Thanks to Seamhiann for this!)
– Garrum and Tar’eelok Restoration, returns a cut padawan and master to the Jedi Enclave. (Thanks to Seamhiann for this!)
– Restoration of cut items within the Jedi Enclave
– Shen and Rahashia Indecent Proposal, the PC can make a rather indecent, and awkward, proposal to either Shen or Rahasia depending upon the PC’s gender.
– The file called plc_glowpudl.utp had the name of “Glowing Puddle” however when placed in game it looked like a blood puddle. The model file and textures have been changed so now the glowing puddle placeable makes a glowing puddle of green liquid. It can be seen in the new module, tar_m03ac, or the swoop platform non-racing version.
– Modified Iriaz from Seamhiann’s modules so there were less of them, they fought against the Kath Hounds, and usually stayed in their small areas.

The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod (TSLRCM). This mod’s intention is to restore much of the cut content to The Sith Lords, that was lost to the main game due to a rush to release the game. This rush also left the game with a plethora of bugs (some of which also blocked out content, so not everything restored was really “cut”, for example the quest ‘Corrun Falt’), this mod should seriously decrease the buginess that plagued TSL. 

Star Wars: Battlefront [Beta – Xbox / PS2 / PC]

Star Wars: Battlefront is an action game developed by Pandemic Studios and LucasArts, and released on September 2004 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Development for Star Wars Battlefront began at Pandemic Studios in 2002. Greg Burrod, executive producer on Battlefront stated “We wanted to create an online shooter title for the Xbox, PS2, and PC which would allow for team strategy and would feature battles and worlds from every one of the six Star Wars films.”

A beta version of Battlefront was released as an extras DVD for one of the trilogy sets. It’s quite interesting and has a lot of ideas that were not in the final version. The build date is February 03 2004, 8 months before the final version was released. Also, the HUD was different and the graphic was still unfinished.

Stranno posted a video and some comparison-screens between the beta and the final version on the Assembler Games Forum!

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Project Hermes [PS2 – Cancelled]

Project Hermes is the code name of a cancelled platform game that was in development at Lucas Learning in 2001. The game was going to be the “spiritual successor” to Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing, using super deformed characters from the Star Wars universe. It seems that the project was stopped early in development and only a small prototype was created before the cancellation.

Thanks to Jar for the contribution!

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[Projects] The KotOR II Beta Restoration

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Fans of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II probably know how much fun the game was, but also how much stuff that was shown in the beta screens was later removed from the final game (yeah, we still need to write an article about that on U64…).

KotOR II’s producer Chris Avellone in an interview after the game’s publication stated that he wished “there had been more time” to work on the game, and that a large amount of content — a droid factory, an entire planet, and other locations — was cut.

Because so much content was cut, however, a couple of teams of modders  have been working on an unofficial patch to restore the missing content, thanks to unused stuff still hidden in the game’s code and lot of patience. A couple of days ago, one of the team released their first Beta Restoration patch and now KotOR II’s fans all around the world are able to play the game with some of the removed parts! You can find a complete  (huge!) list of what’s restored in here.

You can download the KotOR II’s Beta Restoration from the Deadly Stream Forum. Huge props to Zbyl2 and DarthStoney for their work!