Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is finally reported to be in development, with Lucasfilm Games finding a new studio to take on the famous RPG franchise. It’s been reported that neither EA nor BioWare will be involved this time around, which will have some fans tentative about the prospect of a new team working on the IP.

The second game was notably worked on by a different developer, Obsidian Entertainment, and it’s very possible that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3’s new development studio will be able to live up the series’ legacy. If that’s going to happen, the developers will need to avoid some Star Wars sequel mistakes that have caused problems for the series over the course of its mainstream revival this past decade.

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One of the biggest criticisms of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, as well as the franchise in general, is that the stories focused too solely on the Skywalker family despite taking place in a galaxy full of opportunity. Some of the more recent films like Rogue One found success focusing on side characters, as has Disney Plus’ hit tv show The Mandalorian. Despite this, Rogue One still focused on an event tied directly to A New Hope, while The Mandalorian’s introduction of characters like Boba Fett and Ahsoka Tano still have it just one degree of removal away from Anakin Skywalker himself.

The original Knights of the Old Republic took place 4000 years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, but that doesn’t mean that KOTOR 3 isn’t at risk of making the galaxy far far away feel similarly small. While it’s unlikely that the new studio will shift the events of the game too near to the movies–it’s still the Old Republic, after all–it is possible that the storytellers could still focus on characters from the previous games.

Darth Revan and other well-known KOTOR characters like Bastila Shan are among those at most risk of returning in some form or another, particularly with Force Ghosts a possibility. The new studio, however, will likely find more success investing in brand new characters and brand-new stories for players to throw themselves into, just as BioWare did when the studio created the first game.

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The Star Wars sequel trilogy also reinforced the Light Side vs Dark Side binary from the original trilogy, while the original KOTOR games also explored “Gray Jedi” who had learned the ways of the Force outside of the traditional teachings of the Jedi or the Sith. Knights of the Old Republic 3 should explore more of the nuances in the galaxy just as the original two games did instead of following the lead of the movies.

The next Knights of the Old Republic game should be used to expand the Star Wars universe, not to retread old ground, take players to familiar locations, or show players familiar faces. Though it may seem like a bigger risk for a new studio to try and tell a completely original Star Wars story, the huge amount of Star Wars media being produced at the moment – including a new Star Wars open-world game in development at Ubisoft Massive – should make originality a number one priority. Whether or not the new game will ever be able to live up to the hype after nearly 20 years, however, remains to be seen.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is rumored to be in-development.

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