Over sixteen years since the release of the second game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is reportedly in development at an unknown studio. LucasFilm Games is reportedly handing over the coveted IP to an all-new team without the involvement of the original developer BioWare or EA, the publisher which has held the exclusive rights to the Star Wars game for almost eight years.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 can learn a key lesson from the first planet in the original game, Taris. Taris is a master-class in Star Wars story pacing with structural similarities to the very first movie and plenty of great lessons to teach the new developers of the next chapter in the series as it enters development.
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The player crash lands on Taris after the introduction of the original Knights of the Old Republic. Awakening in an apartment having been saved by fellow survivor Carth, the duo has to delve into the planet’s local problems in search of Bastila Shan, the Jedi who also crash landed on the world.
Taris does wonders for the game’s pacing. After a fast-paced prologue in which the player wakes up on-board a ship during a sudden Sith attack and has to battle their way to the escape pods, Taris slows things down to a snail’s pace. This might not sound immediately compelling, but it gives KOTOR's characters like Carth time to breathe.
The pair have no idea where Bastila is, only that she is on the planet. As they venture out into Taris in search of leads, their lack of reference points gives the player permission to explore without undermining the story. Slowly but surely, the game’s heroes are introduced to the local factions and Taris’ multi-tiered class system, which literally has the rich living in towers high above the “Undercity” on the planet’s surface, inhabited by banished criminals and their descendants.
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Most Star Wars planets are pretty one-dimensional, with entire worlds covered by just one type of biome whether it’s a desert, forest, or frozen tundra. Taris is like this in some regards – it’s a city planet like Coruscant. However, the original KOTOR uses Taris to go into great depth exploring the layers of an area no larger than a few city blocks.
Taris doesn’t just have multiple levels. It’s ruled over by the occupying Sith on the one hand, who exist in a tentative truce with those on the upper levels. The lower levels are run by gangs like the Hidden Beks and the Black Vulkars, whose rivalry the player becomes involved with. On the lowest levels, the players finds banished people dealing with zombie-like Rakghoul attacks. The planet has loan sharks, Hutts, gamblers, wannabe dancers, and plenty of other characters for the player to meet before they get a chance to explore the Star Wars galaxy with new expectations about that galaxy and its depth.
This is great for the game’s pacing, helping players familiarize themselves with the level of depth they can find across the galaxy before allowing them to explore the breadth of it, in many ways playing a similar role to A New Hope’s first act on Tatooine despite the differences between the two planets in the story. It will be vital that the new developer of Knights of the Old Republic 3 gets its story pacing right, and though it will need to create an original introductory planet, the design philosophy underlying Taris is a great start.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is rumored to be in-development.
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