Yavin IV Planet Mod for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Lucasfilm Games have teamed up with Aspyr to deliver a remake for the hit BioWare RPG, Knights of the Old Republic. Whilst we wait in anticipation of the release, here’s five great mods for the classic games to tide you over!

Yavin IV Mod

By MasterZionosis

This mod for the original Knights of the Old Republic adds a whole new planet to the game, with new enemies and a whole new storyline to follow! You’ll return to one of the ancestral homes of the Jedi Order and pursue a new mystery with many twists and turns along the way, including a surprise appearance from an otherwise minor character in the original game. It’s a great extra onto Revan’s journey throughout the story and a great addition to the game.

KOTOR Ultimate

By Thunder3

Whilst the remake promises fantastic visuals on modern hardware, there are also options for players of the classic games. KOTOR Ultimate refreshes many textures throughout the game to improve the overall look of environments, as well as adding new models to the game, and features new graphical effects in many locales to enhance the vistas. KOTOR’s age really is beginning to show in 2021, so this mod is a great way to freshen things up a bit in the mean time!

The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod

By TSLRCM group

KOTOR II’s rushed development cycle is well-documented, with many great pieces of content having to be removed from the game, and the finished storyline having a less fulfilling conclusion. This mod is a huge patch mod that, as well as fixing numerous bugs in the game, also brings back lots of cut content in the form of a planet, items, and storylines, as well as cut quests to advance your character even further. This mod is practically mandatory for a new playthrough these days, much like VTMB’s Unofficial Patch.

Knights of the Old Republic III: The Jedi Masters

By Trex01

Whilst Knights of the Old Republic was a smash hit, its sequel didn’t perform as well, and the future of the series was thrown into doubt. Star Wars: The Old Republic picked up hundreds of years after the storyline in the KOTOR games and took many liberties with the source material as a result. This mod aims to be a successor to KOTOR II with a full set of new planets, stories, and characters to meet, as well as a vast swathe of new gear and quests to chase. If you’re looking for a fully fledged experience to keep you busy whilst you wait for the remake, you’re guaranteed to get mileage out of this project!

Expanded Galaxy Project

By Thor110

KOTOR and its sequel touch upon very different environments as you progress throughout their respective stories, with different characters, gear, and quests. KOTOR II, however, benefits from having received an official re-release in recent years that fixed many issues and added better mod support. Thus, this project aims to port the original game into the sequel engine, including all the missing planets, and establish itself as a basis for other classic KOTOR mods to make it into the newer engine. Whilst still in progress, it’s a great way to check out the older game as the port is almost bug-free and fully smoothed out!

A Long Time Ago...

Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, The Sith Lords, are some of the most beloved Star Wars games out there today. Both are remarkable translations of the RPG formula into the Star Wars universe and build up a whole chronicle of lore thousands of years before the events of the movies. Having released in 2003, the original is still a classic worth playing today, and its sequel, whilst initially suffering from rushed release schedules, benefitted from a re-release not too many years ago that brought stronger mod support and many other quality of life features to the game. The follow-up to the franchise was the MMO, The Old Republic, but when Disney took command of the franchise, these stories were deemed part of the Legends canon, and would not factor in to the upcoming stories in the new films.

An Elegant Remake

However, Disney seems to have gained an interest in revisiting this era of the franchise, with new projects in the works like High Republic that touch upon an older period in the Republic prior to the prequel trilogy (though still not as far in the past as the KOTOR continuity). Yesterday, a remake of the classic RPG was announced. This is explicitly confirmed to be a recreation from the ground-up, with lots of new content, cutting-edge graphics, but the same classic storytelling of the original. Development is headed by Aspyr under Lucasfilm Games as part of a new line-up of Star Wars games developed by Lucasfilm’s in-house game studio.

All Too Easy

Whilst the remake is initially slated for PS5 exclusivity, it’s rumoured to also be launching on PC at the same time, with an Xbox console release at a later date. It will aim to take full advantage of modern hardware to produce an immersive Star Wars experience deserving of its rich lineage.

It’s not clear exactly how mods will factor in - the older KOTOR games are helped kept alive by their modding communities, but newer Star Wars games have not been as exceptionally moddable as their predecessors. We can only hope they touch upon the question on every modder’s lips in a future interview on the remake.