BioWare once tried to turn Star Wars: The Old Republic into something much closer to Knights of the Old Republic, according to former lead designer James Ohlen, but the proposed reboot died when EA's board decided not to fund another major swing at the MMO.

The project, called Star Wars: The New Republic, was not a small expansion pitch. In a new PC Gamer interview, Ohlen said he spent roughly six months in 2015 building a design document, presentations and a mock-up trailer for a full reboot of the online RPG.

Ohlen, who was lead designer on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, described the pitch as a chance to correct what he felt The Old Republic had missed.

"It was the chance to do Knights of the Old Republic online, it was a chance to [put right] everything I'd said that we'd messed up."

The idea had momentum inside and around Lucasfilm. Ohlen said he convinced then-Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and met several times with Dave Filoni, who suggested the project could fit into a wider Star Wars tie-in if it was set a couple hundred years before the fall of the Republic. Ohlen also said he won over EA executive Patrick Söderlund, who he recalled as someone who "hates Star Wars: The Old Republic."

The final decision sat with EA's board. Ohlen said the board remembered the original game's enormous cost, which he put at $300 million, and rejected the idea of spending heavily again.

"We were going to be able to have a Star Wars: The New Republic, until the board of directors of EA, who all remembered the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and remembered spending $300 million," Ohlen said. "They're like, 'Why the fuck are we gonna spend a bunch more?'"

A reboot that never escaped BioWare

The canceled pitch cuts into one of the longest-running frustrations around The Old Republic. The MMO launched in 2011 as a huge BioWare and Star Wars bet, but Ohlen has said before that he regretted making something closer to "World of Warcraft in space" instead of a tighter online version of KOTOR.

The live game still leans heavily on BioWare-style story structure. Its official overview describes an MMO where players choose from eight iconic roles, make Light Side or Dark Side choices and play through cinematic dialogue with full voiceover. The game remains active as a free-to-play MMO on PC, with recent official posts covering Galactic Seasons objectives, May the 4th rewards and Game Update 7.9, "Legacy Reborn."

Ohlen framed The New Republic as a way to narrow the focus back toward what players still associate with KOTOR, stronger single-player-style role-playing inside an online Star Wars world. That is why the board's rejection hit him so hard. He called it "the beginning of the end" for his time at BioWare, where he stayed until 2018 before later co-founding Archetype Entertainment.

The timing also lands in a strange moment for Old Republic fans. Aspyr's Knights of the Old Republic remake remains a long-running question mark, while other Star Wars RPG-adjacent projects continue to circle the same appetite for a story-led return to the era. Gamers Now recently covered how Star Wars Outlaws joined PlayStation Plus, but for KOTOR fans, the missing piece is still a modern RPG that feels directly descended from BioWare's 2003 classic.

Ohlen's account does not mean The New Republic was close to release, or even close to formal announcement. It does show BioWare had a serious internal plan, Lucasfilm interest and some EA executive support before the project hit the financial memory of SWTOR's first launch.