Behind the Scenes of KOTOR: The Battle Over Bad Language with Lucasfilm

In an interesting twist from the development of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a member of the team dedicated an entire day to rewatching the films just to tackle a language issue brought up by Lucasfilm. During a chat with FRVR, Mark Darrah, who was part of BioWare but not directly involved with KOTOR, shared some behind-the-scenes drama that unfolded while creating the beloved RPG.

It turns out Lucasfilm had a beef with the game’s use of the word ‘damn,’ claiming it wasn’t fitting for the Star Wars universe. To counter this, one of KOTOR’s writers took it upon themselves to dive deep into the movies, searching for every instance of the word. While Darrah suggested there were close to 20 occurrences, fans have pointed out that ‘damn’ actually popped up just three times across the original trilogy and the prequels by the time KOTOR hit shelves in 2003.

Despite their effort to present evidence, BioWare’s win was only partial. According to Darrah, most of the instances were ultimately cut from the script because, as he put it, “the rights holder always wins.” This situation reflected Lucasfilm’s ongoing mission to keep the Star Wars brand as family-friendly as possible, a trend that has led to the invention of made-up expletives like ‘kriff’ and ‘poodoo’ in later content.

However, it wasn’t a complete loss for the developers. KOTOR still received a Teen rating, primarily due to its violent content rather than the mild swearing, allowing a few real-world curse words to sneak into the final product, even if the majority were scrubbed away.

As we look ahead, excitement continues to build for the KOTOR remake, with Saber Interactive confirming that development is still in progress. Fans are eagerly awaiting any updates on what promises to be a reimagined classic in the Star Wars RPG genre.

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