Tag: Aspyr

Tomb Raider 3 Update Secretly Nukes Lara Croft Pinups

Image: Aspyr / Crystal Dynamics

Well, this is weird. Pinups of Lara Croft appear to have gone missing in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered following a patch earlier this month to fix a bunch of bugs. Whether intentional or not, some fans are now calling it out as heavy-handed censorship of retro classics.

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Publisher Aspyr released the game’s second update on April 11 and mentioned a litany of changes, but nothing about up-scaled posters of Lara Croft being removed from the locker room in the Sleeping with the Fishes level for Tomb Raider III: The Lost Artefact. Though they still appear when playing with the original graphics settings on, where they look like pixelated postcards, the walls they’re on are now blank when players switch to the remastered graphics settings.

Their removal was first noticed on the Tomb Raider subreddit, before the discovery began trickling out to other corners of the internet last week. “I thought it was bullshit, but nope, Crystal Dynamics played the OG fans. They censored out the pictures in the update,” tweeted one person. “Updates should never be used to retroactively censor games, it’s a form of theft. Any company that engages in this bait & switch behavior should go bankrupt,” tweeted another. To be clear, the original versions of the posters are still available in the games when played in the 1990s mode.

A warning at the start of the remastered collection informs players that Crystal Dynamics, the studio behind the original games, chose to retain offensive stereotypes and imagery to “acknowledge its harmful impact” rather than erase those parts of the series’ legacy. Neither Crystal Dynamics nor Aspyr seemed to have a problem with the pinups previously. In fact, they were promoted as one of “ten remastered details you might have missed” a week after the collection’s launch.

Shortly after the latest patch removed the posters, NexusMods user Dario108 uploaded a mod to restore them in the PC version of the game. Timur Gagiev, the maker of popular open-source port OpenLara, who ended up working for Aspyr on the remasters, retweeted Dario’s link to the mod without saying anything further. Some took this as a sign that the change was intentional despite some potential disagreement behind the scenes.

Aspyr and Gagiev did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Ethan Gach

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April 22, 2024
Sony Deletes Mentions Of Troubled Star Wars: KotOR PS5 Remake, Hides Trailer

Image: Aspyr Media / Embracer Group

A teaser for a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake coming to PlayStation 5 nearly stole the show at Sony’s September 2021 showcase. But reports surfaced last year that the project was already in trouble. Now Star Wars fans have noticed that Sony recently deleted tweets about the game and has hidden the trailer from its official YouTube channel.

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Word that the teaser trailer had been removed from PlayStation’s channel first began to spread on September 28 on the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit. Twitter user Crusader3456 later shared a thread showing that Sony’s tweets about the teaser from the original 2021 PlayStation Showcase had also been deleted. The only official mention left appears to be a single tweet promoting multiple games from the livestream.

Screenshot: Sony / Kotaku

It’s possible the highly anticipated KOTOR remake is still alive and this is just some weirdness on the part of Sony’s social media department. It also might be the case that the project, which debuted as a PS5 exclusive, has all but been canceled amid ongoing development issues and massive budget cuts at parent publisher Embracer. Sony and Embracer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg reported in July 2022 that the developers has spent a significant amount of time and resources on a proof-of-concept demo that failed to past muster at a review meeting. Several senior leads were let go from the project, and the following month development on the KOTOR remake shifted to Saber Interactive in Europe (Aspyr is based in Texas).

Fast-forward a year, and parent company Embracer is instituting cuts across its sprawling portfolio, including canceling games and shutting down entire studios like Volition, after reportedly losing out on a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia. Aspyr also announced in June that it would bail on shipping a promised DLC pack for its Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 remaster on Switch. A fan is now suing.

A successful remake of KOTOR would be a lynchpin project for any publisher, especially as new Star Wars shows flood Disney+ every year. It would also be an incredibly ambitious and challenging endeavor for even the best studio. It’s not yet clear if Embracer has given up hope on the project. Fans certainly still haven’t.

Ethan Gach

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September 28, 2023
Devs Abandon KOTOR 2 Restoration DLC On Switch, Apologize With Free Games
Image: Obsidian Entertainment
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 on Switch was a mess from the start. Like the original game’s buggy and incomplete release back in 2004, last year’s port to Nintendo’s handheld hybrid launched with a bug that made the game impossible to beat for some players. Subsequent patches added other issues. And now players will no longer be getting the free Restoration Content DLC they were previously promised.

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The studio behind the port, Aspyr, delivered the bad news late Friday night, telling Switch owners of the game that the update to add support for a series of fan-made mods that fix certain bugs and round out KOTOR 2‘s characters and rough ending had unfortunately been canceled. It’s basically the unofficial “final cut” of Obsidian Entertainment’s excellent RPG, and Switch players will now essentially miss out on it, despite the fact it was previously marketed alongside the port’s 2022 release.

“Sadly, today we are announcing that the Restoration Content DLC for the Nintendo Switch version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords will not be moving forward for release,” the studio tweeted on June 2. “We’d like to thank everyone for their continued support by providing a complimentary video game key to players that purchased Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords on Nintendo Switch before this announcement.”

The games impacted players can choose from include the following list of other Star Wars ports Aspyr has worked on:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords (PC)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Switch)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Switch)

Star Wars: Republic Commando (Switch)

Star Wars: Episode I Racer (Switch)

Star Wars: Jedi Knight Academy (Switch)

Star Wars: Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast (Switch)

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The first game on the list is the PC version of KOTOR 2 which does include the Restoration Content DLC, though if you only own a Switch that’s not going to help you much. And as some players have pointed out, it’s not clear how the studio will make it up to those who might already own all of these games already, which when it comes to Star Wars fans isn’t an entirely unlikely scenario.

Things just aren’t going Aspyr’s way at the moment, it seems. The Austin-based studio behind a bunch of otherwise decent Star Wars ports and remasters was purchased by Embracer for $450 million in 2021. That same year it announced a remake of the first Knights of the Old Republic at a PS5 showcase that immediately generated tons of excitement. A year later Bloomberg reported that the project was already running into trouble and would be moved to a completely new studio under the Embracer umbrella.

Asked about the status of the game at the parent company’s recent earnings presentation, CEO Lars Wingefors responded with an exasperated “no comment.”
Ethan Gach

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June 3, 2023