Tony Elias has joined Arcanaut Studios as narrative director on Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, giving the early-stage RPG another veteran writer as it moves deeper into development. Elias said on LinkedIn that he will work with Casey Hudson and a team of new and familiar faces on the game, which he described as the spiritual successor to KOTOR.

He is a familiar name to players who have followed major role-playing and story-driven projects over the last decade. Elias worked on Monolith Productions’ Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Remedy Entertainment’s Quantum Break, the scrapped Wonder Woman game and the scrapped Humanoid Origin project, where he worked alongside Hudson. He also helped pen Cyberpunk 2 around a year and a half ago, a credit that makes his move to Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic especially notable for fans watching the next wave of big-budget sci-fi and fantasy RPGs.

The hiring lands now because interest in the project has only grown since it was announced at December 2025’s The Game Awards. Arcanaut has said the game is still in early active development, with around 50 developers on the team, even as Hudson has talked about a release sometime before 2030 on current-generation hardware. The studio has also brought in sci-fi novelist Jenny “J.S” Dewes to help write the game, while Eric Wong is serving as senior environment artist and Glenn Mayer as technical and gameplay designer.

That pace of hiring is the story behind the story. Arcanaut is still building the team while the game remains years from release, which means Elias is not arriving to polish a finished vision but to help shape one that is still taking form. The open question is how much his voice will change the tone of the project, and whether the studio’s expanding roster of veterans can turn the old Knights of the Old Republic nostalgia into something that feels fresh when it finally ships.

For now, the move puts another experienced writer into a project that has already become one of the more closely watched Star Wars games in development. It also comes as another Knights of the Old Republic remake at Saber Interactive remains in the works, keeping the franchise’s future tied to projects that are still far from launch.