Gamasutra has started transcribing archival podcasts for reasons best known only to them. In the latest to be converted to the written word, we have a 2004 GDC speech by Bioware's Casey Hudson "Creating a Monster RPG: The Light and the Dark Side of Development on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic".
...and so I give you the KotOR work breakdown. It's basically showing that we spent 90 man-years developing KotOR. It's also kind of interesting to look at the way the breakdown was. We spent a lot of time on the art. We spent 28 man-years doing the art. So a huge amount of art-content went into KotOR, and a tremendous amount of programming too. And this was even given that we are leveraging the technology that we've developed previously. And even though the game was very story-based and is really about the story, we spent less time on the design part, 14 man-years versus 16 on the animation side. Because we had 76 cut-scenes, and hundreds and hundreds of character actions for the choreographed combat, and it was all hand-animated. So a huge amount of work went into that.Many more interesting tidbits on the creation and development of the original KOTOR an the link above. Meatbags.
Source: Gamasutra