Star Wars: Battlefront III seemed like it was going to be a pretty rad game. For one, it was being developed by Free Radical, a company that had numerous former Goldeneye and Perfect Dark developers on staff, and which was responsible for the well-regarded TimeSplitters series. Also, Battlefront III’s gameplay sounded like it was going to be pretty innovative — you could start a battle on the ground then hop into an iconic Star Wars spacecraft, fly to a new location and seamlessly continue your battle there.
LucasArts has never actually confirmed the existence of Battlefront III, but Free Radical founder Steve Ellis has never been shy about letting the world know his company worked on the title. In fact, according to Ellis, Battlefront III was “99 percent finished” and only required “bug fixing”, but LucasArts went and killed their partnership with Free Radical anyways, rendering all their work on the game pointless and essentially dooming the studio (Free Radical would go under shortly after being screwed by LucasArts).
Word is LucasArts then tried to rebuild Battlefront III from the ground up with the help of new developer Rebellion, a company mostly known for mediocre to downright terrible stuff like the Sniper Elite series and Rogue Warrior. Shockingly development didn’t go so well, and Battlefront III is almost certainly finished for good now.
So yeah, add this little story to your “reasons why Disney buying George Lucas’ toys might not be so bad” scrapbook.
via Kotaku
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Two people. From what I understand it comes down to two possible people in the LucasArts corporate structure that have been ruining their projects for the last few years.
Some of the Free Radical guys have made comments to this effect, referring to certain “psychos” denying them milestones, sabotaging dev builds and refusing QA. Inquiring minds want to know. Especially in regards to weather or not these turd-burglers are getting folded into Disney while the hardworking folks at FR get left out to twist in the wind.
Funny, I heard the something similar about Rebellion. Bethesda tried to get them to finish Prey 2 and they failed on that too.
And some people wonder why indie games are such a big thing right now.
I remember hearing a lot about this game for a while. I think I remember remember reading that it included a bunch of “what if?” characters, such as darkside Obi Wan. Pretty sure there is concept art of it too. Would’ve been badass.