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