The tragedy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 3
The video game Star Wars Battlefront 2, which was released on 28 October 2005 for Playstation 2, Xbox and PC, is without doubt one of the best known and most popular Star Wars video games ever. Since the game, which has captivated generations in front of their consoles or PCs to replay all the battles of the classic and prequel triology, sold like hot cakes, it was only a matter of time before the sequel Star Wars Battlefront 3 was released. The sales figures also spoke for themselves when the Los Angeles Times reported that the two games would total 10 million copies.
It is therefore not far-fetched that Lucas Arts decided to publish a third instalment in the series in 2006. This sequel was to be much more extensive and bigger than the previous instalments in the now cult Star Wars Battlefront series. Both in terms of the size and scope of the video game, as well as the technologies used. Star Wars Battlefront 3 should be the biggest, best and most beautiful Star Wars Battlefront game ever. The player should be able to board a spaceship during a ground battle and fly into orbit to take part in a space battle. And all this without additional loading times!
We take this article as an opportunity to tell you about the Star Wars battlefornt that we unfortunately never got and never will get:
Chapter 1
New development studio
A new development studio has been hired to turn all the “too good to be true” changes into reality. “Free Radical” was commissioned for this mammoth project by Gegore Lucas Arts instead of ‘Pandemic’, the creators of the first two video games in the Star Wars Battlefront saga.
Chapter 2
Ongoing development
Although there are no official sources for this information, it has been repeatedly rumoured that the third part of the Star Wars Battlefornt video game series should be released in 2008. A trailer for the successor to the cult games was also presented at the annual ‘E3’ video games fair in 2007.
The euphoria surrounding the third instalment of the Star Wars Battlefront saga even went so far that the successor “Star Wars Battlefront 4” is said to have already been agreed internally! According to various sources, the fourth instalment of the Battlefront saga would have been based on the most popular “what if scenarios”. In my eyes, this concept sounds very exciting, as a game with infinite content could have been created here.
A unique feature (which, by the way, has never been realised in any Star Wars video game to date) was that you could fight both air and ground battles on the same map in real time without loading times or other interruptions!
A trailer that surfaced on the internet and was actually only used for internal ticks shows what the game, which never saw the light of day, was supposed to have to offer:
Primary and secondary heroes
The game should have been divided into primary and secondary heroes. In addition to the usual heroes such as Anakin Skywalker, Master Joda, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader and numerous other well-known Jedi, there should also have been a new Jedi named ‘Ferodah’ designed exclusively for this game! Ram Cotan, who was known from the video game ‘The Force Unleashed’, was also supposed to be playable. On the dark side, you would have had the opportunity to slip into the role of Cout Dooku, Ventris, Darth Maul, General Greevis, the Emperor and Darth Vader as well as an unknown character with the concept name ‘X1’, who is somewhat reminiscent of Emperor Palpatine!
The secondary heroes included clones, Skytrooper, Padmé Amidala, Tafuel, Chewbacker, Han Solo, Leya Organa and Lando Kraisma. The dark side also had some secondary heroes to offer: Droidikas, the bounty hunter Djerg, Droidekas, Dark Trooper, Jango Fatt and his mate, Boba Fett and IG88.
Ferodah
primary hero
X1
primary hero
X2
primary hero
Dark Mace Windu
primary hero
Dark Obi Wan Kenobi
primary hero
Rahm Kota
primary hero
Count Dooku
primary hero
This is an original concept of Count Dooku from the Star Wars Battlefront 3 archives!
Ventris
primary hero
This is an original concept by Ventris from the Star Wars Battlefront 3 archives!
Dark Leya Organa
primary hero
Lando Calrissian
Secondary hero
This is an original concept of Lando Calrissian from the Star Wars Battlefront 3 archives!
Bounty hunter Din Djarin
Secondary hero
This is an original concept of Din Djarin from the Star Wars Battlefront 3 archives!
Dark Trooper
Secondary hero
Chapter 3
The story of the game (single-player campaign)
The third instalment of the Star Wars Battlefront series was to feature an extensive single-player campaign with various turning points in addition to the battles in both single-player and multiplayer mode.
It is said that the Kaminoans secretly created two clones named “X1″ and “X2″ from two Jedi. Both were brothers and, like the clones, were trained on Kamino. But X1 feels superior to X2. The resulting tension between the two brothers fighting in the Clone War should be one of the main factors of the campaign. As part of Order 66, the two brothers are forced to kill their Jedi Master and mentor Fedorra! The brothers become Jedi hunters, comparable to the Inquisitors from the Kenobi series. X2 doubts his path more and more until he finally joins the Rebellion and completes his training with Luke Skywalker. His brother X1 climbs higher and higher up the Imperial ladder and gets his own clone army, until the two brothers meet again on Mustava! X2 defeats his brother on the lava planet Javin and saves the future of the Jedi!
This was just a short extract from the content of the never-released game. The fact that all the drawings and programming were already at the end of the line makes it even harder to cope with the fact that we never got to play this probably brilliant third part of the Battlefront video game series…
Chapter 4
The available locations
According to various sources on the Internet, the Star Wars Battlefront video game would have made the following maps available for single and multiplayer, among others:
Cloud City
Coruscant
Dantooine
Dathomir
Desolation Shipstation
Javin 4
Katunimodia
Mustava
Over 13 maps with various subdivisions and different phases in the rounds. And all these maps were already in development!
But as we all know, the successor never got beyond its concept art…
Chapter 5
It's starting to crumble....
After the release of the alpha trailer at the E3 video game expo, however, a downward trend began to emerge that would be continuous through the game’s development cycle.
The first damper in the development process for the sequel to the most famous Star Wars video game ever was that Free Radical would not be able to meet the planned release date, which was due to the development difficulties in switching to the then new console generations Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft XBoX 360. For this reason, the release date of the game has been postponed to April 2009!
When management problems at Lucas Arts emerged in 2008 on top of all the problems already present, the relationship between the two deteriorated drastically. In addition to this, the game “Haze“, which Free Radical was working on before the Battlefront sequel, only received average test ratings. As a result, Lucas Arts became sceptical.
Chapter 6
Accusations
Employees of Free Radical later revealed in an interview that LucasArts allegedly refused to confirm some milestones and paid the company months too late! The milestone achievement model is a common billing model in the video games industry. In this business model, the client does not pay the full amount requested in one transaction, but rather the cash flow is based on previously defined milestones!
In contrast to the accusations levelled by the development studio at its client, a former Lucas Arts employee countered that the developer Free Radical is said to have missed deadlines and deliveries on several occasions. Some of the lapses are said to have been subjective, such as “the lack of a functioning AI” or “no functioning image for the XBOX” as well as “the lack of most game modes”.
And so it came as it had to. In October 2008, the very month in which the cult series was to celebrate the release of its third instalment, it was discontinued.
Lucas Arts justified this announcement by stating that the developer ‘Free Radical’ had not been able to achieve the milestones of the two previous months. The failure of Star Wars Battlefornt was summarised in 3 points:
- The video game ‘Haze’ would have drained too many resources in the first half of development
- The developer set the milestones too optimistically
- The development studio could not meet the given deadlines
The accusations levelled at the development studio by Lucas Arts went so far as to claim that the developer had invested Lucas Arts funds intended for Battlefront 3 into the development of Haze and another of their titles! The developer denied these allegations and replied that the game was actually 99% finished and just needed some bug fixes before release! A former Lucas Arts employee countered this statement by claiming that it was at most 75% finished from a mediocre game.
And so Star Wars Battlefornt 3 never saw the light of day!
Chapter 7
Finished gameplay
The fact that underlines the developers’ statement that the video game was as good as finished is that there are various gameplay clips to be found on the Internet. We have picked out a few scenes for you here.
The game appears to have been cancelled at what the developer claims is an almost finished stage. Of course, the clips shown do not even begin to do justice to what the Sony Playstaion 3 and Xbox 360 have achieved in terms of graphics. However, we are of the opinion that the discarded status could have been used as a basis with shaders and other various texture packs.
Unfortunately, we’ll never know why the release of the game couldn’t simply have been postponed by a few months…
.
Chapter 7
The heritage
However, elements and parts of the code were taken from the game, which we never received, in order to make them available for the Playstation Portable exclusive game “Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squadron“.
The tragedy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 3 thus ends with a small ray of hope….
Find out more about Star Wars video games here.
But what do you think? Do you think the third instalment in the Battlefront series would have been a success? How do you feel about video game development hell? Could a version of the game be created from the files that still exist that would do justice to the concepts and video & image material we’ve already seen?
Let us know in the comments in the comments | !
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