Star Wars: Battlefront III, a video game that was being created by Free Radical Design starting in 2006, was planned as the third entry in the original Battlefront series. However, it was ultimately cancelled in 2008.
Expanding on the foundation laid by the two previous games, Battlefront III aimed to allow players to seamlessly move between ground and space combat by taking off or landing in a starship.
The majority of information available about Battlefront III comes from a series of online articles released in 2012 by specialized gaming news sources, which were based on accounts from individuals directly involved in the project. Specifically, developers from Free Radical Design, including three of its co-founders, Steve Ellis, David Doak, and Graeme Norgate, were interviewed for articles published by Gameindustry.biz and Eurogamer. In contrast, conflicting statements from a former LucasArts employee, who chose to remain anonymous, alongside a response from Steve Ellis (who suggested he might know the employee's identity based on the level of detail), were featured on GameSpot.
LucasArts President Jim Ward sought to release a third Battlefront game in 2006 as part of the company's ongoing strategy. To achieve this, LucasArts contacted Free Radical Design (who were already developing Haze), and the two companies reached an agreement in the summer of 2006, with development commencing shortly thereafter. The game was intended to be significantly more ambitious than its predecessors, both in terms of its scope and the technologies it would utilize. The planned release date was October 2008. While LucasArts never officially announced or acknowledged Battlefront III, the deal between them and Free Radical was mentioned in a press release in early August 2006.
In December 2007, LucasArts and Free Radical entered into a new contract for a sequel, Star Wars: Battlefront IV, which required Free Radical to expand its workforce further. Steve Ellis, one of Free Radical's co-directors, later described this as a "vote of confidence in us". By January 2008, Ellis informed LucasArts that Free Radical would be unable to meet the original release date for Battlefront III. The release was then pushed back to April 2009, with LucasArts agreeing to fund an additional seven months of development. Among the challenges faced were the technological transition to a new generation of video game consoles, the increasing need for a larger team (which grew to around 200 employees in 2008), and changes in design made in conjunction with LucasArts.
The situation took a turn for the worse in 2008 when LucasArts underwent significant management changes, beginning with the departure of Jim Ward in February, followed by the arrival of his successor, Darrell Rodriguez, in April. Rodriguez's new strategy led to a large portion of the staff, including nearly all managers, being let go. At this time, Free Radical was concerned about meeting deadlines, despite making good progress. From that point on, the relationship between publisher and developer deteriorated. In May, the release of Haze, which had been delayed by a year and was receiving negative reviews (with a Metacritic score of 55), caused alarm at LucasArts.
Free Radical composer Graeme Norgate later described "stalling tactics" employed by LucasArts, as the publisher refused to approve milestones and was six months late in paying Free Radical. David Doak, co-director at Free Radical, characterized the situation as LucasArts attempting to reduce costs and abandon the project, noting that while Free Radical was protected by a contract, the balance of power was not in their favor. The former LucasArts employee (from the GameSpot article) countered that Free Radical had missed deadlines and deliveries even before Jim Ward's departure, and that both Presidents of LucasArts made "many good will whole or partial milestones payments". While he acknowledged that some missed milestones involved subjective quality issues, others lacked functionality entirely, including the absence of working AI in levels by December 2007, the lack of a working build for the Xbox 360 throughout 2007, and the absence of all game modes except team free-for-all.
The cancellation ultimately happened in October 2008. The ex-LucasArts employee stated that LucasArts determined that Free Radical was unable to deliver on their August and September milestones. He summarized the failure of Battlefront III with three key points. Firstly, Haze diverted resources during the initial phase of Battlefront III's development. Secondly, Free Radical overestimated their ability to meet milestones. And lastly, Free Radical consistently missed assigned dates. He concluded that Free Radical was not transparent with LucasArts about the issues they were facing. While Steve Ellis agreed that Free Radical had experienced difficulties in estimating milestone completion, he refuted the first point, stating that Free Radical considered it poor practice to move resources (money or employees) from one ongoing project to another, and had never done so for Haze or any other project. He added, echoing David Doak's earlier statement to Eurogamer, that LucasArts (under Jim Ward) was the best publisher relationship they had experienced. Ellis also revealed that LucasArts negotiated the cancellation of both Battlefront games that Free Radical was developing, and added in defense of the company that the contract was not terminated for breach, and therefore the company was less to blame than it was led to be believed.
The former LucasArts employee even suggested that Free Radical had potentially diverted funds from LucasArts intended for Battlefront III to support the development of Haze, and later TimeSplitters 4, which had been in pre-production since at least mid-2007, describing it as "akin to a Ponzi scheme where time and budget from the next game was being used to finish the previous, late, title". Steve Ellis strongly denied this, emphasizing that Haze's delay was fully financially supported by its publisher, Ubisoft.
Steve Ellis also claimed that the game was nearly complete: "We had a 99% finished game that just needed bug fixing for release." It was this statement that prompted the former LucasArts employee to contact GameSpot, calling it "bullshit" and offering his own "generous estimate" of "75 percent of a mediocre game". Ellis responded that leaked video showed that the game was content complete, and all that was left to do was fix bugs. He stated that the completion rate of the game would be calculated based on the number of open bugs in database, with a possible release date being predicted based on the rate of bug fixing versus the rate of bug discovery. At the time of cancellation, the major bugs (known as "must fix bugs") would have been handled under three to four weeks. Ellis recognized 99% was an exaggeration, and that it was closer to 97-98%.
Assets that were created during the game's development were later implemented by Rebellion Developments in Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron. Artworks, screenshots, and gameplay footage have since been leaked online by former Free Radical employees. One video that was uploaded to YouTube was taken down due to a copyright claim by Lucasfilm.
- The Collapse of Free Radical Design by Martin, Matt on www.gamesindustry.biz ( April 26 , 2012 ) (archived from the original on November 3, 2019)
- Free Radical vs. the Monsters by Stanton, Rich on www.eurogamer.net ( May 7 , 2012 ) (archived from the original on February 7, 2020)
- Former LucasArts employee on why Star Wars: Battlefront III failed on GameSpot.com (backup link)