Star Wars: Battlefront III was ready for release in 2008 before being cancelled: more footage released

Before DICE’s take on Star Wars Battlefront, currently scheduled to drop on November 19th, before EA had appropriated the license even, the Battlefront license was in the ownership of LucasArts and had previously been developed by Pandemic Studios (of Full Spectrum Warrior and Dark Reign 2 fame).

Following the success of Star Wars: Battlefront II, perhaps the best selling Star Wars game of all time, it was only a matter of time before Battlefront III was on the cards.

For those in the know, Star Wars: Battlefront III was in development, and had been for around 2 years.

In fact, studio Free Radical Design, developers of the stupendous TimeSplitters 1 and 2, had been working on the game between 2006 and 2008 before it was cancelled – just before release it seems, because it was practically ready.

“They were big fans of our work, they liked our take on making games, they liked the way we work and they wanted to do this project. It was a big thing, we were very excited and for a long time it was going very well,” founder of Free Radical Design, Steve Ellis, said in an interview with Gameindustry.biz. “We got on well with the production staff that we worked with, we had good access to the LucasArts management and we didn’t fight very much at all, we were just getting on with making the game.”

Rather unfortunately, a change was in the wind and new heads at LucasArts lead to the deterioration between them and Free Radical Design, ultimately culminating in the axing of Battlefront III.

Drastic measures lead to LucasArts canning both projects in development, the first of which was almost complete. Ellis wouldn’t be drawn on the actual details of the game, but enough footage of Star Wars: Battlefront III has long since appeared on YouTube.”

And now, new footage of a much more complete build of the game has appeared on YouTube, on the channel PtoPOnline.

It’s a lot of flight footage, something Star Wars Battlefront is actually sort of lacking. In fact, DICE’s approach, weirdly, is a lot less vehicle orientated than the earlier releases – we say “weird” because this is DICE, creators of the Battlefield series.

What do you think? We would have liked to see the release of Battlefront III, with this latest title by DICE set to reboot the franchise.