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Some fairly interesting news that will be a big disappointment to a lot of fans.. apparently the Star Wars: Battlefront 3 that was in production with Free Radical will never be released. One of our forum members (Thanks Red7 StandingBy!) found an email address of an ex-Free Radical employee and decided that he would shoot him an email asking about what happened with the production of Battlefront 3.
Here’s the email that was sent:
From: my email
CENSORED
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:23:54 -0500
Subject: Big Fan
REMOVED I hope this email finds you well.When you were at Free Radical you did an awesome job at re-inventing the Star Wars Battlefront franchise. It was so sad and upsetting to hear of Free Radicals collapse. Myself and thousands upon thousands of fans were so pumped when we saw the leaked footage of the supposed alpha meeting in November of 2008.
We finally had something to look forward to after years of lackluster titles from Lucasarts. Now BF3 is in development hell and the fans want answers but as usual Lucasarts doesn’t listen. I was wondering if there is anything you could tell me about the whereabouts of BF3 now, how far along it was and I would be interested to know where you are currently working or where you last worked. Thanks again and may the force be with you!
Here is the response that came back to him:
Thanks for your kind words, BF3 was truly awesome.
The whole idea with BF3 was that is was going to have a storyline, following two clone brothers that was cloned from a Jedi. The game also had a vertical battlefield, so you could fight on the ground, jump into a x wing and fly up to a star destroyer, firing ion cannons from space to ground or from ground to space, all this without any loading times.
Sad to say that about 6-8 months from completing the game, Lucasarts canned it, I don’t know all the details about what happened but it got cancelled and that was the death of Free Radical, we couldn’t get a publisher in time for Timesplitters 4 so the directors where forced to make 80 % of the company redundant. Then later on they got bought up by Crytek and are now developing some AAA titel. I was one of the guys that was made redundant so I am not working at Crytek anymore but at a different games company.
The status of BF3, well the BF3 I was working on will never get released, however I believe that Battlefront being one of the major titles for Lucasarts, you will no doubt see a battlefront title at some point, what format, what type of game it will be, that I cant answer, because I dont know.
May the force be with you!
Talk about a major bummer, but this still doesn’t confirm that we won’t be getting our long awaited Battlefront 3. This just means that version that Free Radical were developing, won’t ever surface. So basically all of those leaked renders and screens are what could have been and never will be now.
This really sucks because Free Radicals version looking absolutely amazing. Even if LucasArts are working to recreate Battlefront 3, they’re going to have to work really hard to match what Free Radical had done. It makes me wonder why they would can the project when it was almost ready… strange.. Let me know your thoughts folks!
I wanted to address the people as well who are sending me emails and posting comments that they know when Battlefront 3 is coming out and how they have “sources” that it’s being developed. Don’t bother unless you care to “share” your sources and where you got the info from, because they’ll just be deleted.
Thanks!
Did you know that more Battlefront III stuff (concept and the like) from Free Radical’s version has been found? It’s all reportedly from the build of the game in 07/08 prior to the axing, but it looks cool. I found posts about it here this past week:
http://xcastonline.com/index.php/News/rumor-even-more-star-wars-battlefront-iii-concept-art.html
http://www.pcgames.de/aid,700198/LucasArts-Neues-Star-Wars-Spiel-wird-im-Dezember-enthuellt-und-Bilder-zu-Battlefront-3-aufgetaucht/PC/News/
Bummer. Hopefully LA can bring it back to life.
Well, this makes me want to shoot the guy who canned bf3. If he walked up to my door he’d definitely loose his perfect nose.
Hopefully it turns better on the 12th with some new game coming out, but I doubt now that it will be bf3 with starting from scratch in a year.
what is with your obsession with trying to make Battlefront 3 turn into Elite Squadron?
No, I don’t thinl it’ll be a new force unleased. The did the Ultimate Sith Add. so I don’t expect anything from that soon.
And this is quite a big stink for a Force Unleased spinn-off.
It’s a big installement.
One thing that makes me think that the new game is Battlefront III has to do with Pandemic’s closing. When the studio shut down last week, EA promised continued support for Pandemic’s intellectual properties, and Battlefront is one of those IPs.
When the rumoured Battlefront III surfaced, it did so on the trail of Free Radical’s closing (which was rumored to be the developer on the title). At the time word was that Battlefront III went back to Pandemic after Free Radical was shuttered. Now that Pandemic’s closed, I believe EA’s doing the same thing with Battlefront III that it’s doing with Mercs Inc: Take a few core members from Pandemic, drop them in another EA studio, and get the game ready to go gold sometime next year. What do you folks think? Is a new Force Unleashed more or less plausible?
BF3 is till here may be it was sent back to lucusarts then sent to rebeilan 4 a have cooked idea but I still say that bf3 will appear ar vga 2009 with a better teazer than before with a better story line.
Wow this sucks… i swear if bf3 is not announced now, I will never buy a single Lucasarts game ever… untill BF3 comes out.
this is complete bull. i hope that SWBF3 is announced at VGA. Lucasarts should obviously see how much SWBF fans want this game to come out. the “vertical battlefield” is the most amazing features that could be put into a SWBF game. I believe that if the continuation of this dead version of SWBF3 would be the smartest choice lucasarts could make. Even people that didnt buy the 1st and 2nd SWBF would buy the 3rd. this game needs to be announced soon!!!!!!!
Total crud… I need time to think about this.
This employee blames Free Radical’s closing on the dumping of BF3 (excuse the pun).
I think this shows that there is some relationship between BF3 & ES. So don’t expect the BF3 that comes out to be the same.
I do think that Free Radical’s template went to ES.
Now, please excuse me, I gonna go play BF2.
well this really sucks. I don’t understand why they would can the entire game. I mean come on SWBF 1,2 were the best selling Star Wars games. On the Lucas Art website fans have been barking at Lucas Arts games to make Battlefront 3 for a while now so who know what will happen now. So all I can hope now lucas arts uses Free Radical’s version as a template rather than starting from scratch. I know its a very long shot but I hope its the new Star Wars game annocued at VGA is Star Wars Battlefront 3.