An hour of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 reveals cancelled game

Star Wars: Battlefront III was "pretty much done" when LucasArts cancelled the multiplayer Star War 'em up, developer Free Radical has said. A new hour of snazzy footage from a leaked build shows just how far along it was.

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Star Wars: Battlefront III was "pretty much done" when LucasArts cancelled the multiplayer Star War 'em up, developer Free Radical has said. Almost a whole hour of snazzy new footage from a leaked alpha build shows just how far along it was, though fans should be warned it may hurt to see it so close yet so far.

The footage captured by Past to Present Online shows the Rebels and Imperials warring across Cloud City, Kashyyyk, Mustafar the Death Star, and other famed Warsian locations. It's a little rough round the edges, as one would expect from an alpha, and a bogged down by running AI bots, but still something to see.

Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis explained in April that a change in management at LucasArts brought a "change of direction" and the Star lords lost interest. "LucasArts' opinion is that when you launch a game you have to spend big on the marketing and they're right," he said. "But at that time they were, for whatever reason, unable to commit to spending big. They effectively canned a game that was finished."

Here's about as close as you'll get, then:

From The Chatty
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    July 5, 2012 7:30 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, An hour of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 reveals cancelled game.

    Star Wars: Battlefront III was "pretty much done" when LucasArts cancelled the multiplayer Star War 'em up, developer Free Radical has said. A new hour of snazzy footage from a leaked build shows just how far along it was.

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      July 5, 2012 7:43 AM

      :'(

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      July 5, 2012 7:47 AM

      [deleted]

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      July 5, 2012 7:51 AM

      what's the point? the game isnt coming out so why torture fans?

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      July 5, 2012 8:08 AM

      why cancel it if its finished? are distribution costs so high that they dont even think they can cover those with sales?

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        July 5, 2012 8:32 AM

        "pretty much finished" can mean a lot of things. It might have been finished, but not at all fun. If it would have taken another year to make into a quality, releasable product, and sales estimates didn't justify that cost, it's easier to cancel and write it off.

        Nobody kills a finished product if it's decent, no matter what the developer says.

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          July 5, 2012 8:43 AM

          why speculate when the article mentions the reasoning?

          "Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis explained in April that a change in management at LucasArts brought a "change of direction" and the Star lords lost interest. "LucasArts' opinion is that when you launch a game you have to spend big on the marketing and they're right," he said. "But at that time they were, for whatever reason, unable to commit to spending big."

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            July 5, 2012 9:02 AM

            The "LucasArts pet project dying on regime change" theory is very strong, at least among the Giant Bomb crew. LucasArts only cares about unit sales; look at the bad quality of STFU2 and Kinect Star Wars, versus the strong sales of both titles, riding on the waning fame of Star Wars.

            Also, don't expect the opinions of a producer at a major publisher to be neutral.

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              July 5, 2012 9:11 AM

              star wars battlefront up to that point was one of the best selling star wars game ever.

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              July 5, 2012 9:17 AM

              I want to play Shut The Fuck Up 2

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            July 5, 2012 12:39 PM

            I don't buy it, and until we hear someone from the publisher confirm it, we're only hearing one side. There's no way they killed a quality title that was finished. At bare minimum, they could have released it pc, digital only and made back some of their investment. Unless of course, it wasn't done, which is much more likely.

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              July 5, 2012 12:55 PM

              In the video it definitely looks unfinished but nothing that would take that much longer to complete. Lucasarts is also notorious for changing management and the direction the company wants to go in every couple of years.

              So maybe it's a little bit of both?

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              July 5, 2012 5:15 PM

              That is actually how the first Battlefront was made, actually. EA cancelled it and Pandemic turned and sold it to Lucas Arts (and made it Star Wars). It happens more than you think.

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              July 5, 2012 5:19 PM

              I know a lot of people who've been put out on their ass by LucasArts regime changes over the years. They pull the same stunt every few years; cancel almost everything in progress and "set a new direction". It happened again in April and sent several friends of me back on the job hunt. (Along with industry greats - note that Clint Hocking "left" recently. Coincidence?) That company is totally broken.

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                July 5, 2012 5:22 PM

                That is to say, LucasArts cares more about the Star Wars brand and staying "on message" with their latest corporate strategies than they care about any particular project, and they never put any value in completed work if it started under a previous regime. Scrapping a 90%-finished game rather than spend any marketing money seems par for the course.

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        July 5, 2012 12:52 PM

        more like LucasTards.

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      July 5, 2012 8:56 AM

      Was that the footage from yesterday? That game looked like it was in early alpha. It was no where near ready to ship.

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      July 5, 2012 9:20 AM

      all of this means anyone involved should collaborate and get KOTOR 3 revived.

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      July 5, 2012 10:27 AM

      My gut tells me that we will see this game at some point. Maybe not what we have seen here, but in some entity.

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      July 5, 2012 10:48 AM

      Bugger the marketing, I would have bought this anyway.

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