Newly discovered Battlefront 3 test build turns out to be an entirely different Star Wars game
A new build of canceled sequel Star Wars: Battlefront 3 appears to have surfaced online, but it looks a whole lot like an early version of Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, a spin-off that actually was released on portable systems in 2009.
“LucasArts was a client of a relative of my fiancé back in the day, and he got to playtest a lot of games, one of which was Star Wars: Battlefront III,” Reddit user MissFeepit says in a post to the main gaming subreddit. Once “all the assets were being gathered up to send back to Skywalker Ranch, one of the play test cartridges for the PSP version got left behind. Him being young, he didn't think much of it and took it home, tested it out.”
The poster’s fiancé ran across that copy of the game recently, and the couple became “kind of curious of what it could be worth,” leading to the Reddit post. That post immediately blew up, as fans eager to learn more about the long-lost Star Wars game sought more information.
A few screenshots were provided later, which look more or less identical to the opening screens of the PSP version of Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron - the only difference is that this version features a Battlefront 3 logo.
Battlefront 3 was in development at Free Radical Design, the studio behind TimeSplitters and Haze. LucasArts canceled its contract with Free Radical in 2008, and the studio went bankrupt later in the year, though it was soon bought out by Crytek.
Interviews with developers have confirmed that LucasArts passed some of the assets from Battlefront 3 to Rebellion, the studio behind Battlefront: Elite Squadron on PSP. A few years ago, a dataminer uncovered a Battlefront 3 logo in the game files for Elite Squadron, and that logo is identical to the one
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