Star Wars Fans Have Managed To Restore Most Of Cancelled Battlefront 3's Intro
Back before the days of EA's ownership of the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts licensed the universe out to a number of different studios. One of those was Free Radical Design, a British studio that in the late 2000s was hard at work making the third release of the Star Wars: Battlefront series.
Star Wars: Battlefront 3 had been in development since 2006 and by 2008 was almost done, but then the housing crash happened, the economy went south, and LucasArts didn't want to spend money on marketing what was a fairly niche game franchise at the time. There are conflicting reports on whether LucasArts pulled the license or there was trouble with Free Radical missing deadlines, but a 2010 write-up from IGN revealed the game was basically finished.
Related: EA Didn't Deserve Star Wars
Sadly, Battelfront 3 was canceled at the beginning of 2009, but throughout that year a wealth of material was leaked online--presumably by Free Radical employees trying to revive the game. In the below video, you can see the first 15-minutes of what would have been Battlefront 3 at two points in its development: Milestone 28 in August 2008, and Milestone 31 in November 2008.
It’s pretty incredible to see the massive strides that Free Radical made in the few weeks between either milestone, but it’s also clear that neither milestone was a finished game. Milestone 31 was a better-looking intro, with better graphics, smoother gameplay, and a more fleshed-out story, but both milestones feature some massive slowdowns when they reach Tatooine.
It also appears that some content was cut between the two as the first milestone goes about a minute longer than the second, although the fight scene between the monster and the Jedi was clearly unfinished.
Free
Read more on thegamer.com
