The “Star Wars: Battlefront” series kicked off in 2004 with the first game, which was available on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC at the time. It was a game that put players square in the shoes of soldiers on the ground in the midst of epic battles in a galaxy far, far away. More than anything, the game and its sequel, 2005’s “Star Wars: Battlefront II,” remain some of the best couch-multiplayer games ever, and not just the ones connected to the “Star Wars” franchise. The games were runaway hits and that’s why a third entry was developed.
Unfortunately, things went south somewhere along the way with Free Radical. At one point, the studio’s co-founder Steve Ellis said the game was “99% complete,” but even that received pushback. Speaking to GameSpot in 2012, an ex-employee of the studio had some unkind words to share:
“This 99 percent complete stuff is just bulls**t. A generous estimate would be 75 percent of a mediocre game.”
The unnamed individual further claimed that Free Radical continually missed dates and deliveries during the development of “Battlefront III.” They added that the studio “was akin to a Ponzi scheme where time and budget from the next game was being used to finish the previous, late, title.” At the time, the studio was also finishing up its troubled game “Haze.”
Another ex-employee spoke with IGN in 2009 and explained why the game was axed, stating that “It certainly wasn’t us that ****ed up.” They added:
“We didn’t do any press, they kept it totally under wraps. I think that was partly because they had ‘The Force Unleashed,’ they didn’t want it to be contrasting with that.”
As for the alleged issues? “From my experience with it, it had all the same problems with it that any normal game has at that point,” they said.
