In 2008, the third game in the Star Wars: Battlefront series was reportedly cancelled and long forgotten by Star Wars fans. But now, Star Wars: Battlefront 3 is here and would be available to all players very soon. Star Wars: Battlefront 3 is a sequel to the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 released in 2005 for PC, PS2, PSP, and Xbox.
The second installment in the series was a first and third-person shooter based on the original Star Wars film franchise. The game was developed by Pandemic Studios and published by LucasArts, and was a sequel to 2004’s Star Wars: Battlefront. Star Wars: Battlefront 3 recently resurfaced online providing fans with the game’s complete version.
The build that appeared thie month was the type comoatible with the Nintendo Wii console. Although a few settings need to be tweaked on the console to smoothen the gameplay, it definitely resonates with what the game should look like considering what Free Radical explained years back.
Battlefront 2 received several mixed to favorable reviews with critics praising the game’s gameplay, storyline, music, and other noteworthy aspects. After the success of the first two Battlefront games, the game’s developer Pandemic Studios decided to opt for a new game in the series, Star Wars: Battlefront 3. The development process looked great for the game, but a news report back in 2006 stated that LucasArts had shifted development of a third game in the series to Free Radical Design, the studio known best for the Time Splitters series.
The game’s development continued after the shift for another 2 years before the game’s development was canned in 2008. Star Wars: Battlefront 3 looked promising enough that LucasArts signed Free Radical to develop a fourth Battlefront installment. But all of that came crashing down as the relationship strained between bothe companies due to the change in leadership in LucasArts. That said, due to high marketing costs required to promote the game after its release and other management costs, LucasArts decided that they were “unable to commit to spending big,” causing them to cancel a game that was already in its testing stages.
“It was pretty much done, it was in final [quality assurance testing],” Free Radical founder and former studio director Steve Ellis told GamesIndustry.biz in 2012. “It had been in final QA for half of 2008, it was just being fixed for release. LucasArts’ opinion is that when you launch a game you have to spend big on the marketing, and they’re right. 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 a Trailer for the Star Wars: Battlefront 3:
As stated earlier, the Star Wars: Battlefront 3 Wii build would new a few tweaks to run smoothly, but as the modding community gets their hands on the code and makes some needed changes, updates, and patches, it would be hopefully perfected on all platforms overtime.
