“I feel like it’s been long enough now to come out and say Star Wars Battlefront III was gonnae [sic] be legit incredible and the fact it got cancelled 2 yards from the finish line is an absolute crime,” former Star Wars Battlefront 3 developer Michael Barclay tweeted over the weekend.
Barclay was referring to Free Radical’s Star Wars Battlefront 3, which was in development until it was canceled in 2008. His statement came in response to a simple question posed at developers: “Alright #gamedev folks, what’s your ‘one that got away?’ It can be an IP you wanted to work on, a studio you wanted to work for, anything of the sort.”
Barclay, who now works as a lead designer at Naughty Dog, shared his own story and added, “Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of.”
I feel like it’s been long enough now to come out and say Star Wars Battlefront III was gonnae be legit incredible and the fact it got cancelled 2 yards from the finish line is an absolute crime. Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of. https://t.co/zZUu8JR3iV
— Michael Barclay (@MotleyGrue) April 16, 2023
Battlefront III’s complicated history.
Barclay’s claim isn’t a new one. Way back in 2012, Free Radical cofounder Steve Ellis also claimed that Star Wars Battlefront 3 was “99 percent done.” This prompted a former LucasArts employee to lash out at the studio, which has since undergone multiple iterations before reopening under Deep Silver in 2021.
“This 99 percent complete stuff is just bullsh*t,” the former employee claimed to GameSpot at the time. “A generous estimate would be 75 percent of a mediocre game.”
They went on to claim that Free Radical continually missed milestones and that the game didn’t work in 2007, but that LucasArts was “desperate” for what was then a next-gen follow-up to Battlefront on Xbox 360 and PS3, not the least because Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel sold extremely well on PS2 and Xbox.
The claims led to a war of words in the press, with Ellis posting a lengthy statement claiming that Battlefront 3 being “75 percent of a mediocre game” was “false” while pointing to leaked footage that he said backed him up. He went on to say that “LucasArts was a company with problems in 2008.” Shortly after Ellis’ comments, LucasArts was shuttered by Disney, which had acquired Star Wars the year before.
IGN reached out to Barclay to see if he had additional context to add, but did not receive a response.
Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of.
Plenty of footage and even a playable build would emerge in the years that followed, allowing fans to decide for themselves what they were missing. Much of that footage would ultimately be pulled, with Battlefront III ultimately being lost to history.
EA would later reboot the series, though with notable differences from the original LucasArts games, such as how it handled space battles. The original Battlefront games remain beloved fan-favorites for the way that they combined the prequel and original trilogy eras, pitting players against each in large-scale space battles where they could board and attack enemy capital ships. It included an extensive single-player game, which EA’s games would not get until the sequel.
You can still play the original Star Wars Battlefront 2, though it requires some setup to work properly. It was voted the fifth best Star Wars game ever by IGN readers, with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic coming in at number one.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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