In news that might sadden Star Wars and shooter fans, former Free Radical staff and co-founder Steve Ellis claims that Star Wars: Battlefront 3 was 99% finished before it was cancelled.
In an interview with gamesTM magazine (via NowGamer), Steve Ellis talks about the unreleased game and how he's happy that at least people somehow saw the leaked footage and like what they saw.
We were making a game with very high ambition. You could start a battle on the ground, jump into a ship and fly into space, continuing on to dock in a capital ship and continue the battle there. We'd had to build all kinds of new tech and overcome numerous technical challenges and limitations but we had done it.
We had a 99% finished game that just needed bug fixing for release. It should have been our most successful game, but it was cancelled for financial reasons. I'm happy that people did at least get to see what we were working on and share the team's enthusiasm for it.
In the same interview, Martin Wakeley, project manager at Free Radical, talked about their relationship with then-Star Wars license holder Lucasarts and how the change in management affected the game and the studio as well.
They had a change of management and a change of direction. I wasn't party to all the ins and outs but we had both our games signed with them, and it became apparent we needed to look for other projects fast. The management were very open and we were kept informed of all developments. We worked hard to try and get some projects signed but it wasn't to be.
I admit, this made me sad a little inside. Imagine the people behind TimeSplitters working on a Star Wars shooter with Battlefield elements? I don't know about you, but that sounds like a fantastic premise, no?
Now that Free Radical is known as Crytek UK and the Star Wars license is owned by Disney, which studio do you want to develop Battlefront 3? Based from the leaked footage, should Disney contact Crytek once more and let them finish it?
