Star Wars: Battlefront III was apparently 99 percent complete, before it was scrapped.
Developer Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis stated that was on decision of LucasArts that the game was cancelled.
“It felt like we had turned a corner as a company,” Ellis told gamesTM magazine (via NowGamer. “We had had a dark period during the development of Haze, we’d had problems with our tech and we’d had some growing pains as we expanded to the size we needed to be, but it really felt like we were finally coming out of the other side intact.
“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.”
According to Martin Wakeley, a project manager at Free Radical during the time, the studio’s relationship with LucasArts was “becoming more distant” due to the studio’s 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,” said Wakeley. “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. The writing was on the wall for a long time but people stayed loyal rather than jumping ship.”
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