The Star Wars Battlefront series (especially Battlefront 2) was awesome. I remember just loving those games, and eagerly awaiting a third one. I mean, hey, the Battlefront formula on (then) next gen consoles? Sign me up for that!
So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited...
Yeah, we're still waiting for even an official announcement. Why has taken so long to produce another sequel for such a well loved franchise? Well, after a recent interview with David Doak and Steve Ellis from Free Radical, we have an answer: sabotage.
It gets even more tragic when you hear about the scope they had in mind for the third Battlefront game.
And now, we will never get to see that game. Hey, look on the bright side! Losing Battlefront 3 for The Force Unleashed and Star Wars Kinect is the perfect trade of- oh wait, it isn't. At all. Hm.
I tried to reach LucasArts for a comment on their complete disregard of the fans' wishes. This was their only response.
So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited...
Yeah, we're still waiting for even an official announcement. Why has taken so long to produce another sequel for such a well loved franchise? Well, after a recent interview with David Doak and Steve Ellis from Free Radical, we have an answer: sabotage.
"We went from talking to people who were passionate about making games to talking to psychopaths who insisted on having an unpleasant lawyer in the room," said Doak.
"For a long time we talked of LucasArts as the best relationship we'd ever had with a publisher," said Ellis. "Then in 2008 that disappeared, they were all either fired or left. Then there was a new guy called Darrell Rodriguez, who had been brought in to do a job and it was more to do with cost control than making any games. And the games that we were making for them were costly."
...From Free Radical's point of view, the studio was delivering milestones for Battlefront 3 on time, but LucasArts quibbled over the game assets being actually ready. "If a publisher wants to find something that is wrong with a milestone, it's very easy for them to do so as there are so many grey areas within a deliverable. If the contract says, 'Graphics for level X to be release quality,' who can say what's release quality?" asked a Free Radical employee.
In this way, LucasArts refused to pay Free Radical for more than six months, until the developer ran out of money. That ended up being a very successful tactic because Doak couldn't afford a long legal battle. "If we wanted to fight about it, they were quite happy to fight about it, but it would be on their terms, on their turf, and we would lose not because we were wrong, but because... well, we wouldn't be able to ante up.
"In many ways it was a depressing farce talking to them," said Doak. "They had an agenda motivated by purely financial considerations. Their goal was to stop doing it. And it didn't matter that we had a contract that protected us."
Finally, after many deals including the GoldenEye remake fell through, Free Radical went into administration, laid off 140 people and was eventually purchased by Crytek.
Sources: The Escapist and EuorgamerThe key idea of Battlefront 3 was that players could seamlessly transition from a small-scale gunfight into a space battle simply by climbing into a ship and taking off. "It was so ambitious because you had to populate an environment like that on a scale like that, so we had some tough nuts to crack," says Doak. "We were continually trying to improve that, and it was going well, in fact it was going so well that we were going to make two, and they were letting us do some really interesting stuff with the mythology."
And now, we will never get to see that game. Hey, look on the bright side! Losing Battlefront 3 for The Force Unleashed and Star Wars Kinect is the perfect trade of- oh wait, it isn't. At all. Hm.
I tried to reach LucasArts for a comment on their complete disregard of the fans' wishes. This was their only response.