Battlefront III Cancelled By “Psychopaths” At LucasArts, Former Free Radical Exec Says

Star Wars: Battlefront III‘s cancellation came as a major disappointment for fans of the franchise, but it was even more of a disappointment for the developers, Free Radical.

Over the past several months, new details–including screenshots and video of early builds–have surfaced, and what was shown suggested that Battlefront III was pretty far along in development before its cancellation in 2008.

In fact, the environment at Free Radical was largely positive between 2006 and 2008–there wasn’t a whole lot of indication that LucaasArts planned to drop the axe on the project, according to former Free Radical execs, speaking in an interview with Eurogamer.

David Doak, one of the former Free Radical execs interviewed by Eurogamer, described Battlefront III as ambitious–the idea was that players would be able to transition straight from a small-scale gunfight on the ground into a space battle.

“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.”

From 2006 on into early 2008, things were looking good for Battlefront III. Free Radical was progressing along development nicely, but there were concerns about deadlines.

“Steve and I began thinking that the dates were looking a bit tight for the first one,” Doak recalls, “so we thought we’d do what we had never done before and let LucasArts know our concerns. Because LucasArts had been so good to work with, we thought they’d see the sense of what we were saying. And that coincided with Jim Ward not being there one day.”

Higher-ups at LucasArts had begun to lose faith in Ward’s leadership, and with Ward’s departure the atmosphere at Free Radical and their relationship with LucasArts began to take a turn for the worst.

“That was worrying,” Doak continues, “but it didn’t seem like it would be a bad thing. We still thought we’d done the right thing. And then 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.”

Unfortunately, things never got better.

“My role at Free Radical meant that I was simultaneously involved in these unpleasant high level discussions with psychopaths who wanted to destroy us, and then the next day sitting with our dev staff at their desks trying to boost people’s morale,” he recalled. “Helping them to pass milestones that I knew would subsequently be manipulated to cause them to fail.

“It was the most depressing and pointless thing that I have ever been involved in. The dream job which I once loved had become a nightmarish torture.”

Eurogamer’s interview is on the lengthy side, but if you’d like to learn more about Free Radical and the cancellation of Star Wars: Battlefront III, head through to the source link below.

Source: Eurogamer