Rare Footage of Free Radical’s Battlefront III Hits the Web
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…LucasArts royally fucked up by cancelling one of the most impressively ambitious Star Wars titles to date.
It’s not uncommon for games to get the axe during development. Whether they’re low profile concept pieces that simply can’t gain the right traction or big budget affairs no amount of money can fix, sometimes a publisher needs to stiffen their chin, eat their losses, and squash a title.
But Star Wars: Battlefront III, a true successor to the Battlefront name developed by the studio formerly known as Free Radical (a team pooling years of experience from properties such as the original GoldenEye and the TimeSplitters series), was uniquely cut down by LucasArts – having had a fresh regime change up the ladder – when the game was reportedly an inch near completion.
Now, with LucasArts’ full dissemination brought on by new owners Disney, we’re likely to never play BFIII…But at least you can see it in action. The video above is a few minutes of alpha stage footage of the game, and while the gameplay is very reminiscent of its predecessors, there’s a few truly standout innovations on display including flashes of a more cinematic story and the mindblowing ability to go from ground level to stratosphere to docking in a star destroyer all in real time.
The six minute vid here not quite enough (of course it isn’t)? Weep over a full hour of footage hereabouts.