Free Radical’s Star Wars: Battlefront 3 was almost complete according to a former developer

A former developer on the original version of Star Wars: Battlefront 3, Michael Barclay, has claimed that the game was canceled "2 yards from the finish line" and that it was going to be "legit incredible."

The details:

• On April 16, Barclay, now the lead designer at Naughty Dog, tweeted that Free Radical Design's canceled version of Battlefront 3 was almost complete before it was canceled. The game began development in 2006, building on the foundations laid down by the previous two Battlefront games at the time, and was scheduled to be released in October 2008. When it became clear that Free Radical would not meet the deadline, it was pushed back to 2009, but due to changes in management at publisher LucasArts and Free Radical allegedly missing key development milestones, it was ultimately canned in October 2008.
• In 2016, a playable, albeit buggy and unfinished, Xbox 360 build of the game was discovered, demonstrating that the title followed the gameplay formula expected from a new entry into the series and could have been close to release when it was scrapped, as Barclay claimed. A Reddit user reportedly discovered a playtest copy of Battlefront 3's PSP port in 2022, which was later reworked into Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron with most of its assets identical and all mentions of Battlefront 3 removed.
• DICE, the EA-owned studio behind the rebooted Battlefront franchise, reportedly pitched a third game to EA, but it was rejected due to licensing costs, and the game never progressed beyond prototypes. It's possible that the overwhelmingly negative reception of 2017's Battlefront 2 due to the aggressive microtransaction model, which also helped spawn the now-iconic "pride and accomplishment" meme, influenced EA's unwillingness to greenlight the project, given that Respawn Entertainment is now involved in three different Star Wars projects.

More Star Wars gaming news:

• Despite reports that the game will focus on a single-player narrative adventure, Respawn Entertainment's upcoming Star Wars FPS will be inspired by the Jedi Knight series of shooters from the late 1990s to the early 2000s and may include multiplayer.
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was delayed from March 17, 2023, to April 28, 2023, due to Respawn's decision to focus on "bug fixes to enhance performance, stability, polish, and, most importantly, the player experience." The studio has released a final gameplay trailer for the game ahead of its release, showing a small portion of the sequel to the award-winning Jedi: Fallen Order.