Former LucasArts employee: "This 99 percent complete stuff is just BS"

12/4/12 7:01pm

tl;dr

While Steve Ellis said the game was 99% complete, an anonymous source came out against this claim.

A few days ago Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis said in an interview that Star Wars Battlefront 3 was 99% done and stopped because of financial issues, but a former LucasArts member who wishes to stay anonymous has come out and talked about this.

"This 99 percent complete stuff is just bullsh*t, a generous estimate would be 75 percent of a mediocre game.

"I was at LucasArts during this time, working on Battlefront III, and remember it well. Everybody from producers to marketing was 100 percent invested in making the relationship work. We were desperate for a next-gen followup to Battlefront (the claim that the project was sabotaged for financial reasons is ludicrous. The [Battlefront] franchise was a huge money maker at the time). When Free Radical continually missed dates and deliveries, [former LucasArts presidents Jim Ward and Darrell Rodriguez] made many 'good will' whole or partial milestone payments to keep the project going."

He goes on to say that the three reasons that this game failed was because of Haze, Free Radical underestimating itself, and Free Radical missing assigned dates.

The work schedual for Battlefront 3 went something like this according to the source.

Work began in mid-2006 with a delivery date of October 2008. In August of 2007 Free Radical was having trouble making both Haze and Battlefront 3 so they decided to shoot around Time Splitters 4 in order to make money. In December 2007 the game was a horrible mess and didn't work on the 360 build of it. Apparently it was the kit, but when LucasArts asked for one of Free Radical's working machines to test the game they declined. At this time the only game mode enabled was a team based free-for-all mode with maps that didn't focus on the action.

In January 2008 LucasArts and Free Radical realized they wouldn't be able to make the date and changed the street date to April 2009. Then in May 2008 Haze finally shipped. It got horrible reviews which was a surprise to LucasArts who were ensured that the delays were to make sure that the game would be great and recieve good reviews. By late 2008 Free Radical looked like it couldn't make the April 2009 deadline. This was confirmed in September of 2008 when key staff left Free Radical and they missed key milestones in August, September, and October. The game was finally canceled at this point.

Honestly, I think that LucasArts is being truthful here. It really made no sense to cancel a game at 99%. Whether you agree or not with them, there's one thing we can all agree on. Haze was the cause of everything.

» Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/former-lucasarts-employee-on-why-star-wars-battlefront-iii-failed-6400936
» Tagged In: #Battlefront 3, #Battlefront III, #Free Radical, #lucasarts, #star wars

More wicked cool stories and video from around the web. Got tips for us? Tips@ScrewAttack.com

g1 DISCUSSIONS

mychael

December 5, 2012 - 4:06pm

Still, I hope Disney will let them finish the game...

deadpan

December 5, 2012 - 7:10pm

seriously, it would make gobs of money, but at this point I do think it's much more likely to show up on nextbox and PS4 although I would piss myself laughing if it went Wii U exclusive.

Emeraldsonic101

December 5, 2012 - 7:56pm

I don't care what platform it would/could show up on. If it was a Vectrex exclusive I would shell out for one.

ShinraCorp

December 5, 2012 - 3:57pm

I guess it just means that I'll be keeping Battlefront 2 close to me since I doubt they will make a 3rd one. Although those leaked gameplay footage were in Alpha stage weren't they? So it couldn't be at 99% heck not even 90%. I mean the footage show it needed major polishing and bug fixes.