14 DAY TRIAL // Fans of the Star Wars branded video games have long mourned the cancellation of Battlefront III and one leading developer behind the projects laid the blame straight at the door of license holder LucasArts.
David Doak, who was a co-founder at Free Radical, told Eurogamer that, “It was so ambitious because you had to populate an environment so we had some tough nuts to crack. 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.”
He added, “Steve and I began thinking that the dates were looking a bit tight for the first one, 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.”
Doak says that after Jim Ward left LucasArs, the atmosphere at the company changed completely and lawyers took over, leading to six months without pay for the development team at Free Radical and then to the cancellation of the entire Battlefront III project.
Star Wars has long been one of the most interesting franchises for developers and it has spawned some solid titles, including the first two Battlefront games.
At the moment, the license is being used by The Old Republic, the MMO created by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts, uses a traditional online structure and charges gamers a monthly subscription to explore the various planets and solve quests.
Rumors regularly surface that the Star Wars: Battlefront series is close to being revived by LucasArts and a shooter-oriented developer, but the company has not made any official announcements.