That awesome footage of Star Wars Battle Front III we showed you yesterday is real. However, an ex-employee of Free Radical, who goes by the name of Thomas Dudenaughty, has confirmed that Battlefront III is no longer being developed at the company.
“It’s dead. The stuff in the video of going from the ground to air to space to orbit is the tech that is dying with us,” said Dudenaughty. “They’ve decided, for whatever reason, I guess because it’s less effort, to completely remove that with a cutscene transition.”
When asked about the rumored decision to move the project to the Oxford-based Rebellion, Dudenaughty was not able to comment. “It’s not something I’d be willing or able to comment on,” he said.
Quizzed why the game was taken from Free Radical, he responded: “It’s not something I have a lot of insight to in terms of why it happened, but it certainly wasn’t us that ****ed up. I don’t even necessarily think it’s LucasArts’ fault, it’s just the state of the economy and it was an expensive project. I guess people think it’s shocking they ‘can’ it that late in development. However, you think about the marketing spending equivalent to, or in the same region of, half the budget of the game it can make sense not to do it. But I wasn’t really in the meetings when they decided against it.”
He was also able to confirm the game was almost at its completion, as well. However, LucasArts never gave Free Radical a deadline for when the game should release.
“LucasArts never told us when they wanted to release, literally never,” he said. “We didn’t do any press, they kept it totally under wraps. I think that was partly because they had The Force Unleashed, they didn’t want it to be contrasting with that.”
So, what about Timesplitters 4, then?
“Timesplitters 4 couldn’t find a publisher. Nobody wanted to buy it. They didn’t think that Americans would buy it.”
Apparently, the game was far ahead of Battlefront III in terms of tech.
“The technology we were developing specifically for Timesplitters 4 was streets ahead of what you see in Battlefront III. Streets ahead. The art and the environments really are stunning. Head and shoulders above what you’re seeing in Battlefront.”
Jumping back to Battlefront III, the team at Free Radical were very surprised by the positive reaction given by the net in regards to the leaked footage.
“It’s great, it’s very heartening. That’s pleased people. We’re pleased in terms of people that are interested in buying the company, we’ve got some pretty interesting stuff. But the fact that a good number of friends have been lost to the wind is a real shame. They were talented guys that we simply couldn’t keep on because there wasn’t the money to survive long enough.”
While we may still get Battlefront III, it won’t arrive in the form we’ve last seen it.