The Vault Project has shared a really detailed document about the development of Free Radical’s Battlefront 3 game. According to the document, Free Radical had plans for more Battlefront games and signed up a deal with Lucas Arts.
In 2007, and due to how ambitious Battlefront 3 actually was, Free Radical Design signed a contract to create Battlefront IV, V and VI. In addition, yearly installments were considered at that point, meaning that each and every year we’d be getting a new Battlefront game (whether in the form of expansion or brand new game).
In 2008-2009, Rebellion – who has been working on the PSP and DS versions of Battlefront 3 – signed up a deal with Lucas Arts. This deal gave Rebellion full control over all Battlefront 3 versions (PC, PS3, X360, PS2 and Wii). Rebellion promised low production costs and a tight deadline, however it was unable to fulfil those promises. As such, both Rebellion and Lucas Arts decided to drop the main versions and focus on the PSP and DS versions. Battlefront 3 was then renamed to Star Wars: Elite Squadron and was released in 2009 for both PSP and DS.
What’s also interesting here is that according to The Vault Project, the console ports were most likely what caused the demise of Battlefront 3. As The Vault Project claims, prior to the console ports, everything was working fine. Memory was no issue and high-end PCs could be used in order to brute force some potentially performance optimization issues. However, everything fall apart the moment Free Radical started working on the console versions.
According to The Vault Project’s speculations – and given the fact that X360 and PS3 were not as powerful as PCs – the assets that were used led to memory issues and major performance issues. The only solution that was present was rebuilding a lot of objects/assets but this would still be a long process.
In the end, it appears that those plans to release the game on multiple consoles – instead of focusing on the PC version as that’s where the game’s development started – was what killed Free Radical’s Battlefront 3 game!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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“In 2017, and due to how ambitious Battlefront 3 actually was, Free Radical Design signed a contract to create Battlefront IV, V and VI. “
I’m sure you meant to write 2007, right?
Also, wow, nice ^^
Obviously, fixed
Important excerpts;
“Battlefront III Theories
Dead from the Start
Battlefront III did not die because of the demise of Free Radical Design, or the greediness of LucasArts – it died because of the console ports.
Prior to the console ports, everything was fine. Memory was no issue, and a high-end graphics setup was aimed for, to brute force the poor polygon optimisation* and the large textures. Occasional outliers, and the occasional stall (modelling ‘all the peanuts in a bowl on a market stall’ – something which actually happened and got fixed) are the only issues.
But then, development for the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 versions began. The Xbox 360 was a ‘more restricted PC’ and the Playstation 3 a very demanding platform that required efficiency (The Wii version was safe, as there was a team dedicated to making the game run optimally on it).
The assets lead to memory issues, and shocking performance issues. The polygon counts and the overdraw (hidden useless polys inside objects for example)* were a big issue that needed fixing – and simply downscaling textures to fit them to memory would lead to quality loss. Completely rebuilding assets would be a little bit quicker than starting from scratch due to the already-made assets acting as a starting point, but it’d still be a long process.”
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So as much as we can fault the change in LucasArts leadership, it seems we can also chalk up another death point for sh*tty console hardware.
We miss you, zatara!
What can I say, I’m a busy guy 😛
Glad to see people liking the document.
“In the end, it appears that those plans to release the game on multiple consoles – instead of focusing on the PC version as that’s where the game’s development started – was what killed Free Radical’s Battlefront 3 game!”
What a shocker. It’s not the only game that suffered from this very reason.