Steve Ellis: Battlefront 3 was 99% complete, ex-Free Radical employee claims it’s “bull****”


A couple of days ago, Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis, stated that Battlefront 3 was 99% complete before Lucas Arts decided to pull the plug on it and cancel it. As Steve Ellis told gamesTM, Free Radical had a 99% finished game that just needed bug fixing for release.
Steve Ellis added:
“It should have been our most successful game, but it was cancelled for financial reasons. I’m happy that people did at least get to see what we were working on and share the team’s enthusiasm for it.”
Now before continuing, let us tell you that this sounds a bit weird, as we didn’t even get a proper set of screenshots for Battlefront 3. Not only that, but the leaked footage shows a game in its alpha stage and not one that is nearly finished. Seriously now, the Net would be flooded with images of Battlefront 3 if it was indeed in that late stage of development.
When we first heard about that comment, we facepalmed ourselves. Could something like that be actually happening behind closed doors? And if so, why didn’t Lucas Arts sell the game to another publisher in order to gain some money from it? The game was almost finished – as Ellis stated – so the logical thing would be to either let another developer polish it, or sell it.
Fast forward a week, and here we are today with an anonymous ex-Free Radical employee, claiming that this statement was just bull****. Speaking to Gamespot, this ex-Free Radical employee said that the 99% claim was a lie, a generous estimate would be 75 percent and that the actual game was mediocre.
The ex-Free Radical employee added:
“We were desperate for a next-gen follow-up to Battlefront (the claim that the project was sabotaged for financial reasons is ludicrous. The franchise was a huge money maker at the time). When Free Radical continually missed dates and deliveries, [LucasArts] made many ‘good will’ whole or partial milestone payments to keep the project going.”
As always, there are two sides to every story, and it comes down to you to decide which one sounds more believable. Was Battlefront 3 99% complete before its cancellation or was that statement a way to get everyone’s attention to Free Radical?
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