I know what you’re thinking. ‘That’s got to be a typo in the headline, right? We never even got Star Wars: Battlefront III.’ Of course, you’d be right about that latter point, but no - there are no mistakes here, and it all stems back to the tragic tale of the unreleased third Battlefront game.
The original two Star Wars: Battlefront games released in 2004 and 2005 respectively, and were undeniably fantastic. They remain fan-favourite titles to this day, for good reason. However, there was also supposed to be a third game, and it was actually really close to being finished before it was sadly cancelled.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is set to release next week on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC - take a look at the trailer below.
When I say ‘really close’, I mean it. Lead designer at Naughty Dog, Michael Barclay, who also served as a level designer at Free Radical Design during Star Wars: Battlefront III’s development (for the single-player and multiplayer modes), recently tweeted: “I feel like it’s been long enough now to come out and say Star Wars: Battlefront III was gonna be legit incredible and the fact it got cancelled two yards from the finish line is an absolute crime. Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of.”
Anyway, because of the third game being so close to completion, it’s claimed that concept art for a fourth game was already commissioned. As GGRecon reports, alleged art from the game is currently doing the rounds online, giving us a look at Dark Side variants of Obi Wan, Leia and Mace Windu, as well as a redeemed Vader. If this is real, it hurts to think how we basically lost two potentially brilliant games in one swoop - this one didn’t even get a proper chance.
Perhaps not all hope is lost, though. Thanks to the rebooted Battlefront series, maybe we’ll eventually get a modern game which uses these forgotten concepts? There’s no doubt it’d go down well with fans.
Topics: Star Wars