This is what a new quality in multiplayer shooters from the Star Wars universe was supposed to look like. Battlefront III would have let players fight on planets and in space at the same time

The first two installments of the Star Wars: Battlefront series, released in 2004-2005, achieved huge artistic and commercial success. However, over time, the franchise lost its former glory, and fans had to wait until 2015 for its next major representative, the reboot Star Wars: Battlefront.

Related:Fan-made Star Wars: Battlefront III remake to hit Steam

In the meantime, work was underway on a full-fledged third installment of the series, which was set to bring something fresh and exciting. Interestingly, even though it never saw the light of day, it inspired a whole new project. A convoluted story? Let's trace it from the very beginning.

Ambitious project

Work on Star Wars: Battlefront III started in 2006. Back then, LucasArts, the company in charge of the franchise, teamed up with Free Radical Design, the team that made a big name for themselves in the shooter genre with the Time Splitters series. The devs eagerly got to work, and their initial plan was for the game to be released in October 2008. Moreover, LucasArts was reportedly so pleased with the project's progress that in December 2007, they reached a preliminary agreement for the next installment in the series, Star Wars: Battlefront IV.

Of course, Star Wars: Battlefront III was meant to be a shooter set in the Star Wars universe. Like its predecessors, this game was mainly designed for online multiplayer action (though it would also have a story campaign).

The battles were supposed to happen all at once on the ground, in the air, and in space, and they were going to be epic. Moreover, a distinctive feature of the game was supposed to be the ability to switch between them smoothly in real-time. We could take the fight that started on the planet up into orbit—just need to find a ship and use it to zoom up miles into the sky.

From the available materials, it appears that during gameplay, we could take control of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and AT-ATs, among others. Besides units equipped with blasters, we would also embody Jedi and Sith (as well as characters known from the movies).

A vision that surpassed its creators

This was the vision behind Star Wars: Battlefront III. Turns out, things behind the scenes weren't all sunshine and rainbows... or at least that's what an anonymous LucasArts employee claimed years later in an interview with Gamespot. Steve Ellis, David Doak, and Graeme Norgate, who had the opportunity to speak with GamesIndustry.biz and Eurogamer, presented a different point of view. Below, I will provide the information shared by all of them to give us a comprehensive insight into the project's behind-the-scenes activities.

Star Wars: Battlefront III was in development until around early 2008, when the creators informed the publisher that they would not be able to meet the October deadline. The entire project was internally delayed, and the release was moved to April 2009. Unfortunately, the devs had a tough time with issues like moving to seventh-gen consoles, needing to hire more staff, and having to make changes to the game design.

Things weren't going great at Free Radical Design, and you could tell by looking at the state of their other project, a shooter game called Haze. It was released in 2008, receiving average scores from industry media that were below 60/100. Over time, the relationship between the studio and LucasArts started to go downhill, and the publisher was dragging its feet on payments for project milestones (though an anonymous employee later denied this).

According to the developers, Star Wars: Battlefront III was 99% complete when it was canceled in October 2008. Moreover, the creators were already making plans for Star Wars: Battlefront IV! However, a LucasArts rep says the project was only about 75% done, and what the creators managed to put together was just "average quality."

After years, an anonymous employee of the publisher blamed the situation on Haze, which supposedly "sucked resources" intended for this project (a claim Steve Ellis categorically disagreed with), Free Radical Design's overestimation of their capabilities, and the fact that the studio was reportedly missing deadlines (which Ellis somewhat agreed with, admitting that his team made mistakes in planning the entire endeavor).

Leak, reactivation and flop

Star Wars: Battlefront III is an interesting case of a project that never received an official announcement, yet materials showcasing it in action still came to light. What's interesting, these materials confirmed that many elements characteristic of this project, including the ability to fly between the surface and space, were indeed created and brought to a playable form. Things got even more interesting later on when people started sharing reports, videos, and screenshots of how they somehow got their hands on working copies of the game.

This led to an initiative where Star Wars: Battlefront III was to receive a fan-made remake and be released on Steam. However, when the rights holders of the Star Wars franchise became interested in the matter, it was decided that the project would be reactivated in a new form. This led to the birth of Galaxy in Turmoil, a multiplayer third-person shooter. Due to copyright issues, the developers had to "swap" the universe for a science fiction world they designed themselves, removing all references to Star Wars.

Sadly, what hit Early Access on Steam on May 23, 2020, didn't really match up with what the creators originally had in mind. We received a generic and not particularly polished shooter, which was difficult to praise for anything. Even though Frontwire Studios' game was free-to-play with microtransactions, it still didn't make the cut. As a result, the game received "mostly negative" reviews on Steam, and its release went largely unnoticed. in the end, a decision was made to halt its development and shut down the servers.

Despite that, Galaxy in Turmoil is still available on Valve's platform (at least at the time of writing), where it can be downloaded for free.

Galaxy in Turmoil. Source: Frontwire Studios / Steam.

Further fate of Free Radical Design

After the project got canceled, Free Radical Design was in a really tough spot. The team ran out of money and, after declaring bankruptcy in 2009, they got taken over by the German company Crytek and became Crytek UK.

Star Wars: Battlefront III

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• Overview

• Star Wars
• Free Radical
• cancelled games
• Star Wars: Battlefront (series)
• Necro Gaming