10 Video Games Cancelled Before Their Time

3. Star Wars: Battlefront III

Unfortunately for them, this is the second time studio Free Radical Design appears on this list but perhaps it at least speaks to the impressive potential of the games they had in the works.

Published by LucasArts, the shooter was in development since 2006 and was set to let players travel between grand space battles and ground conflicts without any load screens. Plenty of hype was generated over the game’s potential, so much so that in 2007 not only was development of Battlefront III well underway, but a new game called Battlefront IV was greenlit as well. Battlefront III’s deadline was pushed a year later to 2009 with LucasArts agreeing to foot the bill for another seven months of work but ultimately a huge staffing restructure, mass redundancies, and change of leadership at the publisher left LucasArts with little choice but to do their best to pick up the pieces.

Despite their best efforts trying to adapt to a new generation of consoles, design overhauls, and the demand for more staff proved to be too overwhelming.

The game was officially cancelled in 2008. In short, the relationship between Free Radical and LucasArts became incredibly strained with finger-pointing from both sides. Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis would go on to say that the game was 99% finished to which a LucasArts employee retorted, quote “there was 75% of a mediocre game”.

While EA got their hands on Battlefront a decade later and didn’t do a half bad job of it by any means, to this day modders are still doing their best to recreate the dream that was Battlefront III.