Summary
- Original Star Wars Battlefront 3 by Pandemic Studios was never released due to time constraints given by LucasArts.
- Fans hope for Star Wars Battlefront 3 to become a reality, pushing EA for a new installment in the popular series.
A developer who worked on the original Star Wars: Battlefront 2 has confirmed why a long-awaited third game in the series has never come to fruition. Although Pandemic Studios developed the original Star Wars: Battlefront 2, it took a revival from EA and DICE a decade later for fans to get any new content in the popular series.
Ever since its debut in 2004, the Star Wars: Battlefront series has been a huge hit for the franchise. However, across both its original run and later revival, Star Wars: Battlefront has never made it to a third iteration, disappointing fans. The games remain extremely popular despite their age, with DICE's Star Wars Battlefront 2 player count way up of late, thanks partly to the enormous popularity of the Andor TV series. Fans are enjoying spending time with the games all over again, as there's no better way to experience all the most iconic Star Wars battles first-hand.
Star Wars Battlefront 3 Gets Show of Support from Andor Actor
An actor from the popular Star Wars show Andor joins the growing number of people calling for a third Star Wars Battlefront game from EA.
Speaking to VideoGamer, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 designer Dan Nanni explained why Pandemic's version of the third title in the series was never released. It's well known that Free Radical got close to the finish line with its own version of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 a few years later, but most will not know that original developer Pandemic had its own version in the works first. According to Nanni, "We started working on it and then negotiations just didn't take off." A one-year development cycle was requested, the same as the gap between the original Star Wars: Battlefront and its 2005 sequel.
"Negotiations Just Didn't Take Off" For Pandemic's Star Wars: Battlefront
This coincided with the release of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which made the one-year gap almost impossible. "When you’re moving to a new console it’s not as easy as saying, ‘let me just make a game for it like we did for the old console’. New consoles have new hardware and new hardware comes with new limitations and you don’t know exactly what you’re working with until you’ve got it... And so, I think, negotiations stalled out because I think we wanted more time to work on it." Nanni described Pandemic's potential Star Wars: Battlefront 3 as "cool," claiming the space-to-ground concept featured in Free Radical's canceled version was also present there, too. If "given the time, we'd have made something really special."
...we'd have made something really special.
While it's a shame fans never got to experience that version of Star Wars: Battlefront 3, momentum is gathering for DICE's series to finally become a trilogy, eight years after the last game was released. By rallying players to hop into action, Star Wars Battlefront fans are trying to send a big message to EA that the demand is still there for a new game. Whether it comes together is another thing entirely, but there's no doubt that a new Star Wars Battlefront game would immediately find an audience.
- Genre(s)
- First-Person Shooter
