Battlefront 3 had started in mid-2006, and development continued until early 2008. Then things changed. “Steve and I began thinking that the dates were looking a bit tight for the first one,” says Doak, “so we thought we’d do what we had never done before and let LucasArts know our concerns. Because LucasArts had been so good to work with, we thought they’d see the sense of what we were saying. And that coincided with Jim Ward not being there one day.”

This is fairly accurate with all of the reported rumors and facts.

“The appointment of Darrell Rodriguez as president of LucasArts was announced on April 2nd 2008. He wasn’t the only new face. LucasArts was making sweeping changes as part of a new strategy, the first step of which was cutting their outgoings in half. Huge numbers of staff were fired, an entire layer of management was removed, and countless projects were canned. “For a long time we talked of LucasArts as the best relationship we’d ever had with a publisher,” says Ellis. “Then in 2008 that disappeared, they were all either fired or left. Then there was a new guy called Darrell Rodriguez, who had been brought in to do a job and it was more to do with cost control than making any games. And the games that we were making for them were costly.”

That’s crazy..

“LucasArts hadn’t paid us for six months,” says Norgate “and were refusing to pass a milestone so we would limp along until the money finally ran out. They knew what they were doing, and six months of free work to pass on to Rebellion wasn’t to be sniffed at.” Part of the eventual agreement between LucasArts and Free Radical saw certain assets passed on to Rebellion Studios. For a time LucasArts was tempted by the thought of a hastily put together Battlefront 3, but nothing came of it. When presented with the allegations put forth by this investigation, LucasArts said simply that it does not comment on rumour and speculation.”

So by the sounds of it, like everything else in this world, it boils down to that dirty five letter word: M-O-N-E-Y.

Definitely a good read! Lets hear some thoughts and opinions!

Check out the full article here.

It turns out that Lost Planet 3 is Spark’s unannounced project. To be honest, I never even heard of Lost Planet 3, until now.

Spark went ahead and tweeted this earlier:

“feel sorry for bf3 fans. Maybe LA’s silence is a good thing.”

Very, very, very disappointing day today.

On the other hand, LucasArts has been slated to announce two new games at this years E3.

E3 is scheduled for June 5-7, 2012 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Well Battlefrontians, what are your thoughts?

This game to me, looks like it could have done quite well as the first mission looks awesome!

The video’s speak for themselves so check them out below!

ptoponline.com/

Borman has outdone himself again with a plethora of screenshots from Free Radical’s Battlefront 3 and they look pretty good in my opinion.

Check out the screenshots below!

Source: ptoponline.com

Also according to Borman Free Radical’s description of Battlefront was “Star Wars Battlefront 3, Description : The Future of Gaming, Release Date – 2008-11-06″.

He claims this is the Xbox 360 version of Free Radicals Battlefront 3 and that the PC version was the leading platform.

I was lucky enough to get some footage and impressions of the game. This footage is the best I could get for the time being. Remember, this game was in an alpha state when it was cancelled. The old leaked footage was from a Free Radical Design event in November of 2008. I believe that this footage is from around March – April 2008, so depending on when the old leaked footage was recorded, it could be up to 8 months older. This footage is also of the Xbox 360 build. It seems like a quick and dirty port, not optimized at all. This continues in all aspects of the game, as it continues to say “Exit to Desktop.” Framerates are bad, AI is virtually non-existent, nothing has been bug tested, it isn’t feature complete, the list goes on.

Check out the video below!

A huge thanks to Borman for the amazing footage. Great work!

Source: ptoponline.com

The big one that no can verify if it is a prank or now is, a user of BetaGames.org has released some images that he claims he found from a hidden folder on the disc of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.. How or why Star Wars/Battlefront ended up on a copy of Resident Evil is very skeptical, and given that they were released on April Fools day is almost too much of a coincidence for me.

If anything this could have been the previously scrapped Battlefront Online that Slant Six Games was working on.

Have a look for yourselves:

So what do you think? Real or hoax?

From RogueStarkiller:

This week Spark is in San Francisco for the GDC(Game Developer’s Conference). Last night Spark went out to dinner with their publisher and tweeted this:

For those that may not know, Twitter geotags you to a general area where your tweet came from as seen in the photo above. Their tweet came from an area of San Francisco called Cow Hollow. Now, this doesn’t pinpoint a restaurant or a specific place, but it does put them in a small geographic area.

What’s interesting is what is located within 3 minutes driving distance from the heart of Cow Hollow:

That’s right, LucasFilm. LucasArts is also on this campus.

LucasArts hosted their GDC party at the Infusion Lounge that night.

Hats off to RogueStarKiller for some great work. While this doesn’t necessarly prove that Spark was having some great chow with the folks from LucasArts, it does provide some great room for speculation!

Lets hear some thoughts!

Another huge thanks to RogueStarkiller!!

xxxx Star Wars Battlefront 3 – PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii
xxxx Star Wars Battlefront 4 – PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii

He does say that these are games that he previously worked on, but I just thought it was unusual.

Here is a link to his profile.

Scott (our other administrator) took some time to give his thoughts and input:

When Nitro informed me of the Crytek employee (Graeme), I started checking Crytek’s career opportunities out in the UK offices. I’ve always wanted to work in the UK, and so has Graeme apparently because that’s where he is currently employed.

I found many small tidbits of motivating info. One of the first and possibly the most important points I found was in the SFX artists job requirements:

Ability to technically deconstruct visual effects from other game and film references

The part that stands out to me is the mentions of both game and film. While it doesn’t necessarily make it obvious that they mean movies, it’s implied strongly with the word film. This further implies that the property they are working with has been in game and movie form previously. Wait, Star Wars is a property like that.

I next found this line in the AI Programmer description:

“Tweaking weapons, vehicles and other gameplay elements to shape and define the core experience[stop quoting there”

Tweaking weapons AND vehicles? I think the link here doesn’t require any explanation. It’s Timesplitters. Ha! TS is an honest possibility though, and keep it in mind. Crytek has been rumoured to be developing TS before, so it’s possible.

Here are some fast points that aren’t as critical:

An art requirement mentioned there is a focus on realism. Could be use as an anti-Timesplitters point.

A “Plus” for a programmer was to have networking experience. Could refer to multiplayer, or maybe just a patching system.

The designer career description said that they would be developing “the next wave of triple A first person shooters.” Good or bad? It’s subjective.

Thanks Scott! Scott will be having his own column here at Battlefront3.net soon, so stay tuned!

Lets hear some opinions!

Please be sure to keep this civilized and don’t simply spam Lucas Arts out of respect and consideration!

A message from Tuggie:

The time has come. Saturday, February 11th, we will unleash the fury of Battlefront fans with our darkside powers of…tweets.

Alright, alright it’s not no the craziest thing we could do, but seriously, Lucas Arts has done just about everything it can to limit fans contacting them via email, phone, and other social media. We’ve bothered Spark enough for now, it’s time to take our worries straight to the Publisher. Thanks to RogueStarKiller, he has devised a list of the importance and the method we will be following.

The instructions Tuggie has set up are pretty straight forward:

1. Sign the Battlefront 3 Petition If you haven’t alread signed this, click here and sign the online petition.

@Lucasartsgames We want #StarWars #Battlefront3 Make the game and we will buy it! http://www.petitiononline.com/SWBF3/petition.html

Crazyness! For more information on this “Twitter Bomb” check out Tuggies forums at Gloom Walker Forums.

After a few tweets with Spark, it’s apparent the game is passed the Alpha state in terms of the development cycle. Spark commented that the game is undergoing constant testing by a team, meaning that there is a build that is playable. This is good news in terms of the sooner we get to see the game, but this is usually where the most pain goes into development, in terms of regression testing goes. Simply put, their game is probably at the point or past the point that Free Radical’s was when the footage for Battlefront 3 was filmed. This is all just a guess, only based on some loose information provided by Spark.

Also a forum member from GloomWalker.com’s Forums has been tracking a Spark employee’s blog and it seems they have posted a few screens of *possibly* one of Sparks new games. Some of the photos could possibly be Battlefront 3, but I have my doubts.. You can check out the photos via the links from this post on the Gloom Walkers forums -> here.

Thoughts and opinions? As Tuggie says, don’t give up hope! Until LucasArts comes right out and says, “No Battlefront 3 for you!” .. I will always have hope! as should you!