Star Wars: Battlefront 3 no longer with Rebellion
Edit: We should probably have made it clear in the original post, but this story is straight from an employee at Rebellion. We’re aware that rumours have been circulating for months, but we posted this after hearing those rumours confirmed. Chill.
The troubled development of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 has taken another interesting twist. After jumping from the sinking ship Free Radical to Rebellion, who are currently hard at work on Aliens vs. Predator 3, it has now been handed back into the hands of the developer of the first two installments – Pandemic.
After the recent leaked footage – which we’d thought to be in-game, but since turned out to be pre-rendered – appeared online in the post-Free Radical fallout, Battlefront 3 looked full of promise, and with Rebellion’s experience with the underrated PSP version, the future of the series was looking good. Pandemic, however, are on a bit of a downward ebb in recent times, with Mercenaries 2 being a huge disappointment, and Lord of the Rings: Conquest – billed as essentially “Battlefront in Middle Earth” – being a bit of a turd.
Perhaps getting their hands back on their baby will be enough to inspire them to bring their A-game this time?
28 comments ↓
Spaggiari
March 4th, 2009
Can anyone verify this for me?
Suddenly, after a month of radio silence we apparently know that the footage was pre-rendered, that Crytek didn’t retain the rights to Battlefront after it acquired Free radical, and t\hat it wass handed over to pandemic.
I call bull.
anon
March 4th, 2009
Your facts are wrong. The leaked footage was NOT pre-rendered and was in-fact in-game.
Sean
March 4th, 2009
This comes straight from an employee at Rebellion. We’re not really in the business of making stuff up for the hell of it. Crytek never acquired Free Radical or Battlefront 3, so I’m not sure where you’ve pulled that from. As for the trailer, allegedly the game itself only ran at about 7fps when Rebellion got their hands on it.
Calm down, chaps.
Seth
March 4th, 2009
Free Radical lost the rights to Battlefront even before they went into administration, so that’s not debatable.
But, Crytek definately bought up Free Radical recently (probably for a bargain price).
Sean
March 4th, 2009
Reeeally? I thought FR had been completely liquidated.
Apologies Spaggiari, you’re half-right.
Monkey Rimmer
March 4th, 2009
Either way, I hope Pandemic do a better job of this game than they did with LOTR: Crapquest….. they completely buggered that one up! Star Wars Battlefront has always been a firm favourite of mine… Please make No. 3 a good one!!!
Jarrod Wedge
March 4th, 2009
This is BS, this was posted on other sites back in January. It’s all speculation and hearsay. Rebellion is deving AVP3, and the franchise is up in the air but Pandemic has released 3 poorly rated games in a row and that was the main reason that LA pulled the plug on Free Radical, for the poor Haze response. Seems really unlikely that they would return to Pandemic after they pulled away from then 3 years ago.
Sean
March 4th, 2009
Read the comments. This was from a Rebellion employee.
tofu
March 5th, 2009
7 fps , thats awesome LOLZ. I think this is all made up but its great to generate more spammy fake news for everyone to /cry over. mmm hmmmm [GT]PWNZ
Teancum
March 5th, 2009
Yeah, I’m calling BS as well as the writer couldn’t even take the time to get all the facts correct, then commented with false facts later.
Oh, and tofu — do I Know you from somewhere?
tofu
March 6th, 2009
salmon jerky warehouse welcomes you Tean. Yea this topic is pre-rendered with piles of cow dung. I wish news could be real and this site wouldnt be bantha fodder. lets all make stuff up that bill gates and robin williams are making a new star wars movie called ‘bill williams goes to jedi school.’ to learn the fine art of bs. Also for anyone who wondered these arent the droids your looking for.
noname
March 7th, 2009
crytek definitley bought free radical. that footage was definetly legit. but i dont think that rebellion ever had the rights to the game. i thought lucasarts still had it. but pandemic does have a current project on their website called “project x”. I think they just did that to let people know that they might get it, even though we all know that. I wish it goes back to crytek though, the footage looked soo awesome.
squipple
March 8th, 2009
noname, that ‘project x’ area of their site has been on there for over a year.
Spaggiari
March 12th, 2009
Hey sean man, s’all good about calling me a liar. You may think I’m being sarcastic and admittedly it’s very hard to tell through written text but I do accept the apology. I don’t blame you for being critical of my comment as it was a little more harsh than I intended.
on that note, I would like to provide a littlle credibility to my original position.
http://www.pandemicstudios.com/community/viewtopic.php?pid=603741#p603741
an admin on that board by the name of sledgehammer70 (community manager for pandemic) stated, in that post, that pandemic is not currently handling Bf3.
Spaggiari
March 12th, 2009
Also, why would a rebellion employee know that it was transferred to pandemic anyway. The property is owned by Lucasarts anyway, and rebellion was never in possession of the rights to anything other than the ps2 version.
Also I’m kinda bummed that no one believed me… who is this Seth guy?
Why is he so much more credible than myself?
And why a monkey for an avatar?
This world is so confusing to me.
Spaggiari
March 12th, 2009
Oh my god I wish I could edit that last comment.
It’s embarrassingly poorly written.
François léger
March 17th, 2009
Keep the game as the same as the 2 but more maps i really liked the game online it was very simple and ok, i really really like it !!
François léger
March 17th, 2009
best game this year or the next year !
starwars archiver
March 24th, 2009
guyz i no wut this looks like but hear me out. bf3 wud be huge for lucas arts i rely dont think theyll hang up on the series any way wut do think happened to the engine? someone has to have it. honestly the game may take awhile becuz lucasarts is workin on kotor3 with bioware but i dont think that theyll give up on the franchise its been one of there best sellers someones gotta contact lucas arts and tell them thatthe fans want it reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaallllllllyyy bad im open to comments but i think that theyll find someone to hand this too thers more places han krytec, rebellion, and pandemic you no so dowt the game it will come out eventually
Zach C
April 14th, 2009
Pandemic recently announced a top secret Project Y. Here’s what they say…
“We’re confident that Project Y is a game that will break new ground in its category and in the video game industry. Unfortunately, for the time being, we can’t even tell anyone what category. Stay tuned – this one will be announced soon.”
100 Player online battles sound pretty freaking groundbreaking to me. I asked if Pandemic will be at E3 this year and they say yes. Now they don’t have a designated booth or meeting room so I guess they’ll be under another banner possibly Lucasarts, but some are saying EA. Anyway, this is all just speculation but I truely believe Pandemic has the game.
swfan
April 26th, 2009
i just wish the lucas arts would make the best choice and the game will turn out like on the leaked gameplay or even better
commanderbly123
May 10th, 2009
listen free radical only had to fix the number of human played troopers in the online feature of the game which means they were 98% done so if free radical didnt go bankrupt they wouldve been done with the game last year in the summer lucasarts if your reading this give battlefront 3 back to the remaining free radical employees please i beg you
commanderbly123
May 10th, 2009
actually anon the leeaked gameplay was alpha footage what they already did with the game some was in game some was pre rendered so really the alpha parts where the gameplay parts the cutscenes where the pre rendered part or the other way around
commanderbly123
May 10th, 2009
starwars archiver is right they cant give it up now its already been worked on so i suggest they give it to the remaining free radical employees so that they could fix the multiplayer human played troopers count whos with me
swfan
May 20th, 2009
im with you
Steve
May 20th, 2009
I don’t think it will be made by Free Radical or feature ex free radical developers or anything like that.
I do think whoever makes this (hopefully the people behind the first 2) It’ll be hella awesome.
(I didn’t read all the comments, sorry if Im just covering old ground)
RolO
June 17th, 2009
ummm well i kno the game will probrably be released eventually. but if it doesnt, then it would suck so much because the swb series is one of the best games ever…and best of its time
beef
November 19th, 2009
so, what happened to BF3 since Pandemic closed shop? I ask because you say something which is true (that it was running at 7fps) but are you sure Pandemic ever had BF3 and can you get an employee to comment on that?