Well…yes and no…you see, apparently, well before DICE got the fate of one of the world’s most anticipated titles in gaming to fall into their laps, another crew had a run at Battlefront, and they actually put together a nearly-finished product, which – due to a set of unfortunate circumstances – never really got the see the light of day, or rather that of the screens of computer/console users world-wide. The company behind the effort was Free Radical, and according to some, they were about 99% finished with the project when they were forced into administration and when they finally closed for good in December 2008. Later, Crytek picked up the enterprise and transferred the team to various other projects, as Battlefront was cancelled, up until DICE came into the picture earlier this year to step up to the plate.
Now then, why exactly is this bit of the game’s well-known troubled history interesting at this point in time? Well, with the game 99% done, there was obviously some in-game footage shot at the time, and some of that footage surfaced a few days ago on YouTube. A user named “BananaSwag” was the one who uploaded the videos, giving us all the opportunity to take a peek into what the game could’ve been.
At first glance the game is nowhere near the graphical sophistication of the footage presented by DICE at E3 this year, but by 2008 standards, it is awesome. There’s a great variety of planets and heroes to choose from and the maps are alive with action. There are obviously massive frame-rate drops and lots of missing textures, but overall, the game does look like it could’ve been a genuine crowd-pleaser with a little bit of tweaking and TLC here and there. Having been denied the opportunity to play this Battlefront, the Star Wars community is all the more entitled these days to raise the bar sky-high on its expectations regarding the upcoming DICE title.
Philip Thalberg has been a Gosugamer since 2007. Join the gosugamers community to learn what the pros are playing and to get instant access to the hottest eSports news and rankings.