Star Wars Battlefront III was in development for two years before it was canceled in 2008. As the game was never officially revealed, players have been left wondering what it would have been like. Hopes for an answer to that were fueled by the supposed discovery of an early version of Star Wars Battlefront 3 on a PSP cart this week, but fans are debating whether it’s actually a different game altogether.
A glimpse into the past
The PSP cart was revealed publicly when Reddit user MissFeepit put up a photo of what was thought to be a playtest version of Star Wars Battlefront III (thanks MSN). A relative of her fiancé was a playtester for Lucasarts. When the game was canceled, all assets were supposedly returned to Skywalker Ranch but this cartridge was left behind. The cartridge and the game itself clearly sport the name Star Wars Battlefront III. However, photos of the game in action show it bears a lot of similarities to Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, a spinoff game eventually released on PSP and Nintendo DS.
Elite Squadron was created from the remnants of the canceled Star Wars Battlefront III. The discovered PSP cart includes early versions of the Instant Action, Campaign, and Galactic Conquest modes that later found their way into Elite Squadron. Instant Action appears to solely contain Conquest mode, while it’s unknown how much of the campaign is present. Without video footage, it’s also difficult to determine any similarities between the campaign on the cart and that in the finished product.
This has left fans divided over whether it is truly a copy of Star Wars Battlefront 3 on PSP or merely an extremely early version of Elite Squadron. Regardless of the outcome, the cart is still a piece of gaming history worth preserving. Missfeepit has said, “we’ve reached out/are going to reach out to the people we need to reach out to”.
In other news, Square Enix still hadn’t made a profit on Outriders by the end of 2021, but it isn’t one of the IPs they sold to Embracer Group. Elsewhere, the developers of Final Fantasy were once working on new Bloodborne-style IP that was later canceled.
