How Battlefront 3 - and Free Radical - died.

[The Crotch]

Nice bit on Eurogamer about the troubled relationship between Free Radical (best known for the Timesplitters series) and its many publishers: Free Radical vs. the Monsters

A few choice quotes from the article...

After TimeSplitters 2 EA had come sniffing around, and Free Radical was ready to listen. "EA Partners was this part of EA that was involved with third-party things," says Doak. "It was a bit like being groomed, you know. Here's all these friendly avuncular people that will give you all the love and attention you need to get your game out, and then after a while they go away and all the bad guys come around and it's like you're in borstal. Getting held down, beaten around the head with a cue ball in a sock."

"What I was hoping was we could make an anti-militaristic shooter, a kind of Apocalypse Now," says Doak. "But in terms of ambition it was crippled from the start, because we wanted to do this thing about the horrors of war, and Ubisoft were saying, 'Yeah go for it, something really horrific - but it's got to get a 15 rating.'"

LucasArts presented Free Radical with a choice. "The amount of time [court] would take was more than the money we had left," says Ellis. "So in practice the publisher wants out, and what they do is offer a fraction of that amount. And you either accept a smaller payment and hope to pull through one way or another, or you don't accept the payment and go out of business quite quickly." Free Radical had no choice at all.

 

[CaptainJoel]

I actually just finished reading it and it was pretty ing sad.

 

[The Crotch]

The best bit was about how EA tried to get them to create a "badass hero" for Timesplitters and gave them pictures of Wesley Snipes and Vin Diesel to help them along.

 

[Necrozilla]

[quote name='CaptainJoel']I actually just finished reading it and it was pretty ing sad.[/QUOTE]
Playing Haze is worse.

 

[Vinny]

Wow, I didn't know about the deal between Sony/Ubi for Haze exclusivity. I figured it was FR's choice to go back to single console release, like the original TS was.

This part kills me though:

One project they didn't want was TimeSplitters 4, which had been in development during the final years of Haze. "We tried to do TimeSplitters 4 with everyone," says Martin Wakeley, "and they weren't interested. People say they love it, but no-one wants to sell that game." The game had been built using an upgraded version of the original engine. "Running at a constant 60 fps," says Norgate "and with more lighting effects than we could even dream of in Haze. Too little too late, unfortunately."

Would have loved to see that come to fruition. Sucks how they failed because of all the shit publishers pull.