Star Wars has a history of infamously cancelled games, but these are the ones we want to play the most.
Star Wars fans have been blessed with a bounty of great games over the last few decades, ranging from classic RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic to modern action-adventure games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. With such a diverse feast on the table for us all to enjoy, it feels greedy to look back at some of the franchise’s most infamously cancelled games and ask, “What if?” And yet, we’re going to anyway.
In a franchise as rich with lore as this one, it makes sense that so many Star Wars games have gone into development without ever hitting store shelves. Ideas fall apart, studios get dismantled and franchises stop being profitable. There are many reasons to cancel a videogame, but some of these axed Star Wars games deserve a second chance. Here are a few cancelled Star Wars games we desperately want to make a comeback:
Star Wars Battlefront 3
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2005) was an incredibly nostalgic third-person shooter that put multiple planets, ships, troops, characters and game modes into a single package. It felt like the Battlefront franchise had truly hit its stride after a promising first entry, but there was certainly room for improvement, which is where Star Wars Battlefront 3 came in. This was possibly the most infamous game cancellation in Star Wars history, given how much of a fanbase the series had built up in later years.
Battlefront 3 would have finally allowed players to seamlessly transition from ground battles to space battles simply by jumping into a spaceship, allowing for a much more expansive battlefield. The game began development in 2006 at Free Radical Design, known for making the Timesplitter games and later, a shooter called Haze. The game then languished in development hell for years due to technological constraints, insufficient manpower and design changes. LucasArts and Free Radical’s working relationship began to deteriorate after multiple missed deadlines and the critically-derided release of Haze. The sequel was eventually cancelled in 2008.
Leaked screenshots and videos from the sequel have surfaced in the years since, but it’s clear that the shift in studios and subsequent development woes spelled doom for the project from the off. Still, what could have been?
1313
Long before Star Wars Jedi: Survivor took Cal Kestis into the crime-ridden bowels of Coruscant, an entire game called 1313 was being developed around the very same setting. LucasArts revealed 1313 at E3 2012, a mature Star Wars game that would be set in Coruscant’s criminal underworld. George Lucas himself had direct involvement in the game, and reportedly played a part in its slow development. Lucas had a poor understanding of the differences between game creation and moviemaking, and would frequently request character and story changes only to cause further delays. One version of 1313 supposedly revolved around the origins of Boba Fett, which goes to show how drastic these changes were.
This is one of the most painful game cancellations on the list, mostly because the gameplay footage we got all the way back in 2012 still looks remarkable today! Coruscant is a city of dual faces. On the surface, this ecumenopolis plays host to the Galactic Senate and its politics, but there are 5,000 forgotten levels below all that opulence inhabited by those far less privileged. Crime is mandatory in Coruscant, making it a planet full of opportunities for an action-packed Star Wars game. The fact that this project never got revived still hurts.
Amy Hennig’s open-world Star Wars game
This one has a long and honestly, pretty sad history. When EA made a deal with Lucasfilm to exclusively develop Star Wars games, it immediately put Visceral Games (Dead Space, Battlefield Hardline) to the task. The studio then retooled an existing pirate project codenamed Yuma, which would allow players to take on the roles of space scoundrels in an open-world Star Wars environment. The Uncharted trilogy’s original writer Amy Hennig was hired to write and lead the project. This concept was later retooled into a large-scale heist set after Star Wars: A New Hope.
The project ran into development woes while Visceral was already having trouble making Battlefield Hardline, namely due to the difficulty of adapting EA’s Frostbite Engine for third-person shooters. Disney-Lucasfilm also butted heads with Hennig seeing as they wanted final say on characters and art assets, while Hennig wanted creative control of the project. EA then flattened the studio’s structure and assigned a much too small team to Project Ragtag, as it was now called, and created Motive Studios to help work on the game. The publisher and Visceral started butting heads over the direction of Project Ragtag, further complicating its development.
After EA launched Star Wars Battlefront successfully in 2015, the publisher laid off Visceral staff. To secure funding, the studio put together an internal demo that was partially shown off at E3 2016. This demo not only brought about the game’s cancellation, but the shuttering of Visceral Games as a studio. EA Vancouver was put in charge of the title to make it more multiplayer-focused and in 2018, Hennig left the project. Insiders have confirmed that the game was eventually cancelled. The good news is that Hennig is now working with Skydance New Media on an all-new Star Wars action-adventure game, even if it’s not the Uncharted-like heist game we were promised.
Episode 7: Shadows of the Sith
Back in 2004, long before Disney scooped up the Star Wars franchise and put the sequel trilogy into motion, Episode 7 was being developed as a videogame. The game was conceived by ex-LucasArts creative director Haden Blackman, and would have put players in the role of a grown-up Ben Skywalker - the son of Mara Jade Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, both of whom got together in the Star Wars expanded universe. All these stories have been decanonised post-Disney, of course.
Shadows of the Sith would see Ben Skywalker walk a thin line between the light and dark sides of the Force, wielding all-new Force abilities fans have never seen before in the franchise. The story campaign would pit Ben against a new threat to the galaxy: a member of the Solo family. The game’s plot would have tied into a then-meaty Star Wars expanded universe, pushing the Skywalker Saga forward outside of books and comics in a big way. LucasArts ultimately passed on pursuing this project, but folded parts of it into their next game: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
Speaking of…
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 3
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel introduced players to Starkiller AKA Galen Marek, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice who later turned to the Light side, was killed, cloned, and turned to the Light side again. He’s had a rough go of it. The first game found popularity mostly because it fulfilled the full-blown Jedi fantasy players wanted out of this franchise. Since Starkiller was raised in the Dark Side, his kit included powers we don’t usually see Jedi wield - such as Force Lightning. Starkiller is an incredibly powerful protagonist, wiping out hordes of stormtroopers at one moment and bringing Star Destroyers crashing down the next.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 suffered a troubled development cycle that ultimately led to poor financial performance and derisive critical reviews. When LucasArts was purchased by Disney in 2013 and subsequently shut down, The Force Unleashed 3 was simply lost in the shuffle. A 2017 Twitch livestream featuring LucasArts developers revealed more details on the cancelled sequel: Boba Fett would have shot down Starkiller’s ship and forced the apprentice to team up with his former master, Darth Vader, to survive and escape together. The game would have been a more open-world co-op experience, as both Darth Vader and Starkiller face a new threat from the Emperor.
Star Wars Jedi Knight 3
When Disney hit delete on the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the franchise suffered some heavy losses, not the least of which was one Imperial officer-turned-Jedi named Kyle Katarn. Kyle is a fascinating character, seeing as his first appearance was in 1995’s Doom-like shooter Star Wars: Dark Forces. Subsequent appearances saw Kyle take a major turn as a character, going from the Empire to the Rebel Alliance, and eventually teaching at Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy as an instructor.
This character has a pretty rich history, and fans who followed his journey all the way back from Dark Forces are still owed closure. A sequel to Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast was meant to give them that, ending Kyle Katarn’s story once and for all. The project never went past the conceptual phase, following LucasArts’ decision to end the Jedi Knight series with Jedi Academy.
Star Wars: Knights of the Republic 3
This one hurts. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of the most iconic videogames ever to come out of this franchise, and we almost got a trilogy to round out its story. The game was reportedly axed in early development, after LucasArts had written a story and designed multiple locations including Taloraan, Rodia and Mandalore. The games publisher had put into effect a series of company-wide cuts to ensure future financial success, and Knights of the Old Republic 3 was a sad casualty of this.
According to games writer Chris Avellone, the third game was meant to conclude an already-planned trilogy with a story that set players against ancient Sith lords. These Sith lords were far more powerful and controlled swathes of the galaxy, and would have presented the greatest threat players had faced in the series thus far.
Battle of the Sith Lords/Darth Maul game
Developer Red Fly Studio was assigned the task of making a Darth Maul game back in 2010, but the studio wasn’t given any more information beyond the game’s title: Battle of the Sith Lords. The studio then decided to tell a Darth Maul origin story via a character-action game with stealth elements, using The Force Unleashed 2 as a basis for its gameplay. Seeing as the game followed a Sith lord, the game included decapitation and amputation as Maul fought Mandalorians from the Death Watch and clone troopers on a Tatooine-like planet in early prototypes.
Like a few other games on this list, things took a turn when George Lucas came onboard the project. Lucas suggested that the protagonist could be a descendant or clone of Maul, and feature a character from his then-planned sequel trilogy named Darth Talon. The Maul proxy would fight alongside Darth Talon against another Sith lord and his army, due to the latter breaking the Sith’s rule of only having one master and apprentice in existence at all times. Players would get to play as both Maul and Talon, and development finally took off.
Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm eventually led to the project’s cancellation, but Red Fly continued to prototype the game to pitch it to Electronic Arts and Disney. In 2015, the studio confirmed that Lucasfilm was not interested, and that any games could only be developed under EA thanks to an exclusive contract.
This contract has since expired, and plenty of game studios are now working on new Star Wars games. While many of the games on this list may have been cut down before their time, the future of this gaming franchise is brighter than ever.
