Talk of Star Wars Battlefront 3 has ramped up this week, with a number of studios reportedly in with a chance of developing the shooter sequel.
The rumor kicked off when Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb read out a snippet from Electronic Gaming Monthly’s revived Quarterman column, which claimed Disney has “big plans” for the Star Wars Battlefront series. According to EGM, Lucasfilm is looking for a development partner for Battlefront 3, and two studios are “circling” the project: DICE, developer of Battlefield and Battlefront, and Bungie, developer of Halo, Destiny, and Marathon.
The potential for a Battlefront 3 is hugely exciting for fans of the series, of course, and if it does end up green lit, DICE would be the obvious course to develop it, although how the game would fit with the ongoing work on the Battlefield series remains to be seen.
Bungie, though, would be a huge surprise as developer of Battlefront 3. The Sony-owned studio is working to turn around struggling extraction shooter Marathon, and only last month Bungie said more Destiny is coming, months after ending support for Destiny 2. It feels unlikely that Bungie would have the scope to make a fully fleshed out Battlefront 3, at least not any time soon. Would parent company Sony even be receptive to such an idea? Would Bungie?
Plot twist! Joe Brammer, boss of Wardogs developer Bulkhead, just… tweeted it out. But rather than Bungie, it’s Titanfall, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi developer Respawn that’s working with DICE on Battlefront 3, according to Brammer. "DICE and from what I’ve heard Respawn are working on Battlefront 3," he said on X / Twitter. "Not sure what that means for Battlefield."
What’s actually going on here? Well, it doesn’t sound like Battlefront 3 is in production yet, if Lucasfilm is on the hunt for development partners. But it’s entirely plausible that DICE and Respawn have done pre-production work, fleshing out what the game will be and how it will work, while looking for studios to help build it.
And before we get our hopes up, it’s worth remembering that Battlefront fans have been here before. TimeSplitters developer Free Radical Design has a Battlefront 3 game that was pretty much done before it fell by the wayside around 2008. Assets and even builds of the game have leaked online ever since.
EA eventually had DICE pick up the mantle and reboot the series with the hugely popular Star Wars Battlefront in 2015. But its sequel, 2017’s Battlefront 2, suffered a disastrous launch fueled by a backlash to loot boxes. DICE spent years righting the ship, to the point now where Battlefront 2 is held in pretty high regard.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/theres-real-force-behind-these-star-wars-battlefront-3-rumors
