Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis raised some eyebrows last week when he said that the mythical Star Wars: Battlefront III, the dead game that just will not die, was "99% done" at his studio when publishers pulled the plug.
It was a weird thing to say, since surely things like quality assurance and other testing account for a lot more than 1% of a game's development, something a former Lucasarts developer speaking with GameSpot agrees with. Sort of. Before launching into a bit of a tirade.
"This 99 percent complete stuff is just bullsh*t," the sadly anonymous staffer said. "A generous estimate would be 75 percent of a mediocre game."
This source then goes on to make a lot of accusations against Free Radical, which Ellis later addresses, but that's tit-for-tat stuff that's almost impossible to get to the bottom of. Instead, I'd say we all just dwell on those words from the anonymous staffer, and remember that more often than not, a game goes unreleased for a reason.
Former LucasArts employee on why Star Wars: Battlefront III failed [GameSpot]