Kotaku Details LucasArts' Final Months

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Gaming blog Kotaku has put together an excellent look inside LucasArts over the past few months, as the company's final day approached. The story starts in late 2011 with an announcement from then-president Paul Meegan and details the evolution of the company, including internal deliberations over ongoing projects like Battlefront III, right up until the division's closure on April 3. Here's an excerpt from the article that caught my eye:

"[There's] a very vocal audience that's clamoring for Battlefront III," said a source. "We were hoping to eventually give it to them."

But over the past few months, morale has been low at LucasArts. Due to the freeze on all hiring and game announcements, staff at the company had no idea whether their games would ever actually come out.

In January, a month after the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, Disney's Iger came out and said they would be taking a close look at the violence in their video games.

This was a red flag for the developers at LucasArts. Here they are, working on a first-person shooter and a violent action-adventure game, and Disney says they're re-evaluating the amount of violence in their games? Not a great sign.

"It was very clear that we were kind of the redheaded stepchild," said a source. "We kinda came along with the hot mom being the film properties."

In addition to excellent in-depth reporting and conversations with several sources that shed light on the behind-the-scenes problems at LucasArts, Kotaku also posted test footage of a game project known as "Version Two," which they say was to become Battlefront III.

Check out the full report over at Kotaku.

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