Star Wars is one of the most adaptable sci-fi franchises out there. Despite the Skywalker saga being the most prevalent part of that series, it’s an entire universe with centuries upon centuries of stories to be told across galaxies. There are horror stories, epic war stories, and dramatic and daring tales of heroes and villains. It’s extremely expansive and filled with so much rich world building. On top of making for great films and shows, there are countless great Star Wars video games as well that have not only pleased fans, but served as entry points for newcomers as well.
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Unfortunately, Star Wars is also home to some famous cancelled projects. Of course, there are all kinds of unmade films that are fabled among fans, but the games have also stung as well. Some even were even hours away from being shown to the public before the plug was pulled on them and others could’ve been generation-defining titles. We’ve rounded up a ton of cancelled Star Wars games and provided detailed rundowns on what they would’ve looked like had they released as well as why they’re cancelled. There’s even some leaked gameplay for some of the projects as well!
Star Wars: Battlefront 3 (2008)
One of the most acclaimed Star Wars games of all-time, the original Star Wars: Battlefront 2, nearly got a sequel. Star Wars: Battlefront 3 was in development and was extremely far along at developer Free Radical. Studio co-founder Steve Ellis claimed that the game was almost 99% complete and just required some bug fixes to be totally complete, though others estimate that the game was closer to 75% done. Nevertheless, the game’s entire campaign was leaked online and tells the story of two brothers in the Clone Army that are turned against each other in the fallout of Order 66.
Their story chronicles both the eras of the prequel and original films, allowing you to see characters like Luke Skywalker. The multiplayer also looked like a major step up from its predecessor with ships that can fly from the ground and all the way up to the star destroyers in the sky above and much more. It looked really solid, however, the story of its cancellation is complicated. Free Radical repeatedly missed key milestones during development and was struggling to get the game where it needed to be. It was also alleged that Free Radical was taking money from LucasArts to make other projects, though this was strongly refuted by Ellis.
Ultimately, it’s believed that the relationship between Free Radical and LucasArts collapsed and led to Battlefront 3’s eventual demise. Thankfully, there’s lots of gameplay out there so you can at least see what we may have gotten in the end. Additionally, there were also plans to make a Battlefront 4 that would have been a “what if?” scenario of Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan on the dark side and Darth Vader has a Jedi. However, it was scrapped alongside Battlefront 3.
This complicated story doesn’t end with Free Radical, though. LucasArts still wanted a Battlefront 3. In the early 2010s, LucasArts was working a project known simply as “Version Two” which was expected to be a third Battlefront game developed internally. The company was aware there was high demand for a third game in the shooter franchise, which is the version you can see gameplay of at the top of this entry.
You may also be wondering what happened with EA’s Star Wars Battlefront 3. Well, it never existed, at least not in any meaningful capacity. It’s possible that the controversy that happened around loot boxes made Disney weary of making another Battlefront game, but EA also just didn’t seem to have interest in making it. Maybe one day it will happen, though it seems unlikely given Battlefield is back on track, but it technically wasn’t cancelled because it was never in the works.
Star Wars 1313
Perhaps the most infamous game on this list, Star Wars 1313 was publicly unveiled at E3 2012 as a more mature and gritty game about a bounty hunter in the underbelly of Coruscant, particularly level 1313 of the planet. The gameplay that we saw at the time looked absolutely riveting with an Uncharted-esque set piece where the bounty hunter protagonist tries to fend off masked soldiers who are attacking the ship that he’s on mid-flight. Ultimately, this would be the one and only official look we would get at the game as it would eventually be cancelled following Disney’s acquisition of everything Star Wars.
It was later revealed that the playable character in Star Wars 1313 would’ve been Boba Fett himself, giving players a dream bounty hunter game in the Star Wars universe. A prologue to the game, set to be revealed at E3 2013, would have seen a young pre-Mandalorian armored Boba Fett on Tatooine where we’d see the likes of Jabba the Hutt. Boba Fett would’ve also found unlikely allies in the criminal underworld, including a droid that could serve as a companion, but would eventually betray him later in the story.
George Lucas was also heavily involved in the project and planned to connect it to his live-action TV series Star Wars: Underworld, but obviously stepped away after the sale to Disney. The prime reason for the cancellation, despite the game apparently shaping up nicely, was because Disney wanted to license Star Wars out to other developers instead of doing everything in-house. Unfortunately, this remains one of the most tragic game cancellations out there.
Project Ragtag
Project Ragtag was a codename for another Star Wars game that was announced and even briefly shown off in a public setting. Following her departure from Naughty Dog, Uncharted creator Amy Hennig joined Visceral Games to make a new Star Wars game set after the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It would’ve been a heist game with a group of space scoundrels at the center of it.
However, concerns grew over the project that there were a lack of recognizable characters and perhaps more notably, no Jedi or lightsabers/force powers. Ultimately, the project stalled out amidst various internal problems and creative differences and Visceral Games was shut down, eliminating any hope of seeing the game again.
Star Wars: Battle of the Sith Lords
In the early 2010s, a studio known as Red Fly Studio was approached by LucasArts to conceptualize a Darth Maul video game. They weren’t given any real story direction, so they decided to come up with an origin story that would show Maul’s youth and eventually the unfortunate circumstances that led to him becoming a Sith. There was a desire to make him a conflicted character that had morals, but had to lean toward the dark side for survival, which would give the team opportunities to highlight his humanity.
Not unlike 1313, Star Wars: Battle of the Sith Lords, codenamed Maul, would’ve been a darker game that leaned into the violence of the character. Maul would chop off heads and limbs, showcasing the real power of a lightsaber in a game. Eventually, George Lucas and Dave Filoni began to clue the team in on plans to include Darth Maul in the Clone Wars animated series, which would reveal that Maul survived The Phantom Menace and was now sporting robot legs.
The creative forces than began to envision a trilogy that could tell a complete story chronicling his youth, “death”, and return. Ultimately, the game was also killed as a result of Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars despite the fact that it showed promise. Red Fly tried to pitch the game again in 2015, but Disney and EA (the sole publisher of Star Wars games at the time) unfortunately weren’t interested.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 3
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 3 would’ve picked up from where The Force Unleashed 2‘s light ending left off. Starkiller has captured Vader on behalf of the rebels and is transporting him to Dantooine, but is shot down by Boba Fett at the request of Emperor Palpatine. Vader and Starkiller are then forced to team up as part of a co-op campaign set in an open world, though no one would know if Vader was truly trustworthy.
The game never left the planning stages as creator Haden Blackman was planning to leave LucasArts to form Hanger 13 and then LucasArts was shut down by Disney. It’s unclear if the game would’ve gone ahead without Blackman or if the project would’ve been scrapped after he left.
Star Wars Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith
Almost a full decade before Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be conceptualized, Blackman and his team at LucasArts came up with an idea for a video game that would effectively serve as “Episode VII”. The idea for the game began in 2004, a year before the release of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and would’ve seen Luke Skywalker’s son, Ben, as an adult protagonist. He would’ve discovered powerful new Force abilities and gone up against a villain from the House of Solo, a concept that would later be expanded upon and become Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy.
The project didn’t move beyond the concept stage and some of these ideas were repurposed for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. However, Blackman did try and reboot the project as a Sith game set in the far future of the Star Wars universe. Similarly, it didn’t get very far and was scrapped.
Star Wars: First Assault
Star Wars: First Assault was a more gritty, Call of Duty-esque first-person shooter. It was a downloadable Xbox Live Arcade game that was hours away from being announced before it was cancelled. The project was going to be revealed in September 2012 with a beta releasing shortly thereafter, which led to a listing for the unannounced Star Wars game showing up on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The game would’ve had a full blown release in spring 2013. It was meant to be a test bed for a Star Wars shooter running on Unreal Engine 3 and as a way to demonstrate interest in a new Star Wars shooter.
If it performed well, the plan was to greenlight the aforementioned project known as “Version Two” into Star Wars: Battlefront 3. Unfortunately, this was yet another project caught in the crossfire of the Disney acquisition. It had nothing to do with quality or concerns, the project was basically finished. It was just an unfortunate business decision.
Star Wars: Imperial Commando/Rebel Commando
Speaking of gritty shooters, there were once two competing ideas for a sequel to Star Wars: Republic Command, a pretty edgy shooter following an elite group of Clone troopers known as Delta Squad. LucasArts conceived of two potential sequel ideas. One, known as Imperial Commando, would follow an elite group of Imperial Commandos under the Galactic Empire post-Order 66, presumably including the characters from Delta Squad. The project would have seen players fighting Wookies and lightsaber-wielding foes, but didn’t advance very far.
The other concept, known as Rebel Commando, would have seen Sev (a character whose fate remained ambiguous at the end of the previous game) join the Rebel Alliance after the Battle of Kashyyyk. Despite being arguably one of the best Star Wars games out there, Republic Command didn’t sell particularly well, so neither of these projects advanced past the concept stage.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 was planned to be yet another conclusion to a Star Wars trilogy. The player would track Revan’s footsteps and eventually come face to face with ancient Sith lords who would be terrifying and powerful monsters. Each location you went to, you’d be able to see the impact of these characters and the hell they left behind through history.
BioWare moved on to make Star Wars: The Old Republic and Obsidian, the studio behind the infamous Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, worked hard to repeatedly pitch the project to LucasArts. Unfortunately, the company was undergoing financial issues at the time and wasn’t keen to greenlight a big new single player RPG. As a result, it never happened.
Untitled Star Wars FPS Game
In early 2022, it was confirmed that Titanfall and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order developer was working on a brand new FPS game set in the Star Wars universe. Given the studio’s roots in the genre, it seemed like a great pairing and led fans to speculate about a new Republic Commando game or something in that vein. Rumors also swirled that the project was a game based on The Mandalorian, but to this day, we don’t really have any idea what this game was. The only tangible detail we ever got was that it was inspired by Star Wars: Dark Forces, but that’s about it.
Respawn’s Star Wars FPS game was abruptly cancelled in 2024 without any definitive reason provided to fans.
Miscellaneous Cancelled Star Wars Games
There are a bunch of other Star Wars games that were pitched or cancelled over the years, but next to nothing is known about them. We’ve rounded up a bullet pointed list of some of those titles.
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight 3 – Brink of Darkness
- Untitled Chewbacca game set after Episode III
- Star Wars: Han Solo
- Star Wars: Rebel Fury
- Star Wars: Jedi Outlaw
- Star Wars: Rebel Warrior
- Star Wars: Vader
- Star Wars: Dark Jedi
- Star Wars: Jedi Hunter
- Star Wars: Smuggler
- Star Wars: Rebel Scum
- Star Wars: Underworld (likely related to George Lucas’ cancelled live-action Star Wars TV series)
- Star Wars: Rogue Jedi
- Star Wars: Scum and Villainy
- Star Wars: Rebel Jedi
- Star Wars: Jedi Master
Which of these Star Wars games would you like to see get made? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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