What really boggled the mind back in the day was EA reorganizing the studio in a way that didn't make sense.
They broke Blackbox in half, and then gave each half a game to do in 2 years, to keep up the yearly release schedule. So, each project only had half the people. It was noticeable. Highly noticeable. I think Undercover was the main victim.
You can feel the effect of that change in Skate 3 too due to all of the technical problems it has, but also in NFS The Run to some extent as many of the courses from the end of the game are reverse early game tracks with different weather conditions.
Everything related to Undercover was in a shitty position as both studios were rushed, so we never got a complete version of either game and that's kinda sad, as both versions seemed pretty promising.