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When JJ Abrams gave his much-anticipated public panel on The Force Awakens in Anaheim this weekend as part of the Star Wars Celebration 2015 event, one of the loudest cheers he received (and there were a lot of loud cheers) was when he reassured fans - jaded with the overuse of digital effects thanks to the disastrous prequel trilogy - that he had scaled back production of his sequels to include as many physical props and tangible locations as possible.Just a few hours later, DICE's general manager Patrick Bach told me that, in a way, that was the same aim for the studio and their reboot of Star Wars Battlefront, which is set to launch on 17th November - almost exactly a month before the film debuts at the end of this year. "JJ Abrams's discussion on going back to the roots of creating physical sets, physical objects - we do that as well," he enthused. "We take the physical objects and recreate them digitally, so we kind of go the reverse way but start in the same spot. It's the same idea - we have the same mindset on recreating the universe in the most authentic way possible."
Authenticity is certainly a priority for Bach and Abrams both, each continuing on the legacy of a beloved franchise and taking it in their own direction. For Abrams that meant building a droid that could realistically move and roll around on set; for DICE it meant gaining access to the LucasFilm Art Archive and Skywalker Sound to use as many original assets from the film franchise as possible. Using photogrammetry, the process of creating 3D models from taking thousands of pictures as reference points (and most recently used in games like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter), those assets appear in-game as close to the real thing as they possibly can be - we're shown detailed 3D models of Admiral Ackbar and Han's blaster as proof of concept.
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