While Disney keeps giving us a steady dose of Star Wars movies, EA’s output on the videogame side has been lacking. And I say that as someone who enjoys both Battlefront games. But we can always count on diehard Star Wars fans to churn away on fan projects. Recently, YouTuber Bluedrake42 highlighted what some of them are cooking up in Unreal Engine 4.
Yep, that’s a Dark Forces remake. (UPDATE: The above video is actually an earlier project called Docking Bay 94. Below, I link to images that are from the Dark Forces remake that is being worked on now) Jason Lewis, a Senior Environment Artist over at Obsidian Entertainment, has been working on the level in his spare time. It’s not a direct remake as Lewis did add a little something extra to the starting area.
While Bluedrake42’s walkthrough of a beautifully rendered Mos Eisley doesn’t feature enemies, it certainly looks the part. How can you not feel excited as a TIE Fighter roars right above you and John Williams’ score is playing?
I dug through Lewis’ Artstation page, and it’s fantastic seeing his fan project progress. It gives us a fantastic look into how development evolves and is polished over time.
Here’s a look inside an Imperial Base during an earlier part of development.
And the same area after some polish.
Yes, there are more textures – but the lighting is what makes this scene pop.
Download the fan project and check out R2D2 and the Millenium Falcon for yourself. A quick note on the download. You’re going to run into an error message saying you can’t download it. Here’s the workaround:
– There’s an icon at the top that’ll say something like ‘Add to my Google Drive.’ Click on that.
– Then find the file you added, right click on it, and click on ‘Make a copy.’ (it’s 7GB so make sure your Google Drive has enough space to make the copy.)
– Now, you can right-click on the copy you made and download it.