It’s no secret that America’s interior is full of gorgeous parks that make themselves prime shooting locations for movies. Yosemite, Glacier National and Redwood National are all breathtaking scenes that lend themselves well to atmosphere and it’s that reason that the last of those actually played host to Lucas and crew when Return of the Jedi was capturing its Endor scenes.
With all the effort DICE has pumped into getting the new Battlefront game as faithful as they can by utilizing high rez scans of the original miniatures and facial scans, it seemed a no brainer that they would also want to use the original parks that helped to create iconic worlds. Except that’s not always the easiest thing in the world when the whole damned government, including the national parks system, shuts down.
Design director Niklas Fergraeus confessed in the latest issue of Edge Magazine, “The government shutdown was in effect at the time… and one of the things that happens during those is that the people who take care of the National Parks don’t work, so they were closed. That meant we were denied access to some of the locations, so we had to… find other ways. Like proper Rebels."
You got to admire commitment to the craft from those making Battlefront as faithful as possible. It’s also kind of fun to admire a game design and development crew being stealthy as they infiltrate a national park wearing, one assumes, a tactleneck.
