A group of artists from Obsidian Entertainment, the beloved role-playing game development studio, have recreated the Mos Eisley spaceport, and you can play it for free.
Jason Lewis, senior environment artist for Obsidian, worked with other artists and developers at the studio to develop this simulation of the iconic starport where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi met Han Solo and Chewbacca for the first time, and where Han Solo definitely shot first.
Lewis and his team built Mos Eisley in Unreal Engine 4, one of the video game industry’s premiere game engines. Developers use UE4 for the clarity and detail it makes possible in video games. This recreation of Mos Eisley makes the point nicely.
“This is a just-for-fun personal project that we are all contributing to for no reason other than we are all a bunch of super Star Wars fans,” Lewis told website 80 Level, “and with all the Star Wars awesomeness going on these days, we all thought it would be a good time to jump in and produce a quality fan art project.
Obsidian is the developer of the critically acclaimed role-playing games Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and a fistful of other RPGs including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, the sequel to what many gamers consider the best Star Wars RPG of all time.
“In addition to just being a bunch of super Star Wars nerds,” Lewis told 80 Level, “several of us have been wanting an excuse to learn Unreal 4 for some time now, so we figured that this was a perfect opportunity.
The Mos Eisley project is not part of a game in development. It’s only a tech demo. Yet commenters on both the imgur gallery and the Reddit post announcing the project immediately jumped into discussion as to when the next big Star Wars RPG will be released, why Obsidian can’t be the studio that develops it, and please, oh, please could it look like these photos.
The Mos Eisley recreation is available only for PC. You can download the files from several locations, including here and here. Lewis says that the project is only 90 percent finished, and the team is working on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality versions of the simulation.
In other words, you not only need a PC to explore this version of Mos Eisley, it better be a beefy PC with a fast processor, lots of RAM, and a kick-ass graphics card, if you want to get the most out of this recreation.