Star Wars Squadrons gets an all new short in 'Hunted'
Overnight and out of nowhere, EA and Lucasfilm released a short film called Hunted, which shows off some Rebel Alliance vs Empire dogfighting action. The film was made by ILM, with Motive overseeing the story aspects and all told, it is one heck of a short, so give it a watch.
“Hunted” tells the story of Imperial pilot Varko Grey in the wake of another failed mission after the destruction of the second Death Star. It’s one of the few pieces of linear Star Wars storytelling that’s told from the Empire’s point of view and makes the audience feel strangely sympathetic for Varko, as the pilot risks his own life to save a squadmate, finds himself left behind by his commander, and leads his enemy through canyons on a never-before-seen planet, Var-Shaa, in an effort to survive. In the single player story of the game, you’ll fly alongside him as part of Titan Squadron.
The short was not just done by the folks at ILM, it was overseen by one of the people responsible for Star Wars in a big way. John Knoll has worked on Star Wars for more than 20 years now and was the Visual Effects Supervisor on the prequels and most recently The Mandalorian, if you are doing Star Wars, this is the guy you want on your team.
“I really admired cinematics from older Star Wars games. I think they’re wonderful stories,” Knoll tells StarWars.com. “It was kind of irresistible to have been offered to work on a standalone short. I felt like we had to do it.”
If his name sounds familiar, he and his brother were the creators of Photoshop, if you have it installed, you will see his name on the boot screen. In addition to this, back in 1989’s The Abyss, which featured a creature made out of water, he was the one who started to photograph everything, so they could have lighting references, if you have ever seen a behind the scenes video for any movie these days, you will see folks carrying around a matte grey sphere and a mirror sphere, again, something he pioneered.
“When we’re working on the feature films, there’s a style book. A kind of shot-design grammar that we need to adhere to because it’s part of a franchise and you want a consistency there,” Knoll says. “There was an opportunity on this to depart a bit from that. To do shot designs that wouldn’t really fit into the cinematic design of the feature films. Go-Pro mounts and that kind of thing. It was really fun to get into.”
You can learn more about how the short came to be and how critical it was for the creators of it, to not paint the Empire as good guys, given they are most definitely bad, on the Star Wars website.
Star Wars Squadrons is shaping up to send players into the world of Star Wars dogfights in a way that we haven’t seen in years. The game is out on October 2nd for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
