I guess to say that this is a "Review" is a bit of a stretch, seeing as how what I experienced was simply a developer demo of the Unreal 4 Engine with a Star Wars skin. I first heard about Star Wars Mos Eisley: Docking Bay 94 back in September from an article on PC Gamer and I loved the idea that Jason Lewis, a developers at Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity) headed a group of developers and created a walkabout of a portion of the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine.
The first thing that surprised me, or perhaps it should not have considering how heavy Unreal 4 can be, was that this demo was a 6GB download. The other thing that didn't surprise me, and as warned by the PC Gamer article, was that my system was barely able to handle this, even on the lowest settings, and there are a lot of graphical settings to choose from. What I decided upon was a combination of medium and low settings as my computer ran at about the same frames per second regardless if I was playing on medium or low. I did not even consider trying either high or epic settings as I did not really want to see my computer go up in a ball of blaster residue, plasma and bits of plastic. Most Internet people will tell you though, that my computer should not even attempt SWME:DB94 as my fps was anywhere between 7.33 and 11.24. I did reach 15 fps a few times, but that was only when I was looking up at the brilliant blue sky with minimal visuals on the building tops with the sounds of the spaceport as active as could be all around me.
As you can probably now tell, had SWME:DB94 been anything other than a walking simulator of sorts, I probably would have been unable to play anything more than the title screen. Had there been anything else moving around in the walkable area besides R2D2 and maybe one other R-Series Astromech droid that I cannot specifically recall, then I am pretty sure my game or computer would have crashed from trying too hard. The point is, for what SWME:DB94 was, I very much enjoyed where I was and what I saw. And now I wanted to share with you all some of the gloriousness (new word) that I experienced.
I really wish that the sandcrawlers had been closer to at least be able to walk around the base, but it makes sense that the Jawas were probably not allowed to bring them within a certain distance of the space port. But obviously, I tried to explore out as much as I could.
There are a good number of people so much more familiar with Mos Eisley and Star Wars in general who could tell you what structure that is towering above the space port. I however cannot tell you, and looking at this picture, I actually just now realized that the twin suns are actually present, which was something that forgot to look up for as most of my gazing was done at ground level.
The most exciting part though, was being able to actually locate Docking Bay 94, since apparently Mos Eisley has yet to invest in either road or building signs. Since I do not know the canon layout of Mos Eisley, I just kept wandering around until I found stairs leading down, then continued on as the decor became more technology influenced and full of red lights.
Here you can see that my computer was chugging along at blazingly fast 7.33 fps. Honestly though, while the game definitely felt like it was lagging, the animations were still pretty smooth, although in some instances, it took a second or two for the textures to materialize, especially if there was some form of movement going on in my field of vision, such as R2D2 here repairing something that my uneducated mind would say has to do with a shield generator. However, not seeing any elevators, I am not sure how R2 here made it safely down the flight of stairs I too traversed. Maybe his hovering capabilities were still functioning at this un-dated period of time?
The last picture I wanted to share, is of the "goal," or at least what I took to be the goal of sorts, the Millennium Falcon.
Actually, my first time coming by here, the Millennium Falcon had not loaded, so I thought I was looking down on an empty docking bay. I did find my way down to the Falcon itself and was able to explore inside, although the exlplorable area inside was very limited. Then something happened while I was looking around the docking bay, and I fell through the floor and was surrounded by 8.64 fps of gradient brown. That was the end of my last time traversing through the available areas of Mos Eisley Spaceport.
Considering that this developer's demo is free to download, I would highly recommend picking it up, as it is still currently available, something that kind of surprised me, knowing both Lucasfilm and Disney's penchant for cease-and-desisting anything perceived as an unauthorized use of their intellectual properties, no matter how innocent or benign. I would assume that since it is still up, that someone at Obsidian Entertainment has received an official "okay" from someone at Lucasfilm and/or Disney to keep this publicly available.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Frightened of This Thing That I've Become
P.S. December 16th can't come fast enough so I can get my Star Wars fix.
P.P.S. Because I know everyone is wanting to know, nothing happens if you shoot at R2D2.
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