In June I spent two days at The Imaginarium motion capture studio at Ealing Studios, London. Founded in 2005 by actor Andy Serkis, it has been used for Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It is also where Squadron 42’s substantial narrative component is being pieced together, using a cast that includes Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Andy Serkis and many others.
By the time I arrive filming has been progressing, on and off, for several months. Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies are working through what is left of their parts, and the production as a whole is coming to a close. It is the first time I have seen what over $100 million in funding looks like. That number can be difficult to parse, if you’re not a big-budget game producer. In Ealing, I learned that it looks like a lot of very expensive cameras, skintight suits covered in ping-pong balls, and a cast of top-flight actors.
Bolted onto Squadron 42’s open-ended structure is a scripted narrative told through conversations in the open world and story missions. That world-class motion-capture rig is being used to map the likenesses of the cast into the game, striking for the sense that you’re inside a sci-fi TV show. This is a modern way of achieving what Wing Commander struck for in the 1990s. FMV is gone, but Hamill and RhysDavies are back. They’re no longer Christopher Blair or Paladin (and the aliens are no longer men in giant cat costumes) but this really does feel like a spiritual successor.
“Right from the beginning it was something I wanted to do,” Chris Roberts says. “It’s fun—I haven’t done this in a game for quite a long time. We can take modern technology, fuse it with great acting... take it up a level, like Wing Commander took it up before.”
