I was lucky enough to have a chat to Ben Minto and David Jegutidse, the audio director and sound designer respectively for Star Wars Battlefront , which was packed full of fascinating trivia about both the game and films. I'll work that up into a feature later but they did let me know that - most importantly of all - the Wilhelm Scream will be included.
If you don't know what then means, then watch this and forever ruin your ability to enjoy films ever again:
The scream has a long history with Star Wars, thanks to pioneering sound man Ben Burtt working it into the original film and many other George Lucas and Steven Spielberg movies after that. When I asked the guys if it was in the game they both laughed and shouted "Yes!" Ben then went on to say: "In the actual original recording of the Wilhelm Scream, which is entitled “Man gets bit by Alligator” there’s actually six versions of it," he explains, "and all six are actually used in the film, but three of them are recognisable as the actual Wilhelm Scream."
However, that's a bit of a shoe in really - Star Wars made the scream a running audio gag forever, so it has to be included. The big surprise is this:
Yes, that is Chewbacca doing the Tarzan yodel. "It’s called a Weismuller after the original actor who played Tarzan," says Ben, who adds that it's "something quite hard to listen out for on Endor", and adds "I’m not sure how often people are going to hear that".
Little things like that came from firstly making sure the game was as Star Wars as it could possibly be, and then extending that, while honouring the source material. "There is so much in the Star Wars universe, like little in-jokes about mouse drawings, and we had access to all the stuff that weaves a lot more richness into it," says Ben. "Little in-bits that we just know about and then worked hard to get them into the game as well. So there will be people out there, geeks hopefully that will be like 'Aww yeah, they put that in!' – and we do that because we know that people like ten hours, a hundred hours, five hundred hours into the game are still exploring and discovering new things."
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