Star Wars: Battlefront is a very pretty video game, but while everyone else has been running around the beta sticking wangs on Luke Skywalker’s head, Berdu has been working hard to make it look even prettier.
A screenshot artist, Berdu has created some images of the game that look absolutely stunning. Remember, these aren’t elaborate, custom renders made by DICE’s art team, they’re screenshots taken by a guy in Finland.
If you were wondering how he took the images, here’s how:
To get a shot without the UI or a gun blocking the way, he disables the HUD by typing “ui.drawenable 0” into the console and either switches weapons (capturing a screen between guns) or by zooming in. “Zooming coupled with disabling the HUD results in a nice low FOV view without the gun in sight”, he told me. “I had my screenshot buddy ShadowSix help me by posing for the portrait shots.”
“I recorded this video by using the same method and just walked around the map, trying to capture some nice action. I died a LOT. Sorry team.”
Some of the fancier screens were taken using Hattiwatti’s Battlefield Cinematic Tool, which also works on Battlefront (or at least did initially until a recent patch) and lets the user do things like free the camera.
The really high resolution pics used either custom Nvidia resolutions (up to 5120x2880) or by manually resizing the game window, which you can do with Frostbite games using something called Simple Runtime Window Editor.
So, a little more work than just hitting a screencap button, but as you can see, totally worth it. If you were in need of new wallpaper, these might have you covered (to enlarge the images, click the magnifying glass icon in the top left).
You can see more Star Wars shots—and screens from other games—at Berdu’s Flickr page.