via WIRED

After Kalama shows me how to “hack” a comm tower to make it emit a resonant beep, he points at the unfolding text messages on my screen. “You can eavesdrop on a conversation,” he says. “These towers are relaying messages between characters.” I get a little backstory on a gunfight in the marketplace that left a wall pockmarked with divots.

Think about what all that requires. Kerrison’s story team comes up with that bit of plot and writes the dialog of the messages. “Blaster specialists” carve the impact marks into the wet plaster of the walls under construction—the imagineers decided that each one should look different depending on the type of blaster and the angle of impact. Kalama’s interactive group has to code all that into the minigames and link those games to Bluetooth beacons around the park. This fine-grained, fractal detail adds to the sense that not only is Batuu in canon, but so is anyone who buys a ticket.

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