Uncharted’s Amy Hennig discusses storycraft and the new Star Wars project

The life blood of Star Wars has always been its lore. It’s carried it through two sets of trilogies with another to begin in less than a month, 30+ years of expanded universe novels, comics, video games and more. Each addition tacts on a little bit more to the myth that began with a farmboy on Tatoonie and it’s an aspect that fans have loved for nearly 40 years. 

As much as people dismiss science fiction and fantasy’s reliance of traditional Campbellian storytelling, it exists for a reason – it works. It worked for Lord of the Rings, it worked for multiple religious canon and, of course, it works for Star Wars. So when Nolan North let it slip that Uncharted writer Amy Hennig’s Visceral Games project is a Star Wars game in the vein of the Uncharted series, plenty of interests were piqued. 

In a recent interview with Venturebeat, Amy Hennig was joined by Assassin’s Creed alum Jade Raymond to discuss the importance of storycraft and what that could mean for the future Star Wars project. 

“Our goal as game-makers, always, is to make sure we enable as much player agency and choice as possible within the space that makes sense in the game. That doesn’t mean we want to make absolutely linear games where the player is just along for the ride. They should be able to freestyle within that experience. But there’s also a lot of evidence that people love being taken on a journey by a good storyteller,” Hennig explained with Raymond elaborating, “Different players are looking for a different amount of authorship and a different amount of agency. We’re trying to find how to push and redefine that type of narrative-driven experience. We’re looking for more player agency and different types of interaction.”

“My role, my mission that I was given when I joined, was to say, 'How do we tell more stories?'" Hennig continued, “I’ve been working closely with Lucasfilm since I joined…We’re trying to build more. They want people to be telling new stories. Not in the sense of, 'How is this Star Wars?' It’s all connected. It’s like the Force. It binds everything together. That sense of destiny and inevitability and fate is really important to Star Wars stories.”

On the surface, an Uncharted Star Wars sounds like a fun romp anyone would want to get in on, but both Hennig’s and Raymond’s views on storytelling and the medium as a whole are pretty interesting and relevant, so definitely give that whole interview a read. If nothing else, it’ll make you even more eager to see what kind of lore expansions we’ll get treated to when the Visceral Games project finally is complete.