Q&A with Star Wars: Uprising Creator David Erickson

Star Wars: Uprising, the franchise’s latest mobile role-player game from Kabam, is shaping up to be an important component in the journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. With new characters, new factions, and new stakes, players of the game will get to see the ultimate war for victory over the iron-fisted Empire explode to life before their eyes.

To dig deeper into the game and what fans can expect from it, Fansided’s Entertainment division director, Nick Tylwalk, interviewed one of the minds crucial to the development of Star Wars: Uprising, David Erickson (formerly a creative director on Star Wars: The Old Republic).

1. As one of the first games to explore the fertile space between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, how happy are you with the balance you achieved between elements that are familiar to longtime Star Wars fans and new ones?

Extremely happy. There are touches in Uprising for fans of the original trilogy, the prequels, Clone Wars, Rebels, you name it. There is also a great deal of new content to explore, much of it reinterpretations of beloved extended universe content, all now 100% approved canon and part of the new Star Wars storyline.

2. Character creation and customization look to be big calling cards for Uprising. Can you go into more detail on what kinds of choices players will have creating their ideal Star Wars characters?

Starting with either gender and multiple species, players have tons of physical customization options but the big appeal is the fully open-class ability system. Each trainer in the game represents a core Star Wars fantasy (Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Rebel Guerilla, etc.) and players can learn from all of them, mixing and matching to create their unique identity.

3. With so many mobile games opting for asynchronous multiplayer of some form, was it important to you to get real time co-op play into the game?

Hugely important. At the end of the day there is no replacement for human contact and the joys of watching your friends do something amazing…or not so amazing. These are the stories we tell over and over and we think that in a world where many households have multiple mobile devices, it just makes sense to bring that wonderful experience to the mobile generation.

4. How helpful was it to have members of the Kabam RPG Studio team who already have worked on some well-regarded Star Wars games in the past?

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It definitely gives us a huge head start both in knowing the tone and feel of the game as well as when dealing with the story team at Lucasfilm, who are doing an amazing job coordinating all of the new canon. We have people who have worked on everything from the original Knights of the Old Republic to the Clone Wars animated series and plenty of people who’ve been at Lucas itself so we can quickly move past the “what is this?” part of dealing with an IP to the much more rewarding “what do we want to say about this?”

Download Star Wars: Uprising on your mobile device today and join the battle against the Empire!

Next: Star Wars: Shattered Empire #1 - Review

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