GamesBeat: On your project, do you find an opportunity to be a writer on a game that’s constrained by what’s being done with the movies and everything else? Star Wars as a universe is very expansive, I guess.

Hennig: Sure. And they would say that. They want people to understand that the galaxy is bigger than the Skywalker saga. The galaxy has a lot of stories to tell. You can see that in the stand-alone films. The saga is seven, eight, and nine, and that finishes it out. Rogue One is its own film. The Han Solo film is a stand-alone film. There’s lots of room for other stories and characters and worlds. The galaxy is a big place.

My role, my mission that I was given when I joined, was to say, “How do we tell more stories?” I’ve been working closely with Lucasfilm since I joined, as has my team – with their story group, with their tech group, with Doug Chiang, their creative director. 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.

But they’re very encouraging to their new creatives. Whether it’s Dave Filoni on Rebels and Clone Wars, or their new filmmakers like Gareth Edwards who’ve joined to work on the films, or Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow, they’re very nurturing of their creatives to expand the galaxy and tell new stories with their guidance. They’ve been great partners.

GamesBeat: I’ve always thought of the Star Wars canon as both a restriction and in some ways an assist.

Hennig: Any time you’re trying to solve a creative problem, you want constraints. A blank slate is paralyzing. People tend to do their best work within constraints, whether it’s creative or time or whatever. They’ve been incredibly generous and free with those constraints.

Of course, it can’t be a free-for-all. “This character can’t be there in that time frame.” They’re trying to juggle all of these stories, including the comics and the novels and the games, to make sure it’s all woven together into this correlated whole. It’s been incredibly humbling to be part of that process. I’ve been working really closely with them for more than a year, fleshing out the story and working with the story group.

Raymond: Amy’s basically down at Lucasfilm every second week.

Hennig: It’s not like going in and saying, “Hey, can we get a rubber stamp for this?” We bring our story and our artwork and Doug Chiang is basically our art director. He’s worked with George and worked with Ralph McQuarrie. He reviews our stuff and helps us iterate on it.

We work with the story group, sitting down with Kiri Hart and Diana Williams and Pablo Hidalgo and the rest of the team. We walk through our story and brainstorm. They say, “Well, what if we did this?” and it grows. We talk to the filmmakers as well. It’s an unusual creative relationship. Their whole spirit is collaboration. They don’t want to have everyone silo’d off working on their projects.

I was skeptical when I came in. “How good could this be? It’s the biggest IP in the world. It’s Lucasfilm and Disney and Electronic Arts.” But it’s been amazing. To be able to work with these people who only want to nurture new ideas and good ideas and protect their creatives—It’s not what you would expect.

GamesBeat: Outside of the movies, do you have any favorite Star Wars stories?

Hennig: I’m a huge fan of the Christmas special. Bea Arthur is actually the hero of our new game. I know that’s going to be controversial, but she’s amazing. It was an awkward motion capture session, because she’s dead. It was a Weekend at Bernie’s kind of thing.

Honestly, I’d say that Dave Filoni blows my mind. I don’t know if you’re watching Clone Wars or Rebels, but the man learned at George Lucas’s knee. He knows Star Wars like nobody. I love what he’s doing with Rebels. It’s a kids’ show, but there’s a reason it’s considered canon. He knows his shit. He’s so passionate, and he’s been so helpful to us.

He’s such a fan of this stuff. He can look at our stuff and—I know that if I get a twinkle or a smile out of someone like Pablo, who’s studied Star Wars for his whole life, and Dave and Doug Chiang, I know we’re doing okay. It sounds like PR, but they couldn’t have been more supportive.

I probably wouldn’t have taken the job. I came in skeptical. “I’m going to be constrained by this giant IP and everyone’s going to be telling me what to do.” But it’s been the opposite. Just opening up the doors, getting to go the archives—We’ve gone to the ranch multiple times and just stayed there to soak up the atmosphere, work in the library, pull out all of George’s reference books and think about our story. We’ve studied all of Ralph McQuarrie’s original art in the archives, thinking about how we can build on that. You end up kind of tearing up now and again, when it hits you.

GamesBeat: Have you ever worked with someone else’s IP like this before?

Hennig: No. I’m trying to think? No. But it’s like my favorite thing ever. Everybody says that, of course. But I was 12 when it came out. I remember—You only have so many crystal clear memories in your life. For some reason they stick. I remember sitting in the theater in 1976 with my best friend, and the trailer for Star Wars came on. I could probably pick out our seats in the theater. We turned and looked at each other like, “Holy shit. The world just changed. What the hell was that?” From then on it, that was all I could think about.

Again, I’m not the only one with that experience. My co-writer, Todd Stashwick, he was eight, and he had the same experience. So did so many other people. Something just clicked into place. We felt it even then.