EXCLUSIVE: Star Wars: Rise Against the Empire Creators Talk Disney Infinity Design Challenges and Fun

When Star Wars was announced as coming to Disney Infinity 3.0, fans went crazy, but not as crazy as those who would be making the game, they say. The addition of Star Wars allowed Disney Interactive to bring in new teams to take the series to new heights in every level of game design: look, gameplay, sound, the whole experience. For the new Rise Against the Empire playset, in stores now, the challenge was clear: make an experience based on the original trilogy that's both definitely Star Wars and also uniquely Disney Infinity. A large part of that challenge was in the creation of the vehicles in the game.

"Infinity as a franchise is really about exploring a world of toys in a fun way. As a game developer, that's really interesting. A lot of us have worked on the hyper-realistic end of the spectrum, so this is quite refreshing and challenging in a different way," Paul Ayliffe, Art Director of Studio Gobo told ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview. "Star Wars means so many things to so many people. It's an interesting design challenge to establish these as toys, to do something sort of whimsical with the Star Wars franchise."

The game's style is "really about simplification," and the art team started by trying to bring the vehicles into their simplest shapes. The real fun comes when figuring out how players will actually play with the toys, and adding humor into the process.

"We try to do as much toy research as we can," Mike Thompson, Game Director for the playset said. "Sound is a big part of it, too. What does a vehicle or building do when you fire at it and it explodes?" To that end, Thompson actually brought a toy company in to Studio Gobo to help them with design, making the toys work in-game as if they were also toys-to-life like the figures.

"The toy consultant would tell us that 'no, this wouldn't work if we were to mold it in plastic,'" Ayliffe said. "We tried to think of them as real toys, that we were then creating in the game."

One of those toys that has received a lot of attention is the AT-AT walker. The centerpiece of the Battle of Hoth from Empire Strikes Back, the AT-AT is an imposing, four-legged walking tank. Standing several stories tall, it can take all but the strongest of hits. In Disney Infinity, it's also an incredibly fun toy, with a remote control that can be popped out of the vehicle and used from a distance to wreak havoc.

"That actually came about by accident, to be honest. We have to set up a lot of debug tools when we're working through the game," Ayliffe said. "Those allowed us to look at the AT-AT remotely and control it. Then we said, hang on a second, why don't we actually offer this as a remote control feature in the game?" It's a gameplay element that has been lauded by fans, and also took inspiration from the early '80s toy "BigTrak," which allowed kids to input commands and see the toy move around. "We looked at physical toys like that, and the two ideas converged."

Thompson noted that everything about the AT-AT is "physically driven," and will actually react to the way individual players use it. The procedural animations were a major challenge, but "allowed us to do things you couldn't do with pre-scripted animations."

When Studio Gobo found out they were getting a large portion of Star Wars in Disney Infinity, at first it was just excitement and pressure. "Our first step was to find a way to get a whole lot of content, from Episodes 4, 5, and 6, and condense it while also making sure it made sense," Ayliffe said. "We collaborated really closely with Lucasfilm on that, on scaling it back but making sure it was something that they and Star Wars fans were happy with," Thompson said.

That meant streamlining the story a bit, and some things didn't quite get into the game's story as much as they would have liked.

"There were some big things that we thought we could cut a bit like Dagobah and Cloud City," Ayliffe said, explaining that the slower moments from the films don't necessarily translate well into an action video game. "I do think that Cloud City is a wonderful location, and visually we could've done something amazing with that."

Ultimately, the goal is to have fun – and let kids have even more fun. "We did a lot of playtesting with our target audience, the kids," Ayliffe and Thompson both told us. "It is really wonderful to see the reaction from a young audience with some of the stuff we put in the game."

The Rise Against the Empire playset taught the team a lot that they'll be able to bring into future development. "We're really pleased in what we've put together. We got back to this world of whimsy and humor through the eyes of a child in a way that was a bit of a return to form compared to our work on Guardians and Pirates. I'd like to build on that aesthetic, the humor, the interaction of play," Ayliffe said. "I would agree," said Thompson. "We want more involved storytelling overall going forward," and that's something they started with this playset.

Disney Infinity 3.0 featuring Star Wars is available now on most major gaming platforms. Rise Against the Empire is sold separately, and includes Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia character figures.