Since the debut of the first teaser trailer for Andor, many have commented on the impressive way the upcoming Star Wars show looks. As it turns out, the team behind Andor is forgoing ILM’s impressive CGI technology in order to utilize a more traditional way of shooting.

Starting with the first season of The Mandalorian, LucasFilm has used a new technology called StageCraft which utilizes an immersive CGI screen that wraps around the set to create the faraway worlds of Star Wars. This technology has been used for The Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan along with other Disney Plus shows. But Andor will buck this trend.

“We haven’t been working with Stagecraft at all for our show, no,” says Andor executive producer Sanne Wohlenberg in an interview with IGN at Star Wars Celebration. “It is the first Star Wars show for Disney Plus that has not been leaning into that technology.”

Wohlenberg says that the decision to shoot on camera was simply a result of Tony Gilroy’s writing, which didn’t lend itself to StageCraft. Instead, Andor will utilize “as much on camera” filming, combining location shooting and backlot sets.

Andor star Diego Luna chimed in on the different shooting styles, citing his work on Rogue One which he says “was allowed to be different and we kind of have the same look.”

“We can be different," Luna says. "Rogue One in a way was kind of an homage to the original Star Wars, a New Hope, and that kind of very theatrical way of shooting where stuff is actually there and you can interact with that. And I think we had a lot of that on this one and it’s beautiful as an actor to react to real stuff and to play the game with tons of actors.”

While StageCraft has been a game-changing technology for Hollywood, finding its way into all kinds of shows including How I Met Your Father, traditional shooting is still around and Disney is not marrying its Star Wars shows to StageCraft if creators have a specific look and style they’re going for.

Check out the first trailer for Andor as well as the rest of our coverage from Star Wars Celebration, including a breakdown of the Andor trailer, and how Deborah Chow utilized a Vader specialist on set for Obi-Wan.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Lucasfilm Publishing is gearing up for Phase 2 of the ongoing Star Wars: The High Republic initiative, and Marvel Comics is adding to that tapestry with two new series set centuries before the Skywalker Saga.

As part of Star Wars Celebration 2022, Marvel revealed the next two High Republic comics debuting in the fall. The monthly series Star Wars: The High Republic will relaunch with a new #1 issue in October. The series brings back writer Cavan Scott and artist Ario Anindito, though the cast and setting will both change dramatically.

Phase 2 of the High Republic is delving back even further in the Star Wars timeline, 150 years before the events of Phase 1. The series will introduce a new Jedi character named Vildar Mac and is set on Jedha, the holy moon introduced in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That means fans will get a chance to see what Jedha was like before the Empire wiped out the Jedi and began strip-mining their temples. Though even in this era, Jedha is a dangerous world where civil war is brewing.

Alongside this relaunch, Marvel will debut a new four-issue series called The High Republic: The Blade in November. This series is written by The High Republic: Light of the Jedi's Charles Soule and drawn by Marco Castiello (Star Wars: Darth Vader).

The High Republic: The Blade serves as an origin story for the character Porter Engle, who appears as a much older Jedi Master and cook in the Phase 1 era. The series will reveal how Engle honed his reputation as the "Blade of Bardotta."

Cavan also previously penned the High Republic novel The Rising Storm. Scott discussed the book and the appeal of expanding Star Wars through novels and comics in a 2021 interview with IGN.

For more Star Wars Celebration news, find out more about Jon Watts' newly confirmed series Skeleton Crew and see the new teaser for Star Wars: Andor.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Lucasfilm Publishing is gearing up for Phase 2 of the ongoing Star Wars: The High Republic initiative, and Marvel Comics is adding to that tapestry with two new series set centuries before the Skywalker Saga.

As part of Star Wars Celebration 2022, Marvel revealed the next two High Republic comics debuting in the fall. The monthly series Star Wars: The High Republic will relaunch with a new #1 issue in October. The series brings back writer Cavan Scott and artist Ario Anindito, though the cast and setting will both change dramatically.

Phase 2 of the High Republic is delving back even further in the Star Wars timeline, 150 years before the events of Phase 1. The series will introduce a new Jedi character named Vildar Mac and is set on Jedha, the holy moon introduced in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That means fans will get a chance to see what Jedha was like before the Empire wiped out the Jedi and began strip-mining their temples. Though even in this era, Jedha is a dangerous world where civil war is brewing.

Alongside this relaunch, Marvel will debut a new four-issue series called The High Republic: The Blade in November. This series is written by The High Republic: Light of the Jedi's Charles Soule and drawn by Marco Castiello (Star Wars: Darth Vader).

The High Republic: The Blade serves as an origin story for the character Porter Engle, who appears as a much older Jedi Master and cook in the Phase 1 era. The series will reveal how Engle honed his reputation as the "Blade of Bardotta."

Cavan also previously penned the High Republic novel The Rising Storm. Scott discussed the book and the appeal of expanding Star Wars through novels and comics in a 2021 interview with IGN.

For more Star Wars Celebration news, find out more about Jon Watts' newly confirmed series Skeleton Crew and see the new teaser for Star Wars: Andor.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Valve has responded to a growing Team Fortress 2 community movement in protect of the game's massive botting problem, and is reassuring players it is "working to improve things."

In a tweet today from the official Team Fortress 2 account, Valve said "TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things." It is the first tweet from the account since July 2020 (not counting a single retweet of an official Valve tweet from October 2020).

TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things.

— Team Fortress 2 (@TeamFortress) May 26, 2022

This comes in response to the hashtag #SaveTF2, which the Team Fortress 2 community has adopted in the last few days to draw attention to a massive botting problem that has been ongoing in the game since 2020. The hashtag has been adopted by a large number of Team Fortress 2 streamers and is described as a "peaceful" protest about the state of the game. The bot infestation has caused Team Fortress 2's casual servers to be overun with spam messages, flawless snipers, and more recently bots that can crash entire games or orchestrate coordinated kicking of human players. Previously, community leaders organized an emailing campaign to reach out to Valve and media outlets to shed light on the issue.

While individuals using the #SaveTF2 hashtag may have different motives, largely the group has simply been hoping for some level of acknowledgement from Valve, ideally coupled with a fix. Others hope that renewed attention on Team Fortress 2 may result in the game getting regular updates again given the large community clearly still interested. Despite being over a decade old, Team Fortress 2 remains incredibly popular and has consistently averaged between 70,000 and 90,000 concurrent players every month for the last year.

For now, it's unclear what improvements Valve has up its sleeve, but hopefully they can get Team Fortress 2 into a more stable state.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Valve has responded to a growing Team Fortress 2 community movement in protect of the game's massive botting problem, and is reassuring players it is "working to improve things."

In a tweet today from the official Team Fortress 2 account, Valve said "TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things." It is the first tweet from the account since July 2020 (not counting a single retweet of an official Valve tweet from October 2020).

TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things.

— Team Fortress 2 (@TeamFortress) May 26, 2022

This comes in response to the hashtag #SaveTF2, which the Team Fortress 2 community has adopted in the last few days to draw attention to a massive botting problem that has been ongoing in the game since 2020. The hashtag has been adopted by a large number of Team Fortress 2 streamers and is described as a "peaceful" protest about the state of the game. The bot infestation has caused Team Fortress 2's casual servers to be overun with spam messages, flawless snipers, and more recently bots that can crash entire games or orchestrate coordinated kicking of human players. Previously, community leaders organized an emailing campaign to reach out to Valve and media outlets to shed light on the issue.

While individuals using the #SaveTF2 hashtag may have different motives, largely the group has simply been hoping for some level of acknowledgement from Valve, ideally coupled with a fix. Others hope that renewed attention on Team Fortress 2 may result in the game getting regular updates again given the large community clearly still interested. Despite being over a decade old, Team Fortress 2 remains incredibly popular and has consistently averaged between 70,000 and 90,000 concurrent players every month for the last year.

For now, it's unclear what improvements Valve has up its sleeve, but hopefully they can get Team Fortress 2 into a more stable state.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

The Mandalorian executive producer and writer Dave Filoni has revealed that he has hidden a tiny Akira Kurosawa figure on every episode he's directed of the Disney+ show.

Filoni was speaking at Star Wars Celebration and shared that he chose to place this figure of the legendary director on set as he was a huge influence on not only Filoni, but on George Lucas himself.

"One thing I do in particular that I don't think anyone will ever see, but a lot of my influence comes from obviously George, and then George's mentor is Akira Kurosawa," Filoni said. "And so I've done a lot of study of that and talking with George about it.

"So I have a really small Akira Kurosawa figure, and he is in every episode I've directed somewhere in the set. I hide him in there, and when we shoot an episode I'm directing, he's always right by the monitors to remind me of a lot of his principles of filmmaking that he gave to George so he's another influence on what I'm doing.

"He's in there, but it would be very hard to see him. And there are little Pittsburgh homages, because I love my hometown, so you'll see little golden triangles here and there."

Kurosawa is known for such films as Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress, and the inspirations of those movies in particular and his wider work can be clearly seen in that galaxy far, far away.

Fans of Kurosawa will be happy to know that Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow was also hugely inspired by Kurosawa and "gritty, poetic westerns," so that influence will be felt in this new series as well.

For more from Star Wars Celebration, check out the release date and first trailer of Star Wars' Andor, the official teaser trailer of Willow, the first image from Indiana Jones 5, and the confirmation that the third season of The Mandalorian and the premiere of Ahsoka will arrive in 2023.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The Mandalorian executive producer and writer Dave Filoni has revealed that he has hidden a tiny Akira Kurosawa figure on every episode he's directed of the Disney+ show.

Filoni was speaking at Star Wars Celebration and shared that he chose to place this figure of the legendary director on set as he was a huge influence on not only Filoni, but on George Lucas himself.

"One thing I do in particular that I don't think anyone will ever see, but a lot of my influence comes from obviously George, and then George's mentor is Akira Kurosawa," Filoni said. "And so I've done a lot of study of that and talking with George about it.

"So I have a really small Akira Kurosawa figure, and he is in every episode I've directed somewhere in the set. I hide him in there, and when we shoot an episode I'm directing, he's always right by the monitors to remind me of a lot of his principles of filmmaking that he gave to George so he's another influence on what I'm doing.

"He's in there, but it would be very hard to see him. And there are little Pittsburgh homages, because I love my hometown, so you'll see little golden triangles here and there."

Kurosawa is known for such films as Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress, and the inspirations of those movies in particular and his wider work can be clearly seen in that galaxy far, far away.

Fans of Kurosawa will be happy to know that Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow was also hugely inspired by Kurosawa and "gritty, poetic westerns," so that influence will be felt in this new series as well.

For more from Star Wars Celebration, check out the release date and first trailer of Star Wars' Andor, the official teaser trailer of Willow, the first image from Indiana Jones 5, and the confirmation that the third season of The Mandalorian and the premiere of Ahsoka will arrive in 2023.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Hayden Christensen spoke to IGN and revealed that director Deborah Chow had a "Vader movement specialist on set for us to make sure we stay true to the Vader we know and love."

IGN interviewed Christensen at Star Wars Celebration 2022 and he shared how much importance the team behind Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi Series is putting on staying true to the legacy of Darth Vader.

"Because this is a character that existed before I was even alive there was a continuity there that we needed to adhere to," Christensen said. "So I think we all felt it was very important to get that right. Deborah [Chow] had a Vader [Movement Specialist] on set for us to make sure we stay true to the Vader we know and love.“

Christensen had previously shared other details of what it was like to return to Darth Vader after 17 years, including that it was "surreal" but "natural."

He also revealed that he binged the Star Wars animated shows to prep for his return to the legendary character.

The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are set to debut on Disney+ on May 27 and be sure to watch our look at Obi-Wan's story so far and Ian McDiarmid on whether Palpatine will appear in the series.

For more on Star Wars Celebration, check out the release date and first trailer of Star Wars' Andor, the official teaser trailer of Willow, the first image from Indiana Jones 5, and the confirmation that the third season of The Mandalorian and the premiere of Ahsoka will arrive in 2023.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Hayden Christensen spoke to IGN and revealed that director Deborah Chow had a "Vader movement specialist on set for us to make sure we stay true to the Vader we know and love."

IGN interviewed Christensen at Star Wars Celebration 2022 and he shared how much importance the team behind Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi Series is putting on staying true to the legacy of Darth Vader.

"Because this is a character that existed before I was even alive there was a continuity there that we needed to adhere to," Christensen said. "So I think we all felt it was very important to get that right. Deborah [Chow] had a Vader [Movement Specialist] on set for us to make sure we stay true to the Vader we know and love.“

Christensen had previously shared other details of what it was like to return to Darth Vader after 17 years, including that it was "surreal" but "natural."

He also revealed that he binged the Star Wars animated shows to prep for his return to the legendary character.

The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are set to debut on Disney+ on May 27 and be sure to watch our look at Obi-Wan's story so far and Ian McDiarmid on whether Palpatine will appear in the series.

For more on Star Wars Celebration, check out the release date and first trailer of Star Wars' Andor, the official teaser trailer of Willow, the first image from Indiana Jones 5, and the confirmation that the third season of The Mandalorian and the premiere of Ahsoka will arrive in 2023.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Star Wars legend Ian McDiarmid likes the idea of a Palpatine prequel series.

During a panel at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California, the actor was asked about rumors of an Emperor Palpatine series starring Tom Hiddleston (prompted by fanart that circulated a few years ago).

“I think it’s a very good rumor,” he said. “I think you could do that with practically any of the characters to whom it has not been done already. We saw [Palpatine] rise when he was 50, didn’t we? What did he go through to get there, and how did Sidious come about? I think all of that is very interesting, and no doubt there are people as we speak somewhere around this city thinking along those lines. It would be great.”

Of course, this is just McDiarmid speculating, probably. But if this ever came to pass, this wouldn’t be the first Star Wars prequel series to head to Disney+.

The upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series takes place in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, with the Jedi master hiding out on the desert planet Tatooine following Order 66.

Additionally, Andor will tell the story of Cassian Andor five years before the events of Rogue One.

Would McDiarmid consider returning to his iconic role if such a prequel ever was made?

“Anyone younger than 78 is probably more suited to the part than me,” he said. “And here comes the qualifying bit: although, have you seen what they can do with faces? I’d better leave it at that.”

Considering the furor surrounding digitally de-aged characters, I can’t help thinking that a young Palpatine played by McDiarmid himself would be a bit of a misfire...especially after the less-than-satisfying return of the Emperor in The Rise of Skywalker.

Either way, it looks as though a Palpatine prequel might be a bit of a pipe dream for now… and I can’t help thinking that’s definitely a good thing.

A new Andor teaser trailer was released earlier today, giving us our first glimpse at the upcoming Star Wars series. Additionally, The Mandalorian Season 3 was confirmed and will debut on Disney+ in 2023.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.