Star Wars: The High Republic is almost here, watch the trailer now

Star Wars: The High Republic is almost here, and a new trailer will get you ready for the new chapter in the expanding Star Wars universe.

Rather than being a single project of its own, The High Republic is a new sub-franchise of its own within the Star Wars saga. Its story takes place hundreds of years before the events of the films, and it will play out across an assortment of stories, novels, and comic books, all of which are intended to be suitable for a younger audience. The first parts of The High Republic are set to start rolling out tomorrow on January 5, and Lucasfilm celebrated the eve of its arrival with a live-streamed panel that included the new trailer.

Lucasfilm also revealed that The High Republic will be split into three phases: starting with Light of the Jedi, then Quest of the Jedi, and wrapping up in Trials of the Jedi. All the products rolling out tomorrow are only part of the first phase, so we have a lot more stories of ancient Jedi heroics ahead of us.

That said, the trailer ending with talk about taking "control of the Force itself" doesn't sound like the typical kind of all-things-in-balance Jedi talk we're used to. With KOTOR (mostly) relegated to Legends status, The High Republic will be our new earliest set of stories in the official Star Wars Canon - hopefully Lucasfilm takes that opportunity to tell all kinds of new stories.

See where The High Republic will fit in with the rest of the story with our guide to the Star Wars timeline.

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.