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Lego games are like comfort food: reliable, good for the soul, and simple. Audiences tend to know what developer TT Games has in store with each installment of its immensely popular Lego series. While it’s not meant to be an insult, the word familiarity does spring to mind whenever I boot up a Lego game. Regardless of the franchise, it’s to be expected that there will be an expansive roster of characters pulled from whichever pop culture property is being represented, destructible objects that burst into the eponymous bricks, and a healthy splash of humor.
Sometimes, though, TT Games manages to innovate with its classic formula and do something exciting and new. That is very much looking to be the case with its upcoming Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. This latest entry in the long-running series returns to that famous galaxy so many fans know and love, except this time TT has worked to bring all nine of the mainline Star Wars films into a single, epic adventure. To get a sense of the sort of scope that The Skywalker Saga is striving for, watch the teaser trailer, below:
The media’s time with the game was quite a bit more in depth than this stinger. We filed into a small theater within the convention center and were treated to a running build of The Skywalker Saga. A carousel at the beginning showed off the nine films from which this game pulls (including Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker! No spoilers to report, however). All of the movies can be selected from the outset, so there are no restrictions on which portion of Star Wars lore that fans can partake in first. Want to go chronologically from Episode I through to IX? You can! Return of the Jedi is your favorite in the series? Start there! That’s actually where our preview began, and TT gave us glimpses of combat and vehicle gameplay on the dusty dunes of Tatooine.
While the team at TT knows that fans will want to jump in at the points in the story which interest them most, what is restricted to start is how much of the Star Wars galaxy can be accessed. This time around, every inch of the various planets that have graced the nine films is interconnected. It’s possible to travel to virtually every location within the franchise in The Skywalker Saga. Tatooine, Hoth, Naboo, Jaku, Endor, Dagobah, all of it is there and waiting to be explored. However, in order to see it all, players must go through each movie represented on that carousel we talked about earlier. Thus, fans are truly incentivized to engage with every episode in order to gain access to the entirety of what The Skywalker Saga has to offer.
One element of the game that TT was very proudly showing off was its intricate use of Lego blocks. Every ship is constructed from hundreds and thousands of the iconic bricks. When destroyed, the plastic building blocks go scattering in countless different directions. It’s this attention to detail that makes the Lego games so great in the first place, but TT seems to have taken things to a whole new level, this time around. To say that The Skywalker Saga is shaping up to be gorgeous would be an understatement. This is easily one of the most visually striking Lego games yet made. That said, this early build of the title did have quite a bit of stuttering and screen tear present while being shown. Hopefully, this will be resolved by the time of release, especially on Switch, which is the least powerful of the current crop of home consoles.
As ever, there are scores of secrets to discover and tons of characters to fool around with. There was no talk of DLC at the presentation, but TT is promising a roster of hundreds and multiple planets to toy around on, so out of the box The Skywalker Saga should have plenty to satiate even the most ravenous of Star Wars fans. Combat is said to be expanded and more exciting than ever, and the series’ delightfully quirky humor is also going to be on full display once more. With the Star Wars films going on a bit of a hiatus until the next slate hit theaters, this will likely be the last time in the foreseeable future that TT gets to work in the original universe of Star Wars films. So far, it’s shaping up to be one heck of a sendoff. We’ll keep you updated as we get closer to The Skywalker Saga’s 2020 release!
