It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve seen exactly what I wanted to. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is set to be the greatest LEGO game and one of the greatest Star Wars games ever, and it will be available on the 5th of April. The Gameplay Overview trailer released shows a lot. An absolute trove of information that is sending me straight to hyperspace.
I’ve talked before in articles about my hopes for the game, and what I’ve seen meets those expectations. The largest part of that being the galaxy that has been crafted here. All of these locations that we’ve seen with various trailers look absolutely fantastic, and though there’s no telling yet just how big each of the various worlds will be, I’ve always held hope that the major ones will be huge.
Of course, it all depends on how many locations they have to work with. Somewhere like Kef Bir will obviously be smaller than Naboo, just because there’s so little to work with. I still hold hope we’ll be getting places the films never touched on with these locations. From the slight bit we see of Geonosis, that does seem to be the case, with Mace Windu fighting Geonosians within the rocky canyons – presumably on the way to the Petranaki Arena.
The worlds all look as you would expect them to, fully crafted in LEGO form (except the terrain, for obvious reasons). All the planets that will be in the game are sure to be great to explore. While yes, I do want to go to Naboo straight away, there’s other planets I’m interested in seeing. I want to explore the frozen wastelands of Hoth, to see what secrets they hold, and see what Kijimi holds beyond what we saw in The Rise of Skywalker.
To be fair, I want to give all these locations a good exploring, and that will be possible by progressing through the story. New planets open up as you visit them in the story of one of the Episodes, and it seems like I was right in suggesting that The Phantom Menace would take the story to Coruscant. The overview trailer shows Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan wandering around the city planet when it talks about the story, which means early access to what will hopefully be a very interesting place to explore.
And speaking of things I suggested might happen, it seems the levels are indeed used for those parts of the story that wouldn’t be able to be done in the open. The Tantive IV I’m sure won’t be freely accessible, so having it all be a part of a single level makes the most sense. Likewise for the Battle of Naboo, where that many droids on the grasslands in the open world would be too much to handle.
While you can only select the starting film of each trilogy to begin with, it does make the most sense with the storytelling. That’s not to say you can’t go between the trilogies, of course. As I said, it does seem that TT Games have put as much of the story as possible into the game, what with The Phantom Menace featuring Coruscant, and I am all for that. It allows for every part of the films to be featured while not ruining the pacing of them with unneeded fluff (looking at you, stocking the Falcon level of the LEGO The Force Awakens game).
A game isn’t going to be any fun without some good gameplay, and such is great here. There’s plenty of abilities to use per character class – which now serve more of a purpose than defining what weapon set they have. While yes, that is still the case, there’s plenty more each class is capable of. And each class is now able to be upgraded through finding kyber bricks to utilise even more of their abilities.
The combat feels more involved, with Force-users able to utilise the Force in more ways than before while in fights, along with pulling off strings of attack patterns to defeat enemies. All enemies now have health bars, so you can see how close to being defeated they are, but they will also react to where and how you hit them. I’m interested in seeing all the reactions – especially with the droids.
In fact, I really want to be a battle droid, just to listen to its comical reactions and chatter as it clanks along these planets. Yeah, I can’t help but love the goofs. Some of those abilities I mentioned character classes having also help in combat, such as the ability to sense where to place a shot for mass destruction of the enemy. While such is situational, it helps liven up the combat. Others, such as powered-up bombs, are less situational.
There’s also the wealth of characters to play as, exploring the galaxy as any of 300+ in the game. Both well known and meme-worthy candidates. We’d already seen Yaddle, but now we’ve got Jabba, Max Rebo, and even tiny Babu Frik. As for getting around, the ship combat has been shown off in a bit more detail, and it looks as good as I’d hoped it would. We haven’t seen as many ships as we have characters, but I’m hopeful there’ll be some wilder choices among them.
I’ve always stood by the fact this game will be the best LEGO game and one of the best Star Wars games, and we are very close to finding out for ourselves whether that is indeed the case. With just a month to go until the release date, we will all soon be exploring this blocky galaxy for ourselves after three years dreaming about doing just that.
Images Taken From:
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Gameplay Overview Trailer
