This was said to be the most ambitious game that TT Games had ever developed, one that would change how the world sees their brand of LEGO games. And it’s true. Such has indeed come to pass. There’s a lot more hype and praise for this game that I’ve noticed compared to any previous game. Three years since its announcement, it is now here.
And what a game it is. The Skywalker Saga delivers the evolution of the formula that the series needed. I’ve spent time across that three years detailing concepts of what I’d want to see from it, and while there are parts of the game I come across and think to how those concepts would have looked, I don’t hold a grudge to TT for what they provided. It is a fantastic experience, and one I would not change.
To start, I’ve got both the Switch and Xbox Series versions of the game. It was always my intention to do so, and I’m happy to support the effort that has gone into this game. On the Switch, I started with the sequel trilogy, having waited for midnight to arrive to have a bit of time on the game as soon as it became available. And even from that short playtime, I could tell the game held a lot in store for me.
The story is drastically cut in a way that every important piece of information is delivered to make each story easy to follow while also throwing in the humour that TT Games always excels in delivering. That was very clear from the first scenes where the interrogation of Poe happens on the surface of Jakku after the devastation wrought to Tuanul village.
In the hour I stayed up playing, I completed three levels. I was rushing the story rather than taking the time to appreciate the game, but I wanted to see a fair bit of that story before calling it a night. By doing so, I could tell that these levels had a focus to them. They were designed to replicate the set pieces that would be difficult to implement in the open world. Or to take the action to places not in the open world.
The levels are greatly designed, though some are rather shorter than you would expect. The first of The Force Awakens seemed to breeze by, with Poe and Finn working together to head through the Finalizer toward a TIE Fighter to escape. But better levels soon showed themselves, with the Falcon’s flight from Jakku and the Rathtars on the Eravana bringing a lot more involvement.
I ended that session having arrived at Takodana. After sleeping, I picked it up again, finishing up The Force Awakens and moving onto The Last Jedi. Here, I started to explore the planets more rather than rushing the story, and it here that the brilliance in the design work that has been put into the game shows the most. There’s a lot of detail to these worlds, so that when walking through them, it feels like you are at these locations.
That’s not to say the levels don’t have that same sort of feeling, but there’s a greater focus on making them flow like linear set pieces, even if there are some branching paths at times. The open world also presents a lot of challenges and quests to partake in. Most of them are simple puzzles. Press buttons or shoot targets in a set time, or even just make sure to press and shoot them all.
The quests involve NPCs, meaning more of the wonderful humour the writers have provided. Featured within the trailers is the Stormtrooper filing the incident report over who shot first. Han or Greedo. He tasks you with getting the evidence from six people who witnessed the event. While I’m not going to spoil the conclusion, their answers and the end result were entertainingly great.
These quests have you doing more than just collecting evidence, however. You can be doing dangerous escort missions, deliveries across systems, or even feeding duty. Some quests will only activate once other puzzles or quests are complete. There’s a kyber brick within Unkar Plutt’s storage that, when collected, brings a Happabore into the storage unit to eat all the food within. That then opens up a new quest to find the Happabore and convince it to dig up the food it buried.
I’ve talked before about the formula upgrades to the combat and camera, but using them really highlights the difference between this and the old way. The camera being closer enables aiming to be more prominent in the attacks of those with long range weapons, with the ability to combo various attacks together for melee allowing for more variety to how you attack. Small tip, though. Don’t turn any of the aim assists off. They’ll make hitting smaller targets a lot easier.
After more than a week, I’ve seen the story of all the episodes, with more progress made on the Switch version than the Xbox one. Since I’m streaming all the Episodes using the Xbox version, I’m not playing it unless I’m streaming it. And speaking of the streams, you can see me doing so live on Twitch, or take a look at this playlist from my stream archive channel, where all of them will be added.
If you want to experience the game for yourself, however, I can certainly say that The Skywalker Saga is well worth the money. While it’s not as interconnected as I had hoped, it still provides a great way of exploring the galaxy of the Skywalker saga, and is still as great a LEGO game as I could have wanted. One of the best Star Wars games as well? I can certainly see it being so.
Images Taken From:
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga | Original Screenshots (Nintendo Switch #1, Xbox Series S #2)
