With Gamescom Opening Night Live, we finally got another look at the new LEGO Star Wars game, and I have to say – I just could not contain my excitement at what we were seeing. I’ve wanted to see more of this since Gamescom – which was the last time a trailer had released for this game. And what we have seen is everything I have been expecting this LEGO game to be.
TT Games have been talking of how much of a reinvention this game is compared to all the others, and now we can see that they haven’t just been bluffing. That there was weight to their words. I’ve always believed in them from right the way back to E3 2019 where the game was first revealed, and journalists had closed access to a demo of the game. Those impressions were what first got me excited, dreaming of when I could be exploring as they had, and concepting my own ideas as well.
Despite the delays, despite things being said about troubled development and possible closures, I’ve always held hope that this will be the best LEGO game and one of the top Star Wars games. And now, it will soon be in our hands. The date should now be set in stone, and Spring 2022 will see the release of this game. I daresay it could be possible we’ll get a release around Star Wars Day, which will be just grand.
The combat we see throughout the trailer gives a great idea of just what kind of movement options we have while fighting against bosses or just in general. All characters are more mobile than ever, able to vault over low cover to quickly push the assault and perform dodge rolls to quickly get out of the line of fire. And such cover options can also be destroyed to deny the enemy such defences.
When it battles against bosses, it seems we’ll have a lock-on camera, where it will move to always keep the enemy in sight. Whether it’s a choice we have remains to be seen, but it should make those fights easier. Jedi can use the Force much as we’ve always seen from LEGO games, picking up objects around the field of battle. But now there seems to be more we can do than just chucking those objects around.
Right from the off, Maul appears to fight Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and during that battle, we see Obi-Wan perform a front flip to get back into the action, but then he pulls a battle droid head towards him. But then… he appears to be getting ready to baseball bat it to Maul? Or maybe Obi-Wan has a lock onto Maul and this is the animation he has to push a small object toward a foe? Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it would be cool to see the ability to mix Force and ‘saber attacks during a combo.
That does seem to be possible, as seen with Rey during the fight against the Praetorian Guards, where she appears to have pulled one of the guards toward her ‘saber, performing a strike upon them (which seems to have the wrong animation play?), before pushing them away but keeping them in a grip as she goes in for another attack. It’s possible this all could be part of a special context-sensitive attack, as is the case with Wicket and the Stormtrooper.
That Stormtrooper appears to have made a close-quarters attack upon Wicket – who is facing away from the trooper. As the attack plays out, Wicket jumps up, backflipping onto the trooper’s head, which causes an explosion as Wicket backflips back onto the floor. What’s interesting is that Wicket already seems in the process of starting that first backflip as the trooper goes in for the attack, which does support the idea of it being a perfectly timed button press to activate the counter.
As I’ve said, the locations all look great. And there’s plenty of them that we see throughout the trailer. Naboo, Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Hoth, Endor, the asteroid field of Geonosis… and even underwater. The details that have gone into these worlds to make them feel alive is also present in the trailer. There’s people and animals hanging around Tatooine, junked vehicles littering the wastes of Jakku, vehicles flying in the skies of Kashyyyk. And each world has that natural feel to it that makes them feel like real places.
Sure, there’s studs littering every part of these worlds that you can see, and obvious gamey additions such as climbing handles and ziplines, but aside from those things, they feel authentic to how these worlds have appeared in the movies. Getting right into the details of what makes these locations feel unique. Hoth even manages to feel imposing with the cold creeping in on the edges of your view. Special mention goes to the skies as well, as they look amazing, fitting right in with the tone of these planets.
In terms of what we’ll be doing as part of the story, this trailer did seem to put a bit of focus on that. It made sure to highlight some of the major battles we’ll be undertaking, such as the aforementioned Maul vs Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, but also Yoda vs Palpatine, Anakin vs Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Anakin (though we don’t see him) vs Dooku on board the Invisible Hand, and the two phases of Obi-Wan vs Jango.
Along with those are the Jedi vs Droids at the Geonosis Arena, Leia fighting troopers on the Tantive IV, Finn fighting Phasma, the fight over the Sarlacc pit, and others. Dagobah is featured a bit, though whether the training of Luke will be contained to a level or fully completed in the open world, we have little idea at present. Like with a lot of what we’ve seen. I’m also concerned the Attack of the Clones content might be a bit too Obi-Wan focused once again. I guess only time will tell.
There seems to be plenty of ways to traverse through these open worlds, with Luke riding a dewback, C-3PO driving an AT-RT, and jetpacks that seem to control like ships? I’m pretty certain it would, or at least a way to swap between vertical and horizontal control, as we see Rey using one to fly toward Niima Outpost. However, what’s more than likely is this is just a similar thing to a zipline, as the take-off point is a platform, and the flight does seem more of a glide. Either way, more options for traversal is always good.
The last thing I want to talk of is the galactic map and pause menu. The design of it looks like it’s coming from a holographic projector, and that is intentional, as characters pull out just such a holo-device when you access the menu, as though they are accessing and can see the menu too. Then we see the galactic map, which has the available planets pretty accurate to how they appear on the full version of said map – complete with the sector names as well.
Each sector has a percentage to completion, and I would guess it goes deeper into detail when you swap to an individual system’s map. While it fast travel to a system (and potentially individual landing port) is available, I would guess you can still do things the manual way should you prefer. After all, there are some who enjoy the journey to get to their destination (I pretty much never fast travelled in Starlink, despite the options for doing so being similar to what we see with this game).
While some of the icons on the menu are easy to guess, such as character and vehicle access, others are more difficult to determine. Based on The Incredibles game, I’m sure I know what two of those icons will be. One will be where quests are tracked, giving information on where you need to be going and doing. The other would be the level access, and I guess even a quick swap between times. It’s been said that the world changes based on which Episode we use to play, so it would make sense to give us an easy way to swap – even if it has to go into a loading screen and teleport us to the nearing landing port.
There’s a lot to be picking over with this trailer, and plenty more speculation to be doing. I’m excited to see what is next revealed, and at some point I do hope we get a demo we can play – even if it’s just allowing us to explore one of the systems in the game. Not that I really need it to convince me to buy it, since I know I’ll be getting it. Twice, even. It would be nice to experience just a bit of the full game before we are allowed to be unleashed upon it, though.
Images Taken From:
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Gameplay Trailer 2
