Star Wars’ Skywalker Saga is undoubtedly the strangest series of blockbusters in film history. Across the span of over four decades, we moved from a sci-fi summer epic with mystical space samurai, to a deeply political and infinitely questionable series of prequels, to a deflating sequel trilogy that was clearly ashamed of at least 50% of what had come before it. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga looks to wrap this odd legacy up with a family-friendly bow, and judging by our recent hands-off gameplay preview, it’s piecing those misshapen bricks together quite well.
From the originals to the prequels to the sequels
As its name suggests, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga features worlds, levels, and characters based on all nine mainline Star Wars movies. Everything from A New Hope to (ugh) Rise of Skywalker is present and correct here, with players able to choose between which stages they wish to tackle in which trilogy.
In the hands-off preview, I got to see new spins on a few familiar Star Wars scenes, along with brand new and distinctly uncanonical stages. The familiar included Leia taking on Stormtroopers and Darth Vader on Tantine IV, and Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting Count Dooku to free Chancellor Palpatine. The old scenes have been injected with typical irreverent LEGO humor — Dooku is cheered on by droids who shout words of encouragement like “you can do doo it, Count.” The new saw the player jetting off to a dance party in Hoth’s Echo Base, complete with dancing Tauntauns, disco lights, and pumping music.
LEGO games have always tried to replicate the feeling of playing with the actual bricks, most notably by letting players shove characters into scenes in which they don’t belong. That remains the case here, as Qui-Gon Jinn can be sent to search for R2-D2 in A New Hope’s Tatooine, or you can control Old Ben Kenobi or a rampaging Rancor in Coruscant. A huge emphasis has been placed on the differences between its litany of playable characters, who are divided into classes that now each have their own upgradeable stats.
There are core stats that can be upgraded, too, which improve every character’s attributes — an example shown was the player unlocking the ability to sprint faster, though there are some more fun abilities hidden away in these skill trees. These skills can be improved with the acquisition of Kyber bricks, a new collectible added to The Skywalker Saga.
Rancors and lightsaber combos
A switch to an over-the-shoulder, third-person viewpoint makes the differences between characters far more apparent. Gun-wielders engage enemies in cover-based combat, Jedi now somersault around like they’re in a Platinum Games action title, and extra special characters like the aforementioned Rancor can behave differently from everyone else in the line-up. There’s now a combo meter, too, with a series of five moves — whether that’s firing a blaster, swinging a lightsaber, or something else entirely — granting players a smattering of coins. These coins can then be used to purchase things like new characters or ships.
The camera’s repositioning also presents a big change to multiplayer, as previously LEGO games would switch between a shared screen and split-screen, but now it’s split-screen only. This appears to work fluidly, with a second player able to drop in and out whenever they like, being replaced by AI when they leave. I noticed that this AI often stood around awkwardly in the middle of the action, so it seems that solo players shouldn’t expect much from their CPU buddy. Players can still switch between these characters whenever they like, which proves integral to solving puzzles, such as Qui-Gon using the Force to lift C3PO to a Kyber brick on an otherwise unreachable ledge.
Space traversal has also received a big overhaul. Now there’s the addition of smuggler missions, where players can accept quests from NPC ships before engaging in an interstellar dogfight. Fittingly, quests given by different races will sometimes require the use of a protocol droid like C3PO to translate their language — it’s unclear if players can expect more circumstances in which the protocol droids use their translation abilities, but it’s a neat touch that further helps to diversify each class’ strengths and weaknesses.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga looks to be a natural step up for LEGO games, dividing its ample number of characters into distinct classes, differentiating the way each class controls more than ever before, and building on space combat and traversal all with easy drop-in multiplayer. I’ve yet to get hands-on time with the game, but this early showing makes me hopeful that this once mighty series is more Empire Strikes Back than it is Rise of Skywalker.
