Lego Stars Wars: The Skywalker Saga

The legends said you would return, but I must confess: I never truly believed... 

There are few titles out there that are a guaranteed hardwire directly into my heart through the back-door artery labelled 'nostalgia'. Games that, from their very name alone, can perk my head up and have me all over them, drooling with anticipation and memories-to-be-made, with only so much as a small tease to keep me hooked. In fact, right now I'd say the only three game series' which could manage such a feat would be Metal Gear (which is so unbelievably dead right now that I can't imagine falling into that trap anytime soon), Persona (For the love of god give me Persona 5 on PC, ATLUS! I'll do anything!) and LEGO Star Wars. Yep. Not even if Knights of Old Republic turned around and slapped a surprise KOTOR 3 announcement, would I lend it such unchallenged reverence as I do to LEGO Star Wars. (Although that might be because EA holds the rights to KOTOR, and EA currently has no decent RPG developer within their stable.) And I might go so far as to extend that to maybe one other LEGO sub-division in LEGO Batman (especially given the fact that I've literally been replaying that game series over the past week) but it's the world of LEGO lightsabers, blue glowing build piles and increasingly more complicated Death Star levels that has me hooked.

My history with this series actually goes all the way back to the original on the PS2 days, back when I was still fresh in love with Star Wars. I would consume anything from that medium and it would trickle down towards me thanks to a Father who loved the series too. I would get Star Wars Bounter Hunter in this time, (I need to emulate that someday. Such a classic) LEGO Star Wars, and even a few of those legendarily weird Star Wars titles that people debate the existence of. That's right, I used to own Super Bombad Racing and Star Wars Demolition. (Those goes back into PS1 actually.) But LEGO Star Wars, alongside Star Wars Battlefront, were the gems of my collection in the days that I got them. Battlefront would become my dad's favourite game to play, LEGO Star Wars would become my favourite, and when I got Lego Star Wars 2 The Original Trilogy, that would be the middle ground we'd play together. As you can likely deduce; this series means a lot to me, emotionally.

But even divorcing that sleight context from the whole affair, Lego Star Wars was the first example for me of a 'forever game' before I even knew what that term meant. The sort of game I could come back to again and again in perpetuity, driven by an engine that seemed to say 'yes' to me as much as I wanted it to. Were there secrets and collectibles to return to levels looking for? Yes. Was there enough sprawl to your levels for me to go off and create my own fun, such as pretending to be a clone troop fighting across Federation trade ships? Yes. Could I even go so far as to design my very own Jedi and jump across these levels living the Star Wars power fantasy that every kid of that age has? Of course, go nuts. I think I might have rivalled my several thousands hours playing Skyrim with the amount of times I kept coming back to LEGO Star Wars and reliving my fantastic golden dream. No other LEGO game quite captured that exact charm for me, except Batman, (I never had the chance to play Lego Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, though. They might have been good) so I've yearned for that sprawling majesty ever since.

Thus when I heard that TT Games were moving on to covering the new trilogy I was beyond excited, although confused about why they were going one movie at a time. I mean, I loved more LEGO games, but I couldn't be focusing on one narrative like this was some petty story game, I wanted to jump around from Episode to Episode, crafting my own stupid events on the workbench in my imagination shack up in my noggin. And so I eventually figured that I was better off waiting until they finished the movies so that I could pick up the 'collection pack' or whatever they ended up doing. As you probably know, that ended up not happening. Whilst working on a Last Jedi pack, plans changed and the entire project was directed into creating Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga, a reworking of the entire Star Wars movie franchise in Lego form to create the largest game TT have ever made. So the disappointment from the cancellation news didn't last too long, at least not in this neck of the woods.

And since then it has been silence, crippling, aggravating, silence. Don't get me wrong, I understand what incredible feats of engineering these games are, what with their tactile level design, heavily destructible environments, near-endless replayability, I recognise that all takes time; but good god it felt like they announced the game the same day the project was greenlit, because we had been waiting a hot minute for anything resembling an update. But that doesn't mean the team didn't want to waste our time by announcing DLC. Yep. DLC for a game that doesn't even have a release date. Ya'll serious? Now we could stew in our lack of patience whilst ruminating on the fact that Rogue One, Solo, Mandalorian and Bad Batch would all be getting extra paid content at some point whenever this game launched, also 'at some point'. What a time to be a ravenous fan of this franchise, a time where we were being poked and prodded to see how much we could take without breaking and loosing our damn minds.

Yet I speak of the past, because the wait is oh-so-nearly over. Recently at Gamescon our frustrations were rewarded with an honest-to-goodness look at the meat of what this game is, this New Hope for the Lego Stars Wars Universe, Episodes 1-9. A complete trailer, gameplay and all, covering the breadth of the franchise, and from the very get-go my reaction was "Oh, they're remaking the originals". Yes, I know I might have been late to this particular revelation, but for some reason I just assumed this upcoming game was going to be a repackage of Lego Stars Wars 1 and 2 with a new 3rd era tacked on top for completion's sake. But I may have been feeding my own misconceptions there. Instead, the team have made Episode 1 and 9 from scratch with their modern design philosophies and I am... scared. Excited, but very scared.

What if they screw it up? What if the simple fun of those original games gets lost beneath cinematic sequences and gimmick new minigames that aren't as good as the developer thought they were? Granted, TT themselves have never given substantial fuel to feed these doubts, but isn't it just the pattern of modern storied game developers to screw everything up? Play things too safe or veering too far off the beaten course, and who knows what we'll be getting? Well, in their defence, what I've seen so far is more cool than worrying, but who can rightly say from but a single trailer? The graphics looks perfect, the animations are wonderful, the gameplay seems to have been touched up, the humour is... different, (I preferred when they didn't speak) and I have no idea what that galaxy-map stuff was all about but I want to find out! It just feels like everything is riding a pinprick's edge from tumbling into mediocrity, and currently I've no earthly idea whether or not it'll balance or fall.

One thing I do know, however, is that for this game to finally get a release date is a miracle worth celebrati- Spring? Spring 2022? All these years and you couldn't even hit December? Heck, Spring isn't even a date, making it seem like they still haven't finalised and it could be pushed back even further! Good god, what are they doing over there; genetically cloning a real living LEGO model of Rey to sell with every copy of the game? Wow. At least this means the final game is getting it's polish, and that when it does arrive, it'll be every bit that spotless LEGO experience we remember from our youths. (Except for LEGO Batman, which is unplayable without VSync) But then I did say this series would receive 'unchallenged' reverence, did I not? I didn't think trusting in this game would be as much of a gamble as it's turning out to be, but I'm throwing in the chips. I want to be excited, and from the little we've seen I think that excitement is warranted. Welcome back LEGO Star Wars, I've needed you in my life.