Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga is coming!

 My Lego Star Wars franchise can't be this good!

So after a great many delays, a herculean about of build up, and more than a few rumours of this game being nothing more than modern day vapourware, we have our proof: Lego Star Wars the Skywalker Saga is a game. I say that to release the speculation of what feels like several lifetimes as well as in celebration for what can only be a good thing. Star Wars games have been in hibernation whilst the Sequel Trilogy did it's job in reminding everyone why Star Wars doesn't belong in theatres anymore, but now that the massacre is over the world was starting to heal, and a Lego game is the watershed moment we've been waiting for to signal that process in full swing. Of course, technically a new Lego Star Wars game has already been released recently, but I don't have an apple arcade account so I guess I'm just going to act as though 'Lego Star Wars: Castaways' doesn't exist, huh? Who needs it- the big one is on the horizon!

And may I just say that The Skywalker Saga is looking fine. As in, so much better than any Lego game has the right to be. Could this be one of the mythical times where delayed development time has genuinely gone into making the game as good as it can feasibly be, rather than just to disguise a messy late-game shift in direction that's all but guaranteed the final product will be a mess? Well I don't know but if this gameplay video is anything to go by, then I guess not. (Although we live in a post Cyberpunk-world, so I forever take any gaming marketing with entire wagon's worth of salt.) My expectations were more just impatient itches up until now, waiting to smuggle that which felt due to me, but after this little gameplay drop: heck, I might actually want to get this game because it'll be good. I want to get a kids game: let me sit on that one for a minute.

But can I really blame my self, or you me, when gameplay presentation is just doing the most like it does? I'm not just talking about the vast improvements in visual design in order to mimic this fidelity that I think is what the Lego movie simulated, although that does look great, I mean in content, in scope, and even in gameplay! The last time I looked enviously at the gameplay of a Lego game I was in Secondary School- what a time to be alive! It's looks as though TT games are committed to making this not only the best game they've ever put out for any property, but also a title catered to all the diverse fans they have and the one's they have yet to receive. I've never really thought of TT as a huge company, so god knows how they've managed to juggle all these development vectors at once, but god-bless them for the attempt. Because whatever drops on April 5 (We got a release date!) nothing will change the decently stunned wonderment I'm regarding the studio with today. I am impressed.

Structure is the big one; this is an open world, baby! One with missions baked into over 20 worlds we'll get to visit and explore at our leisure whilst playing as whoever we want out of 400 characters! If you struggle to quantify that number of characters like I did, Lego Star Wars 1 had 59, Lego Star Wars the Original Trilogy had 114, The Complete Saga had 160, and somehow Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens had 200. (That doesn't even make sense to me.) This one beats them all out, soundly. We'll have multiple areas of planets to explore, space travels and random space battles to pad out the time in-between, allegedly multiple-era locations, side quests, collectibles, basically too much game. We're getting too much game. And I want exactly too much. So I'd say we're on the right track.

The combat systems of these games have been entirely reworked, which is something that literally no one needed to do because these games are marketed towards actual babies. What kid is going to appreciate combo chains, or free-form force manipulation? Let me repeat that- this games has free- form force manipulation! That kind of stuff was cutting edge tech back in the days of Star Wars the Force Unleashed, now the Lego games are rocking them and my world doesn't make sense to me anymore. Space combat is now in-the-ship 3D environment flying, rather than the top-down or on-the-rails set-up these games used to employ. There's a cover system for shooting. Abilities for inside and outside combat are influenced by the RPG-lite class system- yes there are tiny RPG trees attached to a class system in this game. That probably isn't even going to prove worth the time it took to code for how little it'll influence enjoyment, but they did it! (Maybe the delays gave the team too much time.) 

Yet I haven't even mentioned the best feature. The be-all end-all, the cream of the crop. Do you want to know what these mad lads did? As shown very briefly in the trailer, under the extra features tab, these absolute saints threw in the ability to switch on an optional 'Mumble Mode'. And yes that is how it sounds- for those like me who grew up on the old school Lego games wherein all the cutscenes were performed with grunts, mumbles and charades, this mode brings that back. I can't even believe they would go that far for us old fans, that's beyond the freakin' pale. To actually hire voice actors and write vocal jokes throughout your entire game, and then recognise your audience and include an option to switch that off for nostalgia's sake... I try not to feel anything but mistrust towards developers and publishers nowadays, but that is undeniably sweet and attentive. I feel seen.

Of course, just because the team are rolling up on their release date and thus have likely long moved onto final polishing, that doesn't mean the content grind has paused. Already they've revealed the first few character packs hitting the game, because 400 ain't nearly enough, apparently. Bad Batch, Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Rogue One- all of them are getting their trademark characters thrown into this game, hinting at a potential for lone-form support. Are we expecting this to be a prelude for full-blown extra location packs down the line? Who can say; I just know that a Lego-version of the Mandalorian series' would be an instant buy. The Spider Asteroid episode with little red Lego nubs as the eyes? Get out of here- that would be so cool!

I'm excited, heck I'm giddy, and we're talking about Lego. If this world has any sense left in it I'd slap myself silly and wake up, but It's been so long since I've felt such pure and genuine awe at the amount of effort a game seems to have. Now whether or not the title is what it's selling itself to be... well that remains to be seen. But I'm really not looking to now have my heart broken on this one TT, so I'd very much appreciate it if you guys were totally on the level with this game. Assuming they are, and this game is really the swan song of the studio like they're setting it up to be, then forgive me if this entire blog goes dark throughout the beginning weeks of April as I reconnect with my presumed long-dead childhood innocence. 

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.

The Magic of Lego Star Wars

Brick by brick.

Video gaming is very diverse and eclectic hobby that draws in folk of all walks of life. You'll find players old and young, occidental and otherwise, all drawn by the allure of interactive entertainment media, and such media is often adjusted accordingly. Be that as it may, that doesn't mean that games aimed towards a younger demographic cannot still strike a cord with all gamers due to it's quality, purity of vision and/or enjoyability factor. (And yes, I am trying to justify why it is that I still play Lego Star Wars games.)

Lego Star Wars is a surprisingly weird concept when you stop and think about it. "What if we completely retold the events of the original and new trilogy without words and using only Lego characters and blocks to make up the world?" It's the kind of concept you'd expect to be spat out in the Lego marketing room after a caffeine-fueled and unproductive 12 hour brainstorming session, the kind of suggestion that would then be immediately laughed off by the rest of the room as too incurably stupid to ever make a profit. And yet 13 years later we are looking at one of the most successful gaming kids franchises of all time, spawning a formula so popular that it has been translated to every relevant media product with a sliver of a chance to be marketable to children. We've seen Lego Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Batman and The Avengers, and next year we'll finally get 'The Skywalker Saga' to wrap up what Lego started all those years ago.

So what exactly is it about the Lego formula that has proven so effective to the public all of these years and, more importantly, can it be replicated? In recent years we have seen that the frequency at which we see new Lego games has started to let up considerably, this year all we got was the adaptation of 'The Lego Movie 2'. (Which I can only imagine disappeared with as much of a whimper as that movie did.) It's a farcry from their heyday when you couldn't go a single trade show without seeing the latest Lego game up front and centre. So what happened? Did the trend start to get old in the eyes of younger gamers or did something change in the formula to suck away at the magic a bit? I intend to look at all that today and more!

Firstly I feel that it's important to establish, regardless of how crazy it sounds, that TT games existed before Lego Star Wars. (I know, I know!) In fact, they were established a full year beforehand in 2005 through a merger between Giant Interactive and Traveller's Tales. (The people responsible for that fantastic Toy Story 2 game adaptation.) So they came from a storied history of turning movies into actually viable movie tie-ins, assisting with a few of the Crash Bandicoot games and taking the rap for Sega when it comes to Sonic R and 3D Blast. (I wish I could say that those are the worst Sonic games, but 'Sonic Eraser' exists.) The Lego company approached them in late 2005 with their idea to make a game based on their current partnership with Lucasfilm and the rest was video gaming history. TT would end up putting out a game that garnered mass praise and sales for everyone involved and their future history was sealed as them being 'the Lego games guys'. Sure, they put out a few well-received independent projects since then, but they are always dragged back to their Lego overlords at somepoint.

From a conceptual perspective, I've always thought that 'Lego Star Wars' was an ingenious idea to pursue. As a series that thrives on the audience's ability to believe in the impossible, Star Wars has always appealed to younger folk in particular. This was especially true in 2005, when George Lucas has just gone through considerable effort (and ridicule) in marketing his new movies towards kids and reshaping the old ones to the same ends. Marrying that world with concepts as innately imaginative and kid friendly as Lego and gaming, and your left with an recipe for commercial success. All TT had to do was find a way to translate all of the story of the Star Wars movies into Lego form, something that had become particularly tricky to pull off ever since Lucas leaned a bit too hard on the 'exposition' faucet when writing the prequels' scripts.

The solution that the team settled on was smart elegant and, most importantly, kid friendly. Firstly, they would make use of that iconic Star Wars scroll text to establish the pertinent information behind each and every chapter, and Secondly, they would play out every cutscene in adorable Lego mime. That means that everytime two characters needed to converse, it was done wordlessly using gestures or slapstick in a manner universal to all ages. This actually allowed for kids, like myself, to loosely follow along with the story of Star Wars which can seem impenetrable from some angles. (Like the endless trade negotiation talk that littered the prequels.) In later games this would branch out a bit, with little sound effects and grunting, mostly to humorous effect, but it wasn't until the 2010's when TT just gave up and started using soundbits. A decision which I never agreed with and still feel slightly betrayed by. (Incidentally, the soundbit decision is also directly responsible for 'Lego Lord of the Rings' being pulled from store shelves. Licensing rights can be tricky like that.)

This creative approach towards storytelling blended into their core design philosophy as TT tried to inspire the same sort of creativity that was indicative of the Lego brand. This translated into one of the key features present in every single Lego game, the ability to build. Often as you traverse through the levels in Lego games, following along the trail and breaking objects along the way for studs, you'd find certain assortments of discarded blocks that were still buzzing with building potential. The player's can then dive into these and reassemble them into useful tools or structures to assist their progress, adding a visceral sense of collaboration from the player's end.

Combat was also a factor that underwent particular consideration when it came to constructing this game. It had to feel fun and easy to pick up, afterall, so they went for the single button system which worked so well for the first two Fable games. The nuance came in the timing of button presses alongside the weapon in that character's hand and the context of the situation. Delay your lightsaber swings by a second and you could pull of a powerful combo, or press the fire button as a laser is coming at you and your character will quickly dodge out of the way. It was a system that was both simple enough to be intuitive and just big enough that player's would learn a few quirks if they played around with it. Of course, there was no real depth to combat itself, but in a game like this there didn't really need to be.

The best part of this game series for me, and the thing which has kept me coming back all these years later, is that addictive collect-athon angle that all of these games mastered. Every single Lego game is absolutely dripping with collectibles and all offer cool rewards for going out of your way for them. First there are the characters who come with unique abilities and appearances and must be purchased in the Cantina or unlocked; then there are the 10 'Minikits' in each level, which resemble Lego sets and must be hunted down. (Often using those abilities from the characters you just unlocked.) Then there are the Red Bricks, which unlock cool cheats for the players to mess around with. Later games would also bring in the elusive golden bricks which were awarded for completing other collectible sets and would go towards unlocking exclusive bonus levels. Oh, and then there is the 'True Jedi' mode which requires players to gather a certain number of 'studs' in each level in exchange for another gold brick. What I'm trying to convey here is that the Lego games are literally some of most replayable games on the market and are practically brim with content for everyone to enjoy.

Every level needs to be played at least twice to get everything (although probably a lot more times, just to be sure.) and, due to the quality level design, most players have no issue making that sacrifice time and time again. So many levels are dripping in secrets that can only be accessed by unlocking 'free play', (The ability to play through that chapter with any character, as opposed to the ones relevant to that point of the story.) and a decent amount of them have alternate pathways and areas to take advantage of. The Lego Star wars games, and all the Lego games for that matter, all exploited the 'scavenger hunt' desires of folk to keep us hooked for weeks on end, and it must have worked, seeing how successful these games were.

All things must come to an end at some point and for some reason, however, and for TT games their hot streak was ended by a mixture of their own over-saturation and the machinations of Disney. You see, TT were flooding the market year after year with their Lego games to the point where it became impossible for people to keep up with them all, especially as their core Kid audience started to grow up and seek interest in other games. Matters were not helped by the Disney acquisition of Star Wars which, due to their infamous purging of the larger canon and tight-lid they kept on the franchise, meant that TT couldn't work on as many Star Wars games as they used to. At this point they had already milked the franchise to the point where they were making their own stories for these games, so it might have seemed wise for they to start diversifying, but the audience wasn't really there. Don't get me wrong, Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman were still huge hits, but they didn't draw in the crowds like Star Wars did and that was beginning to become more apparent as the years drew on. It got to the point that, when we finally did get another Star Wars movie out of Disney, TT couldn't wait for a trilogy and jumped on the chance to adapt it, reasoning that they could add the newer movies later as DLC. (A plan which didn't, ultimately, pan out.)

The last big fork in the road for TT was the fact that their target demographic, kids, have all recently been stolen by a new titan of the kids gaming world; Fortnite. Ask any kid under the age of 13 what Lego Star Wars is and you'll probably be met with a blank stare before they go back to playing Fortnite on their phones, that's because TT's brand has lost all of it's visibility. Now that Fortnite is here to stay, it seems to be sucking all the air out of the room for child targeted games and that has been an absolute nightmare for potential competition. Lego Star Wars slipped from the spotlight for a few years, but that was enough for their throne to be co-opted, and I don't think that Lego has the ability to reclaim that seat.

Come 2020 we will get the chance to see once and for all how much the Star Wars brand is worth in the land of the plastic, as everyone gathers to see what is next for the world's fifth largest franchise.(behind Mikey Mouse, Winne the pooh, Hello Kitty and Pokemon.) Unfortunately for TT, I don't think that the success of their next game lies in their hands at all. Star Wars as a brand has lost a lot of reverence due to the performance of recent movies and despite the success of breakout shows, like the Mandalorian, many see this next movie as make-or-break for the franchise. If 'Rise of the Skywalker' (terrible name, by the by) does poorly then it might spell disaster for TT who are riding on the viability of the brand, or it might not, one can never be certain with these things. If I'm right, however, then it might behoove the heads at TT to construct a plea to J.J. Abrams to do all he can to get this next movie right, he just might be their only hope.