When Kylo Ren said to let the past die, he probably wasn’t talking about those old Lego Star Wars games – the ones which already adapted the film’s original trilogy, prequels, and a chunk of the Clone Wars. But like a freshly-tweaked George Lucas special edition re-release, the Skywalker Saga does do something a bit like that.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga reviewPublisher: Warner Bros. InteractiveDeveloper: TT GamesPlatform: Played on Xbox Series XAvailability: Out 5th April on PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox
To be fair, those older games are some of the most technically outdated in developer TT Games’ portfolio. Time, console hardware and game design have all moved on, and The Skywalker Saga now stands as very different beast. After a lengthy and somewhat troubled development, TT Games has at last completed its nine-film compilation – but that is only half the story. For as long as you spend on the game’s main film storylines, you can also spend just as long aimlessly wandering through the game’s expansive array of planets, undertaking in the series’ largest collectible hunt ever.
The three Star Wars film trilogies can be played in any order, essentially giving three start and end points for your journey around the game’s galaxy. As ever, finished levels (there are five per movie) can then be replayed to unlock further secrets, while visited planets get unlocked on your galaxy map. With so much material to adapt, it’s perhaps unsurprising these shortcut through some of the saga’s less-vital sections, with the series’ typical warm humour used to lighten any of its darker moments. What is surprising, however, is how much the game relies on its open world in missions themselves.
Missions typically start and end somewhere in one of the game’s open world areas, often with a small task to do before the level begins proper. Sometimes action will take place in a bespoke, scripted area – such as onboard Episode 4’s Tantive IV, or in command of a Lego spaceship like Episode 2’s Coruscant chase sequence or Episode 8’s bombing run. But many other levels trace paths over the game’s open world areas, and are the worse for it.
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Overall, sections in these open world areas feel less interactive than the linear levels of old. There’s less to build, less to adapt and less to see change – and isn’t that the point of Lego? There’s also often a lot of walking, from one place in an open area to another. Take the game’s Episode 8 Ahch-To level, where Rey undergoes Jedi training. Her mirror-like Force vision in the Porg-ridden planet’s Sith cave offers up a neat piece of unique gameplay, but to get there and back requires you slowly follow Luke around the planet’s cliffs to get from A to B to wherever he parked his X-Wing to finish the job.
Lego games have always offered replayability, and that is certainly true for Lego Star Wars. If you’ve played the Lego series before you’ll know what to expect – several journeys through each story episode with different character abilities to unlock every secret, as you slowly unlock stud multipliers and grind out currency to buy characters and further upgrades. This is livened up by a definite boost to characters as you go through the game, with everything from walking speeds to spaceship laser power upgradable, and some nice class-specific bonuses for certain groups of characters.