Many LEGO Star Wars fans are heartened by the notion that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga may finally return to the public eye at Gamescom. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's multiple delays have left fans hanging, but advertisements for Gamescom with ties to LEGO Star Wars suggest the game is making a comeback. News about The Skywalker Saga is overdue, as the game's incredible scale and mechanical overhauls compared to previous LEGO games mean it has a unique potential to change the course of the franchise. As exciting as The Skywalker Saga itself is, LEGO fans are also left wondering what developer Traveller's Tales will do next.
Traveller's Tales has no shortage of options, whether it chooses to revisit a classic licensed LEGO game or pick up a new IP. However, The Skywalker Saga sets up for another LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars game particularly well. Although The Clone Wars is over, it has a ton of cultural capital in the current state of Star Wars. The well-received Disney+ original series Star Wars: The Bad Batch is made possible by The Clone Wars, as are many other upcoming Star Wars shows. It'd be great to see a second LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars game adapt later season of The Clone Wars, as well as certain segments of shows like The Bad Batch that follow in The Clone Wars' wake.
The Case for More LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The Clone Wars already got one LEGO adaptation thanks to LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars. This game released in 2011 and adapted both the original Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie and the first two season of the Clone Wars show. On top of offering a charming way to experience these Clone Wars stories again, LEGO Star Wars 3 added some great ideas to the LEGO Star Wars IP. It had a few levels inspired by real-time strategy games where players got involved in large-scale battles, simulating the experience of Jedi leading clone armies.
However, part of the central premise of LEGO Star Wars 3 also highlights one of its biggest flaws. The LEGO adaptation of The Clone Wars isn't representative of the entire show; in fact, at this point, it's a very limited depiction of the seven-season Clone Wars. There's a ton of great stories that LEGO Star Wars 3 never got the chance to adapt because it was created so early in the show's life. A new LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars game could tackle a ton of the show's newer stories and bring them to life.
The timing of another LEGO Star Wars game also couldn't be better. Once Traveller's Tales releases LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, it'll know how fans feel about the changes it's introducing to the LEGO Star Wars games. A second game in the series so soon after could not only further capitalize on The Skywalker Saga's overworld and combat changes, it could even improve on them.
The Clone Wars Still Has Tons of LEGO Potential
Many of the most meaningful stories told by Star Wars: The Clone Wars come from its later seasons. For instance, Ahsoka Tano generates some fantastic stories as she starts to question her relationships with the Jedi Order and the Republic. Her adventures and encounters with characters like Asajj Ventress would make great LEGO levels. Similarly, Darth Maul's return to power and his travels with Savage Opress result in plenty of LEGO Star Wars-worthy adventures. LEGO games famously like to focus on at least two characters for two-person multiplayer, so the Maul-Savage dynamic is perfect for LEGO Star Wars.
It's not just Star Wars: The Clone Wars that could contribute to another adaptation of the show. There's some influential spin-offs of the show that could offer additional arcs to a second LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars game. Star Wars: The Bad Batch tells new stories with familiar characters introduced in the Clone Wars show; its roster of rogue clones supplies plenty of playable characters for LEGO levels. A second LEGO Clone Wars game could even pick up storylines from other successor shows, including Star Wars Rebels, which has direct ties to the events of The Clone Wars.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch is an excellent show on its own, but it's largely a product of Star Wars: The Clone Wars' success. It's likely to direct anyone who hasn't watched The Clone Wars back to the show that made it possible, just as other Star Wars shows can be traced back to The Clone Wars' characters and plotlines. All these shows could be brought together under the roof of another LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars game, since they're essentially family.
LEGO Star Wars Needs a Big Next Step
The Skywalker Saga sort of begs for Traveller's Tales to opt into another LEGO Star Wars game before moving to another IP. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has a lot of big ideas and will play differently from previous LEGO games, but it remains to be seen how well all of Traveller's Tales' ideas work. It'll be easier for the studio to perfect The Skywalker Saga's new mechanics with a second LEGO Star Wars game rather than immediately trying to reconfigure them for another IP. Thanks to The Clone Wars and successor shows like The Bad Batch, Traveller's Tales has a great prompt for another game.
Although The Skywalker Saga has suffered some major delays and slowed down the generally unstoppable LEGO game franchise, one has to imagine that LEGO games will get back on track in the future. Traveller's Tales could get back on its previous pattern of releasing LEGO games annually once it's used to The Skywalker Saga's new standard. It's great to see how Disney is making the most out of everything that The Clone Wars contributed to Star Wars. Hopefully, Traveller's Tales gets to make use of The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, and other Clone Wars successors in a new LEGO game.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.