When LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga first got announced, it was already clear that it would be a LEGO Star Wars game unlike any other. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga set out to compile all nine of the main Star Wars movies, marking one of the first times that all three Star Wars trilogies would be unified under one roof. Travellers' Tales is no stranger to adapting large numbers of Star Wars movies at once, but The Skywalker Saga still seemed like a pretty ambitious project. Still, Travellers' Tales is undeterred, and it seems like fans will finally be able to play through all of these Star Wars stories in 2022.

It's not just the amount of adapted content that defines The Skywalker Saga, though. It's famously making a ton of changes to the traditional LEGO game formula. Everything from the game's combat to its exploration seems like a major departure from traditional licensed LEGO games, resulting in The Skywalker Saga looking more like a Star Wars game than a LEGO game. In the long run, this seems like a good thing for the franchise. By delving into the aesthetics and playstyle of other Star Wars games, LEGO Star Wars and its LEGO siblings could get a lot of valuable inspiration for future games.

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Star Wars Inspires New LEGO Combat

Princess Leia shooting at Stormtroopers in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

Perhaps one of The Skywalker Saga's biggest selling points is its improved combat. Traditionally, LEGO games have very simple combat; each character either fires their ranged weapon or swings their melee weapon repeatedly when players hit the attack button. Beyond a few means of grappling with enemies or using character-specific abilities, combat was simple. In The Skywalker Saga, however, melee characters have light and heavy attacks that they can string into unique combos, while ranged characters use a third-person camera to shoot at enemies. The result is that The Skywalker Saga seems to have a much more dynamic and detailed combat system.

These approaches to combat feel a lot more like a traditional Star Wars game. Anyone who played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed can attest to the intricacies of the game's combat, for instance. Players are encouraged to weave Starkiller's lightsaber attacks together with his various Force powers to tear through the galaxy. Fortunately, The Skywalker Saga's trailers suggest that Jedi will play a lot more like Starkiller than early LEGO characters. It seems like players can use the Force to manipulate their environment in much more detail in The Skywalker Saga, potentially using objects as projectiles between lightsaber swings.

The third-person camera for LEGO Star Wars characters with blasters should feel familiar to Star Wars fans, too. For example, the Star Wars: Battlefront shooter games frequently allow players to use a third-person camera, looking over the shoulder of their Clone, Rebel, or Stormtrooper as they charge into battle. The camera should be a major boon to The Skywalker Saga. Third-person cameras allow for more accurate shooting and immersion than the LEGO franchise's traditional fixed perspective. An additional result, however, is that the game feels less and less like what fans traditionally picture when they imagine a LEGO Star Wars game.

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Exploration Lends Skywalker Saga More Star Wars Vibes

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The Skywalker Saga's approach to a LEGO Star Wars overworld also makes it seem more like a Star Wars game than a LEGO game. In most LEGO Star Wars titles, players have a hub based on a familiar location from the movies that the game adapts. Some examples of hubs include the Mos Eisley Cantina and Dexter Jettster's diner. From there, players choose a level to go out into the actual game world and start playing. The Skywalker Saga instead bills itself on a huge overworld composed of a couple dozen planets and moons from the Star Wars universe. Players can run around many of these worlds freely, completing various bonus objectives and seeking out the next level. It's a much more liberated and relatively open-world approach to a LEGO Star Wars hub that could give players a lot more to do than usual.

A lot of Star Wars games encourage players to explore the galaxy freely in a similar way. For example, in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, players are encouraged to revisit planets they've already been to once protagonist Cal Kestis learns certain abilities. With the right abilities, Cal can unlock secrets that were inaccessible to him before. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic serves as a good example too, featuring several planets that players can fly between in the Ebon Hawk, with a chance of special encounters happening in outer space. Between all the planets players can explore and the spaceships one can enter, The Skywalker Saga's overworld sounds closer to its peers in Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi: Fallen Order than ever.

The Skywalker Saga Uses Star Wars Well

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All of these similarities to traditional Star Wars games don't mean The Skywalker Saga has completely abandoned the LEGO Star Wars identity, though. There's lots of details and design choices that make it a LEGO game through and through. For instance, the lighthearted tone and persistent comedy that LEGO games use in retelling Star Wars movies still shines through in The Skywalker Saga. There's also still a lot of basic LEGO gameplay elements that keep LEGO Star Wars intact, like breaking down LEGO objects and building them back up into something new. Even if it's a very different game from its predecessors, there's no mistaking The Skywalker Saga's identity.

Still, The Skywalker Saga is increasingly similar to more serious Star Wars games. That's a good thing for Skywalker Saga, and it could be valuable for the LEGO games as a whole. Most LEGO games are pretty simple, which makes them easy to get into, but their gameplay can be shallow because of that. The Skywalker Saga's decision to implement and simplify design hallmarks of other major Star Wars games could serve future LEGO games well. They could similarly use simpler versions of other action-adventure games mechanics, adding more depth to LEGO gameplay without becoming complicated or intimidating. It's great to see Travellers' Tales test the limits of the LEGO Star Wars series; hopefully The Skywalker Saga's experiments pay off.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga releases in early 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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