LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga may not be the greatest game ever made, but it certainly lived up to its potential in a big way. Over 400 iconic playable characters and vehicles, 24 separate planets with huge open environments to explore, and over 1000 collectibles make it one of the biggest Star Wars games ever made. With each movie being represented with a handful of charming missions, this seems like the definitive celebration of all things Star Wars.
While the gameplay is much more fleshed out than previous LEGO titles, with more button inputs being used for combat, it's still fairly simplistic. Still, despite this simplicity, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's gameplay still feels incredibly fun throughout the entire journey, and the game's numerous quick time events are a good example of how its more simplistic nature is far from being a disadvantage.
QTEs' Fall From Grace
Quick time events used to dominate video games of the early-mid 2000s. Where some titles integrated their cinematic set pieces within the gameplay itself, such as the Uncharted series, some other titles chose to use quick time sequences to retain a level of interactivity while the scene played out on-screen.
While some games handled QTEs a little better than some, the oversaturation of them soon led to gamers becoming pretty sick of these sequences, with many believing that it actually took them out of the action more than it engaged them. These sequences were especially jarring in games that otherwise had pretty great action mechanics. For example, the Star Wars: Force Unleashed series had some pretty fun hack-and-slash gameplay, so when boss fights ended up boiling down to overly-long quick time events, the wind was taken out of many players' sails.
Nowadays, most games tend to stay as far away from quick time events as possible. At most, modern games will ask the player to repeatedly press a button to open a door or climb a rope, and that's the extent of a game's QTE offerings. Most modern games have learned that the player is most engrossed when they are allowed to directly engage with the set piece using the same mechanics provided in the rest of the game.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's QTEs Are Kept Fun
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has quite a few quick time sequences, but the vast majority of them are kept fun. Every duel or boss fight in The Skywalker Saga switches between fighting the boss with standard attacks and combos and doing a quick time event, but while these sequences are frequent, they don't really detract from the overall experience.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's quick time events help to make each boss fight feel suitably cinematic while also providing a good amount of interactivity for the player. Having these quick time events sandwiched between fully controllable combat sequences goes a long way in keeping the player engaged, as the gameplay is being varied consistently.
These quick time sequences are also extremely quick, lasting just a few seconds and only requiring a few button inputs before they're over, and the player gets to resume their usual combo chain. In doing this, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga manages to avoid the pitfalls of those early-mid 2000s games, cleverly using its quick time events to actually enhance the gameplay experience as opposed to having them take away from it.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.