The galaxy is yours in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga!
Experience memorable moments and nonstop action from all nine Skywalker saga films retold with signature LEGO humour. Out today on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4 & Nintendo Switch.
It’s been such a long wait that it now seems almost unbelievable that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is finally upon us. It’s arguably the biggest LEGO video game release in the last decade or so, bringing the action back to where the modern adventure titles started – the Star Wars universe. It’s not just the franchise of choice that makes this game special though, it’s also the next big evolution in LEGO gameplay and its new-gen console debut. So what can we expect from LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga that takes it beyond anything we’ve seen from a LEGO game to date?
The Biggest LEGO Adventure Yet
It might seem obvious given that it’s a title spanning nine entire Star Wars films, but LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a big game. Not only does it cover an enormous chunk of the Star Wars universe but it’s absolutely bursting at the seams with a ridiculous amount of content for players to get stuck into.
On top of the core missions, huge hub worlds across a multitude of planets in each film offer players the chance to explore to their heart’s content, picking up collectibles and finding optional side quests to complete. One look at the huge, explorable galaxy map is enough to send completionists into a spin. This is certainly a title that’ll keep players of all ages going for a very long time, and that’s before the already-announced downloadable expansions start to fold the other Star Wars films into the mix.
A New Hope Perspective
One look at the game in action and it’s obvious that this isn’t the same LEGO gameplay you’ve come to expect from the series. In one of the biggest shake-ups the games have seen yet, The Skywalker Saga features a proper third person camera that’s freely controllable – putting a much bigger emphasis on the action. Not only does this make everything feel even more immediate, but puzzles have even more room for creative solutions and makes everything feel even more expansive and detailed when exploring all of those planetary hub areas.
This is a LEGO title that finally feels like a proper action-adventure game, updating pretty much every mechanic to suit the change in perspective and allow for more freedom, more detail and more awesome around every turn.
Fights With More Force
Combat in The Skywalker Saga has seen a complete overhaul, replacing the simplistic button mashing of the past with a much deeper systems both in melee encounters and at range. Different inputs create different, dynamic combos in close-quarters combat whether it’s hand-to-hand or in iconic lightsaber battles, and you’ll often even need to pay attention to telegraphed special attacks and quicktime events that help to keep the action varied and interesting.
Characters with blasters now get an over-the-shoulder camera for shooting that represents a massive improvement over the basic shooting mechanics of previous games. With the ability to freely aim, utilise destructible (and rebuildable!) cover and the surrounding environment and rack up stud-increasing combos. It’s much more up-close-and-personal and representative of a modern third person action game, and enemy AI even responds more naturally to players that don’t shake up their strategy as well as having their own different weapon types and approaches.
The Shiniest, Dirtiest Bricks You’ve Ever Seen
Along with the shift in perspective comes a visual presentation that’s a huge leap above what’s come before. Especially on new-gen consoles, where the increased attention to detail is allowed to shine in higher fidelity than ever. Traveller’s Tales has gone all-out with revamping the LEGO experience to take full advantage, with more dense and detailed environments, lush lighting and lovingly-recreated and animated minifigure characters that even get dirty and scuffed in response to the action.
Cutscenes look equally incredible, retelling iconic moments from the Star Wars films with more expression and humour than ever. The game features full voice acting to compliment both scenes that are straight out of the films as well as extra bits of lore and fanservice that even pull from plot threads in other parts of the Star Wars media canon, and character animations both in story scenes and gameplay are an enormous step up from prior LEGO games.
Build Your Own (Brick) Path
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga also puts more control in players’ hands than ever in how they experience the game’s narrative and create their own experiences – starting with the order of the iconic films themselves. Right from the beginning the choice is yours as to which film/s you tackle first, meaning you can jump right into a favourite, start from the chronological beginning, go in release order or anything in between.
On top of that, players will have regular opportunities to make choices about how to tackle certain situations both from a gameplay approach and in the context of what’s happening in the story. The RPG elements continue too with a hefty upgrade system allowing players to spend collected “Kyber bricks” on class-specific bonuses. These include things like being able to bypass security terminals, increase movement speed or pull off special combat moves. Giving players all of these tools and options is a far cry from the mostly-linear progression of previous games.
Want to see even more? Check out over an hour of direct-feed gameplay from our recent hands-on, as well as our written preview here.
The galaxy is yours in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga! Experience memorable moments and nonstop action from all nine Skywalker saga films retold with signature LEGO humour. Out now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4 & Nintendo Switch. Buy it HERE.
