LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga shook up the entire LEGO formula and serves as the biggest innovation the series has seen in years. Traveller’s Tales utilized an entirely new engine for the LEGO games, the fighting mechanics were made more in-depth, the hub world was expanded to include multiple large scale explorable planets, the camera was changed to a third-person viewpoint, and the character roster was expanded to over 380 different playable characters. While this is all impressive and a huge step for the LEGO games, all of this innovation left behind one of the most critical aspects of a LEGO game, and that is its levels.
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How LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga’s Levels Work
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has the tough job of adapting all nine mainline Star Wars movies into one game. Previous LEGO Star Wars titles had only adapted six of the movies, but Disney’s sequel trilogy added three more that needed the LEGO treatment. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga accomplishes this feat by telling the story of each movie in the open-world hub and over five levels each, which is down from the six levels each film received in LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. While The Skywalker Saga only has one less level per movie compared to its predecessors, the way Traveller’s Tales chose to tell the story in these levels leaves much to be desired.
In previous LEGO Star Wars titles, the focus of the game was on the story levels. The hub worlds were barebones versions of Dexter’s Diner or Mos Eisley’s Cantina that only served as a spot to select missions, purchase characters, and view minikits. In recent years, Traveller’s Tales has been crafting larger open-world hub worlds to explore. and with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, it made the hub-worlds even larger. This presented Traveller’s Tales with an opportunity to not only tell the Star Wars story in the levels, but also to tell it using the beautiful hub-worlds that it created.
While it is great that these recreations of Star Wars planets are used to their full potential, the levels just end up feeling lackluster. Before, many of the major plot beats were told in the levels themselves. Players had to fight their way out of the droid control ship in The Phantom Menace, battle in the skies over Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith, and traverse the deserts of Tatooine in A New Hope. Now, some of the biggest plot beats have been relegated to the open-world sections instead of the levels, and some parts like the battle over Coruscant have been stripped out entirely. This makes the movies feel fast and the levels feel short. On top of that, players cannot replay certain plot beats unless they start up a whole new game due to the fact some story is only in the open-world.
The Next LEGO Game Needs to Focus on Levels
There are many things that draw people to LEGO games, from the playable characters to the fun-filled LEGO humor. One of the most memorable parts of LEGO games are the exciting levels that players have to get through to progress through the story. Many players have great memories of fighting their way through Tantive IV, using gunships to take down Droid control ships, or fighting over Coruscant. While LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga does have some fun levels, the majority of them pale in comparison to games that came before.
Players want to be able to play through story beats and replay them over and over again until they are bored or have all the collectables. Locking certain story moments behind the open world sections removes an important aspect of the LEGO games for many people. On top of that, the levels in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga just feel shorter than levels from previous LEGO games. While the game that Traveller’s Tales crafted feels and looks very impressive, taking the focus away from the levels ensures that it loses something that made the older LEGO games shine.
Traveller’s Tales shows no signs of stopping as it gets ready to create the next LEGO game using the systems it built for LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. As it looks to what is next, it should really consider putting the focus less on the open world and more on the replayable levels. Doing so could help Traveller’s Tales make the perfect LEGO game.
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