The upcoming LEGO Star Wars game “The Skywalker Saga” shapes to be a truly unique experience compared to previous LEGO titles!
The release of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is getting closer with each week that passes. In January 2022, the official release date was announced. Now, a “Behind the scenes” video was published on the official LEGO YouTube channel, revealing new details about the creative process.
LEGO video games are known for their fun gameplay and clever jokes. All of their games implement that strategy. However, this new project is described by its creators as something very ambitious and we get to see a few of the reasons why.
“As soon as we started talking about doing a new LEGO Star Wars game, the ambition swelled, because as fans, we love all the movies and to have the opportunity to tell the whole saga from Episode l, all the way through Episode lX, we knew we had to take it further than we’d ever been.”
After a few minutes of watching the trailer, you realize the amount of effort put into it. Every planet, vehicle, creature and character were created precisely thanks to the access LEGO developers had to the Lucasfilm libraries.
They mention the importance of storytelling in Star Wars and because it is a LEGO game it allows them to use humor in a way that doesn’t interfere with the essence of the character while giving it a funny twist.
More than one hundred gameplay mechanics and real-time voice processing add an extra layer of depth. You get to play the game with your preferred approach and the game will interact and adapt to your choices. For this example, they show the player picking up and wearing a Stormtrooper helmet and the voice changing accordingly to match the new outfit.
12,000 materials, 20,000 unique models, and 26,000 textures were created to provide the most accurate LEGO: Star Wars game. Whether you play in the underwater city of Otoh Gunga or fly an X-wing in a space battle, many elements were put in place for the game to be the best Star Wars experience we could get.
“We get to recreate all these iconic designs, literally brick by brick. We built the ships entirely out of LEGO bricks. So that’s not only the exterior of the ship, that’s the interior. So you can land inside these ships and walk around in an environment entirely made out of LEGO bricks. If you were to build one of our capital ships in real life, it would take millions and millions of bricks.”
A new gameplay feature is the third-person camera. When you enter blaster combat the game will bring the camera down into a third-person perspective, this will not only make you feel that you’re right in the middle of the action but also force you to be precise when aiming at your enemies.
It’s an invention for the LEGO games, where you usually play with more like a “traditional top-down RPG-style camera” looking down to your character and the environment.
It wouldn’t be a Star Wars game without the ability to use The Force. When you play either a Sith or Jedi, you’ll be able to pick enemies or objects from the ground and use them to your advantage. Something that wasn’t possible before.
Something that isn’t mentioned but is shown in the trailer is boss battles. Bosses are stronger than regular enemies, require you to learn the mechanics of the game and are often guarding an important objective or at the end of a level. I’m really happy we get to see this, lots of gamers love facing a significant challenge when playing something new. And while it’s probably not going to be that difficult it certainly adds something fresh to this saga.
At the last minute, the funny side of LEGO games takes over the trailer. You’ll get the option to change the weapons so that they sound like mouth noises (pew pew pew). And last but not least, the Mumble Mode. In previous games, they didn’t have voice actors for every character like they do now. Instead, they had to rely on expressions, animations and mumbles that imitate the character’s speech. With this feature, we’ll get to recreate that old and classic LEGO experience.
A short but detailed trailer about some of the elements needed to create a game of these dimensions. Not every developer shares this kind of insight and I appreciate the gesture. I can’t wait to play this game and hope that it delivers a good experience for everyone.
“This is the ultimate experience of going everywhere in the Universe as whatever character you want and really being in Star Wars.”
If you have missed it, here is the behind-the-scenes video:
Article Text: Adrián Oteiza
Editor: Vulkk / Alex
Images: LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga BTS video
