LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the first tried!
LEGO Star Wars
It was since the early 2000s that such a quantity and variety of video games in development did not orbit around the world of Star Wars. From the Quantic Dream project to that of Ubisoft, passing through the remake of Knights of the Old Republic, the multiplayer game Hunters, the sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order or the shooter and strategic within Electronic Arts. However, none of these are as concrete as LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and, with only a few days left to release on PC and consoles, Warner Bros. Interactive has given us the opportunity to experience a small portion of what promises to be one of the richest, most complete and fun transpositions that developer TT Games has ever worked on.We tell you why in the preview of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
To each his own Trilogy
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is entirely voiced in Italian, but in English many of the characters are voiced by official voices or, in some cases, from some of the original actors, such as Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Billy Dee Williams (Lando) . Once the game starts, you are in fact faced with a selection of small and colorful animated dioramas, each of which represents a specific cinematic episode, from The Phantom Menace to The Rise of Skywalker. This will allow you to relive the entire saga exactly in the order in which you grew up. Fans of the Original Trilogy could, for example, decide to start from A New Hope, where it all began, or start directly from Episode 7: The Awakening of the Force. The choice is certainly welcome, but at the same time we wonder how the developers have handled the pace of the game and the level of challenge. Since Episodes 1, 4, and 7 are all meant to be introductory chapters, the fear is that each trilogy will have a slower start and a more mundane difficulty level. function ready (fn) {if (document.readyState! = 'loading') {fn ()} else {document.addEventListener ('DOMContentLoaded', fn)}} ready (function () {window.addEventListener ('message', function (event) {let target_origin = 'https://aff.netaddiction.it'; if (event.origin! == target_origin) return; if (typeof event.data == "object" && event.data.hasOwnProperty ( "type") && event.data.type == "embaff") {let embed_id = event.data.embed_id; if (embed_id == '600') {document.querySelector ('#_ aff_embed_600'). setAttribute ('height ', event.data.embed_size);}}}, false);}) Luckily the stories the game draws from all start with a bang. Once Episode 4: A New Hope starts, the player is immediately in the middle of the action, controlling Princess Leia and Captain Antilles as they try to hide the Death Star's plans. Meanwhile, Darth Vader and his stormtroopers get strange in Tantive IV with scenes also taken from the last moments of Rogue One. The new camera immediately catches the eye, placed behind the characters and closer than the classic LEGO games, as if to recall the more traditional action. You can put yourself in cover, aim and fire blaster shots at opponents, causing different damage and effects depending on whether you hit the enemy in the head or other parts of the body.You can blow up a stormtrooper's helmet and notice his surprised expression, or it makes you smile as enemies rush to rebuild destroyed barriers so as not to be completely exposed. In general, however, the shootings seemed rather static and simple, perhaps due to the need to compromise between a fun experience for the adult but light and welcoming even for a very young audience.
Speech different for hand-to-hand combat, already more dynamic thanks to a simple system of combinations between light attacks, strong and mid-air strikes. You are encouraged to experiment with a variety of techniques and combinations, on the one hand because enemies tend to block more easily the attacks that the player uses continuously, on the other hand because chaining more elaborate combos increases a multiplier and, in the end, rewards with a greater number of LEGO Tokens (the currency used to unlock the vast majority of the contents in the game).
Data Cards and discos
Among the most curious collectibles in the game undoubtedly stand out the Data Card. These are cards that allow you to unlock customizations to the gameplay and aesthetics of the game. Some multiply the number of Tokens that are around (essential for those who want to unlock everything without spending a lifetime), others unlock completely bizarre changes: one of these small "cheats" allows you to have a Porg as an animal companion, another replaces all lightsabers with tasty baguettes, while the Galaxy Rave option (which can only be activated in free play mode) turns the entire galaxy into a nightclub, complete with dance music, strobe lights and dancing characters.Jedi and Sith
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is full of little gags When you control a lightsaber-wielding character things get even more interesting - as you'd expect in a game In Star Wars, your Jedi (or Sith) can grab enemies with the Force, combine swords with a sword, throw it from a distance, or parry and deflect incoming blows. On certain occasions you can also use the blade to create holes and passages on doors and containers.The game traditionally supports multiplayer for two players locally: you can leave or join the game at any time, but those hoping to play online with a friend will have to put their soul in peace. Given the new camera behind the character, the screen will always be split in two and will not join dynamically as it did in other games in the LEGO series. However, this means that - since friendly fire will be active in the game - it will also be possible to improvise Jedi duels between missions.
In full LEGO Star Wars style, the game is not done problems riding memes and parodies emerged over the years among fans of the saga. Between stormtroopers, combat droids, sandpods, bounty hunters and other pesky creatures, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will abound with enemies to face. However, it will be in the boss fights that the action will become more intense and spectacular. To give us an idea we were shown the fight against Count Dooku at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith: Dooku has at his disposal a series of attacks and combinations, an area hit and a couple of techniques that cannot be blocked and they must necessarily be avoided. The screen shows both the remaining health and the number of phases of the fight, while you will have to react to quick QTEs to win a confrontation with the lightsaber or free yourself when Dooku tries to strangle the player with the Force.
Star Wars Land
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga manages to insert classic LEGO humor even in the most dramatic scenes of the series The brief introduction aboard the Tantive IV would be enough on its own to make people understand the work there is been behind the new LEGO Star Wars, but it's when you finally set foot on Tatooine that, as C-3PO, RD2D, Luke and Ben Kenobi, you finally realize the amount of content that awaits us in The Skywalker Saga .Compared to LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, we are facing a completely new game and not a simple remastering, and at least in the opening sequences of Episode 4 it seemed much better paced in alternating fights, scenes intermission and moments of exploration. Above all, each area this time represents a small theme park full of secrets to discover, characters to obtain missions from, puzzles to solve and mini-games to complete. Exploring the expanses of Jundland you can for example meet an alien who has information about a treasure, browse Luke's house or find a canyon in which to participate in a speed race. To reach some places it may be necessary to think outside the box and make several characters with special abilities interact with each other, while small treats and easter eggs in the scenario reward the most curious players who decide not to run through the main story.
Each playable character in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga belongs to a class (Jedi, Droid, Bounty Hunter ...), each of which has its own specific set of skills to unlock using Kyber bricks. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is not one large open map, but different areas of the world can be reached automatically by getting into one of the vehicles scattered around. From Luke's house on Tatooine we pass in an instant to Mos Eisley and in the short time available to us we were able to take only a quick look at the many small challenges and interactions hidden within the city. A spiteful stormtrooper has blocked the entrance to a house with a Bantha, an Imperial patrol guards a mysterious fence, while a traveler tries to communicate something to us in an alien language (if only we had with us a protocol droid who knows more than six million of forms of communication ... right?). Obviously not all planets will have such large and vibrant maps, but considering that in the game it will be possible to visit all the locations that have made even a brief appearance in the nine Star Wars films, we expect a huge amount of mini-games, extras. and areas to explore.
An army of characters
There's no doubt that The Skywalker Saga is the biggest LEGO game TT Games has ever made, with a host of locations unprecedented, hidden extras, mounts and ships to fly. Collected LEGO Tokens can be used to unlock (among other things) over three hundred characters in the game. Some of these are different variants of the same hero (eg Obi-Wan in padawan version of Episode 1 or as old Ben Kenobi), but in addition to the most popular and requested faces by fans there will be space for some characters absolutely unknown to most, such as the Lanai Grebe-Korora or the Mawhonic podracer driver. By spending a lot of Tokens you can also get a huge Rancor and go around doing damage while the inhabitants run away in fear.In space
Dozens and dozens of ships are can unlock and pilot in the new LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, some of these also present in the "Micro" version To move from one planet to another, you must access the galactic map in the menu or go to your ship (which in Game Libero can be any of the many unlockable ships.) Some moments of the story will be set on board a fighter, and it is undoubted that to create the battles in space TT Games was inspired by other recent Star Wars games.At the beginning of Episode 8: The Last Jedi, you have to control Poe Dameron's X-Wing to destroy some turrets on the First Order flagship: between small evasive maneuvers, TIE-Fighter to be hooked and missiles a research launched at the right time, can only come to mind the work done by DICE with the latest episodes of Battlefront. There are also sporadic sequences on tracks that wink at the classic Star Wars shooters that were in the arcade. When not engaged in fighting among the stars, we will also be able to visit the orbit of each planet, where we can extract Kyber bricks from some asteroids or meet other alien ships willing to entrust us with smuggling missions. However, carrying cargo from one planet to another will attract Imperial ships, which could attack us during the journey.
What was already evident and which emerges even more when playing LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, is that the latest effort by TT Games is a project with enormous care behind it, an impressive wealth of content and a great knowledge and passion for the Star Wars universe. Who knows if the conditions will be respected for the duration of the game, but in the meantime we have finished the demo of this "yet another" LEGO video game with a smile on his face and the desire to continue the adventure. A very welcome surprise, some would say.
