Don’t get me wrong, Respawn’s action-packed new Star Wars game looks fine. But there’s something to be said about the charm of the Lego Star Wars games that is just a lot more appealing than another story of another surviving Jedi in the Rise of the Empire (even if said Jedi just so happens to be the Joker from Gotham).
It’s currently E3 2019 in Los Angeles, the yearly video-gaming answer to Comic-Con that sees publishers and developers announcing the metric butt-ton of new games (and hardware to play it on) arriving in the next few years. So far, it’s been a solid E3 for Star Wars. On Saturday, we got to see footage from the aforementioned Jedi: Fallen Order, which follows the adventures of padawan Cal Kestis as he navigates a galaxy where his fellow Jedi have switched from beloved heroes to hunted fugitives as a new galactic power rises. It looks fine, if like a zillion other action adventure games of its ilk, with a coat of Star Wars paint liberally slapped on with a Forest-Whitaker-shaped brush.
But last night’s Microsoft presser brought with it the brief teaser for something that, for me at least, proved immediately a bit more delightful: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, a new telling of all nine main Star Wars movies in brick-based form coming to PC and consoles next year (no Rise of Skywalker spoilers to be found here just yet!).
The trailer itself, unlike Fallen Order’s footage, doesn’t actually tell us that much beyond the fact it’s, well, Lego Star Wars. Seemingly, this isn’t just a new collection of the prior Lego Star Wars games, but an all-new re-imagining of each movie too, now with additions of The Last Jedi and the upcoming Rise of Skywalker.
But even then, the goofy charm of that silent-film-style humor potentially coming back—it’s something more recent Lego games, including the one for The Force Awakens, replaced with simply reutilizing voicework directly from the movies—and the chance to see the entire Skywalker Saga unfold over the course of one very silly video game, is too delightful. Speaking of delightful: What’s cuter than Rey interrupting Kylo Ren mid-Snow-Vader construction?
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order hits shelves November 15, while Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is due for release sometime in 2020.
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