I’ve played a lot of Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga in the last few weeks. Part of this comes from a love of trophy hunting, but the rest comes from the design of the game itself. It features an enormous and meticulously detailed open galaxy to explore. With a whopping 24 planets to plunder, it’s understandable that some might feel overwhelmed or apathetic towards anything beyond the story, especially given how bloated some games are. But exploring the galaxy here is worth every second, as you’ll come away from the game with a new love for the various settings of Star Wars as a whole. Star Wars fans will get the most out of this, but the galaxy that TT Games has created is worth traversing for a plethora of reasons that go beyond that unlocking that enticing platinum trophy or final achievement.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga‘s open world is strong enough to change how I felt about certain planets from the films. Canto Bight from The Last Jedi is often viewed as a bit of a slog; it’s one of the few things people on both sides of that film can agree on. Yet, here in Lego Star Wars form, the Cantonica-based city is given new life and is genuinely worth rummaging around. The scenic villa is filled with items, puzzles, and goofy characters to talk to, giving the planet a great deal more personality than a film ever could. Solving a puzzle in a lavish casino, only to immediately be attacked by a gang of ruffians in an alley upon leaving said everything there is to know about Canto Bight: it presents itself as a classy place but has a dangerous underbelly, which is the quality worldbuilding it needed.
This ideology extends to other worlds, too, even ones that weren’t previously maligned. Even though the Star Wars prequels were controversial, they’ve got some pretty unique settings. From the scenic city of Theed on Naboo to the volcanic wastes of Mustafar, you can venture through familiar and previously unseen areas from new perspectives. Since the films rarely have time to delve into each locale, you get a real sense of identity from each place here. You can see for yourself how damaged and desperate the base on Crait is or how vast the deserts of Jakku are. I gained a new appreciation for quite a few planets thanks to Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga since the interactivity lets players inside these sets and the scope of them builds them out in compelling ways.
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Even the little things make traveling to each world more enjoyable and players are only going to find them if they look around. On Dagobah, you can find Yoda’s E3-standard starship lifeboat that he used to go into exile in Revenge of the Sith. At the Lars homestead on Tatooine, you can find Luke’s T-16 Skyhopper, which he used to bullseye womp rats in Beggar’s Canyon prior to A New Hope. There are NPCs all throughout the various planets that make meta-jokes and wildly deep cuts, even going as far as referencing stuff like the Ewok-Dulok wars from the old Ewoks cartoon. Only by exploring in this game can you find prequels memes alongside references to Ewoks and these jokes and Easter eggs flesh out each area.
There’s also a real sense of accomplishment in finishing a planet. Finding all the Kyber Bricks, characters, ships, and datacards is like actually touring an entire intricately-layered stage, as that level of completion requires a level of familiarity that merely running through (or watching them in a film) doesn’t offer. Places like Ajan Kloss and Coruscant’s Uscru district are far more memorable now. Going through patches of Ajan Kloss’s dense jungle to find Kyber Bricks and venturing in Uscru district’s neon-lit nooks and crannies is like experiencing a new layer of Star Wars. These will likely remain the most detailed versions of some of these planets in any video game for quite some time, so gathering the collectibles is a great way to experience these painstakingly recreated worlds.
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TT Games knew what it was doing when it made Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga‘s open galaxy and filled it with a bunch of content, as said content acts as a way to more closely bond those to the worlds only seen in the films. Outside of the story, there are dozens of hours’ worth of stuff to find through exploring the brilliantly detailed planetary hubs. It’s enough of a well-designed game to be satisfying to those who barrel down the critical path. However, hunting around its many corners for doodads and absorbing its wealth of details is well worth the time of any Star Wars fan since there’s never been a way to interact with planets from the series on this grand of a scale.
