With a new LEGO Star Wars game just announced, and learning that it comprises all nine films from the entire main series, it is no surprise to learn that the game has been in the works for quite a while.
In a behind closed doors demo of the title, we were given a sneak peek at what the game is shaping up to be, and while it won’t be released until 2020, the game is quite far along.
Taking place in episodic chunks just like the movies themselves, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga allows players to play through the movies in order, or select any one of the nine films to begin from.
Want to start playing from the good original series? Hop into A New Hope and enjoy. Want to start when Rey and Finn first meet? Jump into The Force Awakens. Naturally, you could skip right to the end and spoil The Rise of Skywalker for yourself (provided you haven’t seen it, as it will have been out for months by the time the game releases), but that last movie is not something that even the developers have much insight into at this point.
TT Games is a rather large studio, and while there is a lot to do in order to develop a game as massive as this, LucasFilm has been holding back a large chunk of the story.
When asking a developer on the project whether or not there were bits of the final chapter in the game yet, the response was simply, “We’re working closely with Lucas[Film],” and we were shown a LEGO reimagining of Rey jumping over the ship as she does in the trailer.
Asking another member of the team in the room about the Episode IX content, we were told flat out, “not yet.”
While the game officially launches in 2020, given that essentially a ninth of it will be undeveloped, and we don’t yet know the complexity of the story, what models will need to be created, and how they’ll interact with each other, we can say with some confidence that the game won’t likely be out in the early part of the year.
That being said, the actual LEGO company does work alongside the LucasFilm team in order to design LEGO sets to coincide with the movie’s release, and while there are often little nods to characters (Porgs were first seen in the UCS Millennium Falcon that was released two and half months before the film), it’s unlikely that these sets will give away any story details. LEGO would not likely need to have a ton of story knowledge the way that, say, developing a game that matches that story would need.
In any event, the internet seems to be welcoming LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga with open arms, as it culminates the massive franchise that is the main Star Wars films into one epic adventure, due out sometime in 2020.