In any large-scale open-world game, the developers need to address one crucial tool: fast travel. As fun as it might be to explore every nook and cranny of a video game world, traveling everywhere on foot can get tedious very quickly, which means every open-world game comes up with its own means. Although plenty of previous LEGO games have implemented fast travel in different ways, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has its own solution. Based on the most recent trailer for the gain, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga features a galaxy map that lets players instantly travel all around the Star Wars world.
In spite of all the big changes that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga makes to Travellers' Tales' LEGO game formula, the galaxy map could very well be the biggest innovation. The Skywalker Saga may have even more streamlined and optimal travel than predecessors like LEGO The Lord of the Rings. At the same time, the galaxy map could be much more than a fast travel tool. It may be an elegant way of tracking Skywalker Saga objectives that fans don't even know about yet. The galaxy map in the next LEGO Star Wars game redefines fast travel in LEGO games, potentially for the better.
LEGO Star Wars' Next Step in Fast Travel
As far back as LEGO The Lord of the Rings, the maps have been big enough to warrant fast travel points. Much like any other open-world game, LEGO The Lord of the Rings had a bunch of fixed points traveled around the world that the player could travel to from the map screen, as long as they'd visited the statues at those points. While that traditional approach to fast travel worked fine at first, some fans feel that LEGO world maps have gotten increasingly cluttered as Travellers' Tales fills LEGO world maps with more and more objectives.
The Skywalker Saga's galaxy map appears to hit the reset button on that clutter. The main menu of the galaxy map simply catalogs The Skywalker Saga's many planets, letting players pick their planet of choice and jump right to it. There's little need to search for a fast travel point hidden among markers for collectibles. There's a cleanliness to the galaxy map in The Skywalker Saga that makes it a big step forward in LEGO overworld navigation. It's an encouraging indication that LEGO maps will be organized in more detail from now on, rather than lumping every landmark together by default.
There does seem to be a way to view each planet's objectives, though. The galaxy map seems to have a second option aside from instantly traveling to a planet: players can view a map of the planet. That'll probably bring up an overview of the planet that shows hints or markers detailing potential objectives, akin to a traditional LEGO Batman 2 or LEGO The Lord of the Rings map. What's more, it's possible that each individual planet's map will have some distinct fast travel points that'll take players to a more specific place on the planet. Using Star Wars planets as organizational folders for fast travel points would be a brilliant way to add structure and order to The Skywalker Saga's map.
The Skywalker Saga's Objective Tracking
Aside from fast travel, The Skywalker Saga seems to come with a lot of tools for keeping track of collectibles, side missions, or whatever other overworld content the game might have. Players watching The Skywalker Saga's newest trailer may have noticed that each planet seems to have some kind of percentage attached to it. Odds are that that percentage represents how many of a planet's objectives a player has completed.
The LEGO games historically record the player's progress with an overarching completion percentage, but that percentage usually doesn't indicate what areas of the game still have things to do. That means an early LEGO game's final objectives can sometimes hide from players who are just inches away from completing the game. The galaxy map in The Skywalker Saga seems to cleverly point players in the direction of unlockables with individual planet completion percentages. It's a great way to clue players in without giving everything away.
The galaxy map may hint at even more navigation functions in The Skywalker Saga too. In the bottom left corner of the map, there are graphical coordinates that might indicate where exactly the player is standing on any given planet. Coordinate tracking could help players travel in even finer detail; it'd certainly help Skywalker Saga veterans point out notable objectives to newer players. What's more, it seems the Skywalker Saga galaxy map has other trackers for unknown objectives in the bottom right corner, suggesting that there really is plenty to do in The Skywalker Saga's sprawling overworld. It's a relief to know that there's such a strong map at hand for navigating that fleshed-out galaxy.
The Skywalker Saga Just Keeps Innovating
Fans of the LEGO Star Wars games knew The Skywalker Saga would be a drastically different title from the beginning, of course. Although it hasn't revealed many specifics about the game's levels or overworld objectives, Travellers' Tales has been very open about The Skywalker Saga's changes to combat, the overworld, and level organization. Unlike most LEGO games, which generally stick to convention and don't go far to stand out from their peers, The Skywalker Saga is clearly intended to be a spearhead that cuts through the history of the LEGO series, making room for valuable change.
The galaxy map is a subtler change to the LEGO formula as it's hardly the first LEGO overworld map. Still, it's a very different take on a map for the franchise. Frankly, it's pretty different from most traditional open-world maps, which simply put the whole world in front of players and leave the rest up to them. The simplicity of The Skywalker Saga's galaxy map is oddly satisfying, and it looks like a really quick and simple tool to use to get around. While the quality of the actual overworld in The Skywalker Saga remains to be seen, the galaxy map suggests that there'll be very reliable means of navigating that world.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga releases in early 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
