There's no shortage of popular franchises for LEGO to adapt in a video game format, and it has spent the last two decades making its way through the list. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, Marvel, DC, and even The Incredibles have all gotten licensed LEGO game adaptations, with some franchises even getting multiple iterations over the years. The latest licensed LEGO game, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, set a new bar for the entire genre of family-friendly action-adventures. While many franchises deserve to be given the Skywalker Saga treatment, one would be particularly timely.
The Indiana Jones franchise has enjoyed over four decades in the spotlight. Though many have come to challenge it since, Indiana Jones is still regarded as one of, if not the best series of action-adventure movies out there, with pioneering set pieces, stellar casts, and bombastic scores keeping it in the forefront of pop culture. While there have been two LEGO Indiana Jones games already, another one in a similar vein to LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga seems like a smart move.
It's The Perfect Time For Another LEGO Indiana Jones Game
The first LEGO Indiana Jones game, released in 2008, is still regarded as one of the best entries in LEGO's linear licensed catalog. LEGO Indiana Jones took the intuitive and charming formula forged by the first LEGO Star Wars and applied it to the three original Indiana Jones films. Though its runtime is a little short, character library is small, and its collectibles are few (compared to modern LEGO games), LEGO Indiana Jones still stands out for its strong level design, phenomenal atmosphere, and high level of charm.
Released just a year later, LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues wasn't as well received as its predecessor. Remixing missions from the first three movies and adding in another set based on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, LEGO Indiana Jones 2 doesn't have its predecessor's high-quality level design or painstaking attention to detail. Instead, LEGO Indiana Jones 2 trips itself up on its most intriguing feature: free-roaming hub-worlds.
While an open-world design became standard for the licensed LEGO game formula after the success of LEGO Batman 2, LEGO Indiana Jones 2 needed to walk, stumble, and fall before the rest could run. Each movie in the Indiana Jones saga received its own unique hub-world, and players could run around this fairly large environment freely, finding collectibles and characters along the way to the next mission. While these hub-worlds ended up being the worst element of LEGO Indiana Jones 2 given the scarce amount of content in each one, they're the perfect blueprint for a new LEGO Indiana Jones game inspired by LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
With Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny around the corner, it's the perfect time for a new LEGO Indiana Jones game. Much like its maligned predecessor, a new LEGO Indy game could give each movie its own free-roaming hub-world akin to The Skywalker Saga's planets. Each hub-world could take players to locations from the respective movie, all traversable via vehicles. To hop between each movie's hub-world, players could be shown the iconic map screen from the movies with a red dot making its way across the globe. This larger scale would also allow for detailed environments and more complex puzzles in each hub-world, such as dedicated Zelda-like dungeons based on iconic set pieces from each movie. A refined brawling system would also be great to see, with The Skywalker Saga already improving combat from previous LEGO game entries.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
