Traveller's Tales has promised innovative combat in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga for a long time. It has described some pretty compelling changes, like third-person shooting for ranged characters and a combo system for melee characters, but it hasn't provided much footage of these systems. Now that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has an official gameplay overview leading up to its launch, that has changed completely. Fans now have a pretty clear picture of what fighting is like in The Skywalker Saga, and somehow it's even more inventive and elaborate than what Traveller's Tales initially promised so long ago.
The Skywalker Saga's Jedi and Sith have clearly gotten a lot of love from the developers, based on the variety of Force powers they can use to influence their opponents, as well as the flashy combos that players can apparently string together with the right button combinations. Perhaps more importantly, though, The Skywalker Saga's gameplay overview provides concrete evidence that other classes of combatants are getting some major upgrades in The Skywalker Saga too, letting non-Force wielders keep up with Jedi and Sith in combat. Traveller's Tales will make all kinds of characters in The Skywalker Saga shine with the help of melee mechanics and special abilities stemming from character classes.
Fixing a LEGO Star Wars Combat Flaw
At its heart, The Skywalker Saga reflects traditions of Star Wars combat in the same way as every other LEGO Star Wars game: Some characters wield lightsabers, some prefer blasters, and a handful of others might prefer more unique melee weapons, like a MagnaGuard's electrostaff. The Skywalker Saga differs from many older LEGO Star Wars games, however, in that every ranged character seems to be capable of melee attacks, and some characters are newly usable in battle. In entries like LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, if a character doesn't have any inherent weapon, they can't attack, and characters with blasters aren't always particularly useful at close range because they lack a melee option.
To a certain extent, it makes sense that someone like C-3PO wouldn't have any way of attacking, since protocol droids aren't designed for combat, but that inability can still make playing as a protocol droid feel risky and burdensome even for a moment.
The problem is worsened when playing as someone like Jar Jar Binks in The Complete Saga; Jar Jar certainly could throw a punch at a droid if needed, but he just doesn't have the option in The Complete Saga, meaning he's completely helpless in combat. As a result, old LEGO Star Wars games tilted combat in the favor of characters already associated with combat, especially Jedi, whose Force powers and laser deflection often make them more interesting in battle than blaster wielders.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga seems to favor player freedom over franchise realism in this department. The new gameplay overview indicates that every playable character in The Skywalker Saga with even the slightest skill in combat has some means of fending for themselves in both melee and ranged fights. What's more, blaster wielders and non-traditional fighters will have techniques and attacks that made them as compelling to control as lightsaber masters.
The Skywalker Saga's Combat Enhancements
The Skywalker Saga's changes to shooting and aiming immediately showcase how ranged characters can compete with Jedi and Sith in terms of unique combat mechanics. The gameplay trailer showed off the third-person shooting that players have seen before, but it also emphasized the importance of precision. Shooting an enemy in the leg, for instance, might make them hop on one foot in pain, stunning them briefly. That ability to apply status effects through careful shooting makes The Skywalker Saga's ranged stars like Han Solo and Princess Leia far more engaging.
The benefits of skillful aiming in The Skywalker Saga is only the start of ranged characters' enhancements. One clip from the gameplay overview shows Poe Dameron juggling a First Order trooper with midair punches before using a grappling hook to pull himself to an enemy. Another clip explaining The Skywalker Saga's skill trees shows Boba Fett stunning a crowd of foes with a shock grenade, allowing him to run past them safely. Traveller's Tales has clearly gone to great lengths to ensure that blaster wielders have unique options that keep them competitive with Force wielders in combat.
What's more, there's good evidence that a lot of non-traditional combatants can really put up a fight in The Skywalker Saga. The trailer shows R2-D2 essentially performing a suplex on an enemy, for instance. It doesn't go into the details on how The Skywalker Saga's less combat-oriented characters handle in battle, but R2-D2's wrestling throw strongly suggests that even the most unorthodox playable characters, like Jabba the Hutt and Babu Frik, might have special fighting techniques that make them as fun to play as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader.
Equal LEGO Star Wars Combat
None of this is to say that Jedi and Sith aren't getting upgrades of their own, of course. Force users seem to have much more liberty to pick up and throw objects at their opponents, for instance, giving them a great new ranged tool. They can also use Force mind tricks to deceive and manipulate their enemies, creating distractions that might be invaluable for stealth lovers sneaking through The Skywalker Saga's branching levels. Overall, though, Traveller's Tales really seems to have put an emphasis on upgrading blaster wielders and Star Wars' weirder characters so that they can stand up to Jedi and Sith in terms of combat complexity.
Broadly enhancing LEGO Star Wars character design while leveling the playing field in combat sets another great standard for the future of LEGO games. Traveller's Tales can carry the principle of unique character classes with distinct but equitable abilities into all kinds of other franchises, especially superhero games like LEGO Batman and LEGO Marvel where people with refined fighting skills have to stand out next to characters with elaborate superpowers.
The Skywalker Saga's combat looks like a major step forward thanks to all the improvements made to the player's fighting options. Hopefully those ideas carry on in any LEGO Star Wars games that follow, as well as all of Traveller's Tales' other licensed LEGO franchises.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga releases April 5, 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
