For a long time, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's overworld has been a major talking point of the game, even though Traveller's Tales has only offered glimpses of its take on the Star Wars universe. Although fans have known about its two dozen planets for a long time, Traveller's Tales hasn't gone in depth about their contents. That all changed when it released a gameplay overview for LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga that gave fans a new sense of the overworld's scale. Based on new looks at accessing planets and traveling on their surfaces, these worlds are huge, living up to the scale of Star Wars.
More importantly, though, the new trailer has showcased just how many things there are to do in The Skywalker Saga's interplanetary overworld. While it's great to see The Skywalker Saga feature such a vast world to explore, that world's value is measured by what players can find by exploring it. It's clear now that The Skywalker Saga will feature a ton of missions, minigames, and NPC interactions that flesh out the overworld alongside LEGO Star Wars' usual collectibles. The result is a Star Wars overworld with something to do in every nook and cranny.
The Skywalker Saga Needs Objectives
Until the arrival of The Skywalker Saga's gameplay overview, the overworld already sounded great. Although there's plenty of Star Wars games that take players to multiple worlds, few of them give players the liberty to travel between a vast number of planets at their leisure and wander their surfaces. The Skywalker Saga not only features planets with broad regions that they can explore, but apparently players can do so whenever they like, taking breaks between story levels to roam around Coruscant, Tatooine, and some twenty other famous Star Wars worlds. That level of freedom goes far to distinguish The Skywalker Saga from other Star Wars titles.
However, the ability to explore isn't enough. If players don't have anything to do in the overworld besides walk around and earn studs, then the overworld would lose its luster pretty quickly. Some previous LEGO games with overworlds have run into this problem, including early titles like LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes. Gotham City had no shortage of collectibles for players to find, like Gold Bricks, Citizens in Peril, and unlockable characters, but these collectibles lacked variety in the long run and ultimately made exploring Gotham feel a little repetitive.
Considering how many previous LEGO games feature some type of Brick as an important collectible, it's no surprise to learn that The Skywalker Saga's overworld will be littered with Kyber Bricks used to unlock upgrades for character classes; the trailer also suggests that there'll be other collectible types to mix things up. Much more importantly, though, the trailer has provided concrete evidence that The Skywalker Saga's overworld objectives are built on variety. Between sidequests and NPC interactions, The Skywalker Saga aims to offer a much greater breadth of activities, resulting in an overworld that's far more worth the player's time.
The Skywalker Saga's Overworld Activities
The Skywalker Saga's new gameplay overview puts an emphasis on finding side missions in its overworld. While exploring the surface of a planet, players might find locations where they can take on special activities like participating in a bar brawl on Tatooine. Missions aren't limited to the surface of Star Wars planets, however; while flying around in outer space, players might chance upon missions that encourage them to chart a course for another part of the galaxy or participate in a dogfight. Traveller's Tales has teased dogfights in The Skywalker Saga before, but seeing them alongside flight-based missions makes outer space even more compelling to explore.
Minigames might also become a significant part of The Skywalker Saga's overworld. While explaining missions, the gameplay overview shows off a Tatooine minigame about blasting as many womp rats as possible within a certain time limit. There's clear indicators of tiered rewards based on the player's performance, suggesting that it's a highly repeatable minigame. Odds are that this womp rat shooting gallery is only one out of several minigames that The Skywalker Saga features, with each game tailored toward the lore of the planet that hosts it.
It's also clear that The Skywalker Saga will feature more detailed NPC interactions than LEGO Star Wars players might be used to. The LEGO games have transitioned from visual and physical storytelling to having fully-voiced characters, but even so, LEGO games don't always have questgivers with complete dialogue. Nevertheless, the trailer shows the player chatting with some Stormtroopers who are debating if Han Solo or Greedo shot first in their infamous confrontation from A New Hope. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga players might have many more opportunities to talk to denizens of the Star Wars world than they expect, adding one more valuable detail to the overworld.
A Mountain of LEGO Star Wars Content
Between classic LEGO collectibles, diverse sidequests, minigames, and voiced NPCs, there's a lot of compelling evidence that Traveller's Tales set out to make the most detailed LEGO Star Wars overworld that it possibly could for The Skywalker Saga. LEGO games may traditionally put the bulk of their content in story levels, but The Skywalker Saga may take the opposite approach by stacking the free roaming side of the game with activities that reward players for exploring and engaging with the Star Wars world.
If The Skywalker Saga's overworld objectives and landmarks deliver, then future LEGO games will have a great basis to work off of. It's hard to say if this recreation of the Star Wars galaxy sets the new standard for the sheer size of LEGO overworlds, but regardless of total world size, future overworlds should have the same variety in objectives for the player to complete. For instance, even if a future LEGO Batman game has an overworld that's a fraction of The Skywalker Saga's size, it can still offer players diverse experiences through NPC interactions, minigames, and sidequests that reference characters and events from Batman's most famous adventures. The Skywalker Saga's overworld breaks barriers with its scale, but its details are crucial for the LEGO franchise too.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga releases April 5, 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
