LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (and Why Nothing Will Ever Top It)
Luke Canady
A child of God (Christian); aspiring screenwriter and character designer; creator of Christian cartoon concept Eternity Kingdoms; attending Ball State University for MDIA Master’s Degree and working as a custodian there
1999 was a momentous year for both The LEGO Group and Star Wars. The Phantom Menace was the first new Star Wars film since 1983's Return of the Jedi and transported audiences into a hitherto-unexplored era before the rise of the Empire; LEGO was in the midst of refining their "constraction" (construction + action figure) figures into what we would eventually know as Bionicle through its forerunners Slizers and RoboRiders (I've got a few Slizer pieces; must be from my older brother's collection) while trying to fend off bankruptcy induced by several failed experiments. Most importantly, LEGO and Lucasfilm struck a licensing deal, resulting in the birth of LEGO Star Wars, their first (and longest-lasting) licensed range of products.
While The Phantom Menace's sleek vehicles would prove challenging for the Danish automatic binding brick makers (didn't stop them from trying, though), they had no problem recreating the blockier vehicles of the original trilogy. It wasn't long before 2002 and 2004's grand reinventions of what LEGO was helped smooth things out- literally and figuratively. The minifigures gained realistic skin tones, the ships got sleeker, and by 2005, they were able to nail many vehicles and scenes from Revenge of the Sith on their first try.
2005 wasn't just a big year because of the final film in George's original 6-film run releasing, though. See, LEGO had partnered with British game developer Traveler's Tales (best known for obscure SEGA Genesis gem Sonic 3D Blast and many Pixar licensed games pre-The Incredibles) in order to create a video game that retold the prequels in a comedic fashion (including the then-unreleased Revenge of the Sith). Despite game journalists' initial concerns due to how absurd the concept sounded, LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game ended up being a runaway success.
2006 saw the release of LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (which adapted exactly what the title implied and refined the already solid gameplay from the first game), and the two games were combined into 2007's The Complete Saga, which took all that the original trilogy game did better and applied it to the prequel levels. If you were a child born in the 2000s like me, chances are you've played this game at least once. Heck, for some of us, it was our first exposure to gaming.
The Complete Saga is one of the best video games ever made and the best LEGO video game even after all these years. Yes, there are many LEGO games that get close, but there's just something about this one that keeps I and many others coming back to it. Not only that, but the LEGO Star Wars games that came out after this always felt lesser.
Now, I wouldn't say it's nostalgia that makes me see TCS as better than LEGO Star Wars III, The Force Awakens, or The Skywalker Saga. I've replayed the game in recent years, and I recognize the issues that it has (and III and TFA are pretty solid in their own rights). But when you stack up the flaws of the later LEGO games next to this one's problems... it's not even close. TCS is an extremely good game that has some problems that don't hinder my enjoyment of the game; the rest are good games with game-specific problems that hold them back.
In this article, I aim to explain what makes The Complete Saga work so darn well and why its successors struggle to recapture that magic. So join me, won't you?
WHY THE COMPLETE SAGA WORKS (and where it doesn't)
One of the reasons as to why The Complete Saga has held up so well is its level design. Each movie is broken up into six levels that adapt key moments from the films, with one or two levels being dedicated to operating vehicles and the rest having you control minifigure versions of the characters. You can play the movies in any order, but first, you've got to do "Negotiations"- the first level of The Phantom Menace.
It's a brisk level ("You were right, Master. Those negotiations WERE short.") that sees Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's escape from the Trade Federation ship to Naboo. Throughout the level, everything you do serves as a teacher. Use the Force on some chairs? They'll play the Cantina theme and give you some "studs" (those round 1x1s that LEGO games treat as currency). Want to break some stuff? Mash the attack button to hack it up with your lightsaber, young Jedi. Get attacked by some battle droids? Use the Force to push them into each other OR whack 'em with your lightsaber. The game doesn't need to give you an explicit tutorial because this level IS your tutorial and you're probably having too much fun to notice you're learning.
The level also integrates the obscure protocol droid TC-14, whose role from TPM is greatly expanded for the sake of introducing droid panels (with which she and other protocol droids can interface). Not only does this teach you about droid panels, but it does something that The Complete Saga does many times to guarantee that there's always something to do for player 2. Even if you're stuck playing as an Artoo-type astromech while your friend is playing as a Jedi, the game makes sure that neither player is less important than the other. There's always going to be a droid panel you need a buddy to access and it's unlikely that you, playing as R4-P17, can take down Jango Fett all on your own.
As this is a LEGO game, building is part of the game. I was honestly surprised to learn that prior to LEGO Star Wars II, only Jedi characters could build. Knowing that reducing building to something only the space monks with laser swords could do would send a bad message to budding builders, TT corrected this for the original trilogy game and then went back to the prequels to patch that back into The Complete Saga. Alas, droid characters can't build, but that's somewhat understandable considering how many of them don't have hands.
Another thing this level introduces are minikits, strange white canisters that are scattered throughout each levels in sets of ten and contain parts that create miniature versions of Star Wars vehicles both iconic and obscure. You won't be able to get them all in one run, but you might get some through your exploration of the Trade Federation ship's halls. That, and there's also a Red Brick, which contain bonuses that let you either mess with the game's aesthetics or make the game easier (such as making it so you gain more studs or do more damage) and are usually missed during your first play through of the game because you can't find them without certain character abilities on hand.
Once you're done with "Negotiations", you can do any film's levels in any order, but I recommend playing through all The Phantom Menace (regardless of your feelings on the film) first. If "Negotiations" got you used to the basics, the rest of TPM's levels will leave you ready to take on the rest of the game because of what they teach you. "Invasion of Naboo" introduces Jar Jar and his high jumps, "Escape from Naboo" introduces you to blaster combat and grappling hooks, "Mos Eisley Podrace" is a high-octane introduction to vehicle levels, "Retake Theed Palace" introduces short characters like Anakin and Artoo-type droid panels as well as Artoo's rocket boosters, and "Darth Maul" ends it with a boss fight against (who else) Darth Maul and a series of platforming challenges that test everything you've learned up to this point.
Everything you need to know about TCS's gameplay minus a few select abilities are shown off here, and once you've downed Darth Maul, you can press onward or go back and replay the levels for a multitude of reasons. You can go back in "Free Play" mode and collect the minikits and Red Bricks you missed using newly-unlocked/purchased characters, you can do it in "Challenge" mode if you want to collect a set of blue minikits placed in challenging spots under a strict 10 minute time limit, or you can see how quickly you can get 100,000 studs while playing through all six levels. TCS encourages replaying old levels not only because there's a lot to collect, but because these levels are fun.
With TPM complete, we move onto the rest of the game. Attack of the Clones, once you get past the miserable "Bounty Hunter Pursuit" vehicle level, is a surprisingly fun romp that cranks up the difficulty slightly. "Droid Factory" is the standout level here, focusing on puzzles involving Artoo and Threepio and tight platforming in a place that felt prime for a video game adaptation. "Discovery on Kamino" is a close second for its closing chase sequence and boss fight against Jango and Boba Fett, although its first half is a bit sluggish before you run into the elder Fett.
"Jedi Battle" and "Gunship Cavalry" unfortunately drag down the back half of AOTC, with the former being a melee level that is just you mowing down a bunch of battle droids and fighting a MUCH weaker Jango Fett and the latter being an annoying vehicle level full of insta-kill lasers and a "bomb towing" mechanic that unfortunately isn't limited to this level. "Count Dooku" ends Episode II with a mixed bag. Unlike "Darth Maul", which integrated platforming and puzzles organically into the boss fight, this level separates the fight against Dooku from the puzzles. The actual fight against Dooku is great (even managing to integrate Yoda's arrival after Anakin is disarmed well), but I'd rather there have been more puzzle-y and platform-y elements to the fight.
Revenge of the Sith's levels, like its source material within the context of the prequel trilogy, are some of the best the game has to offer. While the movie-accuracy is somewhat hampered by references to scenes that were cut ("Ruin of the Jedi" has clone troopers in Jedi disguises and Shaak Ti being killed by Anakin, both of which were excised from the final film), that's kind of a moot point considering how solid these levels are. "Battle Over Coruscant" is the best vehicle level in the game because its on-rails shooter mechanics prevent the usual difficulties with controlling vehicles in space (it's also the easiest level to 100% and one of the best to get hundreds of studs from).
"Chancellor in Peril" balances combat and platforming well, "Battle of Kashyyyk" is a difficult but rewarding gauntlet in which Yoda and Chewbacca have to fight across the forested planet against Order 66-affected clone troopers and battle droids alike in order to get to Yoda's pod (only somewhat movie-accurate), "Ruin of the Jedi" is a somber level in which Obi-Wan and Yoda try to figure out what went wrong while evading clone troopers, and "Darth Vader" puts a clever twist on Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel on Mustafar by forcing players 1 and 2 to work together until the very end, where they duel one another until one player is the victor (unfortunately, the cutscene dictates that Obi-Wan always wins). The only stinker in all of Episode III is "General Grievous" due to its movie-inaccuracy (would've LOVED a wheelbike chase), but even then it's just an okay level rather than a frustrating one. Revenge of the Sith's levels are game-wide highs and work both as a solid end to the prequel trilogy levels and as a satisfying midpoint to TCS.
Once you're done with the prequels, you transition into the original trilogy's levels. Star Wars/A New Hope starts strong with Leia, Captain Antilles, the droids, and TCS-original character Rebel Friend protecting the Death Star plans in "Secret Plans". While the difficulty resets back to what the TPM levels offered up (because this was the first level of LEGO Star Wars II), that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you jumped straight to the original trilogy after completing "Negotiations", this would be your first exposure to blaster combat, grapple pads, and Artoo-type droid panels, so it still works as a tutorial level in that regard.
However, Episode IV is immediately dragged down by "Through the Jundland Wastes", a painful slog that's overly long and worsened by Tusken Raiders with scary precise aim and Jawas that disable Artoo and Threepio with a single blast of their blaster. Throw in the sluggish waddle that Threepio and other protocol droids suffer from and frustrating platforming, and you end up with a level that's fighting with "Bounty Hunter Pursuit" and "Falcon Flight" for the title of worst level in the game.
Thankfully, the remainder of Star Wars (1977)/A New Hope's levels are either a complete blast or at the very least competently designed. "Mos Eisley Cantina" gives players a full tour of Tatooine's most well-known city with plenty of Stormtroopers for Han to shoot and Chewbacca to tear the arms off (which, yes, is a real feature; Han wasn't bluffing about angry Wookiees having a tendency to disarm those who spurn them). It's brimming with opportunities for brawls, studs to collect, and references to the original film (you can actually sell Luke's landspeeder if you know what you're doing).
The two Death Star levels incorporate the Imperial panels (requiring characters to be Empire-aligned or wear a Stormtrooper helmet) well, have fun puzzles and platforming, and has plenty of clever touches only accessible in Free Play mode (like accessing the walkway Obi-Wan travels on to shut down the Death Star's shields in "Rescue the Princess" or interrupting Obi-Wan and Vader's rematch in "Death Star Escape"). Episode IV ends with- what else?- "Rebel Attack", which chronicles the Rebellion's attack on the Death Star and concludes with a tense trench run battle against Vader's TIE Advanced and two other TIE Fighters. It's one of the better vehicle levels, really.
Like "Mos Espa Podrace" and "Battle Over Coruscant" before it, "Rebel Attack" is excellent due to its tight focus. There's no frustrating gimmick like the towable bombs from "Gunship Cavalry" or some bizarre challenge like the massive asteroid at the end of "Falcon Flight"; it's just a straightforward adaptation of Luke and his fellow Red Squadron pilots' strike against the Death Star that integrates the torpedo mechanic first introduced in "Bounty Hunter Pursuit" well. The level design focuses on one level-appropriate gimmick, something that tends to create the best vehicle levels in the game (see the podrace and Coruscant levels).
Unfortunately, one of the nicest vehicle levels in the game is followed by a rather frustrating one with The Empire Strikes Back's "Hoth Battle". It's basically "'Gunship Cavalry' 2" with the instakill lasers swapped out for AT-ATs that require you to do as Luke did and tangle up their legs before you can blow them up. While the bomb towing mechanic is still annoying, it's a bit more manageable here (suggesting that TT learned from their missteps from the first game) and the worst the level gets is during its final section's tedious shootout against dozens of probe droids and AT-STs and four AT-ATs.
Empire continues with "Escape From Hoth" (which is a fun run-and-gun level only held back by ice physics and some mildly frustrating puzzles) and "Falcon Flight" (which is hampered by the scarcity of torpedos in a level that's practically dependent on using them and an out of nowhere asteroid that holds up the Millennium Falcon's escape from the Empire). "Yoda" is the best of the Empire levels in my opinion- not only does it see a permanent shift in how Luke plays (he gains the ability to use the Force and a lightsaber), but it integrates the story of this part of the film masterfully, to the point where Luke's Force access is limited when Yoda isn't on his backpack and he can't lift his crashed X-Wing out of the swamp- only Yoda can. It's got great puzzles, great platforming, and a fun boss fight against Luke's hallucination of Vader.
"Cloud City Trap" keeps the good Empire level train going by being a battle against Vader that lasts almost the entire level and integrates Artoo into it without taking away from the story being told (he's key to activating certain platforms and panels); "Betrayal at Cloud City" ends ESB with a competent but somewhat underwhelming flight to the landing pad where the Falcon had been parked. The latter is particularly disappointing when you consider that we could've had a more in-depth battle against Boba Fett akin to the battle against his father from AOTC's "Discovery on Kamino", but instead, we got with the first of two mediocre battles in which he goes down in just four hits. In the end, though, Empire fares somewhat well- its vehicle levels drag it down big time, but the minifigure levels range from competent at worst to excellent.
All that remains is Return of the Jedi- the pinnacle of the game, home to some of its best levels. The worst I can say about ROTJ's levels within TCS is that "Speeder Showdown," its third level, is mildly frustrating due to how the speeder bikes control during their sections, and even then what surrounds them within the level is quite solid. "Jabba's Palace" and "The Great Pit of Carkoon" capture the atmosphere of the film's first act well and make the most of the cast's abilities (although "The Great Pit of Carkoon" is brought down a bit due to it having the second of the two disappointing Boba Fett fights).
"The Battle of Endor" plays out like a better "Battle of Kashyyyk". Both levels are long, sprawling gauntlets, but Episode VI's forest planet level avoids the swarms of enemies that plagued Episode III's forest planet level and has a tighter focus on getting to the shield bunker and placing the bombs there to destroy it. It's a blast and serves as one last test for the blaster-wielding characters (Han, Chewie and Leia), the droids (Threepio and Artoo), and short characters (Wicket the Ewok).
Return of the Jedi's levels and TCS as a whole end with "Jedi Destiny" and "Into the Death Star"- what I consider the final boss of the whole game and the victory lap. The former is Luke and Vader (who has his change of heart earlier in order to facilitate multiplayer) tag-teaming against Palpatine in a battle that spans the entire throne room of the second Death Star; the latter is Lando leading the charge against the second Death Star and navigating its innards to fire off the shots needed to blow up the whole thing. Both are excellent levels that blend faithful retellings of the film's events with game-friendly tweaks that don't feel like they detract from the source material so much as they enhance it.
"Jedi Destiny" in particular is a phenomenal level- my favorite from the whole game, in fact. It's got puzzles that require both Skywalkers to work together, it's got a lengthy, grueling battle against Palpatine that makes his eventual defeat cathartic, the Imperial Guards are fittingly tough enemies, and the sight of Luke and Vader working together against the one who corrupted the elder Skywalker and tormented the galaxy through his Empire will never not put a smile on my face. I get that Vader's early shift back to the light side is only there for the sake of multiplayer, but it warms my heart to see him immediately come to his son's defense when Palpatine whips out the Force lightning and turn back. It is as close to perfect as a LEGO Star Wars level can get.
It's such a cinematic, climactic, well-done level that it makes the next level feel more like a bonus rather than the true ending. That's not to say that "Into the Death Star" is bad, though- it has the focus that makes some of the game's best vehicle levels great and what tweaks it makes to the source material are understandable given that this is a video game (such as the Death Star II's core being guarded by a series of turrets). The only gripe I've got with the level is that they didn't include the Super Star Destroyer that takes an A-Wing to the bridge, but I'm willing to forgive that since it would've seemed like it came out of nowhere given neither player 1 nor player 2 has access to an A-Wing.
With the six films' levels complete, now all that's left for a player to do is to spend the studs they've acquired to buy new characters (you NEED some bounty hunters on hand to deal with silver LEGO elements) and Red Brick enhancements necessary for Free Play mode to be done best. Some of the game's best characters include General Grievous (massive damage + high jump a la Jar Jar), 4-LOM (can access both varieties of droid panels and bounty hunter panels in addition to the thermal detonators accessible to all bounty hunters), the Fetts Jango and Boba (their jetpacks grant greater flight than the boosters on R2 units), and the Force Ghosts of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda (completely impervious to all damage; they're appropriately the most expensive characters). The post-game also opens up the variety of vehicles that can be purchased, including Imperial vehicles that can access Empire-only areas in Free Play.
In addition to replaying the main game's levels, one can also experience a boatload of bonus levels. "Anakin's Flight" recreates Anakin's destruction of the Trade Federation ship from TPM. This level was cut from the original 2005 game... with good reason; it's somewhat clunkily designed and doesn't feel like it would've slotted into the Episode I levels without feeling jarring. You couldn't put it before "Darth Maul" because it'd make players too frustrated to want to play the next level and you couldn't place it after the next level because it would've felt like a rushed afterthought.
Speaking of things cut from the 2005 game, TCS also includes the original versions of "Mos Espa Podrace" and "Gunship Cavalry". The original version of the podrace is far more difficult (in a good way); the original version of the Battle of Geonosis is strangely easier because you're locked into facing only one way (making evading the instakill lasers easier and also excising the tow bombs). I understand why both were changed (to keep The Phantom Menace accessible to younger players for the former and to integrate the tow bombs from Empire's "Hoth Battle" for the latter), but I'd have preferred the original version of "Gunship Cavalry" because it's significantly less frustrating.
"A New Hope", the lone bonus level from the 2005 game, focuses on Vader and a Stormtrooper's siege of the Tantive IV. It's the only level from the baddies' perspective and one of the levels that's aged the best- not because of its level design (it's competent but nothing special), but because of Vader's rampage from Rogue One being so scarily similar to it. With Rogue One in mind, the level becomes unintentionally brilliant and a very loose retroactive adaptation of that particular scene.
The final two bonuses are The Video Game and The Original Trilogy's LEGO City-themed bonus levels, in which characters of your choosing go around brick built towns tearing things apart and building them back up in order to get 1 million studs as quick as possible. They're fun novelties, but they feel rather aimless and mindless due to how difficult it can be to find the last thing you need to reach stud number 1000000. Besides, at this point in the game, you've probably already got several million studs; why waste your time here? (Not saying these levels are bad; just that they're kinda redundant when you've got all the Stud Multiplier Red Bricks active)
Believe it or not, we're STILL not done yet. There are movie-specific bonus levels focused on gathering millions of studs and bashing countless baddies using whatever character or minikit-created vehicle you want, there's the "Super Story" mode that involves speeding through each movie's levels as fast as possible, and there's the bounty hunter missions that act as a game of hide-and-seek between some of the best seekers in the Star Wars galaxy finding iconic heroes from every major time period. There's enough content to keep diehard players going until they get that sweet sweet 100%, but the main game is fun enough to keep casual players coming back no matter how many times they've replayed it.
As I've established throughout this section, The Complete Saga is not perfect. There are many levels that are outright bad and several that are serviceable but only exist to fill out a film's six-level length, but those are outweighed by the good-to-great-to-fantastic levels (in terms of a good/bad level ratio, we have 28 good levels against 8 bad ones). The character roster is expansive, the films are adapted faithfully with understandable concessions made for the sake of humor and/or gameplay, and its replayability is impressive for a game of its age.
HOW THE LATER LEGO STAR WARS GAMES (and some later LEGO games too) FUMBLE WHAT THE COMPLETE SAGA DID SO WELL
Now that I've explained The Complete Saga's strengths in great detail, it's time that I critique its successors. Please note that I don't hate these games- far from it. It's just that for every step forward they take, there's a few steps back that hinder them from being TCS-tier.
2011's LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars sought to adapt several episodes from the first two seasons of the acclaimed The Clone Wars animated series. The game was incredibly ambitious, introducing new character types (such as clone commanders who could command groups of clone troopers or rapid-fire characters who could destroy gold LEGO elements), revised space combat that allowed one to land their ship and take the fight to the Separatists aboard their warships, and huge ground battles that employed strategy game elements and focused on taking down one side's forces to advance the level. While I'd rather LucasArts have waited until the show finished its first five seasons so that it could adapt some of the more beloved arcs (ex: Ahsoka's escape from the Trandoshans, the 501st Legion's battle against fallen Jedi Pong Krell on the planet Umbara, Darth Maul's return, and Maul's conquest of Mandalore), what the game offers up is quite nice.
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Heck, the game even fixes TCS's "Jedi Battle" through completely reinventing the brawl in the Geonosian Arena to make it more about battling its creatures (which were completely absent from the TCS level) and then Jango (who has a more substantial boss fight than he did in "Jedi Battle"). The ground battles are engaging and something I wish carried over into future games (the Battle of Kashyyyk would RULE if you could call in Wookiee reinforcements to help battle against the Order 66-affected clones), the space combat is more refined than the vehicle levels from TCS, and I appreciate that the clone troopers aren't just palette swaps that share the same moveset as their Stormtrooper successors like they were in TCS (in all fairness, however, The Clone Wars show did a LOT of heavy lifting to make the clones individual characters).
However, for everything the game does well or better than TCS, there's about two things it doesn't do well. It's far more difficult to buy new characters or Red Bricks due to needing to travel between ships, the hub world(s) of the Republic and Separatist cruisers are a nightmare to navigate (in sharp contrast to TCS's simple and sweet Cantina hub), protocol droids have had their panels changed to be pointlessly more complex, the Force push/pull gimmick is excised in favor of lifting up a droid and throwing them into other droids (which is somewhat fun, but shoving a bunch of droids into one another is more fun), minikits seem to be placed in more obtuse spots, manipulating objects with the Force is now manual instead of automatic (which is annoying in the case of puzzles that require pitch-perfect object placement) and some levels are so poorly lit (especially on the Wii) that it's difficult to tell what to do next. It seems as if in LucasArts and TT's ambition to create a game bigger and better than its predecessor, they forgot to get the little things right that made TCS navigable and snappy gameplay-wise.
Five years passed, and TT released LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a game adapting only the first film of the sequel trilogy. In light of what went wrong with LEGO The Hobbit (which never adapted The Battle of Five Armies), making a game based on only one chunk of a story rather than waiting until the whole story was free to adapt seemed rather foolish. But the game manages to rise above its divisive source material and its limitations to produce a genuinely fun game.
LEGO TFA integrated many of the innovations that post-2012 LEGO games brought with them- full voice acting, a "wheel" that makes switching between multiple characters easier (shame this stopped being a thing after this game; it's quite useful), and Star Wars-ified versions of gimmicks from other recent LEGO games (ex: binoculars that imitate Batman's Scanner Suit's scanning/Spider-Man's spider-sense). Innovations specific to this game included fleshed out chunks of planets to explore both during the story and during the post-game, the best space combat the LEGO Star Wars games have ever had (channeling Nintendo's Star Fox series; ironically, the game released during the same year that Star Fox Zero shot down any chances that SF had to gain a new following with a younger generation), BB-8-specific droid panels (which require a bit more interaction than the astromech and protocol panels), and refined blaster combat that transforms the game into a third-person over-the-shoulder shooter.
However, it's this game that starts an unfortunate trend that bled into the most recent LEGO Star Wars game, and that's how it adapted the source material. See, one of the brilliant things that the first two LEGO SW games/TCS did was add humor to lighten up the game. When combined with the fact that all the minifigure characters could do was pantomime until 2012's LEGO Batman 2 introduced full voice acting, this resulted in truly hilarious renditions of iconic scenes from throughout the first six films (ex: Vader pulls out a photo of him and Padme, then points at her pregnant belly to tell Luke that he is his father).
Unfortunately, LEGO TFA pushes the humor too far, resulting in things like General Hux enjoying an ice cream cone while Kylo Ren is being chastised by Supreme Leader Snoke or Rey's traumatic vision induced by touching the Skywalker family lightsaber being interrupted by surreal visions of Unkar Plutt (aka that blobby alien guy who gave out ration packs) quoting The Wizard of Oz. One of the worst examples is found in the very first level, which retells the final act of Return of the Jedi and turns Vader's bittersweet passing into a joke. Not only do they slip in a jab at the Special Edition for replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen (a joke that means nothing to me because Hayden as Force ghost Anakin is all I've known), but the Imperial Guards are so touched by Luke and Vader's goodbye that they're cartoonishly sobbing in the background.
Compare that to how TCS represented Vader's passing. It's one of the few moments in the game to be played completely straight, and with good reason. Vader- nay, Anakin gets to see his son with his own eyes, finally free from the metal prison that he had been rotting in for nearly two decades, and he passes away peacefully with that knowledge. Sure, there's a subtle gag of his corpse sliding into the Imperial Shuttle as the ramp goes up, but it's remarkably sincere compared to the rest of TCS.
There are gags in LEGO TFA I enjoy like Kylo Ren's quarters being full of Darth Vader memorabilia (which portrays his pathetic obsession with Vader as the joke that it is), but those seem few and far between compared to the attempts at jokes that completely deflate what were meant to be sincere, serious scenes. The game's cutscenes are also hampered by their use of audio ripped straight from the film- apparently a problem that plagued other LEGO adaptation games from this period of time like LEGO Jurassic World or LEGO Marvel's Avengers- resulting in scenes that have to rely more on visual comedy that doesn't always match up with what's being said. Amusingly, this results in Finn's "That's one hell of a pilot!" line being left entirely intact while his bloodstained helmet and the brutal deaths of Lor San Tekka and Han Solo are censored.
The gameplay is the best of the post-TCS games. Combat is tight and precise whether you're using a lightsaber, a blaster, or a ship, the characters are well-balanced (no one feels too overpowered and I welcome the lack of flying characters because those characters just utterly wrecked whatever difficulty some LEGO games were meant to have), the puzzles are clever and utilize character skillsets well, the boss fights are a blast (marrying the more puzzle-oriented style of post-TCS games with the more "whack him with a lightsaber til he goes down" bosses from TCS), and the hub worlds are expansive enough to be fun while also being tight enough to avoid being overwhelming. It's honestly kinda funny how the first film of the worst Star Wars trilogy somehow led TT to produce the best LEGO Star Wars game from a gameplay standpoint since the original two/three.
Due to being part of that era where Disney was REALLY hoping that anything The Force Awakens would get audiences excited for future media set within the sequel trilogy era, LEGO TFA is perhaps one of the most lore-heavy LEGO video games. Heck, there's so much lore that the game actually has five or so extra levels dedicated to pre-movie content set in that 30-year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Want to know how Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma got the scoop on where the map to Luke's location was? Curious about that bounty hunter in red armor who Finn briefly talked to during the not-cantina scene? How did Lor San Tekka get the map to Luke's hideaway? Why is Poe so revered within the Resistance? And where did Han and Chewie get hold of those weird tentacled things? This game's got the answers to all those questions (unlike JJ "Mystery Box" Abrams)... and ironically, they're some of the best levels in the game.
Don't get me wrong, the levels based on The Force Awakens itself ARE fun, but you can tell that TT was having a blast making levels that weren't beholden to screen-accuracy. "The Crimson Corsair" is an excellent level about its titular bounty hunter and his cohorts' misadventure sneaking into a First Order base that blends several different character types together well and ended up as my favorite level from the whole game. From the main campaign, I'd say the battle at Maz Kanata's castle (complete with a boss fight against FN-1999/the Stormtrooper who yelled "TRAITOR!") and the boss fight against Captain Phasma (it's almost as if TT wanted to apologize for how anticlimactically she was dealt with in the film) were my favorite levels.
The open-world hubs are improvements on both LEGO The Clone Wars's flagships and LEGO Batman 3's Lantern Corps homeworlds due to them being significantly easier to navigate. Like many post-LEGO Batman 2 LEGO games, these open worlds are full of challenges to conquer that allow you to gain new characters and vehicles to work with. A collectible unique to this game is the "Carbonite Brick", which unlocks a character from the first six films and/or The Clone Wars.
While this is frustrating since the game's character roster is extremely TFA-heavy (to the point where nothing characters like Constable Zuvio who only showed up for only five seconds are playable), I like the idea of unlocking characters united by a shared theme once you grab certain collectibles. Makes 'em feel a bit more special, you know? I've been working on a LEGO Sonic video game pitch for the last year, and I decided to integrate something akin to the Carbonite Bricks with "Classic Monitors"- collectibles that unlock characters that hail from 1991-1997 (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman's original designs as well as "classic-exclusive" characters like Mighty the Armadillo) or post-1997 faux-retro characters (like Mania's Hard-Boiled Heavies or Superstars's Trip the Sungazer) introduced into that era.
Overall, LEGO The Force Awakens was much better than I remembered it being. Sure, the story feels like TT leaned too hard into the comedy and most of the best levels are reserved for the post-games, but this felt like the perfect marriage of modern LEGO games and LEGO Star Wars at its best. If they were to have combined this game's gameplay with the ground battles from LEGO The Clone Wars and used The Complete Saga's layout for adapting the first six films, we would have the perfect LEGO SW game.
Unfortunately, 2022's LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was not that perfect game. Admittedly, this game had a lot stacked against it. Not only would it have to adapt all nine films of the "Skywalker Saga" (Lucas's original six and the sequel trilogy), but it also aimed to feature as many characters, planets and collectibles as possible. One COULD make that work, but the final project ended up as a mess.
However, let's start with the positives. The voice cast does a good job filling in for the film cast (as part of the The Clone Wars generation, I like that we have official audio of the TCW voice cast saying lines from Revenge of the Sith), the space battles take the right cues from LEGO TFA's interstellar conflicts and add in surprise attacks from enemy forces, the character roster is expansive (from rebel battle droid R0-GR from The Freemaker Adventures animated series to TCS original Rebel Friend), the combat is immersive and a step up from the usual "mash the attack button to win", and the story mode takes great pains to avoid repeating too much of TCS or LEGO TFA when possible (such as including the Gungan sub's escape from the "bigger fish" and Anakin's attack on the Trade Federation ship in The Phantom Menace's adaptation). That's about it, though.
Out of all the LEGO games, this one has the most absurd amount of collectibles. Hundreds of characters and vehicles to unlock, thousands of "Kyber Bricks" (which replace the traditional Gold Bricks), minikits (because of course), mapping out each and every planet, and datacards (which replace Red Bricks) all await you. What's more, many of the collectibles tend to be gained through repetitive side quests... bringing us right back to the same problem that LEGO Batman 3 had. These worlds are full of content, yes, but there's just so much content that it'd leave some players (like myself) overwhelmed with what to do first.
The levels are far shorter than past games (a necessity given how much they're adapting), but what they choose to keep and what they choose to cut is rather maddening. The Battle of Coruscant would've been a blast with the refined starfighter controls, but it's instead reduced to just a cutscene before the rematch against Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith. The chase against Zam Wessel that was so frustrating back in TCS is back and even worse in Attack of the Clones's first level, and while "Through the Jundland Wastes" is thankfully skipped, A New Hope reduces the exploration of Mos Eisley Cantina down to just a single mission about shooting up Stormtroopers while the Millennium Falcon is being repaired instead of letting you experience that iconic hive of scum and villainy.
What's worse, each movie is interrupted by lengthy sections in which you navigate a location until you reach the point where the game decides you get to play through a level that may or may not end up disappointing. While some modern LEGO games had similar sections, at least those weren't terribly tedious. The Skywalker Saga has walking sections that take nearly 10 minutes of travel time, even if you know where you're going!
The multiplayer is there, but it's been sidelined hard in favor of prioritizing single-player and combat. Gone are the clever twists on scenes from the film meant to accommodate multiplayer, and in their place are boss fights where player 2 has almost nothing to work with (the final duel of Revenge of the Sith is especially bad since Artoo can't do crap to help Obi-Wan defeat Anakin). I understand that it'd be difficult to make the game run well in two-player mode with how in-depth its combat and space controls are, but I'd gladly have traded the insane combos and some of the explorable planets for being able to play with a friend just like old times.
The ultimate sin of The Skywalker Saga is its overemphasis on comedy. If LEGO The Force Awakens was hit or miss with its humor, this game is even more so. Nothing is taken seriously, with the writers taking every opportunity they can to turn serious moments into farces. It is the ultimate nadir of the increased focus on comedy in LEGO games adapting movies that knew when to take themselves seriously- if everything is a joke or lightened up to the point of where it no longer resembles the source material, then why should we engage with it? Why should we take seriously media that refuses to take itself seriously? Why should we engage with an adaptation that plays so fast and loose with the source material that, suppose characters and plot elements were reworked to remove their connection to the source material, could be turned into its own thing?
For all of its sins that I'd heard about (and also because of an ongoing boycott of all things Disney Star Wars that isn't Rebels, Rogue One or Andor), I decided not to pick up The Skywalker Saga. It's a shame that the closest thing we have to LEGO Star Wars on modern consoles is such a mess. All TT really had to do was take The Complete Saga, use it as a template, add in all the quality-of-life improvements that modern LEGO games have added, throw in the best elements of past LSW games (ground battles from The Clone Wars and the flight controls and Carbonite Bricks from TFA)... and add in levels based on the sequel trilogy and you'd have an excellent game that'd probably be seen as the best one since The Complete Saga.
Alas, that's not what we ended up getting.
Now that I've explained why I don't think The Complete Saga's follow-ups don't quite work, let's expand this discussion by comparing it to other LEGO games. Out of all the LEGO games released between 2007 and 2018, there's a select few that I'd say can be put alongside TCS as some of the greats. 2008's LEGO Batman: The Videogame maintains the elegant simplicity of TCS while innovating on the formula through 1) introducing targeting reticles and having more varied/consistently good vehicle levels and 2) telling a wholly original story split between 15 hero levels and 15 villain levels.
Another DC example that I think is excellent is 2018's LEGO DC Super-Villains, which does a very loose adaptation of the "Forever Evil" storyline in which Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom are forced to play hero to stop the Justice League's evil alternate universe counterparts and Darkseid from conquering Earth. I'm honestly shocked that I didn't go for it sooner because this game is fantastic. There's solid puzzles, great level design, fun boss fights, a character roster that's just big enough to be exciting and small enough to not be frustrating, the best use of customizable characters out of any LEGO game, and a solid open world split between Gotham City, Metropolis, Smallville and Apokolips. It's a banger of a game and a welcome send-off to the original formula before The Skywalker Saga ruined everything.
Shockingly few people talk about 2014's The LEGO Movie Videogame... and that baffles me because it's one that I'd argue is in my top five. It integrates story and character aspects into the gameplay well (ex: Emmet needs instructions to build before his encounter with reality), it expands upon the movie's story just enough (we get to see Emmet's day at work from a more intimate standpoint and there's a proper final battle against Lord Business), and it feels like a throwback to the days when every character mattered to completing a level (more on that later). It's not the most complex or lengthy LEGO game out there, but it's one that felt delightfully retro in an age when these games were getting too big for their own good in their pursuit of being more modern.
The last of the modern LEGO games that I like is LEGO Incredibles, based on the superhero duology of the same name from Pixar. While the game leans a bit too hard into the irreverence and censorship that plagued later LEGO games (robbing movie 1's levels and cutscenes of much of their adult edge), it's by no means a bad game. There's a solid character roster (including other Pixar characters; as someone who used to draw LEGO-ized versions of WALL-E, you can't imagine how happy I was to see him looking so close to my original sketches from when I was like 8), the levels are a delight that balance the different playable characters quite well (with several sequences being modified for the sake of two-player and allowing us to better understand the ill-defined Supers introduced for Incredibles II), and the open world is given "crime waves" that see you face swarms of enemies and battle against game-original criminals that were actually designed by Pixar employees. It's, for lack of a better word, incredible.
However, outside of these four, I'd say a lot of modern LEGO video games suffer for a list of reasons.
Since the first two points were covered in my critique of The Skywalker Saga, let's look at problem number 3. The most notable example of TT trying to fix what wasn't broken was with LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. While the first LEGO Indy game was pretty solid, the second game is often derided for how much TT changed. Levels are now comically short, collectibles have been moved to cramped, awkwardly formatted hub worlds, and the game trades accuracy for absurdly over-the-top boss fights (ex: Indy's rival Belloq, instead of being vaporized by the holiness of YHWH at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is somehow transformed into an electrical demon by the Ark of the Covenant). Admittedly, I don't think LEGO Indiana Jones 2 was "worst LEGO game ever" bad, but it suffers from the same problem that The Skywalker Saga does in that it cuts perfectly good content from the first game while amplifying all the worst aspects of the levels it chose to remake.
Problem number 4 is a problem I've noticed was amplified post-LEGO Batman 2. The more character abilities get added to the game, the more complex the puzzles in the open world get and the more frustrating it is to have to switch between one character to another just to get one Gold Brick, character token or minikit. A particularly bad example came from LEGO Batman 3, where I struggled to find the Atom's character token for YEARS... all the while a puzzle which required his shrinking powers in the Batcave area sat there, taunting me. Keep in mind, he's the only character in that game with those powers.
While TT attempted to alleviate this through making sure some characters are multipurpose (ex: Batman and Robin in LEGO Batman 3 combined pretty much have almost every ability one could ask for save for shrinking, super strength, super speed, and Lantern constructs), it's still deeply frustrating when there's a puzzle sitting there, taunting you with the fact you don't have the character necessary to solve it. It doesn't help that as the games got bigger and bigger, there was less of an incentive to buy characters you unlocked. Why would I spend my studs on a character that can only do one thing when I could use this character I've already unlocked that can do multiple things?
The worst example of problem number 4 was LEGO Dimensions, LEGO, WB and TT's answer to the "toys-to-life" craze started by Skylanders back in 2011. Several levels and open-world areas had puzzles that were only solvable with certain characters... that might not even be available for another six months. This resulted in certain parts of the game being undoable until you bought that character (which could set you back somewhere between $13.99 and $39.99) in real life, which had to have been a nightmare for lower-income families who just wanted to 100% the game.
Compare that to The Complete Saga, where you could always count on certain character types always playing the same. Jedi and Sith always had the Force and lightsabers, blaster-wielders always shot the same, droids couldn't jump, high-jumping characters always jumped high, and bounty hunters always had thermal detonators on hand to blow things up. It was simpler, yes, but you didn't need a whole sorting system to figure out which character can do what in free play mode.
I'd say this crippling overspecialization really started with the LEGO Marvel trilogy (LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, LEGO Marvel's Avengers, and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2), where you suddenly had a whole cabal of superpowers to keep track of and figure out when they were most useful. Of course, this creates the problem of certain characters outclassing one another due to some being more flexible than others. Why play as Spider-Man and Hulk when you can play as Venom, who has both characters' powers (Peter's web-slinging and spider-sense and Bruce Banner's super strength)? Why play as any of the Fantastic 4 when the Super-Skrull (a character with all their powers combined) can stand in for all of them (although he can't shapeshift like Mr. Fantastic; perhaps that just wasn't programmed in)? it's a deeply flawed system that makes me yearn for the simplicity of the days of yore.
Lastly, we have flying characters, the last of the problems that modern LEGO video games suffer from. They make multiplayer deeply frustrating (and potentially motion sickness-inducing) and removed much of the challenge from the games which feature them. Granted, they help make traversing open world areas much easier (especially as the flight controls got tighter with each subsequent game), yet I wish the ability to fly would be limited in the actual levels so you can't just power through them and leave your buddy in the dust.
What my ultimate problem with modern LEGO games is the misguided need to add more and more features despite how much they actually detract from the play experience by overcomplicating things. You can have specialized character types and open worlds, yes, but when I have to sort through lists upon lists of characters just to figure out how to solve [insert puzzle here] or learn new skills that'll be discarded by the next game, I just find myself asking "why can't this game just be content to be a LEGO game rather than a LEGO game with immersive space combat or combo-heavy lightsaber combat?" rather than being excited for what's next to collect. The formula established in The Complete Saga was nearly perfect- all you needed to do was tighten up the vehicle controls, make it easier to access whatever character you needed in Free Play mode (and include the selection wheel from later games) and add full voice acting, and it would be truly perfect.
CONCLUSION
I knew I wanted to write this article for a while now. Thing is, I had a hard time figuring out what my ultimate point would be other than "The Complete Saga holds up and I think it's still the best LEGO game". However, after spending some time thinking it over and working on other articles, the point I think that I've come to is that LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is the best LEGO game because it so perfectly captured the feel of Star Wars no matter how familiar you were with the franchise.
It brought the prequels in line with the original trilogy through excising the sometimes-cringeworthy dialogue, it communicated all the important narrative beats with the respect they deserved (and a bit of pantomimed humor to keep it entertaining), it has a controlled yet diverse batch of characters to play as, and the gameplay perfectly fits the world of that galaxy far, far away George created back in 1977. Even if you knew nothing about Star Wars other than what was referenced in other media and what you saw in the toy aisle or on TV, this game was a great gateway into the franchise. The Complete Saga has been described as "a perfect adaptation" by other folk online, and I'd have to agree with them.
In light of a certain Disney+ show threatening to unravel the morals and lore of Star Wars down to its barest threads (if you know, you know), the game has become a comfort to me because it's a reminder of a time when Star Wars was pure, when it was fresh and new to me. The Clone Wars may have been what made me a fan, but The Complete Saga is what solidified that love for the series. And no amount of seemingly endless Disney+ spin-offs nor seemingly "better" games can take away my gratitude towards it.
Thank you for reading, everyone. God bless!