LEGO Skywalker Saga’s Galactic Edition Is The Most Pointless DLC Ever
While no game has ever covered as much of Star Wars’s history as LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the love and attention given much of the franchise doesn’t shine through in the game’s Galactic Edition, which unfortunately has the same sarlacc pitfalls as the game’s earlier DLC content. The game’s ambitious task of bringing together three entire trilogies’ worth of characters, settings, and stories was well executed in its base content, and in some ways even fixes problems from the Star Wars films, but the same robustness doesn’t seem to have carried over to the Galactic Edition DLC.
It has been over half a year since the release of TT Games’ largest LEGO game yet, and in that time, various character packs have seen the game’s roster continue to grow. As the title suggests, The Skywalker Saga’s intent was to retell, in LEGO form, the stories of the mainline films; to that end, characters central fo these stories are an obvious necessity. But TT Games doubled down, ensuring that even many small, mostly-irrelevant figures that appear in the Star Wars films also made an appearance in The Skywalker Saga’s selection of playable characters. In doing so, The Skywalker Saga outgrew itself in a sense, shifting its focus from the franchise’s core to a much wider lens.
The game’s DLC only reinforced this shift, with character packs introducing the heroes and villains from various « supplemental » stories such as The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, and Rogue One. Unfortunately, while the game’s roster expanded, the adventures didn’t. No new missions have been added through DLC, and the upcoming Galactic Edition doesn’t look to change this, begging the question: what’s the point of this newest version of the game?
Before The Skywalker Saga even launched, players knew the general plan for its expansion content. Several character packs were announced in advance of the game’s release, but it quickly became clear that The Skywalker Saga’s DLC needed more than characters alone. While it’s good to see fan-favorite characters from outside the Star Wars trilogies appear in the game, the addition of new characters doesn’t meaningfully add to the game’s play experience. Without new missions, add-on content would be sorely lacking, and this has largely proven to be the case.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga’s Galactic Edition continues this unfortunate trend. It contains the next six character packs, which will be released over the duration of November 2022, but nothing else. In addition to some goofier characters based on LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation, these packs add characters from The Clone Wars, Rebels, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and others. For fans of these series’ and the Star Wars characters initially missing from Skywalker Saga, more character packs aren’t inherently a bad thing – but it’s disappointing to see these are the only DLC that TT Games has worked on. With no associated missions, each new character is only available in the game’s Free Play mode, and The Skywalker Saga still lacks the highly-requested character creator that was present in most of TT Games’ prior LEGO titles.
Ultimately, the shallowness of the game’s expansion content makes sense – new characters are little more than re-skins, and don’t require the same development time or resources that new levels or mechanics would demand. TT Games and Disney are likely banking on the larger success of Star Wars properties to sell the packs included in the Galactic Edition; recognizable characters like Grogu, Asajj Ventress, and Cad Bane will certainly appeal to some audiences. Still, it’s a disappointment that Skywalker Saga DLC won’t extend past character packs, especially given the scope of the larger game. Overall, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga still doesn’t disappoint, but its DLC content certainly leaves a lot to be desired.
