Coco Town is home to Dexter’s Diner, a ‘50s-esque bistro nestled in the underbelly of Coruscant. It’s where Obi-Wan Kenobi went for a cup of joe in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. It was also iconic because, in the original Star Wars Lego game, we went back there time and time again. It was the spot for everything you needed, and simplicity worked in its favour, despite stemming from such a mediocre film.
It was succeeded as the hub of the Lego games by the sequel’s Mos Eisley Cantina, Marvel’s Helicarrier, Batman’s Batcave, and Indiana Jones’ university. Things changed soon after. Suddenly, every single Lego game aimed to up the stakes from the last. They were getting bigger and bigger, something arguably started by Lego Batman 2. It shook up the formula by expanding into the open-world genre with the entirety of Gotham ready to explore like a PG Arkham City.
However, the open-world games - be it Marvel or DC - had something in common. They kept the intuitive hub at the center. While there was a sprawling open world to explore, there was still the main area you could go to for everything of importance - the character creator, levels, red bricks, and the shop. You didn’t have to fly all over the galaxy. However, the desperation to one-up the previous Lego game resulted in TT Games getting a little self-indulgent. The Force Awakens had five hubs - that’s four too many.
The Skywalker Saga will be exaggerating that once more by adding extra hubs, new planets to explore, and a whole expansive galaxy. You’ll be forced to sit through unnecessary loading screens and painstakingly learn the ins and outs of what hub lives on what planet - it loses a good deal of its charm, and abandons the more casual feel that defined these games.
What’s more, it drastically slows down the pace when you’re hunting for collectibles to get that sweet 100 percent. The handy part of the Complete Saga - now incomplete - was that you could just open a door and every level would be laid out in the Cantina. You could waltz on over to Episode 3 then take a quick step back and immediately arrive at Episode 6.
It made going for all the Minikits and True Jedi rank far simpler. Now, you’ll have to scour the galaxy from planet to planet - good luck without a guide. The solution is simple - make the Millenium Falcon the hub and have the galaxy itself serve as the equivalent Gotham backdrop.
It’s not a case of wanting the Lego games to remain the exact same for decades on end - that would be a complete bore. The scale has always been amped up, but it did so without losing that intuitive edge that made the Lego games so fun to just pick up and play. At a certain point, however, Lego lost that simplicity, making the games more and more arduous to play with. They aren’t getting more interesting in design, just more complicated. The content is being spread across an array of locations while the map has always and continues to be a janky, hard-to-read headache.
Searching “How do I find the character creator” when playing Lego The Force Awakens yields threads and threads of people baffled at where the hell it is. It’s in one of the five hubs and you can’t access it before beating the game, but none of this is made clear and the map does little to tell you.
Skywalker Saga isn’t looking at these swathes of confused players and deciding to simplify; instead, it’s heightening the complexity in the name of the grandiose scale. It’s the biggest Lego Star Wars to date, but would anyone really mind if it were just Dexter’s Diner again?
As an adult, I’m struggling. I can’t imagine how much of a headache-inducer this is for kids. Lego is losing a big part of its appeal which was the ease of access, just being able to boot it up and get stuck in. Creating a new save in the Complete Saga drops you right into Mos Eisley’s with no hassle. You can do what you want from there. That simplicity is waning and it’s a shame to see it go.