Six brilliant details in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
12.5.2024
By John Walker, Contributor
Like its predecessors, it can be played alone or in couch co-op, and remains one of the very best games for parents to play alongside kids. It’s also jam-packed with so many lovely details, which is a testament to the developers who worked far too hard to make it. We’ve pulled together some of our favorite tiny details or hidden extras to celebrate this incredible, enormous game.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is free on Epic Games Store from December 5, 11 AM ET, 2024 until December 12, 11 AM ET, 2024.
You can begin with your original trilogy
The term “the original trilogy” has become incredibly confusing in the world of Star Wars. It’s intended to mean the first three movies, by which we don’t mean the chronologically first three movies, but the middle three movies, but not the ones that came out before the second group of three movies… I can go on. This is a muddle that’s certainly not helped by the first released Star Wars movie, A New Hope, being subtitled “Episode IV,” although in 1977 it was just called “Star Wars,” the subtitle added in 1981 following the release of 1980’s Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and… yes, sorry, we’ll shut up.
The point is that your original trilogy is always the one you watched first, whether you began in 1977, 1999 or 2015, and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga isn’t going to determine the order in which you begin. You still need to start with the first movie of each trilogy and play through all three movies in order, but if you want to get to Jar Jar as fast as possible or would rather be playing as Rey from the off, it’s totally up to you.
Piggyback rides!
There is nothing happier than the sight of Obi-Wan Kenobi having a ride on the back of R2-D2. You might think this sounds an unlikely scenario, and perhaps even make an argument that it in some way breaks canon with the Star Wars universe, but yet the evidence is before our eyes. You walk him near the bleep-blooping robot, and there’s the option to jump on board. Then you can control R2, charging around as Obi beams with glee.
Admittedly, you can do the same with other characters, but none of them seems to enjoy it as much as the elderly Jedi. And given he’s about to sacrifice himself to Vader for literally no reason, let him have his happiness. (Apparently more powerful than we can possibly imagine amounts to a slightly encouraging blue ghost.)
It really leans into that one Stormtrooper who bumps his head
Everyone’s favorite thing to point out to new viewers of A New Hope is that excellent moment when the rebels are on the Death Star and the Stormtroopers break through the door to the security control center above Docking Bay 327. If you look at the guy at the back, he bumps his head on the top of the doorway, and pretty hard, too! The goof is left in, and better still, it was never fixed or cut in any of George Lucus’s later edits of the movie. (In fact, in a 2004 version, he even added a sound effect.)
It’s a moment that others have paid tribute to, including Lucas himself in Episode II, when he has Jango Fett bump his head on his Slave 1 ship, as well as showing up in 2015’s Star Wars: Battlefront. But the Lego game really leans in, having the poor Stormtrooper really clock it, causing him to wheel around in dizziness; he's barely able to stand later in the cutscene.
Suit yourself
While The Skywalker Saga follows the events of the films pretty closely, the ability to break anything approaching canon is always available in Free Play mode—here you can pull out absolutely any character you’ve unlocked so far and have them interact. Which means if you’ve always wanted to see a team-up between Darth Maul and Kylo Ren, go crazy. And particular pairings will cause a whole bunch of hidden conversations to play out, which is even better.
One such lovely Easter egg hiding in the game occurs if you bring out Darth Vader and young Anakin Skywalker at the same time.
“Whoa, that’s a cool suit!” says the enthusiastic young Anakin to the iconic villain. “Where can I get one of those?”
“Patience, child,” replies Vader. “Patience.”
There’s a mumblecore audio option
If you’re a long-time fan of the Lego games, especially the earlier versions of Lego Star Wars (and to clear up another question, no, there’s no re-used content here at all), you’ll remember that all the games’ cutscenes featured no actual dialogue. Instead, characters made mumbly “mmmph mmmmmph” noises, articulating favorite moments through gestures and antics.
Over the years, developers Traveller’s Tales have switched away from this, instead using voice actors (who generally mimic the original voice) to combine classic lines from the subject they’re lampooning, along with original, often very silly new dialogue. And it works! But if you were used to the previous way of things, it can feel oddly jarring, too.
Rather wonderfully, however, there’s a mode in The Skywalker Saga to switch things back to the classic mumblecore. It’s not that obvious a setting to find, however, and it’s not in the Settings options at all.
To get the mumbles, you need to open the Holo Projector (the screen that lets you pick characters, spend studs, etc), and go to the right-most tab, Extras. In there are all the tutorial notes, but above them is a section called Datacards. These are bonus features you can unlock with vast numbers of studs and hidden Datacards from levels, but if you scroll down the list, you'll see there’s one option that’s already unlocked. That’s Mumble Mode, and you just need to tick it to have things go old-school.
You can cheat!
There was a time—when the world was young and we were even younger—that pretty much every game came with cheat codes. Vestiges of the shortcuts developers used when making the games, they’d be left in, triggered by secret codes or obtuse controller options to let those in the know break the game to their advantage. (Say “IDSPISPOPD” to anyone over the age of 40 and their eyes will glaze over and they’ll mumble something about “no clipping” back to you—and yes, I typed that from memory.) Such cheats are almost entirely gone from gaming, but thank goodness they live on in the Lego Star Wars games.
They are of course a little more “official” here, with a place in which to enter them in the game’s menus. If you open the same Extras tab on your Holo Projector as mentioned above, you’ll see the option “ENTER CODE” at the top. There are two types: some which unlock characters and others that unlock ships. Both of the ships and the Christmassy Holiday Special versions of characters can only be accessed this way.
Characters to unlock
- Darth Vader (Holiday Special): WROSHYR
- Tarkin: 3FCPPVX
- Mr Bones: BAC1CKP
- Poggle the Lesser: Z55T8CQ
- The Emperor: SIDIOUS
- Resistance I-TS Transport: SHUTTLE
- The Razor Crest: ARVALA7
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is free on Epic Games Store from December 5, 11 AM ET, 2024 until December 12, 11 AM ET, 2024.