New gameplay details revealed for LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was announced at E3 2019 as the culmination of the extremely popular LEGO Star Wars video game franchise. Although the game still has no official release date, it has been slated to come out sometime in spring 2021.

Gameplay details have been slim to none since the game’s announcement. That is, until now. The latest issue of Official Playstation Magazine-UK included an interview with Dawn McDiarmid, the lead hub designer at TT Games, that expanded on numerous facets of the game that will be available to players.

One of the most highly anticipated features of the game is the ability to play as a large variety of characters throughout all eras of Star Wars. McDiarmid confirmed that there will be around 300 playable characters and that the developers had created approximately 800 unique characters. These include humans, aliens, creatures, and non-playable characters, so there will definitely be a Jedi, bounty hunter, or Sith for everyone in this game.

In addition to the numerous characters that will be seen in the game, another key feature is the large number of planets that will be featured and fully explorable. Back in 2019, an article from PC Magazine noted that “20 planets will be fully explorable in the game.” We now know that this number is even higher, as stated by McDiarmid in her interview:

"There are 23 planets/moons with 28 unique locations that the player can visit, each full of quests, challenges, items, and characters to find. If you have a favorite Star Wars location, it’s pretty likely you can visit it in-game."

Confirmed planets include fan favorites like Coruscant, Mustafar, and Bespin, among others. There are also random space encounters and larger non-planet locations such as Star Destroyers and the Death Star that can also be explored.

The key that McDiarmid kept coming back to about the game was its size and the ability to create your own Star Wars story, playing the game how you want to play. The nine saga films can be played in any order, and McDiarmid noted that “you are not locked into a linear progression through the entire series”.

Beyond the sheer scale of the game, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will also include other gameplay enhancements, such as aiming-down-sight mechanics and a new datapad tracking system, which all serve to assist the player in having the best possible experience.

A preview of McDiarmid’s full interview can be found on Reddit, which includes some new gameplay images as well. While there is still no release date for the game (although Gamestop.com lists an unofficial date of May 31), LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is available for pre-order now.