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Could LEGO Force Awakens Suck?

Could LEGO Force Awakens Suck?

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard the good news: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and TT Games are bringing you Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens on June 28. The announcement came as a complete surprise to most of us, and a rather pleasant one at that. Lego Star Wars is a name that will evoke very fond memories for many, and The Force Awakens will be the first Lego Star Wars game since The Clone Wars was released in 2011 to pretty mixed reviews.

TT games has been busy since then and has released several, generally well-reviewed Lego games, most recently Lego Marvel’s Avengers, which I had the pleasure of reviewing. During my time spent with that game I was impressed and disappointed; engaged and put off; curious and bored. It’s apparent that TT Games has a knack for parody and for crafting delightful gameplay experiences. Consistency and pacing, on the other hand, are where the game fell short. There were a few things that really held Avengers back, and processing what made that game so great and so frustrating has got me thinking about what The Force Awakens absolutely needs if TT Games wants it to be their best game yet.

The dialogue has to be properly mastered.

Because Lego Marvel’s Avengers followed the story from the films so closely, most of the dialogue was lifted directly from the movies. This meant two things: It meant that TT Games didn’t get to do as much clever writing and add in the kind of dialogue that usually makes its games so funny. Sure The Avengers and Age of Ultron had some great one-liners and comedic moments, but they didn’t live up to the Lego game standard that we’ve grown to expect. It also meant that some weird mixing and mastering had to go down to isolate the voices from the film, minus all other noise from the soundtrack, so that they could squeeze them into the game. This didn’t go over very well and at several points during it the game it’s almost impossible to hear or understand what certain characters are saying. I know voice actors tack on a lot of time and tax development budgets, but it’s worth it if we can actually hear what our heroes are saying.

No mandatory, repetitive mini-games.

I kid you not: every single stage of the story mode in Lego Avengers had an awful, boring, time-wasting mini-game / puzzle that forced you to stare at a little scanner screen, analyzing the environment, and look for small ripples among the grid – directing a cursor to hover over each disturbance and press square (or X). You had to do this at random, pointless spots in a stage before you could move on to another area or continue a boss fight. It completely shattered all momentum accrued to that point, ruined the pacing, and ruined the fun. It blew my mind, and I have no idea how it is that none of the developers or QA guys picked up on how awful that mechanic is while play testing. Let’s stay away from arbitrary, repetitive, over-used puzzles and gimmicks in The Force Awakens, shall we?

Could LEGO Force Awakens Suck?

A fat roster of playable characters.

Lego Marvel’s Avengers had one, incredible saving grace, and that was the enormous roster of playable characters and super heroes. I’m sure that we can expect some semi-open-world areas or hubs in The Force Awakens to mess around in, and if that’s the case I know I speak for all Lego and Star Wars fans when I say that we want to play as all of our favorites! Avengers boasted over 200 characters / heroes / variations, and I can really only think of about 8 playable characters needed to recreate the story from The Force Awakens. We do know, though, that there will be some exclusive story content that will bridge the gap of time between episodes 6 and 7, so it’s possible that we’ll get some interesting time with additional characters during flashback sequences.

It’s going to be really hard to make a bad game with Lego and The Force Awakens . But the hype is real for this one; I’m not worried about the game being bad, I’m worried about the game not being great. As long as I can play as my favorite heroes (who don’t sound like they’re talking into tin cans) and mess around in the Star Wars universe, I know I’ll have fun with this game. Hopefully TT Games won’t drop the ball on this one. May the force be with them.

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