I was thinking about how pissed I'd be if they made multiverse a thing in star wars but then remembered there's like 3-5 defined levels of "canon" which is dumb but at least somewhat more difficult to profit off of

Seventeen years ago, Traveller’s Tales and Eidos Interactive reinvented the movie tie-in video game with Lego Star Wars: The Video Game. Not only did it have an appealing eye towards children, but also to older, more savvier fans of both franchises in mind. In the years to come, TT Games eventually bridged a generation gap with Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now, lightning has definitely struck thrice with Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

The most anticipated video game of the year, as I call it in my opinion, ought to be hailed by critics as the best video game of the year. It has the feel of a classic comedy: sometimes it can be sophisticated, sometimes it can be funny, even the romantic, the tearjerking and even the scarier parts are pretty laughable, with large open worlds that put even Lego Dimensions to shame.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga can also be very thrilling at times, a kind of game that represents Lego artistry at its peak and you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy it.

I suppose if Siskel and Ebert were still here, they could have given the game two thumbs up. In my opinion, the game is on a level with a perfect version of Cyberpunk 2077 that even detractors of said game desire and I think it’s a legitimate candidate for consideration at the Game Developers Choice Awards. The award? Game of the Year.

I can agree with some people that The Skywalker Saga is breathtaking. This is up there with “Lego Lord of the Rings”, “Lego DC Super Villains”, even the original video game adaptation of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. A Lego game (especially one like this) has never even won a GotY award, or at least nominated to my knowledge. This should be the first.

Okay, those were my biased thoughts.

These are my honest thoughts:

I would personally recommend playing the game all the way up to Return of the Jedi if you’re a true Star Wars fan who has denied the existence of the Sequel Trilogy. However, if you think the game will improve on the Sequel Trilogy, go ahead, there’s no stopping you. In the case of the Prequel Trilogy, any attempts to improve or poke fun at it’s flaws are mild, and the dialogue (mostly in the cutscenes) is sadly the same. Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales, a TV series from 2015, did a better job at adding some idiosyncrasy to their adaptations of the original six movies. What it did was actually lampoon on the film’s flaws, both visually and in dialogue. Likewise, it too streamlined the story. The case with this game is tantamount, with several important elements missing due to the condensed amount of time the game is adapting. To make a long story short, the humor in this game is pretty subtle.

As the game is so slavishly devoted to the source material, it can be a bit jarring hearing the voice actors reciting the lines of their predecessors in the movies point for point, but for those cynical fans, Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker is something of an improvement on Hayden Christensen’s emotional range as seen in Episodes II and III. Personally, I think he deserves another shot away from George Lucas’ original direction. If you prefer making up your own dialogue as you watch the cutscenes, click on Mumble Mode.

Exploring the many worlds of the Star Wars universe is so exhilarating, if not a bit of a chore trying to collect those collectables, it makes you wish you could explore the entire Galaxy, even visiting places like Alderaan, Hosnian Prime, Dantooine, Kessel and other places from Canon and Legends if the former was even possible. In addition, some locations are not explorable.

Speaking of which, if Lego wanted to make a game that was more appealing and aimed to the older generation, a Lego game based on the old Expanded Universe would be very beneficial. Think of the possibilities: Dark Empire, the Thrawn Trilogy, the Yuuzhan Vong War, the Old Republic, even the adventures of Luke, Leia and Han’s original offspring Ben, Jania, Jacen and Anakin Solo. Would you want to play a game like that?

Gameplay is pretty similar to the earlier Lego games, but it has a bit of a JRPG flair with character upgrades, leveling and character bios found in the menu. Some characters like Anakin’s BFF Kitster are missing, but who am I to complain?

On another note, podracing and starship gameplay are no longer on a guiding rail against a 2.5D style of gameplay. Now they are reminiscent of the old Star Wars games by LucasArts. Now you are free to do as you please at any angle. You can go wherever you want to go on the map. You can do whatever you want to do as long as it’s possible in the game. You can be whoever you want to be...if there was a character customizer because, if there had been, I would have had a blast creating Ben Skywalker, the son of Luke, who in my view, should have been the real hero of the Sequel Trilogy.

But enough dissing on the sequels, I’ve enjoyed the game for what it is, and I hope that for many, many years, people will look back on this game as the Star Wars game to end all Star Wars games, but not the Lego game to end all Lego games.

So is the RoTS novelization considered Canon? I mean, it is /based/ on a saga movie, but when it was made its still technically a star wars book that falls to the eu category, so???

Im sorry the whole eu deal is really confusing. Sometimes I wish Lucasfilm could just had, like, a whole conference meeting and go through as many eu productions and stuff as possible to discuss canon possibilities, or at least slowly build up a list of old eu/legends that they’ve decided to give an approved-canon stamp or something. I mean, the eu /at least/ deserve some sort of discussion even if it is big and confusing, just to clear out some stuff.

Hi!  It can be confusing until you get the hang of it, yeah!  And it’s still definitely not a value judgement–those old Legends stories can still be great fun and great stories!  They’re just not canon, which means that LF going forward isn’t beholden to including them or their details when putting new stuff out.  That’s the definition we’re working with here–that “canon” means the other authors/creators have to take it into account when creating something new!Okay, so the way LucasFilm canon works is this:- Extended Universe stuff was never really “canon”, George made this very clear in interviews where he said he didn’t read that stuff and it wasn’t part of his Star Wars world, as well as Dave Filoni talked about how, even before the Disney buy, George made it clear that that stuff wasn’t “canon” to him and those working on The Clone Wars.  (This is why TCW contradicts so much of Legends, because it was basically a separate world of stuff that the canon wasn’t beholden to.)  And, frankly, back in the day, the EU stuff was rather Wild West, meaning it was basically anything goes a lot of the time and so it’s probably better to consider it like published fanfiction, imo.- A lot of things from Legends were really influential and popular, so you may see them pop up again (like Thrawn was recanonized, Mace was still Depa’s Master, Shmi was still captured by pirates when she was young, etc.) but not always in the same way, sometimes they’ll be like Thrawn and have entirely new context and histories.  (How we know that some things are still canon because they’ve been mentioned in post-2014 guide books that don’t have the Legends disclaimer.)- Everything previous to April 25, 2014 is now called Legends, EXCEPT for the movies and The Clone Wars.  EVERYTHING.  Everything that came out after that is canon!  EVERYTHING.- I haven’t seen the conversation myself (and last I heard, his twitter auto-deletes itself after a week, so you can’t go looking for old convos) but @glompcat did they mentioned that Pablo Hidalgo specifically mentioned that the movie novelizations (prior to 2014, obv.) were no longer canon and cited the ROTS one as an example, because (fr ex) Anakin would have been thinking about Ahsoka in it, who didn’t exist at the time of ROTS.  While I am personally a little, “….” about that choice (and how I want to pick his brain about it, because of the extenuating circumstances with George’s influence being special to that book) I also recognize that it’s LF’s sandbox and they make their own rules!  So definitely not canon.So!  NOTHING from Legends is still considered canon, anything that is canon will have come up in something post-April 2014 has to be RE-CANONIZED for it to count and then ONLY the parts that are re-canonized (often times with new context!) are what “counts” as canon.Everything else that’s post-April 2014, whether novels or comics or games IS canon.  (One exception might be the LEGO Freemaker series, but IIRC they only said it was canon-COMPLIANT, not that it counted as canon, so I’m hesitant to count that one?  But I’m not wholly sure on that one!)TL;DR VERSION:  If you’re unsure of something, check the original publication date, anything pre-2014.04.25 = NOT CANON, anything post-2014.04.25 = IS CANON, easy peasy!Now, on a personal note, I will give the ROTS novelization more weight in consideration because it was so George-involved, but per LF themselves, no, it’s not canon, it falls under the same Legends banner as everything else does!  You could build up a list, but it’s pretty much just easier to check the original publication date (reprint dates don’t count, only original publication dates/any “this book uses Legends info” disclaimers count) and see which side of the slate wiping it falls onto.  And if something is referenced, ONLY what’s in the post-Disney buy version counts.  (Ie, Shmi was still kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery, but the Pi-Lippa details are no longer canon.  Only what’s specifically in the reference book is what we’re looking at!)(This is also setting aside the issue of how fans choose to interact with Legends stuff on a personal level, which is a whole other conversation!)