Review: LEGO Star Wars - The Complete Saga (2007)
A collab that everyone loved.
★★★★
"LEGO" and Star Wars didn't collaborate until 1999, when Lucas decided to expand his universe with the prequels and merchandise. Now, 25 years later, LEGO continues to create Star Wars-themed sets, featuring scenes from the movies, TV shows, and some of the games. It was a great time to be a fan. Besides action figures, these LEGO sets allowed us fans to recreate our favorite movie scenes and even craft our own. LEGO is also one of the greatest toys ever made, which helped in the long run with Star Wars-themed sets.
In the late '90s, LEGO decided to collaborate with video game developers to create LEGO video games. In 2005, LEGO, LucasArts, and the development company Traveler's Tales released LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, allowing players to experience each prequel film in LEGO form. A year later, the sequel followed the same formula, but this time focused on the original trilogy. Both games were successful and received overwhelming positive reception from fans. This led to the release of The Complete Saga in 2007, which allowed players to "kick some brick in episodes I-VI," as the cover says. That's right—players could now play through all six episodes in one game. It was a huge treat for us fans.
The game was released in 2007 across many platforms. A copy can easily be found on Steam for PC, but used copies are available for the Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and eventually, on mobile devices—both iOS and Android compatible. I wasn’t joking when I said this game can easily be found anywhere. So, no need to worry!
The port for the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, and mobile all use a similar engine, developed by Traveler's Tales. Their engine is called the "TT Games Engine" or "NTT Engine." For the DS port, the engine was also used but had to be downgraded due to the DS's limited technology. Think of it as the younger sibling to the flagship port. The differences included five levels instead of six for each episode, no "Freeplay" mode for ship levels, no challenges or bonus content like "Goldbrick" levels or Bounty Hunter Missions, and smaller levels and world designs. These changes don’t hurt the game too much, although something does confuse me. In the DS port, the characters you have in the hub world remain the same once you start up the game; however, in the flagship port, regardless of which characters you had when you closed the game, it will always start up with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I don’t know the official reason for this, but if I had to guess, I’d say that since the DS’s technology was more limited, the developers couldn’t include all the code in the console. Again, just a theory.
In these earlier games (excluding the LEGO Island series), there was no dialogue. It was replaced with grunts, which allowed the developers to improvise with comedic and humorous moments. For instance, when Obi-Wan gives Luke his father’s lightsaber, Luke accidentally cuts off C-3PO’s head. These comedic moments made up for the lack of dialogue, allowing players to imagine their own lines.
Aside from the base game, anyone with the PC port can mod their game to include custom content, such as new levels, different character skins, updated textures, modified cutscenes, and more. The modding community is one of the reasons why this game still has an active following. It’s like the developers were saying, "Let’s see what the players can do with the tools we used to create the game." I can safely say we’ve done some incredible things. This has expanded our play experience beyond the base, vanilla game.
Man, this game holds a special place in my heart. I loved it so much as a kid. I played it every day. I was thrilled when I bought it on Steam to relive my childhood. Over 255.8 hours on this game isn’t a joke."