LOS ANGELES—It's not surprising that Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga didn't set the gaming world on fire here at E3. The natural reaction was to assume more of the same, but that isn't the case.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga isn't a collection, remake, or expansion of previous Lego Star Wars games. It's a complete reboot of the Lego Star Wars game series, and it could signal a massive overhaul for any Lego games based on popular licenses in the future.

Lego Star Wars, as a video game, is older than Disney's ownership of Star Wars. In fact, it's about as old as the prequel trilogy; the first game came out in 2005, the same year as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It proved so successful that its gameplay mechanics and structure were reproduced for over a decade, with Lego-fied franchises from Harry Potter to Marvel in nearly identical ways. The structured level designs, fixed camera angles, and basic third-person platforming were effective but by 2016's Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens they had become a bit well-worn and stale.

Thankfully, the extra mechanical depth and expanded exploration makes Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga very exciting. I was prepared for simply a better-looking, cookie-cutter licensed Lego game (a consistently pleasant but not particularly interesting experience, after playing so many). Instead, the new game might be the most open and interesting way to explore the Star Wars universe yet.

A gameplay demo at Warner Bros. Interactive's booth opened with an episode-select screen that displayed all nine main Star Wars movies as sections of the game that could be individually played through. The as-yet-unreleased Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was present, though the spin-off films Star Wars: Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story were not.

This menu is extremely deceptive, because it gives the impression that Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is structured with discrete, disconnected sections and missions like previous Lego Star Wars games. Jumping into the Return of the Jedi chapter immediately dispelled that notion.

The gameplay opened in space, with the presenter piloting the Millennium Falcon. Tatooine was in view, offering a selection of locations to land. Piloting the ship toward the planet, the presenter was attacked by a Super Star Destroyer capital ship, one of the random encounters that can happen when you're flying through space. After evading it, he landed near the Pit of Carkoon. There, the minimap indicated where the next step in the Return of the Jedi episode was, Jabba's sail barge. It also showed numerous points of interest all around the area.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is an open-world game. The player could go anywhere on the planet, or blast off into space and visit any other planet that was unlocked. He could talk to different characters to get side quests, explore to find collectibles, and simply take in the Star Wars galaxy at his leisure without starting the next step in the story.

Previous Lego games have used hub worlds to navigate discrete missions, but Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga opens up all of Star Wars (at least, all of Star Wars that is shown in the nine main movies) to look around. A galaxy map showed multiple sectors, and the presenter said 20 planets will be fully explorable in the game. We weren't shown the Jabba's sail barge section itself, and presumably story missions are structured to be more linear than the rest of the game, but this is still a huge departure that vastly expands what you can do at your own pace in the game.

It completely changes how you look at the Lego Star Wars universe, but not as much as the new camera and gameplay perspective does. The fixed views of previous Lego Star Wars games are gone and replaced by an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective with complete user camera control. It's like the change from Resident Evil 3 to Resident Evil 4, and it lets you look around every angle of the Lego Star Wars universe.

Previously, the fixed-camera perspective locked your view in scenes, letting you see the action from a limited number of angles. This opens up the game into a more fully three-dimensional layout that's less like a complex diorama. We've seen open-world, camera-adjustable structures in non-licensed Lego games like Lego City Undercover, but Lego Star Wars and other licensed Lego games have been more limited in their perspectives.

Of course, the game does look better than previous Lego Star Wars games, too. The Lego block structures of Tatooine, including the Millennium Falcon after it landed, looked nicely weathered and covered with dust. Sunlight shining through rock formations across a moisture farm looked impressive, with realistic gleams and shadows. It's safe to say that this will be the best-looking Lego game yet.

In terms of gameplay, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga expands on the basic jumping, fighting, and tool use of previous licensed Lego games in a few ways, but the action is largely similar.

Melee combat, like fighting with lightsabers, has a new combo system to give the action more flare than just mashing a button until enemies fall apart. Ranged combat is more accurate and precise, using the over-the-shoulder perspective to aim carefully at enemies, and do more damage with head shots. The Force is a more universal tool, letting Force-sensitive players pick up and move around all sorts of objects in the environment and solve physics puzzles, rather than simply holding a button and making bricks fly around automatically.

I look forward to seeing just how big and open the game ends up when it comes out next year. And, of course, I'm curious how it tells the story of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, after we find out what actually happens in the movie. That's a lot of potentially exciting Star Wars-related happenings on tap for 2020.

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