Lego Star Wars II - New Screens

Ride just about anything you saw in the original trilogy, made out of Lego

Posted by Staff
It’s always good to be reminded that this September, along with popping over to Barcelona for the X06 press trip we reported yesterday, we will also be playing one of our most anticipated games for the autumn. Published by LucasArts and developed by the Jedis over at Traveller’s Tales, that game is, of course, the ultimate tongue-in-cheek Star Wars experience, Lego Star Wars II.

Check out these new screens and just go a little bit dewy-eyed, when you imagine that you will be re-enacting the greatest modern day epic, only in Lego format, in just over three months time.

Back in pre-Lego Star Wars days (i.e. before April last year), the mere idea of re-creating this mythical movie series, but with Lego and a dash of irreverent fun and mischief, would have seemed, well, pretty much what it is; absolutely ludicrous. But the game was a surprise word-of-mouth hit in 2005, and the follow up, being based on the far more popular initial trilogy of Star Wars movies, is pretty much a guaranteed in-the-bag hit.

Providing, that is, that Traveller’s Tales do the business, and the boys from Burnham have not let us down yet.

SPOnG has been chatting with dev director Jonathan Smith, who has kindly agreed to let us pop over to see the game at some point over the next month.

Speaking of the original game, Jonathan said: “We had three vehicle-based levels in the original game, and while they added some neat variety, they didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the gameplay ... We knew up front for LEGO Star Wars II that the universe of the Original Trilogy had a lot of fantastic ships and cool vehicles: the Millennium Falcon, X-wings, AT-STs, speeder bikes and so on. So we worked hard at the start to integrate them more effectively into the game.”

“For the space scenes,” Smith continues, “we’ve drawn directly upon elements of the gameplay which were successful in the character levels – exploration, interactivity and free play – and we’re delighted with the results.”

LEGO Star Wars II also features construction of playable minikit vehicles for bonus missions on each level. Plus, most excitingly for SPOnG, you will be able to finally play with creatures from all over the galaxy, such as tauntauns on Hoth and banthas on Tatooine.

“You can jump from them to reach higher-up areas,” says Smith. “The Dewbacks on Tatooine are particularly great, too, with a cool ‘chomp’ attack. And they have a few other secret features, too...”

Apparently it seems the Dewbacks are known to leave you a little LEGO ‘present’. Lego Dewback poo. Who’d’ve thunk it?!


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