As the video game industry continues to evolve, prolonged development cycles have become increasingly common. This goes double in a post-pandemic world, with not all studios capable of managing large projects in a work-from-home environment. As March approaches, we can count on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga to hit its April 5 release date.
We can confidently say this because the game’s official Twitter account confirmed that the game has gone gold. This refers to the gold master version of a game’s code, which is considered complete. Video games often go gold anywhere from weeks to months ahead of launch, with developers working on day zero and day one patches as copies make their way to retail.
After initially being announced during E3 2019, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was intended to release sometime in 2020 before going silent. The Skywalker Saga would then go on to miss its following Spring 2021 window. The reports of its troubled development cycle, which included utilizing an allegedly unfinished engine framework, likely contributed to its delays.
The Lego property has become huge in the video game space and it was Lego Star Wars that kickstarted the current Lego formula. The Skywalker Saga acts as a love letter to fans of Star Wars and the Lego franchise as a whole.
It’s much more involved than your typical compilation project. In addition to encompassing every major Star Wars film, its gameplay systems have been overhauled. Beyond the modernized experience, The Skywalker Saga also employs callbacks to those that have stuck with the Lego games, going so far as to include an optional mumble mode for those that could never quite get on with the voice acting in later Lego games.
