Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga demands bounty for Mandalorian characters
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will lock a number of popular characters behind a paywall
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga bills itself as “the ultimate Lego Star Wars experience,” and that may be true — if you’re willing to pay extra. Today (Mar. 7), publisher Warner Bros. Games outlined comprehensive DLC plans for the upcoming game, which included no fewer than seven separate character packs. Even the characters from the hit Disney Plus show The Mandalorian (in two distinct packages) will be behind paywalls.
At a glance, here’s what will be available:
- The Mandalorian Season 1: The Mandalorian, Grogu (non-playable), Greef Karga, Cara Dune, IG-11, Kuiil
- Solo: A Star Wars Story: Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, Qi’ra, Tobias Beckett, Enfys Nest
- Classic Characters: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Darth Vader, Lando Calrissian
- The Trooper Pack: Death Trooper, Incinerator Trooper, Range Trooper, Imperial Shore Trooper, Mimban Stormtrooper
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: Jyn Erso, Bodhi Rook, Cassian Andor, K-2SO, Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbu, Director Krennic
- The Mandalorian Season 2: Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, Bo Katan, Fennec Shand, Moff Gideon
- The Bad Batch: Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, Echo
If you subscribe to the game’s Character Collection (essentially a Season Pass), you’ll get all of these collections as they come out. If not, you can purchase them separately. Depending on where and how you pre-order the game, you may also get access to The Classic Characters pack.
The Character Collection costs $10 on top of the base game’s $60, which is not terrible as Season Passes go. However, it does seem a bit specious to promise fans the “ultimate” Lego Star Wars game, then withhold dozens of characters behind a paywall right from the get-go. It’s also not clear how some of these characters will differ from their base-game versions; it’s hard to imagine that Luke, Leia, Han and Obi-Wan won’t already be playable in some capacity.
Withholding some of these characters might also be understandable, since they come from adjacent TV and movie projects, rather than the nine-film Skywalker Saga proper. Taking Ahsoka Tan or Moff Gideon through the Death Star trench run may be worth the price of admission, but it’s not strictly necessary to follow the Skywalker Saga story.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is banking on a lot of good will, both from Star Wars fans and Lego game fans. We’ll see whether that good will extends to an extra $10 right out of the gate.
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Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom's Guide, overseeing the site's coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing background, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of science and technology. After hours, you can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on classic sci-fi.