Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga feels like a huge responsibility for a Star Wars fan. You're about to play through all nine films in the Skywalker Saga in a single game for the first time, and right off the bat, you have to make a decision: which movie do you start with? The Phantom Menace, A New Hope, and The Force Awakens are the three Star Wars trilogies that can be played at the start of the game. While I saw some friends starting in chronological order, with The Phantom Menace, and others going through release order, with A New Hope, I decided on the path of Machete. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a fun, family-friendly action game where players take control of Lego mini-figures of famous Star Wars characters and fight their way through the stories of the films. There are many side missions and Easter eggs to keep the stories you know fresh and it is just a delight. I don't think about The Phantom Menace when I think about it. I didn't want to start my Lego Star Wars experience with that. I used my years on the internet to suggest a new path. A writer named Rod Hilton created a Star Wars viewing order called "The Machete Order" back in 2011. The idea came from the fact that if you sat a person down to watch the Star Wars movies in chronological order, the prequels would ruin one of the greatest reveals in cinema history. The first film to be released was A New Hope, followed by The Empire Strikes Back. They should go back and watch Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith after the historic reveal. The films act as a giant, elaborate flashback explaining how and why Darth Vader became the evil, notorious Darth Vader, while also keeping the focus on Luke.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga solved my dilemma. The perfect entry point is A New Hope. I could fly the Millennium Falcon and X-Wings if I wanted to get excited about playing this game. That sounded better than starting with Trade Federations, destroyer droids and Gungans.
I played through A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and then I avoided the temptation to play Return of the Jedi in favor of the prequels. The Lego Machete order is different here. The Phantom Menace has been completely eliminated by the order of Hilton. Poof. Gone. In terms of the journey to becoming Darth Vader, it's largely inconsequential, even though you miss some very cool iconography that way.
That's not an option in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. You have to play through The Phantom Menace in order to get Attack of the Clones, just as you have to play through the first two films in each trilogy to get the third. After watching A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, I was ready to go back in time for some Gungan warcraft.
After a few days, I finished the prequel trilogy, which is more enjoyable to play through as a Lego character than watch as a human, and then jumped into Return of the Jedi, which is when something miraculous happened. Return of the Jedi begins with the Emperor showing up on the second Death Star and talking with Darth Vader. This is the first time in the original trilogy that you can see the Emperor in the flesh and play Lego Star Wars with the Machete order. The throughline is perfect. I paused the game to marvel at it because it fit so well. My Machete Order decision was justified because of the beginning of Return of the Jedi and the Emperor and Darth Vader getting their armor after the end of Revenge of the Sith. After The Empire Strikes Back, I was ready to head to Jabba the Hutt's palace to save my friend Han, who was frozen in Carbonite.
I'm still in the middle of Return of the Jedi, but I'm looking forward to meeting Rey, Finn, and the rest soon. If you plan on playing Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, then IV, V, I, II, III, VI, VII, VIII, IX is the way to go.
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