The Besties - Lego Star Wars is like a Rockstar game for kids [The Resties]

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga reminds us of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, in that it feels unsustainably grand. Its creators have crammed nine films worth of characters, planets, and stories, plus winks at corners of the expanded universe, into one game. A report on crunch at the studio, however, raises serious questions about its leadership's decisions to make the game bigger and bigger and bigger. What does it mean for good games to be made in bad ways? Individual creators have filled Lego Star Wars with charming references, clever stages, and some genuinely funny writing. People clearly cared about their contributions to this project. So, this week, we try to parse our feelings of this complicated game and its creation. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Hello everybody, welcome to the show. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Russ Froschdick. And this is The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. And also Master Chief having sex. I should have known. You didn't put this in our planning document. I didn't, but it just happened. It just happened.

And we need to talk about it because how many video game characters do you know have canonically had sex? And I feel like it's not as many as you think it is. I know the Mass Effect franchise, almost all of them had sex fine. But we don't know if Gordon Freeman ever had sex.

Excuse me, this is a different Halo canon. The TV canon is a different canon entirely. Do you think it's aspirational for Master Chief? Oh, unquestionably. Now, that I have no doubt about. He would love to... But, actually, he doesn't need love. Well, I mean, actually, no.

Well, I'm going to walk that back. He receives all of the manufactured love he needs from his suit that takes care of him. This is, that's canonical. Yeah. I'm not watching the show, it should be noted. That's canonical. Yeah. I'm not watching the show, it should be noted.

I just heard about this on the internet today because everyone was all frenzied about the idea that Master Chief had sex on the show. So don't worry, I guess, about spoilers because I don't know necessarily the character he had sex with or whatever. But I do know that Cortana watched along and had like weepy eyes while it was happening, which is not what i was expecting

i did not have cortana getting cucked on my bingo card but here we are anyway this week we're talking about lego star wars the skywalker saga uh you know and there's no cucking allowed in the series because it's for kids. Yeah. I thought the same thing about Halo, but here we are. That's true. That is true. And it did say, wasn't that like finish the fight, never get cucked was the motto?

Yeah. Yeah, that was the sequel. What is Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga? Nine films worth of video games here. Each film gets its own mini open worlds. Like multiple mini open worlds. Dozens of characters are in it. Tons of ships. There's

so much content. Too much, you might ask? We'll ask more about that after the break. Okay, Fresh. I'm gonna kick this off and get the heavy part out of the way first okay so polygon the website that we also work at published a report by jack yarwood uh around just ahead of the game's release uh that detailed the like crunch and accusations or allegations of gendered pay gaps mismanagement across the game and its custom engine it did not sound like a good place to work

during the development of this game and this game took i believe around five years to make um so Um, so that part, I just want to emphasize up front, not good. Yes. And I would also add that, unfortunately, the number of pretty dreadful video game places is high. And continues to get bigger. Yes. You know, or I guess it becomes more publicly understood. Yes. I think it was probably always

high now it's known that said there are obviously many developers who worked very hard on this game and who love what they did on this game and aren't bad people yeah and aren't bad people and want you to see what they did on this game and something that i am looking forward to talking about here is you can see that on an individual level um you can also kind of see i think the crunch in the game so i want to talk about that first there is so much in this game and i think part of that is by nature of the aesthetic of legos you can just kind of keep making stuff it's pretty simple you know like geometry for for the characters in the art style i i assume it certainly looks less complex than you know making a new character in i don't know what's the uncharted uncharted

sure um yeah well i think i think the way to tackle this is let's just talk about like the structure of the game yeah and that'll i, give people an indication as to why there was probably a lot of crunch and like so much content in this game and so much potentially content bloat, as it were. I like this game for what it's worth, but it is worth kind of knowing. And the structure of the game is bizarre. It's like unlike any other game I can possibly think of. Okay. So it's all nine movies in the quote style Skywalker saga. So episode one through episode nine.

And the, when you start the game, you can pick the beginning of I, one of the three trilogies. So you can start at the beginning. You start at new hope. You could start at episode one, Phantom Menace,

or you could start at episode one phantom menace or you could start at um force awakens and then you basically play through those trilogies kind of in a row and the way the the trilogies are broken out they'll have like traditional level lego levels which is to say they'll like kind of linear uh objective based hey flip this switch turn this thing whatever uh recreate the beats in the movie basically yeah following the beats of the movie but but very true if you've ever played a lego game before this is going to feel very familiar to you i think and then in between those very familiar linear lego style levels are literal open world areas like big big areas like moss isley and uh i just played the original trilogy so i'm like thinking what you know where luke grew up whatever tatooine and its surrounding areas um and in those areas there are like shit loads of like little quests to

chase down and like collectibles and unlockable characters and reasons to go back when you unlock other characters. It's, I mean, astonishing just how much they jammed into this and the idea that this is across, again, nine movies, three trilogies in one game. It's a lot of stuff yeah and it's the open world stuff where the crunch feels so suspect to me because i i similarly have just played through the the original trilogy i haven't even touched the prequel or the i don't know three equals are for zoomers hey i love the prequels we're gonna do that in a. I don't mean that derogatorily. I think the Zoomers like the prequels more than we do. Yeah, they grew up on it. Yes.

But I have like basically straight shot the first, the core trilogy, and that's taken about like eight, nine hours. Yeah. And that's, again, not doing any of the open world stuff. And that's, again, not doing any of the open world stuff. So if you figured that holds true for the other game or the other movies, effectively, that's 27 hours of game right here. Right. And it's just like going through just going through the linear film. Right. Not even doing like free play mode and going back and get which is like way more content.

Yes. On top of that. And all of that stuff doesn't feel... I feel like I would like the game just as much without that stuff. Which stuff? The free play stuff? With all the free play stuff.

Oh. And with all of the... So right away, there's downloadable packs for Mandalorian characters. Yeah. There are tons and tons and tons and tons and tons

of references to niche Star Wars stuff, which on one hand, as a fan, is cool. But again, if I'm thinking about this from a management perspective, which is something that you and I have to do often at Polygon, right? Sure. There comes a point where you're like, hey, this is cool, but as much as you want it, and I want it, and our fans want it, it's going to make us all miserable.

So let's not. Let's be happy with what we can do in a healthy way. And it's hard to see that when playing this game, that that was said. Maybe it was in certain rooms. That's the other problem is were parts of this game, was the art team better managed than the sound team or the design team? Like, I don't know.

It's just it's kind of overwhelming being in this game. It feels like this is weird to say, but it feels like a GTA game in the sense that like they had made all of these Lego games. And they're like, we are going to throw everything at this game we're going to put every idea we've ever had every con every character that's ever appeared in star wars is going to be in this game people will never need to buy another game for another 10 years because we're just going to like go so ham on this game and it's a choice i mean i i it's funny because i feel differently than you do i actually really like the free play stuff and find the more linear stuff a little more dull um i think it just has a lot to offer to a lot of people and for considering how much is in there i was surprised at how how it feels good. It doesn't feel great.

It's like a janky action game, but it doesn't feel like the mindless, like isometric third-person beat-em-up that LEGO games used to be. It's like third-person cover-based shooting and lightsaber and, you know, force powers and combo attacks. There's like a lot of surprising depth this game that i actually was kind of impressed by yeah i mean it feel you can feel that people

cared and again you think rockstar is the perfect comparison with gta and red dead and that you can tell that the people who made this game cared deeply about like everything that they were putting in and were like interrogating tons and tons of ideas even if the game's mechanics are quite simple and you know it is it is a game that is meant for kids to enjoy that's where different you know it takes a different path than rockstar but i i agree in the same way that when i play um red dead redemption 2 i have that same feeling where i'm like on one hand what i like about this game is how it feels so big and it feels like such an escape right that that it's so complete in its vision but then at the other

time it's as somebody who cares about how games are made, it is hard not to like, just feel a little weird. Did I need 10, 10 hours of someone dying of tuberculosis in that game? No, I think I could have been okay. Yeah, exactly. Um,

anyway, I just want to talk about that up top because I think it is worth addressing. I, you know, like you said, this is probably happening in studios that we don't even know about but we do know about this one so we should talk about it um uh okay so you said you started with the uh the original trilogy first is there a reason why yeah because just you know that's

the one I have the most fondness for that's the one I grew up on um uh yeah i mean i think the hit to miss ratio of star wars movies these in particular is not great um so uh you know i picked the trilogy that of the you know movies that range from like b plus to a plus in my opinion yeah yeah i think i think that is right i mean i i picked it just because i remember like i have a familiarity with the set pieces yeah that's what i wanted to see i when i think of like the great set pieces i don't know the prequels are are up there too sure the gnoson arena who doesn't love that? Hey, I love pod racing. That's pod racing. But like, weirdly, as much as I enjoy the modern movies,

I don't really care about the set pieces in those movies that much. I guess Last Jedi- Wait, the modern movies like the new trilogy? The most recent trilogy, yeah. I like the like- Do you- What is your ratio of enjoying those to not enjoying them i i like last jedi sure i'm like okay on force awakens i really really

wish i didn't see the last one yeah that's sort of where i'm at as well yeah and then in terms of action in it i like the last jedi is um the hoth ripoff where i mean they're all ripoff isn't nice but like nod oh sure on the red salt crystal planet yeah um i think that's great and i think that the saber fight and last jedi is one of the best ones in the series but then yeah you get away from those two scenes and most of the action in the modern trilogy feels kind of repetitive um samey it's not like stuff that i feel is as iconic as honestly is even the prequels is yeah it does actually help from a game design standpoint that there is so much like familiarity beat to beat between the movies because you are sort of working with a similar toolkit throughout where they have these like classes of like,

Oh, it's a scoundrel. And there's like 60 different Han Solo scoundrel types that you could use versus like, Oh, here's 40 bounty hunters that you can pick from. And realistically the difference between them is negligible, but it's nice.

It's good fan service. People like unlocking things. I was actually like surprised that they went with the i don't i haven't played that many of the newer lego games but like is this directly behind the back camera angle is that new for lego games i don't know i haven't played a lego game in forever i mean have they released that many lego games in the past few years i thought it was kind of like it's been a while all the first one in like yeah a good chunk of time yeah i um i never played the open world i think it was lego city undercover that game was no game was nice that was like one of the very first switch open world games so it felt

great because you could play an open world game on switch i'm not sure how it would feel now um but this feels like uncharted like moving around the world feels like uncharted it's jankier than uncharted but like that's the vibe you get from it which is really weird because it is a kid's game and the for my first reaction of like oh i don't know how i feel about that starts in a new hope the scene, as we all remember it, you're on the Corellian cruiser. Darth Vader docks with the cruiser. The stormtroopers, like, burst through the hole that is exploded.

And you, as, I guess, Leia, is, like, fighting them off and trying to, like, get the Death Star plans off the ship. So in this game, when you shoot stormtroopers in the head the their helmet pops off and you see a human person face under the helmet which as we know from the latter movies uh exemplified by the character finn who was originally a stormtrooper and then sort of came over to the rebel side. Yes, they are indeed people under those masks.

But in all the previous LEGO Star Wars games, they didn't really highlight that so much. And to see it here, and the idea that there's people under those that you are now shooting in the head, feels very weird to me. Headshots are fatal. Yeah, because if you get the helmet off and then you shoot him in the head feels very weird to me headshots are fatal yeah because if you get the helmet off and then you shoot him in the head i believe it's an instant

kill yes it's an instant kill and it feels very good and also very bad at the same time yeah it's um i mean i'm talking about a new hope and in the original trilogy structure for better and worse knowing how the trilogy plays out made it feel both really like a video game and really um slow at times because the action does get better across those movies like yeah i don't think return of the jedi is the best movie but the action that movie rules you know whether it's the entire the rancor fight or the sarlacc pit or the speed bikes or the ewoks or another death star um there's just a lot going on a new hope is i mean it was like a kind of an indie sci-fi movie at the time um and the action set pieces are like they

get stuck in a trash compactor it's like okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. Tell me more. I mean, you do do the trench run. You do. You do at the very end. Yeah. It takes a while to get there. And then, yeah, I think if everything had been unlocked from the top, I'd have been like, great, I'm going to go to Hoth.

I'm going to do that. I'm going to go to Return of the Jedi. I'm going to do the speed bikes. gonna go to hoth i'm gonna do that i'm gonna go to return of the jedi i'm gonna do the speed bikes and i i wonder if in some way this is them recognizing they do have to kind of wrangle the player a little bit um to make sure that they actually have an enjoyable experience and don't just you know go eat the frosting off of every cake and then call it a day it does feel like a frosting kind of game there's just like a lot of like all the mini missions that you find in the open world are like things that you can finish in four minutes and i don't know

there was like a woman who had a bunch of womp rats that were like invading her cantina or whatever the fuck and you just like go in there as obi-wan and just like wreck shit and then stuff uh like giant furniture in the womp rat holes and that's the mission and it was just like you know i i kept thinking i was playing this on my pc and i kept thinking man this is like the perfect game for something like a steam deck or something like i know there is a switch version i don't know how it runs but i would imagine this is kind of perfect for something like uh the switch or the steam deck just because it is so mindless that being able to like kind of peck away at it while you're watching netflix or something like

that uh this is like the ideal circumstance yeah i mean that's literally what i've done the past few nights stuff had stuff to watch, and I was like, great. You can watch whatever you want. I don't care. I will watch kind of sideways with you, and I'll pick at this. And it was delightful. She was watching sideways?

She was watching sideways, and I was like, Merlot! Again? So stupid. I didn't get to any of the flying because i was just playing new hope um does it feel okay the flying like any like flying ships oh you well so you oh so you just played new up so yeah between planets you will fly around and you um it's great it's it's very clever and they're kind of borrowing from the no man's sky of it all when you are in the galaxy like or in outer space and there are things that you can go do in outer space like go blow up comets or go start like a little uh space fight side quest

or you can fly towards the planet and there's a little beacon that you hit and the second you accept the mission it seamlessly seamlessly starts this landing animation. So it looks like you are going from outer space into the world that you're going to go play on. And correct me if I'm wrong, the galaxy map contains all of the locations from every movie. Yes. And in free play, I believe there's a free play mode

where you can just hop around the galaxy as any of the characters that you can't access with the default characters, which is like a nice little feature. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm kind of torn on these games where they let me do, like, really build up all these different little mini worlds. But also I can play as like 100 different characters. Because something I like about building up a open world space like let's say assassin's creed i

loved those games where you built up your estate effectively is it felt connected to the story in a way and it felt like something i was accomplishing as silly as that seems sure yeah but in these games where it's like okay you're now you're at the uh the landing base at the end of a new hope um you know you can go do like 10 or 20 things or find all this stuff it's like oh i mean sure but this feels really superfluous like i don't know why i'm doing this i don't know what like what's my motivation is so it's so silly to say but it is making me realize that i need a little bit more of that if i'm going to be sinking my time into kind of like meaningless stuff other than hey you get the special glowing blue brick that allows you to unlock a few extra power-ups

yeah it feels mobile gamey in that way because it like really just cut cuts away any uh pretension of like this is a meaningful like narrative and is totally like we're just gonna scratch that uh itch in your brain that wants to like unlock shit yeah which again maybe that's why i have the whole you could cut this and just give me the the main chunk of the game and i would be perfectly happy but that said i get why like this is probably more appealing towards a kid right like yeah hey you just 100 i think a kid wants to yeah break the game in that way yeah yeah um real quick before we wrap this section did you have a favorite level character anything like that yeah again i i didn't get uh I just really played through most of A New Hope. And I just liked the, again, the modularity of it.

Playing as the Bo-Katan, who is the, one of the Mandalorian characters. And having like dual pistols was like a really nice touch. And it felt authentic and you get a jet pack and stuff like that. So even though the characters don't vary that much from bounty hunter to bounty hunter, you will see a pretty significant difference. Like IG-88 had a big rifle that fired pulse attacks and stuff like that. So I don't know. For Star Wars fans, I think it's really hard to deny that it scratches that like nostalgia itch. really hard to deny that it scratches that like nostalgia itch um i think for people that are just looking for like a mindless third-person action game there are probably better options because this does have like a lot of cruft in it but i i liked it more than i thought i did

i was going to i should say yeah yeah i i definitely recommend it i mean especially it's going to be a slow year for big triple a games yeah see right and between this and uh elden ring very different games but wow i mean these two games could eat up the rest of your year if you really wanted them to yeah you could probably spend 200 hours in this game alone if you wanted to like get everything wild how big this game feels um anyway we have a bunch of questions from oh boy so how about we take a break and then we can start answering those okay okay we are back i have questions for you. Are you ready? Russell Krushtik, here we go. It is Star Wars time, baby, from SimpBiscuit. You know I'm going to start with the question from SimpBiscuit.

Great name. Would the remake of KOTOR, Knights of the Old Republic, be better as 100% faithful to its original gameplay or in the style of Final Fantasy VII Remake? So this came up in, I know you weren't there there but in the most recent episode of the besties we talked about kotor and i mentioned that i've never played kotor it's on switch right you can do that right now it is on switch but i knew that there was a remake coming and so i figured i might as well just wait until the remake comes rather than just like play the switch version i mean yeah i in terms of this question definitely the final fantasy 7 remake format or or just like requel i guess is like the movie term for it where it's kind of a remake but really it's its own thing i i do not need a glossy version of an rpg

from that many years ago i just i i don't know who that's for other than people with nostalgia for it who are probably gonna buy it and then maybe play like 10 hours and then be like okay yeah that was that was nice it was good to revisit my nostalgia but video games change so fast that there are very very very very very very few that i think would be worth one-to-one original gameplay it's truly 100 faithful adaptations very few it's truly 100% faithful adaptations very few yeah i i would agree with that um i again not having played it but i do know i would imagine that it certainly is creaky in certain areas and i would also say like for people that want to scratch the nostalgia itch the hd version just came out on switch and you can play that and not have it look like total ass but i think there are probably

people that like want that story but with more modern gameplay implemented so that would be my hope as well uh next question is from lillian king best star wars game for someone ambivalent about Star Wars? Oh. That's a good question. Do you have one? I would probably say Fallen Order. Yeah, I think that's a good one. Jedi Fallen Order, which is the third person action

kind of Souls-like-ish, Metroidvania-ish that came out a couple years ago and there's a sequel coming on the way yeah um i don't know why i think it's good that game is good because it isn't so up the lore ass of star wars as many of the other games are like you don't need to recognize every single character because almost all the characters are new characters they make references to events that happened in the past but so long as you have a surface understanding of hey the clones killed a bunch of jedis you're fine um yeah i don't know i i think that game is like

pretty great for onboarding that said it is a very hard game for people that aren't like don't play a lot of games so that's worth keeping in mind yeah for me it would be um probably the force unleashed which i think just got ported to oh yeah that's a good one yeah which is just hey go blow stuff up as a super powerful jedi who i think like so you're so powerful you can bring down star destroyers i think at a certain point yeah something absurd um yeah i'd say that. I would say like any of the Star Wars pinball games because pinball is always great. You know, Star Wars or not.

And da, da, da. I mean, people, I think had I played it, I would probably say maybe KOTOR because KOTOR takes place a thousand years before Star Wars. So realistically, like like I don't know how much Star Wars-y stuff there is they have lightsabers but it's not like Han Solo's running around yeah I mean it also it's like if you it depends on what era of video game you like if you like retro games I mean the X-Wing TIE Fighter games on PC oh yeah those are good squadron on nintendo 64 gamecube era uh the the empire strikes back

super nintendo game which i'm pretty sure is the one where darth vader turns into a giant robot spider or super you're talking about super empire another game that came up during our episode yeah yeah yeah so i i think those are all like fun Again, it's just a matter of your stomach for old games that play kind of funky. Yeah. Okay. Next question from Jabarkus. Which Star Wars game caused you the most frustration as a kid before you finally realized it just wasn't very good? Ooh, another good question.

Okay. So, man, I need to look this up. man i think we're gonna have the same one i don't think so you do yours while i look mine okay mine is shadows of the empire yeah that's what i thought you were gonna say but that is not mine i have a strong fondness for shadows i i have a very strong fondness for it i will also say it's a frustrating game that is completely busted. When Shadows of the Empire came out, the history of video games is a little fuzzy here, so correct me if I'm wrong, Fresh.

Making games for game cartridges was expensive and difficult. Yes. You could not always get the cartridges that you literally needed to put the game onto. They cost a lot more to make. They had to be customized in certain ways for certain games. So finding Shadow of the Empire, the holiday that it came out,

was extremely difficult. Yeah, Justin and Griffin had the exact same problem. Yeah, so difficult. They were stuck with Wayne Gretzky's hockey. 3D hockey? That game's great. They better have said nice things. the exact same problem so difficult and they were stuck with wayne gretzky 3d hockey hockey that game's great i hope they better have said nice things um the the puck glows um anyway yeah went all over the place for this game with with my dad you know didn't get it for christmas he's like

don't worry well you know you'll get your christmas present whenever we can find it and search for it for months we finally find a copy and wow did i sink a ton can find it. And search for it for months. We finally find a copy. And wow, did I sink a ton of time into that game waiting for it to get good. Before I finally accepted it's not everything I wanted it to be. But hey, the book was a masterpiece. Last time I read it, I was like eight. So who knows? Dash Rendar.

Yeah, I like that game a lot. I think the jetpack is really cool and i don't know i the speed bike is great and the speeder bike right uh my game is star wars rebel assault which was a game that came out in 1993 on dos it came out on mac uh sega cd 3do etc It came out on Mac, Sega CD, 3DO, et cetera. It's basically an on-rails shooter where you are flying various X-Wings in various like. Oh, yeah. I remember this one. It has a great box. It has a really good box.

And I played it when I visited my grandparents in San Diego. And they, in the interest of keeping me and my brother busy, would get us one PC game to play while we were visiting them for the for the span of two weeks whatever it was and our pick one year was rebel assault and this game starts out i believe you're flying through beggar's canyon in x-wing and after like 20 or 30 tries eventually we were able to beat beggar's canyon and unlock i think a uh star destroyer level where you're like strafing a star destroyer and then died and it started us back at beggar's canyon and i was like no i can't do this again and i don't think i ever did miserable yet the reviews are not yeah it was it was bad it made me hyper liked it uh hyper magazine gave it a 90 but edge magazine 5 out of 10 so egm gave it a 5.75 out of 10 you know bless egm for their precision we needed that

down to the i remember when I really cared about that. All it says on the Wikipedia is that GamePro gave the Sega CD version a negative review, but it does not say whether or not any Scary Larry was recorded. Oh, sure. Which is really a shame and honestly a problem for the Wikipedia entry. Wait, I got one more. I guess I got another question or two um okay this one's from uh david what game genre would you be interested in seeing the star wars universe tackle pure survival horror would be great although i doubt disney would ever approve

it uh i i think survival horror would be great i think think Disney would be open to that. I don't think they're as controlling with Star Wars as maybe they were like around the Han Solo time where they're like, we can't have jokes in this. various other things they are more open to mixing things up with the star wars franchise um so yeah survival horror would be amazing i don't know what the setting would be for that it would probably the trash compactor oh the entire game is just the entire game is that it's horrible so there you go oh my gosh how great would it be if it was just a game where you are the trash oh man and you man, and you control close and open. Yeah, and that's it. Lower ceiling. That'd be a good mobile game.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think that Disney would let any genre work. They would just maybe pull the punches. In the same way that the MCU, that's the whole gimmick of the MCU these days, right? It's like, oh no, it's a these days right it's like oh no it's a 70s political thriller oh no it's a cosmic horror yeah and it's like that for 20 and then

it's like just an mcu movie for the rest yeah but it gives you something to kind of sink your teeth into i could see something similar with the video games i yeah i don't think they're ever going to go super gory it doesn't seem like it but i could see them doing something survival horror uh in terms of other genres i mean they've done so much of it the the type of stuff that i would want would be more expansions to established games so like I would love a Forza Horizon Star Wars expansion. What does that mean? You could, like, put it on

well, not Tatooine, because Tatooine's so boring. But, like, I don't know, maybe a mix of biomes somehow. And I can use Landspeeders. Landspeeders are not fun to drive. I think they're fun. Also, a lot of the cars in X-Racer are not fun to drive. Pod racing is the only thing you could say is pod racing

pod racing but landspeeders let me fly the millennium falcon at a very close to the ground level hey i'm saying this they did this in uh that cruise in usa game we played on switch you could play as like a helicopter in that game and it was great yeah i don't care i'm just saying i want more star wars stuff in in games that i already enjoy was great yeah i don't care i'm just saying i want more star wars stuff in in games that i already enjoy and that work i don't know if i need like a new star wars game a big new star wars game every year and i think we're going to get that like that appears to be the approach going off of the tons of stuff that they haven't I'll tell you what I want it's very simple the framework of a Saints Row

game in Star Wars sounds good sounds good right you're whatever a Padawan you got a blaster and slowly but surely you get more and more powerful and you're at by the end of the game you're jumping across Coruscant slamming

down on stormtroopers and collecting like orbs of strength. Like that sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That would be pretty great. Especially because, yeah, I just want more Star Wars stuff that lets Jedi go all out. Yes. You know, like that it recognized the inherent goofiness of them being superheroes.

Because I feel like that doesn't get played with a lot. Or just, like, don't have it be Jedi. Have it be Sith or whatever. A rebel faction of Jedi that don't give a shit about the rules. Like, there are so many areas that you can play with. And I think they started doing that with force unleashed and uh yeah well that's why force unleashed is so fun because it just asks the obvious question which is if these characters are as powerful as they supposedly are why do they not do all this

bonkers stuff right like it doesn't make any sense i mean that's the fun of the the end of rogue squadron right where darth vader just goes ham yes not all those those dudes um yeah i agree uh one one final thing and a couple people brought this up i'm gonna read grayson's question but uh john uh also mentioned this too uh grayson said it is time for the besties to weigh in on the Darth Jar Jar fan theory and settle it once and for all. Are you familiar with it? I am indeed.

You don't even need to read it to me. I am familiar with it. Okay, can you share it with me? Yeah, I'm going to go off memory, so this might not be exact. But my understanding is the idea is that Jar Jar Binks, known, what are they called? Undaboo?

Whatever. Sure. Whatever they're, Gungans, known Gungan, is in fact a Dark Lord of the Sith. And all of his goofy nonsense is actually a misdirect to slowly but surely ensure that the Sith take over the galaxy. And which, in fact, is what happens. Effectively, Jar Jar is totally in favor of Emperor Palpatine taking over the Senate. And everyone's clapping. And it's all great.

And then, obviously, we know how that pans out so the idea you know the online theory was that jar jar had this whole thing planned from the beginning and it was all kind of like a big setup like a drunken master situation now my understanding and again this plays into the fan theories is that because the backlash was so harsh against Jar Jar after episode one the feeling is that George Lucas might have changed tack with him and didn't make him like the centerpiece of the entire rest of the series and just made him a side character uh which is possible the backlash was ridiculously intense, probably fairly, but it does. If that were true, I honestly think it would paint the prequel trilogy in a completely different light and be really, really fascinating.

Like I would have to rewatch episode one over again with that in mind to think, wow, this is what they were setting up. Yeah. So. yeah. So, yeah. It, so, uh, there's very technical reasons why it doesn't quite make sense.

Like this whole, like there can only be two Sith at a time thing. But, but I'm going to, I'm going to quote Western Oregon university.edu a piece there. How much debt did someone go into when they were writing this article rachel hetzel wrote this um uh let's see jar jar okay the most agreed upon part of the of the theory jar jar and uh sidious were conspiring

together for a bumbling fool jar jar had way too many major plot influences he is the reason senator palpatine rose to power in the senate and later gained the emergency powers that allowed him to destroy democracy and bring the galactic empire to life the two are practically inseparable throughout the prequels jar jar is constantly at his side convincing others to give him more power and later on in this piece uh hetzel writes uh Ahmed Best. The actor who portrayed Jar Jar. Confirmed the theory on Twitter. And during an interview. Addressing the Darth Jar Jar theory.

Best tweeted. I will say this. It feels really good. When the hidden meaning behind work is seen. And during an interview. Best said. There's a lot about this that's true. Because of the backlash.

And rightfully so. Lucasfilm backed off from Jar Jar a lot yeah I mean yeah that would have been great well here's what I'm going to say at this point they I would say Disney is seemingly very willing

to lean into any remote side fan theory and turn it into an entire series so don't be surprised because Obi--wan is a show that exists and uh there's plenty to do there gosh that's true that's true that could be the big moment for jar jar if jar jar is not an obi-wan that feels like a travesty is he canonically dead did he die at some point i don't think so i think he's like i think he's like poochie you know he went off to another planet yeah um yeah i don't i don't know if i think it's true or not i think it makes i will

say that the films and the prequel i will oh my gosh the prequels there's so much political intrigue in them that it wouldn't surprise me if this was the original intention. They're just so dense and so over the top that this seems right. But it also seems really silly. I mean, it might also just be this concern that like, well, how many villains do we have? You know, they had Dooku, they had Darth Maul, they had Palpatine, they had eventually Anakin as Vader, like probably a little fatty in terms of like how many villains you had topatine. They had eventually Anakin as Vader. Like, probably a little fatty in terms of, like, how many villains you had to deal with.

I don't know, man. I like the theory, but I agree. I don't think, in the long run, Lucas, I think Lucas would not admit to this being true. Yeah, I think the other thing is, like, Dooku would have been replaced by Jar Jar. So he could have had the Yoda Jar Jar fight that the world. It's also way more clever. Not clever. I'm sorry, because I don't want to take anything away from George Lucas.

But George Lucas's stories are so straight ahead. Like they're so straight ahead that the idea that there would be this like usual suspects ask twistesque twist just isn't his style at all yeah i don't know though i think that's true for the original yeah and also the entire point of like the prequel movies is about how you know supposedly well-intentioned democracies can get complacent and then just straight up hand over the power to you know yeah that's true like it could be there yeah um uh anyway that's the reader mail do you have any other stuff to mention uh i wanted to say that i started watching kaguya sama love is war hell yeah which was a series that chris plant recommended as part of this segment probably a month or so ago.

And I don't, because I don't have Crunchyroll, there's like a number of anime that I want to watch but haven't had the chance to. But I do have Hulu. And this is on Hulu. So that's where I watched it. And man, it's really great. Not only is it great, it's great right out of the gate. There's no warm up. Like within five minutes I was sold on this show. It's really great. Not only is it great, it's great right out of the gate. There's no warmup.

Like within five minutes, I was sold on this show. It's my wife and I watch it together. She's totally over the moon about it. Very funny, very warm, great characters, really great animation, very like well-voiced just as a refresher for people that aren't familiar. It's a rom-com set in a high school where the uh uh president and the vice president of the student council are basically in love with each other but unwilling to admit that so they have these

like mind games fighting over who's going to admit it first and um it reminds me of like election that uh thomas pain movie yeah to some extent and uh but with like more um wes anderson kind of thrown in there for good measure yeah and also way warmer oh yeah it's it's much warmer it's not like the super depressing weirdly very pedophilic aspects that election is. Yeah. My other addition is a game I actually haven't started yet, but I'm going to be starting very soon while I'm on vacation. And that is Citizen Sleeper. Do you know about this one?

No. The latest game from Jump Over the Ages. They did Other Waters. I don't know what that is. they did Other Waters. I don't know what that is. Oh, it was a very cool sci-fi game where you saw this

ocean planet through the eyes of I think it was like an AI. It was interesting. But Citizen Sleeper I don't know much about it other than I liked their previous game and I keep hearing delightful things. The squad over into the Aether

had lots of nice things to say about it. So I'm looking forward to it, and I'm mentioning it here because I'll probably end up talking about it in a later episode. Maybe pretty soon, because we are planning on doing a Games You Missed episode of the Besties next week.

Yeah, that would be good. I'll bring it for that. I think that's it. I think we did it. I think we did another episode. What did we talk about this episode? We talked about Lego Star Wars, and we talked about Kaguya-sama, Love is War,

and Citizen Sleeper, and... Oh, yeah, we talked about a whole bunch of other Star Wars games. You know, Shadow of the Empire, Knights of the Old knights of the old republic salt terrible game plus salt we talked about jar jar binks everybody should go check out this little movie called the phantom menace um and i think that's it i think that's it i think that's it cool well everybody thank you so much for listening to The Resties. I'm Chris Plant. He's Russ Fresh Dick. This is The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. Resties!

Resties. Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to say that.