Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the first time developer Traveller’s Tales has portrayed every movie in the mainline Star Wars series. As such, there are plenty of classic creatures the studio had to adapt for the first time, including ones that have never been made by Lego as physical kits. To keep things as authentic as possible, the artists used parts from existing kits as reference for these new creatures, and ‘built’ them from a mixture of existing and original parts.
In a new developer diary debuted during IGN Fan Fest, Neil Crofts, Head of Character Art on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, said: “What we would do is we’d look at the film reference, and we’d take existing Lego creatures and characters that are similar, and then what we end up with is something that is as accurate as we could make it.”
“Take the bantha, for example,” he said. “It’s really true to lego IP and it’s really true to the film IP.”
Concept art in the video also shows how the Rathar, the squid-like creatures from The Force Awakens, was designed using a mix of brand new parts and items from existing kits. The Rathar’s body is a new two-piece component, but it is based on the Lego GyroSphere from the Lego Jurassic World kit. Attached to this body are newly-designed tentacles, but also the Lego dragon kit’s tail and tusks. Finally, the Rathar’s mouth is made up from classic 3794 Lego pieces, perhaps better known as the flat plates with one stud on. This means a minifig character can be easily clipped onto the mouth for any eating scenes.
While other creatures may not use exact pieces from other kits, they’re closely modelled to match any close references in order to maintain authenticity.
For more from Lego Star Wars, check out what comes in each edition of The Skywalker Saga, and an overview of what you can expect from this noticeably different Lego game.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.