In a surprising turn of events for the 2025 Gamescom opening night, one of the most anticipated trailers wasn’t for a long-awaited game or a big-budget multiplayer shooter, but TT Games’ upcoming LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.
Even among the likes of Hollow Knight: Silksong, one of the trailers that I keep finding myself coming back to and analyzing the background for details or Easter eggs was easily LEGO Batman‘s latest offering. With the Batman IP already laying the groundwork for some of the LEGO series’ better games, the only franchise that’s had an even larger impact was the LEGO Star Wars series.
Following in the heels of its ambitious predecessor, Legacy of the Dark Knight has the potential to not only be one of the best LEGO Batman games but one of the best LEGO games of all if it can overcome LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga‘s flaws.
The Skywalker Saga Was An Overly Ambitious Step In The Right Direction
A Fantastic Start That Fell Just Short Of Greatness
Offering a way to experience all 9 films in the Star Wars series in one easily accessible package, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga had all the makings of an excellent offering of the series, especially with its drastically improved visuals and gameplay mechanics. As if its core presentation wasn’t enough, the sheer scale of TT games was unprecedented for a LEGO game, far surpassing the largest hubs of the series’ past.
With a full galaxy of 24 planets to explore from the legendary sci-fi series, hundreds of characters, and countless collectibles, the amount of content offered by The Skywalker Saga was surprisingly generous at the time of its release.
Although not every character got the same level of detail as the rest, it was still great to experience what felt like a true open-world experience within the LEGO Star Wars universe, especially when combined with its space battles and traversal options.
Unfortunately, the ambitious scale of The Skywalker Saga was also one of its greatest downfalls, with much of the content feeling somewhat repetitive or like a massively missed opportunity to offer a hub for future DLC.
With the Star Wars franchise at one of its highest peaks, offering shows like Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Mandalorian, The Skywalker Saga‘s lackluster post-launch content failed to keep the game going past its prime.
Even LEGO Star Wars Wasn’t Immune To Criticism
TT Games’ Magnum Opus That Never Saw Its Full Potential
While it’s easy to list the impressive accomplishments and fun aspects of The Skywalker Saga, it’s unfortunately just as easy to point out the weaker elements holding it back. Even with its vast and explorable environments, the actual story missions in The Skywalker Saga fell flat compared to its predecessors, with even less replayable level design than before.
The cracks beneath the surface of The Skywalker Saga were also incredibly apparent at launch, with a plethora of game-breaking bugs and glitches that ended up soft-locking players left and right.
Although its developers did manage to fix some of the most glaring progression issues, The Skywalker Saga still has its share of persistent bugs and performance issues that aren’t likely to ever get resolved at this point.
Even the fan-service-filled character DLC for The Skywalker Saga failed to live up to the expectations of what the base game provided, offering no in-character voice lines or much personality outside of acting as a paid skin.
The premise of The Skywalker Saga could have easily become a legendary game in the series with worthwhile post-launch content adding themed levels or even planets, but ultimately got left behind after a few disappointing DLCs.
Although The Skywalker Saga does manage to put itself up there with some of the best LEGO Games for its innovative gameplay design and massive, albeit somewhat bloated level of content, the fan-service and humor of the series can only help so much in alleviating the weaker elements of the Skywalker Saga‘s core gameplay loop.
Legacy Of The Dark Knight Already Has The Perfect Templates To Borrow From
Easily Combining The Best Of Both Worlds
While the Skywalker Saga might have failed to live up to its full potential, it seems like LEGO Batman: Legacy Of The Dark Knight could have the answer to all of its ambitious predecessor’s problems.
Learning from some of the mistakes of the Skywalker Saga would be enough, but taking heavy inspiration from the gameplay of the Batman ArkhamVerse series, with the charisma of the LEGO brand, could elevate its missions drastically beyond The Skywalker Saga‘s mediocrity.
Even if it won’t have the same galactic scale as the infamous sci-fi series, Legacy Of The Dark Knight already offers a map that’s even bigger than Arkham Knight’s Gotham, which could more easily find the sweet spot between having plenty of collectibles or secrets to discover without too much bloat.
With LEGO having already proven itself more than capable of delivering great Batman experiences, it feels like the perfect IP to move forward with after the Skywalker Saga‘s somewhat disappointing release.
Having already shown off its film inspirations across several decades of film, Legacy of the Dark Knight could also have a much easier time incorporating elements from its rich comic book history for even more seamless DLC potential.
With a sequel to Pattinson’s The Batman and films for both Clayface and The Brave and the Bold in the works, it would be criminal for LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight not to incorporate the new projects in some fashion.
