It’s High Time We Get A Star Wars Game Starring Luke Skywalker

In addition to being a box office juggernaut, Star Wars has tried its luck and made immense profit in books, comics, and without question, video games. The recent Star Wars Jedi series has been a big success, with 2019’s Fallen Order amassing over 20 million players and its sequel performing even better.

In addition, other games like Force Unleashed, Battlefront, Knights of the Old Republic, and the Skywalker Saga have had commercial and critical success while enhancing the franchise’s portfolio and lore.

With Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, Quantic Dream’s Star Wars: Eclipse, and Electronic Arts’ Jedi 3 coming in the next few years, the IP’s release schedule is packed. However, even with so many games across its history, no title places the center of attention on Luke Skywalker like the movies do. For sure, he appears in a lot of games but except for the Lego adaptations, he isn’t the main star in any of them.

In my opinion, the franchise is missing a trick by not including its most legendary character because a story-based title led by Luke Skywalker and based on one of the many unadapted storylines in the Legends lore will sell out like hotcakes.

The Legends Books Have Untapped Potential That Can Be Utilised In Gaming

Star Wars books and comics have been a thing since the original trilogy and get into much more detail about this galaxy far far away than movies. However, after Disney bought Lucasfilm, any novel or comic book based on the franchise was declared as non-canon and put into a new “Legends” category.

This move didn’t go down too well with tenured fans of the IP as the Legends storylines had been around for decades and were brilliantly written extensions of the original trilogy. Because of this act, Disney can’t adapt these innumerable comics and books into TV shows or movies as they are canon.

Consequently, the only medium left to bring this part of Star Wars mythos to the screen is gaming and in my opinion, it’s a golden egg waiting to be salvaged. Legends are filled with fan-favorite books that explore the depths of the franchise, expand its lore, and showcase the next adventure the main characters are involved in, for example, Luke Skywalker.

The beloved hero has starred in many books with the likes of Survivors Quest, the Thrawn trilogy, and the Yuuzahn Vong series arguably being the most consequential. The Thrawn trilogy left such an impact and was so critically and commercially successful that Disney introduced the titular villain into the canon timeline via Star Wars Rebels. However, besides that, no big part of the storyline has been brought to life yet.

This is exactly why the trilogy is a perfect candidate for a story-based single-player gaming experience starring none other than Luke Skywalker. Suppose someone like Respawn or even Insomniac Games develops several like the Jedi series and centers them on the main characters of the original trilogy as the books do.

In that case, there is every reason they will be commercial juggernauts considering the adoration Star Wars fans have for Legends and single-player titles in the franchise. 

Even though the Legends storylines were always just expansions of Star Wars and not what George Lucas intended the sequels to be, fans have always wanted to experience the stories outside the pages. Hence, a game based on any of the major arcs will appeal to a lot of fans, especially if it stars Luke Skywalker, who died in Episode 8 and has only been used sparingly since.

Therefore, seeing him lead a Star Wars game for the first time as the main playable character will be a big draw for fans of the series. In addition, if Mark Hamill returns to voice Luke, the hype will be through the roof among the fans as they’ll get to play their childhood hero in one of the best-written Star Wars sagas in history. every Legends book features ingenious writing, overarching storylines, grand space adventures, and menacing villains like Darth Vader himself.

Hence, whatever story Lucasfilm chooses to adapt, it probably won’t be a mistake considering the quality of Star Wars Legends and how it originally reinvigorated interest in the franchise.

Takeaway

Over the last five decades, Star Wars has become much more than just a movie franchise and has given fans more content than they could ever ask for. But, one thing that Lucasfilm is yet to serve is a Luke Skywalker-led game. And, when you consider the stories the character has in the highly successful Legends books, it is a recipe for certain success with all available ingredients ready to be cooked.