LEGO movie-based Video Games have been around since 2001. I actually remember buying the first LEGO Star Wars game as a young child for the Nintendo GameCube. The game was awesome and felt like a huge breath of fresh air. It was easy to learn, kid friendly, and just fun to play. I loved the comedy relief in it, the re-telling of a story I already knew, and being able to play as all my favorite characters from the prequel films.
Fast forward a little bit to 2012. LEGO games had been coming out almost yearly. There was Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, the rest of the Star Wars franchise, Harry Potter, and now Lord of the Rings is said to coming out soon as well.
I was stoked and so excited to play LEGO Lord of the Rings. But when I watched a trailer for the game, that all changed.
Talking?! In a LEGO game?!
I was dumbfounded not at what I saw (because what I saw was awesome), but at what I was hearing. All LEGO trailers had a narrator in them, otherwise it would just be this silent short film with LEGO characters grunting and pointing about. So when I heard the voice of Aragorn speaking to me, I grew worried. I heard the voices of other Lord of the Rings characters, and my worries grew. I was afraid at what was transpiring on my screen.
Then it cut to gameplay and everyone was speaking, and I just had to turn the trailer off. I was devastated. Was it true?
Was it really true? Were they speaking in a Lego Game? As far as I knew, such a thing had never been done before, and I realized then that that was a huge part of the charm of the previous games for me.
A loss of at least one fan
It goes without saying that I was angered by this. I mean, what's the point of using dialogue in a LEGO video game?
That question is especially important for games that don't even have an original plot to them. Think about it, if you had seen the movies for Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and Star Wars, you'd understand what was going on in the game whether or not dialogue had been included in the game.
And if you hadn't seen any of the movies then you'd be a little confused, but the game wouldn't really change that much as far as playing is concerned.
Heck, I think it would be fun to play the LEGO game before you see the movie just to compare the two mediums and see which one you liked best. I enjoyed the lack of voice because it required the developers to tell important aspects of a story in fun and creative ways.
LEGO: the new tell-tale stories developer
The dialogue in the LEGO video games, especially in the ones where it's ripped from the movies, is lazy and blasphemous. I can, however, get behind an original plot adapted in an already existing universe with original dialogue. That is fine by me and is done in a few LEGO games. I really don't enjoy seeing LEGO characters talk in general, but if it's all original I can put up with it. I don't find it fun to play a movie-based LEGO game that steals audio from the movies it's based off of.
That cuts so many corners, and it heavily degrades the creativity and quirkiness of the games. With that being said, I haven't bought a LEGO video game since the 2nd Harry Potter game (Years 5-7), and I pretty much refuse to do so in the future until changes are made. Leave the kinds of games that re-tell stories with dialogue to the Tell-Tale Games series, which is exactly what current LEGO games do.
