Following on from the recent reveal of LEGO Dimensions - the latest in a range of "toys-to-life" games that mix physical toys with a video game, like Skylanders or Disney Infinity - many people have been speculating what possible characters the game will include. While previous LEGO games have stuck fairly rigidly to one theme, whether it be Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, or Marvel, LEGO Dimensions promises to blow things wide open, and mix and match characters in a world where "anything is possible". And with Lego Marvel Super Heroes having 155 playable characters alone, imagine how many possibilities there might be in a universe that combines ALL of the LEGO worlds? The possibilities are endless!
And, in an in interesting new twist, it seems the character list could be even more varied than expected, as a blurry image of characters, pinched from a packshot of the game that was promptly taken down from the official website, appears to show characters from franchises that have never been featured in LEGO sets. Well, we say appears - it's really, really blurry, so your guess is as good as ours for most of them.
Wait, am I drunk again?
Of course, the pic has set the internet rife with speculation, as people squint, photoshop and zoom in to try and make out what each character is. Showing 42 possible characters, the picture appears to show that characters such as Homer and Bart Simpson (2 and 21), The Joker (13) and Harley Quinn (14), Scooby Doo and Shaggy (6 and 7) will be amongst the figures released for the game - which kind of makes sense, as there are official Simpsons, Batman and Scooby Doo LEGO sets. The weirder one is no. 3, which folks on the internet are pretty convinced shows Chell from the Portal games, complete with her Portal gun.
Now, this one's a little bit more weird, and at least on the surface, would appear to be a licensing nightmare. That said, it's not entirely without merit. The initial reveal trailer for LEGO Dimensions showed a Wizard of OZ themed level, and the box does show the Witch and Tin Man minifigs, despite LEGO having never produced an official Wizard of Oz set.
We must protect the Precious! The Precious Hover Board!
What may provide the missing link between all these rumoured extra characters is the LEGO Ideas sets. A kind of official kickstarter-for-LEGO, using the LEGO ideas site, fans from around the world can design, and pitch their own ideas for sets, with fans able to vote on their favourites. If an idea gets enough traction, LEGO will set the wheels in motion to acquire the licenses, and put the sets together - which, famously, is how the Back to the Future sets originally came about. Back to the Future, which is now one of the franchises officially revealed to be in LEGO Dimensions.
The key link here, though, is that there once was a project on the LEGO Ideas site for a Portal set. While it didn't reach the required amount of backers, nor did the Wizard of Oz - and that's also now in the game. Whether the blurry mystery figure actually is Chell or not remains to be seen - but the precedent is there.
No matter what the final character line up is though, our take is - the more the merrier! With Disney, Skylanders and Nintendo to compete with, LEGO have stepped up their game - and hopefully, we'll get official confirmation of these characters soon.
