Blondie-Wan

I've been wondering that as well. Apparently Elizabeth Banks is returning as Wyldstyle, Tom Kane is Gandalf and Troy Baker is Batman. According to one report, reporters being shown some of the game at one point got to see this game's Batman meet the Batman of The LEGO Movie (!), so perhaps we'll actually get multiple Bat-actors, such as Will Arnett. Michael J. Fox did in fact work on the Back to the Future game of a couple years ago, but as "Willie McFly" / "Marty Future", while someone else did "regular" Marty, presumably in concession to the actor's age, so I don't know if he'd voice LEGO Marty or not, though I think it'd be nice. I imagine the overall character assortment will be cast with a mix of "big name" actors reprising their characters and talented but less expensive voice acting specialists, depending upon the levels of interest on behalf of the original actors, their availability at the time of voice recording, and their asking prices. I'd also expect that for those characters who have previously appeared in either videogames or LEGO productions (and especially for those that have appeared in LEGO videogames), they'd mostly be voiced by the same performers who did them in those, with perhaps a few exceptions here and there.

I strongly doubt any Marvel or Lucasfilm characters or environments will be in this game in any form at all. I think all playable characters will be ones included in packs with physical figures, and I think the only way we might possibly get any of the Lucasfilm characters is if LEGO and the game's makers licensed the rights from Lucasfilm before Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney. Even that last possibility is an extremely long shot, but given that Skylanders kicked off this whole thing in 2011 and Disney bought Lucasfilm the following year, it might not be completely out of the realm of possibility that LEGO, WB and TT started working on the game in 2011, well before the acquisition, and went ahead and got rights to use LFL characters before Disney bought them and could say "no". But the fact Star Wars is confirmed (and, indeed, is the major selling point) of Disney Infinity 3.0 (and that game's makers have also suggested / hinted at possibly also including Indiana Jones at some point down the line) would seem to preclude any possibility of Lucasfilm characters appearing in LEGO Dimensions, unfortunately. I guess we'll just have to content ourselves with Legends of Chima, NinjaGo, The LEGO Movie, Back to the Future, DC Comics, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, Middle-Earth, Portal, Scooby-Doo, The Simpsons and The Wizard of Oz, as well as any other Warner Bros. and/or original LEGO property they might want to use, along with the occasional outside license - which, honestly, is not too bad.

I wonder whether Valve would be at all involved in the creation of the Portal Level Pack. From what I understand of the company it would seem they'd like a measure of control and creative input. Whatever the levels are like, of course, at least they'll not only expand the overall game world(s), but also add characters and vehicles one can take elsewhere in the game. ______________________________________________________________________ I'm really curious about the Back to the Future and Doctor Who material. Having not just one but (at least) two franchises centered around time travel (and hasn't it also been used occasionally in the DC Comics universe?) makes me wonder whether they'll somehow implement time travel in the game, and not just in those Level Packs' added levels. ______________________________________________________________________ Things I hope to see: Additional packs based on the franchises we already know we're getting. In particular, I'd like to see more packs from The Lord of the Rings (perhaps Fun Packs with Aragorn and Eowyn, a Team Pack with Frodo and Sam, or one with Pippin and Merry), Back to the Future, and Doctor Who (the last two if only because I don't want Marty and the Doctor to be the only playable characters we get from those franchises). I also particularly want to see more female characters, both from these themes and from any new ones. In particular I'd like to see packs with Eowyn, as noted before, plus Velma Dinkley, any of the Doctor's many companions, and Marge and Lisa Simpson. Packs based on additional adventure-oriented established LEGO themes, including perennials like Pirates and Castle, as well as older, inactive themes like Adventurers, Monster Fighters, Exo-Force, Rock Raiders / Power Miners, Atlantis, Time Twisters and Classic Space. Packs based on non-minifigure-based themes like Elves, Bionicle and Mixels. Spinoff sets, that are to this game what the sets from The LEGO Movie are to The LEGO Movie - sets with ludicrous thematic mash-ups. Naturally I don't expect all of this to happen (and that's probably just as well, since I could never afford all of it), but I really hope some of this comes to light.

Apologies if my post wasn't clear; I thought it was, but perhaps not. I was talking about polybags without minifigures, which still tend to be a few dollars - think of all those Star Wars mini vehicles, for example. Three or four bucks for a polybag, the same again for a minifigure, a couple bucks more for the bases, and then a few for the in-game content.

Well, so far they've been doing one huge set and sixteen tiny ones each year, so there you go. :p ;)

I know full well the Fun Packs have a minifigure apiece; I explained that myself in the very same post you're quoting. Polybags strangely tend to be priced around the same whether they have a minifigure or not. Whether they do or not, though, does affect the character and style of the main build, and it appears to me these builds are more like non-figure polybags.

It's not a $10 markup over what it normally would be. Consider it this way: A minifigure by itself currently retails for somewhere from $3.33, at a LEGO Store's BAM kiosk, to $3.99, for one of the blind-bagged figures in the Minifigures line, which also includes a plate to put it on, albeit not an NFC-enabled one. A typical polybag set currently goes for four or five bucks. That's already eight or nine dollars for content comparable to the physical brick content of one of the game's Fun Packs, except that even if you omit the game data and focus on just the physical elements, you're still getting not one but two NFC-enabled bases, which are still special parts even if you ignore the data and look at them purely as hardware. To get Fun Pack pricing, then, we can add a buck or two for those bases to our minifigure-and-micro-build price estimate. A couple more dollars for the actual data that comes on those bases, and bingo, you're within a couple bucks or so of Fun Pack pricing. Yeah, there's a bit of "extra" markup, perhaps, but nowhere near $10 for one of those. And Team Pack pricing is better - a Team Pack is equivalent to two Fun Packs in content (two minifigures and corresponding in-game characters instead of one, two micro-builds instead of one, etc.), but priced at what amounts to a $5 discount on what two would normally cost. The Level Packs are the most costly, but we don't yet know the size of the levels. Each Level Pack comes with only one minifigure-character, but two micro-builds, and bases for each of the three items, and the game data content includes not just a character but also a whole new game area. We'll have to see how big they are. They do have to make special molds, yes, but those are still undoubtedly less expensive and less complex than LEGO's. They're undoubtedly trying to do that. I don't think LEGO set out to design any of the figures with the specific design directive "let's make this minifigure as boring as we can!", and I don't think everyone would agree that they are. A few of them - not many, true, but some - do in fact appear to be new prints and such. Unikitty appears to have a new face print, for example. I fully agree getting more new characters would be great, and I'd love to see them offer an Eowyn Fun Pack, for example. At the same time, some fans of those themes who don't want the game, while being glad to see certain characters get released at all, would undoubtedly be annoyed that the only way to get a desired figure might be an add-on pack for a game they don't have any other interest in and that you yourself think is too expensive. I don't see any solution that would please everyone, but I will say I'd much rather have a character like Eowyn come out only in a $15 or $25 or even $30 add-on pack for this game than as, say, a convention exclusive limited to only 1000 copies made.

I mainly rely on memory.

Well, as indicated I don't pretend to know those voice actor costs are there; I was just pointing out these have considerations we don't yet know about. Of course I'd rather have these more affordable myself; I want to get them, too. Smaller LEGO sets like polybags, "CMFs", etc. do tend to run more expensive on a price-per-piece basis anyway, though, and as far as DLC content for games goes goes, your average DLC doesn't come with actual, physical toys. The natural comparisons to make for these shouldn't be either other small LEGO sets or most other games' expansions, but add-on packs for other toys-to-life games like Skylanders and Disney Infinity. I really think by that comparison, these win out, since the toys here are actual LEGO, which easily trump the toys for those other games. And yes, I do of course realize that's meaningless for someone who just doesn't intend to play the actual games anyway, but LEGO and WB can't just price these as though they were only LEGO sets with no DLC for the benefit of those people who want some but not all of the stuff in the packages. In that regard, we probably should treat them like other LEGO sets, in the sense that they have parts a lot of us will want without wanting the whole sets (or wanting to pay for it) - in this way, they're no different from other sets. Well, that could still happen; I'm hoping for that myself. But we are indeed getting more than new molds and prints. We're getting the game data, too, and just because some of us don't want it doesn't mean it's not part of the cost of the package. And we're getting whole entire themes for this, too, and getting new characters accordingly - Chell and the Wicked Witch of the West, obviously. Those are the only two characters we know about who are wholly exclusive to the LEGO Dimensions "theme" so far, but I suspect there will be more. Wow... I think you have it. I'd pretty much blown off trying to get any useful info from those blurs and smears, but I think that's right; nicely done. For your Wave 4 conundrum, perhaps it's not a Superman / Aquaman Team Pack, but simply two Team Packs, one with Superman and someone else and the other with Aquaman and someone else.

The price isn't as high as that just because of the pieces; that's not all you're getting. These packs all have game content, which itself costs money to develop, and we don't even know just how extensive it is yet. Note how all the packs with new molds (that aren't also known to be coming out in other, regular sets, like the Scooby parts) are Level packs - those come with not just digital characters and vehicles, but also whole new areas in the game world; they're almost like mini-games unto themselves in how much they add. All the artists and programmers who work on these cost money too, you know. And that's not even counting audio expenses. Who's voicing these characters? We already know Elizabeth Banks is reprising the role of Wyldstyle, and she's a big star; her talent has to cost at least a few bucks. What about all the add-on characters? Might they actually have Peter Capaldi and Dan Castellenata voice their characters for these add-on packs? If so, how much do they cost? And we haven't even gotten to music licensing. Do the add-on packs add appropriate music for their franchises? If so, there are music licensing fees as well. And what if it's not even "just" theme music? Marty plays guitar in-game; what if he actually plays "real" songs, like "Earth Angel" or "Johnny B. Goode"? Those songs would have to be licensed as well. I mean, probably not all of this stuff is actually in there, but even so, the point is that the prices aren't just for some bricks, even though we all know at least a few buyers will be getting the packs only for the parts, with no intention of ever actually playing the game. They can't price one of these packs as though it were just a couple of polybags, even though the physical brick content is equivalent. These packs are more than that, and they accordingly cost more to make, and so they're priced accordingly.

I really hope Marge and Lisa also turn up in packs for LEGO Dimensions. I'd like to be able to play as either / both of them.

Darn it, I meant to save them, but didn't. Oops. But that said, there's actually very little instruction in LEGO Dimensions instruction booklets, it turns out (at least for the add-on packs; the starter packs are presumably different). I checked out all the ones I saw links for, and all of them simply had instructions for putting together the minifigures - literally just the hair, head, torso, and legs, and then adding whatever handheld accessory item and putting the figure on the included NFC base; the instructions then just have you put the completed figure on the game pad, and then go in-game for the rest of the instructions. Most of the instruction booklet contents are not actual instructions, therefore, but simply the catalog-style listings of various Level, Team and Fun Packs that have had us all a-flutter the last few days. The instruction booklets do have the customary parts inventories in the back, however, and given how small the builds are, one can probably guess from looking at them and the pictures of the completed models how they're put together. The parts inventories also confirm something I think most of us had already guessed from the images, which is that all the decorated parts in these (all the ones for which we've seen booklets, anyway) are actual printed parts, not stickered ones. The Doctor Who Level Pack uses a number of printed tiles for both the TARDIS and K9, for example.

Yes, the seating has jumped out at lots of people. It's an odd apparent goof for them to make, considering how much attention was obviously paid to source material and reference work. I half-wonder whether it was intentional, as a joke. Still, nice work all around. I've long wanted to do my own "ultra" Millennium Falcon. This one sets a high bar.

If we can get completely, irrationally optimistic, there are actually eight, since technically there are five with Gandalf alone. They just all share the same build. :p ;)

The Doctor Who and WALL·E sets are both due out sometime after the set for The Big Bang Theory, and we haven't seen that one yet. It's possible the design hasn't been finalized. Alternately, it could be ready and waiting to go to production, but the production lines could be solidly booked with more mass-market sets, so that that set (and the Ideas sets after it) are waiting until production slots are free for them. Remember, Ideas sets are lower priorities for LEGO than all the mass-market sets from major themes. if that's the case, they probably are waiting on the reveal, since they don't want an unusually long time to pass between the reveal and the release.

I'm sure there will indeed be people who part them out on Bricklink or whatever; they just won't do so cheaply. Well, it's certainly possible - Back to the Future already has a set, after all, and Doctor Who is getting at least one set through Ideas, and perhaps a whole theme. I half-suspect the reason they took extra time to announce the decision on the Doctor Who project is because they wanted to work out licensing with the BBC not just for that set, but also this pack for the game, and perhaps a whole theme of subsequent sets. If Doctor Who does indeed become a full-blown theme, as I'm sure it will, I'm sure any and all molds developed for its LEGO Dimensions pack(s) will appear in more conventional sets. Portal, though, I could more easily see remaining a LEGO thing only through this game, and this Level Pack being the only official LEGO Portal thing ever released, so I'm less optimistic about ever seeing the portal gun element elsewhere (but you never know; they could always use it later as a structural element in something completely unrelated to Portal).

They pretty clearly want each pack for this game to include at least one relatively substantial build (substantial given the size), as opposed to just offering exclusively dedicated figure elements. That's surely why we're getting a brick-built velociraptor rather than one of the figural ones from dedicated elements, a brick-built flying monkey, etc.

I wonder whether some of those skipped set numbers might be for vendor-exclusive packs.

That said, I can't help but notice the known lineup is pretty heavy with dudes. I hope later pack reveals include a lot more female characters. Right now, we know of just seven female characters out of thirty-one playable characters in total. It seems particularly egregious that the five core family members of The Simpsons are 60% female, yet as far as we know we're getting only the two male characters, plus another male character who isn't even a family member. LEGO and WB are going to take some heat from critics if they don't add some more female characters to the mix, and I can't say they won't have asked for it.

I'm hoping that one is the (first?) Ghostbusters pack, as teased in the announcement video. Perhaps a Team Pack with two of the team members - say, Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore - plus a mini-Ectomobile and mini-HQ.

Eleven (all of them), since you can find stuff pertaining to all eleven of these themes on Ideas even now. If you're referring specifically to past projects that got all their votes and made it to review, then four - two of which actually had projects approved (Back to the Future and Doctor Who) and two of which so far have not (Portal and The Wizard of Oz). From your expression "" I'm guessing you don't approve? ____________________________________ I posted this over in the LEGO Dimensions thread in Culture & Multimedia, but it's relevant here, too:

Okay, so here are all the known sets and set numbers (at least, all the ones known to me): 71170 - PS3 Starter Pack 71171 - PS4 Starter Pack 71172 - XBox One Starter Pack 71173 - XBox 360 Starter Pack 71174 - Wii U Starter Pack 71201 - Level Pack: Back to the Future 71202 - Level Pack: The Simpsons 71203 - Level Pack: Portal 2 71204 - Level Pack: Doctor Who 71205 - Team Pack: Jurassic World 71206 - Team Pack: Scooby-Doo! 71207 - Team Pack: NinjaGo 71208 - ? 71209 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Wonder Woman) 71210 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Cyborg) 71211 - Fun Pack: The Simpsons (Bart Simpson) 71212 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Emmet) 71213 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Bad Cop) 71214 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Benny) 71215 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Jay) 71216 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Nya) 71217 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Zane) 71218 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Gollum) 71219 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Legolas) 71220 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Gimli) 71221 - Fun Pack: The Wizard of Oz (Wicked Witch) 71222 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Laval) 71223 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Cragger) 71224 - ? 71225 - ? 71226 - ? 71227 - Fun Pack: The Simpsons (Krusty the Clown) 71228 - ? 71229 - ? 71230 - ? 71231 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Unikitty) 71232 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Eris) Note the multiple conspicuous gaps in the numbering. Note also that while most of the Fun Packs from any particular theme are numerically grouped together, a few of them aren't (Bart and Krusty, Unikitty, Eris), indicating those blank spaces aren't necessarily for the adjacent themes (if they're for themes listed here at all in the first place). And note further we still have no specific pack info for Ghostbusters, despite the extended announcement video's unambiguous tease of the theme. So... Continue speculating! ;)

They could be in-game only. But still! This is all just fantastic.

If that were the case, it would actually bode well for The Goonies, as it, too, has had an Ideas project get 10,000 votes and been officially considered. I don't think the inclusion of The Wizard of Oz and Portal has anything to do with the CUUSOO / Ideas projects, but never say never.

I do think we easily have it best here in the US when it comes to buying LEGO in general; we have what have got to be the best MSRPs in the world on average, plus possibly more than our share of promos, freebies, etc. However, no place is perfect, and in particular there have been multiple sets that simply haven't been released here at all. I also get the impression sets generally tend to remain available longer elsewhere than they do here in the US, where many sets seem to have terribly short windows of availability.