User:Cookieboy 2005/LEGO Dimensions OP
As with my OP for "The LEGO Batman Movie", I haven't done much OP-creation before, so this may not be particularly good. This is not finished, and suggestions on how to improve it are welcome.
LEGO Dimensions is a massive crossover toys-to-life video game featuring several franchises, including Doctor Who.
The plot of the game revolves around Batman (DC Multiverse), Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings), and Wyldstyle (The LEGO Movie) travelling across several realities to stop the evil Lord Vortech from "taking over all the LEGO dimensions" (as said by the narrator in Endless Awesome).
As part of these travels, the earliest potential appearance by the Doctor would result from him being scanned in on the toy pad - and the same goes for the Cyberman, TARDIS, K9, and the Dalek. Outside of these, the earliest elements shown would be such items as the TARDIS travel points, buildable structures which, upon having the TARDIS piloted onto them, allow the player to travel to hidden levels, some based on Doctor Who, and others based on other franchises such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons. These, as you may already know, are certainly not the most notable DWU parts of this game.
I've met you three before, but you haven't met me yet!
Indeed, partway through the game, the main characters come face-to-face with the Twelfth Doctor as part of the game's story, with him using a grappling hook to pull them into the TARDIS, which is also travelling through the Vortex. After some conversation between the Doctor and the trio, they are sent off to play through the level, with the Doctor declining to come as he believes it to be too risky (perhaps in reference to the player's ability to scan in another version of the Doctor). Partway through this level, "A Dalektable Adventure", Wyldstyle claims to a group of Daleks that they're friends of the Doctor, which naturally riles them up. Additionally, Daleks can be seen in these scenes using a basketball, which, although odd, is almost certainly just the humour naturally present in any LEGO game. At the end of this level, the Twelfth Doctor arrives and meets the trio, for the first time from his own perspective. He is given a grappling hook to use earlier in the story, and the trio travel off.
Later in the game, other tie-ins to the Doctor Who franchise appear, such as the Valiant in the Back to the Future level Once Upon a Time Machine in the West, and various TARDIS travel points, plus reappearances by the Doctor and the Daleks, in both minor and major roles.
Outside of the main story, a Doctor Who level pack, containing the level "The Dalek Extermination of Earth", was added, essentially telling a new, original, Doctor Who-focused story featuring Davros. Even outside of this, various other levels such as The Mysterious Voyage of Homer (The Simpsons) and The Goonies (The Goonies) feature DWU elements - in the former, the 200 can be found, and when broken, a TARDIS travel point can be built to travel to a secret level based on The Jetsons, and in the latter, a travel pad can be built to travel to a secret level based on The Power of the Daleks.
Coverage, and how best to do it[[edit] | [edit source]]
The way I see it, there are a few differing ways to cover this game. I hope to list them all below, along with reasons to do them and not to do them (albeit perhaps with some bias).
Just the voice clips; no more, no less[[edit] | [edit source]]
Now, currently on this site, the only information typically cited to the game is the dialogue between characters, as it pertains to Doctor Who. This option would essentially be taking those pages and flipping the switch on them, to make them valid (and perhaps add other voice clips). Although this would keep much "irrelevant" information from entering the site, I feel that this simply isn't ideal, as it ignores the main story, the Doctor Who level pack, etc.
Main story, voice clips, The Dalek Extermination of Earth, and The LEGO Batman Movie story pack[[edit] | [edit source]]
A more decent option would be to have the voice clips, but also add the main story of the game, with which Doctor Who is intertwined, as well as the Doctor Who level pack "The Dalek Extermination of Earth". This would result in coverage of levels such as Meltdown in Sector 7-G (The Simpsons) and Once Upon a Time Machine in the West (Back to the Future), but I feel that with the level to which Doctor Who is connected to these, this is fine. This would avoid adding too many other level packs, although the one for The LEGO Batman Movie features the Daleks, thus "obviously" deserving coverage. This does ignore a few things, however...
Main story, voice clips, and all of the level & story packs[[edit] | [edit source]]
Here's one of the ones I find more reasonable - covering the entirety of the main plot, voice clips, and all other clearly narrative parts of the game. As noted above, several levels such as The Mysterious Voyage of Homer and The Goonies feature TARDIS travel pads, as well as the former having the 200 and the latter having an entire secret level based on The Power of the Daleks. Additionally, as should be obvious from the game's nature, any of these levels "could" have the Doctor, the Cyberman, the TARDIS, K9, or the Dalek be scanned in during the gameplay which, although not major, does show some connection - which I feel is much stronger that games like Fortnite or Minecraft's skins, as the characters actually talk to each other and acknowledge who they are. This would also result in coverage of levels such as Aperture Science (Portal level pack) and A Book and a Bad Guy (Adventure Time level pack), although both of these regardless are set in continuity with the main game, with the latter even featuring Batman, Gandalf, and Wyldstyle, running past in the background in a cutscene. This isn't all that we could do, however...
Main story, voice clips, all level packs, and the Doctor Who and The LEGO Batman Movie adventure worlds[[edit] | [edit source]]
Now, the adventure worlds are a bit more complicated to cover. They provide a huge wealth of information about the franchises, albeit in a much more non-linear manner than the main game. It also features the ability to pay studs to rebuild locations from the franchises, which is somewhat odd, but I think we can look past it. The 2 adventure worlds proposed here are the "obviously" Doctor Who-related ones, the former literally being the Doctor Who world, and the latter being based on a film featuring the Daleks. These, I feel are somewhat reasonable, but they leave one big thing left unaccounted for...
Everything - main story, voice clips, all level packs, and all adventure worlds[[edit] | [edit source]]
This one's a very big one, and I understand if people don't agree with it. This proposal is to include absolutely all fictional information provided in the game, including data about Chima, the Ice Kingdom, Hogwarts, Green Hill Zone, Jump City (and Titans Tower), Gotham City, Middle-earth, and even the weird meta dimension. This is a lot of information from other franchises, but I do feel that this could improve coverage of these subjects, especially when they appear in valid narratives on the site (e.g. the Land of Ooo in New Adventures Await!). It would also allow us to be more in-depth, describing who these people are and where they're from in their biographies, although again, I understand that this wouldn't please everyone.
Other notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Coverage and validity of LEGO Dimensions would allow us to describe several tie-in sources as taking place in "parallel universes", e.g. Supergirl Meets E.T. being set in E.T.'s universe, rather than the Doctor's.