Star Wars Star Wars Discussion Thread - LET THE PAST D-! Oh, wait, nevermind

[Zachowon]

Um....are you sure you're thinking of the same EU that the rest of us are? Because when you summarize it as:



....I mean, that's your opinion and you're free to hold it, but that's also a pretty good summary of the new universe as well, in that it's a blatantly recycled empire vs rebels fight featuring such stunning new character concepts as "desert dwelling force user with a hidden connection to the villains and who was trained by the last of the old Jedi order".

As for the new VR thing, sure, maybe it's great, and we would have never seen it's like under the old system. Empire at war was also great, and we'll certainly never seen it's like in the new setting, because the nature of the new setting makes it impossible. And as good as you seem to think Vader Immortal is....does the phrase "recycling movie and movie-derived material...simply rehashing the same characters along the the same storylines" sound familiar to you?

And fundamentally, VI sounds like it has the same problem that Fallen Order and a number of other new part of the canon have, in that it's basically a massive waste of time for the players, provided this summary is correct. You run around, do a bunch of vaguely star-warsy stuff and learn a bunch of lore that has zero relevance to anything else in any other part of the setting, in the midst of a plot that has potential to change the course of the saga, and then events unfold that force the plot to proceed as it always was and make your efforts moot, and then you quietly vanish from the setting never to been seen again. Woooo.

Like, even the force unleashed managed to do better than that, and like 50% of that game was just a unrepentant power fantasy about letting you run around as this massive edgelord, shooting people with force lighting and not be the bad guy (or at least the bad-est guy). You got to at least participate in something that would shape later events, you got to have an impact on the setting. Force Unleashed had you help form the rebel alliance. Vader Immortal lets you trash Vader's living room a bit.

I think not being a major part of the plot should not be a focus of the story.

I think the the New canon has the ability to make stuff that would not be possible in the old EU. Such as the Vader story.

Really the arguments both of you give apply to well, oith canons

 

[ShadowArxxy]

I mean, SWTOR thiugh not the best is not that bad of a game and you do that kinda stuff.

KOTOR/SWTOR had to back up several thousand years specifically so that it can be Star Wars without being constrained by the movie canon.

And fundamentally, VI sounds like it has the same problem that Fallen Order and a number of other new part of the canon have, in that it's basically a massive waste of time for the players, provided this summary is correct. You run around, do a bunch of vaguely star-warsy stuff and learn a bunch of lore that has zero relevance to anything else in any other part of the setting, in the midst of a plot that has potential to change the course of the saga, and then events unfold that force the plot to proceed as it always was and make your efforts moot, and then you quietly vanish from the setting never to been seen again. Woooo.

Ehhh, by the strictest terms, Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker were literally the only people in Star Wars who *ever* mattered at all, since literally anything anyone else in the entire universe ever did exists only as window dressing to the fixed events of the Skywalker Saga.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Ehhh, by the strictest terms, Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker were literally the only people in Star Wars who *ever* mattered at all, since literally anything anyone else in the entire universe ever did exists only as window dressing to the fixed events of the Skywalker Saga.

Presuming I accept that logic, which I don't, there's still a significant difference between being the guy that arranged that window dressing and set up the entire display, vs being the guy that's in the back room of the shop running out the time before his shift ends by sweeping out a disused storeroom no one ever uses.

EDIT:
In the old EU, when the rebels launched their attack on the death star, they did so flying your colors because you helped create that organization, flying ships that you lead the strike team to obtain, and they're flying that mission based on intel you helped provide...several times, apparently. Man, people really liked using the death star plans as a narrative device, didn't they?

In the new EU, the rebels were formed by someone else, using someone else's symbols and ships they obtained....somehow, using not just plans that someone else got them, but also a weakness that someone else helpfully built into the system for them. But don't worry, several years ago a guy named Cal Kestis meet a guy that the people that got the plans also met. Not that Cal had any lasting impact on that guy, or had any other involvement with that guy other than the one meeting, and Cal went on to do nothing else of note after meeting that guy, but they definitely met each other that one time.



The old EU didn't just have the fans watch events play out, it let them take part in those events, which created a deeper connection to the entire setting because the viewer isn't just watching events take place, they're watching the ramifications of their own actions play out.

The new EU very rarely lets the fans actually interact with the setting beyond just passive observation, and on the few occasions it does let them get deeper, they're barricaded away in their own little corner of the setting, forbidden to play with anything that's actually important.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I think the most telling thing is Disney has owned the Star Wars property back in 2012 and AFAIK the only major game releases they've had is a reboot of Star Wars Battlefront and its much maligned (story wise) sequel, Star Wars: Fallen Order and the just released Star Wars Squadrons. And a niche VR (because VR is niche) called Vader Immortal.

Meanwhile under the EU we've had Knights of the Old Republic I & II and Star Wars The Old Republic MMO which granted, took place thousands of years earlier. But you also had Star Wars: TIE Fighter which old people tell me was great. And you had Dark Forces, and the often Game of the Year lauded Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and it's sequel Jedi Knight II: Outcast which while not great, was still decent enough. And then the sequel Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy which was again, very well received.

And you had two easily superior Battlefront games, plus Empire At War which was mentioned earlier.

Just FYI, I'm not saying this as some EU apologist. I understood perfectly why Disney would shunt the old EU off into Legends and then pillage it for ideas... and initially, like with some of the initial comics that came out, I was thinking that "Wow, Disney is going to make their EU way better because of a consistent vision," but... that did not last long... at all.

Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels were shit. Even compared to how disassociative the EU was (where we had basically several writers writing their own post-Endor Galactic Civil War in different time periods) Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels which condensed the collapse of the entire Empire (devoid of any main characters as well) was trite and shallow and at best can be said to be 'competently written' so a nice narrative with terrible world building and vision.

I would infinitely prefer the Multiple Personality Disorder of reading the X-Wing series, Thrawn Trilogy, Dark Empire Graphic Novels, and playing the Jedi Knight series of games again then dealing with lame ass Disney Aftermath. Individually and even collectively, the Legends version of the post-Endor Civil War is superior. Infinitely superior.

Hopefully... with the recent trend of decent video games (Battlefront II not withstanding) as well as The Mandalorian we'll see a proper Disney Extended Universe fleshed out and the Aftermath crap can be retconned (see what I did there?) into oblivion. Because so far the Disney EU novels and comics by and large have just been low quality crap. Their overall vision... is crap... and the content released... just as crap. At least with Michael Stackpole and Timothy Zahn we got good stories on an individual level.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Meanwhile under the EU we've had Knights of the Old Republic I & II and Star Wars The Old Republic MMO which granted, took place thousands of years earlier. But you also had Star Wars: TIE Fighter which old people tell me was great. And you had Dark Forces, and the often Game of the Year lauded Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and it's sequel Jedi Knight II: Outcast which while not great, was still decent enough. And then the sequel Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy which was again, very well received.

And you had two easily superior Battlefront games, plus Empire At War which was mentioned earlier.

You forgot rogue squadron and republic commando, and that's just if you're listing the universally acknowledged great ones. If you're willing to add in a few of the "eh" titles, there's a bunch more starfighter games, rebel assault, droid works, force unleashed, a few RTS titles...

 

[Husky_Khan]

You forgot rogue squadron and republic commando, and that's just if you're listing the universally acknowledged great ones. If you're willing to add in a few of the "eh" titles, there's a bunch more starfighter games, rebel assault, droid works, force unleashed, a few RTS titles...

Yeah I was trying to go off of memory. Feels more honest and organic discussion wise. I did think of Rebel Assault but yeah wasn't sure how beloved it was. I just got it recently on gog.com and it's deceptively fun. And there were preceding and followup games to TIE Fighter as well for sure.

 

[Zachowon]

I think the most telling thing is Disney has owned the Star Wars property back in 2012 and AFAIK the only major game releases they've had is a reboot of Star Wars Battlefront and its much maligned (story wise) sequel, Star Wars: Fallen Order and the just released Star Wars Squadrons. And a niche VR (because VR is niche) called Vader Immortal.

Meanwhile under the EU we've had Knights of the Old Republic I & II and Star Wars The Old Republic MMO which granted, took place thousands of years earlier. But you also had Star Wars: TIE Fighter which old people tell me was great. And you had Dark Forces, and the often Game of the Year lauded Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and it's sequel Jedi Knight II: Outcast which while not great, was still decent enough. And then the sequel Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy which was again, very well received.

And you had two easily superior Battlefront games, plus Empire At War which was mentioned earlier.

Just FYI, I'm not saying this as some EU apologist. I understood perfectly why Disney would shunt the old EU off into Legends and then pillage it for ideas... and initially, like with some of the initial comics that came out, I was thinking that "Wow, Disney is going to make their EU way better because of a consistent vision," but... that did not last long... at all.

Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels were shit. Even compared to how disassociative the EU was (where we had basically several writers writing their own post-Endor Galactic Civil War in different time periods) Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels which condensed the collapse of the entire Empire (devoid of any main characters as well) was trite and shallow and at best can be said to be 'competently written' so a nice narrative with terrible world building and vision.

I would infinitely prefer the Multiple Personality Disorder of reading the X-Wing series, Thrawn Trilogy, Dark Empire Graphic Novels, and playing the Jedi Knight series of games again then dealing with lame ass Disney Aftermath. Individually and even collectively, the Legends version of the post-Endor Civil War is superior. Infinitely superior.

Hopefully... with the recent trend of decent video games (Battlefront II not withstanding) as well as The Mandalorian we'll see a proper Disney Extended Universe fleshed out and the Aftermath crap can be retconned (see what I did there?) into oblivion. Because so far the Disney EU novels and comics by and large have just been low quality crap. Their overall vision... is crap... and the content released... just as crap. At least with Michael Stackpole and Timothy Zahn we got good stories on an individual level.

I think everyone agrees Chuck wrote the worst Star Wars novel and caused so many issues with the Canon.

Honestly the consistency of the comics and books outside of Chucks are pretty good. Alphabet squadron is a great look into what a former Imperial pilot killing those she used to work with feels, and it is not an easy journey. Sqaudrons game is great story but mainly a MP focused game.

So, yes Disney had the rights back in 2012, they did not officially take control till 2 years later in 2014. We have had a multitude of mobile games. Few great ones, and one that became good once the company that made it was taught a lesson by the world.

Though thinks about the difference here.Lucasarts had what, multiple multiple multiple different companies working on the games while they produced it. Here EA is the one making them so they wont come out AS much as they would back in the old days. PLus it takes longer to make a game these days.

Yeah I was trying to go off of memory. Feels more honest and organic discussion wise. I did think of Rebel Assault but yeah wasn't sure how beloved it was. I just got it recently on gog.com and it's deceptively fun. And there were preceding and followup games to TIE Fighter as well for sure.

There were A LOT of old games for SW. They all were not that good. It seems, after all Fallen order and Squadrons shows that EA can take a step back and let their child companies do good work. We do not know what else is being made but we will see and can hope.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

I think the most telling thing is Disney has owned the Star Wars property back in 2012 and AFAIK the only major game releases they've had is a reboot of Star Wars Battlefront and its much maligned (story wise) sequel, Star Wars: Fallen Order and the just released Star Wars Squadrons. And a niche VR (because VR is niche) called Vader Immortal.

LucasArts put out a lot more games total over their twenty year run, but not all of them were that great, and the successful ones tended to be sequel-of-sequel-of-sequel; i.e., Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter which old people tell me was great.

X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and then X-Wing Alliance. On the other hand, there was obviously some sort of serious falling out between LucasArts and Totally Games, because despite Alliance being just as hugely successful as the prior X-Wing games, no more games in that series *or* genre were made.

A huge part of the popularity of the recently released Squadrons (which is hands down the best Star Wars game in the history of ever) is that it's a spiritual sequel to those sim games, and the first Star Wars game in that genre since X-Wing Alliance *twenty-one years ago*.

 

[Battlegrinder]

There were A LOT of old games for SW. They all were not that good. It seems, after all Fallen order and Squadrons shows that EA can take a step back and let their child companies do good work. We do not know what else is being made but we will see and can hope.

I'd again comment that it's something of a stretch to call Fallen Order "good work". It's basically following the force unleashed's path of being a SW game using whatever the current trendy set of game mechanics are to make a functional game...but that's really all it is, and unlike TFU, it doesn't have the guts to go out and say "well, canon doesn't say that Darth Vader didn't get beaten within an inch of of his life by some duel light saber wielding edgelord that also founded the rebel alliance somehow, so we can totally do that!", and instead Fallen Order carefully isolates the player from anything that might be consequential or important. Including the most emotionally impactful and important parts of Fallen Order itself.

I can't say that TFU made the better choice there, but it certainly had the spine needed to make the bolder choice.

 

[Zachowon]

LucasArts put out a lot more games total over their twenty year run, but not all of them were that great, and the successful ones tended to be sequel-of-sequel-of-sequel; i.e., Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy.



X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and then X-Wing Alliance. On the other hand, there was obviously some sort of serious falling out between LucasArts and Totally Games, because despite Alliance being just as hugely successful as the prior X-Wing games, no more games in that series *or* genre were made.

A huge part of the popularity of the recently released Squadrons (which is hands down the best Star Wars game in the history of ever) is that it's a spiritual sequel to those sim games, and the first Star Wars game in that genre since X-Wing Alliance *twenty-one years ago*.

It isnt full sim like the x wong or tie. But it is not rouge squadron arcady

 

[Zachowon]

I'd again comment that it's something of a stretch to call Fallen Order "good work". It's basically following the force unleashed's path of being a SW game using whatever the current trendy set of game mechanics are to make a functional game...but that's really all it is, and unlike TFU, it doesn't have the guts to go out and say "well, canon doesn't say that Darth Vader didn't get beaten within an inch of of his life by some duel light saber wielding edgelord that also founded the rebel alliance somehow, so we can totally do that!", and instead Fallen Order carefully isolates the player from anything that might be consequential or important. Including the most emotionally impactful and important parts of Fallen Order itself.

I can't say that TFU made the better choice there, but it certainly had the spine needed to make the bolder choice.

Why does the story have to revolve around major events and characters?

I enjoy fallen order not because of the souls like style. But because the story. It isnt the "Good guys always win!" And it shows there was a moral choice that had to happen and it was not a simple choice.

To me it and Squadrons are the two best star wars games on a long time.

BF 2 wasn't that bad for an FPS and after EA fixed it that is

 

[Husky_Khan]

LucasArts put out a lot more games total over their twenty year run, but not all of them were that great, and the successful ones tended to be sequel-of-sequel-of-sequel; i.e., Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy.

Yes and they put out a lot more good games over their twenty year run.

Like seriously, I bet between 1993 and 2012 when the deal was done there was probably at least ONE good Star Wars game and potentially two or more that were released.

And don't be pedantic (even if that's half of your argument so far)... it's called Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and it's still being played and popular videos uploaded to Youtube shockingly enough.

Why does the story have to revolve around major events and characters?

I enjoy fallen order not because of the souls like style. But because the story. It isnt the "Good guys always win!" And it shows there was a moral choice that had to happen and it was not a simple choice.

To me it and Squadrons are the two best star wars games on a long time.

BF 2 wasn't that bad for an FPS and after EA fixed it that is

I'm pretty sure one of the major arguments that led to this discussion was that the old Legends didn't pertain to advancing the Star Wars lore (just rehashes of the main storyline or minor stuff) and so when Fallen Order is brought up, it's natural to point out it too had a very minor impact on the canon.

Fallen Order was good and there was a great ending and the like, but I don't think it was as amazing as all of the initial press. And the gameplay was kinda Dark Souls lite... but with a lovely Star Wars setting.

And Battlefront 2 was good eventually but the story was balls and it took like two years of releases to make it a good game. Plus booting up the old 2005 Battlefront II, it's still just more fun to play, no BS, then the current game IMHO. I mean the graphics are dated as hell but still, it's fun to play. The scale of it is just amazing. Not to say the new Battlefronts can't compare, but they just can't match the scale of the old games unfortunately.

Still I am very glad EA is bothering to make actual good games and I hope their 'doubling down' on making Star Wars games keeps blessing us with more good games like the good ol' days where we could actually have one or more good Star Wars games every year.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Why does the story have to revolve around major events and characters?

I enjoy fallen order not because of the souls like style. But because the story. It isnt the "Good guys always win!" And it shows there was a moral choice that had to happen and it was not a simple choice.

Their are two core problems with Fallen Order, and a few minor ones. The first big one is that the driving goal for most of the the game is refounding the Jedi order, something the player knows from minute one will not happen and that what they're doing is pointless, and that no one even questions or thinks that through until Merrin joins the crew at the end of the game (and if this question occurs to Merrin right after she's introduced to it, it really should have occurred to someone else at some point before. She's smarter than Cal, yes, but not that much smarter). I don't mind having a plot other than "good guys always win" or even "the only kind of victory you have is making sure the enemy doesn't win", but I'd rather not having the game act like there's a chance of winning for most of the playthrough when I darn well know better.

It's even more of a problem because you could have just changed the plot from "refound the order" to "get the holocron before the empire does" and you wouldn't have had to change anything but a few lines of dialogue and some cutscenes the game could have played out exactly the same.

The second core problem is that Cere is way too prominent and way too involved with Trilla. Look at the ending here:



Cal wins the fight, recovers the holocron, and then Cere runs up and takes center stage during the final confrontation with the women that's been hounding Cal, killing people to get to Cal, she killed his best friend, and that he has a connection to her via his psychometry, and Cal is the protagonist and player character. Cal should have been the one giving the "it's not too late" speech (before Vader showed up and declared his support for the Cal/Merrin shippers in the most definitive way possible), not Cere. And this is at the culmination of a longstanding thing where all of Cere and Trilla's actions are in referance to one another and thier relationship, with Cal just being an observer for most of it. This is not supposed to be Cere's story, it's Cal's, but for some reason the devs refuse to let Cal get involved in the core emotional points of his own game.

I can buy an argument that Cere should have been there because of her connection with Trilla, but if that's the direction the writers wanted to go then Cere should have been the protagonist, not Cal.

I could bring up any number of minor issues, but for brevity I'll just go with one, which is illistrative of several related issues regarding the Mantis. At the beginning of the final act, Trilla ambushes you inside the Vault and steal the Holocron before flee, and you have to fight your way past a bunch of stormtroopers to get to the ship and go after her. The ship that was sitting like two hundred meters away and just never noticed a platoon of storm troopers miling around outside, or Trilla arriving, or (most egregiously) Trilla leaving. They appreantly just sat there, just going "huh, the boglings over on that hill sure look awfully big, and awfully white, and very stormtroopery today. And then there was that big, TIE Reaper shaped bird that was flying around a while ago, never seen one of those before" the entire time until you get back. In general, the game treats the Mantis as just a big, ship-shaped level select hub and refuses to actually treat it as part of the world that could intervene in events in any capacity.

 

[Zachowon]

Look. It was one of the best games last year, and has held up.

I personally felt like perhaps we would form the order back. That something doffrent ends up happening and changing the idea or what did happen.

Yes and they put out a lot more good games over their twenty year run.

Like seriously, I bet between 1993 and 2012 when the deal was done there was probably at least ONE good Star Wars game and potentially two or more that were released.

And don't be pedantic (even if that's half of your argument so far)... it's called Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and it's still being played and popular videos uploaded to Youtube shockingly enough.



I'm pretty sure one of the major arguments that led to this discussion was that the old Legends didn't pertain to advancing the Star Wars lore (just rehashes of the main storyline or minor stuff) and so when Fallen Order is brought up, it's natural to point out it too had a very minor impact on the canon.

Fallen Order was good and there was a great ending and the like, but I don't think it was as amazing as all of the initial press. And the gameplay was kinda Dark Souls lite... but with a lovely Star Wars setting.

And Battlefront 2 was good eventually but the story was balls and it took like two years of releases to make it a good game. Plus booting up the old 2005 Battlefront II, it's still just more fun to play, no BS, then the current game IMHO. I mean the graphics are dated as hell but still, it's fun to play. The scale of it is just amazing. Not to say the new Battlefronts can't compare, but they just can't match the scale of the old games unfortunately.

Still I am very glad EA is bothering to make actual good games and I hope their 'doubling down' on making Star Wars games keeps blessing us with more good games like the good ol' days where we could actually have one or more good Star Wars games every year.

I like feeling the weight in my FPS. Main thing i like about new BF 2 over old

 

[Battlegrinder]

Look. It was one of the best games last year, and has held up.

I personally felt like perhaps we would form the order back. That something doffrent ends up happening and changing the idea or what did happen.

I'm not saying it's awful. I'm saying it's not as good as people say it is. All of the mechanical and technical competence in the world cannot make up for serious plot issues.

 

[Skallagrim]

KOTOR/SWTOR had to back up several thousand years specifically so that it can be Star Wars without being constrained by the movie canon.

Only in the sense that the prequels make it explicit that there's been galactic peace for a thousand years. So a story with a major war has to be a thousand years ago. All the rest is other EU stuff constraining things. Like Darth Bane and his role being already established in the novelisations, and The Essential Chronology (2000) merging his story with the Valley of the Jedi stuff. So KotOR couldn't be about the most recent big Sith war unless it was going to be the Big Saga of Darth Bane, which it wasn't aiming to be. So it had to be another, earlier Big Galactic War. So they invented one.

I don't think this can be used as an argument supporting the notion that the films somehow blot out everything else, and you can only be free of them to do anything creative by moving thousands of years away. Literally the first thing Zahn did in '91 was write a book full of fleshed-out OCs. Even before than, we had Han Solo books and Lando Calrissian books that featured those established characters, but were otherwise almost entirely divorced from the films. (Only Rebel Dawn ends up tying into ANH's background plot, and then in a way that actually makes sense.)

Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novels which condensed the collapse of the entire Empire (devoid of any main characters as well) was trite and shallow and at best can be said to be 'competently written' so a nice narrative with terrible world building and vision.

That's way too merciful towards the tasteless word salad that Chuck Wendig disingenuously calls 'writing'.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Like seriously, I bet between 1993 and 2012 when the deal was done there was probably at least ONE good Star Wars game and potentially two or more that were released.

It's not exactly a high bar to say that LucasArts released more good games in nineteen years in an era where game development was exponentially easier, cheaper, and faster than today, versus EA in eight years.

And don't be pedantic (even if that's half of your argument so far)... it's called Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and it's still being played and popular videos uploaded to Youtube shockingly enough.

I don't disagree that Jedi Academy was a good game, although plotwise it suffers (like all the Dark Force series games) from basically being a set of pocket adventures with little to no connection to the universe at large.

And I'm not being pedantic -- the name thing is something that fans of the series have been gently poking fun at for a pretty long time, along with the related joke that Lucasarts is morbidly afraid of the number three.

And Battlefront 2 was good eventually but the story was balls and it took like two years of releases to make it a good game. Plus booting up the old 2005 Battlefront II, it's still just more fun to play, no BS, then the current game IMHO. I mean the graphics are dated as hell but still, it's fun to play. The scale of it is just amazing. Not to say the new Battlefronts can't compare, but they just can't match the scale of the old games unfortunately.

I enjoyed the single-player campaign of Battlefront 2, although the story wasn't the strongest. I do still play the 2005 Battlefront II as well; I agree that it's still fun despite the dated graphics, but I don't agree that it's *more* fun.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

@ShadowArxxy you forgot Empire at War with its boundless potential for modding.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

@ShadowArxxy you forgot Empire at War with its boundless potential for modding.

I wasn't trying to list all the good Lucasarts era Star Wars games, though?

 

[Knowledgeispower]

I wasn't trying to list all the good Lucasarts era Star Wars games, though?

Ah oops my bad.