Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20170901233307/@comment-3547390-20171003220241

Yeah, I am a bit crazy. Admittedly it hasn't all been at one time, I had that hiatus with Star Wars Droids, plus various points in the past where I took a rest. But overall I have been making a lot of progress. If there is any series, any franchise I feel I have made a lot of progress on, it is Star Wars. The optimist in me knows that it is now closer to the good games than A New Hope. The 80s was a terrible time for Star Wars games, the best were a Japanese rip-off and a 1D game, with all other titles being Arcade titles (which I don't upload generally, seeing as there is little way to make progress or do anything of merit). The stories could potentially be better, but almost none of it had any point going forwards beyond a couple elements.

Star Wars is indeed a franchise that can be interesting. It has a massive amount of lore that can get as intricate as you wish, but at the same time can be completely forgotten without regret. Sometimes things come back, most of the time they won't, and so you learn to value what you like and just forget the rest as you move through the series. A lot can be seen as pointless, especially with the cancellation of the old EU essentially saying that, but what ends up happening is that we get a lot of self-contained stories that at the same time people have attempted to connect together. We get a sense of a larger picture, yet aren't required to know thousands of pages of lore to understand the story. It becomes less about the individual stuff as opposed to what you particularly pick out of a larger palette. Kinda like DnD modules, but with a greater sense of story, especially due to the films. Sure, I may forget a lot of random planets I have seen or what the population size of the major city was, but it doesn't matter in the overall scheme of things. It is better than a large novel series (Wheel of Time) where the lore gets so bogged down and all of it is at the same time canon and needs to be remembered to understand things later. Star Wars is a franchise that has the best of both worlds, as opposed to the serialized nature of Star Trek where it was from the beginning a bunch of worlds they never really return to, a franchise where you can get certain familiar worlds like Tatooine and other such locations that become memorable with repeat occurrences. This is also how species like the Verpine is quite easy to recall (Shantipole in general is a familiar name due to the whole importance it had to the creation of the B-Wings as well as Ackbar's promotion from Captain to Admiral; things with bigger connections are of course more memorable than the dotted worlds of the Outer Rim), even by name, when they didn't exist in the films. Yet a species like the seal people that worshiped the Golden Sun is pretty forgettable in name because you won't see them mentioned outside of West End Games sourcebooks listing aliens or the 1988 module. Zero-G stormtroopers and Torpedo Spheres have been included enough that they are familiar at least, while most of the Imperial vessels only appeared one time and then dropped off the radar.

You know, one thing to learn from this is that there were a lot of species introduced in Jabba's Palace. At least the cantina gave camera shots to them momentarily. Here, we are talking about a dark and dingy location where you can barely see them. Do you remember the Elom whose sole purpose was to stand there in one scene in near total darkness?

Oh, I approve of a lot of the changes. I don't hold movies in the same vanilla mindset as I do games. I like the look of the new Cloud City. I just can't stand "Noooo" or "Awoooooooo" or whatever else they decide to yell randomly while inserting blinking ewoks into the plot.

Baba Marta is perhaps foolish. Why wouldn't she get a young apprentice to help her in the final battle, the one to stop Little Sechko entirely and bring back the warm side of the year. I guess because her ideology is that aggression leads to the cold side and so you have to let them commit an atrocity before you can act against it. Only the chosen one, the groundhog, can bring back the warmth for all eternity. But the groundhog has much fear of his own shadow.

It is very weird indeed that I managed to play all those games when they came out and now am playing stuff before all of that because I need to earn my way to those :P

Darth Vader stood there, waiting for the Stormtroopers to open the door, but it was fruitless. They just kept dying because they kept ignoring the lone Ewok attacking their rear end when they tried unlocking it. Suddenly C-3P0 and R2-D2 run down the corridor, their pathway having been interrupted by The Rancor (because we are in the WEG era where there was only one Rancor, who was implied to be some sort of mutated beast from unknown origins that survived a crash landing on Tatooine). Pan left and watch as Han Solo and Greedo talk in a bar. Neither shoots, Han Solo gave up for some reason. Pan back to the Tantive IV, Vader is still waiting for the door to be unlocked. He sends forth a bigger army. The Ewok hits one, they all die. The Death Star shows up, having detected the enemy ewoks, and blows up the Tantive IV. Somehow surviving the vacuum of space, Darth Vader walks onto the damaged Tantive IV and kills the Ewok. Running down the corridors, he murders Ewoks and Rebels left and right, eventually reaching Princess Leia. Forgetting his orders for setting to stun, he kills her, then steps in the life pod meant for the droids and escapes to Tatooine. There he is picked up by a sandcrawler and thrown in with a bunch of droids, who he proceeds to kill as well as the Jawas. The sandcrawler going full throttle, it rams into Luke's Moisture Farm and blows it up. Cue Luke coming back from Toche Station to pick up some power converters. Darth Vader exits the sandcrawler and chases after Luke. Luke runs into the Junland Wastes with Vader on his tail. Vader massacres a bunch of Tusken Raiders trying to attack before kidnapping a hoard of Banthas, who of course become useful as Vader's personal army to replace his stormtrooper brigade. They charge at Luke. Ben Kenobi appears and takes the Banthas. Leading them with Vader even more enraged, they go to Mos Eisley. Of course, it isn't there anymore, Chewbacca burned it down after being replaced as first mate with Greedo. Did I mention the scenario editor is the best RTS editor out there? The triggers are quite powerful.

Well, the first 20 pages consisted entirely of how to make your own planet due to your lack of creativity, requiring a lot of dice roles and laborious tasks in one of the better parts to being a GM. Luckily the rest featured a bunch of planets nobody would ever care about due to their total lack of relevance. In any event, I have finished West End Games for 1991 after doing nothing but it for 3 years. So, with that in mind, it is finally time to tackle Heir to the Empire, possibly the most important EU book out there and the first part of the Thrawn trilogy. As far as I remember, Coruscant is also introduced here (before it was always just the Imperial City, a name was never given to the planet proper) and Mara Jade is another new character. Yeah, it is one of the most important things to tackle here.

So far? This definitely belongs in the Star Wars lore. As I have never seen the Disney movies, this is now my headcanon for Episode 7. Best book so far, by far. It is the first that doesn't feel like some b-rated movie if it was a film. I can hear the characters saying these lines, which is indeed a first as well. Very impressive and a good continuation.