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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Better question: Why wouldn't Palpatine kill Organa after he found out he was leading the Rebels with Leia in TFU? I'm playing TFU for the 1st time now and just got to this level yesterday and let out a huge groan when I saw Leia and R2. Also, how the hell does Starkiller survive being ejected into space? I thought he'd get some cool cybernetics or something but nope. I guess the Empire, or Vader, has great technology where one can be stabbed with a lightsaber, thrown against walls and then pushed into the vacuum of outer space and walk away hours later with no scars or anything.
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Oct 4, 2010 17:26
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Simple. Star Wars Goku and a Wizard told him to do it.
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Oct 4, 2010 17:35
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Faerunner posted:Denning's Forgotten Realms books are at least readable. Is his Star Wars EU stuff THAT bad? He's perfectly readable. He was actually considered one of the better Star Wars authors after his first entry into the franchise. Unfortunately he went on to pen a three book series called The Dark Next Trilogy which contained some very uncomfortable plot lines and characters who didn't act like themselves. I consider it the point that the EU stopped being fun and started being about slogging through grandiose plot lines where the longstanding characters do what the plot demands when the plot demands it for the sake of extra pages. He then contributed three completely forgettable books to the nine book Legacy of the Force series. Again, the prose was readable but the things that happened were so unusual that it didn't seem like Star Wars much of the time. He was even more guilty of having the plot's needs dictate everybody's behavior in this series and, combined with a petulant Karen Traviss' three abortions, the series ended up completely inconsistent and unfocused. I guess it just comes down to his Star Wars books being no fun.
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Oct 4, 2010 18:44
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Azzmo posted:He's perfectly readable. He was actually considered one of the better Star Wars authors after his first entry into the franchise. Unfortunately he went on to pen a three book series called The Dark Next Trilogy which contained some very uncomfortable plot lines and characters who didn't act like themselves. I consider it the point that the EU stopped being fun and started being about slogging through grandiose plot lines where the longstanding characters do what the plot demands when the plot demands it for the sake of extra pages. More or less. I've said it once and I will say it a million times, the EU jumped the shark with the Dark Nest Trilogy. And it was already pretty crazy.
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Oct 4, 2010 18:49
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"Readable", but you'd have to be some kind of broken in the head to write Dark Nest.
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Oct 4, 2010 19:59
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Bonzo posted:Also, how the hell does Starkiller survive being ejected into space? The same reason that Leia, Han, and Chewie didn't need pressure suits to walk around inside that giant worm thing on the asteroid in Empire: the interstellar vacuum doesn't affect GFFA human(oid)s in the same way that it affects real Earth humans. Remember, Star Wars was inspired by those space pulps where everyone wore fishbowls on their heads, and the franchise has always ignored real world physics when convenient. (See also: sound in space, hollow Naboo, lightsabers not burning their users through convection, etc.).
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Oct 4, 2010 21:05
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arioch posted:The Jag thing is pretty much almost as bad as the Daala thing, because up till the moment where Daala was named Chief of State Jag was basically a fighter jock. Then he gets named to the head of the Imperial Remnant Moff Council. At least he makes sense. Sort of. The moffs accepted him, albeit under duress. You have to wonder what was going on in the upper echelons of the GA government to think Daala was a great pick though.
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Oct 4, 2010 21:34
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I've always wondered how going out in space would effect a human body. I'm guessing you wouldn't freeze instantly, nor would you just immediately get pulled apart, right?
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Oct 4, 2010 21:40
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Jerk McJerkface posted:I've always wondered how going out in space would effect a human body. I'm guessing you wouldn't freeze instantly, nor would you just immediately get pulled apart, right? Well, there's no contact medium for you to lose your body heat, and your body is strong enough to keep itself together in a vacuum, so not those. I forget what the exact effects are, though.
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Oct 4, 2010 21:48
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http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html cites various NASA studies and such on the subject.
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Oct 4, 2010 22:12
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A goon linked an article on the subject once, and it read like the best explanation I'd heard considering we don't get (m)any people dying in space that often. If I remember correctly it was kind of a happy medium between explosive decompression and suffocation. Like the body expanded a little bit but didn't explode? On the subject of Daala, the best part is in FOJ she's going around trying people for war crimes in LotF when she's done her own share of "war crim-y" poo poo. E:FB by the very article I was mentioning...I think.
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Oct 4, 2010 22:15
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:More or less. I've said it once and I will say it a million times, the EU jumped the shark with the Dark Nest Trilogy. I think this is funny because a lot of people said they jumped the shark with the Yuuzhan Vong. Can anyone who has read the Traviss books vouch for my theory that she wrote Daala as herself? She seemed to be caught up on that whole Jedi being Nazis thing and low and behold a beautiful woman achieves the most powerful position in the galazy out of nowhere and exacts vengeance on them for "crimes". To be perfectly honest as well, the EU is for the most part usually readable mass marketed officially endorsed fanfiction. There have been characters in the past that were pretty much their author's self masturbatory persona such as Callista and Corran Horn who would Mary and Gary Sue it up. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 4, 2010 |
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Oct 4, 2010 23:17
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^^ Also both being "female former military officer" (Traviss likes to make a big deal out of the fact that she was briefly a PR official for the Territorial Army which she levies into claims that she fully served in the military, writes for her "fellow" soldiers, etc) Azzmo posted:He's perfectly readable. He was actually considered one of the better Star Wars authors after his first entry into the franchise. Unfortunately he went on to pen a three book series called The Dark Next Trilogy which contained some very uncomfortable plot lines and characters who didn't act like themselves. I consider it the point that the EU stopped being fun and started being about slogging through grandiose plot lines where the longstanding characters do what the plot demands when the plot demands it for the sake of extra pages. I actually thought that Star by Star was terrible. It has some good moments (Luke, Tsavong Lah, Nom Anor and Leia are well written, and the battle segments are good) but it's really clunkily written, way too long, focuses disproportionately on Dennin'g pet characters, and the Wayland mission makes absolutely no loving sense and just screams out "This is written to satisfy a Lucasfilm plot mandate." Also not only did Denning contribute three books each to LOTF and FOTJ but he is the guy who came up with the outlines for each series, so he's really responsible for the terrible plots of them. The entire post-NJO book series is essentially Denning's brain child (even though some of the details were filled in by others) and it's no coincidence how it's also one of the least coherent, rambling, and idiotically-plotted blocs of the EU.
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Oct 4, 2010 23:42
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Can anyone who has read the Traviss books vouch for my theory that she wrote Daala as herself? She seemed to be caught up on that whole Jedi being Nazis thing and low and behold a beautiful woman achieves the most powerful position in the galazy out of nowhere and exacts vengeance on them for "crimes". I can vouch for it. But then again, Traviss is guilty of using any character she chooses as a mouthpiece for her thoughts, whether it is consistent with the characterisation or not.
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Oct 5, 2010 00:07
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Denning came up with Flow Walking, a Force power so retarded that I hate him more than Traviss.
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Oct 5, 2010 02:13
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Crowetron posted:Denning came up with Flow Walking, a Force power so retarded that I hate him more than Traviss. Didn't he do this as a way to bring Anakin Solo back but the plot got axed somewhere in the middle?
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Oct 5, 2010 02:21
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I think this is funny because a lot of people said they jumped the shark with the Yuuzhan Vong. Traviss is still horrible whether she wrote Daala as herself or not, but Daala as an (apparently) reconstructed former Imperial Warlord who got her rear end handed to her by them does have a fair amount of reason to not be especially fond of Jedi.
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Oct 5, 2010 02:33
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Torael_7 posted:Traviss is still horrible whether she wrote Daala as herself or not, but Daala as an (apparently) reconstructed former Imperial Warlord who got her rear end handed to her by them does have a fair amount of reason to not be especially fond of Jedi. Pretty much everyone wearing an Imperial uniform hates the Jedi. Why would they have any reason to like the guys that have been dicking them over for decades, multiple generations even? Why the gently caress did it even have to be her?
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Oct 5, 2010 02:46
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I think this is funny because a lot of people said they jumped the shark with the Yuuzhan Vong. This. The story line just kept getting more retarded, and every book seemed to have some really strong effort by the New Republic/Jedi to defeat the Vong, but then some last minute crisis hosed it up and the Vong would win. Even at the age of 13 I just found it ridiculous.
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Oct 5, 2010 02:58
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NJO is worth it just for the reaction of the cadre of adult posters at TFN constantly harp on how they hate it for killing off their precious minor characters from Young Jedi Knights.
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Oct 5, 2010 03:33
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Poor horsefucker
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Oct 5, 2010 03:50
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Chairman Capone posted:I actually thought that Star by Star was terrible. It has some good moments (Luke, Tsavong Lah, Nom Anor and Leia are well written, and the battle segments are good) but it's really clunkily written, way too long, focuses disproportionately on Dennin'g pet characters, and the Wayland mission makes absolutely no loving sense and just screams out "This is written to satisfy a Lucasfilm plot mandate." It's fair to dislike the book. The general consensus was that SbS was one of the better Star Wars books and it was the high point of the NJO up to that point. Part of the reason it was well liked was that Denning had a lot of the plot laid out for him already and he got do some major payoffs of plot lines that had been developing throughout the NJO, thus lending SbS an "epic" feel. It's only in retrospect that I see how marginal that book's plot was. As you said, the mission makes absolutely no sense since cloning doesn't work that way. The predictability of the enemy to act in the exact necessary manner for the heroes to get into position also came off as lazy writing. Despite all this, though, I really liked the characters and their interactions and the action scenes and still consider the book to be very enjoyable.
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Oct 5, 2010 04:07
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Chairman Capone posted:NJO is worth it just for the reaction of the cadre of adult posters at TFN constantly harp on how they hate it for killing off their precious minor characters from Young Jedi Knights. I don't know about anyone else, but I laughed my rear end off when Anakin's retarded rabbit-dog Jedi Master got gunned down.
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Oct 5, 2010 04:12
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Bonzo posted:Didn't he do this as a way to bring Anakin Solo back but the plot got axed somewhere in the middle? See what I mean? Denning blows.
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Oct 5, 2010 04:23
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The NJO authors couldn't seem to agree on just how powerful the Jedi and Vong were in relation to each other. At one point, the NJO seemed to imply that Regular NR troops < Jedi < Vong < Lando's super-awesome droids which half of the later authors seemed to completely ignore.
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Oct 5, 2010 07:15
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NJO seemed like a bit of a mess on several levels. Like, it felt like someone decided to set out the whole series before book 1 hit market, and then had to scramble when authors had disagreements, or simply didn't follow The Outline to the letter, or when fan reaction was just oddly not exactly as planned. I can't help but think that it would have done a lot better at a quarter of the length and no more than two authors. Even then, preferably one. Collaborations are tougher to make everything seamless, and each new author seems to make things much more complex.
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Oct 5, 2010 19:15
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Bonzo posted:Also, how the hell does Starkiller survive being ejected into space? I thought he'd get some cool cybernetics or something but nope. I guess the Empire, or Vader, has great technology where one can be stabbed with a lightsaber, thrown against walls and then pushed into the vacuum of outer space and walk away hours later with no scars or anything. Who knows, is him surviving canon? Using the teasers from the TFUII for all we know he could be some sort of Star Wars ghola.
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Oct 5, 2010 19:16
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AcridWhistle posted:Who knows, is him surviving canon? Using the teasers from the TFUII for all we know he could be some sort of Star Wars ghola. They've already said he's a clone.
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Oct 5, 2010 19:31
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ZeeToo posted:NJO seemed like a bit of a mess on several levels. Like, it felt like someone decided to set out the whole series before book 1 hit market, and then had to scramble when authors had disagreements, or simply didn't follow The Outline to the letter, or when fan reaction was just oddly not exactly as planned. I can't help but think that it would have done a lot better at a quarter of the length and no more than two authors. Even then, preferably one. Collaborations are tougher to make everything seamless, and each new author seems to make things much more complex. My take on it is this. 1) Let's create a non-Empire enemy, someone that is on par with Jedis as far as power (not a bad thing when you think about it) 2) Let's Kill Chewbacca since since we can't figure out how to write him anymore and for the last 2 books he's been a babysitter. 3) Kill Jacen Solo. 4) Set up Anakin to be the next successor to Luke. Chewie was more of less killed for shock value and he's the one character you can write off without loosing a "voice" in the stories. Plus it's a grab to pull back fans that stopped reading in the mid 90s. "WHAT!?? They killed Chewie? Holy poo poo, I need to read Star Wars again!" Somewhere in the middle of everything, Lucas sticks his head in and says, "NO!" to the idea that Anakin Solo will be the next big thing. I believe I also heard that between the writers, there was no main plot outline. Each author just continued the story were the previous one left off. This is part of the reason that they now all meet to get a general idea of how things are going to go. I believe I even saw in this thread (of a previous one) that Travvis never read any previous books, she just continued on summaries she heard. I have a feeling that had the series not been so accepted, it would have been shorter and not 20+ books. But the books kept selling and since all but 3 were published as softcover only, the profit margin would have been favorable. Personally, other than Travvis horrible writing, the length of the NJO series ruined the LoTF series for me. They spent quite a bit of effort and time in building up a new generation of Jedi and characters that were really cool, only to kill or write off all but a small handful. EDIT: vvvvvvvvvv the CD was available with the hardcover edition of The Unifying Force Bonzo fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Oct 5, 2010 |
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Oct 5, 2010 19:33
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Bonzo posted:My take on it is this. I have a CD, not sure where I got it from, that has a audiobook version of Vector Prime and a interview with the authors. In there they state that they did meet up and plan out the entire series before they even wrote it. It was in these meetings that they decided they needed to kill one of the main characters to really stress the danger of the Vong (kind of like the Justice League: How do create a threat that justifies involving 6 superheroes? Make Superman go down like a pussy.). They initially wanted to kill Luke (I think they should have done this) but Lucas, through representatives, said no. They later got a list of acceptable casualties and thus Chewie got the axe. Now what I don't exactly recall is when the Anakin Solo issue came up. They were building Anakin up to be the next strongest Jedi with all the midichlorians or whatever, but once the idea of Ben Skywalker came around, Lucas said Ben would be the successor. I didn't see how that required them to kill Anakin, and Ben ended up not being the badass he should have been - all hiding from the Force and then not wanting to be a Jedi. I think NJO held a lot of promise, but they made it too long, there was too much interference and, as was said, the passing-of-the-torch opportunity was completely missed. I was daydreaming the other day about someone making a revised version of NJO as a fan-film. I wonder how eager Mark Hammil would be to have a small cameo if you mention "Luke Skywalker will die." I mean, he's the perfect age to portray NJO Luke. Well now I've just started babbling.
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Oct 5, 2010 20:17
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Drighton posted:Now what I don't exactly recall is when the Anakin Solo issue came up. They were building Anakin up to be the next strongest Jedi with all the midichlorians or whatever, but once the idea of Ben Skywalker came around, Lucas said Ben would be the successor. I've heard people say that he just didn't want another Jedi named Anakin as an eventual leader, but that sounds too simplistic even for Lucas.
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Oct 5, 2010 20:40
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Nucleic Acids posted:I've heard people say that he just didn't want another Jedi named Anakin as an eventual leader, but that sounds too simplistic even for Lucas. He claimed he didn't want to confuse fans because of Darth Vader. I'm sure it confused him but I don't think he understands how spergy the average Star Wars fan, let alone book reader is.
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Oct 5, 2010 21:01
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Drighton posted:I have a CD, not sure where I got it from, that has a audiobook version of Vector Prime and a interview with the authors. In there they state that they did meet up and plan out the entire series before they even wrote it. It was in these meetings that they decided they needed to kill one of the main characters to really stress the danger of the Vong (kind of like the Justice League: How do create a threat that justifies involving 6 superheroes? Make Superman go down like a pussy.). They initially wanted to kill Luke (I think they should have done this) but Lucas, through representatives, said no. They later got a list of acceptable casualties and thus Chewie got the axe. Yeah, building off this not only was there an outline but much of it was written/developed by Luceno and Stackpole (which is odd given that in later years he seems to have distanced himself from the NJO somewhat, although maybe that's telling - I know he really strongly disagreed with the decision to kill Anakin). Also some of the NJO makes more sense when you realize that it was originally going to be a comic series. I think the pacing issues that affected the NJO especially in the second half wouldn't have popped up (at least, assuming that the comic series wasn't really shittily paced) just due to the format, and the Vong with all their completely new ships and technology would have gone over better in a visual format.
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Oct 6, 2010 03:50
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Muppetjedi posted:Indiana Jones and the sex offenders register You know I had always heard this line and never thought much about it, but... Oh poo poo! Shortround  Can't help but see all those Indiana Jones valentines in a different context now.
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Oct 6, 2010 15:29
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Fil5000 posted:I've just suggested to my wife that our son is now old enough to "get" Star Wars and that we should watch them with him. I had a grand plan to show my kids ANH, ESB and then ROTJ up to the point where Obi Wan Tells luke the truth about this father..... providing a cunning opportunity to switch and show them TPM, AOTC, ROTS before switching back to the rest of ROTJ. Thereby avoiding showing them the crappy movies first, and keeping the whole truth behind Luke's family history a secret, and ultimately ending with the defeat of the empire and good vibes all around. This well crafted plan was of course ruined when they started seeing the movies in random order at friends houses.
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Oct 6, 2010 22:38
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ROCKET SCIENCE
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illectro posted:I had a grand plan to show my kids ANH, ESB and then ROTJ up to the point where Obi Wan Tells luke the truth about this father..... providing a cunning opportunity to switch and show them TPM, AOTC, ROTS before switching back to the rest of ROTJ. Thereby avoiding showing them the crappy movies first, and keeping the whole truth behind Luke's family history a secret, and ultimately ending with the defeat of the empire and good vibes all around. Vader tells Luke he is his father in ESB obviously. Yeah I guess as far as he knows he could be lying but the surprise is out of the bag. So this plan is kind of dumb.
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Oct 6, 2010 22:44
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Showing them the PT in the middle of ROTJ may make them forget Luke kisses his sister in Empire
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Oct 6, 2010 22:55
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Bonzo posted:Showing them the PT in the middle of ROTJ may make them forget Luke kisses his sister in Empire I doubt it. Kids seem to have a knack for fixating on things you don't want to have to explain.
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Oct 7, 2010 11:53
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On the other hand, kissing doesn't involve lasers and spacefights, so who is going to pay attention to that scene? Girls, that's who. And they have cooties you know!
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Oct 7, 2010 12:49
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Someone on Reddit posted links to updated version of X-Wing an Tie Fighter. They look pretty good! http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/do1fn/did_you_love_xwing_tie_fighter_andor_xwing/
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