|
Raptor1033 posted:Especially when you consider how many iterations the Star Wars posters have been through it's pretty easy to work out what works and what doesn't.
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 03:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 21:09 |
|
|
Darth Freddy posted:So thanks to the kindle marketplace I just binged through all the X wing books. About to go into the heir to the empire but after that no ideas. Any suggestions? Is courtship of Leia any good I loved the character of the warlord so far, but yea we all know how the EU goes. It's not that great. Definitely read the rest of Zahn's books though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 03:53
|
|
|
Darth Freddy posted:So thanks to the kindle marketplace I just binged through all the X wing books. About to go into the heir to the empire but after that no ideas. Any suggestions? Is courtship of Leia any good I loved the character of the warlord so far, but yea we all know how the EU goes. Yeah, what the guy above me said. Hand of Thrawn trilogy is pretty good. I, Jedi is another great one. Basically just read anything Zahn, Stackpole. Travis books are ok if you only read the first three. The Han Solo Trilogy, Shadows of the Empire and the various tales books are pretty decent as well. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Sep 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 04:04
|
|
|
Strangely enough some how I, Jedi is one of the books still sitting on my shelf from when I was younger. I think I have read all of Zhans books but choices of one. Going to check out the rest of those though. Its kind of fun to get back into Star Wars books again with the movies out again. This thing has to be one of my best purchases now the only books I know I have to keep are the nice hard bound collections and ones I plan to share with my kid.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 04:17
|
|
|
napster of meat posted:I found a page claiming $49.99 and a release date of 8/29/95 for the slide out widescreen set. My memory, however, tells me I bought mine a few months earlier than that and at price more like $90. Yeah, $80-90 sounds about right. I remember some retail chains like Suncoast and Best Buy charging an arm and a leg for it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 04:23
|
|
|
Darth Freddy posted:So thanks to the kindle marketplace I just binged through all the X wing books. About to go into the heir to the empire but after that no ideas. Any suggestions? Read Shatterpoint, the RotS novelization, then close them all and tell yourself it all stops there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 04:42
|
|
|
If you can handle Star Wars treading in a more general Sci-Fi direction the New Jedi Order is definitely a good read. Some of the books drag more than others but overall the plot is pretty decent. It's not too ridiculous so to be unenjoyably but it's definitely a different kind of Star Wars. If you decide to read them though do not under any circumstances read any books after the NJO. Pretend the Star Wars chronology ends with The Unifying Force and go on with your life.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 04:50
|
|
|
spacemountain posted:Lucas should have taken some more inspiration from Kurosawa and based the ROTS duel on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYbi7gKKvOo I've probably said it before but Lucas was at some point considering Toshiro Mifune in the role of Obi-Wan. Which probably wouldn't have worked since I don't think he spoke English (did some English-speaking roles that he learned word for word) but it is an interesting "what-if" to ponder.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 05:49
|
|
|
I'm rereading all of the Star Wars books, so I just bought the Kyle Katarn games on steam for $20. Is it worth my time to play through them all? The first one plays very DOOM-eqse and is pretty fun, but should I play it for the storyline or just keep reading?(I just finished first Zahn trilogy)
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 06:53
|
|
|
Sir_Vondruke_IV posted:I'm rereading all of the Star Wars books, so I just bought the Kyle Katarn games on steam for $20. Is it worth my time to play through them all? The first one plays very DOOM-eqse and is pretty fun, but should I play it for the storyline or just keep reading?(I just finished first Zahn trilogy) I didn't really like Dark Forces 1 and 2 but Jedi Outcast is definitely worth finishing, that game is Star Wars as gently caress and I loved every minute. The lightsaber fights against opponents were kind of hit or miss, but getting to the skill level of being able to carve swaths through legions of enemies you used to be afraid of is an awesome feeling. Der Luftwaffle fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Sep 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 07:08
|
|
|
Jedi Outcast was great, but it got too easy towards the end, as Kyle could effortlessly deflect a battalion's worth of blaster fire. In Jedi Knight 1, you had to aim at the enemy to deflect his blaster bolts. It made strafing trickier, meant that you couldn't take on hordes, and gave the other weapons more relative worth.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 07:31
|
|
|
I kind of liked it for doing that, it really showcased how massively superior a Jedi would be to ordinary dudes with guns without it feeling boring like the PT. That said, sitting back and letting all the sentry turrets and laser remote balls I'd been saving for the whole game take care of Dessan will never not be hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 08:02
|
|
|
Darth Freddy posted:So thanks to the kindle marketplace I just binged through all the X wing books. About to go into the heir to the empire but after that no ideas. Any suggestions? Is courtship of Leia any good I loved the character of the warlord so far, but yea we all know how the EU goes. You know how Allston writes Zsinj and Melvar as being smart but pretending to be some kind of wacky cartoonish villains? His books were written AFTER Courtship and the wacky cartoonishness is pretty much their full characterisation in Courtship, Allston wrote the "pretending" bit in so he could use Zsinj as an interesting and effective antagonist without contradicting the book that alread had him in. So if you go into it expecting him to be like he was in the Wraith books, you'll be really disappointed. Also Courtship is pretty bad in general. The other Zahn books are worth reading, and I recall the Corellian trilogy being less bad than a lot of the other stuff, though not great. Just avoid New Rebellion and Crystal Star as they will make you want to smash things. Also Planet of Twilight. And anything by Kevin J Anderson.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 12:16
|
|
|
Rev. Bleech_ posted:Read Shatterpoint, the RotS novelization, then close them all and tell yourself it all stops there. If you're going to read those two you might as well read Stover's other non-NJO novel, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. They work as a kind of loose trilogy, with epilogues to Shatterpoint's characters, plus parallels between Luke and his dad (and why Luke is best). Also, any excuse to showcase young Jedi Luke is pretty worthwhile.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 12:56
|
|
|
Fil5000 posted:You know how Allston writes Zsinj and Melvar as being smart but pretending to be some kind of wacky cartoonish villains? His books were written AFTER Courtship and the wacky cartoonishness is pretty much their full characterisation in Courtship, Allston wrote the "pretending" bit in so he could use Zsinj as an interesting and effective antagonist without contradicting the book that alread had him in. So if you go into it expecting him to be like he was in the Wraith books, you'll be really disappointed. Zsinj and Melvar barely get any characterization at all in Courtship, as I recall.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 13:45
|
|
|
Gianthogweed posted:Nevertheless, he has a purist version of the film floating around out there to satisfy those who were complaining about some of his changes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 14:01
|
|
|
Baron Bifford posted:No, I did get my hands on some widescreen remastered VHS tapes. Back in the 90s, I saw a TV ad for them that insisted I buy these because soon they would be "gone forever." I had no idea what the gently caress they meant by that at the time. It's funny when you think about it now. We can complain all we want that Lucas never releases the original non-special edition trilogy, but you can't say he didn't warn us.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 14:08
|
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:If you decide to read them though do not under any circumstances read any books after the NJO. Pretend the Star Wars chronology ends with The Unifying Force and go on with your life.  .
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 15:43
|
|
|
That's not true! That's impossible!
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 16:01
|
|
|
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 16:18
|
|
|
If they had just condensed the series down to 3 books it would be pretty drat good. And gotten rid of that Boba Fett sub-plot. Hell, nixed all the Mandalorian parts. Oh and portrayed the Jedi Council/Luke as competent instead of inept buffoons. The writing was really inconsistent between the books as well. Ok, maybe I'm remembering these wrong 
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 16:35
|
|
|
Douche Bag posted:If they had just condensed the series down to 3 books it would be pretty drat good. And gotten rid of that Boba Fett sub-plot. Hell, nixed all the Mandalorian parts. Oh and portrayed the Jedi Council/Luke as competent instead of inept buffoons. The writing was really inconsistent between the books as well. So what you are saying is, Traviss ruined the series? Yeah I can get behind that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 16:46
|
|
|
http://humaniterations.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/how-star-wars-should-have-ended-reflections-on-taste-the-expanded-universe-radical-politics/hurrrr anarchy posted:Star Wars took a turn for the suck a long time ago and those mistakes have been continuously compounded by everyone writing in its world since. The stream of what revamps writers are caught in showcases the growing desperation to get back to the roots. The obvious piece of advice: Stop Writing About Han, Luke and Leia! Keep characters obscure rather than dynastic and focus on separate concurrent sagas about little people! Is a waste of breath — we’re talking about space-fantasy genre trash afterall. What the gently caress did I just read? Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Sep 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 17:11
|
|
|
I just found this interesting article linked at theforce.net: It basically shows how Lucas has tweaked the films pretty much every time they were released in one format or another, even back in the 1980s. Granted, these days the changes aren't so much "tweaking" as "loving around with, sometimes for little discernible reason", but I found it a fascinating read nonetheless.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 18:05
|
|
|
Fil5000 posted:I recall the Corellian trilogy being less bad than a lot of the other stuff, though not great. No, it really wasn't. I mean, I get that everyone has more or less tolerances for different flavors of awfulness, but the Corellian trilogy spent way too much time focusing on kid who are totally precocious. That won't get tiring at all, right? Cut out the lack of compelling antagonists, the dumb twist about who's really behind it all, and some really ham-fisted romance between Luke and Gariel, and you're left with... ...Really stupid one-upsmanship in superweapons. Just like Kevin J. Anderson. Except not as charming. Both the Han Solo trilogies are at least decent, though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 20:42
|
|
|
Douche Bag posted:If they had just condensed the series down to 3 books it would be pretty drat good. And gotten rid of that Boba Fett sub-plot. Hell, nixed all the Mandalorian parts. Oh and portrayed the Jedi Council/Luke as competent instead of inept buffoons. The writing was really inconsistent between the books as well. If they had let Aaron Allston write the entire trilogy then it might have been a good series. I kind of think the SW EU became irredeemably stunted the day Lucas decided to keep the Jedi philosophy indefinitely stunted in the simpleminded, binary morality crap of the prequels. After NJO (which personally I thought was superb) the EU had a chance to evolve the conflict in Star Wars beyond light and dark, Jedi and Sith, binary good and evil and so on. But then all of a sudden they had to portray that interpretation as "evil", retcon Vergere as a Sith, and transplant the Jedi vs. Sith battle to multiple different time-settings and milk the cash cow forever.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 21:27
|
|
|
DougieFFC posted:If they had let Aaron Allston write the entire trilogy then it might have been a good series. I don't know. I thought Betrayal was decent, but the rest of his entries in LOTF I found to just be bland at best. Which I guess is better than "actively bad" like Denning and Traviss' stuff were, but still. All three authors of that series were guilty of basically writing their own independent trilogies that occasionally included references to the other two concurrent trilogies. DougieFFC posted:I kind of think the SW EU became irredeemably stunted the day Lucas decided to keep the Jedi philosophy indefinitely stunted in the simpleminded, binary morality crap of the prequels. After NJO (which personally I thought was superb) the EU had a chance to evolve the conflict in Star Wars beyond light and dark, Jedi and Sith, binary good and evil and so on. But then all of a sudden they had to portray that interpretation as "evil", retcon Vergere as a Sith, and transplant the Jedi vs. Sith battle to multiple different time-settings and milk the cash cow forever. I don't think it's even Lucas' fault, I think the editors of Del Rey/Lucasbooks just decided to retcon everything into being prequel-redux. Denning himself has a lot of the blame also, since he's either directly written or came up with the plot and outline of every post-NJO story, and he clearly has very Lucas-like ideas on characterization, morality, writing styles, etc. Chairman Capone fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Sep 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 21:31
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:I don't know. I thought Betrayal was decent, but the rest of his entries in LOTF I found to just be bland at best. Which I guess is better than "actively bad" like Denning and Traviss' stuff were, but still. No, it WAS Lucas's fault. He literally come out and overruled the EU by explicitly stating that the Force is Dark and Light with no in between. This is one of the very few times he ever got personally involved with EU business. It was immediately after this interference that we got LoTF and the current mess we see the EU in. So gently caress him. Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Sep 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 21:50
|
|
|
Denning does deserve plenty of the blame though. Star by Star was okay - hardly the best of the NJO but better than Balance Point at least. But all his contributions since are simply rank awful, and I've no idea how he managed to be project lead on two big projects. He did a Q&A on theforce.net where he basically admitted they came up with the plot for LOTF on a whim as a gimmick ("Hey what would happen if Jacen went bad") rather than think it through as a natural extrapolation for his characer. This I found extremely annoying since not only is it a profligate sacrifice of the most fleshed-out character of all the next generation of characters, but his journey in NJO has him conquer all the things that would drive an individual to evil and emerge shining bright at the end. He was the last person you would expert to turn evil. Jacen in LOTF (and DNT) is portrayed as a moral compromiser (as is Vergere), and in NJO he's anything but. LOTF Jacen is all ends-justify-the-means and gotta-crack-some-eggs-to-make-an-omlette, but for NJO Jacen, and Vergere (in Traitor and in TUF, at least) what matter is your actions and what you do. Jace was the direct opposite of a moral compromiser. His characterisation basically turns 180-degrees in order to suit the storyline, which is so lazy it's unbelievable. There's a really good essay called Jacen, Vergere and the Force or Jacen and the Two Vergeres that expresses this very well. Stover's transformation of Jacen is actually clever. Walter Jon Williams gets it wrong in Destiny's Way but I can forgive that because the book would have been written concurrently, and it's still an enjoyable romp. Then Luceno gets it right for TUF. But after that, and in full knowledge of the books that went before, Denning and LOTF steps in and twists everything for his gimmicky storyline that ran out of steam less than half way through the series. I still collect and read them all, but for half of me the SW EU ended at TUF.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 22:39
|
|
|
I'm not even collecting them anymore. I could stand the Special Editions, I withstood the prequels (helped, admittedly, by Matt Stover), I even bought some prequel era books. But NJO and LotF broke me. I bought a copy of Outcast and haven't even cracked it open, and I haven't bought anything since.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 22:47
|
|
|
On a happier note: Ikea finally delivered the book shelves that allowed me to transport my Star Wars collection from my parents' home to my own: Apart from a few young readers and lovely Clone Wars novels, that's just about the whole EU published in novel or comic book form since 1990 (all of the left-hand unit, and the top 1 1/2 shelves of the second) with some non-apocryphal Marvel thrown in here and there, and some old EU (Lando Calrissian adventures, Splinter of the Mind's Eye and of course Brian Daley's Han Solo Triology) All in chronological order as best as I can manage it - between ANH and ESB it gets very hazy since the Classic Star Wars series depicts the Rebel base going pretty much directly from Yavin to Hoth only after the latter has been discovered, when all other literature depicts the Yavin evacuation being (naturally) almost immediately after ANH, but settling on Hoth appears to have happened - based on the movies - only months before ESB. So I assume that in-between the Rebels breaking the blockade around Yavin and arriving at Hoth, they secretly gently caress around for two years, which is where Dark Horse's excellent Empire/Rebellion series comes in. Then there's the original Clone Wars continuity, and the new one that accomodates the CGI series. I deal with this by going gently caress the CGI series.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 22:59
|
|
|
I read all of LotF and although it did drag in certain places, especially all the Boba Fett scenes, I enjoyed it. That is until the final book, Invincible. The book that was supposed to tie everything together read like a very rough outline with a few details penciled in for good measure. The former Chief of State Niathal, who had just switched sides in the last book, wasn't in Invincible at all! I swore off all of the newest SW novels after that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2011 23:10
|
|
|
I'd like everyone to take a look here at the latest Penny Arcade blog and see a man who doesn't realize Karen Traviss is pretty much a fascist. http://www.penny-arcade.com/
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 03:08
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:I'd like everyone to take a look here at the latest Penny Arcade blog and see a man who doesn't realize Karen Traviss is pretty much a fascist. Let's see her answer a question that isn't about soldiering!!
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 03:15
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:I'd like everyone to take a look here at the latest Penny Arcade blog and see a man who doesn't realize Karen Traviss is pretty much a fascist. quote:There’s a reason why she keeps getting these jobs: she has a tremendous heart for the soldier, and telling their stories is a kind of overriding personal mission. Sounds like praise for Robert Heinlein circa Starship Troopers. Except Robert Heinlein at least pretty much made up his own poo poo instead of trampling over other people's crap. People who don't realize Starship Troopers the book was pretty much the next best thing to fascist apologia are the best kind of broken. Gonna quote myself quoting Timothy Zahn again: quote:Reading the anniversary Heir to the Empire right now: VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Sep 21, 2011 |
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 03:16
|
|
|
DougieFFC posted:On a happier note: Ikea finally delivered the book shelves that allowed me to transport my Star Wars collection from my parents' home to my own: Maybe I'm blind, but I looked for a bit, where are the X-Wing books 
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 03:52
|
|
|
Well I saw Courtship of Princess Leia and Tatooine Ghost, so the small row of paperbacks immediately before ought to be the X-Wing books. But at this resolution/graininess I can't tell. Did they give the X-Wing books new paperback covers or something?
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 04:14
|
|
|
[quote="DougieFFC"] This dwarfs my shelf, so suddenly I feel better about myself.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 04:38
|
|
|
Who is Anakin's father?
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 04:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 21:09 |
|
|
HappierGarden posted:Who is Anakin's father? Darth Plagueis. Kinda.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2011 04:45
|
|