Geeky Star Wars Loser Thread Episode VII: Attack of the bugnest orgies

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Geeky Star Wars Loser Thread Episode VII: Attack of the bugnest orgies

«‹›2 »

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Pththya-lyi posted:

He certainly didn't try to save the Emperor or anyone else on the Death Star.

Wasn't there a huge alarm sounding, things falling down, and people running around in a panic as he dragged Vader to the nearby-shuttle-that-was-conveniently-vacant? I think they'd be able to tell that the entire freaking reactor just got torpedoed and had an old man fall into it.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2010 09:05

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 19:21

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Mister_Eel posted:

PS. Do we even know that the Emperor is force sensitive in the OT before he shocks Luke? I honestly can't remember.

The first thing he says in ESB is "there is a great disturbance in the force" so it's clear he is. He frequently says he has foreseen things in ROTJ. He's got Vader cowed yet he looks like a frail old man, so on first viewing we know he must be pretty drat powerful.

But we don't see him actually do a single threatening thing, let alone use the force, until he starts hitting Luke with the force lightning. A lot of the prequel stuff seems very out of character because of this. I was sort of disappointed to see him use a lightsaber and throw things around and jump all over the place; it seemed beneath him.

T-1000 fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Oct 14, 2010

# ¿ Oct 14, 2010 10:22

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

As a ten-year-old I just thought that he was so strong in the dark side it was burning out his body. Like the head witch in The Witches, or to a lesser extent Gollum with the Ring. The power corrupts you. The Emperor embodied spiritual corruption, and him having sold his soul and his body for power made perfect sense. Maybe this could have been shown with a bit of ageing towards the end of RoTS to show he's finally using all his power and it's consuming him. None of this insta-ageing crap.

In the same vein, Yoda was dedicated to the light side of the force, and it kept him alive for nine hundred years. He even sort of implies that the force can prolong life, just not indefinitely; when Luke says he can't die, he says "strong am I in the force, but not that strong". This could just be a species thing; if the prequels were never made it'd be open to speculation.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2010 12:45

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

BonHair posted:

Also level design is pretty much non-existent, what with everything going on in empty space. Of course, this is where the COD style thing becomes difficult. The maps would probably be somewhat repetitive without missions.

It wouldn't need to be empty. XWA started making structures you could fly inside - space stations, death stars. If they wanted more environmental features, there's no reason they couldn't have space station maps, asteroid field maps, maps set in ship graveyards or other space industries. Or you could just cram the whole thing with convoys of cargo containers and bulk freighters and other ships that aren't active threats. I remember a lot of missions involving scanning ten million ships while a bunch of enemies chased you and they didn't seem like empty space at all.

There are a few space shooters still but the ones I know of are free. Allegiance looked fantastic but seems pretty hard on first examination. Eternal Silence 2 looks a bit easier but I've heard some of the balance is off. I haven't played either so I'm not really sure.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2010 07:00

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

dialhforhero posted:

Well everyone knows that you have to fire your lasers grouped in twos or more to kill tie fighters in one 'shot'. X-wing series taught me that. To kill x-wings you have to hit them with 6 dual laser shots after shields are down.

I could have sworn it was 3 laser shots to kill a standard TIE. The B-wing was perfect, everything else less so.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2010 13:54

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Powered Descent posted:

Arabs? I thought Watto was the moneygrubbing Jew.

There was debate amongst some anti-discrimination scholars at the time of which he was. The clones were meant to represent an endless wave of mexicans streaming across the border. Despite being maoris.

Honestly if he could be either an arab or a jew it can't be that bad a stereotype.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2010 14:21

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Captain von Trapp posted:

For that matter if we're talking classic villain archetypes, the main one Lucas uses is the one that's rarely noticed because it's as common as oxygen - the classic bad-guys-with-upper-class-British-accents trope.

Even more obvious, if you're ugly, you're probably evil. The disfigured/masked other with an ominous voice is always the villain in the pulps. Normally it's just a foreigner with an accent and a scar or an eyepatch. Lucas went the whole hog and made him a cyborg with a gas mask, voiced by James Earl Jones no less. And every threatening-looking alien is either evil or at least hangs out in shady places, while the good aliens don't really look threatening at all.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2010 00:57

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

dissss posted:

That being the case then why bother making them so large?

To fit more guns on. If I were the Empire I'd build a ship hundreds of kilometres long and bristling with lasers like a porcupine.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2010 02:29

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

CommieGIR posted:

However, they overuse turbo lasers, maybe some sort of large anti-ship laser is what I was thinking

That's a good idea. They should invent heavy turbo lasers and cover an even huger ship with them. You don't need to be mobile when all your enemies are dead.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2010 07:21

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

ZeeToo posted:

And yet they need new ship designs every in-universe few years.

Every time the jedi population reaches critical mass, there's a massive war that wipes out a substantial proportion of the galaxy. The only technologies that survive are things that are widespread, comparatively simple and very easily understood and produced. During these periods of chaos weapons technology makes massive leaps forward, then stagnates once the jedi population is reduced and peace is restored. The periods of episodes 2-3 and 4-6 are chaotic and so the ships and ground weapons develop rapidly. In the period up to the start of episode 2 and between 3-4 there's not a lot of progress beyond fashion because there's uneasy peace.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2010 13:15

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

RagnarokAngel posted:

The Force is a major factor that keeps it from being like other sci-fi though. I agree that in it's current form youre probably right. But in the OT the Force was more subdued. We saw clear demonstrations of "Magic" but nothing generally too overt. As authors try to one up each other The Force just got silly and basically made invincible supermen.

Also the problem that authors have no imagination and just keep rewriting the original trilogy: epic wars between rebels/republic and the ____ Empire, invariably decided by a few guys with magic powers having swordfights, usually during a space battle. I'd be interested to see how many Empires there has been through star wars history that suffered that fate; off the top of my head I can think of about five at least.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2010 01:09

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

muscles like this? posted:

Another prequel contradiction from ANH, Obi Wan claims that nobody has called him that since "before (Luke) was born."

Something else that could be also seen as a contradiction is Obi Wan telling Luke that he's to learn the ways of the Force which implies that anybody could do it. Not, "well good thing you were born force sensitive because otherwise you'd never become a Jedi."

That whole scene is Obi Wan is lying through his teeth. The same way he claims he never owned a droid (despite owning at least one that served loyally and died gloriously in battle). Or how Anakin would want Luke to have his lightsaber (it's a simpler lie than "I chopped both your Dad's legs off, and one of his arms, allowed him to catch fire then nicked this and left him for dead. But he deserved it, he was evil. Hey, you should come with me to Alderaan."). Or even that he was going to pay Han more when they got to Alderaan (he was probably going to mind trick him and Chewie when they got there. Organa had money but Obi Wan's a dick). And of course the obvious lie of Luke's parentage.

It's all true from a certain point of view when you've been living in a shack in the desert of a craphole planet plotting sweet sweet ~~revenge~~ justice for twenty years.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2010 12:11

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

JediTalentAgent posted:

Out of curiosity, about 15 years ago or so I took more notice that there used to be all those swap meet things that would show up at malls with people selling just various collectibles all over the place. You'd almost ALWAYS have someone with various sort of movie memorabilia and among these items would be $20-40 copies of xeroxed and authentic 'scripts' for Star Wars 1, 2 and 3 well before they actually came out. They had titles like, "Rise of the Empire, Fall of the Republic, etc..."

Even as recently as a few years ago at one of these things I saw a table with one of these on it and little tags attached saying, "The RARE UNPRODUCED ORIGINAL SCRIPT FOR EPISODE 1" and still wanting big bucks for it.

So, I need to ask: Did anyone ever drop dime on one of these, and if so, how do these things compare to the actual films we got?

You can download a lot of the genuine draft scripts from various websites. I skimmed through a copy of one of the original Star Wars IV draft scripts that was being used to teach a scriptwriting course, partly because there was so much revision of the script. They pared a lot of things back, changed a lot of characters around, and after a few revisions there was very little of the original left. It must have taken ages. It's kind of sad they didn't do that for the second trilogy.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2010 06:18

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

AmbassadorFriendly posted:

I also remember reading the Galaxy of Fear books. Basically they were Goosebumps novels set in Star Wars, and each book would have a bigger name guest star like Boba Fett or Thrawn. I kinda liked it.

There was one that had Boba Fett fighting zombies. It rocked fairly hard.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2011 07:44

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

I don't really get how this thread went from mocking officially sanctioned fan fiction to writing our own fan fiction.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 03:24

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

That DICK! posted:

I have a question - Why is Owen Lars so loving stupid? Why be a Moisture Farmer on a desert planet?

I seem to recall reading the ANH novelisation that for some reason, fog forms in certain regions of the desert and setting up a moisture farm in a good spot can make a reasonable amount of money.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2011 02:42

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Now that I think of it, the driest town in the world is a place in the Atacama desert in, I think, Chile or Bolivia, where they get a lot of their moisture from large, fine nets strung up on hills above the town. Moist air from the Pacific blows inland and the water condenses on the nets. It's an old mining town on its way to becoming a ghost town. Most other towns in the region are already abandoned, and the young people all move out as soon as possible.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2011 03:15

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Duckman2008 posted:

The most badass level I remember is when you escort Lord Vader and he says all sorts of awesome poo poo.

The most badass level is the one where your wingmen turn on you and a star destroyer comes to rescue you.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 10:16

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Jerk McJerkface posted:

The Tie Defender was a great ship in the game, but it, and the missile boat always struck me as odd. They were basically sort of over the top. Like the designers were trying to one up each other. And they ended up with a Tie Fighter that has 4 lasers, ION cannons, shields, and hyperdrive, and then another ship with like five million lasers. It felt to me like the game jumping the shark, I guess, but then reading some of the EU stuff in this thread, it's not so bad.

The whole point was you were a test pilot playing with all the weird and wacky toys the empire could possibly cook up. That's how you also got to use tractor beams, and mag pulse missiles, and jamming beams and oh hey look now we have advanced missiles, go see if they blow up rebels in an advanced manner. The Empire is Nazi Germany so they have huge teams of brilliant engineers cooking up absolutely insane weapons, some of which actually work.
I mean, look at all these.

Click here for the full 1600x1096 image.
They're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

In game design terms, I assume it was really hard to make a level that could be completed in an unshielded craft and was also fun. In the basic TIEs, it only takes one missile or a couple of lucky laser shots and it was over. The "Enough of this charade, Gamma 1 is the Emperor's stoolpigeon! Gamma 2 and 3, destroy Gamma 1" mission was probaly the highlight but the hard part here was just staying alive in a scenario that would be dead easy in a TIE defender. I had a lot more fun intercepting squadrons of bombers or picking turrets off capital ships than dodging every single shot coming my way in an early TIE fighter mission.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 14:14

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Chairman Capone posted:

I was just watching the OT today and thinking on how, with the prevalence of bounty hunters and smugglers, a freaking huge percentage of the galaxy's economy must be tied up in illegal activity. I guess you could argue in the time of the OT it's due to so many people being opposed to the Empire they turn to underground economic actors, but that doesn't explain every other era.

Seriously just how many bounties are there in the Star Wars Galaxy where bounty hunting can be such a main stream, profitable job? I can make myself understand smuggling being so widespread, but bounty hunting is just so weird.

It's meant to be a huge galaxy, and the places the film is set are fairly shady.

Mos Eisley is a wretched hive of scum and villainy on a planet ruled by gangsters for decades/centuries. It's space Mogadishu. And from a population of many billions of people, we see something like six bounty hunters. There are probably more bounty hunters than that in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2011 09:17

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

That and it's a prequel property. I think that alone kept a lot of older casual Star Wars fans away from it.

Bingo. There are quite a few good FPSes and I don't have time to play them all, and I wasn't going to waste my time and money shooting annoying battle droids or those bug things from episode 2. Maybe I'll pick it up next time it's a Steam special.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2011 11:33

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

SeanBeansShako posted:

I loving loved Gall Spaceport and fighting on foot in Echo Base. Played them hundreds of times as kid. The Imperial Freighter was a favourite of mine too.

The Sewers and Xizors Palace though, gently caress those levels hard.

Truth.

I found the train level stupendously hard because I could never time the jumps right. I still have fond memories of it though. I wish they'd do a remake of the entire game using the Uncharted 2 engine, that game had the longest train level in history and it was amazing.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2011 00:25

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

that awful man posted:

Why is it that Greedo is the only character in Star Wars to be shot with a blaster and be completely burnt to a crisp?

I like to think Uncle Own and Aunt Beru and their farm just got hosed down by a squad's worth of blasters on full auto.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2011 22:10

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 19:21

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

As far as my niece and nephew know right now, the only two Star Wars movies are ANH and Empire and I intend for it to stay that way as long as possible.

ROTJ might be the weakest film overall but it has the most powerful scene. You ought to show it to them.

I hope that 10000 years in the future ESB is the only film of the series known to historians because everyody in the film ends up miserable except Boba Fett, General Veers, R2 and the medical droid. Then they'll just be left guessing what happened in the other films and marvelling at what geniuses twentieth century film-makers were.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2011 06:27

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Geeky Star Wars Loser Thread Episode VII: Attack of the bugnest orgies

«‹›2 »