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Yeah Star by Star is by far Denning's best book, because it's the only one where the grimdarkness is actually kind of the point rather than just gratuitous bullshit. That isn't to say it's immune to his weird other quirks, like having Leia put on disguises all the time and introducing weird OP stuff like the YVH droids or shadow bombs or StealthXs and jamming his OCs everywhere (although to be fair this is where most of them were first introduced), but if that were his only EU entry I'd be pretty satisfied with his output. Also didn't Star by Star have the really unfortunate timing of coming out like a month after 9/11?
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Jun 3, 2021 20:05
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VaultAggie posted:Were the YVH ones the ones that were designed to troll the Vong? Very efficient killers that would poo poo talk the vong in their own language? They were awesome. Actually that part was pretty cool — think Allston made their war cry “WE ARE MACHINES! WE ARE GREATER THAN THE YUUZHAN VONG!”  I just wasn’t a huge fan of the “yeah they’re made of a special metal that can’t be cut and also can see through the vong disguise tech no problem” part
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Jun 4, 2021 00:36
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Chairman Capone posted:But then again, I also thought at the start of the NJO that Threepio's arc was going to be turning into a droid civil rights activist, and while it got touched on in a handful of scenes across the twenty books... nope. Still think that's the EU equivalent of Finn being set up to lead a stormtrooper rebellion and that never paying off. Droid sentience/civil rights has always been a weird third rail that the vast majority of Star Wars media is really reluctant to touch. Like yeah, many droids are clearly creative thinkers with a sense of self-actualization yet are also owned property, but it's also explicitly *not* slavery because we also see plenty of that in Star Wars and it's clearly supposed to be an abhorrent institution that no heroic character would ever dream of partaking in. So you wind up with edgelord fan theories about how all droids are clearly an oppressed underclass and every organic character who doesn't immediately advocate for their liberation are irredeemably evil, which, like, is obviously not the case? There's just never going to be a piece of Star Wars media where the galaxy turns on Luke Skywalker in favor of the *true* hero, the champion of the droid proletariat. The closest we really get is Lando's droid friend in Solo, but even that is kinda brushed off as a semi-comical aside. I don't really know what Lucasfilm/Disney's official behind-the-scenes stance on it is, but I imagine it's something like "yeah we know it's weird, but acknowledging it would be a seismic shift in how literally this entire universe works so it's just gonna be this weird grey area of the setting." A lot of authors and sourcebook writers certainly tried to circle this square in Legends, but even the most common explanation of "they get smarter unless you mind-wipe them every now and then" still raises a lot more ethical questions than it answers. I totally get an urge to deconstruct and examine the issues of AI sentience and there's plenty of pop sci-fi that does exactly that, but I think anyone looking for those themes in Star Wars is just gonna wind up really disappointed.
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Jun 4, 2021 16:44
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Chairman Capone posted:If I remember right, wasn't Fincher the first person they asked to direct Episode VII? And then Brad Bird after he turned it down? Goddamn I wish I lived in the universe where Brad Bird got the keys to the sequel trilogy. Incredibles and Mission Impossible 4 loving owned.
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Jun 7, 2021 19:22
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I wonder if it would have been better in the Great Canon Purge of 2014 if they had just removed Clone Wars from Legends altogether. Not only did the addition of Ashoka make a ton of pre-2008 prequel era content real weird in hindsight, they also killed a lot of characters on the show that were alive and well in novels and such and snarled up the war’s timeline something fierce. I remember for a while lucasfilm was promising an updated timeline after the show ended, but then the Legends split happened and they just stopped caring.
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Jun 12, 2021 05:47
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Wasn't the Black Fleet trilogy originally written as an original plot and then rejiggered to be Star Wars? I think that and Jedi Trial both really leaned on the generic mil-sci-fi stuff and kinda forgot to be Star Wars because neither were originally intended to be. Kinda wish Legends books set after Black Fleet used the ships introduced in it though, that author did a lot of work laying out a bunch of cool fleet dynamics and new capital ships and then everyone else just kept using ISDs forever after 
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Jun 22, 2021 20:53
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Yeah I'm a little disappointed they had a chance to make new non-SWTOR Legends art for the first time in *years* and instead went with weird abstract stuff.  Chairman Capone posted:Honestly, I think the Thrawn ones are an improvement over the originals too, I never really liked the clear ROTJ reuse images for the OT characters on those. They did this for a *ton* of the Bantam books -- Apparently Leia wore that outfit the Ewoks made her for the next fifteen years if those covers are anything to go by Slashrat posted:Speaking of covers, I remembered how awesome the japanese edition covers for the thrawn books and the NJO were. It's a shame they never reused them elsewhere. Hell yeah, these ruled -- they were also basically the only canon art for the Solo kids for a long time too. Jacen and Anakin especially were dead ringers for Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher's hypothetical sons. We can all agree that Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor had the best cover though, right? Screw this abstract stuff that tries to look more artsy, I'm never gonna look cool reading a big-rear end STAR WARS cover on the train so why not just go crazy with it: 
ninjahedgehog fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 22:57
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Huh, so it's not even going to be canon then? Seems like a missed opportunity to just place it in the distant past and flesh out the history of the Jedi/Sith a little bit more. Still looks cool as hell though, a lot of the newer Star Wars creators have come to the correct realization that ripping off Star Wars' inspirations gets you a much better product than ripping off other parts of Star Wars itself. The Ahsoka episode of the Mandalorian is probably my favorite single piece of the new canon so far, having Ahsoka's samurai duel with the magistrate juxtaposed with Din's western shootout outside was incredible 
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Jul 8, 2021 16:36
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Yeah same -- I feel like it really wouldn't be hard to make it fit into canon, it's so far in the past that anything it might contradict can easily be handwaved away as something that just happened to change in 4,000 years Really hope they revamp the gameplay though, every time I think about another runthrough I remember how tedious and boring the combat could be. Even just making it more like The Old Republic would be a huge improvement
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Sep 9, 2021 22:18
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I kinda wish at that point they had moved the timeline up a millennium or so -- Without Vima there's nothing really connecting KOTOR to TOTJ, and so you've got the TOTJ ancient-looking ships and technology giving way to prequel-era Star Wars aesthetics in just about 20 years. Alternatively they could have gone whole hog and given KOTOR the TOTJ aesthetic, but from a brand recognition perspective I get why that's a nonstarter.
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Sep 25, 2021 17:59
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Lord Hydronium posted:Both the Knight Errant comics and novel were great. Definitely one of the highlights of the late Legends EU, and outside of the Bane era the only real look we got into the New Sith Wars. Never got around to reading Knight Errant but it sounds like it's right up my alley -- I loved the glimpses of that era in the Essential Guides, and the concept of the Republic failing to such a degree that various Jedi set up hereditary fiefdoms in the periphery of Republic space is really interesting. Prime material for mining some more Kurosawa-influenced stories if Legends had lasted a little longer
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Sep 28, 2021 18:04
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Chairman Capone posted:Also for what it's worth I think The Unifying Force itself is a really good book, maybe Luceno's best and one of the best EU novels overall, as well as the best of the various potential "ending points" that came out for the overall series over the years. Yeah in my personal canon, Star Wars ends with TUF and picks up again with the Legacy comics. As for why Danni disappeared, she seems to be a casualty of Troy Denning's de facto control over the post-ROTJ canon starting with Dark Nest and lasting pretty much until the Legends split. Dude really, really loved the Young Jedi Knights series and it's his Star By Star where its supporting cast first gets reintroduced into the canon, they play a *huge* role in Dark Nest and the upcoming Legacy of the Force. In particular, he leaned hard on ditching Jacen and Jaina's apparent love interests from NJO (Danni, Jag) in favor of their childhood sweethearts (Tenel Ka, Zekk), and their execution is.... well, we'll get there when we get there. It's really bizarre how prominent a role he played in shaping the direction of SW Legends for basically the rest of its existence considering how little-loved his actual books were. My bet is he was just a really pleasant person to work with and turned in his drafts on time, so they just kept giving him contracts rather than try something new. 
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Oct 22, 2021 18:43
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Kinda the opposite of JJ Abrams, now that I think about it -- the minute-to-minute dialogue and action of TFA is honestly pretty good, but the worldbuilding and overall plot is *staggeringly* derivative, even without his infamy at setting up big mysteries without any plan at all on how to resolve them
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May 23, 2022 21:54
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Xenomrph posted:But everyone knows the Legends timeline ended in 2003 with ‘New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force’? bunnyofdoom posted:False. Mercy Kill exists Both wrong, it ends with Legacy: War issue 6. Weird that they didn't publish anything in between TUF and Legacy except for Mercy Kill and Crosscurrent though
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May 24, 2022 01:14
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General Battuta posted:What Holdo should have done was thrown Poe in the brig immediately when she took command, and told him nothing, and saved the Resistance. "Shut up and do as you're told, your superiors know more than you do" is a real odd message from a movie ostensibly about rebellion, resistance, and students surpassing their teachers though.
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May 27, 2022 00:09
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Apparently the kid who Kumail helps flee to Corellia is named Corran in the credits, which lmao that the most Corellian Corellian in the galaxy isn't actually from there in nu-canon
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May 28, 2022 05:29
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No joke, that's legit great to hear -- I mostly lurk this thread so we never interacted much directly, but I always appreciated your earnestness even when I disagreed with your exact points. Glad things are working out for you. 
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May 30, 2022 15:22
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Arc Hammer posted:Except that the sequels tend to use specific time frames. Threepio says Starkiller Base will be ready to fire in ten minutes. In Last Jedi they put the fleet's fuel supply at a matter of hours. In Rise they have an 18 hour time frame. Yeah this bugs the poo poo out of me, it makes the universe feel so small and the events so inconsequential when everything is compressed into such a tight timeframe. TLJ in particular feels like an unforced error here -- why not have the Resistance fleet bouncing around the galaxy playing cat and mouse with Snoke, which would not only give the Rey and Finn plots more time to breathe but also be way more visually interesting than "one fleet pursues another in literally a straight line" ? I think ending TFA with Rey finding Luke also constrains them quite a bit, because it required TLJ to pick up just seconds after TFA ends to resolve that cliffhanger. I get why they ended TFA the way they did though, seeing old man Luke was a real thrill in 2015. Honestly this all stems from the fundamental failure of the sequels, which was that they pretty much let the three writer/directors completely do their own thing instead of coming up with an initial story treatment before a single frame was filmed. Even Palpatine coming back from the dead could have worked if there was even a tiny bit of groundwork laid beforehand, instead of this huge revelation introduced in the first sentence of the opening crawl/in loving Fortnite, of all places.
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Jun 2, 2022 17:40
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Vinylshadow posted:...I am actually mad I am only just now getting the pun Yeah what the gently caress, how did I miss that for literally twenty years 
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Jun 7, 2022 19:33
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Also the prequels make it pretty clear that the Jedi report to the Senate
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Jun 8, 2022 15:37
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Say what you will about Fey'lya's fail-yas, he went out like a loving boss
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Jun 14, 2022 16:21
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I don't see the issue here, y'all need to snatch the dirty thoughts right out of your heads
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Jun 21, 2022 21:16
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ScottyJSno posted:The war was a false flag on both sides This is a point I wish was brought up in more Clone Wars media -- Individual heroics are cool and all, but in the end none of it matters because both sides are controlled by the same person and even if the outcome isn't predetermined, Palpatine doesn't really give a poo poo who wins because either way he's on top and the Jedi are all dead. Too bad Traviss leveraged this point in the stupidest way possible.
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Jun 22, 2022 16:00
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I always figured that "units" actually meant battalions or divisions or something, because 1.2 million soldiers is smaller than the standing army of Cuba. How does that even pass the sniff test
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Jun 24, 2022 20:34
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Long as we’re talking about numbers, that 1 trillion population estimate for Coruscant is insanely low— iirc covering an earth-sized planet with the population density of Manhattan clocks in way north of that before you even take into account the mile-high skyscrapers and hundreds of layers of undercity
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Jun 25, 2022 22:45
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Do they ever actually namedrop Hosnian in TFA? I remember walking out of the theater thinking they exploded Coruscant and getting corrected later by the Wook
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Jul 19, 2022 20:47
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Anakin shows up to Jacen a couple times in NJO -- the first time Jacen doesn't realize who he is, but the second time is at the very end when he defeats Onimi. Kind of a missed opportunity not to have him show up for a chat with Kylo Ren in the sequels tbh -- would have been a fun wrinkle in that Kylo idolizes Vader but Anakin himself is literally right there telling him no, this is a bad idea, nobody has more firsthand experience in this kind of thing than me. I'm sure Hayden would have been down for it
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Aug 2, 2022 15:28
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Chairman Capone posted:Actually, has Traviss ever commented on the show? Although I would be surprised if she’s actually seen it. I’m also sure she would hate Book of Boba Fett, but I wonder if she’d like Mandalorian. Din didn’t immediately headshot baby yoda the moment he used the force, 0/10 not my Mando
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Oct 9, 2022 14:16
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Han Solo dropping hard truths posted:What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong–killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn't have worked. They'd forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that's what the Empire would have done.
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Nov 29, 2022 02:18
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Where do Fallen Order and Andor line up on the timeline? Obviously Andor's not the kind of show where Cal can just pop in and start slicing up stormtroopers, but it would have been funny if (Andor spoilers) when Luthen was telling Saw he needed to burn his source, Saw was like gently caress that, I'll call up my ginger Jedi friend and that Imperial ambush is gonna get murdered
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Dec 1, 2022 23:36
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My one annoyance with the 90s EU covers is that they only had the rights to Mark Hamill etc.'s appearances as of 1983, so they weren't allowed to age them up or even alter their outfits too much even if the book took place decades after RotJ. It's pretty lol, but kinda heartwarming, that Leia still wears the dress the Ewoks made her 30+ years later
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Dec 5, 2022 18:19
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Are the clones even fertile in the nu-canon? Feel like the urge to gently caress would be something the Kaminoans would have edited out right quick e: wow this is my worst snipe ever
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Apr 25, 2023 16:08
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Her weird fashy anti-Jedi stuff also makes a lot more sense in the RepCom books where all the POV characters would have that perspective, but when Luke F-ing Skywalker is embarassed he doesn't know the difference between the Jedi and Sith and talks up the Mandos as the true heroes of the galaxy, maybe it's time to send the manuscript back for another round of edits. e: or yeah, exactly what you said
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Apr 26, 2023 19:32
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Arc Hammer posted:I'm not about to defend Traviss's hosed up politics or her behaviour interacting with fans. There is plenty of stuff to criticize her over, but I do chafe seeing the same points brought up again that don't really hold water. From where I'm sitting, Traviss doesn't particularly like fascists or governments much at all, and her obsession lies with soldiers who are stuck working for weak rear end politicians or corrupt assholes. The noble soldier often criticizes these politician and those who support them because the noble soldier is the Hard Man Making Hard Decisions. That's why the Jedi are hated in her novels, why the brainwashed Spartans who unconditionally love being kidnapped child soldiers are tragic victims of an evil woman if onyl they could see it, why the heros of Gears are bound by brotherhood more than loyalty to the COG. Not familiar with her Gears or Halo work but I think this is a fair point. However, the reason she still sucks isn't because she calls out the weird fashy stuff in the universes she works in, it's because it's only in support of her pet warrior societies that also wind up being incredibly fashy but in a way that seems cooler to her. Like, the Jedi are completely hosed up and evil for leading an army of child soldiers into battle, but it's incredibly cool and good to have children born and bred into Mandalorian mercenaries because reasons.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:48
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StashAugustine posted:Say what you will about the Disney movies but they were technically better at having Han's son fall to the dark side while all the authors were constantly feuding with no clear purpose Flashback to the 2014 Legends split -- thank god we can finally get rid of the dumb EU poo poo like the OT heroes' accomplishments falling apart, the Emperor coming back to life and Han's son turning Sith! 
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Apr 27, 2023 17:52
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Casimir Radon posted:Kenobi by John Jackson Miller is your best bet. It’s what the Obi-Wan show should have been. I maintain that with an extremely aggressive edit you could cut Obi-Wan down to a decent 120-minute movie. tbh I think a dedicated fan could even piece something passable together with only the footage provided
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May 2, 2023 16:47
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These are really well done but it's always a little funny how awkward some of the radio drama dialogue is in this context Luke deflects blasterfire with his lightsaber Han: Look Leia, Luke's deflecting blasterfire with his lightsaber! 
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Jun 10, 2023 17:32
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Angry_Ed posted:Given how many components and versions og the plans existed in the Legends Canon sometimes it feels like half the Galaxy was in on the heist. There's a great Pablo Hidalgo quote on the Wook: "if you had to throw a dinner party and invite everyone who had ever stolen the Death Star plans, you'd be surprised at how many place settings you'd have to worry about." Most of them came from video games iirc, apparently "Rebel ships, striking from a secret base, have scored their first major victory" is such a good plot hook that dozens of game writers pounced on it without really checking to see what had been done before
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Jul 7, 2023 15:58
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Lord Hydronium posted:And that's why it annoys me when people treat the Dark Forces/Kyle Katarn version as definitive when it's the one that fits the least with the opening crawl! That was probably the first one, no? At least it was the first widespread one, I bet there was a WEG supplement that had it as well E: it is kinda funny how unimportant it is in Dark Forces though, iirc it's only the first level and the rest of it is the Dark Trooper stuff
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Jul 7, 2023 16:18
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Chairman Capone posted:The full Ahsoka trailer is out. Aside from a full view of Elon Musk Thrawn, one other EU element present: an E-wing in it, which was cool to see in live-action. It was always one of my favorite EU fighter designs. They even removed the dumb pilot-blinding cockpit-blocking unicorn-looking third cannon  One kid at school in the 90s had an E-wing Action Fleet toy and I'm just as jealous now as I was then
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Jul 11, 2023 22:20
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