I don't think anyone is suggesting a direct adaptation of the first Kotor. Most video game plots would be hideous in any other setting, since they involve massive amounts of filler and side characters. We just want something in that era. Either adapt Revan's fall (preferably in a way that, as noted, doesn't spend the entire movie running around looking for maps) or the Jedi Civil War from a different perspective. Maybe the Exile? Show her activating the mass shadow generator and all that. Malachor is canon again, so they've certainly got a starting point.
edited 4th Jun '18 4:10:55 PM by Discar
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.Battlefront 2 was a miscalculation on every level.
They decided to play it very "safe" with Iden Versio and were confused, basically, when fans showed they WANTED to be a ruthless Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist. So even the whole business with the loot boxes was not undermined as the story was So Okay It Was Average. Except even that was the fact the story wasn't FINISHED.
edited 4th Jun '18 4:19:00 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Some people want more complex and three-dimensional fascists to play as. People with a conscience but who have really good reasons for being fascists.
Problem is, fascists aren't that complex. Their reasons usually are just petty and stupid. And people with a conscience tend to distance themselves from them as soon as they realize what those jackboots represent.
But we live in a society where shooting Nazis is now considered a controversial political statement, so it's no surprise that some Battlefront fans were upset that they didn't get to have a genocide power fantasy.
edited 4th Jun '18 4:40:17 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The problem with that is that she's STILL a good guy fascist.
It's just she apparently wasn't persuaded by Alderaan being destroyed and everything was good until her homeworld was targeted.
Which is an odd redemption cycle as it just makes her a Moral Myopia hypocrite.
"Destroying Miami was awful but justified. But Chicago is a bridge too far!"
I wanted Iden Versio to be an evil awful person who believes she's righteous. I don't want apologia for an Imperial who "learns the truth." No, she should have been a fascist who wanted to avenge Space Hitler and then joins the First Order.
edited 4th Jun '18 4:56:04 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I mean, many if not most people who join extremist organizations aren't what you'd call pure evil in real life. They're desperate, or seriously pissed at society, or extremely lonely and will fall in with anyone who will accept them. The high leaders are the real evil ones, because they deliberately prey on people like this and mold them into monsters.
edited 4th Jun '18 5:35:05 PM by HamburgerTime
Now I'm thinking about what I've heard about that one dude from Lost Stars The Imperial officer from Alderaan who saw his planet get blown up and, caught between his loyalty to the Empire and the fact that they just blew up his home, tied his brain into knots doing the mental gymnastics required to convince himself it was necessary to blow up the planet and very quickly stopped being anything that could be commonly recognizable as a sane, logical individual.
but HOW?The problem with Iden Versio, as has been mentioned, is that she has no moral compass. (or if she does it's outright wrong).
She's on board with everything the Empire does, planetary genocide and all, until it's her homeworld that's in the firing line.
So nobody got what they wanted. People who wanted to play as the Empire (for whatever reason) didn't get what they wanted. People who wanted to play as the Rebellion had to play a person with an astounding case of hypocrisy.
You can actually make an Imperial campaign interesting without necessarily whitewashing everything they do - see something like TIE Fighter. It generally relies on a lot of satire and Black Comedy and reading between the lines. But it's certainly possible.
edited 4th Jun '18 5:46:39 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"in regards to Alderaan, we see it from the point of view of those that blow it up, but we don't exactly see how the Empire spun the story to the general public and their own forces. I would not be surprised if the Empire made some official story that Alderaan was going to start some civil war, was funding terrorism, had dangerous weapons or a number of reasons. The imperial that teams up with Luke shows that the Empire has painted the Jedi as the villains.
When Iden's homeworld is attacked if I am not mistaken the implication seems to be that Empire is attacking a planet that loyal to the Empire for no good reason. She also seemed really dissatisfied with how things were being run in the early missions so I was not surprised that she would turn at some point. It is also harder to ignore an atrocity when you have a good view of it.
edited 4th Jun '18 6:15:42 PM by Darthwyn
"Shall I use you, or make you mine... I'm not so sure what I'll do." - DorthyTrue fact: TIE Fighter was a massively successful game, even more than X-wing.
And George put the kibosh on any sequels.
He didn't want glorification of what he viewed as genuine evil, even if fictionalized.
Re: Iden
There's nothing exceptionally strange about the idea that she doesn't care about murdering a bunch of strangers to intimidate the galaxy versus deciding to defect when it's people SHE knows being murdered for no damned good reason. However, it's possibly the least heroic and most undramatic motivation you can have.
The "I didn't know we'd be killing white people!" equivalent
edited 4th Jun '18 6:20:59 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah, she was a hypocrite, and realizing it was what made her defect. Realizing that she couldn't possibly be standing for justice and order and peace while representing an Empire who destroys loyal planets on a whim was what made her defect.
I'm addressing the critics directly here: Do you expect all Americans to renounce their American citizenship upon realizing we nuked Japan? Do you expect all Americans to rebel against their government because of the atrocities commited by its military and military intelligence organizations against its third-world neighbors?
Then how the hell do you justify demanding the same of Iden Versio, in universe? As far as she was concerned, it was an extreme but necessary move against a dangerous enemy who was directly providing material assistance to the rebellion. And then, when faced with the irrevocable fact that the Empire would torch even its own loyal planets, she made a choice. She made the right choice, it baffles me that people would criticize her for making that choice.
It also doesn't escape my notice that many of the same critics are also ones who want an unapologetic and unashamed fascist playthrough, so....
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for youI pretty much reject planetary genocide as a thing which our protagonists can just look over, sorry.
Or genocide in general.
But that's just me. I guess I view it is as, "Is she brainwashed and crazy or not?"
Maybe I wouldn't have minded if I felt it was a bit more earned.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.First, let's get this out of the way - US nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki =/= Empire destroying Alderaan. That's a comparison only someone who doesn't know jack about either WWII or Star Wars would make.
Secondly, any destruction of planets is the Empire destroying its own citizens. What is happening is a civil war. What Iden specifically is objecting to is the destruction of her own planet. Which makes it looks like she's switching sides because it's personal, not because of any sort of moral objection to majority loyal planets being destroyed.
Thirdly, the other major criticism of BF II is that any significant majority of the Imperials would be on board with Operation Cinder at all, considering it's destruction of the entire galaxy. It's not a matter of even good or evil - I can't imagine anyone except people who personally worshipped Palpatine to be on board with that as opposed to simply trying to retake it.
edited 4th Jun '18 6:49:29 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"![]()
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re: Traviss and Mandos: My two cents, keeping in mind that a., I've only read her Lot F works and b., I haven't touched Lot F in ten years because I think it's the single worst thing the EU ever produced, there's a couple major problems. First off, her characters are always talking about Mandalorians/making references to Mandalorian things/thinking or talking about how Fett specifically is the Biggest Badass of Ever that just comes off as Character Shilling after a while and gets annoying. Second is that she shoehorned Mandalorians into a storyline that wasn't actually about them, taking significant chunks of time every three books for the Boba Fett Family Hour that could have been used for, I don't know, making the Confederation an actual faction rather than a placeholder or building up some actual consistent motivation and villain cred for Caedus. The two threads converge in Revelation, where Jaina goes to Mandalore to train with Fett and gets constantly shown up, taught how great Mandalorians and Mandalorian ways are, and generally treated as if she was a pampered, sheltered, elitist princess rather than, you know, an actual decorated war veteran. Not helping matters is the rotating authors format of Lot F made it really obvious that Traviss was the only writer in the stable who cared about any of this, as the Mandos show up when she's writing and drop off the face of the galaxy under anyone else (the other authors had their pet characters too - Denning has several, most of them Barabels - but aren't generally as bad about it) - the chief exception being Invincible which does have the Mandos but characterizes them completely differently and with much more of a Take That! feel to Traviss's characterization. It just doesn't work, especially for me personally since I really, really don't care about Mandos, but its one of the most frequently called out aspects of the series in generaly.
EDIT: For a deconstruction of Revelation, Traviss's last Lot F book that's generally considered the nadir of both the series and her work on SW as a whole, put far more eloquently and completely than I have, see Yoda Kenobi's review in this thread: http://web.archive.org/web/20100115082418/http://boards.theforce.net/literature/b10003/28128642/p5
edited 4th Jun '18 7:05:25 PM by MasterGhandalf
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Good God, do not get us started again. Suffice it to say her writing is so transparently Authoritarian, Colonialist, Militarist and borderline Fascist that she has been dropped by one publisher and booted from no fewer than 3 Sci-Fi franchises; a genre notorious for catering to those views.
Also that, specifically about Mandalorians. Talk about Authoritarian, Militarism Author Appeal.
edited 4th Jun '18 6:50:01 PM by ViperMagnum357
Oddly, ignoring all that, it's hostile to the Jedi in a Moral Myopia way.
Clonetroopers=Good.
Jedi=Bad for using slave army.
The ENTIRE REST OF THE REPUBLIC which used the army=Gets a Pass.
Then she went on to write Gears of War about how they're heroic.
The thing is, Traviss ISN'T WRONG in criticizing the Jedi or Halo's Doctor Halsey. It's just that it's weird she goes after them but no one else.
edited 4th Jun '18 6:48:55 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Looking over it, I think the writers did kinda just take for granted that we would assume that her upbringing would instill Imperial values into her, deep into her psyche.
Her dad was an admiral. My first instinct was of course she was raised a fascist. But whatever her reason for abandoning the Empire, she still did so, and I, a player, had fun roleplaying her adventures.
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for youAdditionally it's just a weird idea to paint a target on the Jedi's back considering that they're portrayed in virtually every other portrayal as being really paternal to the Clones under their command.
But she had a vendetta against them, and tried to make the star wars universe fit her ideas rather than the other way around and it was obvious to everyone. When a creator takes that attitude bad things happen.
She's also kind of a hypocrite; changing the lore of the Mandolins so that they were still thriving in the PT era even though that wasn't the established lore, then rage quitting when the Clone Wars series made them peaceful and opposing a Mandalorian militarist faction.
And the Nazis.
edited 4th Jun '18 6:56:05 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"Well it is not like we have any real world equivalent to anyone destroying an entire planet which includes the any real life dictatorships. So one takes the closest real-world equivalent.
The point was it is a lot easier to accept actions made against what is considered the enemy it terrorist, but it is a lot harder to swallow your side doing such actions to their own people without any rhyme or reason.
Going by the mission with Luke not even the empire equivalent of Black ops is aware that their leader is capable of using the force and was under the assumption that the Jedi are the monsters.
Going even further one character in rebels television series made a weapon that is pretty much capable of quick and easy genocide at the flip of a switch and they are one of the main characters.
"Shall I use you, or make you mine... I'm not so sure what I'll do." - Dorthy

The problem is she wasn't ever really a proper villain. Her entire thing about opposing the Rebels was that they were criminals, and she was the law. Seeing that "being the law" was basically an Imperial lie to control her and harness her skills to do terrible things finally broker her pedestal, and she peeled away immediately. This WAS rushed, to be fair, basically boiling down to ONE argument with Lando Calrissian, and ONE mission against a Star Destroyer trying to bake a planet with the Cinder satellites, but still.
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you