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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Twain
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - The Twain
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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I get that those people are out there, and I understand their struggle, I just don't want to be on either end of that struggle, because while I do care a little bit about these same things, I'm not about to raise arms against anyone who doesn't subscribe to my particular flavor of fictional history.
I say that so that I may say this: The provided jpeg gives an excellent way to back out of any of these discussions. Hi, my interpretation of the events are that you are a godking supreme warlord president chieftain emperor. Why, how did you think the literature goes?
-Tycho Brahe
The particular issue with the Star Wars canon is that there wasn't multiple versions to begin with at all. There was just one, and that one has now been discarded in favour of a different one. And it wasn't as if everyone just got together and agreed on this canon by themselves - all of the canon was Lucasarts sanctioned and approved. It WAS the history of Star Wars, beyond the established film stories, and it's not as simple a matter to discard it all as if it was no more than fan fiction.
It's not like the EU books were considered a bastion of well thought out and consistent lore.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
While it's true that it was all sanctioned, it really is this simple a matter to discard it. The proof is the fact that Disney's done it. And frankly it was a necessary decision. Besides the fact that a huge proportion of the EU hovered between mediocre and actively bad, they simply needed to escape from ~20 years of accumulated cruft, inconsistencies, power-creep, and other such restrictions. The 30 years between RotJ and the new movies are extremely well-defined by the EU and there have been major events in that time. There's no way to explain Jacen, Anakin, Mara, Chewie, and other characters who have lived, gone through wars, and died, much less events like the Yuuzhn Vong, while also having the movies focus on new characters as well. It either would have been shoved so far in the background as to be meaningless besides a few winking nods to those in the know (while still restricting the stories to be told) or so much time would have to be spent rehashing those events they'd have completely taken over the movie. The decision to jettison all of it wasn't the right one; it was the only possible decision.
Lucasarts was sanctioning anything with mention of a lightsaber. I'm sure I could have drafted up a short story in which a utility droid rises to power with the use of the dark side and his eight spinning lightsabers that make a rainbow as he attacks, and have it be sanctioned. But don't worry, in my story you're going to stop him, godking Dhalphir.
Still though, it IS pretty lame that all the KOTOR stuff got booted out, especially since it wouldn't have conflicted with any modern lore.
here's hoping for a third act twist in Force Awakens!!!
Which means I'll never get to see a Death Troopers movie. :sad:
Shouldn't it be Wauke?
I refuse to believe this is an actual thing someone created and has a ~2600 word wiki page on.
So much this.
If it wasn't for Zahn the EU would have been nothing (all due respect Michael Stackpole
Edit: I'd love to hear at least someone mention Thrawn.
My favorite EU author? Aaron Allston.
*awaits the flames*
Only a mere 136 pins to go!
The irony being that the dark-side Luke clone referenced above, Luuke, was part of Zahn's "masterpiece trilogy." They all have bad days.
I'm pretty neutral about the whole EU retcon, though I enjoyed a lot of the material along the way. I kind of hope they'll mine as many good ideas from it as they can, though. It'd also be cool if they continued to develop it as an alternate product line from time to time, but I don't see that happening (look what's happened with Marvel's M2, New Universe, and Ultimate lines).
My favorite EU stuff was when it tried to get away from the big idea, "classic legendary storytelling" stuff that the movies covered so well. I liked the X-Wing books, I liked a lot of the bounty hunter material. Shit like that. It felt like a better fit for the EU to focus on covering the universe from other angles.
I never got the "power creep" complaints about Force Unleashed. Did they miss the whole point of Yoda's speech in Empire? There's no difference between the X-Wing and the rock, size matters not, etc. The force doesn't have power levels like DBZ, nor pounds per square inch ratings. It's about your sensitivity to it, and the strength of your belief. Pulling a Star Destroyer into a crash shouldn't be any different from any other hold/levitation trick, as long as you believe in it.
I loved the KOTOR games, but really didn't like the time period for it. 4,000 years before the original trilogy shouldn't look just like the original trilogy. It's one of the best features of the old Tales of the Jedi comics; it's an ancient time compared to the old movies, so it LOOKS like ancient times (IN SPACE!). Reading one of the Bioware big-shots badmouthing that aesthetic in some interview really stuck in my craw. I mean, if they hated the look of the basilisk war droids, just design a new look. Don't put a fucking Starviper from Shadows of the Empire in there; it's a war droid, not a starfighter. Sorry, got a little off-tangent there.
My biggest hope with the new stuff, is that they'll avoid the pitfall that the old EU's Old Republic/Legacy materials did. Don't keep remaking the prequel and OT scenarios & aesthetics in different time periods. It makes the galaxy feel horribly stagnant, and the conflicts and struggles of our heroes futile and pointless. If you want to do a Clone Wars MMO, call it a fucking Clone Wars MMO. If you want to do a story during the OT; it's an entire galaxy, whose to say there weren't a few other "last of the Jedi" running around helping the rebels against 'not-Sith because rule of two, but totally extra Sith you guys' villains (like "Rebels" Inquisitor) that Luke, Leia, et al didn't know about? Here again, I liked the products, but just didn't like how they were supposed to fit into the larger picture. Or hell, just make them alt continuities like the old EU becoming "SW Legacies" or Marvel's Ultimates.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat