Dissatisfied with the current Star Wars Mod so built upon prexisting mods: SWGC and Star Wars Expansion.

Heavy work in progress, but just used for fun between a couple friends.

I started reading Star Wars books when I was a kid in the 90s, so the idea of Ackbar as a brilliant military commander is firmly lodged in my head. But every now and then I remember that Ackbar only really does two things on screen in RotJ: A) Lead the Alliance fleet into a trap at Endor, and B) Get told by Lando to move the fleet into close combat with the Imperials so they don't get picked off by the Death Star. Neither of which speak well to Ackbar's military acumen.

And I understand the why of it. Having even one line in an OT film is basically a superpower in the books (the Bobo Effect). But it still makes me chuckle.

What is everyone's thoughts on Thrawn as a character by Timothy Zahn (I know the general feeling about Thrawn as written by others is not generally as good) outside of the original Heir to the Empire trilogy? While I like him a lot, I am still somewhat personally conflicted. I find him to be a very interesting and well written character, however, I cannot decide how I feel about Zahn's seeming push to make Thrawn more of a grey/anti-hero/sometimes-strictly-heroic character in his later novels beginning with Outbound Flight. It really feels disconnected from the Thrawn that appears in the Heir to the Empire trilogy or is referenced in the Hand of Thrawn duology, who, while brilliant, different, and oftentimes honorable, is still distinctly a villain. Or for that matter the canon Thrawn as he appears in Rebels and Ahsoka. This sometimes bleeds over into making the imperial characters under his command in the canon Thrawn novels, and some characters who are friendly with Thrawn we know to be villains like Yularen, and sometimes the Empire as a whole, more likable and disconnected from the version of the Empire we see elsewhere. I like all of these novels I've read so far (up to Chaos Rising), but the general feeling that Zahn is trying too hard to make Thrawn likeable as a person and not just a character leaves me conflicted.

I thought the idea that an opponents darkside fuelling a Vaapad user is moreso a metaphor for how the more aggressive an adversary becomes the more it fuels a Vaapad users passion for battle. By fully embracing their passion they’re able to immerse themselves in the zone. It’s their reliance on passion that makes Vaapad such a risky form to learn for a Jedi. Is a this correct?

The idea Vaapad literally redirects an opponents darkside powers feels more like a force ability rather than a combative state of mind.

This is one of the coolest descriptions of Vader I've seen yet.

What are light-, medium-, and heavy-class capital ships from the Confederacy of Independent Systems Navy whose existence and names are known but that were cruelly neglected and underused by the various Clone Wars authors despite their cool and/or interesting and promising designs and characteristics in combat?

The light and medium-class ships such as the Gozanti-class cruiser, Diamond-class cruiser (especially given how fast and reliable a ship and transport it was, and with Empire at War having made it a scary anti-starfighter ship, ideal to decimate Republic starfighters), Lupus-class missile frigate with its missiles which would have made it great against starfighters and to support bigger CIS ships against Republic large ships, Munifex-class light cruiser (with its heavy armament of 28 turbolasers and 12 ion cannons for a three-hundred-meter size), the Sabaoth ships (with the frigate having an especially strong tractor beam) with their designs, the Wavecrest-class frigate manufactured and used by the Givins (Givins are described as amazing ship engineers, barring their pressurisation issues and lack of astro-computers due to Givin biology, and I would have wanted to see far more of their ships, with this obscure frigate being their only known product).

For the heavier class ships, there is, of course, the hammer and anvil at once of the Confederate Navy that is the Bulwark-class cruiser and its younger brother, the Bulwark II, with their heavy weaponry and very tough armor and shielding. And I would have liked to see the Fantail-class destroyer of the Corporate Alliance in the EU for once. I liked that in Empire at War mode, the ship is presented as having one or several strong ion cannons, which let it wear down Republic ships' shielding and support fellow Confederate ships.

I won't go too much into the story because... I didn't feel like it had much of one. You're a force-sensitive child that Vader picked up and trained as his own personal assassin, which I thought was an idea that kind of works. TCW (which was still co-existing with the EU) had Anakin take up Ahsoka in the movie and show, so him having a new Padawan (or Sith Apprentice, in this case) makes logical sense to me, like he's trying to fill a hole from her. At least, that's the vibes I got; I know that it came out the same time as the TCW movie, so it might've just been a coincidence, but that's my headcanon, helps to me that Starkiller and Ahsoka also both hold their lightsabers backwards.

As for the main plot: I've heard this game referred to as just a power fantasy for teens, and it does kind of come off to me that way, but in a good way for the gameplay, which I'll get to in a sec. Starkiller just didn't have much of an interesting personality to me, and his character design was too similar to Cole McGrath from inFamous and damn near every other white guy protagonist in the late 2000s (mostly because of the shaved head), and the Light Side ending just felt... okay to me, but the Dark Side ending seemed more fitting to me personally.

The idea of Vader and Palpatine using him to accidentally create the Rebels is an idea I don't necessarily hate; after all, incompetence is one of the hallmarks of fascism, and it would speak to how empires always fall due to their own hubris, but it plays against the idea that hope will always succeed on its own (though you could argue Starkiller was responsible for holding the hope and keeping it alive), and it also directly contradicts the Radio Dramas, which show that Bail Organa was at least tolerated by the Empire, but was almost executed directly by Palpatine, who knew for a fact he was leading the Rebel Alliance. That contradiction, to me, makes me wish the game was its own thing and just stuck to having the Dark Side ending as a deviation from the main series. It would have been a hell of a shock ending that stuck with you, fits more with the shit you do throughout the game by being able to kill literally anyone and everything, and it wouldn't matter what you contradict. If anything, being a power fantasy that ends with you falling into being Palpatine's puppet perfectly encapsulates being a Sith in general: Giving into the Dark Side and causing chaos is good and fun at first, but it ends up coming back to haunt you in the end. You could do more sequels this way without worrying about the canon, or at least tweak the main story by making him a Dark Jedi in service of Palpatine, like Kam Solusar before Luke turned him back in Dark Empire II.

The gameplay I found mostly fun, but with a few caveats: I do love being able to use the Force to be able to kill basically anyone and everything, living up to "The Force Unleashed" name, but some enemies and gameplay mechanics I found a little off. I'm biased in the sense that I kind of suck at hack-and-slash games; I've played the old God of War and some Devil May Cry games, so I'm decent at pulling off some combos, but I found the combos here a little hard to pull off, and didn't feel very rewarding, and it doesn't help that enemies like the Purge Troopers or AT-STs and the like knock you over from the first strike you make and can't keep comboing them. I mainly said "fuck it" and hit them with Force Lightning until they died, or it gave me the quick-time reactions to kill them.

Ironically, because a lot of enemies later are like this, I found the boss fights to be even easier and more fun than most of the levels themselves; I actually got to make better use of the combos and have a real lightsaber fight. Otherwise, the levels I go through by just picking up Stormtroopers (and occasionally those damn Purge Troopers when they're close enough to a regular Stormtrooper) and tossing them around more than I use my lightsaber. It cheapens it a bit for me in that I don't use the actual weapon of a Jedi or Sith, but I still found that insanely fun and cartoonishly hilarious, plus it leveled me up faster by doing it. I even found myself being more sadistic with it by just holding Stormtroopers in the air, hearing them scream and beg for mercy, only to casually drop them off a cliff or walk them into a disintegration wall. Again, more reason to make the ending just have you become a full Sith.

This is also me being picky, but I would've also preferred if they went ham with the lightsaber combat and let you dismember enemies, going full M-rated. I know it's a Star Wars game and that's not likely to happen, especially not now, but it would've been fun for sure, and, again, actually fit into the feel of you falling into the Dark Side of the Force and made for a fun mechanic that you don't see in any other game.

Overall, pretty fun, and I'm glad I got the Ultimate Sith Edition for $30 so I could enjoy all the bonuses. I might check out the second one sometime down the road when I get it.