For reasons that should be apparent to anyone who looks at the opposite page, I'm writing this entry myself instead of letting Ahriman do it. The worst part is he seems to have taken a liking to be my scribe, and is now sulking that I won't let him do it. Perhaps if he improves his attitude I'll reconsider, but as it stands I like knowing what I'm writing won't suddenly be filled with expletives and suggestive comments about my mother.
To return to the subject at hand, however, I must record the last mission the Veil has so kindly given us. It seems we had finally decided to launch a full offensive on a terrorists group to the North, and we were about to be sent along (accompanied by Kaidar, who had returned from... something? He never quite told us) when we were waylaid and told we were being sent on a "special" assignment, namely a noble who had recently received a death threat. We were all a bit perplexed by this, since noble's usually have their own (often highly skilled) bodyguards, but as we were briefed it turned out this particular noble was the local Governor and he had kindly lent his forces to the current Veil operation. Also it seemed he was an old friend of Kaidar, so he in particular felt obliged to help him.
What made it more serious was that the death notice was from the Midnight Sun, a notorious assassin who had never failed to kill a target she had earmarked as deserving justice--in the form of death.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
New Veras Vengeance 2: And On My Day Off, Too
Man, Drachon is going to regret having bought this permanent ink... hope he didn't like this poem too much, hehe. Not enough blood mentioned, anyway.
Also, you ђค๔Ŧ คєŦlןเ, I'm sitting on your chest right now writing in your precious notebook because you can't handle the heat. That's right! If you just unbound me I could be helping you out... but since I can't tell you that in person, I, Ahriman, shall detail exactly every fault you made along this road to show you why you are such a tเคl๔ภ๔ןєคl and why you deserve to be unconscious right now, if not worse.
Also, you ђค๔Ŧ คєŦlןเ, I'm sitting on your chest right now writing in your precious notebook because you can't handle the heat. That's right! If you just unbound me I could be helping you out... but since I can't tell you that in person, I, Ahriman, shall detail exactly every fault you made along this road to show you why you are such a tเคl๔ภ๔ןєคl and why you deserve to be unconscious right now, if not worse.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
New Veras Vengeance 1: Fire Cleanses All
That's Drachon, if I ever get these sigils of bounding off. Thrice-damned mortal thinks he can control me? I'll prove him wrong, the [weird sigils].
What? Yes, yes I'm writing down what you're saying. Just because you're too lazy to write yourself while walking you think you can-!
What was that? Ya, your mother!!
Just because I have wings doesn't mean it's easier!!
....
....
Just because you can order me doesn't mean I'll like it.
Well yes.
Fine.
Monday, September 27, 2010
New Veras Vengeance: The Prologue
[Note: The New Veras Vengeance series will be the title and tag for the chronicles associated with the current D&D4e campaign being run, and as such will be the in-character writings of my character. Hopefully they'll be entertaining even if you're not a part of the campaign, but they are mainly meant for those who are a part of it (and the DM's who are now desperate for someone to record the happenings :-P)]
I sometimes wonder why I bother to commit my thoughts to paper, as I now do. I would normally associate diary writing and the sort with people who either lack self-confidence or are too full of it; but seeing as I know my strengths and limits, and I don't believe this will become some prized piece of literature in the future (although one can only hope) obviously this isn't the case.
I think the main point is this scribbling allows me to better consider the events that have taken place, especially during such a turning point as I am experiencing now. Veil employment is far far different than the last few years of my life, to be sure, and that's just from the standpoint of being in training. However, it seems we have finally proven our worth, and today we had our final test of sorts before setting out into the field. I think it's only fitting I recount the occasion.
I sometimes wonder why I bother to commit my thoughts to paper, as I now do. I would normally associate diary writing and the sort with people who either lack self-confidence or are too full of it; but seeing as I know my strengths and limits, and I don't believe this will become some prized piece of literature in the future (although one can only hope) obviously this isn't the case.
I think the main point is this scribbling allows me to better consider the events that have taken place, especially during such a turning point as I am experiencing now. Veil employment is far far different than the last few years of my life, to be sure, and that's just from the standpoint of being in training. However, it seems we have finally proven our worth, and today we had our final test of sorts before setting out into the field. I think it's only fitting I recount the occasion.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
We're Gonna Need A Lot of Wine Barrels: The Problem of Cheese
Ah, cheese. It can mean a great many things, depending on the context, ranging from a popular overpowered choice in a game, a risky early game choice, or just using something that's incredibly annoying. In any game that involves strategy & choices, whether's it's Warhammer 40k or SC2, accusations of cheese and cheese use are abound. It's always a question; if it works, why not use it? Does it cheapen the win to know you're using something "overpowered," or is it simply stupid not to use what the game gives you (although this idea treads dangerously to the Dark Side of glitch abuse).
It's an interesting question, and I'm afraid I can't give you any answers, but I can provide some (hopefully ) hilarious examples. You see, I've always been mostly against cheese, except in specific situations. For instance, 2 common "cheeses" of the Protoss army in SC2 are the cannon rush and Void Rays. The former is the kind of "risky early game strategy" kind of cheese, while the "Cheese Rays" are more the type of thing often considering overpowered (OP). I'd never been a fan of the cannon rush, the only time I've employed it was to annoy Aaron (and it only worked once out of the two times I've used it). On the other hand, I like Void Rays, but recently I've been trying to avoid them in order to a) not be so predictable and b) improve the number of options I can bring to the table in a game.
However, this was all to change.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Less Canon, More Cannon: A Review of Halo Reach
I had actually been planning to wait to write this review. The point being, I don't actually own Halo Reach; my friend bought it, and I played through the campaign co-op with him as well as borrowing it on a few occasions. I figured I should give it a more thorough playthrough, get to really know it, before I wrote a review.
This was before I've had it sitting in my room for the last 3 days, where when faced with free time I played Gears of War 2, L4D2, and SC2 unless specifically asked by someone else to play Reach. So before I get into details on the game, a tl;dr would be that Halo Reach is merely ok. It works as a social game, but it'll never be something that's my go-to game, nor will I ever buy it unless it gets down to the $20 price point.
This was before I've had it sitting in my room for the last 3 days, where when faced with free time I played Gears of War 2, L4D2, and SC2 unless specifically asked by someone else to play Reach. So before I get into details on the game, a tl;dr would be that Halo Reach is merely ok. It works as a social game, but it'll never be something that's my go-to game, nor will I ever buy it unless it gets down to the $20 price point.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Sweet Victory and Sour Loss: The Nature of Competitive Games
First of all, credit where credit is due. Thanks twicefold to Rome, once for helping me brainstorm a new, more descriptive (Ed: Debatable) title for this Blog, and second for writing the post that inspired this one. If you click the linky link, you'll find some thoughts on his relationship with competitive gaming, so I thought I'd follow up with mine.
I've also had a gradual growth to competitive gaming. First of all, the majority of my gaming career has been spent offline-- the first real online game I played wasn't till something like Battlefield 2142, which was all of 4 years ago. Likewise it wasn't till I got my 360 that I had a dedicated online gaming platform that I played with consistency.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Blame & Stolen Praise: The Nature of Team-Based Games
My two current games of choice of late have been the online components of Starcraft 2 & Gears of War 2, both of which I enjoy very much. SC2 tends to be when I have friends on, while GoW2 tends to consume my private time. Interestingly enough, neither of these are single-player, and both are team-based multiplayer. The two are pretty different though.
I read an interesting post on the SC2 forums about why people tend to shy away from 1v1 in SC2. It basically boiled down to risk/reward. He hypothesizes that like in a team FPS, with 3v3 and 4v4 SC2 matches you can always take the credit for a win, and blame the others for a loss. 1v1 means you have to face the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself for the loss, which most people can't handle.
I actually think the poster's probably right for the majority of gamers; I've definitely seen a lot of "if my teammates hadn't sucked I would have totally owned you" type comments after my team winning a 3v3. However, I like to think I don't fall under this category. I usually acknowledge my strengths and weaknesses, or comment when I didn't really help in a match, etc. I think it's actually my awareness of my strengths and weaknesses that drives me towards SC2 multiplayer.
I know I'm not great at early game, especially scouting & early harass. I could devote more time to improving these, but since as I stated I tend to play SC2 with friends, it's easier to just play on a team with someone like Aaron who complements my weaknesses with his strengths and come out all the better for it. Naturally I'll want to improve eventually, but it's easier to focus on improvement when you have a reliable ally to fall back on.
Which leads me to my next point: SC2 is actually far, far harder to tell who's pulling the team, anyway. Numbers often will show overall who was "doing" the most, but let me present a game from today.
Rome, Aaron and I played a ranked 3v3, and decided before the match started to do a (late) early T1 rush. We were going along, and suddenly Aaron got attacked. We managed to fight it off, but Aaron lost the majority of his base. However, we counterattacked (since Aaron had taken down a good chunk of the forces) and Rome and my combined force managed to take out the 3 enemy bases, one by one*, while Aaron rebuilt his base and lent a bit of support towards the end.
Looking at the numbers and graphs afterwards, it would seem Rome and I carried the game and Aaron didn't help. What that ignores is the fact that if Aaron hadn't defended the rush well enough, had he just been steamrolled, Rome and I couldn't have gone on the offensive like we did. While the game gives us credit numbers-wise, without Aaron being the excellent player he is, we probably would have lost. And that's why SC2 is hard to boil down in terms of team gameplay; it's often a combination of, say, Aaron's expansion harassment, Rome's raiding, and my heavy support that will win a game, and even if I destroy the most buildings or whatnot, our success is very interlinked, and we are all pretty dependent on one another (assuming the other players aren't completely incompetent)
I want to contrast this with Gears. It's also a very team-driven game; for instance, whenever a player drops and it turns into 4v5 instead of 5v5, the team with 5 has always won in my experience. There are rare exceptions will I will see the last player on a team beat the other 3 players, but those are just that: rare exceptions. This is a game, however, where it's very obvious who's helping the team, and numbers are quite relevant. I often seen organized teams (i.e. people obviously talking to one another) annihilate the opposing team, as often if not more often than one player carrying everyone else.
This is why it bugs me when so often good players will split off and do their own thing, and then be faced 4v1 because the other team is working together, and then complain that the other players aren't helping out. Sure, they usually kill 1 or 2 of the other opponents, but they get upset that apparently they're the only "good player." The simple fact is if they stuck with other teammates and used their skills instead of essentially hiding, we'd probably BE winning. In fact, if my team is losing, I usually end up following someone else, and more often than not it means we end up winning the round. It's a team tactical game, yet some people still think it's Halo or MW2. Master Chiefing it may earn you the kills and the points associated with it, but it won't always win you the round. In fact, my most memorable win recently was me killing the entire 5 members of the opposing team in one round, and that was only possible because they weren't watching their back because the rest of my team was firing on them.
What's my point with all this? Good question. I guess I'm lucky to have such a good group of gamer friends, ones who I can play a game of SC2 with and not be blamed for being the sole reason our team loses, or never get credit for us winning. One aspect of gaming I absolutely hate is the amount of idiots on multiplayer games, and I suspect that if I had been playing SC2 online alone I would have ceased playing it weeks ago. While it's nice to be the top player in a winning team of Gears, it's far more satisfying to congratulate known teammates after a SC2 win, or even to analyze a loss to improve next time. I think this sense of camaraderie is the real reason I haven't played much 1v1 in SC2; I get that experience from Gears, and I get my "real" team based game with friends on SC2.
-HTMC
*Funny story from that, regarding stupid end game complaints. As we were killing the last base, the guy complained that "no one builds base defenses." Rome and I asked if he meant his teammates, since we had just blown up their bases, and they had defenses. Enemy guy responds "no you guys," meaning Aaron had no defenses. I respond "...but it didn't matter," since we had obviously just won. He keeps repeating that no one builds defenses, which would make sense if Aaron not building defenses had meant we had lost the game... but we hadn't. We're still not sure why he brought it up, but I guess it supports the point that most people will blame anyone else but themselves for winning or losing a team game... even if that other person is on the other team :-P
I read an interesting post on the SC2 forums about why people tend to shy away from 1v1 in SC2. It basically boiled down to risk/reward. He hypothesizes that like in a team FPS, with 3v3 and 4v4 SC2 matches you can always take the credit for a win, and blame the others for a loss. 1v1 means you have to face the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself for the loss, which most people can't handle.
I actually think the poster's probably right for the majority of gamers; I've definitely seen a lot of "if my teammates hadn't sucked I would have totally owned you" type comments after my team winning a 3v3. However, I like to think I don't fall under this category. I usually acknowledge my strengths and weaknesses, or comment when I didn't really help in a match, etc. I think it's actually my awareness of my strengths and weaknesses that drives me towards SC2 multiplayer.
I know I'm not great at early game, especially scouting & early harass. I could devote more time to improving these, but since as I stated I tend to play SC2 with friends, it's easier to just play on a team with someone like Aaron who complements my weaknesses with his strengths and come out all the better for it. Naturally I'll want to improve eventually, but it's easier to focus on improvement when you have a reliable ally to fall back on.
Which leads me to my next point: SC2 is actually far, far harder to tell who's pulling the team, anyway. Numbers often will show overall who was "doing" the most, but let me present a game from today.
Rome, Aaron and I played a ranked 3v3, and decided before the match started to do a (late) early T1 rush. We were going along, and suddenly Aaron got attacked. We managed to fight it off, but Aaron lost the majority of his base. However, we counterattacked (since Aaron had taken down a good chunk of the forces) and Rome and my combined force managed to take out the 3 enemy bases, one by one*, while Aaron rebuilt his base and lent a bit of support towards the end.
Looking at the numbers and graphs afterwards, it would seem Rome and I carried the game and Aaron didn't help. What that ignores is the fact that if Aaron hadn't defended the rush well enough, had he just been steamrolled, Rome and I couldn't have gone on the offensive like we did. While the game gives us credit numbers-wise, without Aaron being the excellent player he is, we probably would have lost. And that's why SC2 is hard to boil down in terms of team gameplay; it's often a combination of, say, Aaron's expansion harassment, Rome's raiding, and my heavy support that will win a game, and even if I destroy the most buildings or whatnot, our success is very interlinked, and we are all pretty dependent on one another (assuming the other players aren't completely incompetent)
I want to contrast this with Gears. It's also a very team-driven game; for instance, whenever a player drops and it turns into 4v5 instead of 5v5, the team with 5 has always won in my experience. There are rare exceptions will I will see the last player on a team beat the other 3 players, but those are just that: rare exceptions. This is a game, however, where it's very obvious who's helping the team, and numbers are quite relevant. I often seen organized teams (i.e. people obviously talking to one another) annihilate the opposing team, as often if not more often than one player carrying everyone else.
This is why it bugs me when so often good players will split off and do their own thing, and then be faced 4v1 because the other team is working together, and then complain that the other players aren't helping out. Sure, they usually kill 1 or 2 of the other opponents, but they get upset that apparently they're the only "good player." The simple fact is if they stuck with other teammates and used their skills instead of essentially hiding, we'd probably BE winning. In fact, if my team is losing, I usually end up following someone else, and more often than not it means we end up winning the round. It's a team tactical game, yet some people still think it's Halo or MW2. Master Chiefing it may earn you the kills and the points associated with it, but it won't always win you the round. In fact, my most memorable win recently was me killing the entire 5 members of the opposing team in one round, and that was only possible because they weren't watching their back because the rest of my team was firing on them.
What's my point with all this? Good question. I guess I'm lucky to have such a good group of gamer friends, ones who I can play a game of SC2 with and not be blamed for being the sole reason our team loses, or never get credit for us winning. One aspect of gaming I absolutely hate is the amount of idiots on multiplayer games, and I suspect that if I had been playing SC2 online alone I would have ceased playing it weeks ago. While it's nice to be the top player in a winning team of Gears, it's far more satisfying to congratulate known teammates after a SC2 win, or even to analyze a loss to improve next time. I think this sense of camaraderie is the real reason I haven't played much 1v1 in SC2; I get that experience from Gears, and I get my "real" team based game with friends on SC2.
-HTMC
*Funny story from that, regarding stupid end game complaints. As we were killing the last base, the guy complained that "no one builds base defenses." Rome and I asked if he meant his teammates, since we had just blown up their bases, and they had defenses. Enemy guy responds "no you guys," meaning Aaron had no defenses. I respond "...but it didn't matter," since we had obviously just won. He keeps repeating that no one builds defenses, which would make sense if Aaron not building defenses had meant we had lost the game... but we hadn't. We're still not sure why he brought it up, but I guess it supports the point that most people will blame anyone else but themselves for winning or losing a team game... even if that other person is on the other team :-P
Sunday, September 12, 2010
There's No Good Title for This: Star Wars Vs. 40k
So to finish off this trifecta of Star Wars related post, I'm going to increase my nerd factor by a significant factor and do a comparison that's been brewing in my mind for quite some time. Note this comparison will be more in a spiritual form than completely grounded in fact: unlike some people who analyze the impact of the Death Star's destruction on Endor, or argue over what would happen if the same fired on the Enterprise, I feel like with both the 40k and the SW universe it's important to focus more on the fiction than the science. I'll attempt to break this down into several subsections, going from most general to most specific, and deciding who has an edge.
Assumptions
The first big assumption would be location. The first problem is that the 40k universe is far larger than the SW one. 40k's Imperium of Man numbers around a million planets at a given time, while SW's listed planets number less than a hundred, and in total can't be more than in the hundreds. Therefore to get even a balanced fight you'd have to assume the Imperium is launching an rather sizable expeditionary force against the SW's universe; so a new extragalactic invasion, but a different force. Timewise, we'll assume directly after NJO SW and "modern" 40k.
Structure & Organization
In general, 40k has the big advantage in that all the human planets are pretty much under one government, with one religion, one tongue, etc. Obviously it's not completely uniform, and many changes exist, but it's fundamentally far more unified than the SW universe is. Even the simple fact that the Galactic Alliance is still an alliance with a senate puts it at a disadvantage; there were beings arguing for peace with the Yuuzhan Vong even after the conquest of Coruscant. In comparison, while sometimes faulty, the Imperium benefits from a clear, unquestionable command structure and a fervent ideological belief, so is rather comparable to the Yuuzhan Vong in this respect, and would cause similar problems, and be similarly useless to negotiate with. On the flip side, individual commanders in the SW universe are given far more freedom and initiative, giving the GA far more flexibility and ease of response. This can obviously still work against them, since the GA is a bit more weak to infighting and clash of opinion than the Imperium, but it still is a nice benefit on a micro side of things. Despite this, though, the Imperium wins pretty easily in this category.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 0
Technology
This section is where SW has a pretty big advantage. While the Imperium has some pretty awesome technology, and a lot of cool things, there aren't a ton of things that the Imperium has that the Alliance doesn't have something comparable. The other big advantage is the stagnation the the Imperium. Whatever they bring to the battle is often all they'll ever have, and often thing they lose are irreplaceable. The Alliance however is easily adjustable and is always evolving, and this gives a huge advantage. If they can get around YV black holes, I'm sure they can adjust to void shields, and if they can deal with amphistaffs I doubt chainswords will be problematic for long. Another nice touch is the Alliance's ability to use droids, especially things like the YV Hunter droids Lando develops, which would help balance out the sheer numbers of the Imperium and things like Sentinels and Dreadnaughts. Both the Tau and the Tyranids have used adaptability to overcome the Imperium, and I suspect the SW universe would also benefit from this. Technology can often vary widely through Imperial Worlds, to the point where you can sometimes (rarely) get IG regiments who use stubbers because they don't have lasgun technology. SW planets are pretty well distributed technology wise, with the exceptions of real backwaters, which is rarer than in the Imperium.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 1
Standard Infantry
The standard lasgun and the standard blaster seem pretty similar in function and effectiveness, and the same for standard armor (I feel like Stormtrooper armor [in lore if not in the movies] is about the same as Carapace armor). Numbers-wise the Imperial Guard probably has an advantage, since the Alliance doesn't seem super hot on infantry combat, although 1v1 a Guardsman and an Alliance trooper are probably about evenly matched, again trading pure doctrinarian and standards for a bit more freedom and flexibility. Assuming even numbers, it'd be an even battle, but assuming respective norms the Imperium would probably have an advantage.
Imperium: 1.5
Alliance: 2
Ground Vehicles
While the movies showcase a lot of ground vehicles, in the EU and especially NJO they tend to have a very minor role, making them a bit harder to judge. SW is usually all about air and space superiority, and ground troops if you /have/ to take on ground targets. That being said, even assuming the technological adjustment I mentioned above, changing the whole way of making war would be time consuming and a bit difficult, so the Imperium would likely have a large advantage in mechanized combat and would enjoy it. (Not to even mention titans).
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 2
Starfighters
As far as I'm given to understand, Lightnings and Marauders and the like are simply more modern versions of our current fighter jets, in that they're simply armor and ballistics. SW has the advantage of true advanced fighters, with shields, lasers, missiles, etc. Fighters in the Imperium seem there mostly to engage other starfighters and harry smaller ships, whereas a concentrated starfighter strike will often take down capital ships given the right circumstances in SW. 40k fighters seem best suited to air support on planets, where SW ones have a complete superiority role often unless they're super specialized like B-wings. All in all, SW fighters would almost certainly outclass Imperial ships, giving the Alliance a huge advantage in space combat.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3
Capital Ships
The Imperium has an advantage in having bigger capital ships, while the Alliance has an advantage in them being much more numerous and much more easily produced. This is where things get a little tricky, given relative differences in fire power and weaponry, but it seems like the Alliance would have the pure advantage in terms of small and medium ships (both in terms of them being more common and usually packing more firepower and defenses). In terms of actual capital class ships, Imperial ones probably would easily come off the better in 1v1, but this is one case where SW has a big advantage, since the average fleet contains a number of Star Destroyers, Mon Calamari Cruisers, etc while it's a giant Imperial fleet that contains an equal number of large ships. They also seem far superior in terms of maneuverability and bringing fire to bear; Imperial ships seem like giant sea ships in terms of using broadsides, whereas SW ships are more like "true" space ships, giving them another advantage. The short story is that the SW universe is centered around space combat for the most part, whereas 40k is often more focused on ground combat. Nevertheless, it would still be a definite fight, even if SW has an advantage.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3.5
Elites
What you've all been waiting for this entire time, I'm sure: the question of Jedi vs. Space Marines. In a 1v1 setting, I'm going to say that an average Jedi will beat an average Space Marine every time. Jedi are notoriously hard to kill in ranged combat, and will close to CC range. The average Space Marine does not have a power weapon, whereas every Jedi does: this means that with anything up to and sometimes including a Sergeant the Jedi will win through pure weapon advantage (even a well-trained swordsman with a power sword in 40k lore will always beat a normal Space Marine, so I don't think this is at all a reach). When you throw power weapons into the mix, it gets a little closer. The Space Marine will have a lot of experience (oftentimes in the scale of hundreds of years) and the power weapon would theoretically the same as a lightsaber in terms of blocking and hitting, but the Jedi's Force ability usually means battle senses: no matter how much experience, the ability to foresee an opponent's move will usually be the deciding factor. Jedi are also faster and stronger than normal humans, albeit not as much as Space Marines, which is why I'll say that Jedi will probably often, if not always, beat a power-equipped SM. When you get to Librarians or Chapter Masters it gets interesting, since the Warp is way different than the Force. I suspect that one of the above versus a highly experienced Jedi Knight or Jedi Master would be a very close thing. If we get to named characters it's anyone's guess.
However, the key point is that Space Marines rarely work along, and are usually in squads of at least 5. Jedi often work in teams of 2 or 1, and it's a special occasion when you get more than that. So really the question comes down to statistically likely what size group would be fighting what other size. I was forced to do something I've prior to this been trying to avoid, that of looking up statistics.
In the SW univese, there's at the end of NJO around 200 Jedi left. According to Wookiepedia, there's about about 20 million planets with sentient life; a rather unhelpful figure, to be honest. The Galactic Alliance page puts the planets at about 1.2 million.
The galaxy pages states that the total population of the galaxy is 100 quadrillion lifeforms over 20 million planets, meaning an average of 5 billion per planet. I think these numbers are fishy, but let's run with it. That means that the Jedi:People ratio is about 1:3.6^13.
The averages for the Imperium are much much harder to come by, since they can vary from billions and billions on a hive world to mere hundreds on a frontier colony. However, the planets is an easy one million. To make thngs easy, let's also assume 5 billion per planet, giving the population roughly equal to the Alliances. Instead of 200 Jedi, though, you have roughly 1,000 chapters of 1,000, or a million marines, giving a much favorable ratio.
Even assuming the SW numbers of stupidly inflated (which it probably is, I don't think most SW writers would agree that the average planet has 5 billion lifeforms, or that the Alliance is composed of 1.2 million planets) 200 Jedi is still a tiny, tiny number, so the Space Marines would likely steamroll A LOT. I'm sure they could be taken down, but like everything else they fight, it would cost a lot.
Imperium: 3.5
Alliance: 3.5
Conclusion
I actually didn't have numbers or anything planned out while writing this, it all came kind of naturally, so I'm actually surprised the score came out even. Regardless, it seems the general gist is that SW holds the natural front on space combat, whereas the Imperium would dominate on the ground (although the space combat advantage would also likely turn into air superiority on the ground, which might change things; I doubt even hydras would do much vs. strafing X-Wings). It would probably be simply a race to make sure the Imperium never won a space battle to the point they could launch a ground invasion: in some ways, it would be very similar to the Yuuzhan Vong war in that respect, meaning the Alliance has some good experience fighting them off.
Again, I think the key point would be the technological one mentioned above. Much as the Yuuzhan Vong were a mostly static race, the Imperium would probably win a number of smashing victories out the gate, but as the Alliance adjusted that momentum would quickly peter out, and eventually the Alliance would have the upper hand. How much loss would occur before that is up for debate, but I feel an invasion of the SW universe by the Imperium would eventually end badly.
Of course, the big question is again the numbers. I assumed that 40k had a huge advantage, given the lore I've read in both, but apparently the technical facts on Wookipedia speak differently (I'm compelled to call bulls***, but who knows). Assuming the current wars-on-all-fronts of the Imperium, they wouldn't be able to devote as much resources as necessary; if they had somehow secured their galaxy, then they'd also be at an advantage. That would also mean you'd assume the SW galaxy was equally peaceful, but even at their worst they're never as war-torn as the 40k universe is.
Anyway, I've very curious to hear what you all think; what points you think I missed, what points you think I got wrong, etc. If I get enough interesting comments I might write a follow-up, since as I said this wasn't /that/ planned out. Other than that though, this'll probably be the last SW post for a while, so expect other things next time.
-HTMC
Assumptions
The first big assumption would be location. The first problem is that the 40k universe is far larger than the SW one. 40k's Imperium of Man numbers around a million planets at a given time, while SW's listed planets number less than a hundred, and in total can't be more than in the hundreds. Therefore to get even a balanced fight you'd have to assume the Imperium is launching an rather sizable expeditionary force against the SW's universe; so a new extragalactic invasion, but a different force. Timewise, we'll assume directly after NJO SW and "modern" 40k.
Structure & Organization
In general, 40k has the big advantage in that all the human planets are pretty much under one government, with one religion, one tongue, etc. Obviously it's not completely uniform, and many changes exist, but it's fundamentally far more unified than the SW universe is. Even the simple fact that the Galactic Alliance is still an alliance with a senate puts it at a disadvantage; there were beings arguing for peace with the Yuuzhan Vong even after the conquest of Coruscant. In comparison, while sometimes faulty, the Imperium benefits from a clear, unquestionable command structure and a fervent ideological belief, so is rather comparable to the Yuuzhan Vong in this respect, and would cause similar problems, and be similarly useless to negotiate with. On the flip side, individual commanders in the SW universe are given far more freedom and initiative, giving the GA far more flexibility and ease of response. This can obviously still work against them, since the GA is a bit more weak to infighting and clash of opinion than the Imperium, but it still is a nice benefit on a micro side of things. Despite this, though, the Imperium wins pretty easily in this category.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 0
Technology
This section is where SW has a pretty big advantage. While the Imperium has some pretty awesome technology, and a lot of cool things, there aren't a ton of things that the Imperium has that the Alliance doesn't have something comparable. The other big advantage is the stagnation the the Imperium. Whatever they bring to the battle is often all they'll ever have, and often thing they lose are irreplaceable. The Alliance however is easily adjustable and is always evolving, and this gives a huge advantage. If they can get around YV black holes, I'm sure they can adjust to void shields, and if they can deal with amphistaffs I doubt chainswords will be problematic for long. Another nice touch is the Alliance's ability to use droids, especially things like the YV Hunter droids Lando develops, which would help balance out the sheer numbers of the Imperium and things like Sentinels and Dreadnaughts. Both the Tau and the Tyranids have used adaptability to overcome the Imperium, and I suspect the SW universe would also benefit from this. Technology can often vary widely through Imperial Worlds, to the point where you can sometimes (rarely) get IG regiments who use stubbers because they don't have lasgun technology. SW planets are pretty well distributed technology wise, with the exceptions of real backwaters, which is rarer than in the Imperium.
Imperium: 1
Alliance: 1
Standard Infantry
The standard lasgun and the standard blaster seem pretty similar in function and effectiveness, and the same for standard armor (I feel like Stormtrooper armor [in lore if not in the movies] is about the same as Carapace armor). Numbers-wise the Imperial Guard probably has an advantage, since the Alliance doesn't seem super hot on infantry combat, although 1v1 a Guardsman and an Alliance trooper are probably about evenly matched, again trading pure doctrinarian and standards for a bit more freedom and flexibility. Assuming even numbers, it'd be an even battle, but assuming respective norms the Imperium would probably have an advantage.
Imperium: 1.5
Alliance: 2
Ground Vehicles
While the movies showcase a lot of ground vehicles, in the EU and especially NJO they tend to have a very minor role, making them a bit harder to judge. SW is usually all about air and space superiority, and ground troops if you /have/ to take on ground targets. That being said, even assuming the technological adjustment I mentioned above, changing the whole way of making war would be time consuming and a bit difficult, so the Imperium would likely have a large advantage in mechanized combat and would enjoy it. (Not to even mention titans).
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 2
Starfighters
As far as I'm given to understand, Lightnings and Marauders and the like are simply more modern versions of our current fighter jets, in that they're simply armor and ballistics. SW has the advantage of true advanced fighters, with shields, lasers, missiles, etc. Fighters in the Imperium seem there mostly to engage other starfighters and harry smaller ships, whereas a concentrated starfighter strike will often take down capital ships given the right circumstances in SW. 40k fighters seem best suited to air support on planets, where SW ones have a complete superiority role often unless they're super specialized like B-wings. All in all, SW fighters would almost certainly outclass Imperial ships, giving the Alliance a huge advantage in space combat.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3
Capital Ships
The Imperium has an advantage in having bigger capital ships, while the Alliance has an advantage in them being much more numerous and much more easily produced. This is where things get a little tricky, given relative differences in fire power and weaponry, but it seems like the Alliance would have the pure advantage in terms of small and medium ships (both in terms of them being more common and usually packing more firepower and defenses). In terms of actual capital class ships, Imperial ones probably would easily come off the better in 1v1, but this is one case where SW has a big advantage, since the average fleet contains a number of Star Destroyers, Mon Calamari Cruisers, etc while it's a giant Imperial fleet that contains an equal number of large ships. They also seem far superior in terms of maneuverability and bringing fire to bear; Imperial ships seem like giant sea ships in terms of using broadsides, whereas SW ships are more like "true" space ships, giving them another advantage. The short story is that the SW universe is centered around space combat for the most part, whereas 40k is often more focused on ground combat. Nevertheless, it would still be a definite fight, even if SW has an advantage.
Imperium: 2.5
Alliance: 3.5
Elites
What you've all been waiting for this entire time, I'm sure: the question of Jedi vs. Space Marines. In a 1v1 setting, I'm going to say that an average Jedi will beat an average Space Marine every time. Jedi are notoriously hard to kill in ranged combat, and will close to CC range. The average Space Marine does not have a power weapon, whereas every Jedi does: this means that with anything up to and sometimes including a Sergeant the Jedi will win through pure weapon advantage (even a well-trained swordsman with a power sword in 40k lore will always beat a normal Space Marine, so I don't think this is at all a reach). When you throw power weapons into the mix, it gets a little closer. The Space Marine will have a lot of experience (oftentimes in the scale of hundreds of years) and the power weapon would theoretically the same as a lightsaber in terms of blocking and hitting, but the Jedi's Force ability usually means battle senses: no matter how much experience, the ability to foresee an opponent's move will usually be the deciding factor. Jedi are also faster and stronger than normal humans, albeit not as much as Space Marines, which is why I'll say that Jedi will probably often, if not always, beat a power-equipped SM. When you get to Librarians or Chapter Masters it gets interesting, since the Warp is way different than the Force. I suspect that one of the above versus a highly experienced Jedi Knight or Jedi Master would be a very close thing. If we get to named characters it's anyone's guess.
However, the key point is that Space Marines rarely work along, and are usually in squads of at least 5. Jedi often work in teams of 2 or 1, and it's a special occasion when you get more than that. So really the question comes down to statistically likely what size group would be fighting what other size. I was forced to do something I've prior to this been trying to avoid, that of looking up statistics.
In the SW univese, there's at the end of NJO around 200 Jedi left. According to Wookiepedia, there's about about 20 million planets with sentient life; a rather unhelpful figure, to be honest. The Galactic Alliance page puts the planets at about 1.2 million.
The galaxy pages states that the total population of the galaxy is 100 quadrillion lifeforms over 20 million planets, meaning an average of 5 billion per planet. I think these numbers are fishy, but let's run with it. That means that the Jedi:People ratio is about 1:3.6^13.
The averages for the Imperium are much much harder to come by, since they can vary from billions and billions on a hive world to mere hundreds on a frontier colony. However, the planets is an easy one million. To make thngs easy, let's also assume 5 billion per planet, giving the population roughly equal to the Alliances. Instead of 200 Jedi, though, you have roughly 1,000 chapters of 1,000, or a million marines, giving a much favorable ratio.
Even assuming the SW numbers of stupidly inflated (which it probably is, I don't think most SW writers would agree that the average planet has 5 billion lifeforms, or that the Alliance is composed of 1.2 million planets) 200 Jedi is still a tiny, tiny number, so the Space Marines would likely steamroll A LOT. I'm sure they could be taken down, but like everything else they fight, it would cost a lot.
Imperium: 3.5
Alliance: 3.5
Conclusion
I actually didn't have numbers or anything planned out while writing this, it all came kind of naturally, so I'm actually surprised the score came out even. Regardless, it seems the general gist is that SW holds the natural front on space combat, whereas the Imperium would dominate on the ground (although the space combat advantage would also likely turn into air superiority on the ground, which might change things; I doubt even hydras would do much vs. strafing X-Wings). It would probably be simply a race to make sure the Imperium never won a space battle to the point they could launch a ground invasion: in some ways, it would be very similar to the Yuuzhan Vong war in that respect, meaning the Alliance has some good experience fighting them off.
Again, I think the key point would be the technological one mentioned above. Much as the Yuuzhan Vong were a mostly static race, the Imperium would probably win a number of smashing victories out the gate, but as the Alliance adjusted that momentum would quickly peter out, and eventually the Alliance would have the upper hand. How much loss would occur before that is up for debate, but I feel an invasion of the SW universe by the Imperium would eventually end badly.
Of course, the big question is again the numbers. I assumed that 40k had a huge advantage, given the lore I've read in both, but apparently the technical facts on Wookipedia speak differently (I'm compelled to call bulls***, but who knows). Assuming the current wars-on-all-fronts of the Imperium, they wouldn't be able to devote as much resources as necessary; if they had somehow secured their galaxy, then they'd also be at an advantage. That would also mean you'd assume the SW galaxy was equally peaceful, but even at their worst they're never as war-torn as the 40k universe is.
Anyway, I've very curious to hear what you all think; what points you think I missed, what points you think I got wrong, etc. If I get enough interesting comments I might write a follow-up, since as I said this wasn't /that/ planned out. Other than that though, this'll probably be the last SW post for a while, so expect other things next time.
-HTMC
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
So Bad It's Bad: Grimdark & Star Wars
Since I ended up writing that post on the canonicity of videogames, and Star Wars in particular, I figure now is as good of time as any to write that pair of Star Wars posts I've been meaning to write, and make it into a trilogy (My enthusiasm for which has already been seen). Thus I again present you with two things I "like" and why they do not at all go together: The idea of "grimdark" and, again, Star Wars.
My interest in the grimdark has been more recent, stemming from things like Gears of Wars, various zombie things, war movies, and most particularly all the 40k stuff. Obviously there's a limit, and it has to be handled well, but a certain level of this works extraordinarily well in certain circumstances. Lots of examples exist, and while I don't think the majority of the media I consume could be labeled "grimdark," I definitely enjoy the genre (style?).
I've been a fan of the universe for as long as I can remember, although my actual count of watching the movies is relatively low; I've always been much more focused on the Expanded Universe, particularly the novels and short stories, and to a lesser extent things like video games, comics, the original Clone Wars shorts, etc. I devoured things like the X-Wing series and everything Timothy Zahn wrote, and supplemented it with anything I could find. If my memory serves me correctly, releases were fairly small while I was growing up, and there weren't so many spin-offs as there are now. I could be wrong.
However, all this changed with New Jedi Order. Although the writing team didn't use the word "grimdark," they specifically stated the goal was to make the Star Wars universe darker/grittier, which is why the series opens with the still controversial death of Chewbacca.
My opinion of the series is actually on the whole positive. Some of the stories are better than others. Some moments are treated amazingly, like Anakin's martyrdom, while others don't get nearly what they deserver, like the death of Tsavong Lah. Some of the stories, particularly the early ones, are forgettable to a large extent, while others (such as Traitor and the two by Aaron Allstone) are still worth rereading even out of order.
So yes, I think they achieved what they wanted. They wanted to get away from the predictable, the "Han/Leia/Luke get in trouble but everyone knows they'll barely make it out because we can't kill off those characters." I can understand some frustration from a writer's standpoint, wanting to do something different in a universe so many people love. And as I said, I think they handled it extremely well, for the most part. It was a good series, I don't regret reading it, and it definitely made for a different feel than the other works.
What I object strongly to is that now, since the NJO series sold so well, the writers seem to think that the rest of the books need to be grimdark in order to sell well. I read the Dark Nest Trilogy, which is the immediate sequel to the NJO series, and it basically said "let's take everything they resolved, destroy it, and have 3 of the strongest people in the entire SW universe fall victim to bugs... after defeating Force-blank extradimensional aliens."
Ya. That makes a lot of sense.
I honestly can barely remember anything from the series, because it was so bad both in terms of content, character believability, and actual writing style. I only finished the trilogy because I have some Completionist in me. I almost started reading the Legacy of the Force, only to read some of the plot summaries online, and then declare the entire series Excommunicatus Hereticus and thus non-canon (I would have burned all copies too, if I had the resources).
To give a summary of why I hate this book so much, I refer back to a book I referenced earlier, namely Traitor. It may be, in my mind, the best book of the series. It focuses on Jacen on occupied Coruscant, and his journey to come to terms with the Yuuzhan Vong, their alienness, and their lack of the Force. His descent into madness, confusion, and eventual reemergence as perhaps the wisest of the Jedi is one of the best stories I've read, period. It's philosophy and introspection through a Star Wars lens, and confronts the grimdarkness of the Yuuzhan Vong and takes from it something positive. Alien, but positive.
Jacen's key discovery is that the idea of the Light and Dark side of the Force is a farce. The Force is living energy; energy cannot be good or bad. What the Jedi refer to the Dark side is merely the evil within Force users themselves. Not only is such labeling detrimental, but by doing so the Jedi have blinded themselves to the full spectrum of the Force and cannot reach their whole potential.
Jacen solves the problem of the Vong Force-nakedness. He uses a Vong symbiot to fix his lightsaber, and becomes deeply in tune with it as as a result (as well as a symbiote implanted within him). He then becomes able to dimly, but still somewhat, sense the Vong in the Force. It's a huge breakthrough, and Jacen spends the rest of the series (although this book is 20/26, so towards the end) contemplating the Force and trying to learn as many of the non-Jedi Force-user cults as he can (such as the Dathomir witches).
Cool idea, right? Like I said, it's really well executed, an amazing character development and motivation for Jacen (who'd prior to that been Animal Boy, i.e. Pretty Boring). So what did Legacy of the Force do?
"Olololol I troll you! He's gonna become a Sith because he needs to learn ALL kinds of Force!"
"But wait, didn't he learn that the Dark side of the Force didn't really exist? What kind of motivation could he possibly have for this?!" you say in confusion and betrayal.
"I TROLL YOU" shouts Karen Traviss and Troy Denning.
So yes, Legacy of the Force (and everything else post NJO) is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. You'd think that the fact that pretty much every SW novel, no matter how grimdark or whatever, is a bestseller would clue the writers off that it doesn't NEED to be grimdark. In fact, while NJO was a nice change, I prefer the traditional type. Star Wars was ABOUT the heroic, the traditional happy ending story; Han may be frozen in carbonite, all may seem lost, but they'll come through eventually. It's a good feeling to know that. And if you really want to kill people? Be like Aaron Allstone or Michael Stackpole, or Timothy Zahn, and make some compelling characters that sometimes become more popular than the movie characters (I'm looking at you, Mara Jade and Corran Horn) and then you can kill them off.
Also, in that vein, Karen Traviss, you f***ing leave Timothy Zahn's characters alone. He writes infinitely better and more interesting stories than you do.
Anyway, sorry for the long and rambling post, but I've been bottling this up for a long time. Grimdarkness is good, and it has its place, but that place is not Star Wars. I'll get that fix elsewhere, and meanwhile I can go to Star Wars getting what I'm expecting. I mean, I'd be upset if I read a 40k novel where every character lived; likewise I'd be upset if I read a SW novel where EVERYONE DIED. So get back to your roots. Side stories featuring none of the movie characters can be awesome (again, see the Rogue Squadron series). Write more of those or something. If nothing else, it's getting silly that Han and Luke are the only two people in the entire galaxy who can handle some things (didn't Luke make that Jedi Academy for this reason?)
I welcome your thoughts, and thanks for bearing with me through all this.
-HTMC
My interest in the grimdark has been more recent, stemming from things like Gears of Wars, various zombie things, war movies, and most particularly all the 40k stuff. Obviously there's a limit, and it has to be handled well, but a certain level of this works extraordinarily well in certain circumstances. Lots of examples exist, and while I don't think the majority of the media I consume could be labeled "grimdark," I definitely enjoy the genre (style?).
I've been a fan of the universe for as long as I can remember, although my actual count of watching the movies is relatively low; I've always been much more focused on the Expanded Universe, particularly the novels and short stories, and to a lesser extent things like video games, comics, the original Clone Wars shorts, etc. I devoured things like the X-Wing series and everything Timothy Zahn wrote, and supplemented it with anything I could find. If my memory serves me correctly, releases were fairly small while I was growing up, and there weren't so many spin-offs as there are now. I could be wrong.
However, all this changed with New Jedi Order. Although the writing team didn't use the word "grimdark," they specifically stated the goal was to make the Star Wars universe darker/grittier, which is why the series opens with the still controversial death of Chewbacca.
My opinion of the series is actually on the whole positive. Some of the stories are better than others. Some moments are treated amazingly, like Anakin's martyrdom, while others don't get nearly what they deserver, like the death of Tsavong Lah. Some of the stories, particularly the early ones, are forgettable to a large extent, while others (such as Traitor and the two by Aaron Allstone) are still worth rereading even out of order.
So yes, I think they achieved what they wanted. They wanted to get away from the predictable, the "Han/Leia/Luke get in trouble but everyone knows they'll barely make it out because we can't kill off those characters." I can understand some frustration from a writer's standpoint, wanting to do something different in a universe so many people love. And as I said, I think they handled it extremely well, for the most part. It was a good series, I don't regret reading it, and it definitely made for a different feel than the other works.
What I object strongly to is that now, since the NJO series sold so well, the writers seem to think that the rest of the books need to be grimdark in order to sell well. I read the Dark Nest Trilogy, which is the immediate sequel to the NJO series, and it basically said "let's take everything they resolved, destroy it, and have 3 of the strongest people in the entire SW universe fall victim to bugs... after defeating Force-blank extradimensional aliens."
Ya. That makes a lot of sense.
I honestly can barely remember anything from the series, because it was so bad both in terms of content, character believability, and actual writing style. I only finished the trilogy because I have some Completionist in me. I almost started reading the Legacy of the Force, only to read some of the plot summaries online, and then declare the entire series Excommunicatus Hereticus and thus non-canon (I would have burned all copies too, if I had the resources).
To give a summary of why I hate this book so much, I refer back to a book I referenced earlier, namely Traitor. It may be, in my mind, the best book of the series. It focuses on Jacen on occupied Coruscant, and his journey to come to terms with the Yuuzhan Vong, their alienness, and their lack of the Force. His descent into madness, confusion, and eventual reemergence as perhaps the wisest of the Jedi is one of the best stories I've read, period. It's philosophy and introspection through a Star Wars lens, and confronts the grimdarkness of the Yuuzhan Vong and takes from it something positive. Alien, but positive.
Jacen's key discovery is that the idea of the Light and Dark side of the Force is a farce. The Force is living energy; energy cannot be good or bad. What the Jedi refer to the Dark side is merely the evil within Force users themselves. Not only is such labeling detrimental, but by doing so the Jedi have blinded themselves to the full spectrum of the Force and cannot reach their whole potential.
Jacen solves the problem of the Vong Force-nakedness. He uses a Vong symbiot to fix his lightsaber, and becomes deeply in tune with it as as a result (as well as a symbiote implanted within him). He then becomes able to dimly, but still somewhat, sense the Vong in the Force. It's a huge breakthrough, and Jacen spends the rest of the series (although this book is 20/26, so towards the end) contemplating the Force and trying to learn as many of the non-Jedi Force-user cults as he can (such as the Dathomir witches).
Cool idea, right? Like I said, it's really well executed, an amazing character development and motivation for Jacen (who'd prior to that been Animal Boy, i.e. Pretty Boring). So what did Legacy of the Force do?
"Olololol I troll you! He's gonna become a Sith because he needs to learn ALL kinds of Force!"
"But wait, didn't he learn that the Dark side of the Force didn't really exist? What kind of motivation could he possibly have for this?!" you say in confusion and betrayal.
"I TROLL YOU" shouts Karen Traviss and Troy Denning.
So yes, Legacy of the Force (and everything else post NJO) is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. You'd think that the fact that pretty much every SW novel, no matter how grimdark or whatever, is a bestseller would clue the writers off that it doesn't NEED to be grimdark. In fact, while NJO was a nice change, I prefer the traditional type. Star Wars was ABOUT the heroic, the traditional happy ending story; Han may be frozen in carbonite, all may seem lost, but they'll come through eventually. It's a good feeling to know that. And if you really want to kill people? Be like Aaron Allstone or Michael Stackpole, or Timothy Zahn, and make some compelling characters that sometimes become more popular than the movie characters (I'm looking at you, Mara Jade and Corran Horn) and then you can kill them off.
Also, in that vein, Karen Traviss, you f***ing leave Timothy Zahn's characters alone. He writes infinitely better and more interesting stories than you do.
Anyway, sorry for the long and rambling post, but I've been bottling this up for a long time. Grimdarkness is good, and it has its place, but that place is not Star Wars. I'll get that fix elsewhere, and meanwhile I can go to Star Wars getting what I'm expecting. I mean, I'd be upset if I read a 40k novel where every character lived; likewise I'd be upset if I read a SW novel where EVERYONE DIED. So get back to your roots. Side stories featuring none of the movie characters can be awesome (again, see the Rogue Squadron series). Write more of those or something. If nothing else, it's getting silly that Han and Luke are the only two people in the entire galaxy who can handle some things (didn't Luke make that Jedi Academy for this reason?)
I welcome your thoughts, and thanks for bearing with me through all this.
-HTMC
Monday, September 6, 2010
Video Games And Canon, or, The Lack Thereof
I'm supposed to be writing a short piece on Plato, but instead I'm going to talk about two subjects I enjoy far more, namely Stars Wars and videogames.
I actually have a couple SW related posts bouncing lazily around my skull, but this one is short and relevant to what I'm currently doing.
Anyway, Star Wars. I like Star Wars. I like the stories, I know the canon well, I have enjoyed and continued to enjoy the universe in its entirety, despite various ups and downs (and forcibly ignoring the travesty that is Karin Travess, may a Sarlacc consume her). I like videogames a lot too, as the number of posts on this site will attest. I don't think they work well together as a general rule, though, specifically when it involves story-telling.
For instance, KotOR. I'll admit I've never played through either game completely, but what I did play didn't impress me very much. For starts, the time period is kind of boring to me in terms of the SW continuity, and in addition they had to make things 2000 or whatever BANH (before A New Hope) but still maintain the Star Wars feel, which ends up being ANH with different names and none of the same characters. It would have been interesting if they had seriously messed with the look or feel of the universe... but they didn't, so I for one just was wondering where everything I know was. I understand why they did it, since it gives them far freer rein in what stories to tell and what to do with the characters, but I kind of ignore it for the same reason that I ignore the series set hundreds of years after the Yuuzhan Vong war.
Another example are the two Battlefront games. While being excellent games, they didn't make a strong attempt to be canon, and I think they gained from it. While I'll always be annoyed at things like using thermal detonators as grenades, it tried to be a good, solid shooter, and succeeded. Things like Battlefield 1942 didn't need much of a story, just a good background to set the war in, and this succeeded.
Another example is Super Bombad Racing. I'm not really gonna touch that.
Anyway, this brings me to the latest point, where I started today playing the Force Unleashed. This is where canonicity really rears its head. For starters, the first level is on Kashyyyk. On the ground.
Admittedly, a couple other games and the movie itself also featured ground on Kashyyyk. But in canon, you don't go to ground level. If you're there, you're dead and being eaten by giant predators. But to serve a videogame setting, it's on the ground. Likewise you get Wookies dying in droves, despite how long lived and relatively rare offspring are. The game moves on to things like taking multiple lightsaber slashes to kill a single human, Force powers always having a physical appearance, and a Jedi Master sacrificing his entire battalion to draw out a Force user.
I get it, videogames need certain liberties in order to function. If you could always one-hit kill with a lightsaber, it would get somewhat old quickly. But then I hear things about the canon of these kind of games being contested, and I just want to say: No. They're no canon. They're games. In the same way that I view the Blood Angels as a fun fan Chapter that Relic made up, or even how a football team winning in Madden 200x doesn't represent real life, any videogame drawn from an outside canon is probably not actually going to follow the canon well, and I will likely not buy into it.
Videogames need certain parameters to work, and often this conflicts with the universe lore. While this isn't a problem in and of itself, when you try to force a videogame that simple conflicts into canon, then you have problems. I think the solution is to (again only for series not originating in videogames) simply leave the games as a fun side note, and leave the canon to books, movies, and other mediums.
-HTMC
I actually have a couple SW related posts bouncing lazily around my skull, but this one is short and relevant to what I'm currently doing.
Anyway, Star Wars. I like Star Wars. I like the stories, I know the canon well, I have enjoyed and continued to enjoy the universe in its entirety, despite various ups and downs (and forcibly ignoring the travesty that is Karin Travess, may a Sarlacc consume her). I like videogames a lot too, as the number of posts on this site will attest. I don't think they work well together as a general rule, though, specifically when it involves story-telling.
For instance, KotOR. I'll admit I've never played through either game completely, but what I did play didn't impress me very much. For starts, the time period is kind of boring to me in terms of the SW continuity, and in addition they had to make things 2000 or whatever BANH (before A New Hope) but still maintain the Star Wars feel, which ends up being ANH with different names and none of the same characters. It would have been interesting if they had seriously messed with the look or feel of the universe... but they didn't, so I for one just was wondering where everything I know was. I understand why they did it, since it gives them far freer rein in what stories to tell and what to do with the characters, but I kind of ignore it for the same reason that I ignore the series set hundreds of years after the Yuuzhan Vong war.
Another example are the two Battlefront games. While being excellent games, they didn't make a strong attempt to be canon, and I think they gained from it. While I'll always be annoyed at things like using thermal detonators as grenades, it tried to be a good, solid shooter, and succeeded. Things like Battlefield 1942 didn't need much of a story, just a good background to set the war in, and this succeeded.
Another example is Super Bombad Racing. I'm not really gonna touch that.
Anyway, this brings me to the latest point, where I started today playing the Force Unleashed. This is where canonicity really rears its head. For starters, the first level is on Kashyyyk. On the ground.
Admittedly, a couple other games and the movie itself also featured ground on Kashyyyk. But in canon, you don't go to ground level. If you're there, you're dead and being eaten by giant predators. But to serve a videogame setting, it's on the ground. Likewise you get Wookies dying in droves, despite how long lived and relatively rare offspring are. The game moves on to things like taking multiple lightsaber slashes to kill a single human, Force powers always having a physical appearance, and a Jedi Master sacrificing his entire battalion to draw out a Force user.
I get it, videogames need certain liberties in order to function. If you could always one-hit kill with a lightsaber, it would get somewhat old quickly. But then I hear things about the canon of these kind of games being contested, and I just want to say: No. They're no canon. They're games. In the same way that I view the Blood Angels as a fun fan Chapter that Relic made up, or even how a football team winning in Madden 200x doesn't represent real life, any videogame drawn from an outside canon is probably not actually going to follow the canon well, and I will likely not buy into it.
Videogames need certain parameters to work, and often this conflicts with the universe lore. While this isn't a problem in and of itself, when you try to force a videogame that simple conflicts into canon, then you have problems. I think the solution is to (again only for series not originating in videogames) simply leave the games as a fun side note, and leave the canon to books, movies, and other mediums.
-HTMC
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Going Beyond the Impossible And Making the Believable: A Review of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Scott Pilgrim actually succeeded in passing completely under my radar; I had never heard of the comic, I don't think I ever saw trailers (and if I did I obviously forgot it), and the first time I remember hearing about it was during my weekly Rotten Tomatoes check where I saw it was garnering mostly positive reviews. When a friend invited me to accompany him to watch the film, I accepted purely on those grounds.
Therefore I walked out of the theater having been very pleasantly surprised, since Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is likely one of the best movies I've seen this year (although to be fair I haven't been super happy with the offerings). It's always a nice surprise when a movie comes out of the blue like that.
I think there are two main points as to why I enjoyed the film so much. The first has to do with the scope, for lack of a better word. It seems the directors/producers/etc had a specific vision in mind, and they seemed to have pulled it off without any part failing. The acting is good, effects excellent, soundtrack good, editing, wardrobe, etc etc. No part was lacking and everything came together really well. I think all the actors were well cast, and he-whose-name-I-always-forget (Michael Cera, and I just had to look that up) mad a surprisingly good "action" hero, despite his inherent painful awkwardness. They also managed the feat for making the female "punk" outfit actually work, from my perspective. Surprise minor roles from people like Anna Kendrick and Mae Whitman were also cool.
The second point has to do with the title; although the film made no attempt to be completely ridiculous (what with people exploding into coins and Scott drawing a sword from his chest) for all it's over-the-topness, it managed to be somehow more authentic when it came to the love story. Although I'm not expert in "chick flicks," I've obviously seen a lot of movies that revolved around a love story, ranging from Twilight to the Notebook to Titanic and whatnot. However, Scott Pilgrim seemed to really hit home and actually resonate with me in terms of what relationships are like. I can't really pinpoint what facets make it the case, and it's not like any of the relationships actually correlate to experience I've had, but the way the characters behave and the way the actors perform their roles just felt unforced, realistic, and completely not-Hollywood. Obviously this is only my feeling and I don't know if others feel the same, but it was definitely one of the strongest points of the movie.
Beyond those things, the action scenes were cool, the characters pretty interesting (although, as always, Michael Cera was Michael Cera + Superpowers) and it felt culturally relevant to me. One thing I will warn was that, when I saw the reviews, I saw a lot of them mentioned the "lots of videogame references." This put me on guard, since I assume movie reviewers and video game enthusiasts don't overlap very much. I think I was proven correct, since the movie deals with a substantial number of video game tropes (particularly fighting games) it never gets referential in way a show like The Big Bang Theory gets, where a majority of the viewers may not get a joke. The closest thing was the FF2 and Zelda themes playing, but I never felt like there was a joke I got that people with even a passing familiarity of gaming wouldn't. However, this is far from being a flaw, and rather just an observation.
Anyway, the movie has been out for a while now, and I can happily recommend it to all my friends, since it is quite enjoyable and worth seeing. If you do miss it in theaters, it's not spectacular enough to regret not seeing it on a big screen, so do yourself a favor and find it next time you're wondering what movie to watch.
-HTMC
Therefore I walked out of the theater having been very pleasantly surprised, since Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is likely one of the best movies I've seen this year (although to be fair I haven't been super happy with the offerings). It's always a nice surprise when a movie comes out of the blue like that.
I think there are two main points as to why I enjoyed the film so much. The first has to do with the scope, for lack of a better word. It seems the directors/producers/etc had a specific vision in mind, and they seemed to have pulled it off without any part failing. The acting is good, effects excellent, soundtrack good, editing, wardrobe, etc etc. No part was lacking and everything came together really well. I think all the actors were well cast, and he-whose-name-I-always-forget (Michael Cera, and I just had to look that up) mad a surprisingly good "action" hero, despite his inherent painful awkwardness. They also managed the feat for making the female "punk" outfit actually work, from my perspective. Surprise minor roles from people like Anna Kendrick and Mae Whitman were also cool.
The second point has to do with the title; although the film made no attempt to be completely ridiculous (what with people exploding into coins and Scott drawing a sword from his chest) for all it's over-the-topness, it managed to be somehow more authentic when it came to the love story. Although I'm not expert in "chick flicks," I've obviously seen a lot of movies that revolved around a love story, ranging from Twilight to the Notebook to Titanic and whatnot. However, Scott Pilgrim seemed to really hit home and actually resonate with me in terms of what relationships are like. I can't really pinpoint what facets make it the case, and it's not like any of the relationships actually correlate to experience I've had, but the way the characters behave and the way the actors perform their roles just felt unforced, realistic, and completely not-Hollywood. Obviously this is only my feeling and I don't know if others feel the same, but it was definitely one of the strongest points of the movie.
Beyond those things, the action scenes were cool, the characters pretty interesting (although, as always, Michael Cera was Michael Cera + Superpowers) and it felt culturally relevant to me. One thing I will warn was that, when I saw the reviews, I saw a lot of them mentioned the "lots of videogame references." This put me on guard, since I assume movie reviewers and video game enthusiasts don't overlap very much. I think I was proven correct, since the movie deals with a substantial number of video game tropes (particularly fighting games) it never gets referential in way a show like The Big Bang Theory gets, where a majority of the viewers may not get a joke. The closest thing was the FF2 and Zelda themes playing, but I never felt like there was a joke I got that people with even a passing familiarity of gaming wouldn't. However, this is far from being a flaw, and rather just an observation.
Anyway, the movie has been out for a while now, and I can happily recommend it to all my friends, since it is quite enjoyable and worth seeing. If you do miss it in theaters, it's not spectacular enough to regret not seeing it on a big screen, so do yourself a favor and find it next time you're wondering what movie to watch.
-HTMC
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