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The annoying obsessiveness of the extended universe
Chieftan
Member UncommonPosts: 1,188
Just a quick preface here: SWTOR is the best MMO I've played yet. I think it's outstanding. BUT, it is part of the SW extended universe and I have to rant a little about it.
My post will be about Boba Fett and if anybody else has a similar rant, feel free to share yours.
Ok here's what Boba Fett was: a dude with a really cool outfit who talked like Clint Eastwood(in a reference to hired guns in cowboy movies). He was a bounty hunter. According to Lucas he wore mandalorian armor that was worn during the Clone Wars. THAT'S IT END OF STORY. STOP RIGHT THERE.
But nooooooooooooooooo! as Vader would say. That's not enough for writers of fan fiction. In the EU, Boba Fett is a mandalore, a leader of the mandalorians who are now apparently a society of bounty hunters. A whole planet of em. Because Boba Fett was a bounty hunter his whole entire cultural heritage must be all about bounty hunting!
Not just that, but now the mandalorians are jedi killers. We know this because in ROTJ Boba Fett managed to incapacitate Luke with a grappling line for about oh, FIVE SECONDS.
And of course Boba didn't actually die in the sarlaac pit, his mandalorian armor helped protect him from the weakass sarlaac digestive juices that take a thousand years to metabolize its food.
Here's what I'm thinking Boba Fett was: some dude, probably a veteran with combat experience who bought some nice armor(or took it from a target) and then modified the crap out of it. Why modify it? Because he couldn't just go around blasting his targets, sometimes his employer wanted the target brought back alive. Hence the grappling line he used on Luke.
Now, I can stretch it a little bit and say he probably did work for the Empire previously. Or at least had a reputation for dusting his targets, and Darth Vader had to get specific with him for that reason.
Oh and another thing, carbon freezing. Everybody was a little leery about using it on humans, Vader included, so he tested on Han Solo. Nobody really knew for sure if it would kill him or not. But apparently in the EU they carbon freeze people all the time as flippantly as we would throw steak in the freezer.
SO, I can live with the SWTOR "Great Hunt" storyline but I really think it's cheesy. I would really rather just happen to be a guy whose quick on the draw and gets a thrill out of bringing in bounties or occaisionally saving the busty damsel from the evil dewback rancher in a dusty corner of the galaxy.
Comments
regarding the carbon freezing thing, it wasnt that they werent sure it would work on humans so much as the equipment being used wasnt designed for it. they had to modify it and decided to test it on han to make sure it worked properly. or thats atleast how some people look at it.
I take it you didn't actively read the novels, comics, or other media?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Also, there is a cap of three thousand years that includes a galactic "dark age". Much of the technology, knowledge etc was lost, this could indicate that during the age portrayed in films, carbon freezing was not practised anymore....at last not a common practise. Also, it could indicate that there were health concern relating to the process, which is why Vader is hesitant to use the techonology in Cloud City, without testing it first.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
first off i love the eu. That said i also love tor. i just dont have your issue. They expanded ona character with very little backstory in the movies.
The mandalorians have been part of the eu from the biggening almost. i dont have any issue with this. for one thing tor is 3000 yrs before a new hope
Sure bobba wore mandolrian armor, heres a question how could he wear mando armor if the mandos never existed? just saying .
The truth is all the eu did was expand on the star wars universe and give us alot of back story and alot of future books and comics after the movie return of the jedi which lets face it left alot of things open
While the emperor was dead at end of it the rebellion hadnt actually taken the goverment back. the eu explains how that happened.
Okay, I don't keep up with all the EU but I do try, so here's some bits worth mentioning to the OP:
1. Boba Fett wasn't some dude who stole the armor, he's a clone spanwed from one of the last Mandalorians (Jango Fett; see SW: Attack of the Clones) who decided to take after his father in profession.
2. The Mandlorians got the bounty hunter "rep" early on because they were a warrior-cult spawned to kill Jedi. As I recall, in the original Tales of the Jedi comics (which the whole KOTOR universe came from) the Mandalorians started as a marauding cult under the warlord...wait for it....Mandalore, the guy who gave his name to his order. I forget the details now, but I think Mandalore and his crew had it out for the Old Republic and fought a generation of Jedi in conjunction with the rising Sith; I'm not 100% sure when this stuff took place relative to SWTOR, I think it was about 40 years before the first KOTOR game, though.
3. Star Wars has a lot of iconic elements. SWTOR needs to expound on as many of those as possible so it can still "feel" like the Star Wars we know and love. Mandalorians are one of those things, as they have been established in the EU as an ancient warrior cult with a long tradition of a certain armor form and style.
4. It's a mainstay of space opera Sci Fi (of which Star Wars is a flag-bearer) to have entire alien civilizations based off of one crazy concept. It's lame, I know, but if you dispatched every single individual case of such in Star Wars (never mind Star Trek and other franchises) you would have the barest skeleton of a plot, and a dearth of characters. I say, just roll with it. If you want deeper, more meaningful SF, it's out there, waiting to be found in book stores.
Anyway, I obviously don't have much of an issue with the Mandalorians as presented...
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
Hell, no. Everything I need to know about Star Wars is in the opening crawl of A New Hope to the group pose at the end of ROTJ.
I wouldn't mind the EU if the storylines were less derivative and not so slap-your-forehead-lame(Boba survives, the emperor comes back as a ghost, Luke turns to the dark side).
I play SW games more for the visceral enjoyment of shooting blasters and waving lightsabers--not to say Bioware didn't put some good stories in TOR. The inquisitor story is great and their telling from the point of view of the Empire and the Sith sheds a new light on the series.
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So I'm no buff on lore but i have to ask, was the OP correct because George DID start messing up the original movies by many people's accounts couldn't he have done the same thing with what people believe is KOTOR lore? I mean I saw the second showing of the movies when i was 6 which was "cough cough" years ago and I have to say that since he made changes to the movies he could have very likely made changes to the lore. So the KOTOR stuff people are speaking of was that before or after he started messing with the movies?
Just enjoy the game for what it is. The Star Wars universe is raped and broken anyway thanks to the three newer films.
In my mind the only REAL Star Wars is the first three fims like they were showed in theatres.
No director cuts and other changes. No books, cartoons or other crap. And yes I read one of the books which tells the story after Return of the Jedi. It sucked. I don't want to know everything, the less I know the better the mystery and lore. Han and Leia getting married, please no.
What annoys me about SWTOR is how it always wants to refrence the original trilogy. The whole game seems to be based on stereotypes of those movies and hs set that as a standard to the lore , like these abilities is what all Jedi or Sith have, this is what all Smugglers are like or all Sith have Red Crystals and Jedi blue...
You even see it in the CG trailers with things like the Smuggler saying "She's the fastest ship in the galaxy" or something similar anyways and "can go however many parsecs".
Just hate it lol.