Rogue (re)plays X-Wing

[Rogue 9]

Speaking of which, here's the XvT final Imperial mission:



The rest of XWA is in the can and I'm playing through the Squadrons single player now as a kind of epilogue. The Imperial side of Squadrons is for the most part non-stop war crimes; you can avoid some of them by strictly sticking to the mission parameters (though not all, notably in the prologue tutorial where your whole mission is to slaughter a refugee convoy) but a lot of the bonus objectives are awarded for destroying as much helpless civilian shipping and infrastructure as you possibly can. Which is fair; the Empire are definitely Space Fascists and acting like it. But it kind of makes me uncomfortable playing it, in a way that TIE Fighter didn't since it mainly restricted itself to military targets.

[Lord Revan]

Yeah the Disney era Empire is much more obviously evil where as the legends Empire was evil but sometimes you had to look to notice the evil as it wasn't obvious "in your face" evil but rather was more in the implications.

It explains why the Empire collapsed so fast after Endor, they were too focused at performing petty evil acts to notice they had lost hearts and minds of the people and no longer had the power to rule by fear and thus were loosing their logistics base.

[Rogue 9]

The second part of the Battle of Endor, in which XWA completely fucks up the battle's canon timeline, went up this morning.

[Rogue 9]

The Death Star tunnel run is premiering now.

[Rogue 9]

I considered making a new thread, but fuck it. Squadrons playthrough started today.

[MKSheppard]

The Imperial side of Squadrons is for the most part non-stop war crimes; you can avoid some of them by strictly sticking to the mission parameters (though not all, notably in the prologue tutorial where your whole mission is to slaughter a refugee convoy) but a lot of the bonus objectives are awarded for destroying as much helpless civilian shipping and infrastructure as you possibly can. Which is fair; the Empire are definitely Space Fascists and acting like it. But it kind of makes me uncomfortable playing it, in a way that TIE Fighter didn't since it mainly restricted itself to military targets.

Yeah the Disney era Empire is much more obviously evil where as the legends Empire was evil but sometimes you had to look to notice the evil as it wasn't obvious "in your face" evil but rather was more in the implications.

It explains why the Empire collapsed so fast after Endor, they were too focused at performing petty evil acts to notice they had lost hearts and minds of the people and no longer had the power to rule by fear and thus were loosing their logistics base.

It's really funny how the old LucasFilm people who ran the old EU from 1991-1999 managed to put together a mostly coherent EU that didn't rely on blatant tropery to carry the day, but Disney's first idea is to turn everything up to a scale of 20 out of 11; pretty much destroying the attempts of Tim Zahn to recanonize Thrawn in his new cycle of Thrawn novels and Zahn's attempts to portray greys and shadows, rather than a black/white morality.

Rogue One for all of it's fun stuff had these Disney Flaws as we recognize them noow:

1.) Orson Krennic was already enough of an asshole but they had to try and turn it up to 11 by having him pull an "Evil Overlord" by killing the Death Star design team as a way to "get back" at Galen Erso.

2.) Tarkin's portrayal was rather inconsistent -- he pulled back Krennic from destroying Jedha:

"We need a statement, not a manifesto. The Holy City will be enough for today."

Yet at the same time he wastes no time ordering the DS to be fired on Scarif -- killing untold numbers of Imperial personnel; again, a move straight out of the Evil Overlord book 101.

[MKSheppard]

Rogue, I watched your video and got really confused. So the mission is to destroy an Alderaanian convoy.

There wasn't enough time in between the arrival of the DS 1 and the firing of the big gun in ANH for a significant fraction of people to leave, other than super paranoid rich people who already had getaway ships ready for a moment's launch; and given how fast the DS1 accelerated the fragments of Alderaan away from the core of the planet -- everyone who was in the immediate area died immediately from impact of planetary fragments on their ships.

This is something that a lot of really cheap writers for various franchises don't get about being the bad guy.

Bad Guys don't view themselves as being Bad. Hence political legitimacy is very, very important for them.

It's why the NKVD carried out the Katyn Forest Massacres in secret, and why the Germans expended enormous efforts to disguise the true scope of the Holocaust late war, to the point of sending specialist units in 1944 to the sites of early massacres and death camps to dig up the bodies, grind them up and scatter them to the wind.

Something like the operation portrayed in SQUADRONS MISSION 1 from your video, would be more correctly handled by the Imperial Security Bureau's internal units, while the Imperial Navy acts as a blocking force a system or two away.

[Rogue 9]

Rebel half of the tutorial up today.

[Rogue 9]

Rogue, I watched your video and got really confused. So the mission is to destroy an Alderaanian convoy.

There wasn't enough time in between the arrival of the DS 1 and the firing of the big gun in ANH for a significant fraction of people to leave, other than super paranoid rich people who already had getaway ships ready for a moment's launch; and given how fast the DS1 accelerated the fragments of Alderaan away from the core of the planet -- everyone who was in the immediate area died immediately from impact of planetary fragments on their ships.

This is something that a lot of really cheap writers for various franchises don't get about being the bad guy.

Bad Guys don't view themselves as being Bad. Hence political legitimacy is very, very important for them.

It's why the NKVD carried out the Katyn Forest Massacres in secret, and why the Germans expended enormous efforts to disguise the true scope of the Holocaust late war, to the point of sending specialist units in 1944 to the sites of early massacres and death camps to dig up the bodies, grind them up and scatter them to the wind.

Something like the operation portrayed in SQUADRONS MISSION 1 from your video, would be more correctly handled by the Imperial Security Bureau's internal units, while the Imperial Navy acts as a blocking force a system or two away.

Yeah, that is a problem. Best I can reconcile is that they're people who were off planet at the time, perhaps together because they were bound for Alderaan at the time of its destruction and arrived after the deed was done. As for best handled by the ISB, yeah, probably, but the impression given is that Helix Squadron is an elite outfit; Captain Javes does say that they'll have support but finding the convoy is up to them, so the mission isn't entrusted to everyone in the fleet.

[Coop D'etat]

Perhaps we can head canon that the Imperial unit in Squadrons is specially chosen for missions requiring "political reliability." Then draw a comparison to its campaign versus the one from the original TIE Fighter game.

[Rogue 9]

Helix Squadron from the prologue isn't seen again, but Titan Squadron, the post-Endor outfit you fly with for the remainder of the campaign, certainly is. One of the pilots is a child of Senators, and they're all vocally fanatically loyal to the Empire (and openly fascist right down to the Star Destroyer captain carrying on about the will to power more than once).

[Rogue 9]

First real mission of the campaign (starting with the Republic).

[Rogue 9]

Second mission, Skies of Yavin. They actually got Denis Lawson to reprise Wedge. I was kind of surprised the first time I played it.

[Rogue 9]

The first Imperial mission.

[Rogue 9]

Wrapped up Squadrons today. Here's the final Republic mission.

[wautd]

Star Wars: Squardrons was the game that convinced me to get a VR set. And it was glorious

[Lord Revan]

Star Wars: Squardrons was the game that convinced me to get a VR set. And it was glorious

Yeah it looks great shame the VR and 3D stuff gives me headaches so I can't use them.

BTW Rogue are you gonna play the old Bride Commander game at any point since IMHO it was pretty decent Trek game and it was made by the same company as the X-wing series of games (the classic ones that is).