Smile and Nod: My Favorite Villain is Me

[Nazrel]

Anyone want to know palatines motivation for creating the empire?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yuuzhan_Vong_War

 

[2fish]

It's my estimation that... every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another.

The same goes for any person that builds an empire, all empires are built ontop of piles of bodies. I have always supported the Empire and I always will.

I must buy this game now, Thanks for the info!

Rebel Scum

 

[Djinni]

Yes, nice to warp the brain a bit every now and then. I still have no problem coming out on the side of Good, but that line can be blurry sometimes. Unfortunately I didn't get to play this game. There are too many good stories I've missed because I'm really bad at certain types of games.

 

[Alex Cowan]

I'm glad this series is getting a mention - I was starting to think they were all forgotten....

Also, I would reiterate the point that using fear and force are indeed good ways of "getting shit done", but no matter whether it gets done or not, it's still shit! You can say as much as you like about how the Rebels are all hippy slackers, but In it's heyday the Republic was doing pretty well, and they managed it without blowing up any planets.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I loved reading about Thrawn. I'm just sorry I missed out on TIE Fighter.

A game mixing TIE fighter with scenes like this

Spoiler

would be supremely fun.

Haha, that would be hilarious! Someone, please make this game

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

I loved reading about Thrawn. I'm just sorry I missed out on TIE Fighter.

A game mixing TIE fighter with scenes like this

Spoiler

would be supremely fun.

Haha, that would be hilarious! Someone, please make this game

Cheers Blood.

 

[rsvp42]

A great read and an interesting example of how you can tell a compelling narrative without needing to resort to the underdog idea, even in games. We see a lot of stories where characters start with nothing, so I can imagine how refreshing it would be to not feel so cut-off, even if it does mean you're playing for the "bad guys." I've never played the game myself, but it sounds like a blast.

 

[Eldarion]

I had a similar, if not as profound experience playing battlefront 2. It may not have caused the same kind of questions to surface, but it really put you in the heads of those clone troopers.

 

[Rick1940]

Thrawn is the gentleman's bad guy. He's a lover of art and history. He's an underdog, being the first non-human to attain the highest rank in the Imperial Fleet. And he's a decent guy. He doesn't rule through fear and intimidation, he rules through competence and vision. Yeah, so what if he's the supreme leader of the evil empire's war machine. He gets shit done. He's a boss you can respect and a bad guy you can love.

Getting stuff done in fictional universes is impressive because so many fiction plots are stupid.

The good guys are often stupid because the fictional conflict is contrived and thus smart good guys would finish the story too quickly. Thus the good guys are often idiots, and the bad guys are the only ones who can get anything done ... in fiction.

Getting stuff done in the real world doesn't necessarily require being evil. In fact, being evil might prevent you from getting stuff done in the real world.

It's easy to relish evil as the underdog if you're a fiction addict, because evil frequently is the underdog in fiction.

You may realize that, as a citizen of the Western world, you've been privileged with the luxury of spending the equivalent of a full working week entertaining yourself with a digital illusion, on a machine that costs as much as it would take to feed a third-world family of four for a year, and that, once that machine becomes "obsolete," and you discard it, its innards will be poisoning the planet long after you're dead. If so, your own faith in who's right and who's wrong may begin to quiver and you may consider that possibility that your place in the universe is not as you assumed it to be.

Conversely, you may conclude that you only play videogames because your destiny to be born as a Westerner deprived you of the sexually rich, emotionally full, but monetarily impoverished life that is available in the East. Also, you might work for a metallurgical company that recycles lead and silver from old electronics, so you might not feel any fashionable ecological guilt. But YMMV, your mileage may vary.

 

[kementari]

Admiral Thrawn is my favorite villain, therefore, not simply because of his badass attributes (which are legion), but because he broke my brain in two, caused me to feel good about being a bad guy, then bad about being a good guy. Like countless charismatic leaders before him, he manipulated my way of thinking until all I could believe in was him, and at that point, I'd have followed him anywhere. Even to the Dark Side.

Beautifully spoken. I've searched my whole life for a better (or better-written) antagonist than the Grand Admiral, and I've come up dry. Thanks for writing this, Russ.

 

[Anti-Robot Man]

TIE Fighter is my favorite PC game of all time, like the writer I had read the Thrawn trilogy before playing it, which made it all the more awesome. One aspect of the enticing evil of the game you didn't really mention but worked very well was the ranking up and eventual induction into a secret elite by the Emperor himself (using Force lightening to give you tatoos!), this worked perfectly with the menu screen which put you inside a Star Destroyer (you could even roll up your sleeve to check your tats, which if you notice this before you get them seems a little random).

I really don't understand why no Star Wars flight sims have been made since Alliance, they would look amazing now. I know you couldn't release it on console, and people would have to buy flightsticks, but its a very technically undemanding genre so it should be comparatively very cheap to develop. Every crappy Rogue Squadron style game they release is like a slap to the face.

 

[SirCannonFodder]

A game mixing TIE fighter with scenes like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ9yj_BXRp0&feature=related

would be supremely fun.

Or perhaps with scenes like this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY].

 

[Darth_Dude]

You may realize that, as a citizen of the Western world, you've been privileged with the luxury
of spending the equivalent of a full working week entertaining yourself with a digital illusion,
on a machine that costs as much as it would take to feed a third-world family of four for a year, and that, once that machine becomes "obsolete," and you discard it,
its innards will be poisoning the planet long after you're dead.

That was.....deep...

 

[ThePinkAcidSmurf]

I enjoyed Empire at War. Crushing the rebellion was quite satisfying...

 

[Sebenko]

You may realize that, as a citizen of the Western world, you've been privileged with the luxury
of spending the equivalent of a full working week entertaining yourself with a digital illusion,
on a machine that costs as much as it would take to feed a third-world family of four for a year, and that, once that machine becomes "obsolete," and you discard it,
its innards will be poisoning the planet long after you're dead.

I keep all my computer parts. I like keeping stuff.

Also, I've embraced the whole "westerners are evil thing" by stopping caring. No-one's gonna white guilt me.

 

[Kermi]

TIE Fighter is one of my favourite games, and this article has put into words a concept I could never fully explain myself. My of my friends were diehard Rebel Alliance fans and said X-Wing was the better game, but I was playing TIE Fighter long after they had moved onto X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and beyond.
To this day I love the Empire. Yes, the Star Wars expanded universe does a lot to paint them as the bad guys: xenophobic, misogynistic, and all shades of pure evil for the sheer sake of evil.
But the true source material, the original movies, did not demonstrate this. Hell, in the original scripts Luke wanted to join the empire as a fighter pilot before his buddy Dak told him he'd fled the Empire to join the rebels! Apart from the fact that the Empire had a superweapon, they were never demonstrably bad. It wasn't really until the third movie when you get to meet the Emperor that you realise the core of the Empire truly is rotten... and even then, what was the emperor's real sin? He wanted to ensure his power by either having Vader kill Luke and remove the threat, or Luke kill Vader and take Vader's place as his apprentice.

Everything else was just window dressing! You could argue that the Emperor was evil for blowing up all those rebels, but what else was he gonna do? Lower the shields and let the rebels kill his dudes instead? That's a lot of condolence letters to write to a lot of families.

 

[Rob Zacny]

As a former Imperial pilot, I applaud your devotion to Order, but did you miss the part where the Empire USED its superweapon to destroy a planet full of people? Or that the Empire did it just to make extra-sure the galaxy was properly afraid of a moon-sized space laser called the Death Star, and because the people on that planet kind of annoyed the Empire?

Also, remember how Darth Vader would just hang around his command ship, killing officers right and left for the slightest errors? Letting a sociopath slaughter loyal soldiers for entertainment falls into the "demonstrable evil" category.

But TIE Fighter was the best of the games, and anyone who said X-Wing was better was out of his mind. X-Wing was more like a proof of concept next to TIE Fighter. Plus, the nature of the Empire provided much more variety in scenario design. The Rebels tended to fly strike missions, supply raids, escort missions, and holding actions. Every mission was a variation on these themes. Flying with the Empire, on the other hand, means manning checkpoints, suppressing pirates, peacekeeping, hunting down Rebels, escorting supply ships, taking part in huge fleet actions, etc. There was just so much more variety possible in TIE Fighter, because the nature of the Empire creates greater possibilities for scenario design.

It is worth considering that the Empire was always characterized as the side of order and stability, while the Rebels / New Republic were for freedom and equality. The Expanded Universe, in games like TIE Fighter, made that theme a little more convincing. The Empire of the movies is a fascist straw man. But TIE Fighter explores the theme that there is a dangerous anarchy at work in the universe, and that peace may require those "rough men standing ready in the night" to keep it at bay, using methods that prize efficacy over morality.

 

[deth2munkies]

TIE Fighter was the first video game I ever bought. Thank you so much for bringing back the fond memories

 

[Bullfrog1983]

You may realize that, as a citizen of the Western world, you've been privileged with the luxury
of spending the equivalent of a full working week entertaining yourself with a digital illusion,
on a machine that costs as much as it would take to feed a third-world family of four for a year, and that, once that machine becomes "obsolete," and you discard it,
its innards will be poisoning the planet long after you're dead.

"Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?"
- J.R.R. Tolkien

I have fought on the side of the Empire many times and I have to say... You rebel scum! How dare you call us evil when you murdered a planet full of people on the death star! Damn hypocrites!

I am also kind of concerned that you equated the Western world with "evil." There are a hell of a lot more evils being perpetrated in other countries that have nothing to do with Western culture or the price of a computer. We should not be required to interfere in other people's lives just because we think we live better than they do, nor to donate everything we own so that others can live comfortably. I have one family to take care of, and that is enough for me. In response to feeding people I would vote to regulate the amount of billions a single family can have. There would be no problems in funding projects to fix world-wide problems then. Except no one will ever do that because it would look like world-wide communism... and communism of course is "evil."

 

[Lord S. Binkleheimer]

Kinda like Dungeon Keeper?