I really enjoyed it as an XCOM combat-ish game that felt like there was work done to make it feel like it belongs in the Gears Of War universe. It’s not infinitely replayable because the campaign has mandatory side-missions that are generated from a limited template and begin to feel stale once you’ve seen all the templates, and by the endgame you have so many special abilities unlocked in your squad that it kind of drifts away from any semblance of feeling like combat tactics and into a puzzle game about min-maxing abilities to combo chain them together (this opinion might read a little oddly but if you’ve played enough turnbased tactical games you notice many game riding this line, with some going extreme one way or the other). It is worth a sale price though if you need a turn based combat fix.

I posit that ratings in a franchise like Star Wars are a downstream reflection of previous material. Part of Andor’s low ratings I think are a reflection on the other shows that came out and weren’t good. It creates an environment where so many viewers check out. I’d say that Disney reducing the amount of Star Wars shows it puts out and giving the shows to properly talented creators to make unique high quality projects should be the takeaway.

I really hope the executive takeaway is “let individual creators have unique takes and expand Star Wars” and not “All Star Wars should now be dark and depressing and grim.”

The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn’t like it. That wasn’t helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).

I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.

Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.

Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.

I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.

Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.

Things go differently in the current canon, but what you described was more or less what happened in the old EU. There was no line of succession or instructions for what happened if Palpatine died. His death, along with Vader and important central figures in the Empire in ROTJ left a lot of squabbling Moffs and Admirals of dubious levels of competence in control of splinters of the Empire.

It wasn’t until Thrawn that someone competent started consolidating Imperial forces again.

You and @Geetnerd@lemmy.world are both right on the line for me to step in when it comes to personally insulting each other. You can disagree without belittling each other.

The OP specified canon comics already. The Vader and Doctor Aphra comics are in canon.

Nothing wrong with the old EU material. I like a lot of it, even preferring large chunks compared to the current canon. It depends on your goal, and if your goal is to brush up on current canon then knowing about the canon split will save you a lot of time.

Disney bought Star Wars in 2012, and it officially branched its canon in 2014 away from the existing EU. What that means is anything made before 2014 except for the main movies, the Clone Wars CGI cartoon, and the Rebels cartoon is not part of Disney canon.

Some elements of the classic EU have been reincorporated back into the Disney canon, but often remixed when they show back up.

What that means is old EU material isn’t directly part of canon and can only sometimes at best be used to guess at what might be in the new canon.

That said, the Tarkovsky Clone Wars cartoon rocks. I haven’t played the PS2 Clone Wars game, but the Republic Commando game is really great and has a modern widescreen fan fix now. The books about clones were interesting, a different take than the modern canon with clones having a much more Mandalorian cultural influence.

In that scene the T-Rex is trying to flush out people which it knows are hiding somewhere as well. (Disregarding all the T-Rex specific science and just focusing on the idea of a predator screaming.)

The immunity regarding official acts pertains to judicial proceedings. An impeachment is a legislative proceeding. While it uses judicial terms like “trial” it is not the same thing and can not directly result in criminal conviction or sentencing.

An impeachment conviction results in removal from office. The previous impeachment proceedings did not result in a conviction.

(Edit for additional information: While an impeachment uses terms like “trial” and “conviction” it is not a judicial proceeding. It is entirely a legislative proceeding which is formatted to resemble a judicial one, but is not bound to judicial procedure and it also can not produce a criminal conviction or sentence.)

I thought the reason we spent so much time with the stupid rebels was to really make sure we knew how dumb they are. This will be so that there’s no question why they screw up a mission on Ghormon. I imagine an ISB intermediary supplying them with a lot of explosives and telling them to blow up an Imperial target, but the ISB ensuring the group ends up blowing up civilians instead.

Tay laid it out to Mon: He went out on a limb to help her hide her money and activities, he feels she hasn’t properly rewarded him, his existing investments have been hurt by the rebellion, and his personal life has fallen apart.

He’s a loose cannon.

From his conversion with Mon in episode 2 where he talked about being undervalued and the rebels having caused damage to his investments it was instantly clear to me that he was a problem that was going to be solved.