Lit Assassinating the Emperor: Impossible or Ingenious

Well yes but he was a made for videogame Gary Stu.

Although really why does everyone bother going hand to hand with Palps? If he can be felled by a mere blaster bolt it seems a simple sniper rifle would be in order. I am also like the idea of ramming his office with an explosive packed vehicle.

 

Every video game player character is a Gary Stu.

 

Most video game player characters don't humiliate movie villains and beat them down like punks.

 

Yeah, that's kind of required for player agency. Unless the game just ends with an unbeatable boss.

 

In the dark side ending of Force Unleashed, he definitely wasn't close. More like effortlessly squished with his own ship.

 

Really? So what, the bosses of KOTOR, Jedi Knight, Jedi Academy, they're all unbeatable bosses? Or could it be that they're not the exact same villains that were supposed to be the responsibility of the OT's heroes to defeat? Seriously, I'm not even sure what your assertion here is.

 

I'm not quite sure what your assertion is either. I guess Revan would be considered a huge Gary Stu if Vader and Sidious were the villains in his game. Typically, video game protagonists "win" their game. Ultimately, the idea that Starkiller is anymore a Gary Stu than Revan is a product of the enemies he faces rather than the character himself. And even then, Starkiller dies at the conclusion of his game. I think having you fight Vader and Palpatine, and defeat them in gameplay, is ultimately a concession to the fact that it's a game. Despite the fact that the player character dies at the conclusion. I really don't understand the problem.

 

Well, I guess it's a writing thing. You don't have Vader or Sidious as the end bosses of your game because the player would be expected to beat them, and the way Star Wars works, that becomes canon. To monkey around with the events surrounding the OT in such a manner is tantamount to self-insert fanfiction, and since Marek is the protagonist of said fanfic and delivers a beatdown to the two main villains of the saga in the process, that therefore marks him out as a Gary Sue. You may find that normal because of the nature of the medium, but I would contend that it's crass to be tampering with the original story like that in the first place.

In short, I'd say the difference between Revan and Starkiller is essentially the difference between original fiction and fanfiction - having a Gary Sue in the latter actually affects an existing story, and for the worse in any reasonable respect.

 

So it's ultimately a difference of opinion. I think Starkiller aka Galen Marek aka Secret Apprentice as performed by Sam Witwer is a much more engaging character than Darth Revan, who in KOTOR isn't a character at all, but a blank slate for the player. Darth Revan does MORE TROUSERS stuff than Starkiller, and that's why fans love him, because he's not a character in the game, but the player's character that they create the personality for, so there's self identification. Thus he's the ultimate Gary Stu character in the self-insertion sense of the term. I don't think Hayden Blackman is living out his Star Wars fantasies vicariously through Starkiller, but I think a lot of players that love Revan are doing so through playing as him, and that's the entire premise of the game.

That The Force Unleashed is set between film trilogies and features Vader and Sidious as villains means nothing because Starkiller didn't beat them. He died. Starkiller was batting .333 against Vader. Palpatine clearly threw the fight. Vader killed Palpatine and died in the act. Nothing was changed.

 

I think some games should simply not be included into canon. TFU is fine when it is just taken at what it is - a game - but of course it doesn't mesh well with Star Wars canon.

 

Except that Lucas apparently was all about it.

 

Idiocy,

Due to the fact most people don't expect their world to be run on magic, Killing a leader does not necessarily stop an empire or a ruling elite. Anyone who wanted to assassinate the empire probably would think "if all went well and we killed the Shutta, what about the next guy in succession?"

 

With the exception of power level (and for the most part that's principally a dramatized incident regarding a Star Destroyer), TFU meshes just fine with Star Wars canon, it just doesn't mesh in a way that dedicated fans, such as the membership of this board, happen to like. However, whether or not you like it is not a criteria effecting canonicity - the only issue is whether or not it induces continuity errors and requires retconning. Canon is about true vs. untrue, not good vs. bad.

 

I thought it created a lot of issues with the foundation of the rebellion? But maybe I am wrong. It's not like I cared so much how the Rebellion came into existence exactly.

I don't mind TFU, by the way. I like how Vader played Starkiller from beginning to end. The overpoweredness of the lead character I chalk up to it being a game.

 

The original idea of a Wookie protagonist was so much more awesome.

 

Seriously, TFU is right up there with TCW and the post-NJO as my most despised things in Star Wars.

 

Debates on the canonicity of TFU is all well and good, the topic of this threat is Assassinating Palpatine.

Anyone have any other thoughts on how to kill HIMS?

 

Crash the Death Star into Coruscant.

Edited for photographic evidence:

 

Thought Coruscant had only 1 trillion on it. At any rate, compared to Jar Jar, Borsk, and Not cool, Infinities!Yoda's crimes seem mild.

If you have a specific criticism, about a specific work, that's fine -- but refrain from that kind of straight-up author bashing, please.

 

2-3 trillion, including transient populations and uncounted underdwellers.

Daala was planning to do something similar, so apparently it's not considered bad enough to be chosen to be the head of the galaxy. (Assuming that she was correct in her convoluted plan to crash an ISD in a way that would somehow destroy the entire planet, which might have been just completely wrong on her part).

 

Daala's theory was that the earthquakes triggered by the hit would wreck buildings all across the planet.

 

Figure out a way to make that hypermatter reactor go critical on impact and I'd say Daala's plan would've worked just fine.

Also, a one-mile long asteroid (which wouldn't necessarily be moving as fast as an ISD could be, and therefore have less energy at impact) would generate something in the area of a million megatons of energy on impact. Coruscant is pretty severely wrecked, I'd say:


http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/asteroid-hits-earth.htm

"by the time you get up to a mile-wide asteroid, you are working in the 1 million megaton range. This asteroid has the energy that's 10 million times greater than the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. It's able to flatten everything for 100 to 200 miles out from ground zero. In other words, if a mile-wide asteroid were to directly hit New York City, the force of the impact probably would completely flatten every single thing from Washington D.C. to Boston, and would cause extensive damage perhaps 1,000 miles out -- that's as far away as Chicago. The amount of dust and debris thrown up into the atmosphere would block out the sun and cause most living things on the planet to perish. If an asteroid that big were to land in the ocean, it would cause massive tidal waves hundreds of feet high that would completely scrub the coastlines in the vicinity."