Lit 3,681 BBY - The Old Republic Continuity Thread

Hey guys,

It occurs to me we don't have a thread for discussing issues of continuity in the Old Republic video game. It's an extraordinarily detailed world with countless Sith Lords, Jedi Masters, tie-ins to the previous games, and even the greater Expanded Universe as a whole. It's also something of a "safety raft" for the Expanded Universe with the Disney purchase.

Since Disney has given the Star Wars license to EA, the Old Republic is going to remain part of the Star Wars EU. As a result, everything tied to the game is probably going to remain canon too. This may be wishful thinking on my part but we might as well hold out hope.

Anywho, there's hundreds of things to discuss and I think we deserve to have a place to put them.

 

So is your assumption (not an unreasonable one) that everything up to and including TOR is going to stay canon, or is there stuff chronologically after TOR that will likely be kept?

Also, I assume the LtoS novellas will be retconned if FotJ does - nothing really relies on them. OTOH, it could be an interesting thing to keep.

 

The Gree mass using Droids is still my biggest gripe with the game, beside just not being that fun to play.

 

My general opinion is everything referenced by TOR will remain canon. Which would be:

"Dawn of the Jedi"
"Golden Age of the Sith"
"Tales of the Jedi"
"KOTOR1 & 2"
"Fatal Alliance"
"Revan"
"Deceived"
"Annihilation"
"The Old Republic comics."

I dunno if the KOTOR comics would remain canon but with Carrick Station, I'm inclined to think they are. This isn't to say everything ELSE would be retconned away but because TOR is in existence and not going anywhere, this stuff is safe for the time being.

 

I think the KotOR comics would be safe, merely by association with KotOR and thus TOR.

 

That's probably a safe assumption. Curiously, a lot of stuff is canon in the Star Wars universe which was created far down the line as well.

Grand Admiral Thrawn isn't necessarily canon but the Chiss Ascendancy is, The Dark Nest Trilogy is almost certainly not canon (unless Jacen is made canon) but the Killiks are, the Mandalorian culture by Karen Traviss is canon, and so are other "broad strokes" details that have been incorporated into the Expanded Universe history.

For example: Raynar Thul is possibly not canon but House Thul is.

Amusingly, these sorts of details would make a lot of overlooked Dark Horse creations much more prominent.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if TOR becomes AU. That way, the game and the movies can coexist in harmony.

 

It depends if Disney has any interest in telling stories in the distant past.

 

Also depends on if the sequel trilogy have any lines that screw with ancient continuity- such as "There is no such planet named Dromund Kaas, that's a stupid name for a planet". Well, the EU could get around by saying the name has changed since the TOR era (yes, I know there's another game that first used the planet which TOR then used, but that other game was post-RotJ, which is the major era of concern).

It would seem unlikely, but then a line from the RotS script retconned out Yoda's battle with a Dark Jedi on Dagobah, so anything goes.

KotOR I and II should be safe, as well as the KotOR comics, but its always hard to tell when they'll muck about with continuity for the heck of it.

 

Yes, well, the new movies could always say, "The Jedi were founded on Endor by the Great Ewok" but let's hope that's not the case.



And we can work around that!

 

I think the AU theory is unlikely - Abrams only got away with that in Trek because that's a franchise that's used to that device - Star Wars has had Infinities stuff, sure, but spinning off a whole new universe seems unlikely. I don't think the post-ROTJ EU will escape unscathed, but I think an Alternate Universe deal isn't gonna happen.

 

I don't see why they would change the existing policy in which they fit all that they can. They'll probably just have to cut out stuff from after the films, but even a Han Solo or Boba Fett origin film shouldn't be worse than Episode II was to "The Last One Standing." Plus Han was almost in Episode III. THERE ARE CONTINGENCIES IN PLACE.

 

What if we see the Republic using the six-spoked Bendu symbol in a movie set pre-TPM?

 

I maintain the Sith Empire got the symbol from the Republic...because the Sith were taken over by Jedi refugees from the Republic. Depending on when the Tapani came in the Republic, too, they might be involved in the "Republicification" of the Sith Empire.

 

The six and eight spoke symbols likely have some numerological significance or meaning.

 

I hope the game will remain canon, solely so Kotor's 1 and 2 can remain canon. Tales of the Jedi as well.

 

Disney will tell Abrams (or whoever's now in charge of SW - what'shername) not to retcon TOR. Annoying EA at this stage will do nothing but hurt them.

 

It's pretty much the issue of numbers and averages. The reason the Clone Wars were such a clusterkark was due to the fact that the primary audience of Star Wars (i.e. the public at large) is ridiculously mind-blowingly larger than the die-hard EU fans. So when George Lucas was making a show for them, which makes sense business wise, he didn't really feel beholden to the smaller audience.

The real question is whether or not George Lucas decided to mine the EU that he remembered (because, at least by TJA trilogy, he read all the comics and approved summaries for all of the EU personally) or whether they chose to insert the EU around stories George Lucas was telling out of love. I.e. The Onderon Arc on TCW didn't have to be on Onderon but people who loved Onderon wanted to make it so.

I'm inclined to say it was a mix because George Lucas knew enough about the EU to intend to put Quinlan Vos in ROTS. Likewise, he was the guy responsible for both SOTE and TFU. More or less saying, "Do a story about Darth Vader's apprentice instead of a Wookiee!"

So if someone wants to tell the story of the origins of the Jedi Order or the Sith, there's not much that's going to stop them because the EU audience is so much smaller. However, barring that, everything should be safe. The real danger, ironically, is JJ Abrams does love something and decides to throw it in.

But yes, barring the above circumstances, there's no reason Disney will step on EA or their creation and the Old Republic simply cost too much money for them to put it aside. It was the "John Carter" of video games.

 

Sable_Hart, I'd love if TOR was declared a holodrama or simply AU.

 

For the present, with Star Wars Rebels apparently still a thing, it seems likely that the bulk of continuity will be preserved through well into the Dark Times, and most likely all the way up to ROTJ.

Given that, it's difficult for the plot of the ST to directly override anything that happened 3600 years in the past unless there's some deep expositional reference to prior history, which is unlikely in the first place, and even if it did exist, why would there be any need to trample on what's already there?

So unless Abrams really feels like gratuitously punching TOR in the face just because he can, it should stand pretty much untouched.

 

Technically Episode I and its novelization trampled all over the origin of the Sith, but it was pretty easy to just integrate it into Sith history.

 

Some continuity-related thoughts as related to TOR:

* Does this mean HK-47's "Galaxies" appearance is retconned and his canonical death is in the game.

* Revan is ambiguously dead, teleporting away when the Light Side Sith defeated him. How about Darth Malgus, though? Is he ambiguously dead or just dead-dead now?

* Would people support a canonical LS Sith option or would they prefer the DS version?

* Would anyone like a Satele Shan novel?

* Would anyone like to hear more about the Jedi Dynasts and what sort of trouble they caused?

 

Nah, we can say someone hauled his carcass off of the space station before it went boom and he gets rebuilt yet again. Possibly HK even programmed some other droid to handle that contingency.

Seeing as they changed the fight so he actually falls to the floor as opposed to drops down a shaft (admittedly to stop people from glitch-killing him all the time), going with actual death. I don't think that's a problem, TOR kills of plenty of big name Darths, and as of today actually, all of the Dread Masters too.

The dark side version being canon simply makes more sense. If any of the Imperial characters should be light side I think the agent fits best, and the bounty hunter should be neutral. Likewise the canonical smuggler should be neutral, and possibly the trooper as well.

Ah, maybe. I'd actually rather see a Dread Masters novel, one set during the first war, that explains how they got captured in the first place.

 

I still don't think that the retcon for that is very believable.

 

I don't imagine major retcons will apply to much of the Old Republic era. TOTJ, KOTOR, TOR, Dark Times, Knight Errant and all associated Dark Age material. It all seems pretty safe. It's the post ROTJ stuff that's up in the air. But whatever the case, in my mind, personal canon is just going to have to apply come any major changes.