Lit Shadows of the Empire multimedia project

It's in the Prince Xizor's Palace theme.

 

I stand corrected then. I guess I'll have to listen to my SOTE soundtrack again.

 

Same words, different sound. If I didn't know I wouldn't have recognized it.

 

I did not like SOTE.

1. The author dumbed down Vader to make Xyzor seem smarter.
2. Why make a bad copy of Han Solo when you had the opportunity to make some other unique character? I know Perry can do it. His Matador series was great and his 2 AvP books were great and his lone Predator(Predator: Turnabout) book was one of the best books I have ever read. Dash Rendar was a major let down. And the wa it is written..."Wow, he really is like Han!" Gag me.
3. Flying close to treetops is somehow this incredible feet of flight especially given the tech of GFFA?
4. Black Sun. Well, I guess if you have to rip something off it's ok to rip off your own work. Black Sun and Xyzor's pheromones come from Perry's Matador series. I just thought it lame to copy his own stuff to SW.

I recall Lucas saying he wished he could have made a SOTE film becaus ehe liked it so much. Ugh. Oh well.

 

Imo Xizor was an idiot the entire book for underestimating Vader. Xizor made many mistakes, especially assuming the emperor actually cared about the empire's war against the rebels and Xizor's existence as a non-force sensitive fodder. The ending revealed that was not the case at all.

I agree about Dash Rendar, he was a pretty unbearable character, although I think it turned out that he was no where near as competent a pilot as Han.

 

Part of Dash's whole thing is that he's skilled but can't deal with the notion that he's not the best. Sure, he's forged from the same steel as Han but he works for the purposes of the story. It would have been easy to leave it at that but Perry doesn't. For being a secondary character in a single book, the guy manages a lot more growth than some characters now get in entire series.

As for Xizor, there's two things going on. The first is that, in the book, we're not seeing the complete picture of what Vader's doing. If you read just the book, you don't know that he's got Jix out there to ensure that Luke is kept alive. So, it's not even as if the project treats Vader as nothing more than a brute. He's more than willing to engage in some cloak and dagger. But there's a big separation drawn between himself and Xizor. One of the nice things about Vader in SOTE is that we see he has some form of a code of honor.

I mean, just think of Vader. The guy will walk right on the field of battle with his troops. Compare with Xizor. The guy acts by proxy. He uses pheremones to seduce. Whispers suggestions in people ears. But at the end of the day, his palace crumbles and he flees. And he sits in his Skyhook pulling off one of the best childish moments in the EU. He's losing all his toys and when Vader shows up, he basically goes "'ll tell daddy!" and Vader, having waited and endured the long game, says "Good luck with that", blows the guy up, and goes into his meditation pod to sip an ice cold Arnold Palmer. In SPACE!

 

I was gonna say they could have dredged up BoShek, but perhaps another Force sensitive running around between TESB and ROTJ is not something GL would have wanted.

 

Not only Jix, he even sent a group of Noghri to Tatooine, in case Jix couldn't do the job! (per the Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook)

 

I like the idea of Vader drinking Arnold Palmers.

 

Man, you lost me here. Vader wasn't remotely "dumb" in SotE. He was invariably well written, throughout.

 

People seem to be defensive of how Vader is written lately.

 

I actually really like how Vader was written in SOTE, and it was definitely revolutionary at the time, but I think it (along with the release of TPM) opened the floodgates to showing Vader as having a lot more soft and underpowered (for lack of better words) moments, which has become the norm by now.

 

I agree, I think there's an effort to show Vader having vulnerable moments, I think would be the best way to describe it, either emotionally or quite literally. Haden Blackman seems to be quite fond of it, in his Vader comics and The Force Unleashed. Personally, depending upon the context, I don't have a problem with it. I think looking at stories in Dragonball Z power level terms just obfuscates the narrative; Vader can have moments of vulnerability, and if it serves a greater narrative purpose I'm all for it. Anyone can have a bad day, and Anakin really had one bad day after another for twenty-three years, in varying forms.

But Shadows of the Empire did Vader no disservice. The dude was stone cold.

 

I got introduced into the OT through Force Unleashed, so I thought Vader was a refreshing change of pace for a villain due to his unpredictable treachery. It's obvious he's going to backstab whoever he's allied with, but when is another story- and for Starkiller and Xizor, it was the most inconvenient time possible.

I'm really excited to see Rebel's take on this trend.

 

I have to say all the Shadows of the Empire output are among my favorite Star Wars releases ever.

The novel and the comic series especially (including Shadows of the Empire Evolution). It was just such a huge, fascinating project.

Prince Xizor is probably one of my favorite SW characters ever.

The video game was tons of fun too and the toy action figures were very nice.

What's your take on this project?

 

I thought the comic was rather weak, actually. It was simultaneously at its best and worst during the Boba Fett sequences. Best, due to doing its own part of the story rather than throwing in scenes from the novel; worst, because Fett had more lines in that comic than he did in the rest of the EU. The novel was enjoyable- nothing particularly groundbreaking, but a good solid SW novel, and one of the better products of the Bantam era. The game of course is a classic.

SOTE Evolution could have been decent, but was dragged down by A) shoehorning in the big damn heroes and B) the godawful art.

 

Actually, RC-1991, I quite liked Evolution's art, far better than the original SOTE's.

 

Before TPM was released, the EU dumbed down poor Palpatine.

 

Not really, Dark Empire was pretty hard in him but then we shall chalk that up to Clone Insanity and getting consumed by the Dark Side, otherwise he was a magnificent schemer even then.

 

What about "Therefore I Am"? Terminator expy droids do not outsmart Dark Lords of the Sith.

 

I remember in the "Shadows" novel Xizor was checking out the posterior of the robot assassin he had working for him. That guy was kind of a freak, eh?

 

I am sure Palpatine had a purge Computer Core button sitting around.

Well he had Guri grown to be attractive to him.... and SOTE mentions that he had sex with her several times, but yeah clearly just to much money to know what to really do with it.

 

But he should have been aware of IG-88 long before it got to that point. Perhaps Palpatine not only expected, but also wanted IG-88 to do what it did, having engineered IG-88's creation.