Forces of Corruption

I've been reading this old thread, and seeing the negative responses.

So, now the game has actually been out for over a year, and some of you have actually played it, what do you think about the storyline being considered for canon status? Assuming it isn't canon already.

It seems as if that while the concept is obnoxious (super-craft criminal comes out of nowhere and beats a lot of people before disappearing), but I don't think it's on the whole all that unbelievable. Corruption is partially a quirk of game mechanics, and it doesn't necessarily mean that Zann bribed a lot of high-ranking Imperials and never got caught for it. Once you get down to it, the Consortium really didn't have all that many worlds, and probably was a minor local power with criminal networks that extended outwards and elsewhere. And besides the rhetoric, did Zann really do anything towards Galactic domination? It seems like he suckered in a lot of criminals into helping him knock off a few rivals, temporarily steal a powerful ship (which he didn't plan on keeping, anyways), and run off with a lot of Palpatine's money. And in the process he managed to get a lot of them under his command killed at Kuat, blindly following him.

If they weren't apparently setting up with a sequel (what with the Nightsister finding all of those carbonite soldiers and promising to show Zann the 'true meaning of power'), I'd say Zann just retired after the battle and stopped doing the warlord thing. And maybe eventually Talon Karrde and the Black Sun remnants took over most of his network, and he faded into the background.

I think of him pretty much as the Stark of the Galactic Civil War era. Hardly that big of a continuity-killer as everyone says.

 

I dunno, stealing superweapons and going toe to toe against the Empire just doesn't seem believable, even for a powerful crimelord. And Zann isn't even the biggest of the bunch. Also, considering the way the Empire treats criminals and Palpatine's "safe and secure society!!oneone", I would think that there's a whole lot less breathing space for guys like him. Anybody who's done half of what Tyber has would have Vader breathing down their necks in no time.

 

Prior to the big stuff (attacking the Imperial museum, stealing the Eclipse prototype), just what did Zann really do against the Empire that was that major. Besides, around that time, Vader was a bit busy with his son, anyhows.

And while I do agree that it's cluttering up the time period by adding yet another big person, I think it's also good in showing how big the Galaxy is. There are quadrillions of beings, if not more. Who says that Jabba, Xizor, and Karrde were the only ones to dominate?

 

My main problem with Zann, as I voiced in the review thread for the Ahakista Gambit, is that he's sort of a Super-Criminal of the Week. His kind aren't quite as uubiquitous as the Warlords in the Bantam Era, but still, it seems like every...we'll say third....story or so seems to feature some crimelord who's shown to have power and reach rivaling that of the Empire (or whatever other Galactic Government is in power at the time), and they all seem intent on doing to Jabba what seemingly every single one of Vader's Secret Apprentices do to him. They trump the one in the movie.

Basically, it's just ____________ of the Week (insert "Warlord", "Crimelord", or "Secret Apprentice"). They exist for the sole purposes of making the villains we grew up with less spectacular for the sake of exalting their own image.

Some examples of other Crimelords of the Week would be Xizor, G0-T0, and Raze, all of whom make Jabba (nay, all of Hutt Space) look like common street thugs.

 

"The Hutts are gangsters!" -- Captain Panaka

 

The funny thing is, I always considered Jabba to be a small-time fry who had some reach, but was really a local heavy. I never considered him to be remotely close to Xizor status until actually when the negative press about Forces of Corruption came out, and how people were lambasting how Zann was Jabba's rival. In retrospect, they weren't angry about him being a rival because of the incongruity of Zann being a crimelord who is a rival to a small-timer (which I thought Jabba to be), but because probably every space-mafia don worth its salt was gunning against Jabba.

Personally, I think that it it's a bit ridiculous how just because Jabba was in the movies that makes him a king of gangsters. Which he might be on Tatooine and the local systems, but in the entire Galaxy?

Though, outside of the universe, it was inevitable that something like the Zann Consortium would be made in a game. Because Star Wars always had a huge emphasis on a super-space Underworld. Besides Jabba, there was Han Solo the smuggler, Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters, then there are mercenaries, space pirates, assassins, etc. It's a huge element of Star Wars, and ultimately someone who was involved in adding to the EU was going to make a game that had an Underworld-centric group trying to fight some conventional battles. Hey, at least it beats more extragalactic aliens, or a Droid rebellion, or more rogue corporations. And it definitely beats more Dark Sider users, though a three-way battle between the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, and Sith/Dark Jedi who are against Palpatine would be cool.

 

The thing is, until Shadows of the Empire, Jabba was always painted as the biggest fish in the underworld pond, not a small-time or local player. That's what makes all of these other "No, wait! THIS guy is running the biggest, baddest crime organization around!" revelations obnoxious. Well, they'd STILL be obnoxious, except we'd be saying it about Xizor instead of Jabba, so there'd be one less to gripe about.

 

lol @ 000's hystrionics in the linked thread.

 

For the record i love FOC & play it about 4 times a week. The mods added cool ships & heroes
Sorry bout the kinda-OT..I'd love a sequel! Star Wars & RTS games go hand -in- hand.. NOthing more fun then a fleet of imperial star destroyers going up against say the fifth fleet & Tie interceptors vs those new X-wings...good stuff....


Back on topic- The galaxy is/was big enough for plenty more big characters. 20 years of Imperial dominance is plenty of time for warlods to rise & fall or vanish etc..Zahnwas a great idea.Esp with his Nightsister ally..

 

Is there going to be another Empire at War expansion/sequel? If not, then it'll be really annoying never to find out just what the carbonite Sith troopers were all about. I think Zann needs to show in some EU more often, just so he becomes less of a "one-shot video game sudden threat" character. And I just realized that we need at least one good character going "Zaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnn!!!!!!"

 

Pretty sure I did that when I read Vader's characterisation in Allegiance.

But Zann is low, low, low on the list of characters that need to appear in other works.

 

The Essential Guide to the Force could extrapolate on this...please....pretty please....with a riknit egg on top?

 

He doesn't have to be the big baddie. He can just have a cameo. People can just namedrop the Consortium. At least, Consortium ships can appear somewhere. And thus we can begin the long and painful process of integration into the EU.

 

Well, he got into the Abel article. That's got to count for something.

 

In my opinion he´s not any kind of "continuity killer" at all. If i recall well, many of the most daring things he did against the Empire were done taking advantage of the circumstances and in a moment when it was distracted with more serious events (the battle of Endor, for instance). Zann seems to be very conscious of his limitations, no matter how insane he is. In fact i can imagine him retiring after getting all that money from Palpatine´s vaults. Although a sequel would be very welcome.

 

Was Jabba ever presented as the biggest gangster around? The Droids cartoons had Sise Fromm and several unnamed gangs (probably Black Sun in retrospect) as major rivals, and the Jabba comic book series shows a few crime lords with at least enough power to negotiate with Jabba. Admittedly, Jabba ended up in a stronger position at the end of both stories, with Fromm and other crime lords put out of the picture, but still...

TC

 

Jabba was, IIRC, the leader of one of the clans of the Hutts (within only a few years of ANH) - the Hutts being a major criminal force in the Outer Rim itself. This doesn't mean he had a lot of influence elsewhere - like, say, the Core Worlds.

Tyber was lots of fun, and let's be honest - the Consortium basically rose to power because elsewhere heroes were bumping off his rivals. Would he really have thrived for long against Xizor and Black Sun?
The timeframe of the end of the game is right as the remnants of the largest criminal organization in the galaxy is squabbling amongst themselves over scraps. I don't see any problem with his rise. The only question is: what happened between 0 and 3 ABE?

 

Looking at Wookiepedia's list of Consortium missions:

None of those except the ones at the end are really all that scary in terms of upsetting the Galactic non-Underworld balance. Yes, a bit annoying in that it makes the formerly nonexistent Zann into some super-cool superactive super-criminal, but what's Star Wars without legendary (anti-)heroic feats?

 

I do agree with that. In fact, what he does is taking advantage of some great opportunities that perhaps wouldn´t have appeared under different circumstances. And he´s not trying to overthrow Palpatine or something like that...he´s just earning a living in great style. Though his relationship with Silri seems a bit rough and that he´ll have to solve some things...