Lit The multi media Star Wars: The never ending story

I would like to know if anyone else does this. After collecting many Star Wars novels, videogames, of course the six movies and tv shows; has anyone ever tried to play/watch/read them all in chronological order? I have done this a few times on a small scale, where it was just a particular era in the Star Wars chronology, and one time on a large scale. Starting from "Golden Age of the Sith" going all the way to the Legacy series, trying to include as many books and videogames along the way, including of course the movies. It can be kind of hard sometimes, especialy when new entries in the chronology are constantly being released. It is kind of cool, there is always an answer to the question: what happens next? Am I crazy, or has anyone else tried this?

 

Impossible to do. First of all, tracking down 100% of the material itself is a problem: short stories published in old magazines, Young Reader books that fell out of print, RPG and Adventure books only released in UK many years ago etc - finding all this stuff is pretty much impossible unless you work work Lucasfilm or are named Steve Sansweet. Second, as you correctly mentioned, new installments are released constantly which all all over the timeline. Lastly, some of the material is currently impossible to obtain at all (at least legally) - I'm talking Hyperspace exclusive short stories and Star Wars Galaxies video game.

Personally I have long ceased to try and read it all. Took me about 6 years to read all adult novels to date and each year brings several more I need to catch up. I did read most of Dark Horse comics (their Omnibus program is amazing!), but there are some I only know from Wookieepedia - old newspaper strips, magazine comics, TCW tie-ins etc. As for video games, as a person who got into gaming in middle 2000s, I wouldn't even want to play some of the older titles: original Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, even legendary TIE Fighter hold no interest for a person spoiled by modern graphics. So just read what you can and enjoy it, let the Wookiee fill in the rest.

 

While I can't say one way or the other about your sanity, yes, someone else has tried this.

 

It would definitely be possible to do all the major stuff; novels, comics, short stories, video games (minus Galaxies), television, that type of thing. I doubt anyone would have the patience to insert all the reference work in there, though, even if they dodged the money issue by torrenting every published SW reference book ever created.

The biggest problem, as Malachi points out, is tracking all the stuff down... there are more underhanded ways to gain access to the impossible to find stuff, but I find some stuff, like the Episode 1 adventures, remain elusive in every format. I'm only interested in reading the "major" stuff anyway.

 

I see the problem. What I meant was read/play/watch the sources in chronological order of what you have!

 

I do this in cycles. My first attempt was in the lead up to the release of AOTC. I didn't have a lot of material, but I did own all the adult novels. It was quite the marathon read, and I managed to get to AOTC in time for the release, then continued on but petered out on the New Jedi Order somewhere around the Dark Tide books.

I tried again before ROTS came out, this time not quite finishing all the books set before the movie was released. I've continued on since then, stopping for long periods of time. I'm on the Jedi Academy Trilogy now. I made a point to try and collect all the comics during this read-through, but gave up when the Omnibus series came out. Now I just collect the Omnibuses, as I assume that all the existing SW comics will be reprinted there eventually.

I have all the adult and young adult novels now, and a good chunk of the comics, magazines, children's books, etc. After I finish this read-through, I plan to start at the beginning, this time collecting all of the magazine short stories and audio dramas as I go along. One day (when I'm rich, of course) I'd like to do the same for the video games, picking up the now-obsolete systems necessary to play them.

The idea is to eventually collect every piece of the EU ever published, but to do so in a way that doesn't bankrupt me. We'll see if this happens before I'm too senile to keep updating my timeline.

TC

 

While I have never done this. I am sure it is not impossible to do. Just very hard, very time consuming and very very expensive. I do not have the time or money to read, watch or play everything SW related. For this reason I focus on the novels. I have read every adult novel written to date. I also of course watch the movies, and read certain comics.

However, the only EU that I promise myself I will follow completely is the adult novels. I wish I had the time and money to read and watch everything SW related. To anyone who has or is trying to, i wish you all he luck in the world.

 

You can say that again. I played Halo Anniversary last month, and while the HD graphics are all nice and pretty, I felt it had totally lost the sense of atmosphere that not being able to see into the distance gave the original.

 

I grew up on "modern" graphics, and I love the original Dark Forces game. I think one of my top three favorite games ever is the original Metal Gear Solid, and the characters are blocks in that...

Unfortunately, I wouldn't know where to get X-Wing or TIE Fighter. I got Dark Forces on steam.

 

And it's not just graphics; older games -- X-wing/TIE Fighter and Dark Forces/Jedi Knight are great examples -- often embody entire styles of gameplay that are simply not available anymore. The intricate, exploratory, puzzle-heavy level design of a shooter like Dark Forces simply isn't present in modern shooters of the Halo/COD type. And space combat sims like X-wing and TIE Fighter aren't even a thing anymore; the entire genre has basically disappeared.

Gaming is about gameplay, not graphics, and graphics shouldn't stop you from enjoying gameplay that is as good as, or better, than anything on the modern market, and often impossible to find on the modern market. It's a whole new gaming experience that you're missing out on.

 

Indeed, Hav, indeed.

Ever since gaming went mainstream and became more commercialised, whole genres have gone the way of the dodo...

 

RTS, and city building, genres are also nearly extinct too, with only a few of the biggest names holding on. Outside of Starcraft, and Command and Conquer, I can't even think of an RTS that has been released in the last two years. Contrast that to the early-mid 2000s, which had age of mythology, age of empires 2/3, rise of nations, empire earth 1/2, dawn of the modern world, two LOTR rts, two star wars rts games, company of heroes, and dawn of war. This new age of gaming is pretty and all, but something has been lost. Also, the fact that kids LOVE skyrim, but won't even try morrowind, says so much to me about the state of mind of the "next generation" of gamer.

 

You don't play the Total War series? Die

Rome is still my favorite, but Shogun is great.

 

Oh no, I love the total war series (no really, i've done vids of every game since rome on my youtube), i just don't consider it an RTS. My favorite is probably empire/napoleon...honestly liked all of them up to shogun, which was a bit too homogenous for me. Speaking of RTS, galactic battlegrounds is probably one of my favorite games ever, used to play that all the time.

 

My favourite RTS remains Homeworld. God I loved those games... and the HW2 Star Wars mod...

I've always been baffled the "Space RTS" genre didn't pick up after the boom of sic-fi following Halo.

Am I wrong for having not even liked Skyrim?

As a huge RPG gamer and Morrowind fan, I was very underwhelmed and just did the main quest line and called it a day. But Skyrim's somehow become huge overnight, among people who often don't even seem to be Elder Scrolls fans, and yet Skyrim neither has the sort of dynamic story of other RPGs like BioWare's classics, nor does it have the style of [multiplayer] gaming that is what the masses usually like to consume the most.

I just... feel like I must be missing something.

Or maybe I just took an arrow to the knee. (Btw, I also hate that joke. )

 

Personally, I sort of hated skyrim. I got it on steam for $40 about 2 weeks ago and I MIGHT have 4 hours logged. I hate the reliance on radiant quests (lazy, lazy, lazy!) I hate the trimmed down factions, the somewhat bland setting, and the dumbed down combat. The game also tells you where to go with like every quest! It was much more fun trying to navigate based on vague directions in Morrowind. Elder Scrolls have never been heavy on combat mechanics, but atleast before you had to put some thought into your skill/attribute allocations. Give me Morrowind, with its awesome setting, cultural depth, and replayability any day.

One of the more overrated games (with the exception of only the CoD series, which is atleast fun in its own stupid, comical way) I've ever played.

 

Quest, if you're unfamiliar with the arrow in the knee meme, then you've managed to remain better insulated from some of the lamest parts of mass culture than I.

 

wait a minute, I didn't know the UK had rpg that are hard to find? Which ones were they and what did they cover?

 

The RPG I wish the UK would hurry up and get is Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.

It always irritated me to no end that they releases it in the US but never bothered with the EU. (It's not like they had to translate the Japanese into English a second time.)

 

Hmm, I'm not as well versed in the RTS genre as I would like, though I'd always been under the impression that Rome: Total War is practically the poster boy of the genre.

On that subject, is Empire at War worth playing?

Skyrim was a great game, but what really annoyed me- and I know it shouldn't, because it's far from the focus- was the writing. Writing has never been Bethesda's strong point (which is why I love the idea of Fallout New Vegas, though I still haven't given it a try; an open world, Bethesda style game with Obsidian, the guys who wrote Planescape: Torment and KOTOR II writing? Gold). As I said, far from the point of the game, but the dialogue was really bad in places, and the main quest just did absolutely nothing for me... less engaging than Oblivion, in my opinion. Once again, though, the best part of the game storywise was the Dark Brotherhood.

It's a great game in so many ways, it's just my favorite element, story, is really lacking. Now that I've upgraded my PC, I need to get it for that platform, so I can do the mods.

On Skyrim's popularity, I imagine it's just that Oblivion really started to gain popularity, being a 360 launch title and all. The fact that it kept people playing years after its release only led to greater anticipation for Skyrim. I actually went to the midnight release for **** and giggles, and the primary topic of conversation was how people there would have "no life" for the next few months; so, the primary appeal is the fact that it's a game you can sink countless hours in. In that regard, Skyrim succeeds. I have no desire to do all the side quests in that game. I personally don't find them much more interesting than TOR's side quests

My brother is in middle school; that damn meme has spread across his school like wild fire. Think god I don't have to deal with it outside the internet.