Video Games and the Canon Endings

This is a rather troubling trend that has popped up in the Lucasarts contributions to the EU. Namely, whenever a Star Wars game is given a Light Side/ Dark Side split ending, the Light Side ending is always canon. In most cases, it doesn't cause too much damage; what happens happens and it is not allowed to contradict the films. But there are times where this policy can diminish the story being told.

Case in point: The Force Unleashed 2. As SithStarSlayer put it in the discussion thread, everything about the game screams that it should be the Dark Side ending as canon. Where Starkiller 2.0 gets offed by another clone, elevating Vader's badassitude and removing a plot tumor that could affect the rest of the EU.

But it isn't the canon ending. That "honor" goes to the hideous cliffhanger leaving Vader imprisoned by Starkiller 2 and stalked by Fett. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, as it is a nice sequel hook. But it is a problem, because a sequel isn't coming. With the departure of Blackman, and the subsequent cutbacks at Lucasarts, one of their main franchises is suddenly left with a glaring plot hole that has no foreseeable patch-job coming in the future. The Dark Side ending ties up the story about as well as it could, and it is one of the few instances where the evil ending actually connects better with the EU than the canon ending.

The biggest problem with the Light/Dark flip endings is that the light ending always flows with canon, while the dark ending goes out of its way to rewrite history. See: KOTOR Dark Side, Jedi Knight Dark Side, Jedi Academy Dark Side, TFU 1 Dark Side.
Instead of giving a bit of ambiguity for each event, all of these endings leave the galaxy with either a Sith takeover, or a radically altered film history.

The rule stating that LightSide = Canon also hinders what stories Lucasarts is able to tell. Since they seem hell bent on giving everybody a good guy role in their games, the chances of receiving a dark side game like Tie Fighter ever again seem almost nonexistent. Everyone must be a good guy all the time, no exceptions. It stifles creativity, and as stated above, can lead otherwise intriguing plot lines into a canon mess up.

I know this is venting more at Lucasarts, but since their games bear a tangential link to the greater Expanded Universe, I felt this was as good a place as any to bring up the discussion.

 

I suspect this has to do with the emphasis (increasing since the beginning of the prequel era?) on the Empire and other villains in the galaxy as PURE EVIL. The villains were more interesting when they were about order, which can be an understandable motivation. It's at least possible to identify with such a position. Destruction for gleeful destruction's sake is cartoonish and boring.

 

But some of the Dark Side endings in the games I listed, despite their canon altering implications, have shown that you can make a compelling character out of a power hungry darksider. Like Starkiller 2.0. Evil Starkiller is obsessive, destructive, and at the end of the day, a complete whackjob, who still manages to pull off an interesting story.

KOTOR2 gave Kreia, who didn't care how evil you were, as long as balance was maintained. You could murder puppies, and she wouldn't bat an eye, as long as you maintained a balance.

You're just not allowed to be evil anymore. Hence no Tie Fighter 2, or Imperial Commando.

 

Full disclosure, I've not played either of those games. But I presume that the dark characters you mention as being interesting were less interested in being angry and evil and more interested in other things, even if said things amounted to REAL ULTIMATE POWER ("power-hungry"). That's identifiable-with. You may be right about protagonists not being allowed to be less than light-side paragons, as a rule, but I think the often-portrayed-one-dimensionality of the dark side could contribute to that. I've not been a deep EU reader/player for a long time, but this is the impression I get from participating here.

 

Well, the dark side ending of TFUII doesn't exactly wrap everything into a neat little bow either, since there's still the matter of what happened to the clone. Still, it's hinted at that both endings are canon, in a way. I really hope the story gets wrapped up.

 

--I wouldn't call it a "trend". To me, it is more like standard operating procedure, or simply following the vanilla formula. Whatever IT is, it doesn't lend itself to GREAT storytelling conclusions. They'll always give us similar endings, because they'll (almost) always follow the same path. IIRC: The only times the bad guys won in recent EU, was the Bane trilogy. And they HAD to.

--Of all the games you've mentioned, THIS one still agitates me the most. FU2. Everything about the game's ending screams "WAIT! FINISH THIS NOW!!" I guess the questions I have are these: What about dark Rhett? Is he canon? If so, then the story is good to go... IF not? Then the story is REALLY stuck in a weird place. Sure Vader can have an EPIC force-fit and utterly wreck the Rogue Shadow from the inside out as it hovers above the secret Rebel base on Dantooine, he escapes right before the ship plunges down and incinerates everything. Meh. That would suck. But!! The idea of Vader having a loyal, secret whacko (who can cloak himself no less!!!) onboard makes me drool. The possibilities are tantalizing....

--It fits in here because most of the games are ALSO crossover-book/comic events at the same time.


/AdmiralNick for MOD-ship!

 

Well I can't speak for the likes of KOTOR II as I have not played it yet. I can understand KOTOR having the light side ending as canon. But having the Light Side or Dark Side ending as canon in TFU2 seems to have a large effect of the EU either way IMO.

But man do I miss the days of being evil. The Star Wars universe is were it is most fun to be evil!

 

That video games are considered canon is a joke to begin with.

 

To each his own, but the video games have really contributed a lot to canon. The Jedi Knight games, the last two in particular, give a really nice view of how the NJO operates, and the KOTOR games, well, they probably defined their era as much as Tales of the Jedi did... and in my humble opinion, are far, far more enjoyable than TOTJ.

It may seem odd, but the video games actually require the most amount of imagination to fit into canon, particularly the two KOTOR games, and I enjoy that. Yes, they do in many ways rely on your personal image of the character, which in many ways blurs the line between canon and fanon (I hate that term), but they really do break up the routine.

Honestly, I'm willing to say that KOTOR II is one of the best written EU works period.

 

Just for the record I don't hate the video games. It's just that making something with a - let's say variable nature - like video games canon just doesn't make much sense to me.

 

I can understand that but would you consider the likes of Shadows of the Empire or Dark Forces/Jedi Knight to be considered non-canon?

 

In TIE Fighter though, you weren't "evil" per se. Yes, Maarek Stele was an Emperor's Hand, and yes he was part of the Secret Order, but you don't do anything in the game that's terribly evil.

Not once do you hear this:

The character in TIE Fighter is not evil, so much as he's following the orders of the ruling power. He's only killing people that he genuinely believes are threats to the peace. He is never ordered to kill innocents.

So I would not consider TIE Fighter to be a dark-side game.

 

While there certainly is a trend for good ending = canon, I certainly haven't heard anywhere that there is a hard and fast rule for it. Christ, if case-by-case determinations can permit C-canon to override G, then certainly Licencing can look at the sorry chances for a third FU and decide the dark ending is the continuity one.

However, I don't think that will actually happen. For the cliffhanger still serves its money-making purpose. Only the medium the story is told in might be different.

 

While I don't agree with this in the slightest, I do think it's a damn shame that LFL don't ever take advantage of the Infinities label with video games. I don't need to feel like I'm contributing to the greater body of Star Wars canon to have a good time in the universe. I'd quite happily play a game based in an AU that seriously explored the question: "what if Darth Vader defeated Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar", or a videogame version of the original The Star Wars script.

 

Well, they are. And the light side ending is canon. The male ending is also canon, if gender is playable, EXCEPT for the Jedi Exile. She's a girl.

 

The difference here is that Tie Fighter was released around the time that the EU was trying to give the Empire more human characteristics. We had the cool and efficient villains from the X-Wing series, and the optimistic but intimidating Thrawn Imperials.

Nowadays, flanderization has turned the rather complex villains into all baby eating uber killers. And that seems to be a nono on Lucasarts games policy.

 

THIS.