Star Wars: The Force Unleashed/Headscratchers

Why didn't Palpatine and Vader just go back and arrest and/or execute Bail Organa?

• He apparently just went back home to Alderaan for the next two years and nothing at all happened to him until Episode IV! They even let his daughter, who was at the founding of the Rebellion keep being a senator! Either the Empire is very slow or very passive-aggressive. Bail himself also apparently took his sweet time in letting Obi-Wan know about the Death Star. Some of this is workable; Leia was at the meeting by projecting a hologram of herself through Proxy, and Bail does order him, quite quickly, to cut transmission, presumably to protect her from being outed as a conspirator. He also might not have known the Death Star wasn't a simple if large space station; the Emperor presumably didn't tell him what, exactly, they were standing in while being a Large Ham about their capture. Still doesn't explain why he gets away without any consequence until A New Hope, though.
  • Leia in A New Hope" did remark to Vader about her arrest that "the Imperial Senate will not sit still for this". Presumably the Emperor knew that executing Garm Bel Iblis, Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, three Senators from three very influential worlds was a huge political gambit, even for him. IIRC my Star Wars canon correctly, Bel Iblis and Mon Mothma had resigned from the Senate at around the time the Rebellion was founded anyway, so they probably immediately resigned and went into hiding running the Rebellion. Bail Organa probably stood by his status as the sovereign monarch of Alderaan, much like how Leia hid behind Diplomatic status as her fathers replacement in the Senate. For the Emperor to completely ignore this and arrest the monarch of a core world, he'd need to be virtually immune to criticism. Abolishing the Senate because with the Death Star he didn't need it would let him do that. Anyway, in ANH, Vader seemed pretty aware of who the Rebel leaders were and was more happy that he would finally be able to dispense with them after the subterfuge the rebels had been hiding behind.
  • Despite being Emperor and all, Bail is a public figure and the ruler of a planet. A move against Organa could've backfired before the Death Star was complete. It is also possible that after these events, Organa goes underground.
    • The Emperor was planning to publicly execute three well known and well liked Senators before they escaped. And it wouldn't be the first time. The whole reason a rebellion is being started is because the Empire frequently and unabashedly commits well-publicized atrocities. The whole them still being alive thing is a massive Plot Hole for the game.
    • Yes, but if he did, he could just say how Vader found them on Corellia, as opposed to swooping down onto Alderaan to get a Senator who, if he had any sense, has gone underground. That would only incite mass rebellion.
  • Of course, none of this fits in with the canon from the ANH radio play, and arguably makes the characters seem stupid for not knowing all of this already, but meh.
  • As for Obi-Wan, it's possible that isolating himself on Tatooine entailed cutting off contact with everyone, making R2's mission in Episode IV that much more significant.

Why all the hate for the Hangar in the last level?

• You can just go a few steps to the hole and jump straight in it, if you don´t like this practice of your awesome powerlevel.
  • If it's not a timed mission, most players feel obligated to kill every enemy in sight. For some reason it just feels wrong to leave an entire room full of Stormtroopers alive and un-murdered.
  • Wait...you could do that?

Where did Starkiller learned how to use Force Lightning?

• It has been established by canon that Darth Vader is physically incapable of using it due to the lack of organic limbs. Moreover, the only one who could use said power at that point was the Emperor, whom Starkiller had never met before.
  • Canon has also established (mostly in other video games) that any sufficiently evil Force-user can use Force Lightning. Even if Vader wasn't able to pull it off himself, he could know enough about it, either from Sith holocrons or by doing it himself off-screen before his defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan, to instruct his apprentice. Not to mention that, if a Sith absolutely requires an instructor, it creates an odd chicken-and-egg-style paradox as to how the first Sith figured all this stuff out (since as Palpatine so quotably puts it, he could not have learned it from a Jedi).
    • I always thought Canon had said that Vader would electrocute his robotic limbs if he used force lightning through them. Maybe Vader taught Starkiller by taking off a robot limb and using force lightning through the stump.
    • Thank you, I now picture that Vader once ordered Starkiller to spread his fingers and scream "UNLIMITED POOOOOWWWAAAAAAAAHHHRRR!!!".
    • Now it bugs me how lightning did so little against Vader in the sequel
    • It's likely that after his first fight with Starkiller, Vader's armor was heavily damaged and in need of repairs. Being Vader, he probably already had the idea to clone Starkiller, and to make sure that particular weakness wasn't so exploitable should he have to face him again he had his armor reinforced with a lightning/force resistant material. And to the obvious question of, "If this is so, how did Palpatine kill him with his lightning?" I say that Palpatine's lightning/powers were too potent for the new armor to resist it.
    • Or, as he is stated to do in the book, he is simply using the Force to block most of the lightning but it still hurts him a little. When Palpy gets him, he's too distracted to block it.
    • Since Vader was holding Palpatine at the time, he would become a conductor (since none of the lightning's power would be lost to the air), thus breaking through his defenses.

Where did Starkiller get those two lightsabers he uses in the E3 trailer?

• Like many trailers, its not actually part of the story. Its just suppose to give you the feel of the game and is strictly guided by the Rule of Cool.
  • I know, but still. He starts the scene chained to the floor about to be executed. And then he magically conjures a pair of lightsabers out of nowhere. It bugs me.
• What's the point of having two lightsabers if you're not gonna utilize them properly? As in, he throws them BOTH, leaving himself "defenseless" and they generally feel they really add nothing. They could have just, you know, added to that single blades power to a point where it was actually usable, unlike the first game
  • He's hardly "defenseless". He's still got his uber-Force powers working for him.
    • Except he doesn't even bother blocking any attacks during that

Why is Starkiller considered a God Mode Sue?

• Sure, he has impressive mastery over the force, but physically he's just a scrawny dude who gets pushed around by robots. And I'm not talking about badass assassin machines of destruction a la HK-47 no, I'm talking about big, dumb, slow robots (Imperial Purge Troopers) who can take half his health in a single combo. Also just about any other Jedi he fights (padawan or master) is able to cut through his defense like a hot knife through butter. And for all the awesome his force powers are, 90% of them are useless against most bosses (with force lightning being more or less the only reliable one against larger creatures). If anything, he's more of a Glass Cannon.
• As far as Star Wars powerhouses go, Kyle Katarn was pretty much invincible once he got Force Protection, and both Revan and The Exile were beasts in the use of the force AND skill with a lightsaber. The Apprentice pales in comparisson to the aforementioned Jedi Knights, and they were not branded God Mode Sues
• In Force Unleashed, you use the Force to telekinetically crash an entire Star Destroyer. In Force Unleashed 2, you use the Force to undergo orbital re-entry without a spacecraft, DBZ-punching a squadron of TIE fighters to death on the way down. Never mind that both of these were QTE or cutscene bullshit and not the average power level of gameplay, the fact that they existed at all blew willing suspension of disbelief right out of the water for most players.

Full of problems

• The biggest problem I had as soon as the game was finished was already mentioned, it's the first one on this page. Moving on.
• Starkiller's lack of Dark Sidedness. He was raised from childhood by one of the cruelest beings in the galaxy, but at no point in the game does he even seem moderately evil, or even twisted. The darkest he gets is slightly grim. Yeah, he kills a lot of people without remorse or hesitation, but so does Kyle Katarn. I know that choice plays a huge role in the Black and White Morality of Star Wars, but this is just ludicrous.
  • To me, this is actually one of the more interesting aspects of his character. He may never have been entirely dark side (who says he has to be?) but he never has been entirely light side either. Something that always bothered me about the Star Wars universe was their Black and White Morality categorizing of everyone, Starkiller is one of the few exceptions to this that I know of, he's neither good nor bad but an interesting in between.
    • Actually, he's one of the few character that absolutely should fit into a Black and White Morality. Did you forget that he was taken in at the most impressionable age in the human life cycle and raised by Darth Vader? Abuse a child their whole life and they're going to grow into a twisted and hateful adult; constantly instruct a child that the Dark Side is the only way, that the lives of others are for you to use as you please, and constantly subject them to harsh and cruel training methods, and you're going to end up with one sick son of a bitch. Mara Jade is an understandable grey character (during the time that she was the Emperor's Hand). Galen Marek is not.
    • I think it's up to nature vs. nurture. There have been people in the past who have had awful childhoods but managed to over come those challenges while others become the sick and twisted sons of bitches you describe. There have also been people who grew up in perfectly loving homes that turned into monsters. Nurture isn't the be all and end all. A little of column A, a little of column B. Starkiller wasn't the equal parts of his childhood though it still left him a very screwed up person. If he hadn't have had PROXY, he probably would have committed suicide long ago.
    • I remember a developer in an interview saying the fact Galen has any humanity in him is because Darth Vader still has good in him. Still, you'd think Starkiller would be a bit more evil, all things considered.
  • I don't see the problem here. The Star Wars universe has always been consistent in saying that a person must choose to embrace the Light Side or the Dark Side. Anakin Skywalker may have been manipulated by Palpatine, but in the end he chose to embrace the Dark Side. He chose to commit acts that were fundamentally against his moral fiber in order to gain greater power. Starkiller never had that choice. You said it yourself, he was raised from childhood by Darth Vader and was never taught anything else (until Kota came along). It could be fairly argued that because he was never given a choice in the matter he never truly embraced the Dark Side in the first place. Also, and admittedly this is just my own WMG talking, I think this says something about the nature of the Force itself. It's long been suggested that the Force is more than just a passive, quasi-magical "energy field". Jedi in the EU often talk about "serving the Force" or "the will of the Force" as though the Force were an actual living thing with a mind of its own (it's even been called "the living Force" on occasion). If this interpretation of the Force is correct, then it could easily account for why Starkiller doesn't show any of the traditional signs of "Dark Sidedness". He doesn't show them because the Force itself is protecting him. Starkiller's destiny is to serve the Light Side and the Force is pushing him towards that destiny.
• Rahm Kota is a pathetic excuse for a Jedi. When Galen tracks him down to Bespin, aside from being a drunken ball of Wangst, he splutters something to the effect of "Look at my eyes! I'm not a Jedi anymore."

Obi-Wan: Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.

• • Well, if you've ever read the novel version this is addressed a couple times. Juno and Starkiller voice their options and annoyance at Kota's self-defeating attitude and how he hide behind his blindness as an excuse for it. The real reason Kota wallowed in self-pity for so long was because he'd been beaten, badly and his ego couldn't take the defeat and the reminder of it daily with his sight gone.
  • Jedi aren't perfect and the Star Wars universe has never pretended that they are. Kota suffered a severe physical and emotional trauma and he took it rather badly, as any man who went through a similar experience might. It shows he's a realistic character with realistic emotions. Why exactly are you complaining about this?
    • Following on this one, my theory is that he thinks he failed at being a strong Jedi. He attacked the Tie Fighter factory to draw Vader out, but was surprised when he encountered "a boy" and thought he'd be able to defeat him easily. however, when he get's trumped by Galen, he probably thought to himself that he became a pitiful excuse for a Jedi if he can't even defeat (in his mind) a Sith Apprentice, so he degrades himself over this.
• This:

Maris Brood: I repent everything please let me live!
Galen: I immediately trust you.

• • She hadn't done anything to warrant a death sentence at that point and what was she going do if he let her go? She was stuck on the planet without a ship and she couldn't snitch on him to the Empire since that might get her killed with her Force-sensitive nature and associations with Jedi. The reason he let her go are a lot more prominent in the novel. It flashes through Starkiller's head about how she's really just a kid and she's as clueless about the world as he is. Letting her go said that there was just as much hope for him as there was for her.
    • Well, she had corrupted an entire planet of good, relatively peaceful beings into twisted monsters and used them to do her bidding. That's pretty bad. But it was more that Starkiller immediately accepted her repentance as genuine. How did he know she wasn't just lying to save her life? It's like the time that Darth Vader surrendered to a group of Jedi on Kessel, and they decided that they couldn't kill him because it would go against the Jedi code. He promptly continued to kill them as soon as he got an opportunity. A Dark Sider's word that they're sorry is never proof enough that they really are.
    • She wasn't Darth Vader however and she wasn't the one to turn the planet darksside, that was Starkiller's fault for killing Shaak Ti who kept the planet lightside. The point the book was making with him letting her go was that Maris really wasn't like Darth Vader at all, she may have said she turned darkside (it was mostly for survival) but she really didn't have the guts to go the whole 9 yards to do what that means and that was what Galen sensed. He thought she still had hope to turn back.
    • In the idealistic world of Star Wars, someone repenting like this is standard hat. After all, Darth Vader himself eventually turns on the Emperor and redeems himself but there's no real reason why Luke, even with his pleads to his father, should have believed Vader just wasn't being opportunistic in a more realistic setting. So if Vader can have his reasons for repenting, so can Brood. As well, there is precedence for what amounts to 'casual' Dark Sidedness. KOTOR has an example of this where you meet a young padawan who struck her master and, feeling that was a bad thing, turned to the Dark Side and fled. But she neither had the intent or the desire to actually stay there and it doesn't take much to turn her back. On a grander scale, the Jennessari and Mace Windu also provide examples of how one can employ the tricks of the Dark Side or Sith without falling to the Dark Side full and truly.
    • In the Wii version of the game, Maris says she'll turn from the Dark Side and as she walks away we see her pause, glance to the side and smirk before continuing walking. That changes it from "she might have been lying" to "She definitely lied."
• Galen pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky. Seen by some as a Crowning Moment of Awesome, seen by me a Dethroning Moment of Narm. I know that Yoda said size doesn't matter, but if that was really true, the Clone Wars would have been a cakewalk. Every space battle would have just consisted of a few Jedi flying under heavy escort around the various Separatist capital ships and ripping them apart with the Force. And yeah, I get it, Galen's supposed to be one of the most powerful Force users ever, but the entire Skywalker line was supposed to be right at the top, and none of them could pull off anything even remotely close to that.
  • Watch closely, he didn't in fact pull a Star Destroyer out of orbit but the ship was already falling to earth and all he did was bring it down a little early to stop it from landing on him. In the book, he lost consciousness from the effort.
    • I can accept that a little more--guiding its crash instead of yanking it out of the air. However, the novel may have explained that the Star Destroyer wasn't finished yet and was crashing into the planet after the shipyard was destroyed, but the game certainly didn't. In the game, it glides down to the planet and a (ridiculously hard) minigame ensues where you actually pull the SD down. Books should support movies or games that they're based off of, and provide more information and fill in blanks, but the original shouldn't be on crutches without the novelization.
    • I think the game supports it. In the game, they'd just destroyed the ship building platform and it shows one of the docked Destroyers knocked off and gliding toward earth. It's not spelled out and they probably could have done a better job with it (as they really should have done with that whole sequence), but it can be guessed.
    • Actually, no. I just checked out a video on youtube of that section, to make sure, and the Star Destroyer in the game isn't even attached to the space station. The cannon shot destroys the shipyard, and off to the left from way behind it comes a Star Destroyer. It flies down to the planet and the whole "pull down an SD" minigame starts; the cutscene makes it clear that the SD was coming (probably from hyperspace) to deal with the situation that had gotten out of hand. Like I said, I can accept him guiding the crash away from him, but the game doesn't reflect that in any way. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that a novelization made more sense than the source material; that's basically my big problem. From your counters, it sounds like the novelization pulled the story off much better. But the game was the big seller that was given most of the attention. It should have been done properly so that people didn't need to read the book to make sense of it.
    • Hm, I guess without the context of the book it would be hard to catch (I read the book before I played the game). From what I've heard from the creative team post-release, I think we were lucky we got a finished game in the end at all so I try not to be too hard on it. It's still a good story though and the novel is a pretty good read.
  • "Size matters not" was obviously a simplification for Luke's benefit, not a literal truth. Like in martial arts classes where instructors will sometimes taunt students who can't break a wooden board by asking them if they're "afraid of the board". Obviously they're not afraid of it, but the goal is to get them past that mental block that's preventing them from succeeding. Similarly, "size matters not" is just a convenient mantra to help padawans shrug off the mindset telling them that they can't move something so big.
  • When fully trained, Luke could yank a ship out of the sky. He simply chose not to do so because he realized that doing so would be taking the easy way out, which is a mark of the Dark Side.
    • Who says Jedi can't do stuff like that? The problem in the Clone Wars, it is specifically stated, is that there aren't enough powerful Jedi to go around. Jedi probably were doing enormous Force feats like those, but they take so much time that they arent useful in close combat. Finally, there's a massive difference between moving something and tearing it apart.
• After these games this troper had difficulties picturing Vader or Palpatine as that powerful figures as Starkiller seemingly outshines both as there's no possible way either of them could pull the stunts he pulls.
  • Well if you're willing to accept some more EU (that well predates Starkiller) Palps is definately on top. Google Force Storm or check out the Dark Empire comics. Starkiller killed a Star Destroyer. Palps could swallow fleets (of course that still leaves Vader a little underpowered, but he's also a lot cooler than either).
  • In both endings of the first game Starkiller gets in a direct fight with Palpatine and loses. In the Dark Side ending he gets dominated by Palpatine and turned into a Sith Stalker. In the Light Side ending he gets in a Beam-O-War with Palpatine and ends up dead. I'd say that handily established Palpatine as being greater in power.
    • Not really. He beat Palpatine first, but when Palpatine hit the Rebels with lightning he went in to block. He may have won again, but the problem was that Vader and reinforcements were coming, so his only option was to release himself into the Force, thus causing a massive explosion to buy some time.

Gorog in the sequel

• First of: how the hell did they capture that thing in the first place and how did they plan to restrain it afterwards as you had to force push its shackles back to place after they were re-powered?
  • They had no plan to restrain it afterwards. Baron Tarko's servant protests that the shackles had not been tested yet, only for the Baron to say that he doesn't care.
    • They captured it by injecting it with ludicrous amounts of anaesthetic. In their plan, they would wait until it killed Kota and Starkiller, then hit it with a blaster shot from a large ship.

The lightside and darkside endings of the sequel.

• It really bugs me that, unlike the last game, the lightside and darkside endings really had nothing to do with Galen's choice to kill Vader or not. You decide to kill Vader, oh sorry you can't because your evil twin has stabbed you through. Okay, fine. But then you choose not to kill him suddenly the evil twin is no where to be seen or found? What? Where the hell did that guy go and how come he didn't try to free Vader from the rebels when they captured him? And what about Juno? She was all right in the lightside ending but dead in the darkside one? Why? Where Juno was concerned, nothing changed at that point, so why is she alive in one ending and dead in the other? It almost breaks the fourth wall to a degree because the only reason one ending happens over the other is because you, the player, press a button on your controller with nothing in the narrative supporting it.
  • According to the unlockable extras, Vader told the evil twin to interfere only if Vader was in any actual danger. In the lightside ending, he's either biding time until he receives further instructions or has joined Boba Fett in trailing the Rogue Shadow. As for Juno waking up in the lightside ending... The Power of Love.
    • Starkiller willed it.
  • Taking that into account, I think it is still kind of a cop-out. In the first game, Starkiller's selfish decision to fight Vader instead of rescuing Kota led to his ultimate fall and dark ending. But here the circumstances are completely out of his control. He doesn't know about the evil twin (in the book, he thought he'd killed all the clones at that point), he has no idea what the consequences of killing Vader are going to be. The ending's completely depend on Vader's contingency plans and have nothing to do with the effect Galen's decisions have on himself and those around him.
  • I'm rather curious why PROXY, if it tried to revive Juno, couldn't tell she was alive.
    • PROXY isn't a medical droid. His criteria for "could not be revived" might well be limited to "did not wake up when I said her name and poked her in the forehead a few times".
    • He (er, it, sorry) said it couldn't revive her. It didn't imply if she was dead or not. Besides, how can you revive someone if they're still alive, anyway?
  • It would have been sort of hard for the writers to implement a satisfying, logical dark side ending given the premise of executing Vader or not (if you executed him, what realistic bad consequence could happen? Privately killing Vader instead of a public trial and execution wouldn't give the Alliance the PR boost it needed?). Still, though, they should have thought of less of an Ass Pull than an evil Starkiller clone coming out of nowhere.
  • The novelization has Starkiller see a vision before arriving on Kamino of getting stabbed by an evil clone. Perhaps this plays into his decision to let Vader live (the book takes the Light side option).
• The whole 'No! You can't kill Palpatine! Dark Side!' thing at the end. Even if it would have been more work, could they not have framed the scene so that Kota doesn't look like such a supreme idiot? If nothing else, he should have said 'If you kill him now in anger, you'll turn to the Dark Sid-' and then heel-stomped Palpatine in the throat himself as Palpy let down his guard, thinking the idiot Jedi were yet again being idiot Jedi. Seriously, Rahm's been killin' people since he was ten years old; obviously he's learned how to detach.
  • You have to remember that the Force is very much a religion to the Jedi. Killing a fallen, helpless, surrendering opponent is a Dark Side act and that's a major sin in the eyes of the Jedi. Whatever evil Palpatine might do in the future pales in comparison to deliberately embracing the Dark Side. Kota letting Starkiller strike down Palpatine in anger would be like a Catholic priest counseling one of his flock to trade his soul to Satan in exchange for everlasting world peace.
    • It's hard to think of Palpatine as "helpless" in any situation.
  • The way I saw it, Kota realized that dark-side Galen could be far more powerful than Vader or Palpatine. There would be no point in killing Palpatine if it would cause Galen to fall to the dark side.
    • Obviously Galen can't do it, given how full of rage he is at that moment, or else he would fall. The question being asked is why Kota didn't do it. If he's morally capable of encompassing 'blowing up a factory in a terrorist attack just to lure out a high-value target to be assassinated', you'd think doing a Sith Lord in cold blood would be achievable for him even if not for some more idealistic Jedi like Obi-Wan.

The Sequel

• Or rather the ending. Or rather how abrupt it was. Maybe it was just the wii version, but it seemed a lot shorter then the successor. It took me only 5 hours to beat it on normal, over the course of two nights. There was so much buildup to Starkiller meeting with Juno, then when he finally does, they kiss, and it ends. Just like that. The pace of the game just seemed way too quick; escape from Vader, find Kota, now we're on ship, ship is being destroyed, ship crashes back into place you escape from, you kill Vader, done. And all the while the only characterization or sequence of plot we see is "I'm really sad I'm not with Juno! Oh no Juno is kidnapped! Yay I just saved her!". It doubly bugs me just because the gameplay was so much better then the original. I felt like I was just getting super into it when it ended.
  • It's not just the Wii version; all versions of TFU 2 are short.

Missing Boss Battles

• How come Darth Desolous and Darth Phobos aren't in the Play Station 3/XBOX 360 versions? Facing them with superior animation would have been awesome.
  • Because if they don't put them in the game, they can make you pay extra for them as DLC.

Jedi can't be cloned?

• Now I know some things have changed in the EU with regards to cloning since Ep II came out and messed everything up, but a number of novels have shown that Jedi and other force-sensitive people can be cloned, sure most go insane but still Kota and (I think) others are fairly insistent that it can't be done at all.
  • This was addressed in the book. It's not that they can't clone Jedi, it's more the fact that if they do the clones are highly unstable and very very dangerous to the point where cloners, as a general rule, try to weed out Force sensitivity as much as possible in the DNA they use. The fact that Starkiller seems so normal and sane (relatively, anyway) is used to as a proof that he isn't a clone.
  • The vast majority of attempts to clone Force users in the SW universe have not ended well. The most famous Force-user clone, Joruus C'Baoth, turned out batshit insane. There have been some successful clonings of Force users but they either took place long after the events of TFU 2 (i.e. Dorsk 81) or too obscure for Kota to have known about them at the time (i.e. Palpatine's secret stash of clone bodies).
    • To be fair, the original Jorus C'Baoth (note one "u" versus the clone's two) wasn't much better. He outright considered himself above non-Jedi, was desperate to mount a mission to another galaxy for no good reason (there are still plenty of undiscovered systems in this one), and, when push came to shove, crossed the line into the Dark Side by trying to Force-choke Thrawn (who wasn't evil yet). Basically, it was Jorus C'baoth's fault that the Outbound Flight was destroyed with nearly all hands. That his clone turned out to be crazy wasn't much of a surprise.
  • Oddly enough, though, in Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, the main character is a Force-sensitive clone of a Jedi knight-- and Rahm Kota commands him in one level. Presumably, that level must have taken place after TFU 2.
• Cloning someone as in "creating a genetically identical twin with their own thoughts and feelings" is perfectly viable for a Jedi, (as the clone is really a different person) but cloning as in "making an exact duplicate with the same memories and personality" had never been done to a Jedi. Hence the dozens of horribly failed clones.

Dark Side Endings

• I understand what they're trying to get to, dark side=bad, leads down the wrong path. But I feel that it's strange how the dark side endings aren't satisfying. I know what the dark side leads to, but at least the dark side endings of KOTOR and Jedi Academy left me satisfied.
  • That's the thing. Until The Force Unleashed, all Star Wars games where you can fall to the darkside end with the character ruling the galaxy. I personally appreciated The Force Unleashed doing osmething different and subverting the whole Evil Is Cool thing.
    • Even so, the Dark Side Ending in TFU 2 was really underwhelming. In TFU 1 the endings made sense because they had logical consequences. Go after Vader and Palpatine kills your allies and turns you into a Sith Stalker. Go after Palpatine and your allies escape with their lives but you die fighting the Emperor and you lose your chance for revenge against Vader. Not so much in TFU 2. If you choose to kill Vader the Dark Apprentice shows up and kills you, and Juno is dead. If you choose not to kill Vader the Dark Apprentice is nowhere to be found (seriously, he won't intervene to save his master from being captured by the Rebel Alliance? WTF?) and Juno is just sleeping. It's as if choosing to execute Vader in TFU 2 actually warps the fabric of reality.
    • You know, it probably does. This is the Force, remember. Also, in the novel, the Dark Apprentice is definitely dead: they dropped all the Empire's Star Destroyers on the facility.
    • The Force does not work that way. It has magical elements but it isn't that powerful.
    • Then again, in the novelization, Starkiller sees himself get stabbed by the Dark Apprentice. Perhaps this played into his decision not to kill Vader (the book went with the Light Side ending). Perhaps Vader also foresaw this and didn't throw Juno hard enough to kill, knowing Starkiller would go berserk if he did.

Two Reverse Grip lightsabers?!

Because Galen isn't Marty Stu enough already? He's had no precedent for using two sabers, let alone in a reverse grip, and it just combines two of the rarest lightsaber forms together because...well, it's cool? It may be, but it's still way out of left field for him to wield two sabers in such a style.

• It's called trademark. The sequel can stay visually distinct from the previous game while Starkiller can maintain his recognizable fighting style from the first game. The layman isn't going to know how difficult different lightsaber fighting styles are, all they'll see is a character who is easily separated from the crowd of other Jedi and Siths they've seen. That is good character design IMO.
  • He was already distinct with his Shien sytle from the first game, no need to give him two without a single explanation or plausible reason. Everything else he does, mind trick aside, are pretty much close to the same as moves from the first game. And it's more the fact that for those that do know about Star Wars, it's known how uncommon both fighting styles are, so for a character already proficient in one to suddenly master both... It's not so much that I don't like having two sabers, because it is pretty fun, but it's more that Starkiller already has enough implausible traits. Perhaps this was the feather on the camel for this troper.
    • I was saying that the added saber makes the new game district from the other while allowing Starkiller to keep his trademarked backhand fighting style. It's a style most have never seen before making the game unique. Personally, I really don't get all the Sue accusations when he was created principally for the enjoyment of the player not to fulfill author wish fulfillment. Over the top powers are common in video games.
      • The over-the-top powers aren't what bugs me, that was featured in the first game, and he sticks to it in the second - the only difference between the two Starkillers is the addition of a second lightsaber, which felt like a needless addition. Galen was already badass with just one, and it seems to be an attempt to make him even "cooler" which felt pointless. He never really uses two sabers in a way different than or more effective than if he'd use just one. It just looks cooler. Which he needs no help with at all.
    • If that's your opinion you are of course welcome to it. But not everyone agrees.
      • It's a progression. One lightsaber in TFU 1, two lightsabers in TFU 2... If they make TFU 3 he'll have THREE lightsabers!
• Well in universe Vader was probably trying to make his new Starkiller more powerful then the old one. Out of universe it's a way to tell the two Starkillers apart

Kota cut off from the Force.

• In the first game, Kota reveals to Bail at one point that his connection to the Force has been cut. When did this happen? When Galen blinded him? Since when does having the ability to see link directly to one's Force sensitivity? And for that matter, at the very end we see Kota pull Palpatine's lightsabre out of his sleeve. How? With the Force. So what happened, did the writers retcon the whole thing within the same game, or did he just suddenly, inexplicably restore his connection to the Force?
  • My personal theory is that Kota was lying. He knew Starkiller was the same guy who blinded him but he didn't want Starkiller to suspect that he knew through his use of the Force so he claimed to be cut from it.
  • It has been established in canon that the ability to use the Force is at least partly based on mindset. Yoda's "size matters not" advice in TESB was meant to break Luke out of his preconceived notion that he could not lift his X-Wing out of the swamp. So, Kota wasn't exactly "cut off from the Force" he was just too wrapped up in self-loathing and depression to access the Force. Once Starkiller helps him get his confidence back he gets his Force powers back too.
    • Case in point: In the Shadows of the Empire novel, there is a chapter that focuses on Darth Vader in his meditation chamber as he attempts to strengthen his connection to the Dark Side in order to heal the damage to his lungs. At one point his connection to the Dark Side becomes so strong that he becomes able to breath perfectly without his suit. But as soon as he feels the first hint of happiness about this the Dark Side instantly leaves him and suddenly he can't breath anymore. The reason being that while the Dark Side is strengthened by anger and hatred it is "poisoned by joy". If "good" emotions like joy, happiness, and love can weaken or sever a Sith Lord's connection to the Dark Side, it stands to reason that "bad" emotions like hate, anger, or despair can damage a Jedi's connection to the Light Side.
• I figured Kota was lying out of his arse. I mean, I'm sure that throughout the 1,000+ years of Jedi, there were a few Jedi here and there that were blind either from birth or injury. Kota wasn't the first, or likely the last, blind Jedi.

Windows in the space stations/ships.

• Sure, those blast doors close when a window breaks, good design and all, but why are the windows on a space station so fragile that you can punt people through them? Especially one designed for war?
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation is at play here, IMO. Obviously the windows on a real space ship/station wouldn't be simultaneously that big and that fragile, nor would there be such an unforgivably long delay between the window breaking and the pressure doors coming down. In the real world Starkiller would have been killed the first time he blew out one of those windows. Even if we assumed his Force powers were strong enough to keep from getting spaced, most if not all the air in the room would have been sucked out into space in the time it takes for the pressure doors to come down. He would either asphyxiate or suffer a slow, painful, lingering death from decompression sickness. But...but...the developers thought it'd be cool and/or funny if we could kill stormtroopers by spacing them. Can you look me in the eye and say they were wrong?
  • Darth Bane can fly through space on a goddamn bird with the Force. It's safe to say Starkiller can rapidly create a strong enough Force shield to keep an air bubble around himself.
    • Who's to say the windows are particularly fragile anyway? We are talking about the Force here. An energy source that allows the play to fling TIE fighters around as if they were only very slightly heavy boxes. I think the Force would be strong enough to break through reinforced glass.
    • He could (probably) create a bubble of air around himself, but the rest of the air in the room has still been sucked out into space. The remaining air would be too thin for him to breathe and he would quickly start suffering decompression sickness. Startkiller would be dead as dirt the first time he broke one of those windows. This is pure Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny at work.
    • Er...he breathes the air in the bubble. Besides, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon hold their breath with the Force for a hugely long time in Ep I. Furthermore, this is Star Wars. Oxygen manufacture from waste material isn't too far beyond them. Finally, Jedi are MUCH tougher than usual people. Rahm Kota FELL FROM ORBIT. He was fine, and he had just been slashed across the face with a lightsaber!
    • He couldn't possibly hold enough air in his Force bubble to survive more than a few minutes (if that). Jedi may be tougher than usual people, but they still need to breath.
    • He wouldn't need to hold the barrier for more than a few minutes. After the windows are sealed the air pressure probably went back to normal pretty fast.
    • Most of the air in the room would have been blown out into space in the time it takes for the pressure doors to come down. The remaining air would be too thin to breath and would be such low pressure that Starkiller would be stricken with a fatal case of decompression sickness. Again, this is pure Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny. In real life Starkiller would have been killed, but it doesn't matter because it's cool and it's funny.
  • Bear in mind that niether Vader nor Sidious actually wanted Starkiller dead. It's entirely plausible to assume that they could have protected him from the vacuum forces him in some way. Also remember that Vader had to "rebuild" Starkiller's body, which could account for both being smashed through the glass and the subsequent asphyxiation.

Starkiller's method of travel.

On the rebel ship Starkiller needs to get from point a to point b how does he do this? By destroying parts of the ships that are in his way. Now does destroying parts of a ship that you don't know what they sound like a good idea to you?

• Under normal circumstances, no. But time is a factor for Starkiller. Getting there quickly is more important than getting there safely.
• And it's goddamn AWESOME!
• Also by that point the ship was already in bad shape. A little more damage wouldn't make things much worse than they already were.

Death Star Plans.

We already know that at least 12 people stole Death Star plans, but now it turns out that the entirety of the Rebel Alliance leadership (except Leia) were already there. What do they need them for?

• Just because they were there doesn't mean they know anything about where they were taken. I doubt the Emperor told them much about the Death Star in between all the other bragging he was getting up to.
  • Do you really think the Emperor would tell them, "Hey, fyi, if you want to destroy the Death Star, this is what you must do..." He's so Genre Savvy that he won't even include something like "You Rebel scum likely will never notice the thermal shaft that we left open up on the surface."

On Obi-Wan.

Why doesn't Bail just tell Obi-Wan "Hey, we're starting a rebellion, please help Jedi Master! And bring Vader's son, since we have two insanely powerful Jedi here to train him!" I know he contacted Obi-Wan in IV, but that was 2 years later. Why wait?

• • Luke would've been 18 at the time. Maybe Obi-Wan would've felt that Luke just wasn't ready yet?
  • He was 19 at the time of A New Hope. Not much difference.
  • Well, Obi-Wan must've felt that the Force would know when it'd be the right time to deliver Luke to him.