<\/p>\n
Nobody Can be Forgiven if Nobody is at Fault<\/h3>\n
<\/div>This is what I mean about the game needing an overarching villain. It would be really nice if Cere could say something to the effect of, “We shouldn’t fight each other. The real enemy is Darth Torture Face, and if we fight each other then he wins.” Or whatever. Maybe do a callback to one of his taunts, or refute one of his claims, or whatever. Even if we don’t directly face the torturer, we need to defeat him rhetorically.<\/p>\n
Without an ultimate enemy for this guilt to land on, we just end up with this paradoxical loop of blame where nobody can accept responsibility for anything so nobody can be forgiven of anything because nobody chose<\/b> anything.<\/p>\n
Again, this isn’t terrible, it’s just a missed opportunity to put some heft into this scene. The writer is swinging around some pretty heavy themes here, and it ought to pack more punch when Cere and Trilla finally confront each other.<\/p>\n
Regardless of this lack of accountability, Trilla softens anyway. Her anger melts, and she begins to forgive Cere.<\/p>\n
Then Darth Vader enters the room and kills her.<\/p>\n
No I’m not kidding.<\/p>\n
Please Tell Me This is a Joke<\/h3>\n
<\/div>I said earlier in the series that this game only surprised me twice. The first time was when the designer didn’t pull the lightsaber tease. The second time is when they pulled…. this. Not because this is a clever twist, but because it’s so outrageously clumsy and infantile that I didn’t think it was possible.<\/p>\n
Despite my nitpicking about torture and the Dark Side, this writer knows how to construct a plot, establish stakes, make us like characters, and otherwise tell a story. The storyteller for the first 99% of the game does not feel like the sort of clueless hack that would take the central conflict of the story and the resolution between two major characters, and toss it aside for a childish fanservice stunt cameo.<\/p>\n
But here’s the thing: I don’t blame the writer for this. I blame this obnoxious mess on EA<\/i>.<\/p>\nThe All-Clown Circus<\/h3>\n
<\/div>A few years ago, the now defunct Visceral Games<\/a> was working on a Star Wars game called Ragtag<\/i>That was actually the project name, not the intended title of the game. I don’t think it ever got a proper title before the project was canned.<\/span>. It was intended to focus on a group of scoundrels and criminals instead of giving us yet another story revolving around the well-worn Jedi vs. Sith glowstick fight. The problem was that EA didn’t realize that Visceral Games knew what they were doing. As revealed in the Jason Schreier expose The Collapse Of Visceral’s Ambitious Star Wars Game<\/a>:<\/p>\n Two former Visceral staff recall EA looking at Ragtag and asking where Chewbacca was. \u201cEA would get obsessed with market research and start asking people what\u2019s important to them about Star Wars,\u201d said a former staff member. \u201cYou\u2019d get, \u2018Oh, the Force, lightsabers, the usual Jedi continuum.\u2019 They\u2019re hyper focused on that stuff, and it\u2019d be a topic of conversation in every pitch meeting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is so obnoxiously idiotic that I honestly have trouble analyzing it. There are so many glaring problems and they’re all so infuriating that I have trouble calming down and forming a coherent plan of attack. I just want to stride into the boardroom and flip tables.<\/p>\n One, they hired industry veterans like Amy Hennig<\/a>. Hennig is a legend. She’s a major force behind the Legacy of Kain<\/i> \/ Soul Reaver<\/i> series, Jak and Daxter,<\/i> and Uncharted<\/i>. She’s been the creative leadOr one of a small group of leads.<\/span> on many quality titles<\/a> and also Battlefield: Hardline<\/i><\/a>. Why would you hire someone with a resum\u00e9 like that and then second-guess them? Second-guessing your talented creative teams with proven track records is dumb enough, but doing so based on the feedback of FUCKING FOCUS GROUPS isn’t just dumb, it’s an absolute dereliction of your duty as company executive<\/b>.<\/p>\n This isn’t even how you’re supposed to use focus groups! You don’t ask people to name what they like about Star Wars and give them more of that! If you asked people in 1978 what they liked about Star Wars, they wouldn’t tell you Yoda, because they’d never heard of Yoda before. You shouldn’t make focus groups a foundational element of any<\/b> creative decision. Don’t ask them what to make, ask them what they think of what you’ve already made. I know the EA leadership is shit at running game studios, but how is it possible they’re also shit at basic business management?<\/p>\n At most, you should use focus groups as a gut-check to fine-tune stuff your brilliant creative staff has already decided to build. You don’t ask them, “What characters should we put in our next movie?” You say “Here is a Yoda character we made. What do you think of him?” Asking them what to make is nonsensical. If those random people had any skill at narrative or character design, they wouldn’t be working in a fucking focus group.<\/p>\n You absolute pillocks.<\/p>\n As a leader of an entertainment company, you should understand the business you’re in. You should understand how the products work, why people enjoy them, and what the audience is looking for. That is, in a nutshell, your entire job<\/b>. But if you’re more into golf than video games and you can’t be bothered to join the hobby you’re trying to serve, then you can at least hire talented people and trust them to know what the hell they’re doing.<\/p>\n But the absolute worst – the most ridiculous and farcical thing you can do as you attempt to embody every negative stereotype people have regarding corporate executives – is to hire a focus group and take their word over the word of your creative staff. You have no ability to make coherent decisions or to tell good ideas from bad, so you hire other laypeople and blindly follow them? That’s not the blind leading the blind. That’s blind people hiring other, less knowledgeable blind people<\/i> to tell the sighted people where to go.<\/p>\n Can you imagine if Walt Disney asked his staff to wander around the park and randomly ask guests how to make the park more popular? Dude! If you have no idea how to run the business then why are you in charge?<\/b><\/p>\n I’m not inclined to think that this writer decided to throw away the Cere \/ Trilla conflict and build the ending around a cameo that relies entirely on an audience’s external knowledge of Star Wars and otherwise has no relevance or emotional connection to anything that’s happened in the previous ~12 hours. I think this was a move of basic self-preservation on the part of the developer. Ragtag<\/i> got shitcanned because it didn’t have Chewbacca or any of the other six characters that the casual rando off the street could name. So when the team at Respawn Entertainment<\/a> was making their game, they knew they had to shoehorn in a stupid cameo. Not for the fans, but for the know-nothing executives at Electronic Arts who would otherwise cancel the game if it didn’t pander to the casually disinterested general public.<\/p>\n As proof: Even though this scene feels like it’s supposed to be the big “Oh shit!” moment of surprise for the audience, Vader was featured in the trailers for the game<\/a>. Marketing didn’t care about the integrity of the story. They didn’t care about spoilers. They just wanted to advertise HEY KIDS WE GOT DARK VADER. WE KNOW YOU LIKE DARK VADER AND LIGHT SABERS. COME PRE-ORDER OUR GAME AND GET DARK VADER AND LIGHT SABERS. Vader isn’t here because the story needs him. He’s here because he works for marketing now.<\/p>\n The irony for me is that I never saw any of the trailers, so I had no idea the Darth Vader cameo was a thing. It did indeed surprise me, but for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>Getting Back to Vader<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Come on Shamus, Was it Really THAT Bad?<\/h3>\n
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