Shakey Mac Posted November 27, 2003 Share Posted November 27, 2003 idontlikegeorge said this: I mean, they are completely seperate from the Force! Atleast the yslamiri are still relative to the Force, but the Vong aren't affected with a lack of or presence of the Force. i would have agreed with that statement 6 months ago. but i actually had the guts to pick up an NJO book not too long ago; Traitor, by Matthew Stover. in it, Jacen (the male twin) is captured by the Vong for some obscure religious reason. anyway, the basic plot of the book is irrelevant for this post. however, along the course of the book, Jacen learns to interact with Vong-life forms using the Force. once he eventually discovers how to do this, his "teacher" likens the Vongs' lack of a force presence to the electro-magnetic-spectrum. the idea being that just because all we see is white light (and its component colors) doesnt mean that the other forms of light (x-ray, infrared, UV) dont exist. so the whole premise behind what Jacen learns is not so much that the Vong are untouchable by the Force, but just that they are untouchable by the Force all the current Jedi know. so a story could be conceivably be weaved around Jacen returning and teaching his Jedi comrades how to effect the Vong using the force. but thats just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzerian Posted November 27, 2003 Share Posted November 27, 2003 like Species 8472 from Voyager those r very annoying jumping around corners and hard to kill (star trek elite force) probably the most annoying monster in that game lol anyway NJO game sounds good but it will be like what people were saying before JA kyles a jedi master hes finished no more playing him so basicaly in NJO u would need to be trained as a padawan which would be exactly the same as JA if a game was made as u being a jedi master the dark jedi would have to be very hard and stormtrooper would have to be like the droids in TPM that being always in groups of about 4 or 5 and have tanks backing them up:eek: anyway for a game like this to be good it wouldnt be very newbie friendly and only die hard jedi knight fans would like it i like the old mercanary jedi knight 1 feel of the game where a lightsaber wasnt "uber" but then again its fun to run into a bunch of stormtroopers deflecting there shots before cleaving them into a thousand pieces:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrotoy7 Posted November 27, 2003 Share Posted November 27, 2003 Im still meandering through the final NJO book, "The Unifying Force", one revelation was (major book spoiler) : The yuuzhan vong are absent from the force because it was stripped from them as a punishment for their aberrant ways I havent finished reading the book, but it can safely be assumed that there will be greater clarification of where the Vong stand w regards to the force. This would obviously affect any other EU/gaming representation of them..... Still that above mod/project sounds interesting, and ambitious.... I would definitely give it a go, if it ever gets completed...... MTFBWYA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master_Keralys Posted December 1, 2003 Author Share Posted December 1, 2003 Does anyone know what happened to Prime's NJO mod that he talked about early in the thread? It's been kind of silent on that thread for a while... For that matter, where' Prime? Hmm... I can't wait for TUF <no spoilers, no spoilers, no spoilers... grr. Focus, Keralys!!!> Astro, go check out my Jacen Solo thread in the EU section... Just watch out for the ridiculous quantities of literary analysis. It's a good thread, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kengo Posted December 1, 2003 Share Posted December 1, 2003 Originally posted by Master_Keralys Does anyone know what happened to Prime's NJO mod that he talked about early in the thread? It's been kind of silent on that thread for a while... ... Wha? Unless I seriously misintrepreted what Prime meant when he said " I guess I see an NJO game as getting rid of most of the elements I enjoy about Star Wars games, like stormtroopers, lightsaber battles, dark jedi, effective force powers, and scenes/locations familiar from the movies." it doesn't make much sense for him to have started an NJO Mod? Am I missing something here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master_Keralys Posted December 2, 2003 Author Share Posted December 2, 2003 Yup, you're right. Sorry, I think I was thinking about something PnutMaster said about another mod that's being done. It was a long time ago, and I was in a rush when I wrote that... so I was confused. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Count Posted December 2, 2003 Share Posted December 2, 2003 NJO sucks dick and ruined the whole point of Star Wars; it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned; also why isn't pnut_master the most hated person on the entire forum; he loves to RPG and love the NJO; all the self rightgeous morons on here should be going for his throat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrotoy7 Posted December 2, 2003 Share Posted December 2, 2003 Originally posted by The Count NJO sucks dick and ruined the whole point of Star Wars; it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned; also why isn't pnut_master the most hated person on the entire forum; he loves to RPG and love the NJO; all the self rightgeous morons on here should be going for his throat. What are you carryin on about Count.... So you dont like the NJO..... So you dont like RPG.... well, um, good for you ! As for me I love NJO, and am a huge RPG fan, from Final Fantasy to Neverwinter... cant wait for KOTOR. Pnut is hardly the most hated person on the forum, or the most annoying. In fact, the only thing that irritates me are whingers, but you are a POM after all.... Don't get your knickers in a knot though guv, the NJO isnt everyones cup o' tea..... KERALYS - I was actually avoiding that thread because I thought it contained TUF spoilers, but since you posted it...... I'm 300 pages in, its amazing stuff.... I dont think this is spoiler material but Kyles name is dropped at least 4 times so far by my count, including 1 very short spoken line..... MTFBWYA *goes off to EU forum* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prime Posted December 2, 2003 Share Posted December 2, 2003 Originally posted by The Count NJO sucks dick and ruined the whole point of Star Wars; it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned; also why isn't pnut_master the most hated person on the entire forum; he loves to RPG and love the NJO; all the self rightgeous morons on here should be going for his throat. All you mother******s who like the NJO are goina pay! How's that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kengo Posted December 2, 2003 Share Posted December 2, 2003 Originally posted by Prime All you mother******s who like the NJO are goina pay! How's that? *Lights saber* I don't even like the NJO, but en guarde! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solo4114 Posted December 2, 2003 Share Posted December 2, 2003 ...thank you Jay and Silent Bob... (don't think I didn't catch that. ) ANYWAY.... Personally, I'm against the NJO. I haven't read the books either, but I've read enough background material to know that I'd rather just avoid it. If the whole storyline was presented to me in an easily digestible format, I MIGHT look into it, but only to critique it more accurately. It seems ill thought out to me. The Vong just don't fit the feel of the star wars universe to me. The whole concept of having them as the new big bad guys strikes me as an attempt to broaden the appeal of star wars or somehow make it more "mature". This is like saying we should have Episode III be rated R and be more violent to appeal to mature audiences. the end result is that you shrink your audience and lose much of the feel of the original material. Think about it this way. Imagine if the next Star Trek movie suddenly had the Enterprise discover a planet of telekinetic, empathic, psychic samurai who used laser swords and believed themselves to be the guardians of peace and justice. You'd cry foul, wouldn't you? It's like mixing your paints or double-dipping with chips. Just don't do it. It also shows me that the people who conceived of the whole idea really didn't understand what star wars is about. They saw it more as science fiction and less as myth. Read some Joseph Campbell. THAT is what Star Wars is about. The space setting is just a backdrop to what is basically an archetypal hero tale. Granted, the EU books have basically told the stories of what happens afterwards to the characters (which gets away from the "hero" story), but have done so mostly emulating the feel of the films. They've used the established conventions from the films and have played with them a little, but basically hewed pretty closely to the source material. The NJO stuff seems like a conscious radical departure from this. It's as if the marketing guys said "It's all getting stale. We need to shake things up a bit. The Empire is getting tired as a source for stories. I mean, how many would-be usurpers can we have here?" And they were right about that. But it's what happened NEXT that's the problem. Rather than decide to reexamine the original themes more closely and to stick with those themes, they started spinning out ideas which, to me at least, seem based more on what's "cool" than on capturing the feel of the films. No offense to our younger posters, but it seems like a lot of it was the same 13-year-old-inspired drek that we find in films like Independence Day. "Yeah! So the bad guys would be these evil aliens who, like, can't be touched by the force! Cool! And they'd have LIVING spaceships! What, like they live in them? No, man, like the ships are ALIVE! Wow! And ALL their weapons are alive and stuff! Oh, and you know, to make this more mature and more serious, we should kill off someone. One of the main characters. That'd make it mature." People don't really want mature, though. When I read Star Wars books or see the movies, I want to feel like I'm 5 years old again. I do appreciate having my "Cool!" center stimulated (IE: the last 30 minutes of Ep. II), but I want basically a space myth, not science fiction. It seems that the people writing the stories said "It's time for Star Wars to grow up" when star wars is precisely about NOT growing up. Now, I'm all for telling darker stories and I think that highlighting pain and loss makes a story more meaningful and makes the heroes victories count for more when they happen. But the way I see it, killing off our established favorites is just a bad idea. Better to set the story in an entirely new era without those characters, and simply tell a new and darker story in the Star Wars universe. Besides, there are other ways to threaten the galaxy than just making up some evil unstoppable space aliens from another galaxy who...um...are unstoppable and have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the universe... It's like taking Tolkien or the Dragonlance books and then saying, "And then, from across the seas, came a race of people who flew on magic carpets and could turn their bodies into metal at a whim!" It just makes you go "Huh? Where the hell did THAT come from?" If they wanted to create new badguys, they could have done any of the following storylines: 1.) Droid/Clone rights. A new story arc where the underclass is treated poorly and seeks representation in the senate. This touches off a conflict between a group of planets who want to basically enslave droids/clones and the rest of the republic that's against them. Or it could be that the group wants to join the republic, but the republic is against it, and about how a small group of Jedi travel to the planet to expose the truth about droid/clone injustice. 2.) A territorial war breaks out between two planets or two groups on one planet, based on who has hereditary rights to the planet. The conflict threatens to engulf the republic in war as planets begin to take sides. Can the Jedi mediate the peace in time? 3.) Luke senses a great disturbance in the Force, but his visions remain cloudy. Across the Republic, there are signs of some impending evil approaching, but nothing concrete appears to Luke. Could the Sith be rising again? Is there a new power in the force? What danger awaits the galaxy, and can Luke and his Jedi solve the riddle in time? You could then throw in any number of smaller scale conflicts that could be orchestrated by some evil power, or could just be general free-floating nastiness in the galaxy. Moral of the story: true evil can never be eradicated. So long as there is good, there must be evil, and Luke and the Jedi must remain vigilant for its rise in any form. Those are just a few. Instead, what'd we get? Nasty bio-borg-like guys who are into body piercings, and a dead wookiee on our hands. Where do I sign up? Regardless, I actually came up with a way to neatly sidestep the events of the NJO, while at the same time still give them some creedence and value in the continuity. If I ever got off my ass and wrote the stories (and if Lucas entertainment actually didn't sue me first), they might be pretty cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLiberator34 Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Ummm so what do you think about an NJO game? I thought that was the point of this thread? As for your opinions on the books Solo4114 to each his own pal. You want to feel like a kid that's your thing. I, for one, am glad that Star Wars has evolved into something that steps beyond the ideas the movies and earlier books used. It's time to expand the boundaries of what we see as Star Wars. That hold just as true for the games as it does for books or even movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wes Marrakesh Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Originally posted by The Count NJO sucks dick and ruined the whole point of Star Wars; it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned; also why isn't pnut_master the most hated person on the entire forum; he loves to RPG and love the NJO; all the self rightgeous morons on here should be going for his throat. Well hello and **** you too. Just 'cause you don't like the NJO or you don't like RPGers, doesn't mean we need to hear about it. Especially if it's a flame. Keep it to yourself. Also, I see no reason why I should be going for Pnut's throat (self righteous moron or not). Yours, however... there's good reason there. Returning to the topic of the thread... I think there's a large amount of potential for an NJO game. I probably wouldn't play it, though. I don't see very much non-linear gameplay here, and though the Vong are pretty cool, it seems like it would be very hard to balance. But if it was pulled off well, there's no good reason not to give it a shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrotoy7 Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Uh-oh....please don't turn this into *another* flame fest.... Count - I don't think its a good idea to come on any forum, let alone this one and call ppl morons, self righteous or not... Go straighten your Posh & Becks poster will ya.... If you want to rant about the NJO go to the EU forum ! http://www.lucasforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=442 there's plenty of ppl in there who'd love to agree or disagree with you.... back to topic....... well if those guys ever make the mod(see posts above) I'll give it a go. I think the vong thing will fit better in with : -A SW flight sim, like the old XW series, which requires a bit more precision -A stealth and strategy FPS, like Republic Commando seems to be(but of course NO Vong there, wrong era !) -An RPG or RTS, this would have to be done extremely well to be at all fun ! see... i'm cynical about the game side of things but I love the NJO... to each their own... Getting on here and saying *anything* sucks dick will render what was a thoughtful discussion and debate into a rant and flame-a-thon.... which is boring, and sad.... damn you **(mumbles under breath... words include 'frickin' and 'count'...... )** Solo4etc.. Nice, well thought out post. At least you can elaborate on what you dislike about the NJO, rather than saying it "sucks dicK". As for the Vong, I really couldnt care less if they are tatooed tough guys who are invisible to the force. Thats just the dressing, the main body of the NJO is about *specific* characters and how they deal with the situations presented to them.....If it weren't for characters like Nom Anor, Jacen & Jaina Solo, Vergere, Corran Horn, Tahiri etc then the NJO would be another low rate sci fi spin off, like alot of the Trek novels are...... Dont knock it till you try it....properly..... Wes - well stated...all of it !! MTFBWYA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solo4114 Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 See, that's the thing. I'll bet the story itself is kind of cool if it was set in some other universe. But to me it just doesn't belong in the Star Wars universe. As for expanding Star Wars and letting it grow beyond the movies, I think that's nice and all, but isn't that what the pre-NJO EU stuff was doing anyway? It expanded on the stories of the characters, while (generally) maintaining the feel of the films. I guess I just don't get why people would want to get away from the films and the feelings they evoked. Isn't it that experience that you have watching the films that made you a Star Wars fan in the first place? Even aside from all that, I guess my other great gripe with the Vong is that they seem contrived. They're too easy a plot device to me and they just don't seem all that creative, in addition to the stuff I discussed above. It's as if someone said, "Ah, hell, I dunno. Make 'em bad guys from another galaxy or something" and then the rest of the brainstormers went from there ("And they'd have biological everything! And the force wouldn't work! And, and, and....") As for a game based on this, I've discussed this before (albeit back on the JK2 forums) and I think it probably wouldn't work very well. We've pretty much covered the reasons why here, though. If you want to stay true to what I've heard of the stories, any fights with a vong would have to be basically no-force affairs. Not much of a Jedi game. Your lightsabre would do piddly amounts of damage (even LESS than 1.04!!). Again, not much of a Jedi game. The rest of the time, you could fight a bunch of battle thralls and collaborators, but then how would this be any different from what we do already? Essentially, you'd have the vong as the "bosses" of the levels, but it just doesn't sound like it'd be that fun to me. Then you've got all the stuff with a reduced audience, people not knowing the background story, etc. I think a game based on the NJO would likely be reviewed by people who hadn't read the books and would have much of the same reactions that many of us have had. Namely a "Huh? Where the hell did THIS stuff come from? This isn't Star Wars!" kind of response. I just think it's too touchy a subject to make a game about and it's financially not that feasible. Besides, folks are already working on mods for it, so no worries. You'll get SOMETHING with the NJO feel to it eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrotoy7 Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Solo4etc well...at least your responses are detailed... At the end of the day, the Vong are NOT what the NJO is all about.... need I say it again... I'm finishing "The Unifying Force"(The final book) and it has been an amazing read..... I think it'd be great for you to state your case at the EU forum, and have a squizz of the NJO related threads... there have been some excellent posts by Keralys in particular..... But you wouldnt be the only one there who isnt into the NJO..... MTFBWYA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I am the Boo Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Astrotoy7: While the Vong may not be what the books are ultimately about, they would be what the GAME is ultimately about. Unless the developers make the story so integral to the game(such as in Xenosaga or Final Fantasy etc) and extend the game to such lengths as to HAVE that much story, the Vong will never be more than bosses or Minibosses. Most FPS, including the JK series to date, just don't have that much story so they can convey the depth of intrigue and character building that would be needed for an NJO game to be anything but what Solo4114 suggests. The gamers and the critics who played the game would end up only experiencing the NJO game as a strange departure from the standard SW lore and wonder what crack Lucas was smoking the day that it crossed his desk and he stamped it with the "Ok" stamp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jahs Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Im too lazy to read the entire thread, so I don't know if it's been mentioned or not, but how about playing a bad guy? Perhaps a Vong, perhaps not. Would probably attract alot of players, like the casual sith rodian, or the more timid darkbountyhuntersmuggler. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master_Keralys Posted December 3, 2003 Author Share Posted December 3, 2003 Well done, Solo4114. I think you're right about a lot of things. HOWEVER: I think that if the game was doen correctly it could be very powerful. I think, though, that with the kind of FPS's today, the story isn't as important in most of them. It certainly can be, though. Regardless of whether or not you like the game, the story development and player involvement level in HALO was incredible, and HALO 2 will probably be the same, from all I've heard. It just goes to show you that it's possible, but it takes a ton more work. And that's something LA doesn't seem to care about in the JK series anymore. So, in the long run, I think that you guys are right: it would make a better RPG or X-Wing style game (which I've wanted since the series started ) - but not because of the limitations of the storyline, but rather because of LA. The As I've said before, it would actually be fairly easy to get into the story without feeling unnatural: have them come in a few missions into the game. It would have to be done right, and it would be a lot of work, but all true masterpieces are. That's why games like XWA and KOTOR are so incredible - they had the work to earn it, and no offense to Raven, b/c it's not their fault, but JO and JA just don't have that depth (though, to be honest, I think the story was stronger w/JO than JA). Solo4114 - you really should head over to the EU section: your rationality would be most appreciated. I am the Boo - true. That's kind of what I was talking about with the dev time and effort and all that. LA just isn't into it, and it weakens their games I think. Jahs - that's not a bad idea, and it certainly hasn't been mentioned - I'd have to think about it. It'd be interesting, that's for sure... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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