One common complaint I've seen about the campaign is Operation: Cinder. Many people say that it makes no sense for the Empire to attack Vardos, that it just makes them look pointlessly and stupidly evil. Others (mainly the "Empire Did Nothing Wrong!" crowd who were fuming at Iden's defection) say that it was just a weak plot device to give Iden a weak reason to defect. Still others say that even if the Emperor made such a plan, surely nobody would ever carry it out.
Now, I don't think the campaign's story is perfect. In my opinion, its greatest flaw is that it relies too much on a player's preexisting knowledge of Star Wars lore to make certain connections. Many details about Operation: Cinder's true nature are never made clear; they're hinted at, but only those with preexisting knowledge of the lore will make all those connections.
That said, if you do know this information, the plot becomes more engaging and less confusing. This is good, because I think overall the campaign is very good and is even better when you aren't hung up on certain issues. So let's get into Operation: Cinder.
One common complaint I've seen about the campaign is Operation: Cinder...
THE PURPOSE AND GOALS OF OPERATION CINDER
In game, we are told that the purpose of Cinder is essentially a show of strength: by purging entire planets, the Empire will show that they're still in control and cow rebellious systems into submission. A lot of people have pointed out that this makes little sense, especially when it comes to destroying loyal worlds like Vardos. There's a good reason for that: It's a lie.
At this point, the Empire is officially led by Grand Admiral Rae Sloane (the so-called "Counselor to the Empire"), but she was actually a puppet to the real man in charge: the shadowy Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax. Rax was groomed by Palpatine himself to execute Operation: Cinder in the events of Palpatine's death without a successor. Thus, he was one of the few people to know the true nature of Operation: Cinder.
Operation: Cinder seems counter-productive to preserving the Empire because it is counterproductive to preserving the Empire. In fact, that's the entire point. Palpatine believed that, if he died without a successor, that meant that the Empire had failed and needed to be torn down and replaced. Part of this is actually somewhat logical, and part of it is an "If I can't have it, nobody can" attitude befitting of a Sith Lord and especially befitting Palpatine in particular.
(it's likely Palpatine's Plan A in the event of his death was for Vader to replace him- after all, that's how the Rule of Two works. Obviously, that didn't pan out, but the Emperor was smart enough to have a Plan B.)
Operation: Cinder fulfills the Emperor's will in several ways.
First, it accelerates the death of the "unworthy" Empire (which, let's be honest, would have been unlikely to survive long term in any case after Palpatine's death and the loss of Death Star II).
Second, it is a "Scorched Earth" campaign, destroying key planets like Vardos, Naboo, and Coruscant (which was not targeted with satellites but left by Rax to collapse into civil war and anarchy) and assets like the Pillio Observatory, and thereby stopping the Rebels from acquiring them.
By destroying key planets, the galaxy is thrown into chaos and disorder, preventing the Rebels from creating a stable successor to the Empire.
Finally, and perhaps most important here, it separates out which Imperials are "worthy" of participating in the new order planned Palpatine and Rax, and which Imperials must be purged from the ranks. Which brings us to Iden and Del.
THE DEFECTION
By forcing Imperial soldiers and commanders to commit seemingly irrational and counter-productive atrocities, Rax (and posthumously, Palpatine) is testing their loyalty to the Empire. He's saying "Do you trust the Emperor enough to do this?" and "What are you more loyal to: your personal ideals, or the institution of the Empire and the legacy of the Emperor?" .
People like Gideon Hask and Garrick Versio pass the test. They are mindlesssly loyal and zealous enough that they will commit such acts even if they have their doubts. And they do have their doubts: Hask's initial reaction to seeing the satellites over Vardos, and Admiral Versio's stilted attitude when talking to Iden, confirm that they are personally uncomfortable with the operation, but trust the Empire and the Emperor enough to do it anyway.
Iden and Del, however, are more principled. They serve the Empire because they agree with its proclaimed ideals, not because of personal faith in the Emperor or in the institution of the Empire (Note Iden's frustration with the Emperor at Endor). They can't bring themselves to destroy their home just because the Emperor asked, and so they reluctantly commit treason against the Empire. To them, it's the Empire that's gone traitor- by destroying their own people, it has, to them, abandoned the ideals it should have stood for.
And the kicker is that this is all part of the plan with Operation: Cinder. People like Iden and Del are "weak" and cannot do what is truly necessary to build a new order in the galaxy. In addition, they are more loyal to their own moral compass than to the orders of the Empire, this makes them fickle and unreliable. Thus, it is fitting that they be revealed and purged from the ranks, so that the new order that will rise from the ashes of the Empire can be truly pure and strong.
>It's good if you're ignorant about Star Wars
No thank you
EA please leave
Conclusion
We may question why anyone would be able to pass this test, but the tragic truth is that people pass it every day in real life: there are always people who will trample every personal ideal and value they have out of loyalty to the cause. While we could have had a story where Iden stayed loyal the entire time, I'm personally okay that we got this instead. Yes, the "Imperial defector" is a cliche, but here, it not only actually makes sense but has some more relevant things to say than most stories in this vane.
Sorry that this got a little long. I've just been irritated by all the people saying "dammit EA the plot is so dumb". Again, the campaign has flaws, some of them pretty major (such as the breakneck pace and the over-reliance on outside lore), but the purpose of this write-up was to explain that it both works and is, in fact, very fitting for the Star Wars saga.
Quite the opposite chump. Thanks for not reading I'm sure you have many peers
Good read op. Makes the campaign feel like it wasn't made by some tumblerina. To bad there are to many words for the average high school user so this thread won't get far. God speed tho
Thanks :) I know Sup Forums is too contrarian for their own good, but hoping for a little vydia discussion instead of this ignorant shit
So to create the Empire we must destroy the Empire?
Maybe. Doesn't forgive the fact that the game's plot was still incredibly weak.
More like
>to create the NEW Empire we must destroy the OLD Empire
If the Empire has satellites which can kill everything on a planet what was the point with the death stars?
Name one empire where this has actually happened and worked out for the better
First Order maybe? We'll see in 2 movies
>Thinking the first order will win
The whole Operation Cinder deal still feels ultra-retarded to me.
For starters, it's based on the idea that being a zealot who mindlessly follows orders and never think by himself is a good thing, which isn't. An Empire filled with stupid zealots would suffer from the same issue the previous Empire suffered: take out the one in charge and everyone goes into a panic because they don't have the ability or willingless to take matters into their own hands.
Second, even if you could say destroying key planets is a good way to prevent the Alliance from becoming strong in the future, going after your own planets first is the most stupid shit ever. You are basically weakening yourself and making it pretty easy for the Alliance to stop any further attempts to fuck other key worlds.
There is also the issue that apparently everyone in the Empire is a zealot, because they would rather betray the very ideals of order, stability and control they sought than disobey a dead man's orders. The reality is that the Empire wasn't a "failure", that was just Sheev being a whiny dick because he fucked up and got killed. Even post-Endor, the Empire was strong enough to continue the fight, change and maybe actually get something done now that that the evil wizards who ruled it are gone. People tend to forget that the loss of both Death Stars and the death of the Emperor were lucky breaks for the Rebellion. Yeah, they got more support after that but the Empire was still the ruler of most of the galaxy and that wasn't going to stop just because they lost a battle station or due to the death of their leader, what would really happen is that the Empire would split into many factions just like it did in the EU.
So for Operation Cinder to work you would need most imperials to be the mindless zealots it seeks to uplift, which apparently is the case even though ANH shows the Moff bickering among each other and even one of them pointing out everyone is acting like a fucking retard.
So who would win in a war between house nigger Sloane and this crazy broad?
Regarding Iden's defection, I just think it's handled pretty poorly. She is the leader of a black ops group and has known nothing but the Empire her entire life and yet she betrays it way too easily, even if she had every reason to do so.
We are never shown her internal conflict or her struggling with the fact that she is now fighting her own people. You can start gunning down Stormtroopers as soon as you get the defection cutscene and you don't even get a shitty off-hand comment from her about how fucked up that is. What's worse, by the next mission she is more than willing to murder a bunch of pilots and an entire Star Destroyer crew with her not showing any emotion about this yet again.
I also hate how the imperial characters were characterized. You have Iden, who seems to have lived inside a fucking bubble her entire life because everything she says pre-defection reeks with hypocrisy, like saying the Rebels are evil for blowing up a space station MEANT TO BLOW UP PLANETS. Then you have Del, who despite the implication that he has been serving the Empire nearly his entire life shows the doubt and lack of conviction of a fresh new recruit. And finally you have Hask, who like all the other imperial who don't defect seems incapable of thinking by himself and acts like a retarded zealot.
From the way the story shows you the imperial characters, it seems none of them ever took the time to think about what the Empire stands for and trying to come with their own justification of why this is a good thing and something worth fighting for. For a black ops group they sure feel like a bunch of ignorant pricks who didn't even know they were fighting for a totalitarian and oppressive dictatorship till the story starts.
It's a pretty shit thing, instead of humanizing the Empire or showing people who actually believe in its ideals, it instead shows you that they are stupid bad guys who do what they do because they don't know any better.
They should’ve made the campaign take place in the clone wars gunning down CIS scum
Finally, I fucking hate Operation Cinder for a simple reason: it IS a shitty plot device that ruins any potential the post-RotJ EU had and forces a retarded reset so the rehashed story of TFA makes sense.
This is arguably the worst thing about this shit. The worst cancer of the old EU took place in the post-Endor era, yes, but then it was a period filled with interesting storylines, characters and events. The Empire dealing with the Emperor's death and the rise of different warlords seeking to unite it once again, the New Republic taking its first steps, Luke becoming a proper Jedi Master. You saw the galaxy changing due to all the shit the heroes went through in the OT and what they did after that, it felt alive, vast and it was really interesting seeing how the characters you saw in the movies evolved.
With the nu-canon, all that shit is gone. Now the Empire collapses instantly, the New Republic gets 30 years of peace and then everything goes back to the way it was. Luke is still the last Jedi, Leia is still leading the Rebellion, Han is still a shitty smuggler, there is an empire lead by an evil old guy and his Jedi-turned-evil masked apprentice fucking shit up and the galaxy seems pretty much the same. It feels like all the struggles and sacrifices made in the OT are meaningles, less than half a century later everyone is still the same way they were back then, nothing changed, nothing improved, you might as well say nothing happened because it does feel that way.
This is why I fucking hate Disney and I always will. The old EU had a lot of shit but it also had a lot of good stories and it made Star Wars feel immense and epic. I probably wouldn't be so hooked up to it it wasn't for that and I hate how Disney tore it all down, not to replace it with something different but still immense but rather to make a lazy work and make sure everything stays safe and profitable.
So fuck Disney, fuck EA and fuck every single nu-canon writer.
Just wait till its revealed Iden is Rey's mother ;)
That throwaway line by Del about their daughter probably wasn't a throwaway
>It feels like all the struggles and sacrifices made in the OT are meaningles
Fucking this.
They should have just made the sequels take place in the distant future when everyone (but the droids I guess) was already dead but lived the rest of their lives peacefully.
I wouldn't even care. Rey is supposed to be a reincarnation of Jedi Eve or some shit like that so her parents are pretty much meaningless.
I'm just happy that the fag who deserted with Iden gets shot to death by their former friend.
The old EU got that point and was going even further before it was murdered by the Mouse.
Legacy got pretty shit towards the end but fuck did I enjoy reading it.
There is also campgain dlc