A SPOILER-Filled Discussion of The Force Awakens

Scooter and I went to see The Force Awakens a second time, and while it hasn't quite been two weeks since the opening, I wanted to get down some of my thoughts regarding specific story beats in the film. Obviously, there are spoilers involved, so I am going to hide the bulk of this post behind a break.

My Fandom Awakens [SPOILER FREE]

If you're reading this, you're likely to have already decided to go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, or have already seen it. But if not, I highly recommend it, especially for even the most casual fan of the franchise.

What can I say? I was not disappointed. I know that sounds like faint praise. But as a part of the generation that saw the Original Trilogy in theaters and then suffered through the prequels, I hope you can appreciate the impact of those words. The Force Awakens is simply awesome. I have only praise for the filmmakers.

Beginning with the script, Lawrence Kasdan proves once again his skill in making the SW Galaxy come alive with believable dialogue. Based on what I have read, I wonder how much of Michael Arndt's (a capable screenwriter) original script remains after Kasdan and J.J. Abrams got done with it. Abrams' decision to go with mostly practical locations, effects, and aliens (along with the selective use of CGI) was perfectly fitting with the OT, giving the film a feeling of physicality that is often lacking in the prequels. Finally, the actors themselves give awesome performances. Daisy Ridley and [John] Boyega are a delight. (I can't believe I just wrote that phrase, but they are.) And they are well supported by the rest of the cast, both old and new.

While I have a few questions the movie doesn't answer, I am satisfied with the story I got. Well, actually, I'm not satisfied. For the first time in three decades, I walked out of a Star Wars movie eagerly anticipating the next.

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The [Spoiler Free] Force Awakens

As are many others, I am a longtime fan of Jimmy Fallon's musical numbers, often shared on YouTube and elsewhere. I'm also huge fan of a capella music. Here we have a mash-up even better than Pentatonix' Star Wars Medley from the AMAs:

And just because it is the right time of the year, here's the one that made me a fan of Jimmy Fallon: Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas Is You" (with Classroom Instruments):

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to this blog. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Rowan l'Artiste

Have you ever heard of Painting With a Twist? I have been aware of the company for a while, but had never really looked into attending a class until a few weeks ago when my stepson suggested that we go try it out. So there we were, Scooter and I, along with her sons, about to have an adventure in pigments. The "Twist" is optional of course; and in fact, our class was full of kids, due to a soccer team post-season event.

Of course, we started with a blank canvas. So much potential.

If you've ever watched Bob Ross, you know that you never paint details onto a blank canvas, there s always a base coat. In our case, that background was black.

Using chalk, the outline of the project begins to take shape. Unfortunately, at this point, we got so busy actually painting that I neglected to take any more in-progress photos and only have the finished art below.

Hooray for Star Wars! I was tempted to add a crossguard to the Sith blade, but went for something a little more classic. I saw one lady use purple and green, and I considered green for my Jedi blade, but thought that might look too Christmas-y. On the other hand, Christmas-y would have been perfect for this time of year.

I hesitate to show the original model painting, but here it is. Scooter and I decided that when we go next time, we'll study the model a bit more closely, so we have a better idea of what we're aiming for.

Eventually, when our game room is up and running, our lightsaber paintings will be hung in a place of honor. But for now, I brought mine to work, where I can show it off above the jolly roger hanging in my office.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to this blog. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Chores and Rewards

Syp has a post up about logging into a bunch of games to get login rewards and do basic "chores" before logging out again. Scooter and I were just talking last night—early this morning, actually—about daily logins and monthly patron/subscription rewards. (On a side note, how is "login" not in the default Firefox spelling dictionary?) Discussing GW2, Scooter didn’t like the idea of logging in and basically leveling a character to max without ever actually playing GW2. Rift has a similar daily login reward system—at least for patrons—but without the leveling boosts, if I recall correctly.

While I am perfectly willing to pickup a reward just for logging into a game, I am generally disinclined to log in solely for the reward. I have on occasion logged in regularly simply to do "chores" like repeatable quests for a larger reward, like during seasonal events. But that's only when I don't have time for more. And I become less inclined to chase such rewards the older I get.

The Hype Train Derails

Meanwhile, and I am late to the party here, the folks at BioWare announced, during the recent livestream, a monthly subscriber reward program.

Thanks to Vulkk for posting that, since BioWare apparently didn't. And GRATZ to my old guild leader Maric (@PaganRites) for getting his tweet featured, among others (top right, starting about 7:02).

I kinda see monthly reward programs as bonuses for playing the game; I would not subscribe to any game only for the rewards. So I have no issue with the program as announced. But as Syp pointed out in his rehash of the December Livestream: "BioWare is the most begrudging studio I’ve ever seen when it comes to its free-to-play model. It has it. It offers it. And it clearly loathes that it’s had to include it." For some people—including me for the longest time—SWTOR's atrocious F2P program keeps them from playing at all, much less subscribing. And if I decide to stop subscribing I lose all sorts of quality-of-life perqs, not just an XP bonus and such. And non-subscribers are limited in how much of the MMO aspects of the game they can participate in, from PvP battlegrounds to group instances. More on that later.

Contrast that with, say, Trion Worlds and Rift, which has just about the most generous loyalty program out there. You can play whatever aspect of the game you like as much as you like completely for free, and most of the patron perqs simply add to that. And the more you spend, the more loyalty points you get. And the loyalty rewards NEVER go away.

Let's Role

A lot of people were disappointed in the subscriber rewards leading up to the release of Knights of the Fallen Empire, and were again disappointed by the already announced subscriber/loyalty rewards relating to the companion character HK-55. I see reactions like, "We already have an HK droid. We already have enough companions." I don't have much of an opinion either way, to be honest. I don't have an HK-51; I don't have a Treek companion either. I saw no need—even before the new, more versatile, companion system—to get another companion when I was likely to only use a couple of the companions I had already anyway.

Seriously, of the stories I've played through, Scourge is the only final companion I've used while questing, and only because I got him after the new system launched, and it's funny to make him my healer. The final companion usually comes so late in the game that I've already established a playstyle with one of the others, and I don't need a new one. If this were more like Dragon Age, where I was forming parties with my companions, I could understand having more than one. As it is, only the new system allowing me to pick my companion's combat role has induced me to switch companions as they join my crew (which means basically, only my smuggler Heliantha).

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic

Getting back to HK-55 (and HK-related stuff, I assume) as a subscriber reward: meh. While I agree that the eightish-month sustained subscription during a specific time frame seems a little much for that extra story (no a la carte option?), monthly gifts are not why I subscribe to SWTOR any more than TSW's monthly gifts were the reason I subscribed there. I subscribe to SWTOR to play the game freely, without restrictions.

Meanwhile, many players are disappointed by the lack of new MMO content in SWTOR. While BioWare has obviously been focusing on the essentially single player Story experience, they have neglected creating new operations (raids) and PvP battlegrounds. These people don't have enough to do, and the subscriber rewards that have been announced are not much inducement to stick around. I do sympathize with them. But since my appreciation of "group content" at this stage is limited to the Story stuff Scooter and I do together, I am not a strong advocate for more raids and PvP. We haven't even done much by way of Alliance building, since those conversations are totally solo. I can't even watch Scooter's confabs, and vice versa. (I assume any missions can be done together.) We're busy bringing up our newer characters to get legendary status. I kinda hope that doesn't bite us in the butt when Ep X comes out in February.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to this blog. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.