Monthly Archives: May 2018

Happy 41st Birthday, Star Wars!

“The Star Wars” was released on this date, May 25, 41 years ago in 1977.  A movie made on a shoe-string budget went on to make a billionaire out of its creator and billions of dollars each year in merchandise from its millions of devoted fans worldwide.  If the movie bombed in theaters those 41 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this right now as this website wouldn’t even exist.  “Whoa.  That’s heavy.”  Wait a tic, that’s the wrong franchise….

Today, we have something we’d like to share with you, but I wanted to make sure we were all signed off on it, so check back to this post soon as I will edit it once the “green light” is given.

You won’t want to miss out.  😉

Alt Episode IX

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Battlefront II’s campaign is the best official Star Wars story in years.

Ok, I have to come clean and make a couple of admissions.  First, I was one of those folks who were greatly disappointed that Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) shipped without a campaign mode.  I mean, seriously?  How do you make a gorgeous Star Wars game and then ship it without a playable story to experience?!  It seemed like a ludicrous situation; a grand oversight.  Partially because of that, even though I bought SW:BF on Day One, I never played it that much.  I enjoyed the offline missions from time to time, (the Speeder Bike sequence on Endor in first person mode is still amazing), but overall it remained primarily on the shelf to keep my bookcase company.

I was (most likely) going to buy Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) no matter what, I’ll admit it.  Once I heard it had a campaign mode, though, I was sold.  Which leads to my painful second admission.  I bought this game also on Day One, November 17, 2017, and although I did the first Mission (the prologue “The Cleaner”) when I originally got the game, I didn’t actually, really play the campaign until April 26, 2018.

OK!  Hold on, I have an excuse!  This was partially because everyone in my house wanted to watch as I played through it to experience the story as well and I was under orders from my kids and my wife to “wait for them”.  You know, like an Imperial Decree.  Well, as anyone with a TiVo or DVR can attest, often times waiting for that other person or persons who want to “watch it with you” can lead to that show never actually getting watched.  So, I finally decided “If we actually all gather around the screen at some point to watch this together, I’ll just play it all over again.”

So after deciding to finally just play the darn thing two weeks ago, this past weekend I completed the whole campaign (the main story as well as the three-chapter “Resurrection” DLC epilogue).  As I was going about my day today, the wonderful story that developer Dice created for Battlefront II continues to float around in my head, and for very good reason.  The campaign’s story line in the Battlefront II video game is far superior to the script for the movie The Last Jedi, and really even The Force Awakens.  But what is it that this game got right that Hollywood keeps getting wrong?  Let’s take a (spoiler free) look.

Iden Versio's nobody's fool. She's Star Wars' best written female since Leia, and character to wear black since Vader.

Iden Versio’s nobody’s fool. She’s Star Wars’ best written female since Leia, and character to wear black since Vader.

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Gaming, Off-Topic

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We’re on the right ‘track!

Soundtrack, that is!

I had a little tune I dreamt up for an escape scene early on in the script that was bouncing around in my head when I woke up a few days ago and I just couldn’t seem to shake it.  I thought to myself “Maybe this is something good, something that would work,” so I rang up Tim, my friend and our musical composer, to see if I could swing by his place and talk to him about it.  He said to come on by, so two days ago I went over to see him and effectively hummed to him to the best of my ability what it was that I was “hearing” in my mind.

It was both awkward and slightly embarrassing, but in a goofy kind of a way.  You know when you can hear a song so clearly in your mind and then you go to sing or hum it and you just can’t focus in on it at all no matter how hard you try?  Your mouth is making a sound, but whatever that sound is, it doesn’t match up with what you’re hearing in your head?  Well, I was struggling against that, and in the face of Tim clearly trying to intently listen to specifically what sounds I was making as I feebly fought to extract the tune from my head well enough for him to understand what I was hearing.

Fast forward to today.
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The Soundtrack

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It’s Star Wars Day! Happy May the 4th!

Cortana proves that even in the distant future, they celebrate what happened a long time ago.

Cortana proves that even in the distant future, they celebrate what happened a long time ago.

I, like many people, have a routine.

Step #1 is to wake up.  If I complete Step #1, no matter what, my day is going better than if I didn’t.  After that, I blindly eject my arm out of bed and start jabbing at the air to find my phone, which sits on my nightstand.

Upon completion of that task, I begin by checking my email accounts for anything of interest or urgency and then Cortana gives me my daily custom feed of various local, nation, global, and video game news.  I like to find out if we’ve attacked someone or been attacked yet before I get out of bed, because depending on that answer I may or may not do it.

And yes, I use Cortana, that’s because I have a Windows Mobile device.  Yes, I use a Windows Mobile device.  It just works so much better than the other two, app-gap be damned.  Now, now.  No teasing.  That leads to the Dark Side.  😉

Anyways, today I had a great greeting from “her” as I was waking up.  After unlocking my phone, Cortana offered up the best wake-up message I think she’s done yet; and that includes the “Happy Birthday!” she said to me just last weekend!

Check out how she said “Good Morning” to me today.  She shifted from her usual circular, or, dare I say it, “Halo” icon and morphed into the face of a very familiar Jedi Master.  What could be a better way to start your day with a smile then that?  Can one truly love an inanimate object?  I think quite possibly yes, as there’s always another reason why I love my phone.  🙂

Best headline for Cortana to wake me up to on my Windows Mobile phone.

Best headline for Cortana to wake me up to on my Windows Mobile phone.

 

But she wasn’t done!  She had one last notification before I was forced to either start my day or waste time talking to my phone’s AI about how fast Han Solo made the Kessel Run.

Ah, May the 4th.  The geekiest “holiday” fandom has. ^_^

But does it really belong to fandom?  Let’s take a little bit of a look into where May the 4th supposedly originated, what it means to us here today, as well as ways you can celebrate it here in Massachusetts.

 

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Community Events

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