Rise of the Empire Retrospective: Complete Edition | Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005)

I know this video is far from perfect (especially with mic issues), but I wanted to say thank you to all of you guys who watched this video! It has probably been the biggest project I've worked on for this channel so far, and the response has been encouraging and humbling. Thank you guys for watching this and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did making it

“Gathered an army large enough to capture 2 star systems” starts with 15 men That’s about all I ever remember from the utapau mission

Writing this at the Polis Massa segment, I will always remember this map. Not from the campaign, but a Galactic Conquest my brother and I played together. We always hated Polis with how cramped it was, but one battle qas one we have always considered legendary, even almost 20 years later. We were getting crushed, and eventually it was just the two of us against over 60 AI. So we regrouped at one cap point and just held out, and after ten minutes of fighting we won by killing the remaining enemies. We've always considered that one of our crowning moments

“What I remember about the rise of the Empire…was how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We knew what was about to happen and what we were about to do. Did we have any doubt? Any private and traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 went down and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word.”

"Its just not very satisfying from a gameplay perspective to end on a loss" Halo Reach: "hold my plasma grenade"

I definitely think they "couldn't look her in the eyes" because they knew order 66 was coming. A lot of these journals seem to imply the clones knew it was going to happen ahead of time which makes them very different from the clones we see in the clone wars with the inhibitor chips. It's Interesting to think that these clones had full awareness and actively obeyed order 66. It makes them seem a lot colder and more like weapons used by palpatine and not actual people.

1:17:21 I think the use Boba for this mission for one major reason. He’s just as much invested as any other clone. He is one. And not only one, it’s his fathers genetics too. Like they say at the start, he has a intensive knowledge of the place and they are using him as a strike leader/guide for it to help them complete this objective completely. So it makes sense playing Boba Fett at the start, as not only are you a Clone too, your the primary clone guiding the attack on into the facility to destroy it. You are the guide to the others.

the virgin queen of naboo vs the chad hover tank is basically what happened on my playthrough of swbf2 safe to say the queen is in a better place now

I always read the “couldn’t look her in the eyes” comment as a mix of shame and sadness. Not only did she save the 501st from being wiped out and helped keep them going during the fighting, she had personally come to see them and thank them. It wasn’t just the fact that she helped them, but that she was still able to then turn around and acknowledge the brave fighting they had done. Here was their savior, the one they knew would be betrayed eventually, coming and thanking them and congratulating them on their brave fighting.

The real reason for not including Ep6 in the scripted campaign is to guide you right into the Galactic Conquest mode, where you can decide the ending yourself and which puts all the skills learned throughout the campaign to use.

The clone rebellion on Kamino not being recanonized is an unforgivable tragedy. The Bad Batch was clearly building up to it, but then Filoni pulled a switcheroo.

Regarding Vader's command about stealing a strike bomber: I always assumed that Vader, with his background as "Anakin the pilot", was interested in this type of ship for some sort of personal collection, because it was a type of ship that General Grievous used at some point. Grievous was killed by Anakin's old master, Obi-Wan, so maybe it was another way for Vader to claim victory over his old friend and teacher, whom he now hates with a passion.

Something that Battlefront 2 OG does exceptionally well imo is representing the hatred between the Imperials and the Rebels, partly from what can be observed from context but mostly due to how well it submerges you in the rivalry from the antagonists side of all things, we all want to root for the rebellion by default but when we're placed solely in the Empires POV and we're subjected to all the hardship that the steady snowball of the rebellion builds to, it's hard not to become engrossed, not that it's some super deep dive into the human psyche, but it's amazing how the game can so quickly push you into enacting a power/revenge fantasy directed against the heroes of the story. One simple, small but crucial detail that sells it all that I don't see anyone talk about or even seem to notice, is that the AI of the civil war era exclusively for both Imperials and Rebels will occasionally swap to their blasters after a kill, run over to the corpse and start viscously "mag dumping" it as it were, shouting things like "Don't get up! Stay dead! Rebel scum! Filthy traitor..." as they do so, this never occurs in the Clone Wars era and it's an awfully gruesome detail to include that's indicative of the overall tone of the era, the Clone Wars may have been a far more brutal wide spanning war but end of the day it was all just a matter of efficiency and logistics, one manufactured disposable army against another, the Empire and the galactic civil war on the other hand stood to bring out the worst human qualities among everyone that was a player in it. I'm glad Star Wars has games like Battlefront 2 and Republic Commando, while the movies and shows prefer to focus on the ever feuding big pictures of the Jedi and Sith whose visions and presence are so far above and beyond the realm of relatability and understanding, the games, books and novels all offer a window into the smaller pictures that make up their "big picture" their "utopia"... And each small picture is likely someones story getting cut short, fighting and dying in a bloody filth filled trench.

For me, this game has the best representation of Order 66. No inhibitor chip that turns clones into mindless killing machines, just loyal soldiers who know which is their ultimate goal. Others may disagree, but I feel this approach is more interesting.

I love the clonewars. But I prefer this interpretation more “When the enemy screams in your voice” that gave me goosebumps

Fun fact about the training mission: If you decline being Windu in the tutorial….you soft lock yourself and cannot progress in the mission because the hero objective is required to progress. You can still leave the game via pause menu, but the mission will not progress and never end.

I think in RotS the reason the clones shot Aalay so many times, was to make sure she died quickly and didn't suffer.

1:06:06 I think the point of the “pointless” stealing of the CIS “bomber” objective is that the ship you are told to recover is the same model as General Grievous’ personal starship. Perhaps Vader wanted you to salvage one for him so that he could add it to his own personal collection. He is a pilot by nature, and this is probably showing his still innate love of flying. The order also still plays into the pointlessness of most of the orders the clones receive throughout the campaign. Risk your life to add a new toy to someone’s collection.

Small correction, Inhibitor Chips were not present in Legends. Instead they received genetic modifications to make them more docile and compliant.

49:00 the clones are defending and capturing Jedi knowledge, first yes it's a direct order, but second you have to understand that the order predates the galactic republic itself (more than 25.000 years), the Jedi archives contain literal thousands of generations of knowledge and wisdom, knowledge shared only in the order, knowledge that palpatine wants to have, with that precedent and well placed propaganda, the Jedi order actually seemed suspicious and treacherous at the eyes of the public...