ROFL. We are talking about the same Palpatine, right? "POWAH UNLIMITED POWAH!!!" 'Palpy, right? Most detailed and interesting? His sole motivation is fear of death and desire to control the galaxy. He isn't an interesting character at all, he undergoes approximately zero character growth and has a miserable cliche of an origin story. Prior to this contest, I didn't even think it was possible to be a Palpatine fanboy...

Oh, Admiral Bwu'atu, up to mischief again. Over in my fic, he's plotting a Civil War. Seems like things don't turn out so well for him down the road...

Which is a great thing, because it leaves the existing characters and stories in place and expands the universe in new and interesting directions.

Hmmm, looks like I mistakenly looked at the 78% Boba pulled down in the previous round. Still, 'Ol Palpy got schooled, and rightfully so. This IS a popularity contest, despite what doctoglethorp appears to believe...

I don't see how this is surprising. This tournament is run on "Rule of Cool", and Boba Fett is the author. No one actually likes Palpatine, as evidenced by his crushing defeat. He lost worse than Jabba the Hutt.

You could get around the multiclassing by saving your levelups after Level 2 and just waiting until you got to Dantooine. Admittedly, Taris is hard as all hell, but your companions can pick up your slack. The endings to KotOR 2 were pretty choppy, but it was also unfinished, so best not to judge it based on its final plot segments. Do you die a hero, or live to see yourself become the very thing you sought to destroy? KotOR 2 had the same black and white morality system, it was just that Kreia was sitting around to deliver snarky commentary on everything, and the end message was basically: "No matter what you do, there will be consequences". Being light side still required you to make the "pet the puppy" choices, however. It was just the Jedi mentality that was deconstructed by Kreia. KotOR 2 and SWTOR have this same childish morality system, where your choices range between being crippling kind and generous to a sadistic lunatic with no regard for any sense of planning or manipulation, or even making certain choices which are "dark" but may lead to a better future outcome. And the plot was not "A New Hope" in a new wrapping, the story unfolded interestingly enough the first time you played it. The shock/reveal was played quite well, and it wasn't a "Rescue the princess and blow up the death star plot". It followed a more traditional epic journey, which just happened to be retracing your footsteps. It was a clean heroic quest storyline, which worked fine since the supporting cast was interesting. For its time, KotOR was a great game, it's just that future titles and releases have since raised the storytelling bar. Wait... you don't have a silly amount of plot armor in KotOR 2? You manage to survive your encounter with Nihilus, you wake up just in time to escape the Peragus station, you narrowly avoid getting blown into pieces when the asteroid field explodes, your assassin on Citadel Station releases you from your Force Cage, you miraculously survive a shuttle crash on Telos IV, locate Bao-Dur by accident (who finds your ship for you), you repeatedly escape murder by Darth Sion, HK-50 assassins, and that's like the first third of the game! At least the excuse for Revan was his power in the Force and latent abilities allowed him to scrape by on Taris. After that, he was literally retracing his steps, so it's not so much plot armor as that he's done it all before. Revan was hardly the ultimate hero, that was the entire point of his character. He was a complex, fallen character with inscrutable motives. The Exile was a similarly complex character, but hardly "just a person". You had the unique ability to manipulate Force Bonds, and were one of the most powerful Force users left alive in the galaxy during the game. Your actions were just as epic as Revan's, but they took place in a much darker galaxy.

That depends entirely on what kind of story you're trying to tell. If the purpose is to create an intriguing or new plot, and you're using characters from the game, then focus on the plot and its developments. If you plan on exploring the characters themselves, then start from the baselines established in the game and work in your own direction, whether you're expanding on characters or looking at different aspects of familiar ones.

This simply means that he knows the Force is vastly more powerful than lightsabers, which bodes ill for Plagueis attempting to overcome him by rushing in with a lightsaber. Here's a comparison of their attitudes towards lightsabers: "Plagueis was also skilled in lightsaber combat, although he disdained using his blade in combat, regarding lightsaber duels as tedious affairs." "When necessary, the Emperor would utilize his red-bladed lightsaber in combat" ~Wookiepedia So both combatants seem to prefer to use the Force, but are both capable of using lightsabers. So even if Plagueis closes the distance, there's nothing to indicate that he'll be overwhelmed instantly, or even quickly. Vitiate held his own against the Hero of Tython, who almost exclusively preferred lightsaber combat. I don't see how a discussion of form should matter here. Plagueis is never stated to have studied Niman, nor to have achieved "Exar Kun like" mastery of it. Exar Kun is unique among practitioners of Niman so far, Plagueis did not often engage in lightsaber combat. His only real edge is extreme speed, which is offset by his lack of Jedi reflexes and precognition due to his partial possession by Tenebrous. When has he been shown to resort to lightsaber combat first? In his duel with Venamis? Again, his martial skill will help him but by no means ensure victory even if he closes the distance. Vitiate is capable of immensely powerful telekinesis and barriers, which will be more than adequate for tossing Plagueis away and shielding himself. He threw Revan casually across his throne room with a mere wave of the hand. Furthermore, while Plagueis is gathering up for his Force Wave, Vitiate can easily counteract with his own wave, turning it into a battle of Force strength much as when Anakin and Obi-Wan opposed each other's Force Waves on Mustafar. Vitiate will not allow Plagueis to bat him around like a rag doll when he can easily counter with Force Storms, Lightning, or Waves of his own. The Rule of Two is shaky at best. So far, we have seen only Bane adhere to the rule. Every other Sith has broken it, so we're really only speculating that Bane's plan worked out the way he envisioned it. Tenebrous trained Venamis at the same time as Plagueis, Plagueis authorized Sidious to train Maul and abolished the Rule of Two, Sidious murdered Plagueis while he was drunk and reinstated the Rule of Two, Dooku trained both Ventress and Savage to overthrow Sidious, Vader trained Starkiller and others including his intention of teaming up with Luke to kill Sidious... the Rule of Two was in tatters by the time Plagueis got around to it, and he tried to get rid of it entirely as part of his plan to live forever, a plan that Sidious arguably adopted after him. So the "mechanics" of the Rule of Two only show that Zannah surpassed Bane... no telling how long that carried on before the Sith apprentices got back to their sneaky, traitorous ways.

Comparing Disney's management to Lex Luthor because they got rid of a redundant department? Yeah, that makes sense. You actually don't know that. The stated reason for not continuing the Clone Wars was that they needed to focus their energies on creating the sequel trilogies, which makes sense. I'd rather see the full energies of LucasFilm devoted to that project. That's very nice and sentimental of you, but the fact of the matter is that "the economy" isn't really that bad. There are jobs around, they're just not always the jobs you wish people were demanding. Smart businesses don't retain employees whose talents they no longer require, and LucasArts was far from a massive powerhouse of creative talent.

I was also quite disappointed. Yoda is a dull character and Obi-Wan is arguably the lifeblood of the prequels. Sidious is a boring character. His gig is orchestrating an obvious and unsubtle takeover of a crumbling Republic and then going on to rule an equally uninventive and dull GALACTIC EMPIRE OF EVIL IMPERIALNESS. Yay. Sidious makes Hitler look like a mastermind, to be quite honest. At least Hitler had to put forth some effort convincing milliions of people to back his ideology. Sidious just kind of got himself elected and then built a secret army of Clones and took over.

Just throwing this out there as well, since a lot of Plagueis' strategy seems to hinge on tutaminis. He has been shown to be capable of using that skill to absorb blaster bolts, not torrents of the Emperor's Force Lightning. Plagueis hasn't really demonstrated amazing abilities against other Force users. He killed Darth Venamis, a half trained apprentice of Tenebrous. That's about it. He killed his master with treachery, and was in turn killed when he was helpless... that doesn't speak much for Bane's vision of the rule of two, either.

Alright, most of the EU is probably going to remain in place. Everything covered by the post-RotJ era stuff will be reworked and probably overwritten. This isn't Disney's doing, it's Lucas. They're using his original story treatments to craft the new trilogy, while retaining Lucas as a creative consultant. Which is what he does best anyways, not directing or screenwriting. As for LucasArts, who cares? They're deadweight, really. They haven't produced any games in years, and Star Wars 1313 had some small potential, but was probably going to end up as a generic cover-based shooter. Might have had a good story, might not. We might still see that game released by an out-of-house developer under license from Disney. TCW had gone on a long, long run. The only reason it was still going so long was because it was the only thing LucasFilm was putting out. Now that they're refocusing on the new films, they need to allocate their resources to those. We'll probably see a few special episodes wrapping up the major plot arcs of the TCW, and then they'll release the whole deal as a BluRay bundle or something to complete your collection. No big deal. I'm rather sick of people crying their eyes out because Disney is running the show decisively. You're getting three whole new episodes of Star Wars! This is every fan's dream come true, since the late 80's when it was rumored that there would be nine films, three trilogies! Then Lucas dismissed all that, made the prequels, and the fandom despaired. So, instead of getting all melodramatic and claiming that Star Wars belongs to you and you're sad that Disney is ruining it. First of all, they haven't actually done anything. You have seen ZERO content produced by Disney, so you have no way of knowing how good it'll be. Disney has a long history of fantastic franchise management, I expect great things from Star Wars in the future. Secondly, Star Wars does not belong to you. It belonged to Lucas, and now it belongs to Disney. Nothing appreciable has changed, except that Disney is committed to producing new content, something Lucas hasn't done in almost a decade. So sit down, shut up, and enjoy the ride.

Oh, really? And what wise decisions did Yoda make in the books? What shrewd investigations did he carry out to determine why this seriously sketchy Clone Army had just shown up magically right when the Separatists left the Republic? What part of me not caring about Boba Fett are you missing? You keep bringing him up as if he somehow matters. You need to realize that I'm exclusively trash talking Sidious and his so-called opponents.

Ah, you seem to have assumed that I was somehow arguing for Boba Fett. I am not. I am just deflating Sidious' "chessmaster/evil genius" balloon, because it's a reputation he absolutely does not deserve. Asinine? Conjecture? I'm pointing out that he was essentially unopposed while he laid his "masterful" plans. His one political rival was a lame duck (Valorum), the Jedi Order bought into his obvious lies hook, line, and sinker. When did the Jedi (even Yoda, with his vaunted wisdom) ever stop to question the existence of a clone army ordered by a dead Jedi master? Starting the war was kind of easy, he just had Dooku play along pre-existing tensions and let the Jedi invade Geonosis. He didn't seamlessly create the Empire, there were plenty of rebellions, which were apparently constant and eventually toppled the Empire... Who did he actually manipulate? Padme? Jar Jar Binks? A fourteen year old child-Queen and a mentally handicapped amphibian? Impressive. Saying that the other characters around him didn't catch on because he was brilliant makes no sense. When it is readily apparent that his plan was obvious, this simply makes his adversaries dimwits. There is no implication of his brilliance. Given how his downfall came about, I would say that his planning abilities are fairly slim. I would say far more than slightly. Sir Christopher Lee is the most prolific actor in the history of cinema, and not to mention one of the greatest.

That argument is purely nonsensical. That infighting of their order weakens them as an institution and causes them to be more vulnerable to external threats (i.e. the Jedi, Republic). However, "the dark side" is not some mystical pie that each Sith takes a slice of. Power is accumulated and lost individually, the Force is not a zero sum game. That kind of simplistic analysis is also irrational. A > B > C logic cannot be applied to these confrontations, for various reasons, including the asymmetric nature of most confrontations. A "pure" test of two characters abilities against a single standard could provide a basis for analysis, but instances of this are rare to nonexistent. Even then, such information would only be a single piece of the equation. Plagueis is powerful, but by no means overwhelmingly so. You just felt the need to throw out an irrational statement for the sake of provocation? Yeah, Plagueis, more powerful than the Chosen One? Get real. On top of all this, the entire premise for considering Plagueis to be such a strong Sith Lord is because he's near the tail end of the rule of two. Now, even assuming that the rule of two provides a linear increase in individual power with the Force (which is a premise I do not accept), but assuming that to be true... You have a thousand years of linear progression for the Rule of Two... Vitiate has a thousand years of linear progression FOR HIMSELF. So, by the logic of the Rule of Two... Vitiate should be on par with Sidious (a fractional step behind him, since Sidious is confirmed to be the strongest.. but not by how much).

Chapter Eleven

During the battle with Revan, Vitiate had a lot to focus on, he was distracted. The fact that he did not react to the Exile's saber toss could partially be due to her having superb aim (thanks to precog). The Emperor doesn't need exceptional precog, just normal Jedi reflexes conferred by it. Qui-Gon clearly states that the reason Anakin is able to perform seemingly miraculous feats during podracing is because he "sees things before they happen", he has Jedi reflexes thanks to that split-second precognition. This is manifest in lightsaber combat and when deflecting blaster bolts. The Jedi can anticipate where the strike is going to land. Plagueis can't anticipate this, so in lightsaber combat he has to rely on overwhelming speed, so that even if fighting a Jedi, he can strike faster than they can guard, even if they were able to see where he was attacking. But Plagueis is not a noted duelist, he prefers to avoid lightsaber combat, probably because its extra risky for him. Vitiate will not have any distractions in this fight. He'll be able to focus on Plagueis and target him precisely with a storm of objects, making it impossible for Plagueis to evade them, because he can see where Plagueis will evade to but Plagueis cannot anticipate where the objects will be thrown. He lacks "Jedi Reflexes" and instead has to rely on pure speed. While this can work to a degree in melee combat, it puts him at a huge disadvantage when his enemy can line up TK attacks ahead of time.

His political maneuverings weren't exactly subtle or brilliant. He basically just relied on everyone else in the Republic being so monumentally stupid that they never figured out the obvious plan he was executing. The Trade Federation, the Jedi Order, the Senate, everyone around him was borderline retarded. He didn't "turn the populace", most of them had no contact with or understanding of Jedi anyways, so he just threw out some propaganda and had his brainwashed clones gun them down. He played both sides of the war, sure, but that was hardly challenging. No one was even bothering to investigate the war, or the Clone Armies, or anything, really. Palpatine succeeded because no one bothered opposing him until the very last second, when it was much too late. Then after taking everything over, he wastes it all constructing huge battle stations that get blown up easily.

Jedi Mind Trick would end Superman. "I'm not the Jedi you're looking for." "OH, ok... have you seen him?" "Yes, he's inside that Kryptonite mine." Just using Force Stealth, Illusions, and Mind Trick, Luke could easily get the drop on Superman and wreck him with either a kryptonite crystal in a lightsaber, or just a synthesized kryptonite knife. Or Force Choke him to death, no matter how strong he is, he couldn't resist the spasming of the lungs caused by Force Choke.

Jacen Solo, Tulak Hord, Exar Kun. Those guys are also top contenders.

Plagueis is going to have an incredibly hard time dodging anything at all. Vitiate will have a tremendous advantage over him, because he can anticipate Plagueis' movements through precognition, while Plagueis is essentially flying blind. I think that Sidious and Vitiate would be a pretty close match. Sidious may have somewhat more raw power, but Vitiate has had a thousand years to study the Force and the Dark Side. His knowledge of it will be vastly more than that of basically any other Sith Lord.

I guess I'm a little unclear on the sides involved. It's basically the Chiss Ascendancy plus some Hutt allies the Master has against the Galactic Alliance?

He doesn't need to generate a storm, just throw a number of sharp/heavy objects at Plagueis. I don't see how confined quarters are going to help Plagueis evade either, if anything that makes it easier for Vitiate to lead him in. And he'll probably notice Plagueis' slow reaction times pretty quickly, since by comparison any other Force Sensitive would be much quicker to react. I'm not really buying the argument that Plagueis will stun Vitiate. His force waves/screams are strong, but there's no evidence Vitiate can't block them. Furthermore, a simple static barrier in a hallway will cut Plagueis off and allow Vitiate to bombard him with TK. Then if Plagueis breaks through, he can shred him with lightning. Plagueis' lack of precog is basically going to guarantee that Vitiate can hit him with every attack, by making him react to one thing, such as TK, and then following with lightning. Since he can see where Plagueis is going to react, and Plagueis can't, that's basically an insurmountable advantage.

Samuel L. Jackson made quite the Jedi, I think it might be rather hilarious to see Dwayne Johnson as a Jedi or something of that nature. Just for the laughs, assuming he can downplay his presence to not be out of proportion to the role he's playing.

Sidious isn't much better. He's just a crazy evil egomaniac who gets thrown down a pit by Vader.