I hate TFU for making Darth Vader inadvertently responsible for forming the Rebel Alliance. It makes him look like a complete retard, especially with the ending with Palpatine characterizing the Rebellion as something of "Vader's making."
And having Starkiller be the inspiration for the Rebels, along with the crest of his family house being used for the Rebel insignia, is as contrived and eye-rollingly stupid as Timothy Zahn having his race of space elves come up with the name Skywalker. It's the mark of a writer trying to place way too much in-universe significance on their creation.
The only good news is that the events and characters of TFU are referenced virtually nowhere else in the EU (outside of some handheld games published around the same time), so I can ignore it as the misguided fanfic that it is.
Unfortunately for TFU haters, it's one of the few EU works Lucas actually does see as part of his own canon. He was involved in its writing, and even at its time of release, TFU was described as "canon" to the SW universe. Although it does make sense: Lucas describes the Dark Side as self-destructive, so I kind of see it as a scenario where "it's like poetry, it rhymes" since basically the Sith shooting themselves in the foot is a trope that's as old as Star Wars itself. Also, Palpatine states that the Alliance was something that "we have unwittingly created" since he's also in on the plot.
Plus, the older reasons as to how the Alliance formed weren't much different either. Tarkin acts like a dick and lands his ship killing protesters in the Ghorman Massacre, and that causes the Alliance to form. So in one way or another, the Empire caused the birth of the Alliance. Either Darth Vader (and by proxy, Emperor Palpatine) use a Sith Apprentice to stage false-flag attacks to form the Alliance, or Tarkin acts like a dick, lands his ship on people, and that causes the Alliance to be born. At least the former sounds a tad bit smarter and would have worked had Vader disposed of Starkiller properly. Perhaps he shouldn't have underestimated his apprentice after the Star Destroyer incident on Raxus Prime.
Plus, the name "Skywalker" wasn't that special in the SW universe to begin with. Lucas even described it as a common name and even said that there was "Skywalker wine" among other things. It's the equivalent of having the last name of "Walker" in Anglo culture, or having the last name "Diego" in Latino culture. The fact that the first Skywalker in the movie series whom we lay eyes upon chronologically is some slave woman working for some junk dealer drives that point home further. It's why in some EU works, Vader originally didn't think Luke Skywalker was his son, with some works even having him think that Luke was Obi-Wan's son.
That was from Disney's Thrawn Alliances right? And to think people still act as if that's one of the better Disney novels. Zahn even retcons his own character's name. I'm not even sure what's going on through his mind anymore. At one point he actually seemed disappointed with what Filoni and Disney were doing with him and his works, but now he just seems to be eagerly going along with it all while adding to their corrupting formula.
As for Vader in the TFU games, I think what bothers me is how he's depicted as being almost devoid of free will. There's some struggle, and I like an emotional and internally struggling Anakin to show that he was always resisting his Vader persona on some level (unlike in Disney where they just go all out devoted to the Dark and even have him move to Mustafar ffs), but I hated how he was basically just a hollow puppet with no choice of his own in anything and would just stand quietly at times when actual dialogue was necessary to show what was going on in his POV, but instead he just feels like Palpatine's third arm rather than Palpatine's corrupted slave.
My only issue with that is that I actually do like parts of TFU, like PROXY, Kota, Raxus Prime, new Imperial units and Paratus (whose whole existence gave me some nasty feels) and what the game did with pre-existing material like Felucia, the sarlaccs and Shaak Ti. Maybe if they remade the game and changed Galen's role as founder of the Rebels and simply change him to a hero symbol and give Vader a real character, it would be easy to redeem while keeping the original story as a what if scenario/classic mode. But instead Disney won't let us have nice things or compromises.
Zahn, like most individuals, is probably thankful getting paid in a time when most people are jobless or losing their businesses. I suppose he might personally dislike what's going on, but is just going along with what's happening because money is money.
That's an issue shared with Return of the Jedi. Both TFU and ROTJ had Vader simping out and remaining as Palpatine's slave even though he had a perfectly good weapon to kill him with. ROTJ should have had Vader teaching Luke how to counter Palpatine's powers so the two of them can kill him together (as he promised back in ESB) and TFU should have had Vader telling Starkiller that they're going to kill the Emperor in front of the Rebel Senators to ensure their support in the new Imperial regime. TFU simply followed the same script ROTJ did when it came to Vader being a simp. And as a Vader fan, both examples pissed me off, despite the fact that both TFU and ROTJ had a lot of good things going on and were mostly good on my book.
It's a colossal shame, because there's a lot I like about TFU. The aesthetics of that game were incredible for its time, and seeing the way the art directors bridged the flashier look of the PT era with the aesthetics of the OT was fantastic, even in little things like Ram Khota's militia looking like the predecessors to the Rebel Alliance ground troops. Having old Clone War wreckages in places like Raxus Prime and Felucia were especially cool, as well as seeing EU iconography like Garm Bel Iblis and the Dark Troopers. Plus, tribal milf Shaak Ti was 10/10.
But a lot of that is aesthetics and fanservice that, while welcome, don't make up for the poor story (kind of like The Blandalorian, interestingly enough). It's funny, because I love Haden Blackman's work on the Dark Horse comics, but when it came to game writing, his work wasn't that great.
That's because Haden wasn't working alone on the story, and Lucas had a lot of influence in the story. Which is why it was different from his other works among the Dark Horse comics.
"The Blandalorian" - So that's what we're calling "The Mandalorian" now? I suppose it fits, when the only thing it did was provide some decent entertainment and not shit the bed and fail. Although its portrayal of Stormtroopers leaves much to be desired, especially since the OT and many EU works portrayed Stormtroopers as far deadlier combatants to the point where the heroes were almost always forced to seek cover and retreat when they appear in force. Having them get cut down by the dozens by Mando and his allies kinda saps the fun out of fighting them.
