Whilst this is fun and beautifully made and of course sounds and looks the part, all good things, I feel I have to address something that has started to discomfort me a little in Star Wars media that's set in the OT timeline but portrays different events than the movies. 1/? https://twitter.com/starwars/status/1305523955915083777

Here's the thing: the Rebel Alliance, in the movies, and in the wider context of the Star Wars universe, is not a match for the Empire. The Empire is a totalitarian fascist state built on a lie, moulded to suit one man's ambitions, & horribly brutally repressive. 2/?

The Rebel Alliance is a plucky band of freedom fighters, ill-equipped, outmatched, constantly on the run. They're the underdogs up against a super heavyweight. They're the good guys because they're fighting to restore a democratic republic that was previously lost. 3/?

Our heroes from those original movies join the Rebel Alliance because they want to fight evil, which the Empire, embodies in literally every way. The Original Trilogy, and basically all of Star Wars media, goes to great lengths to show us that the Empire is Bad, and Wrong. 4/?

But! That means we have a problem. Because in a game like Star Wars Squadrons, or Battlefront, you have to have both sides as playable factions... and gameplay has to be balanaced. So suddenly a strange shift occurs in the dynamic between the two sides. 5/?

Now, the Rebels aren't the plucky ill-equipped ragtag band they once were. Now, they're an industrial military power, able to field fleets of hundreds of ships, and land armies of thousands of soldiers, against similar numbers on the Imperial side. It's balanced, right? 6/?

Now, this causes a fair amount of ludonarrative dissonance already, and I'm sure you can figure out why presenting the plucky band of Freedom Fighters as militarily equivalent to the Fascist Empire comes off as a bit of a weird vibe without me explaining it, but... 7/?

There's an extra wrinkle in this game specifically, that this short highlights, that makes it worse. This is set after Return of the Jedi. This isn't the Rebel Alliance, this is the restored New Republic. And the Imperials we see are the failing rump state of an old regime. 8/?

And that's fine, you might say, now the stakes are a bit more even. The Rebels won, democracy is restored, and the war is now about mopping up the last remnants of the old Empire, it's a much more even fight now, as the Rebels are essentially now the legitimate government. 9/?

But (and spoilers here for this short), what we have now done is legitimise what's left of the Empire as this kind of noble band of doomed heroes, fighting a war that's already lost, but they just don't know it. This CGI short is already engaging in this kind of rewriting. 10/?

The TIE pilot saves a TIE bomber selflessly, he seems distraught at the loss of his comrades, he outfoxes a New Republic X-Wing pilot, who's presented as a douchey asshole type who taunts him over the radio. The TIE pilot's final line is "The war's not over yet, not for me." 11/?

Oooh, very dramatic, great endnote, good stuff, we shout! Here's the thing though; it doesn't matter how noble or valiant this specific TIE pilot or his comrades are in their struggle... they're still soldiers in the rump state of an awful totalitarian fascist government?? 12/?

Maybe this is all because I recently watched some videos of ex Wehrmacht soldiers dismissing/justifying the atrocities German Army units committed in WW2, but fascist apologia, however cool it looks, is dangerous and insidious. 13/?

I dived into the comments of this vid on YouTube and saw a whole lot of people praising this because it "shows the Imperials as real people", and "makes us see their side of the story", and they criticised Star Wars stories where Imp protagonists switch sides to the Rebels. 14/?

And, like, do people not get that the Empire, as cool as its ships might look, and as badass as their uniforms might be, is really, genuinely, DEFINITELY the bad guys, in Star Wars? Like, you're not supposed to sympathise with them, at all! 15/?

The reason Star Wars narratives featuring Rebel characters who were at one point Imperials are so common is because that's what generally happens when people realise they work for an awful fascist state that's actively making the galaxy worse! They want to get rid of it! 16/?

Lindsay Ellis made a great video about this exact problem that I probably should have just started this thread with but if you want someone much smarter than me to talk about this and why it's probably not a good thing then here it is: 17/?

This is why I felt super weird about Battlefront 2, where you mow down dozens of Rebels in the Battle for Endor, before switching sides like two missions later because the Empire does something terrible to the main character's home planet and Iden Versio is like.. 18/?

Call me old fashioned, but cheering in delight as fascist stormtroopers mow down plucky freedom fighters who've probably lost everything and have desperately joined the ragtag force trying to free the galaxy from evil just gives me the collywobbles, tbh. 19/?

Maybe this game is gonna do something interesting that adds a bunch of context and depth to the whole thing, and makes these worries of mine completely unfounded. And then, fine, we all get to enjoy a good Star Wars Fighter Sim. It's been a while since we had a good one. 20/?

Doubt it though. The people making this game aren't stupid. They have had this exact conversation, and their solution, their bright idea, was this: Let's make the New Republic look kind of like the bad guys, maybe? That way people won't feel bad about playing as the Empire! 21/21