I spent most of my last few hours playing the Imperial campaign. I thought it would be fun to command the awesome power of the Death Star, but it actually just turned out to be grim and unpleasant. I mean, you've got these planets and they produce resources and have space for garrisons, and then you blow them up and they become these near-worthless asteroid fields. It doesn't feel worth it, especially when you still have to win a massive space battle to get in position to use the Death Star's laser. Since I had the resources of 90% of the galaxy at my disposal, I wound up just crushing the Rebellion with my conventional forces.
I'm not sure why Star Wars games keep making you play as the Empire, though. The movies are known for their straightforward (some might say simplistic) depiction of good vs evil. The heroes, even scoundrels like Han Solo, are unambiguously on the side of light. And the villains revel in the darkness. I suppose there is some potential pleasure in being a scenery-chewing bad guys, but I've never really felt they've done it well. Darth Vader choking minions just feels petty and counterproductive. The Emperor is overly smug. And the rest of the Imperials, from the storm troopers to the officers, barely have any personality at all.
But I think the biggest problem with playing the Empire in a game is that their signature weapon is the Death Star. Even leaving aside the fact that it blew up the first time they moved it out, it's not a very good villain weapon. Sure, it's big and imposing, and could theoretically chew through entire fleets, but its main thing is that it blows up planets.
And if you saw it coming up over the horizon, blotting out the sun, churning the sea with its massive tidal forces, you would cower in its shadow, certain of the doom that was to come. But you never see the Death Star from that angle. You always see it from above, a grey dot, floating in space, that uses green light to blow up a rock. The Empire's violence is rarely presented in a victim-centered fashion. Snuffing out a billion lives is spectacle, and even when we're given the viewpoint of people who are intimately involved with the dead, their state of mind is not the focus. Luke mourned more for Obi-Wan Kenobi than Leia did for Alderaan. I don't think this is because Leia was cold and uncaring, but rather because Star Wars was more interested in pulp sci-fi action and less in realistic character work.
The bloodless and impersonal nature of the Empire's crimes makes them tempting video game protagonists, because they don't seem "that bad" and yet also makes them awful villains because you can't humanize them too much without whitewashing their atrocities. For example, Darth Vader's "redemption" in Return of the Jedi, where he doesn't confront and answer for his many, many crimes, and just kills a guy he hates to save his son. It's a plot that makes sense if the dichotomy is between "pure evil" and "some good," but for redemption to make any sense as a concept, it has to be the beginning of a process of healing, and that is not possible if you don't acknowledge the wound.
Bringing it back to Empire At War, the upside to playing as the Empire is that they have more strikingly designed units and messing around with Star Destroyers and AT-ATs is pretty darned cool. The downside is that they have terrible, unsympathetic motives, and no psychological nuance to make them more compelling (or, failing that, over-the-top humor like the Saints Row crew).
Overall, though, I enjoyed the game. I downplayed its RTS elements as much as possible, but it is a high mark in my book that I was able to do that. I enjoyed playing the Rebels, though I wish I could have had a real Death Star battle (provided it wasn't a tedious escort mission). I merely tolerated playing the Empire, but I did enjoy the look and feel of their units. I didn't get enough of a chance with the Forces of Corruption expansion to have a strong opinion of it one way or the other, though playing as a ruthless criminal syndicate did seem like a step up in the villain protagonist department.
I don't think I'll ever play this game again, simply because I have about 50 others that outrank it in my order of preference, but if I was ever in a situation where I had no other choice, I would play it again. It would not strike me as a trial I had to endure. Real-time strategy games are not my favorite in general, but this particular RTS managed to strike a positive balance for me. And, of course, I love the Star Wars franchise quite a bit. When taken together, I dub this game "perfectly adequate."
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