Delta. I still love Omega, but there's some baggage to the Republic Commando novels, as much as I enjoy them. Delta are the original. The game isn't perfect or anything, but I'm always gonna love it.
Plus the paint jobs are fire, and show clones individualizing pretty early after the introduction of the Clone Troopers by each clone having their own armor.
I still enjoy them, but aspects of Karen Traviss' narrative is inconsistent with other works released around the same time.
I really love her gritty military take on the Star Wars Universe, and I think Hard Contact in particular is a masterpiece level novel. I love a lot of her characters even still, and I'm planning to read through the series again.
On the flipside, almost nothing else treats the Jedi so harshly as she does in her novels. There's a very strong undercurrent of "Mandalorian good, Jedi bad" throughout the whole series. Most of it is excusable as the perspective of Mandalorians, and thus expected to be biased against the Jedi. However, Traviss in the latter novels juxtapositions Etain and Bardan Jusik in a manner to critique the Jedi order, with Jusik leaving the order, while Etain is unable and ends up dying when she could have ran with the Skirata clan or joined with the Altisian Jedi. Traviss created both characters, with Etain barely being allowed to become a Jedi and never getting the support she needs from the Order. Traviss' narrative places blame on the Jedi Order at many points. Some of that is fair criticism. Some of it is Karen Traviss' biases shining through into her work.
TLDR: Most of it is good, but Etain and Jusik are contrived characters that Traviss uses to push her anti-Jedi agenda. Giving a perspective to people that find themselves opposite the Jedi is actually a really cool idea, but I feel Karen Traviss bends the storyline and creates characters to lend credence to her position about the Jedi.
While I like her novels in the clone commando squad, I definitely think her perceptions are very, very clear in her writing. Legacy of the Force series is 9 novels and has a whole host of problems, but it was written with 3 authors each writing one of the novels (3 books each) on a rotating basis.
Hers almost go out of their way to bring in Boba Fett, Mandalorian culture being the best of the best. I'm not against Mandalorians. I love the lore of Revan, Mandalorian War, Jedi/Sith Civil War, Canderous Ordo, etc.
But it just seems so forced with her in some of her books. They even have Boba Fett train Jaina Solo in some Mandalorian fighting technique to make her so deadly vs Jedi. And literally all the technique was some BS philosophy line of "clear your mind and act" which...is way too simple of a technique to make it seem that the Mandalorians are some god tier warrior.
I preferred that they were just exceptionally skilled fighters, not that they just cleared their mind mid fight. That makes it seem kind of hand wavy.
IIRC the most important things she had to internalize during the training were to fight unexpected, without rules & "don't stop until your enemy is actually dead", so it's obviously less about learning new sword blows, but focusses heavily on preparing her mentally to show no mercy or hesitation that her brother might use against her, but to straight-up kill him (& to catch Caedus offguard with that mental attitude)
This sounds exactly like the usefulstuff a Jedi could learn from a Mandalorian headhunter to assassinate somebody (especially somebody the Jedi has an attachment to), I don't see any lack of logic behind that
Hmm, haven't read the novels in a while, but I always found Etain and Jusik believable. The whole thing of being picked at a very young age and than trained to be some monk with super powers, only to be cast aside if you don't perform at a certain level... Especially when you add the inability to found your own family and find love within the rules of the order. Plus the unfait treatment of the clones, for whom Etain and Jusik feel responsible as officers.
It's not so much that Etain and Jusik aren't *believable*, it's that when you take in the other media written before, concurrently and after, there's a disconnect between Traviss' novels and most of the other media surrounding the era.
Traviss implies the Jedi are careless with Clone lives, which other novels either don't suggest such at all or suggest the opposite.
Nobody in the order notices Etain's struggles, except Jusik since he has insider information, leaving her without a support network, but generally other media have shown the bonds of the Jedi to be fairly close and even familial.
Then TCW comes in and really takes things in entirely the opposite direction, but I personally prefer to excise TCW from the Legends continuity for cohesion, as Traviss' novels and some other works like the 501st journal from Old Battlefront 2 make more sense without it. Oops, slight tangent.
I don't think the point the novels make is that the Jedi are fundamentally careless. It's more about the real impact it has, when the Officers of an Army are not trained in leading armies at all.
And the whole morale dilemma of allowing a slave army consisting of 10 year olds.
The novels shine light on these problems and don't shy away to reach the logical conclusions from the perspective of the clones and their supporters.
About the relationship of the Jedi with each other, I think this ia mostly based on very few individuals who are very high performing and belomg to the Elite of the Order. At least in the old canon only a hand full of younglings became a Padawan. And only a few of them made it to a Knight or an equivalent rank. The rest was mostly designed to the Agricorps on rural planets. Not being abandoned, but also being sent away from the temple, the only home they knew.
The Battlefront 2 501st storyline was amazing! I still get chills when the narrator talks about Aayla Secura.
I think it's absolutely worth it. I still love these books and for me they will always be canon, albeit very one sided.
But as in real live, many things can be true at the same time and experiences differ depending on who experiences them. So for me the Jedi are still generally good guys and Kenobi is still a badass, while I also agree with the points the novels make.
Reading atm, I just find it weird how she never mentions Anakin
Even how Ordo described Kenobi seems more fitting for Anakin, and during the Battle of Coruscant only Obi-Wan gets mentioned
It released not long before Revenge of the Sith. As far as I know, the only customization before then was by legion, and it was uniform by legion. I just remember thinking Sev’s armor was edgelord at the time.
Omega. Though I may be biased, as the *Republic Commando* novels are my all time favourite Legends novels. Given that so much of the Mandalorian lore from those novels was repurposed in *The Mandalorian*, I was disappointed when some of the other stuff (like Kal Skirata) was brought into canon too - especially when the Bad Batch are, in my opinion, a very loosely adapted canon version of the Null ARC troopers.
Delta squad felt like more believable soldiers NGL. Omega squad started that way but felt like they just became an outlet for the author to voice her own opinion. Simply put from all the former soldiers I talked to when the shooting is happening you don’t actually think about or care why it’s happening in that moment the only thing that’s on your mind is making sure you and your buddies survive. A lot of times you actually start to enjoy the adrenaline in the moment. And you actually want the shooting to happen. Then it stops you go home and society tells you it’s time to turn kill mode off as if you can just turn it off. You can’t just turn it off, your whole brain was rewired to do something that’s not acceptable in the civil world. But yet it’s completely acceptable in the civil world for people to fuck each other over in ways that are almost worse than killing each other. You start questioning what was I actually fighting for. You’re confused, you’re lost, some of your buddies became private contractors cause they couldn’t reintegrate. One committed suicide. And you, you just want to find your peace. So you decide to go study art history you refuse to even watch war movies because you want to completely rewire your brain. You go to therapy sucking up your own pride. And you over come it. That’s the expiernce my old college buddy told me he had.
What disappoints me most is Karen Traviss could have written that type of story. But took her Jedi bashing so far she just didn’t. That’s why Omega squad always disappoints me after awhile they just become the author’s voice. Whereas Delta squad always reminds me of how my friend described what it was while war was happening. Why it’s happening just doesn’t matter as much as you’d think.
Simply put the amount of clones who would desert or would even be unsatisfied with being soldiers would be low. You have sentient beings whose whole purpose was warfare. The dark truth is most of them would be ok with the Republic using them for war and wouldn’t care that they were being used as free labor. What would really concern them is what happens when the war ends. Real soldiers do have a home my buddy had a wife, kids, and community to return to. Someone who’s always been raised to be soldier wouldn’t even be able to imagine a life outside of that. And that would be a really interesting perspective to tell a story from. In lore that was most clones yet most of Karen Traviss’s clones are not that. All of the important clones in her story come to the conclusion that the Jedi are terrible and so is the Republic. And it’s a squandered opportunity to tell the events of Starwars from a protagonist that isn’t trying to be the hero. I would live a Delta Squad novel to capture this. And get close to a Generation kill like Star Wars story.
Delta Squad. All four of the commandos are my Top 25 favorite Star Wars characters with Scorch being my favorite clone and I hated the way he went out in the TBB S3 finale
Omega. Way better chemistry, bond, and they feel like a family as well. Delta just doesn’t feel like a team to me, more like a bunch of individually skilled clones crammed into a unit, which is ironic since they are one of the few team that survived the CW with their whole team intact (until Kashik ofc). But then in context it does makes sense for Omega to have better chemistry and bond since they lost their old team and doesn’t want to lose what they have now.
Omega squad, Hard Contact was a great book ruined by a mediocre interpretation of Mandalorian culture in the later novels, just give me the commando military stories!
Re-reading my favorite Star Wars series ever and I love it more every time. Omega is the best squad. Sev calls Omega a ‘mongrel squad’ but being made up of the sole survivors has given the commandos a unique perspective. They go from being alone in an army of people identical to them and have to put in work to be a family again. I think that’s beautiful
Omega, the books RC books are amazing. They give them a lot of personality, and you see them coping with being clones. While Delta is just doing their job and only thinking about finishing the mission.
It's probably because they are trained so differently.
Hey, I know that this is fanfiction, but I did hear that HandofThrawn45 did make a good unofficial conclusion for the RC series called [The Dying Day ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/33290875).
Again, it's a fanfic, but this is probably the closest one could get for a conclusion for this series.
Omega 100%. Clan Skirata felt like a real family which grew and grew with each book in the series - a real family with all the highs and lows of real non-Star wars life, caught up in a very Star Wars galactic war
Omega. Specifically Dar ❤️ I felt that trauma.
Delta are fun, they showed you could really have a cast of 4 identical clones and give them all unique personalities. But I’ve got 5 books about Omega & mostly just quips from Delta :/
Delta. I still love Omega, but there's some baggage to the Republic Commando novels, as much as I enjoy them. Delta are the original. The game isn't perfect or anything, but I'm always gonna love it. Plus the paint jobs are fire, and show clones individualizing pretty early after the introduction of the Clone Troopers by each clone having their own armor.
What baggage do you mean? Sorry I read them and I thought they were fantastic.
I still enjoy them, but aspects of Karen Traviss' narrative is inconsistent with other works released around the same time. I really love her gritty military take on the Star Wars Universe, and I think Hard Contact in particular is a masterpiece level novel. I love a lot of her characters even still, and I'm planning to read through the series again. On the flipside, almost nothing else treats the Jedi so harshly as she does in her novels. There's a very strong undercurrent of "Mandalorian good, Jedi bad" throughout the whole series. Most of it is excusable as the perspective of Mandalorians, and thus expected to be biased against the Jedi. However, Traviss in the latter novels juxtapositions Etain and Bardan Jusik in a manner to critique the Jedi order, with Jusik leaving the order, while Etain is unable and ends up dying when she could have ran with the Skirata clan or joined with the Altisian Jedi. Traviss created both characters, with Etain barely being allowed to become a Jedi and never getting the support she needs from the Order. Traviss' narrative places blame on the Jedi Order at many points. Some of that is fair criticism. Some of it is Karen Traviss' biases shining through into her work. TLDR: Most of it is good, but Etain and Jusik are contrived characters that Traviss uses to push her anti-Jedi agenda. Giving a perspective to people that find themselves opposite the Jedi is actually a really cool idea, but I feel Karen Traviss bends the storyline and creates characters to lend credence to her position about the Jedi.
While I like her novels in the clone commando squad, I definitely think her perceptions are very, very clear in her writing. Legacy of the Force series is 9 novels and has a whole host of problems, but it was written with 3 authors each writing one of the novels (3 books each) on a rotating basis. Hers almost go out of their way to bring in Boba Fett, Mandalorian culture being the best of the best. I'm not against Mandalorians. I love the lore of Revan, Mandalorian War, Jedi/Sith Civil War, Canderous Ordo, etc. But it just seems so forced with her in some of her books. They even have Boba Fett train Jaina Solo in some Mandalorian fighting technique to make her so deadly vs Jedi. And literally all the technique was some BS philosophy line of "clear your mind and act" which...is way too simple of a technique to make it seem that the Mandalorians are some god tier warrior. I preferred that they were just exceptionally skilled fighters, not that they just cleared their mind mid fight. That makes it seem kind of hand wavy.
IIRC the most important things she had to internalize during the training were to fight unexpected, without rules & "don't stop until your enemy is actually dead", so it's obviously less about learning new sword blows, but focusses heavily on preparing her mentally to show no mercy or hesitation that her brother might use against her, but to straight-up kill him (& to catch Caedus offguard with that mental attitude) This sounds exactly like the usefulstuff a Jedi could learn from a Mandalorian headhunter to assassinate somebody (especially somebody the Jedi has an attachment to), I don't see any lack of logic behind that
Hmm, haven't read the novels in a while, but I always found Etain and Jusik believable. The whole thing of being picked at a very young age and than trained to be some monk with super powers, only to be cast aside if you don't perform at a certain level... Especially when you add the inability to found your own family and find love within the rules of the order. Plus the unfait treatment of the clones, for whom Etain and Jusik feel responsible as officers.
It's not so much that Etain and Jusik aren't *believable*, it's that when you take in the other media written before, concurrently and after, there's a disconnect between Traviss' novels and most of the other media surrounding the era. Traviss implies the Jedi are careless with Clone lives, which other novels either don't suggest such at all or suggest the opposite. Nobody in the order notices Etain's struggles, except Jusik since he has insider information, leaving her without a support network, but generally other media have shown the bonds of the Jedi to be fairly close and even familial. Then TCW comes in and really takes things in entirely the opposite direction, but I personally prefer to excise TCW from the Legends continuity for cohesion, as Traviss' novels and some other works like the 501st journal from Old Battlefront 2 make more sense without it. Oops, slight tangent.
I don't think the point the novels make is that the Jedi are fundamentally careless. It's more about the real impact it has, when the Officers of an Army are not trained in leading armies at all. And the whole morale dilemma of allowing a slave army consisting of 10 year olds. The novels shine light on these problems and don't shy away to reach the logical conclusions from the perspective of the clones and their supporters. About the relationship of the Jedi with each other, I think this ia mostly based on very few individuals who are very high performing and belomg to the Elite of the Order. At least in the old canon only a hand full of younglings became a Padawan. And only a few of them made it to a Knight or an equivalent rank. The rest was mostly designed to the Agricorps on rural planets. Not being abandoned, but also being sent away from the temple, the only home they knew. The Battlefront 2 501st storyline was amazing! I still get chills when the narrator talks about Aayla Secura.
Is Traviss’ Republic Commando/Imperial Commando series worth reading or would it be preferable to stop with Hard Contact and/or Triple Zero?
I think it's absolutely worth it. I still love these books and for me they will always be canon, albeit very one sided. But as in real live, many things can be true at the same time and experiences differ depending on who experiences them. So for me the Jedi are still generally good guys and Kenobi is still a badass, while I also agree with the points the novels make.
Definitely continue, it's gritty star wars fun and well worth reading, just take the anti-Jedi sentiment with a grain of salt.
Reading atm, I just find it weird how she never mentions Anakin Even how Ordo described Kenobi seems more fitting for Anakin, and during the Battle of Coruscant only Obi-Wan gets mentioned
It’s the first customization that I’m aware of in all the Clone Wars.
I'd have to check release years to be sure, but I think so!
It released not long before Revenge of the Sith. As far as I know, the only customization before then was by legion, and it was uniform by legion. I just remember thinking Sev’s armor was edgelord at the time.
baggage?
Replied to another poster up above.
Someone having the audacity to have an opinion other than "JEDI UNEQUIVOCALLY GOOD".
Omega squad had more personality
My brother in christ have you heard scorches voicelines?
Scorch: Ya hear that Sev, someone thinks I'm excelent. Sev: Well at least that makes two of you. Probably my favorite voice line in the game.
Omega. Though I may be biased, as the *Republic Commando* novels are my all time favourite Legends novels. Given that so much of the Mandalorian lore from those novels was repurposed in *The Mandalorian*, I was disappointed when some of the other stuff (like Kal Skirata) was brought into canon too - especially when the Bad Batch are, in my opinion, a very loosely adapted canon version of the Null ARC troopers.
Delta squad felt like more believable soldiers NGL. Omega squad started that way but felt like they just became an outlet for the author to voice her own opinion. Simply put from all the former soldiers I talked to when the shooting is happening you don’t actually think about or care why it’s happening in that moment the only thing that’s on your mind is making sure you and your buddies survive. A lot of times you actually start to enjoy the adrenaline in the moment. And you actually want the shooting to happen. Then it stops you go home and society tells you it’s time to turn kill mode off as if you can just turn it off. You can’t just turn it off, your whole brain was rewired to do something that’s not acceptable in the civil world. But yet it’s completely acceptable in the civil world for people to fuck each other over in ways that are almost worse than killing each other. You start questioning what was I actually fighting for. You’re confused, you’re lost, some of your buddies became private contractors cause they couldn’t reintegrate. One committed suicide. And you, you just want to find your peace. So you decide to go study art history you refuse to even watch war movies because you want to completely rewire your brain. You go to therapy sucking up your own pride. And you over come it. That’s the expiernce my old college buddy told me he had. What disappoints me most is Karen Traviss could have written that type of story. But took her Jedi bashing so far she just didn’t. That’s why Omega squad always disappoints me after awhile they just become the author’s voice. Whereas Delta squad always reminds me of how my friend described what it was while war was happening. Why it’s happening just doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. Simply put the amount of clones who would desert or would even be unsatisfied with being soldiers would be low. You have sentient beings whose whole purpose was warfare. The dark truth is most of them would be ok with the Republic using them for war and wouldn’t care that they were being used as free labor. What would really concern them is what happens when the war ends. Real soldiers do have a home my buddy had a wife, kids, and community to return to. Someone who’s always been raised to be soldier wouldn’t even be able to imagine a life outside of that. And that would be a really interesting perspective to tell a story from. In lore that was most clones yet most of Karen Traviss’s clones are not that. All of the important clones in her story come to the conclusion that the Jedi are terrible and so is the Republic. And it’s a squandered opportunity to tell the events of Starwars from a protagonist that isn’t trying to be the hero. I would live a Delta Squad novel to capture this. And get close to a Generation kill like Star Wars story.
I love em both, but it’s always gonna be Omega for me
It's been a long time since I read the books. Forgot the nuance between them. But Omega.
Delta. Haven’t read the books but I love Delta so much lol. Rule 39: Never say no to bacta.
Delta Squad.
None. Ion Squad FOR LIFE.
This would be very hard for me if it were Delta AND Ion up there. Ion Squad dared to take on Vader in a suicide run and survived it >!by half!
Delta. I adore Sev in particular.
Yes.
Delta all the way.
Same here. Deltas stayed loyal.
Delta
I only played the game so I think Delta. SEV!
Delta Squad. All four of the commandos are my Top 25 favorite Star Wars characters with Scorch being my favorite clone and I hated the way he went out in the TBB S3 finale
Omega. Way better chemistry, bond, and they feel like a family as well. Delta just doesn’t feel like a team to me, more like a bunch of individually skilled clones crammed into a unit, which is ironic since they are one of the few team that survived the CW with their whole team intact (until Kashik ofc). But then in context it does makes sense for Omega to have better chemistry and bond since they lost their old team and doesn’t want to lose what they have now.
Omega squad, Hard Contact was a great book ruined by a mediocre interpretation of Mandalorian culture in the later novels, just give me the commando military stories!
Delta. Can't go wrong with that squad, their practically the TMNT of Star Wars.
Delta squad
Omega. I loved the books when I was a teen. Haven't been able to revisit them in many years.
Re-reading my favorite Star Wars series ever and I love it more every time. Omega is the best squad. Sev calls Omega a ‘mongrel squad’ but being made up of the sole survivors has given the commandos a unique perspective. They go from being alone in an army of people identical to them and have to put in work to be a family again. I think that’s beautiful
Neither. Give me Captain Fordo or give me death
Omega, the books RC books are amazing. They give them a lot of personality, and you see them coping with being clones. While Delta is just doing their job and only thinking about finishing the mission. It's probably because they are trained so differently.
I wish somebody would adapt Republican Commando: Triple Zero to the screen. Any screen.
Honestly Omega Squad. Their story is just heartbreaking and amazing. Really sad it never got finished.
Hey, I know that this is fanfiction, but I did hear that HandofThrawn45 did make a good unofficial conclusion for the RC series called [The Dying Day ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/33290875). Again, it's a fanfic, but this is probably the closest one could get for a conclusion for this series.
Omega 100%. Clan Skirata felt like a real family which grew and grew with each book in the series - a real family with all the highs and lows of real non-Star wars life, caught up in a very Star Wars galactic war
...do I have to type it out?
Hey, go right ahead, mate, not gonna stop you
But you did See my Username, didnt you? :D
Oh, you clever lil bastard, you got me
Omega. Specifically Dar ❤️ I felt that trauma. Delta are fun, they showed you could really have a cast of 4 identical clones and give them all unique personalities. But I’ve got 5 books about Omega & mostly just quips from Delta :/
Delta squad, but got mad love for omega as well
The Bad Batch <>_<>
...you really wanna go with the ~~wish.com~~ TEMU knock-off? ...OK.
Yes, and I'm tired of pretending I don't.