Imperial Kashyyyk

Starkiller, Juno, and the recovering Kota head to Kashyyyk to rescue a captured Princess Leia so that they can give her back to her Senator father and then he will be happy and the rebellion will start. The end.

This fight on Kashyyyk is an important homecoming for Starkiller. The last time he was here he was just a boy in what was essentially a backwater trailer park. Now, most of the flora and fauna has been torn down and replaced with an imperial command station. As he wanders the scorched earth, Starkiller pauses at a banner that is marked with the phoenix symbol we all know from thousands of toys and countless bad tattoos as the icon of the rebel alliance. He is even more cautious as he "senses a great darkness." As if you really need the force to tell that a razed village and the smell of burntWookie fur is a bad sign. Then, in a shot-for-shot remake of Luke's subconscious encounter with Vader while on Dagobah, Starkiller walks through some ruins and encounters his deceased, hooded father. The man whispers that he is sorry and disappears into the mist. Then, unlike Luke, Starkiller has the good graces not to chop his head off.

Starkiller's mission in this area is to siege the imperial command center. He is held back by dozens of Storm Troopers - some of them wielding flame throwers!!!!!!!! The level is the exact same as the Kashyyyk except that now everything is all burnt. In most cases I would call Copy+Paste but it just seems right that Starkiller should be confronting his charred past and as a player you should want to see what has changed. Good job George Lucas and team.

If you are playing you may have noticed that huge, impenetrable imperial wall guarded by an AT-ST with a gatling gun taped to its head and be wondering how to pass it:

• The best way is to stand as far away as you can - even if the AT-ST is off screen. Grab a rock, and snake it down the grassy canyon.
• Toss the rock, even if you don't know where it is going because the auto lock assumes that you want to throw this rock at the AT-ST
• Keep tossing rocks using this blind-throw technique until you are convinced it is dead.

After negotiating the rocky cliffs and narrow catwalks of this level, Starkiller reaches the local commander's residence. CommanderOzzik Sturn is a big-game hunter who lines his villa with the trophies he has captured. Among them is Jar Jar Binks frozen in Carbonite.

Continuing through the villa, Starkiller eventually finds Princess Leia in nearly unguarded room with a nice view of the lake and a giant imperial machine called a sky hook. It is not clear what the sky hook is but perhaps the empire hopes to rule the galaxy by having Kareem Abdul Jabbar fire protons like artillery from the surface of the Kashyyyk.
According to Leia though, after it is completed, the Sky Hook will be used to transport enslaved Wookies off this planet. Suspicious that Starkiller is just an assassin set on killing her, Leia says that a real Jedi would go and dismantle that Sky hook. Fumbling like a teenage boy talking to his crush, Starkiller agrees and runs off to go dismantle it.
By the way, if you type "Leia" into Google, the first suggested term is "Leia lingerie".

The path to the Sky Hook is through a wooded and, for some reason, wet canyon. Eventually, you transition through to an imperial holding center that is lined with cells containingWookies . Each section is protected by a series of force fields. Make your way through them by using the force pull to yank the plug overhead. After Starkiller emerges from the imperial tunnel, he reaches the base of the Sky Hook.

This enormous tower fires a beam of energy into the night sky and it looks like something you would buy in a smoke shop. The structure is buttressed by seven spokes that grip the hillside. At the end of each spoke is a mooring pin that stick out like candles on a 7 year-old's Nazi themed birthday cake. The goal in this mission is to pluck each of these "birthday candles" out to cut power from the Sky Hook. Pulling them is easy. The difficult part is surviving the entire army surrounding the structure. 

How to dismantle the Sky Hook

The trick to beating this area is to forget, temporarily, about pulling out the mooring pins until you have cleared out all the enemies. To kill all of the enemies, you must focus on just one type and do a whole lap around the tower. You should also move swiftly to dodge the missiles fired by the Purge Troopers. Here is a detailed description of the strategy:

• Do one lap killing just the snipers camping on each of the spokes and the troopers who are manning the gun turrets. Dodge past the Purge Troopers.
• Do a second lap and kill each of the Purge Troopers. Remember, shock them and then press X,X,Y.
• When everyone is gone, do another lap and start pulling out the mooring pins.

After pulling two or three of the mooring pins, Ozzik Sturn comes out piloting his personal AT-ST and therefore nominating himself as the best fascist driving a mech since Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D.

• Take Ozzik out by hiding behind the spokes on the other side of him (make sure there are no mooring pins in the spoke you are hiding behind so you don't get electrocuted).
• Jump up and shock him with force lighting until you drain your force power. Then, drop back down behind the wall and wait for your force to recharge. Then, jump back up and do it again.
• Repeat this pop and shock approach until his power is totally drained.

When he Ozzik is dead, continue along plucking out the mooring pins.

When all the pins have been removed, lighting shoots out of the tower like it is going to explode. All the Wookies gather around it and for a moment it looks like a crowd gathered at a Steppenwolf concert. The skyhook area is frustrating but satisfying. I actually liked it because I had to figure out the best way to use each of my force powers to accomplish the task at hand. This area was much like a Halo bathtub problem in that you know what you have to do, you are just horribly out-numbered. The fun comes in carefully discovering a strategy to use your strengths to overcoming your character's disadvantages.

Starkiller storms onto his ship fuming at the amount of trouble he had to go through to rescue a stupid princess and demands that Kota tell him who that girl was and what she is going to provide in forming an army. Kota tells him that Leia is the daughter of senator JimmySmits (aka Bail Prestor Organa ). With the Senator on their side, they can have more influence in forming the rebel army. However, the senator has gone missing because he went toFelucia to find Shaak Ti and so, you know, she's dead, and so he probably got eaten by a flower or something. Therefore, Starkiller and Company has to head back toFelucia and find him.

We flash over to Felucia and find out real fast what happened to Senator Goatee - he got captured by that intergalactic Hot Topic employee Marius Brood. She is holding him as a bargaining chip in case Vader shows up.