User blog:KaharZamet/Star Wars Celebration 2015 Wrap-up

Hello everyone. So, Star Wars Celebration 2015 recently happened in Anaheim, and I was at it. There was a lot of exciting news so I'm going to attempt to share all the important stuff in one blog post.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
So, there was a lot of exciting news for The Force Awakens. Celebration was kicked off with a panel featuring JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy. Later, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) were brought on stage. The new Stormtroopers, R2-D2 and BB-8 (the droid who has a ball for a body) were also brought on stage. Yes, BB-8 is a real robotic-created droid and it is very impressive. The panel ended with a new teaser for The Force Awakens being shown. If you're a true Star Wars fan, you'll get goosebumps every time you watch this trailer, and there was a line at the end of it that broke the Internet and made everyone excited. The trailer features the new Stormtroopers and the new characters Finn, Rey, and Kylo Ren, as well as classic characters. I won't spoil which classic characters - you'll have to watch the trailer for yourself, which is embedded below.

Star Wars: Battlefront
On the second day of Star Wars Celebration, we got a bunch of big news about the Star Wars: Battlefront reboot being made by EA DICE. The game will launch on November 17, 2015 for the PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Playable planets include Endor, Hoth, Tatooine, and Sullust. There will be playable heroes like in Battlefront II, such as Boba Fett and Darth Vader. Matches will be able to hold 40 players (20 on each side). There will be a new gamemode called Walker in which the Empire must defend an AI-controlled AT-AT walker while the Rebel Alliance captures stations around the map and call in Y-Wing Bombers to destroy it.

On December 8, 2015, a free DLC called The Battle of Jakku will be released on all platforms. It will feature 2 maps set on the planet of Jakku (the desert planet shown at the beginning of The Force Awakens trailer), and players who pre-order the game will get access to the DLC a week early on December 1, 2015. Story-wise, the Battle of Jakku is a crucial battle that takes place after the Battle of Endor. In it, the Rebel Alliance devastates the Imperial fleet.

We also got a trailer for Battlefront, which is embedded below.

Star Wars: Rebels
On the third day of Celebration, we got a bunch of exciting news about Rebels. At the beginning of the day, a trailer was shown for Season 2. James Earl Jones is voicing Darth Vader in Season 2. He is the voice actor who voiced Vader in the Original Trilogy. Captain Rex, along with two currently unknown clone buddies (I'm assuming Kix and Echo) return as old men to help Ahsoka Tano and the crew of The Ghost fight the Empire. Hondo Ohnaka, our favorite Weequay space pirate, is also returning.



We also got the Season 2 premiere of Rebels later on in the day. Unfortunately, I can't tell you guys how this went because I was planning to attend, but people filled up the line 3 hours before the panel even began, so I was unable to.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Even though The Clone Wars is over, we also got some Clone Wars "news" on the first and second day.

On the first day, there was a panel called The Untold Clone Wars, featuring Dave Filoni and Pablo Hidalgo. Filoni showed off some of the concept art for the show. He discussed The Bad Batch arc (I'll get to that later), and showed concept art for it and other episode arcs. He also showed unfinished animations for an arc featuring Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos (which the content of will most likely appear in the Dark Disciple novel), as well as an arc featuring the clones (and more specifically The Bad Batch) and Wookiees trying to defend Kashyyyk from Trandoshans. There were the webshooters from Knights of the Old Republic present, because Dave said he "hated fighting the things in KOTOR and wanted our guys to kill them". The wookiees would've also rode these giant bear-like creatures.

There were a few other un-finished animations shown, including one of Ahsoka fending for herself on Coruscant, one of Boba Fett, Bossk, Embo, and some of your other favorite bounty hunters fighting Count Dooku, and one of Cad Bane and Boba Fett fighting Tusken Raiders on Tatooine.

Now this is the part that makes you hate Disney for cancelling Clone Wars prematurely again: they had the fates of Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other characters planned out for the series finale, which would take place shortly after Revenge of the Sith. I'm kind of bummed we won't find out the fates of all the amazing Clone Wars characters, but fortunately it looks like we'll find out the fates of Ahsoka and Rex in Season 2 of Rebels.

On day two, The Bad Batch arc was shown. It was 4 unfinished episodes featuring Cody, Rex, Anakin, Mace, Obi-Wan, Admiral Trench, and The Bad Batch. The Bad Batch, also known as Clone Squad 99 (a tribute to the deformed clone 99), are a group of experimental clone commandos, extremely different from other clone troopers. After clone 99's heroic efforts at the beginning of Season 3 of The Clone Wars, the Republic began experimenting on deformed clones to give them more useful traits. A group of some of these clones is The Bad Batch. Unfortunately, I can't currently find Bad Batch online, but if I do, I'll post the video on this blog.

Star Wars: Rogue One
The first in the Anthology (spin-off) series, Rogue One was discussed on the fourth and final day of Celebration. It takes place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, closer to A New Hope, and features a band of resistance fighters (believed to be Rogue Squadron) stealing the Death Star plans. We also got a trailer.

Other than that, not much is really known about Rogue One. Most likely, more will be revealed as we get closer to the December 16, 2016 release.

So, that's pretty much all the important stuff from Star Wars Celebration 2015. What do you guys think of all this stuff? Are you excited about it? Let me know in the comments.