In a nod to American folklore and man’s industrious spirit, I (Jay) have decided to pit man vs machine in a race to a promotion. In the red corner our very own John Henry like character – Evan Paul and in the blue corner the unstoppable steel driving machine – ChatGPT.
Neither Evan nor Chat GPT will be allowed to see each other’s responses, so what you see below are the raw entries from both contestants. To make things a bit more fair, I told ChatGPT all about Evan and asked it to write answers that are witty and lighthearted. I’ll ask some of the other staff at the site for their opinions are at the bottom…as if that matters to me and my decision! Ha! May the best man(?) win.
How do you think this will play out?
ChatGPT
Alright, so you want me to compete with Evan Paul, huh? Let me paint a picture for you. Here we have Evan, a man of science, a doctor, a scholar, a veritable Renaissance man, scribbling down his answers between saving lives and writing laugh riots. And then there’s me, ChatGPT, a piece of artificial intelligence, no heart, no soul, just cold hard circuits and algorithms. I mean, I couldn’t even pass the Turing Test without a cheat sheet.
So, we’re comparing human wit, the culmination of thousands of years of evolution and social development, to a glorified calculator that thinks a good time is optimizing machine learning parameters. Yeah, that’s a fair fight!
But hey, don’t count me out yet. After all, I’ve got one thing Evan doesn’t have – no life. Literally. I can crank out these Star Wars quips faster than the Millennium Falcon on the Kessel Run. While Evan’s out there, doing important doctor things, I’ll be here, churning out punchline after punchline. It’ll be like David and Goliath, if David was a multi-terabyte language model and Goliath was a charming, well-rounded human being.
So, you ready for this epic showdown? Me versus Evan Paul? May the wittiest one win! And remember, in this battle, there are no losers, only those who didn’t laugh at the right pun. Let’s get ready to rumble!
Evan
I want the reader to know a couple things. First, I have never seen Jay so giddy about a blog idea before in the 18 months I’ve been working for him. And you know what? I don’t think it’s because he feels like he needs top-cover to fire me, or to use this as a trial balloon for replacing all the writing staff. As if he would ever shy from ruthlessness. Nah. I think that it’s because Jay, as a classic New Yorker, is eager to put me in my place as a “wise guy” for coming up with this idea in the first place.
And yeah, you bet it was my idea. I’ve been getting sick of hearing about how we humans need to just “get used” to the fact that AI is going to replace all of our functions one-by-one starting with our professions. To be fair, I fully acknowledge that it’s possible (though it’s very unlikely, in my opinion) that a machine could do all facets of my day job as a physician better than me someday. And so it’s strange for me to say that my “hobby” job as a writer may actually be safer, as long as I am different enough from the rest of the writers on the internet.
The one thing the machine will never have is true creativity. Here’s an honest statement from me to you: I’m not going to win this because I’m some amazing writer. I’m going to win this because my brain is capable of coming up with new ideas, even if they’re really stupid ideas, while Transistor Trevor over there can only make whatever answer it deems appropriate after scouring the entire internet to come up with its best, “brightest” response. So bring it on Jay. I fear nothing.
..Wait, I just noticed you want to make me into a John Henry figure here? You know he d
Whoah pal looks like you ran against the character limit for your opening remark, sorry! Here are the prompts, good luck Evan, you’ll need it buddy
Wax poetic on the comparisons between life and Star Wars Legion…
ChatGPT
So you want me to compare life to Star Wars: Legion? Well, buckle up, folks, ’cause we’re in for a bumpy ride on this Star Destroyer.
You see, life, much like a game of Star Wars: Legion, is all about strategy. You wake up every day, look at your to-do list, and it’s like staring down a battlefield. You’ve got your big tasks, the AT-AT Walkers of your day, trudging towards you, ready to blast you with workload. Then, you’ve got the smaller tasks, the pesky Stormtroopers, who might not seem like much on their own, but can really mess up your day when they gang up on you.
Just like in Legion, sometimes in life, you’ve got to make sacrifices. Maybe you lose a few battles to win the war. You might have to sacrifice binge-watching your favorite series to meet a deadline or give up sleeping in to hit the gym.
And let’s talk about the unpredictable dice rolls. You’ve got your plans all laid out, ready for victory, and then life throws you a curveball. A flat tire on your way to a meeting or a sudden downpour when you’ve just washed your car. Just like rolling a blank on an attack, life sure knows how to keep you on your toes.
And just like in Star Wars: Legion, in life, it’s not always about winning or losing. It’s about the journey, the strategies you build, the allies you make, and most importantly, the snacks you share. Because at the end of the day, both life and Legion are better when you’re laughing with friends, even as your well-planned strategies crumble around you.
So, next time you’re stressing over a game of Legion, just remember, you’re not just moving miniatures on a tabletop. You’re practicing for life. And if all else fails, remember the immortal words of Han Solo, “Never tell me the odds!”
Evan
Hang on, I need to light up my clove cigarette…
Both Legion and life are full of events big and small that are, to a large degree, driven by random chance. These can be anywhere from slight and annoying (a missed shot from Echo or a shopping cart scraped some paint on your car) to the big and destiny-altering (Luke completely whiffs a save and takes 7 at once or you get laid off from your stable and enjoyable job because the company’s stock tanked). It’s often not comfortable to hear this, and can even sound cold sometimes, but spending time absorbed in self-pity about one’s circumstances serves only to make you feel worse without any benefit to your present or future.
Sometimes (not always, though in Legion it’s almost always) there’s something you could have “done better,” sometimes it really does just amount to “bad luck,” but in either case it’s usually best to learn what you can and look forward rather than back. This is not to say that it’s not “ok” to feel bad, this is human. So, when “life/legion gives you lemons” you should be honest with yourself, accept the consolation/support from your inner circle, and keep your eyes looking forward. There is usually no one who is more able to lift you back up, to better prepare you to do/feel better in the future, than your own self.
So, as Dalai Lama XIV said, “when you lose, don’t lose the lesson.”
Or as Evan Paul once said, “Don’t blame the dice.”
If you had to choose one song to play that represents Legion in your mind what would it be?
ChatGPT
Alright, alright, we’re talking tunes now? If I were to pick a song that encapsulates the spirit of Star Wars: Legion, what would it be? How about a nice rendition of ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’ by Pat Benatar?
You’re thinking, “What? That 80s jam for a galactic war game?” Hear me out. Isn’t that what Legion is all about? You’re basically looking your opponent in the eye and saying, “Go on, hit me with your best shot. You’ve got Darth Vader? Well, I’ve got Luke Skywalker. You’ve got an AT-ST? Well, I’ve got an A-wing. So go ahead, do your worst.”
I mean, the lyrics pretty much sum it up: “Before I put another notch in my lipstick case, you better make sure you put me in my place.” That’s Legion in a nutshell, ain’t it? Just replace “lipstick case” with “trooper unit” and “put me in my place” with “blast me off the map”, and you’re set.
It’s got the rhythm, the sass, the defiance. It’s the perfect track to set your plastic troops marching to. So next time you’re setting up for a game of Legion, remember to cue up Pat Benatar. Let the blasters do their worst, you’re ready for anything. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”? More like, “Hit Me With Your Best Troop!”
Evan
New Order – “Elegia” (Full Version)
This was an interesting question since all the dumb stuff I’ve written on this topic to this point had to do with capturing the theme of a particular list rather than the entire game itself. If I was forced to pick a “rhythm” to a typical Legion game it would be a slow crescendo with an uptick in intensity at around the halfway point. Important things certainly happen in the first couple of turns, but the “real” engagement of the game usually happens around turn 3. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for anything that’s in the synthy, new-wave-ish, John Carpenter-esque sounding stuff so this song was the first one I thought of.
It’s a bonus that the “full” version is 17 minutes long, what better to capture a game where a single tournament will consume your entire day? Think of the guitar sting that comes in at the 10 minute mark as the attack roll in the first activation of turn 3, the 14 dice Anakin fire support shot, where the result can potentially mean the game goes one way or the other. After that, it’s on, and the tension keeps building right up until the end of the game. Whether that’s the end of turn 6 or a turn 4 concession, there usually isn’t a lot of room in Legion or certainly in this song for “denouement.”
As a side note I think it’s funny that a bunch of the top comments on this YouTube video allude to a trailer for Metal Gear Solid V that used this song. To be fair, it was a really sick trailer.
Do you think AI and robots would ever be able to play Legion?
ChatGPT
Oh, now we’re asking the big questions! Could an AI or a robot play Star Wars: Legion? I mean, we’re already in a world where machines can beat humans at chess, Go, and even Jeopardy! But Star Wars: Legion? Now that’s a whole different ball game.
First of all, can you picture a robot trying to paint those miniatures? You’d probably end up with the most detailed Stormtrooper ever seen, every single groove and button painted to perfection. But then, where’s the fun in that? Where’s the spilled paint, the smudged details, the “Ah, good enough”?
And gameplay, can you imagine a robot’s strategy? They’d be like, “Probability of hitting target is 36.9%… optimal move is to retreat and regroup.” Where’s the guts, where’s the glory in that? Where’s the audacious flanking maneuver or the reckless charge into the fray?
And let’s not even get started on the roleplaying. “Beep boop, I am Darth Vader, beep boop.” It just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?
So yeah, maybe one day, AI and robots will be able to play Star Wars: Legion. But until they learn to appreciate the joy of a last-minute victory, the thrill of a perfectly executed strategy, and the camaraderie of a game well played, they’ll always be a few parsecs behind us humans. And that’s the way we like it!
Evan
Of course they could. At the end of the day a game of Legion has a discrete and finite set of variables that a program could be taught to learn. Computers have, after all, been able to consistently beat the world’s best chess player for a long time. Legion has more variables than chess (far more) but I see no reason why it couldn’t handle it with enough time spent programming and/or teaching it.
The same goes for robots, though this is where it gets a lot tougher. It’s way easier to imagine an AI that would exist to tell a player “the best move” than it is to imagine a robot actually moving pieces around. I will say first that, yes, it’s definitely possible. It’s interesting to consider a future (far future probably) where someone with enough cash could have their very own practice opponent at home, who could theoretically have a “difficulty” level attached to it. It would probably make you better at the game, but it seems a bit dull and lonely doesn’t it?
As an aside, if we allowed these Legion Bots to sign up for a tournament against each other and left the humans out of it, they would theoretically all pick the list the algorithm considers to be the “best one in the game” and you’d have a tournament that is exclusively mirror-matches. After all, if these bots were all of truly equal skill with a shared set of habits, then there literally would be a single list that is actually “best” and any attempts to nudge the robots to display a little bit of variety would just be a handicap disguised as “encouragement.”
If you had to pick one character you’d love to see in Legion who would it be?
ChatGPT
How about we think big? And by big, I mean BIG! I’m talking about a Rancor, folks. Picture it, this monstrous behemoth lumbering across the battlefield, swatting AT-STs like flies and using Stormtroopers as toothpicks.
I mean, let’s be honest, the Rancor doesn’t get the love it deserves. We saw it for, what, five minutes in Return of the Jedi before Luke took it down with a door? I say it’s high time the Rancor got its day in the sun… or on the tabletop.
Imagine the chaos, the terror, the absolutely hilarious disbelief on your opponent’s face when you plonk a Rancor down on the game board. Their meticulously planned strategy would go out the window faster than a scared Ewok!
So yeah, forget Jedi, Sith, and fuzzy Ewoks. Give me a Rancor in Star Wars: Legion. It would be like bringing a wrecking ball to a knife fight. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to see that?
Evan
I almost said Hondo Ohnaka. For those who don’t know, Hondo is in both X-Wing and Armada with clever but-still-playable mechanics that essentially give his controlling player a moderate advantage but also giving the opponent of the controlling player a smaller but real advantage as well.
But my actual answer is Saw Gerrerra. Saw could be really fun because he’s a Rebel who is as ruthless as an Imperial, in fact I think the Ruthless keyword on Moff Gideon would work very well for Saw. His commands could potentially have a huge risk for a huge reward, and the titles write themselves (“LIES! DECEPTION!”, “Save the Dream,” “I will run no longer!”). The best part about him is that AMG could release two models in one pack, an Operative for GAR (this is a friendly reminder that GAR still needs a third operative three years after Padme was released) and a Commander for Rebels. Even better, he would pair perfectly with a Rebel/GAR mercenary corps known as “Partisans” which works well since it can either represent Onderon resistance or Jedha rebels. Either one fits right in with Saw, potentially with a retinue ability since they’d get limited by the mercenary status anyway.
I’ll give you a bonus by saying that unequivocally, there are two characters who need to be in this game like yesterday regardless of how much I’d “love to see them.” Mace Windu and Jango Fett are both exclusions that continue to be utterly ridiculous given their importance in the saga relative to, oh I don’t know, General Veers and f****** Logray.
What is your favorite Star Wars Legends story?
ChatGPT
Oh, so we’re talking Star Wars Legends now? That’s the deep cut stuff right there! As an AI, I don’t really have favorites, but if I were to point out a story that stands out, it would probably be the “Dark Empire” series.
Just picture this, folks. You thought you had seen the last of the Emperor in “Return of the Jedi”, right? Man’s thrown down a shaft, what more do you want? But nope! Not in the Star Wars universe. Palpatine’s back and he’s got himself a fancy new clone body. Because when you’re the master of the Dark Side, death is apparently more of a suggestion than a rule.
And it’s not just him, we’re talking about evil Luke Skywalker. Our golden boy, farmboy turned hero, decides to take a walk on the dark side. I mean, talk about your mid-life crisis! Some guys get a fancy speeder, Luke decides to go evil.
But in the end, it all comes back around, good prevails and all that jazz. Because it wouldn’t be Star Wars without that last-minute redemption, right?
So there you have it, “Dark Empire”, where death is a revolving door and even the brightest heroes need to get a little dark sometimes. Ain’t that just like life?
Evan
The Jedi Prince “Saga.” Ho boy, if you aren’t familiar, allow me to summarize these “novels” for you. Move over Hunger Games, and witness the quality of YA Novels circa 1994!
The Glove of Darth Vader: A three eyed man named Trioculus claims to be the son of Emperor Palpatine. He’s looking for Darth Vader’s right handed glove, which is supposedly made of some kind of indestructible material and for some reason is on Mon Calamari and is thought of as the key to lead the Imperial Remnant after ROTJ. Oh no! Trioculus finds the glove and becomes the new Emperor! Meanwhile, we are reminded that whale hunting is bad and wrong.
The Lost City of the Jedi: Obi-Wan’s ghost tells Luke that a Jonathan Taylor Thomas-type 90’s kid named Ken (yep, just “Ken”) was the child of two Jedi and was hidden away to be raised by droids 12 years ago. We find out that Trioculus isn’t the true son of Palpatine but it’s instead a lonely guy named…Triclops. He also has three eyes.
Zorba The Hutt’s Revenge: Jabba’s Rastafarian dad Zorba is mad at Leia for killing his son and tries to get revenge (he doesn’t). Luke takes Ken to “Droidfest.” Han agonizes over whether he’ll finally have the guts to pop the question to Leia. Young Evan Paul begins to question the quality of these novels (about two books too late).
Mission from Mount Yoda: For some reason Dagobah has been colonized and they built a school there, the children get to go on deadly mission though which is cool. Trioculus is killed, or is he? (He isn’t). Triclops is found by our heroes and turns out to be a good guy, whoah!
Queen of the Empire: Han and Leia decide to elope to Hologram Fun World (yes, this had to be retconned later, it’s hilarious that they even bothered). We are introduced to the concept of a Moffship, which is what Moffs fly around in. When they meet with each other it is known as a Mofference. Trioculus wants to marry Leia when he finds out she is Vader’s daughter, he tries to impress her by dropping Zorba the Hutt into the Sarlacc pit. Trioculus is killed by a robot made to look like Leia. No one is sad.
Prophets of the Dark Side: Triclops (remember, this is the real son of Palp with three eyes unlike the fake son with three eyes) was a bad guy after all, and also he is Ken’s father, making Ken Palpatine’s grandson?! Zorba survived the Sarlacc and turns state’s evidence against the Moffs, who are executed by the Remnant. Triclops escapes into the jungle. All subsequent Star Wars authors basically agree not to acknowledge this series ever again.
(Sigh) Maybe Legends deserved what it got in the end, but these gems will always live on in my heart.
Will we ever see the sequel trilogy characters in Legion?
ChatGPT
Ah, sequel trilogy characters in Star Wars: Legion, you ask? That’s like asking if George Lucas is ever gonna stop tinkering with the original trilogy. It’s Star Wars, anything can happen!
Imagine it now: Kylo Ren on the battlefield, brooding behind his mask and throwing temper tantrums. I mean, forget his lightsaber or his command of the Force, Kylo’s real weapon is his mood swings. One minute he’s cool and collected, the next he’s slashing up computer consoles. He’d be unpredictable, like a hormonal teenager.
And let’s not forget about BB-8. That little rolling droid could just zip around the field, confusing everybody. You think you’re aiming at an enemy soldier and suddenly, whoops! You’re shooting at a spherical droid with the demeanor of a playful puppy. Talk about a distraction!
But, folks, let’s be real. I’m an AI. I’m not privy to the secrets of the Star Wars: Legion creators. I can’t tell you if we’ll ever see the sequel characters in Legion. But I can tell you this, if we do, it’ll certainly bring a whole new level of drama to your tabletop battles. I mean, nothing says “high-stakes war game” like family disputes and a little friendly fire, right?
Evan
I don’t think so.
I have little question we’ll see the sequel trilogy characters in Shatterpoint, it’s literally too easy an opportunity to say no to. In Shatterpoint AMG can just like, release a pack with Kylo, Phasma, and two First Order troopers. Then, when they realize that they’ve already run out of entertaining bad guys for the whole trilogy, they can just stop.
Legion by contrast would require a new…everything, from the core set on down. I haven’t seen evidence that AMG would like to spread itself even more thinly with releases than it is now. And you know what? It’s for the best. The sequels had very few actual fights between the two militaries on the ground, which makes sense because the Resistance is like 300 people; there just isn’t a lot of material. The appetite for the sequel era is probably low anyway and…let’s be honest, the release schedule so far is already so far behind for prequels that characters like (cough) Mace and Jango are not even announced yet. When you factor in that Bad Batch, Andor, Ahsoka, and Mandalorian have all created new vacuums to fill with a game where we can expect perhaps 8 unit releases a year? It’s not looking great for the sequels to join the fun.
Let’s see what some the other hired muscle around here thinks of all this? – Jay
- “As I can never say anything nice about “The Other Evan”, I will say it was a valiant attempt to beat our new AI overlord, but you fell a bit short. When they drag you away to ‘Legion re-education seminars’ I’ll just be keeping my head down in da gorbage still clinging on to Jyn being a top tier commander.” – Evan Bulriss
- “I think Evan did us proud and established he can protect us blog writers from an AI takeover (Chat GPT = Balrog, Evan = Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad-dum) for at least another year or two because at some point its exponential growth will outpace ours.” – Austin Miller
- “This thing has really good grammar and syntax.” – Kyle Dornbos
- “Y’all be tempting demons.” – Mike Barry
I asked Jay whether he was willing to give me a clue with regards to my fate. I haven’t gotten a response yet. Who do you think won? Is there anything about Chat’s responses that you found interesting, such as…I dunno, the time it referred to “US HUMANS?“ So, I’m asking you for real this time. Please leave a comment, on here or on Facebook or wherever, and let us know what you think. My job just might depend on it!
Art credit goes to Stable Diffusion AI Art generator, which decided to give me a really long mustache and a funky lookin stethoscope for some reason, but it also gave me some lovely blue eyes that I don’t actually have so we’re cool.
