Here's to the Speed Freaks of 'Star Wars: Galactic Racer'
I feel the need for speed, and as many weirdo aliens as feasibly possible.
It's been a good year for Glup Shittos. But then again, when hasn't it?
What was—for a brief period just a few years ago—a sweeping insult against Star Wars' love of arcane worldbuilding is now a defining pillar of the dichotomy of the franchise. Glup Shittos can be hubristic; we saw that earlier this year with the arrival of The Mandalorian and Grogu, and its attempt at trying (and failing) to make Rotta the Hutt, a character who had previously only appeared as a child in the 2008 Clone Wars animated movie, a blockbuster movie star. But they can also be a celebration of what makes Star Wars so enduring and charming, a universe so vast and full of character that audiences can glom onto an alien with a 30-second appearance and a name on a wiki as much as they can someone like Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia.
If The Mandalorian and Grogu was a testament to Glup Shitto at its worst and most cynical, Star Wars video games have been a salve this year as they've rejoiced in the ideal of it. Both Zero Company and now the newly released Galactic Racer engage with what peak Glup Shitto means in two different, yet equally appealing, ways. Zero Company took a more symbolic approach: to the tactics game, to be a Glup Shitto was to be a person buffeted by a galaxy of events much bigger than you, to be a small player in the chorus of the tragic events of Revenge of the Sith. In Zero Company, your gang of Glups were not the heroes and not the people enacting change on a galactic scale, but the people carving out their own tiny corner of the universe because it was all they could do. To be a Glup Shitto there was to be one with the anonymous mass of the galaxy.
To be a Glup Shitto in Galactic Racer is to open the doors to the freak show.