I've got the game in.  Each race sheet has a story / description on the back of it that is pretty cool.  The Hacan's role in the story of Rex comes about because the Lazax were using trade embargoes instead of military action to punish those who defied them through separatism.  This upset the Hacan because they were losing trade -- and though not directly stated, I could see how this would irk them, as each punishment against another race is a cumulative punishment against them, despite their uninvolvment.  It is well written overall.  I'd sure love to know more about the setting now. 

I especially like that the new Bene Gesserit (the Xxcha) actually sound like the "good guys" while the Atreides (Jol-Nar) are perhaps less so, not that any of it is so black and white.  The factions all sound like good fits for their abilities without being shoehorned into every facet of the roles they inherited from Dune.

Adam said:

I agree.  The fluff on the back of the race sheets does a lot to make the factions "fit" into the racial abilities they've been given, without making them thiny veiled clones of the Dune factions they came from.  The setting is less about Machiavellian politics and more about the chaos of civil war (a shift towards the action side of things), but there's still plenty of room for all the things that made Dune such a great game, mechanically.

Rex will never completely replace Dune (did anyone seriously expect that it would?), but it is a great homage and it will keep the game engine alive for a new generation of gamers, so all in all I'd say FFG done good.

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Treguard said:

This thread is now about lions wearing eyepatches.

So what's the deal with the Hacan? One of the six Great Races, big ol' pictures on both game boxes and yet we've not had a whisker of official fiction about them! Clearly FFG are fans of the fuzzy merchants since they're an odd mascot for a space opera, being amongst the less "alien" looking, so it's odd that we don't know that much about them.
 

I expect their design was initially inspired by the Kilrathi (?) from the Wing commander series, at least graphically.  They're both talking lion people at any rate.  I don't really know much about Wing Commander, other than it had talking lion people in it though, and Mark Hammil was involved in voice work for one or more of the games.  I vaguely recall one lion-person with an eye-patch, too =P

The fluff on the back on their race sheet in TI3 discusses a certain highly addictive "spice" that they farm on one of their three home planets, which is somehow connected to their strong trade empire (apparently, the "spice" must "be evenly distributed in a timely fashion.")
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Mark Hamill actually starred in the live-action/CGI cutscenes of the Wing Commander III, IV, and V video games, not just voice work. (as did Tom Wilson, aka: Biff Tannen from "Back to the Future") They also starred Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies.

I miss those Wing Commander games. (not the movie; it was terrible.) Apparently, there was also a short-lived animated TV show which also starred Mark Hamill, of course just as a voice actor.
 

 

But yes, I agree. I thought of the Kilrathi immediately when I first Twilight Imperium.

Sorry about that last post. Apparently, there was some sort of glitch in the system. That whole first section was supposed to be a quote from earlier in the thread.