danaan said:

Vader with some scars, and some machine-augmentations...

Has someone been playing Deus Ex lately?
I certainly have.

But in all seriousness: that's a rather neat approach to the politics-centered transformation. It's starting to feel a bit more like a real social system. Not "oh look Ian MacDiarmid is suddenly more powerful than anybody in the Republic, what are we gonna do now".

Having Bail Organa play an important role makes it feel more like the Empire was a malevolent tumor that sprang forth when the conditions were just right for it to come into being, not a neatly baked cake with a nice, straightforward recipe courtesy of the Order of Sith Lords.

In my draft, I try to cut to the chase as quickly as possible.

You want to see the end of the Old Republic? *kaboom* It's gone in Episode I.
You want clones? Episode I.
Palpatine and the Empire? Episode II.
Last-ditch effort to rescue the mother of the twins? That's the majority of Episode III's plot.

One of the main differences between this draft and all of my others is that the "Old Republic Era" hardly overlaps with the Clone Wars time period. Technically the Republic existed during the Clone Wars, but that was for literally one battle at the start of the war. After the clones destroyed the seat of government on Coruscant, the Republic, as one contiguous entity, was history.