Yeah, but I feel it's already too late. I guess the plot for the addons is pretty much set.
I wouldn't be too sure about that -- I was just pointed to this interview with Dustin Browder, the lead designer of
Forum Index > StarCraft 2 HotS |
hack41
21 Posts
Yeah, but I feel it's already too late. I guess the plot for the addons is pretty much set. I wouldn't be too sure about that -- I was just pointed to this interview with Dustin Browder, the lead designer of | ||
nemanja1503
Serbia49 Posts
We'll see what part 5 brings. | ||
Birthday
17 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + Could you tell me the backstory of Wings of Liberty? Take your time. Is it Raynor fighting against Mengsk? But he doesn't really do anything against Mengsk - he's more focused on helping colonists, getting money and the artifacts. The entire revolution sub-plot, with the adjutant and all, is just four missions long(five if you count Wasteland) in the twenty-two Terran total - and completely optional! So maybe it's all about Kerrigan? But the chance to turn her back human doesn't even appear until the very end of the game. There is not a single clue that the artifact, once complete, could turn her back human until Valerian tells you so explicitly, and that triggers another short sub-plot about saving Kerrigan which puts the game on rails should you start it. The reason for this incoherency is the non-linear campaign structure. To simplify, the more linear the story the stronger it is(or at least could be) because the more control the writers have of the pacing, arc and characters. Non-linearity ruins all that as you can't predict where the player will move next and I cannot really blame Blizzard for failing to pull it off. Writing a good story that also remains non-linear is a daunting task. I can, hovewer, blame them for not taking advantage of the non-linear campaign structure. While it's true that you're presented with various missions to choose from at any given time, the order in which you do them doesn't matter at all, and the choice of picking one mission over the other doesn't exist. The missions will just hang out on the Star Map until you decide to do them, no matter how much time has passed and what other missions you've done, which is especially irking in mission which should be on a timer like The Moebius Factor. The entire planet is being overrun by Zerg, I shouldn't be able to just hang out and do other stuff in the meantime. The very first choice you make is between The Evacuation, where you save some innocent colonists and Shash and Grab, which is another artifact mission for Tychus. The contrast between the two is obvious: be a good guy or be a rich guy and I honestly thought it was a "hard" choice - once I pick one, the other will disappear. But after saving the colonists(damn my good heart) and going back to the Star Map I realized that not only Tychus' mission is still there so there was no moral choice at all, it pays barely 10% more than The Evacuation which means that there is hardly any monetary choice to it as well. In fact almost all missions in the campaign pay exactly the same - not counting The Outlaws and Zero Hour which are technically part of the tutorial, the difference between lowest and highest paying mission in the game is 25%. Which begs the question, where do these credits come from? Sometimes you can justify it - Tosh pays you for springing out his buddies for example - but what about, say, Heaven's Fall? Who pays James Raynor for killing infected colonists? It can't be money for the artifacts since again, you could just ignore the artifact mission line and still get money for other missions. Speaking of Heaven's Fall, it is one of the two missions in the game where you're given a moral choice. But guess what? Your choice doesn't matter here as well; whatever you pick, you'll be right. If you side with Protoss, the colonists and Ariel herself will be infected; if you side with Ariel, apparently the Protoss were completely wrong and there was no infection at all. Similar deal with Tosh, though less blatant as he's an anti-hero. Choices without consequences are meaningless. So the order in which you pick the missions is mostly irrelevant gameplay-wise and the moral choice of picking missions is nonexistent. While Blizzard suffered all the consequences of making a non-linear campaign they failed to utilize any of its strengths. Even more so; despite putting different parts of the story into bubble sub-plots they couldn't make them work together well enough. For example the beforementioned Revolution sub-plot - whether you do it or not, Raynor will need to confront the Hyperion crew about striking a deal with Valerian. You'd think that if he took care of the Media Blitz just before siding with a Mangsk, the crew would have more faith in him. But it plays out the same no matter whether you dealt a serious blow to Arcturus' reputation or not. The bottom line is, ultimately there is no reason for the the campaign to be non-linear at all. If it was linear just like in Starcraft it would flow and work much better and the impact on the gameplay would be minimal. All it does is hurt the story - which is actually pretty damn bad even without being chopped into fragments. So yeah, it's not bottom line quite yet. We're just getting started. The problem with story, characters, writing and presentation is that it's all straight from a B-class Hollywood movie. You get a pretty good taste of it the moment you start a new game - Raynor drinking alone in a bar, melancholically staring at the photo of his ex, camera zooms on his eyes, he shoots the TV because he doesn't like the guy on the TV and then says "It's about time we kicked this revolution into overdrive". Sorry Blizzard, but I've seen better directed and more subtle scenes in *anime* and that's about as damning claim as it gets. And it gets worse. "We got so far because we were leaning on each other"... I literally facepalmed during the entire pep talk in Fire and Fury cinematic, and normally I'm a huge sucker for heroic stuff. Who the hell wrote that? How does it even relate to the rest of the story? At which point in the game anyone was leaning on anyone else? As if cheesy, badly directed cutscenes weren't enough we are presented a full array of two dimensional characters which are so archetypical they border on caricatures. Matt Horner is the young, handsome idealist; Stetmann is a "standard nerd"; Findlay is the macho tough guy; Tosh is a black rastaman complete with dreadlocks. A lot of work was done to import the old characters into this new black and white setting as well: Raynor, once a pretty simple and honest young chap who gets caught into something much bigger than his little revolution but he just does what he believes is right is now a dirty, old, tired, drinking veteran mercenary type complete with shotgun shells(even though he never fires a shotgun in the entire game) and what look like rifle grenades(he never uses these either). Despite the fact that he seemed to give up on Kerrigan in Starcraft and he even swore to kill her for what she's done in Brood War, he now apparently wants nothing but to have her back. I guess that's what four years of drinking will do to you. Alcohol is bad, kids. And yeah I know he has an excuse because she's now instrumental to saving the world, but he spends so much time with her picture that it's obvious he loves her sooooooooo much. And if you don't do the Protoss mini-campaign you don't know that she needs to live(yep, that's the non-linearity coming back to bite the story in the ass again). Kerrigan herself is not much better. In the first mission she comes under the player's control in Starcraft she quite clearly states she "likes what she is". She displays insane ambition as well as cunning, double, triple and quadruple crossing just about every other character in Starcraft and Brood War and emerges victorious, self-proclaimed "Queen Bitch of the Universe". Then, when there is no one left to oppose her... she retreats back to Char and keeps sitting there quietly for four years? When she comes back out in SC2, she's all emo and then in All-In it is even revealed that she actually retains most of her humanity and doesn't really want to be a Zerg no more. Much like Raynor she got her image changed, complete with high heels. Hey remember what Overmind said about the Zerg? That they were the purity of essence? I guess when you're main female character in the game it's *essential* to be as sexy as possible. Finally, Arcturus Mengsk. while he certainly wasn't your friendly neighbour despot, it's hard to say using the PSI Emitters on Tarsonis was not justified considering the nuclear holocaust of Korhal by Confederacy which prompted the creation of Sons of Korhal in the first place. In Wings of Liberty he was reduced to the role of Stalin, a ruthless dictator who kills everyone who questions his rule and spends "trillions" on hunting rebels like Raynor despite the fact he didn't even care about him all that much in Starcraft and Brood War. There is not much to say about Valerian, other than the fact his motivations are ridiculous - it's blindingly obvious that Arcturus is not a popular leader, so what kind of idiotic goal is proving yourself to the people? But Valerian is obviously a weasel kind of character so I'll let that go on the grounds his real motivations will become clear later. The gist of things is that Raynor is feeling responsible for having Kerrigan deliver the PSI Emitter on Tarsonis even though he had nothing to do with it and also feeling responsible for leaving her there even though there was nothing he could do and in fact urged her not to go. These lapses in logic made him bitter and a heavy drinker. Meanwhile Tychus who is on Mengsk's paycheck is ordered to do... something. I can't imagine what his deal with Arcturus would be. It seems that from the start his goal is to kill Kerrigan(as he digs about her in the archives and every time Raynor mentions her he urges him to put an end to her once and for all) - now Mengsk wanting Kerrgan dead is understandable, because... well... um... uh actually he doesn't really have any good reason to hate Kerrigan all that much. But anyway, did Arcturus *predict* the new Zerg invasion? Did he *predict* that Raynor will go after the artifacts not even knowing what they do? Did he *predict* that he will succeed? Did he *predict* that his son will betray him and assault Char directly once the artifact is complete? Did he *predict* that Kerrigan will be back human again? So about halfway through the game Zeratul appears literally out of nowhere and ruins the Starcraft universe forever by giving Raynor the mhm-mhm crystal in which he learns that Overmind had a vision of the future. Visions of the future are just like time travel: No matter how little of it you add to the story, it now officially sucks and is beyond repair. I hope I don't need to explain the paradox of seeing the future being different than how it's going to be because now we know it might be different if x happens so obviously we will not allow it to happen so it would never have happaned in the first place so there should be no vision of the future happening as it happaned when Overmind saw it. *deep breath* Now this whole mess might have been handled differently and quite well by simply stating that Overmind with his huge alien brain analyzed all possible outcomes like the computer in War Games and realized the only way to win against the Hybrid is by joining forces of all three races. But for the sake of cheap mysticism and saturday night doom prophecies we got the vision of the future which will never happen. By the way, a minor point: In The Propecy cinematic, Zeratul looks at the prophecy of Xel'Naga returning carved in stone. This includes carvings of Hydralisk and Ultralisk. But both Hydralisk and Ultralisk are not native Zerg organisms, they were evolved based on much more peaceful and docile animals Zerg encountered - slothiens and brontoliths. In other words, there were no Hydralisks and Ultralisks attacking the Xel'Naga, and the carvings can't really be newer than that, as otherwise who would make them... now my head hurts. There is another inconsistency in the Protoss campaign and that's the reason why Overmind created Kerrigan in the first place - as some kind of trick on its imperative goal to kill all Protoss. Except Overmind never wanted to kill all Protoss, as it states quite clearly in the last Zerg mission in Starcraft the goal was to achieve perfection as a species. For that it needed the Khaydarin Crystal, nothing else, and the entire invasion of Aiur was about getting said crystal and placing it in the ruins of the Xel'Naga temple so Overmind could manifest there. Of course after achieving perfection Overmind would most likely slaughter all the Protoss(and Terran) all the same, but it was never even suggested as one of its goals. But obviously they needed to make Kerrigan the Good Guy in Wings of Liberty as you'll be playing as her in Heart of the Swarm so it was retconned along with Tassadar's death. Tassadar is now "neither alive nor dead" which means he's a deus ex machina plot device to be used whenever the good guys run out of ideas. Mark my words, we'll be seeing more of him in the future. Then there's the case of recovered adjutant and its intercepted message of Arcturus ordering placing of PSI Emitters on Korhal. Raynor is a widely known criminal and a terrorist, and yet it takes but one audio log by said criminal and terrorist for everyone to believe Mengsk killed six billion people? Now you could say that Arcturus was so widely hated already that all it took was one audio log to spark the rebellion, but his reaction(and reaction of the press present on the conference) makes no sense at all. In the Hearts and Minds cinematic he's seen calmly stating that the message is fabricated, then Kate Lockwell plays the recording and this sends him into a rage and act in the most conspicious way possible. What the hell? Just deny it! You denied it ten seconds ago! Deny it again! What's the big deal? Just say again that it's a fake! Is this the same man who was smart enough to *predict* defeat of Kerrigan? Speaking of Kate, she spends the entire game reporting about successes of Raynor's Raiders and speaking against Dominion and not once she gets killed, murdered, arrested, beaten up, locked up or even censored. I know the whole News thing is supposed to be kind of a comic relief but it's hard to believe the vision of a totalitarian empire when you can badmouth it constantly on national television with no consequences. After gathering all the pieces of the artifact we get another story piece dumbed down for no reason other than giving the animators something to do, which is assault on the Bucephalus. This is one of the most ridiculous moments in the game and yes, I get it, you want to have a dramatic entry for Valerian, but there are limits of how much can you sacrifice in the name of flashy bangs. Okay so the Dominion ships arrive and even though they outnumber Raynor's Raiders at least three to one he decides to assault the flagship himself, personally, since "their shields are still down". Now you might think that Valerian purposefully left the shields down because he wanted Raynor to board the ship, but I know the real reason why they're down: It's because BATTLECRUISERS DON'T HAVE FUCKING SHIELDS. And why the hell is Raynor even boarding the Bucephalus? Just shoot at it! Shoot it! Shoot it WITH LASERS! If Arcturus is on board he will die if you blow up his ship! But since Jim is such a drama queen he simply must risk his life and lives of all the Raynor's Raiders just to have a chance to kill Arcturus personally with his handgun. Even though it wouldn't work as he loaded it wrong(he loads the single bullet in topmost chamber; his revolver has barrel at the bottom, Mateba-style). Valerian, of course, *predicted* that not only Raynor will board the ship, but he also *predicted* that he will survive fighting through dozens of what I assume are elite Dominion Marines and also *predicted* he won't simply shoot him in the head as soon as he opens the door. Even so, letting all of his men die for nothing since he and Jim become allies five minutes later is a pretty asshole thing to do. Finally, I have one last complaint about this whole sequence. Why the hell this is not a playable mission? It simply begs for an installation crawl. Even the cinematic looks like it's split in two. As soon as Raynor and Findlay leave the bridge, loading screen, you play the mission, then the second part plays, with the idiotic flash grenade sequence. Maybe they ran out of time to make the mission. They only had five years to make the game after all. And finally we come to the biggest turd of the storyline: The ending cinematic. At this point in the game it's nothing surprising; it's more of a recap of all the problems with the story I outlined so far. One thing that stands out is that Findlay is talking directly to Arcturus and it's suggested that Arcturus sees what he sees, probably with a live stream like they have here on Team Liquid. Which begs the question, if Arcturus knew where Findlay is the whole time - I imagine finding a source of a radio signal strong enough to reach from Char to Korhal with no noticeable delay isn't very hard, and even if it's somehow impossible, Findlay could just look at the Star Map with Hyperion's position highlighted on it or something - if all this time Arcturus knew the precise position of the Hyperion, why didn't he simply assault it with half the fleet and turn it into space dust WITH LASERS? The story wants us to believe that he simply hates Kerrigan much more than Raynor. Why? I have no idea, but I wrote about that already. James, the man who swore he will kill Kerrigan, prefers to kill one of his best buddies instead, but I wrote about that too. And then the very thing everyone dreaded happens and we get a happy end with Kerrigan in Raynor's arms. Hey remember the previous endings in Starcraft universe? In Rebel Yell, the good guy turns out the bad guy and gets everything. The prize for winning the last mission is merely continued existence. In The Overmind, the bad guys win. The prize for winning the last mission is possibly dooming the entire sector. In The Fall, The Overmind is defeated. Hovewer Aiur lies in ruins and Kerrigan is ready to take over the Swarm. In The Stand, all you achieve is secure a new homeworld for the Protoss. In The Iron Fist, more bad guys arrive and win. In Queen of Blades, old bad guys kill the new bad guys. But it doesn't make them any better. What happens in SC2 ending? Good guys successfully assault the bad guys' homeworld. They get rid of the head bad guy. They most likely turn the head bad guy into a good guy. Zerg all over the sector fell into disarray, since there's no one to guide them anymore - the war is as good as won. Since Kerrigan is still alive, we can assume Hybrids will be stopped too. I played jRPGs with less happy endings, and that's about as damning claim as it gets. But enough about the story. This is a videogame, and despite what gaming journalismos like to claim(as it makes them look much more refined), video games are not all about the story. Video games are about the gameplay. So how's the gameplay in SC2? Well, in single player, it's not that good actually. The gist of the problem is that Blizzard tried to make missions a little bit too interesting, achieving what I like to call the Baldur's Gate 2 Effect. See, in Baldur's Gate - the first one - most of areas in the game were just generic fantasy plains, hills, forests, and so on. That wasn't generally very interesting, hovewer it meant that when you finally stumbled on some special location, it was truly unique - because it was surrounded by mediocrity(if you can call high fantasy setting mediocre). You never knew what awaited you in the next area. In Baldur's Gate 2, it's all drastically different; you start out in a secret hideout/lab of a powerful mage complete with portal to the Plane of Air and it gets even more extreme from here - labyrinths under ancient asylums, underwater cities, underdark, planar spheres, dragons... it's a rollercoaster, and that's why it never really delivers the same sense of adventure that Baldur's Gate did - you're simply bombarded with one unique location after another to the point where they lose their sense of uniqueness. What was I talking about again? Oh right. So see, they obviously wanted to make missions in SC2 as unique as possible, but that's the deal - something is unique if it's different from what you normally see. Since almost all missions in SC2 are trying to be unique, the're not really. You eventually find yourself wishing for normal, '90s era "here is your base, here is the massive enemy base, build up and destroy it" gameplay. I guess it wouldn't be such a problem if the unique missions were actually a lot of fun. Because they're not. Majority of missions in Wings of Liberty is various variations on: a) timed missions b) escort missions Now I analyzed the RTS market with a team of Cheerleaders. They came to one, unanimous conclusion: that if I let them go, they won't tell nobody... oh wait, started channeling redlettermedia there. Let's try that again. I analyzed the RTS market with the power of Internet all on my own in my small, dark, cold and damp basement and came to the following conclusion: that when it comes to RTS games, but also most of other games in general, majority of people doesn't like: a) timed missions b) escort missions Oh... But hey, maybe it's not so bad. How many timed and escort missions could there be in SC2, anyway? Wasteland - Normal Outlaws - Normal Zero Hour - Normal *The Evacuation - timed, escort *Outbreak - double timed (is the night over yet? zzz) *Safe Haven - timed, escort / *Heaven's Fall - escort (I guess you could just let all the colonies get infested. But that's lame and could make the mission unwinnable on higher difficulties) *Smash and Grab - timed The Dig - Normal *The Moebius Factor - timed *Supernova - timed Maw of the Void - Normal evil's Playground - timed *Welcome to the Jungle - timed (Tal'Darim sealing altars) Breakout - Normal / Ghost of a Chance - Normal *The Great Train Robbery - timed *Cutthroat - timed *Engine of Destruction - timed, escort Media Blitz - Normal *Piercing the Shroud - Normal(first half)/timed(second half) Whispers of Doom - Normal A Sinister Turn - Normal Echoes of the Future - Normal In Utter Darkness - Normal *Gates of Hell - timed Belly of the Beast - Normal / Shatter the Sky - Normal All-In - technically Escort, but your base is more likely to fall before the artifact does, so Normal Out of 26 missions in the game, 13 - half - are either timed or escort missions. The kind that nobody likes. Why, Blizzard? It's because Blizzard has a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes playing an RTS fun. In multiplayer it's the challenge. But in single player mode it's almost the opposite. People who play campaigns in RTSes usually don't do it for the challenge, but to get a story and because the mechanics are fun. They're usually phlegmatic kind of guys, who will replay it multiple times and proud themselves on discovering that if you position an artillery unit on that ledge over there in mission seventeen you will be able to destroy three energy generators in the enemy base - amazing, eh? These guys don't approach missions as a challenge of clicking fast and accurately, but as a puzzle to be solved. What is the best strategy in that mission? They will usually spend a lot of time just sitting in their base, waiting until everything is researched, building up defensive structures, then a large army and only then rolling out on the map in one slow push, systematically destroying everything. And as you can imagine, they don't really like missions which force them to act quickly. I know because I'm one of these guys. You see it's quite disappointing because Blizzard themselves said that it's pointless to make the campaign a tutorial for the multiplayer, and yet that's exactly what they did. At least the campaign is much better preparation for MP than, say, Warcraft 3's. If it wasn't for SP-exclusive units, playing the campaign on higher difficulties would be a pretty good way to get started in multiplayer because you need to hurry and micro a lot. So I guess they might have wanted to make the SP part more SP but didn't have any idea what makes SP fun in the first place. Another reason why timed/escort missions suck in Wings of Liberty is that there's a ton of units available with tons of upgrades. Yet you're never really allowed to have fun with them. Theoretically you should be able to do so in remaining 13 "Normal" missions, but: three of these are tutorial missions where you can barely build anything anyway and four of these are Protoss missions. That leaves 6. Out of these, All-In and The Dig are defensive so you're not likely to attack anyone outside your base with anything, Piercing the Shroud is a dungeon crawl(and so is Belly of the Beast if you pick it), and in Maw of the Void you're forced to use Battlecruisers. In the end, at most there are two(!) missions in the game where you're allowed to have fun with all your shiny units with shiny upgrades you spent a fortune on: Media Blitz and Shatter the Sky, latter of which you're unlikely to pick for storyline reasons. So that's basically... only Media Blitz where you can finally check out if your Wraiths really do evade 20% attacks when cloaked and other funky stuff. Lameness. A minor note, but it's quite funny: Pretty much every unit which returns from SC/BW is better than its new counterpart in SC2. Goliaths and Wraiths are better than Vikings, Medics are better than Medivacs, Vultures are better than Hellions and so on. Speaking of upgrades, it's disappointing that many of them are multiplayer upgrades you're forced to buy in the Armory instead of simply researching them in their respective research buildings. Was it really so hard to come up with two new additions to every unit? Some of units start fully upgraded and have two special Armory upgrades(like Reapers), some don't. I don't really understand the reasnoning behind that. And why Ghosts don't have the EMP, not even as an Armory upgrade? Considering how useful it is in multiplayer... you can't tell me it's too unbalanced, Spectres get a three second long AoE stun without spending a single credit! Research upgrades are cooler and more unique, but some of them are really silly or just useless(Shrike Turret and Predator for example). And I can't just put my finger on it, but I think the whole idea could have been handled better. Get points, every 5 points you unlock upgrades... that's okay, but Blizzard usually spends a lot of time polishing their games so "just okay" is surprising. Since we're on Hyperion, let's talk about it. What is it, mechanics-wise? Well, it's basically a giant turd on your way to play the game. Because every time you want to continue your progress, you need to first load the Hyperion... actually, wait. First you need to wait for the auto-patcher to contact the Blizzard server in case there's another patch out that will ruin all your single player saves. Once that's done, you need to wait for the dynamic menu to load. Then you click the continue campaign button, which means you now need to wait for Hyperion to load, and once that's loaded, you spend entire ten seconds there because that's how long it will take you to go to the Star Map, select a mission and click "Launch". Man, and to think Brood War launches so fast that you can't even see the Loading screen. Eventually you learn to turn off the game before talking to anyone after a mission since then at least you have an excuse to load the 3D briefing menu that Hyperion is. But no, really. Can you name one thing about the Hyperion that couldn't be done with Starcraft-style 2D screen? Why is it even 3D in the first place? Just like the non-linear campaign, this is more taking of a feature and then failing to utilize any of its strong points. At the very least they could let you walk around the ship yourself, but no, you only click the buttons to move between 3D set pieces. In other words, there is no reason AT ALL for all this to be in 3D and take minutes to load. It could have been talking portraits just like in days of yore and it would have worked exactly the same... Now this is a fair warning. I'm starting to talk about graphics now. If you're still reading this for some reason, now it's your last chance to stop and do something productive with your life. No? Okay. Here we go. ...just like REST OF THE GAME. Now I know that making a 3D game today is almost obligatory, even if it's a strategy game like Civilization it must be 3D or no one will buy it. Though this is a game by a company with practically infinite money, with huge recognition and enough hype for a Call of Duty 11. As unlikely as it would be, they COULD make it 2D(or at least release some kind of ESPORTS MODE which would be 2D overlay) and it would still sell millions. But as I said, making 3D games today is an obligation so I won't dwell further on the issue. What I will dwell on, hovewer, is graphics style and audio. It is one of Internet's greatest ironies that while Diablo 3 was being jumped on by thousands of nerds who were calling it a WoW clone simply because Blizzard dared to introduce things like ambient light from torches, the shift to cartoon-ish graphics in Starcraft 2 went almost completely unnoticed. Now the shift itself is not entirely unexpected as the same thing happened to Warcraft 3. Hovewer there is a subtle difference between Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2: Warcraft 3 is a FANTASY game and follows a series of FANTASY games whose graphics were almost just as cartoony. Starcraft 2 on the other hand is SCIENCE FICTION and follows Starcraft and Brood War which were SCIENCE FICTION and only slightly cartoony(if at all) and even that was a result of the technical limitations more than deliberate design. Otherwise... well I wouldn't call them gritty, and some liberies were taken for the sake of gameplay(Battlecruisers and Carriers as buildable units) but it was a pretty solid science fiction. Let's consider the Siege Tank as an example. In SC/BW, it's a tank with the siege mode added on. All siege mode does is extend the supports - quite reasonable - and basically turns the barrel(s) around to fire from the other end - not quite as reasonable but a pretty cool idea. Now how exactly the same unit works in SC2? First of all, the turret was made comically huge. Then additional set of tracks was added on the sides, like these bikes for kids with support wheels. But the worst of all is the siege mode - changing the barrel geometry is not a big deal, though definitely less interesting than the original breech reversal. Hovewer the supports now extend from these silly little extra tracks, which retract inside the hull, while the main tracks extend to the sides and life the entire tank up by around a meter or so. Now excuse me but this is retarded on so many levels that I need to spend a while talking about it. Just what the hell would lifting what is now na artillery piece up by one meter achieve? Artillery, by definition, is an indirect fire weapon so elevation is almost completely IRRELEVANT. Not to mention that after all that nonsense you actually REDUCED the area in which the tank touches the ground. You did the complete opposite of what extending the supports was supposed to achieve, that is reduce the point ground pressure when firing the siege cannon. And what do you mean the side tracks retract INSIDE the vehicle? What is there a bunch of empty space inside just for that? Where does that fat guy inside fits in then? You redesigned the entire unit and all you've achieved is stripping it of all pretense of realism and turned it into a toy, a LEGO toy. Not even LEGO Technic toy, this is some Duplo shit! What about the Goliath? THAT is one of the most bad-ass units in Starcraft? It looks like an outhouse on legs. And who is that fatso inside? THAT is one of the most bad-ass unit voices/portraits in Starcraft? How could you possibly fuck it up SO BADLY? Protoss units aren't much better. The cybernetic theme is almost completely gone, instead Protoss now utilize flimsy, delicate elf-like design. Hey Blizzard, you know what was the defining feature of Protoss in SC? Strong, but more importantly, TOUGH units. Almost all Protoss units have tons of HP and at least 1 Armor. Zealot, most basic Protoss unit, has more HP than a fucking TANK. But I guess that's too non-standard for all the casuals you're aiming for with this game. They can't get anything more complicated than humans-bugs-elves. Good fucking job, Blizzard. Keep pissing in your own cornflakes. At least Zerg got away relatively undumbed, as it's hard to fuck up a race of alien bugs. Units that are new are even worse. Now I don't want to hate on Blizzard too much for actually adding in new units, because people already bitch that "Starcraft 2 is just Starcraft in 3D" so I won't ask stupid questions like "If these Colossi were on Aiur all along, why didn't they help fighting against the Overmind" or "How the heck all three races managed to completely change most of their standing forces in just four years" and finally "If Protoss did change most of their units in just four years, how come they didn't change them ever again in hundreds of years before they took the last stand against the Hybrid". Making sequels is a bitch, you want to add new stuff but you have to find a way to explain why old stuff is now the new stuff which almost never works. No hate there. But the mechanics of the units themselves? Hooo boy. First of all, the units are obviously designed for multiplayer. That means instead of creating three distinct races and then designing units based on the "personalities" of the races, they made a bunch of units based on what the race needs in multiplayer to be competetive at any stage in the game. Example. In Starcraft, Terran units were mostly based on what actually exists: Infantry with assault rifles. Medics. Infantry with flamethrowers. Tanks. Fighters. Dropships. At no point they started adding in stupid crap like jetpack-equipped dual-pistol-wielding infantry, because that would be simply silly and unbelievable. But because design in SC2 started with multiplayer, and they wanted terran to be able to harass from the early stages of the game, they designed this abortion of a unit which feels as if it's straight from some badly written fanfic. Viking, another example. Why would you make a mech that turns into a plane? Would you rather just have better mech and better plane separately? But for some match balance reasons I can't even comprehend they decided it would be best to have an unit that only attacks ground when on the ground, and only attacks air when in the air, and thus Viking was born. Defying all common sense, but since when gameplay mechanics adhere to common sense? Finally I wanted to talk about dumbing down of the new units. We'll use Colossus as an example here. Colossus is obviously a Shuttle Reaver, except as a single unit so it's much easier to pull off and some nerfs were done so it won't be so extremely damaging/unbeatable in the right hands. Shuttle Reaver harass was extremely dangerous and could easily win you the game - if you did it right. And it was really damn hard to do it right with siege tanks, mines you can't see and Missile Turrets. Obviously Blizzard wanted to make Starcraft 2 more accessible so such dangerous extremes were removed from the game. There are many more examples of that line of thought, for example Spider Mines were completely removed from the game; Immortals were put in as a means of dealing with Siege Tanks lines; Queens were added to make management of the Zerg's "third resource" easier. A lot of improvements were done to the interface, insanely overpowered spells were removed from the game, and the game even auto-micros for you to a certain extent. And that's why Starcraft 2 will never be played as competetively as Brood War. It's simply too easy. One could say that only recently Brood War was truly mastered, over a decade after it was released. Starcraft played on professional level is a very hard game, personally I believe it's hardest game ever made. And that's what makes it such a competetive hit, because there's always the next peak to climb. Game as user-friendly as Starcraft 2 will be mastered quickly, players will quickly reach limits of the game and it will die just like all the other RTSes. | ||
Kaydje
2 Posts
Harharharharharh. | ||
hack41
21 Posts
On September 23 2010 04:46 Birthday wrote: Still, I don't want to just throw the review away so I decided to post it here. Hey, that was a great read! No need to comment on the story and writing, I think we agree there, but I did also very much enjoy your analysis of the gameplay, the unit design and the visual aesthetics. I would never have thought about minding the siege tank design, but now I can't unthink how silly the change is! Cartoony indeed, and why, Blizzard, why. What I definitely agree with is your point about the 3D Hyperion intermissions. 3D animation is such a costly process, and indeed these entire sequences add nothing in terms of immersion that couldn't have been done in 2D. Did you ever see the fantastic little game Starscape? The visual style is fantastic and it's great fun, and it feels very modern, but it's all in 2D. It was made by a couple of people in a basement (figuratively), and it provides you hours of fun at a very low price. Menus of that style would have been entirely sufficient for SC2, and they'd have saved us lots of time and nerves waiting for the loading screens. I sort of see why the actual game makes sense in 3D. You can have much more general terrain than in a 2D world, I suppose. Even though I don't think you're meant to change the camera angle (though there's a little bit of wiggle room) and you may really wonder why they bothered, at least it offers lots of potential for machinima and such things. Hm, I guess the same idea went into the Hyperion scenes: by setting it all up in 3D, they could use the same sets for the realtime cutscenes. I don't really know. Ultimately I suppose RTS is the genre that least calls for proper 3D, and it's quite possible that all that development money could have been spent more wisely. Like on a writer who isn't totally out of ideas. | ||
Lurker87
United States172 Posts
On August 05 2010 08:20 Supamang wrote: You completely miss the point about the "Raynor swored to kill Kerrigan" bit (way to inject bad grammar to try to make us look stupid). The point is, the fact that Raynor was in love with Kerrigan and that he then had a turnaround when he realized that Kerrigan was now the queen bitch of the universe was some good character development. They could have utilized that and had Raynor struggling with his past love and his more recent desire to avenge his war buddy Fenix, among countless others. Instead, we got a deus ex machina that magically allowed him to stop the queen and get kerrigan back in one fell swoop. This allowed for a cheesy ending where Raynor literally walked off with Kerrigan in his arms into the sunset. My point, at least, was that Blizzard gave up on a good opportunity for character development and a less linear plot. Pretty much sums up my feelings. I was so excited to see Raynor be true to his word, and be the one to kill Kerrigan, but perhaps in a spectacular fashion (...maybe it will still have to happen?), for instance, he himself gets infested in order to get closer to her, and kills her to take the power for himself. JUST AN EXAMPLE, I know it is retarded, but it'd be a twist that satisfies the "Raynor swored to kill Kerrigan" argument, and at the same time allowed for a a twist. It'd be kind of hard to transition into Raynor being the new "bad guy" for the rest of the series, but perhaps if that was how the SC2 trilogy ended... IDK. I am really reaching here for SOME kind of twist, or deep thought put into the story. I just hope all the shallowness of this part is crucial in order to lead to a magnificent plot, but after such a watered down, contrived ending as that, I am having my doubts. | ||
Rorra
Australia1066 Posts
I was actually surprised at how disappointing the campaign storyline was, I mean I expected it to be aimed at a young audience, but the plot holes... | ||
eNbee
Belgium487 Posts
On August 04 2010 19:17 Jyvblamo wrote: The only part of the campaign that had me going "Seriously Blizzard?" was when the Hyperion by itself managed to dock and board the flagship of the Dominion fleet while being clearly outnumbered. Except Mengsk wasn't there to fight...? Would've made so much more sense if he just hailed them though | ||
Telenil
France484 Posts
Okay so the Dominion ships arrive and even though they outnumber Raynor's Raiders at least three to one he decides to assault the flagship himself, personally, since "their shields are still down". Now you might think that Valerian purposefully left the shields down because he wanted Raynor to board the ship, but I know the real reason why they're down: It's because BATTLECRUISERS DON'T HAVE FUCKING SHIELDS. And why the hell is Raynor even boarding the Bucephalus? Just shoot at it! Shoot it! Shoot it WITH LASERS! If Arcturus is on board he will die if you blow up his ship! But since Jim is such a drama queen he simply must risk his life and lives of all the Raynor's Raiders just to have a chance to kill Arcturus personally with his handgun. Even though it wouldn't work as he loaded it wrong(he loads the single bullet in topmost chamber; his revolver has barrel at the bottom, Mateba-style). Valerian, of course, *predicted* that not only Raynor will board the ship, but he also *predicted* that he will survive fighting through dozens of what I assume are elite Dominion Marines and also *predicted* he won't simply shoot him in the head as soon as he opens the door. Even so, letting all of his men die for nothing since he and Jim become allies five minutes later is a pretty asshole thing to do. So true <3I'm not surprised at all with Mengsk wanting to killing Kerrigan. Raynor excepted, who wouldn't? She rules the zerg, is bound to invade the entire sector sooner or later, had betrayed Arcturus and murdered hundreds of thousands of people, including his own soldiers. When WoL begins, she is by far a greater threat than Raynor. Beyond that, I agree with most things you said about the story. On the other hand, I did quite like the gameplay of the campaign. Lots of missions are timed, but that didn't bother me much, as it is a way to keep pressure on the player during the level, and have less of a "build 10 bunkers, 10 siege tanks, 10 battlecruisers and pwn the map". I'd have enjoyed more installation missions or more "use whatever units to wish to destroy everything" missons - many "normal" missions, such as Shatter the Sky or the Maar level, can be completed with surgical strikes rather than by total annihilation of the enemy. But all in all, I enjoyed the gameplay of the campaign, if not the story. The zerg/protoss research idea, for instance, was a good one - completely unbelievable from a story point of view, but a nice touch to the gameplay. | ||
Birthday
17 Posts
I'm not surprised at all with Mengsk wanting to killing Kerrigan. Raynor excepted, who wouldn't? She rules the zerg, is bound to invade the entire sector sooner or later, had betrayed Arcturus and murdered hundreds of thousands of people, including his own soldiers. When WoL begins, she is by far a greater threat than Raynor. It's true that she killed millions of both soldiers and innocent people, but Mengsk is not the kind of man to really care about that(even before the retcon) and he did it himself more than once. It just feels like a very personal revenge to me, a revenge for something we never see. | ||
Mobius
Canada1268 Posts
It wasnt really even a continuation of broodwar, it was just random bullshit.. Broodwar left us with cliffhangers.. All of which werent met. What happened to Duran? Why does Jim suddenly carry a picture of her when he swore he would kill her? Why are there so many huge plot holes? Why did they make such an awful twist where infested kerrigan has to survive? Why are the characters completely different? Why was the ending so completely awful? They build up 3 different plots at the end.. When you beat the last mission, it kinda shows one of them.. Then after that its just "buy our next game to find out about the other 2!" But i did like how it was in some kinda story mode.. Like there was a lobby and stuff.. You're not just some commander/cerebrate guy with no face lol. Overall.. I HATED it as a longtime starcraft 1 fan.. but if I had never played sc;bw, then im sure I would've loved it | ||
hack41
21 Posts
On September 25 2010 01:41 Mobius wrote: But i did like how it was in some kinda story mode.. Like there was a lobby and stuff.. You're not just some commander/cerebrate guy with no face lol. Actually, can we discuss that? Because I've thought about this for a bit and I'm not sure. Do you think the change of perspective from nameless follower to named protagonist is a good idea? You see, one of the most important parts of story telling is engaging your audience and giving them something to care about, and characters to which they can relate. Now, most of us don't own battle cruisers or have loyal crews obeying our orders. Most of us are just ordinary, random shlubs who get swept along by life, and there's always something happening in the world that is just a little beyond us. By making us the nameless guy who executes the commands of a system around him that's slightly beyond comprehension, SC1/BW brilliantly put us in a role that most of us can relate to only all too well. What's more, all the main characters are only exposed to the player through their interactions with the nameless player character, and naturally we would only get a small peek at the main guys, and there'd be lots of room for mystery. Also, being able to tag along different main guys (e.g. Duke, Mengsk, Raynor just in Episode 1!) kept things moving and fresh. We'd later meet them again from a different perspective, and so we could learn more about the main guys from different angles, while all the time moving at a refreshing pace. To quote Harry Plinkett: The fact that this was so brilliant tells me that Chris Metzen had nothing to do with it and would probably have fought against putting it in the game. Now compare this to WoL: We spend an agonising 22+ missions with Raynor. There's only one perspective. What's worst is that now we are supposed to be him! But it makes no sense! He doesn't act at all like I would have! I'm angry now -- why doesn' he... sorry, why don't I get to lock Tychus up? That's what I'd have done! The experience of being Raynor is so dreadfully dull and terrible that it totally ruins the character. Not only do we see no mystery about him, but since we literally are he, we know that there's no mystery and that the guy is just a boring creep. | ||
ghostunit
61 Posts
| ||
strongwind
United States862 Posts
On September 25 2010 02:02 hack41 wrote: Show nested quote + On September 25 2010 01:41 Mobius wrote: But i did like how it was in some kinda story mode.. Like there was a lobby and stuff.. You're not just some commander/cerebrate guy with no face lol. Actually, can we discuss that? Because I've thought about this for a bit and I'm not sure. Do you think the change of perspective from nameless follower to named protagonist is a good idea? You see, one of the most important parts of story telling is engaging your audience and giving them something to care about, and characters to which they can relate. Now, most of us don't own battle cruisers or have loyal crews obeying our orders. Most of us are just ordinary, random shlubs who get swept along by life, and there's always something happening in the world that is just a little beyond us. By making us the nameless guy who executes the commands of a system around him that's slightly beyond comprehension, SC1/BW brilliantly put us in a role that most of us can relate to only all too well. What's more, all the main characters are only exposed to the player through their interactions with the nameless player character, and naturally we would only get a small peek at the main guys, and there'd be lots of room for mystery. Also, being able to tag along different main guys (e.g. Duke, Mengsk, Raynor just in Episode 1!) kept things moving and fresh. We'd later meet them again from a different perspective, and so we could learn more about the main guys from different angles, while all the time moving at a refreshing pace. To quote Harry Plinkett: The fact that this was so brilliant tells me that Chris Metzen had nothing to do with it and would probably have fought against putting it in the game. Now compare this to WoL: We spend an agonising 22+ missions with Raynor. There's only one perspective. What's worst is that now we are supposed to be him! But it makes no sense! He doesn't act at all like I would have! I'm angry now -- why doesn' he... sorry, why don't I get to lock Tychus up? That's what I'd have done! The experience of being Raynor is so dreadfully dull and terrible that it totally ruins the character. Not only do we see no mystery about him, but since we literally are he, we know that there's no mystery and that the guy is just a boring creep. I really liked the way the original did it too. It was cool because you felt like this cog in the wheel of this great big universe which you are a minor part of. You're being ordered around by different leaders, given controversial orders, and ultimately must follow them through. But sometimes during the campaign I wondered, how do I feel about doing this? I hated leaving Kerrigan to her doom, but those were my orders. I hated working against Aldaris and killing my fellow protoss brethren, but I knew it was essential for Tassadar to succeed. I remember not wanting to kill Fenix for the longest time, until I realized that I was a cerebrate under the control of the bitch queen. It was fun. I never felt that way in WoL. To take it one step further (this is probably more controversial), I really wished they incorporated the portrait / dialogue system that they had in the original, albeit tweaked graphics-wise to a much greater extent. I know it wouldn't be able to show all the pretty graphics like in WoL, but it made the original feel unique and refreshing compared to other games. More importantly, it adds this layer of mystery and imagination to everything that's hard to describe. I would have loved it if they used that and just modified it somehow to make it more eye-candyish for the casual gamer. Maybe with more cinematics or something. The way they did it in WoL just seemed boring to me. | ||
nemanja1503
Serbia49 Posts
On September 23 2010 04:46 Birthday wrote: Hey guys, this is my first post on Team Liquid forums. About a week ago I started writing a Starcraft 2 review, which got kind of out of hand and ended up as a rant few pages long. And I didn't even finish it yet - nor will I. BroodmyWarcraft's redlettermedia-style videos are rough, but he makes good points in a way much more interesting than a wall of text. Still, I don't want to just throw the review away so I decided to post it here. + Show Spoiler + Could you tell me the backstory of Wings of Liberty? Take your time. Is it Raynor fighting against Mengsk? But he doesn't really do anything against Mengsk - he's more focused on helping colonists, getting money and the artifacts. The entire revolution sub-plot, with the adjutant and all, is just four missions long(five if you count Wasteland) in the twenty-two Terran total - and completely optional! So maybe it's all about Kerrigan? But the chance to turn her back human doesn't even appear until the very end of the game. There is not a single clue that the artifact, once complete, could turn her back human until Valerian tells you so explicitly, and that triggers another short sub-plot about saving Kerrigan which puts the game on rails should you start it. The reason for this incoherency is the non-linear campaign structure. To simplify, the more linear the story the stronger it is(or at least could be) because the more control the writers have of the pacing, arc and characters. Non-linearity ruins all that as you can't predict where the player will move next and I cannot really blame Blizzard for failing to pull it off. Writing a good story that also remains non-linear is a daunting task. I can, hovewer, blame them for not taking advantage of the non-linear campaign structure. While it's true that you're presented with various missions to choose from at any given time, the order in which you do them doesn't matter at all, and the choice of picking one mission over the other doesn't exist. The missions will just hang out on the Star Map until you decide to do them, no matter how much time has passed and what other missions you've done, which is especially irking in mission which should be on a timer like The Moebius Factor. The entire planet is being overrun by Zerg, I shouldn't be able to just hang out and do other stuff in the meantime. The very first choice you make is between The Evacuation, where you save some innocent colonists and Shash and Grab, which is another artifact mission for Tychus. The contrast between the two is obvious: be a good guy or be a rich guy and I honestly thought it was a "hard" choice - once I pick one, the other will disappear. But after saving the colonists(damn my good heart) and going back to the Star Map I realized that not only Tychus' mission is still there so there was no moral choice at all, it pays barely 10% more than The Evacuation which means that there is hardly any monetary choice to it as well. In fact almost all missions in the campaign pay exactly the same - not counting The Outlaws and Zero Hour which are technically part of the tutorial, the difference between lowest and highest paying mission in the game is 25%. Which begs the question, where do these credits come from? Sometimes you can justify it - Tosh pays you for springing out his buddies for example - but what about, say, Heaven's Fall? Who pays James Raynor for killing infected colonists? It can't be money for the artifacts since again, you could just ignore the artifact mission line and still get money for other missions. Speaking of Heaven's Fall, it is one of the two missions in the game where you're given a moral choice. But guess what? Your choice doesn't matter here as well; whatever you pick, you'll be right. If you side with Protoss, the colonists and Ariel herself will be infected; if you side with Ariel, apparently the Protoss were completely wrong and there was no infection at all. Similar deal with Tosh, though less blatant as he's an anti-hero. Choices without consequences are meaningless. So the order in which you pick the missions is mostly irrelevant gameplay-wise and the moral choice of picking missions is nonexistent. While Blizzard suffered all the consequences of making a non-linear campaign they failed to utilize any of its strengths. Even more so; despite putting different parts of the story into bubble sub-plots they couldn't make them work together well enough. For example the beforementioned Revolution sub-plot - whether you do it or not, Raynor will need to confront the Hyperion crew about striking a deal with Valerian. You'd think that if he took care of the Media Blitz just before siding with a Mangsk, the crew would have more faith in him. But it plays out the same no matter whether you dealt a serious blow to Arcturus' reputation or not. The bottom line is, ultimately there is no reason for the the campaign to be non-linear at all. If it was linear just like in Starcraft it would flow and work much better and the impact on the gameplay would be minimal. All it does is hurt the story - which is actually pretty damn bad even without being chopped into fragments. So yeah, it's not bottom line quite yet. We're just getting started. The problem with story, characters, writing and presentation is that it's all straight from a B-class Hollywood movie. You get a pretty good taste of it the moment you start a new game - Raynor drinking alone in a bar, melancholically staring at the photo of his ex, camera zooms on his eyes, he shoots the TV because he doesn't like the guy on the TV and then says "It's about time we kicked this revolution into overdrive". Sorry Blizzard, but I've seen better directed and more subtle scenes in *anime* and that's about as damning claim as it gets. And it gets worse. "We got so far because we were leaning on each other"... I literally facepalmed during the entire pep talk in Fire and Fury cinematic, and normally I'm a huge sucker for heroic stuff. Who the hell wrote that? How does it even relate to the rest of the story? At which point in the game anyone was leaning on anyone else? As if cheesy, badly directed cutscenes weren't enough we are presented a full array of two dimensional characters which are so archetypical they border on caricatures. Matt Horner is the young, handsome idealist; Stetmann is a "standard nerd"; Findlay is the macho tough guy; Tosh is a black rastaman complete with dreadlocks. A lot of work was done to import the old characters into this new black and white setting as well: Raynor, once a pretty simple and honest young chap who gets caught into something much bigger than his little revolution but he just does what he believes is right is now a dirty, old, tired, drinking veteran mercenary type complete with shotgun shells(even though he never fires a shotgun in the entire game) and what look like rifle grenades(he never uses these either). Despite the fact that he seemed to give up on Kerrigan in Starcraft and he even swore to kill her for what she's done in Brood War, he now apparently wants nothing but to have her back. I guess that's what four years of drinking will do to you. Alcohol is bad, kids. And yeah I know he has an excuse because she's now instrumental to saving the world, but he spends so much time with her picture that it's obvious he loves her sooooooooo much. And if you don't do the Protoss mini-campaign you don't know that she needs to live(yep, that's the non-linearity coming back to bite the story in the ass again). Kerrigan herself is not much better. In the first mission she comes under the player's control in Starcraft she quite clearly states she "likes what she is". She displays insane ambition as well as cunning, double, triple and quadruple crossing just about every other character in Starcraft and Brood War and emerges victorious, self-proclaimed "Queen Bitch of the Universe". Then, when there is no one left to oppose her... she retreats back to Char and keeps sitting there quietly for four years? When she comes back out in SC2, she's all emo and then in All-In it is even revealed that she actually retains most of her humanity and doesn't really want to be a Zerg no more. Much like Raynor she got her image changed, complete with high heels. Hey remember what Overmind said about the Zerg? That they were the purity of essence? I guess when you're main female character in the game it's *essential* to be as sexy as possible. Finally, Arcturus Mengsk. while he certainly wasn't your friendly neighbour despot, it's hard to say using the PSI Emitters on Tarsonis was not justified considering the nuclear holocaust of Korhal by Confederacy which prompted the creation of Sons of Korhal in the first place. In Wings of Liberty he was reduced to the role of Stalin, a ruthless dictator who kills everyone who questions his rule and spends "trillions" on hunting rebels like Raynor despite the fact he didn't even care about him all that much in Starcraft and Brood War. There is not much to say about Valerian, other than the fact his motivations are ridiculous - it's blindingly obvious that Arcturus is not a popular leader, so what kind of idiotic goal is proving yourself to the people? But Valerian is obviously a weasel kind of character so I'll let that go on the grounds his real motivations will become clear later. The gist of things is that Raynor is feeling responsible for having Kerrigan deliver the PSI Emitter on Tarsonis even though he had nothing to do with it and also feeling responsible for leaving her there even though there was nothing he could do and in fact urged her not to go. These lapses in logic made him bitter and a heavy drinker. Meanwhile Tychus who is on Mengsk's paycheck is ordered to do... something. I can't imagine what his deal with Arcturus would be. It seems that from the start his goal is to kill Kerrigan(as he digs about her in the archives and every time Raynor mentions her he urges him to put an end to her once and for all) - now Mengsk wanting Kerrgan dead is understandable, because... well... um... uh actually he doesn't really have any good reason to hate Kerrigan all that much. But anyway, did Arcturus *predict* the new Zerg invasion? Did he *predict* that Raynor will go after the artifacts not even knowing what they do? Did he *predict* that he will succeed? Did he *predict* that his son will betray him and assault Char directly once the artifact is complete? Did he *predict* that Kerrigan will be back human again? So about halfway through the game Zeratul appears literally out of nowhere and ruins the Starcraft universe forever by giving Raynor the mhm-mhm crystal in which he learns that Overmind had a vision of the future. Visions of the future are just like time travel: No matter how little of it you add to the story, it now officially sucks and is beyond repair. I hope I don't need to explain the paradox of seeing the future being different than how it's going to be because now we know it might be different if x happens so obviously we will not allow it to happen so it would never have happaned in the first place so there should be no vision of the future happening as it happaned when Overmind saw it. *deep breath* Now this whole mess might have been handled differently and quite well by simply stating that Overmind with his huge alien brain analyzed all possible outcomes like the computer in War Games and realized the only way to win against the Hybrid is by joining forces of all three races. But for the sake of cheap mysticism and saturday night doom prophecies we got the vision of the future which will never happen. By the way, a minor point: In The Propecy cinematic, Zeratul looks at the prophecy of Xel'Naga returning carved in stone. This includes carvings of Hydralisk and Ultralisk. But both Hydralisk and Ultralisk are not native Zerg organisms, they were evolved based on much more peaceful and docile animals Zerg encountered - slothiens and brontoliths. In other words, there were no Hydralisks and Ultralisks attacking the Xel'Naga, and the carvings can't really be newer than that, as otherwise who would make them... now my head hurts. There is another inconsistency in the Protoss campaign and that's the reason why Overmind created Kerrigan in the first place - as some kind of trick on its imperative goal to kill all Protoss. Except Overmind never wanted to kill all Protoss, as it states quite clearly in the last Zerg mission in Starcraft the goal was to achieve perfection as a species. For that it needed the Khaydarin Crystal, nothing else, and the entire invasion of Aiur was about getting said crystal and placing it in the ruins of the Xel'Naga temple so Overmind could manifest there. Of course after achieving perfection Overmind would most likely slaughter all the Protoss(and Terran) all the same, but it was never even suggested as one of its goals. But obviously they needed to make Kerrigan the Good Guy in Wings of Liberty as you'll be playing as her in Heart of the Swarm so it was retconned along with Tassadar's death. Tassadar is now "neither alive nor dead" which means he's a deus ex machina plot device to be used whenever the good guys run out of ideas. Mark my words, we'll be seeing more of him in the future. Then there's the case of recovered adjutant and its intercepted message of Arcturus ordering placing of PSI Emitters on Korhal. Raynor is a widely known criminal and a terrorist, and yet it takes but one audio log by said criminal and terrorist for everyone to believe Mengsk killed six billion people? Now you could say that Arcturus was so widely hated already that all it took was one audio log to spark the rebellion, but his reaction(and reaction of the press present on the conference) makes no sense at all. In the Hearts and Minds cinematic he's seen calmly stating that the message is fabricated, then Kate Lockwell plays the recording and this sends him into a rage and act in the most conspicious way possible. What the hell? Just deny it! You denied it ten seconds ago! Deny it again! What's the big deal? Just say again that it's a fake! Is this the same man who was smart enough to *predict* defeat of Kerrigan? Speaking of Kate, she spends the entire game reporting about successes of Raynor's Raiders and speaking against Dominion and not once she gets killed, murdered, arrested, beaten up, locked up or even censored. I know the whole News thing is supposed to be kind of a comic relief but it's hard to believe the vision of a totalitarian empire when you can badmouth it constantly on national television with no consequences. After gathering all the pieces of the artifact we get another story piece dumbed down for no reason other than giving the animators something to do, which is assault on the Bucephalus. This is one of the most ridiculous moments in the game and yes, I get it, you want to have a dramatic entry for Valerian, but there are limits of how much can you sacrifice in the name of flashy bangs. Okay so the Dominion ships arrive and even though they outnumber Raynor's Raiders at least three to one he decides to assault the flagship himself, personally, since "their shields are still down". Now you might think that Valerian purposefully left the shields down because he wanted Raynor to board the ship, but I know the real reason why they're down: It's because BATTLECRUISERS DON'T HAVE FUCKING SHIELDS. And why the hell is Raynor even boarding the Bucephalus? Just shoot at it! Shoot it! Shoot it WITH LASERS! If Arcturus is on board he will die if you blow up his ship! But since Jim is such a drama queen he simply must risk his life and lives of all the Raynor's Raiders just to have a chance to kill Arcturus personally with his handgun. Even though it wouldn't work as he loaded it wrong(he loads the single bullet in topmost chamber; his revolver has barrel at the bottom, Mateba-style). Valerian, of course, *predicted* that not only Raynor will board the ship, but he also *predicted* that he will survive fighting through dozens of what I assume are elite Dominion Marines and also *predicted* he won't simply shoot him in the head as soon as he opens the door. Even so, letting all of his men die for nothing since he and Jim become allies five minutes later is a pretty asshole thing to do. Finally, I have one last complaint about this whole sequence. Why the hell this is not a playable mission? It simply begs for an installation crawl. Even the cinematic looks like it's split in two. As soon as Raynor and Findlay leave the bridge, loading screen, you play the mission, then the second part plays, with the idiotic flash grenade sequence. Maybe they ran out of time to make the mission. They only had five years to make the game after all. And finally we come to the biggest turd of the storyline: The ending cinematic. At this point in the game it's nothing surprising; it's more of a recap of all the problems with the story I outlined so far. One thing that stands out is that Findlay is talking directly to Arcturus and it's suggested that Arcturus sees what he sees, probably with a live stream like they have here on Team Liquid. Which begs the question, if Arcturus knew where Findlay is the whole time - I imagine finding a source of a radio signal strong enough to reach from Char to Korhal with no noticeable delay isn't very hard, and even if it's somehow impossible, Findlay could just look at the Star Map with Hyperion's position highlighted on it or something - if all this time Arcturus knew the precise position of the Hyperion, why didn't he simply assault it with half the fleet and turn it into space dust WITH LASERS? The story wants us to believe that he simply hates Kerrigan much more than Raynor. Why? I have no idea, but I wrote about that already. James, the man who swore he will kill Kerrigan, prefers to kill one of his best buddies instead, but I wrote about that too. And then the very thing everyone dreaded happens and we get a happy end with Kerrigan in Raynor's arms. Hey remember the previous endings in Starcraft universe? In Rebel Yell, the good guy turns out the bad guy and gets everything. The prize for winning the last mission is merely continued existence. In The Overmind, the bad guys win. The prize for winning the last mission is possibly dooming the entire sector. In The Fall, The Overmind is defeated. Hovewer Aiur lies in ruins and Kerrigan is ready to take over the Swarm. In The Stand, all you achieve is secure a new homeworld for the Protoss. In The Iron Fist, more bad guys arrive and win. In Queen of Blades, old bad guys kill the new bad guys. But it doesn't make them any better. What happens in SC2 ending? Good guys successfully assault the bad guys' homeworld. They get rid of the head bad guy. They most likely turn the head bad guy into a good guy. Zerg all over the sector fell into disarray, since there's no one to guide them anymore - the war is as good as won. Since Kerrigan is still alive, we can assume Hybrids will be stopped too. I played jRPGs with less happy endings, and that's about as damning claim as it gets. But enough about the story. This is a videogame, and despite what gaming journalismos like to claim(as it makes them look much more refined), video games are not all about the story. Video games are about the gameplay. So how's the gameplay in SC2? Well, in single player, it's not that good actually. The gist of the problem is that Blizzard tried to make missions a little bit too interesting, achieving what I like to call the Baldur's Gate 2 Effect. See, in Baldur's Gate - the first one - most of areas in the game were just generic fantasy plains, hills, forests, and so on. That wasn't generally very interesting, hovewer it meant that when you finally stumbled on some special location, it was truly unique - because it was surrounded by mediocrity(if you can call high fantasy setting mediocre). You never knew what awaited you in the next area. In Baldur's Gate 2, it's all drastically different; you start out in a secret hideout/lab of a powerful mage complete with portal to the Plane of Air and it gets even more extreme from here - labyrinths under ancient asylums, underwater cities, underdark, planar spheres, dragons... it's a rollercoaster, and that's why it never really delivers the same sense of adventure that Baldur's Gate did - you're simply bombarded with one unique location after another to the point where they lose their sense of uniqueness. What was I talking about again? Oh right. So see, they obviously wanted to make missions in SC2 as unique as possible, but that's the deal - something is unique if it's different from what you normally see. Since almost all missions in SC2 are trying to be unique, the're not really. You eventually find yourself wishing for normal, '90s era "here is your base, here is the massive enemy base, build up and destroy it" gameplay. I guess it wouldn't be such a problem if the unique missions were actually a lot of fun. Because they're not. Majority of missions in Wings of Liberty is various variations on: a) timed missions b) escort missions Now I analyzed the RTS market with a team of Cheerleaders. They came to one, unanimous conclusion: that if I let them go, they won't tell nobody... oh wait, started channeling redlettermedia there. Let's try that again. I analyzed the RTS market with the power of Internet all on my own in my small, dark, cold and damp basement and came to the following conclusion: that when it comes to RTS games, but also most of other games in general, majority of people doesn't like: a) timed missions b) escort missions Oh... But hey, maybe it's not so bad. How many timed and escort missions could there be in SC2, anyway? Wasteland - Normal Outlaws - Normal Zero Hour - Normal *The Evacuation - timed, escort *Outbreak - double timed (is the night over yet? zzz) *Safe Haven - timed, escort / *Heaven's Fall - escort (I guess you could just let all the colonies get infested. But that's lame and could make the mission unwinnable on higher difficulties) *Smash and Grab - timed The Dig - Normal *The Moebius Factor - timed *Supernova - timed Maw of the Void - Normal evil's Playground - timed *Welcome to the Jungle - timed (Tal'Darim sealing altars) Breakout - Normal / Ghost of a Chance - Normal *The Great Train Robbery - timed *Cutthroat - timed *Engine of Destruction - timed, escort Media Blitz - Normal *Piercing the Shroud - Normal(first half)/timed(second half) Whispers of Doom - Normal A Sinister Turn - Normal Echoes of the Future - Normal In Utter Darkness - Normal *Gates of Hell - timed Belly of the Beast - Normal / Shatter the Sky - Normal All-In - technically Escort, but your base is more likely to fall before the artifact does, so Normal Out of 26 missions in the game, 13 - half - are either timed or escort missions. The kind that nobody likes. Why, Blizzard? It's because Blizzard has a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes playing an RTS fun. In multiplayer it's the challenge. But in single player mode it's almost the opposite. People who play campaigns in RTSes usually don't do it for the challenge, but to get a story and because the mechanics are fun. They're usually phlegmatic kind of guys, who will replay it multiple times and proud themselves on discovering that if you position an artillery unit on that ledge over there in mission seventeen you will be able to destroy three energy generators in the enemy base - amazing, eh? These guys don't approach missions as a challenge of clicking fast and accurately, but as a puzzle to be solved. What is the best strategy in that mission? They will usually spend a lot of time just sitting in their base, waiting until everything is researched, building up defensive structures, then a large army and only then rolling out on the map in one slow push, systematically destroying everything. And as you can imagine, they don't really like missions which force them to act quickly. I know because I'm one of these guys. You see it's quite disappointing because Blizzard themselves said that it's pointless to make the campaign a tutorial for the multiplayer, and yet that's exactly what they did. At least the campaign is much better preparation for MP than, say, Warcraft 3's. If it wasn't for SP-exclusive units, playing the campaign on higher difficulties would be a pretty good way to get started in multiplayer because you need to hurry and micro a lot. So I guess they might have wanted to make the SP part more SP but didn't have any idea what makes SP fun in the first place. Another reason why timed/escort missions suck in Wings of Liberty is that there's a ton of units available with tons of upgrades. Yet you're never really allowed to have fun with them. Theoretically you should be able to do so in remaining 13 "Normal" missions, but: three of these are tutorial missions where you can barely build anything anyway and four of these are Protoss missions. That leaves 6. Out of these, All-In and The Dig are defensive so you're not likely to attack anyone outside your base with anything, Piercing the Shroud is a dungeon crawl(and so is Belly of the Beast if you pick it), and in Maw of the Void you're forced to use Battlecruisers. In the end, at most there are two(!) missions in the game where you're allowed to have fun with all your shiny units with shiny upgrades you spent a fortune on: Media Blitz and Shatter the Sky, latter of which you're unlikely to pick for storyline reasons. So that's basically... only Media Blitz where you can finally check out if your Wraiths really do evade 20% attacks when cloaked and other funky stuff. Lameness. A minor note, but it's quite funny: Pretty much every unit which returns from SC/BW is better than its new counterpart in SC2. Goliaths and Wraiths are better than Vikings, Medics are better than Medivacs, Vultures are better than Hellions and so on. Speaking of upgrades, it's disappointing that many of them are multiplayer upgrades you're forced to buy in the Armory instead of simply researching them in their respective research buildings. Was it really so hard to come up with two new additions to every unit? Some of units start fully upgraded and have two special Armory upgrades(like Reapers), some don't. I don't really understand the reasnoning behind that. And why Ghosts don't have the EMP, not even as an Armory upgrade? Considering how useful it is in multiplayer... you can't tell me it's too unbalanced, Spectres get a three second long AoE stun without spending a single credit! Research upgrades are cooler and more unique, but some of them are really silly or just useless(Shrike Turret and Predator for example). And I can't just put my finger on it, but I think the whole idea could have been handled better. Get points, every 5 points you unlock upgrades... that's okay, but Blizzard usually spends a lot of time polishing their games so "just okay" is surprising. Since we're on Hyperion, let's talk about it. What is it, mechanics-wise? Well, it's basically a giant turd on your way to play the game. Because every time you want to continue your progress, you need to first load the Hyperion... actually, wait. First you need to wait for the auto-patcher to contact the Blizzard server in case there's another patch out that will ruin all your single player saves. Once that's done, you need to wait for the dynamic menu to load. Then you click the continue campaign button, which means you now need to wait for Hyperion to load, and once that's loaded, you spend entire ten seconds there because that's how long it will take you to go to the Star Map, select a mission and click "Launch". Man, and to think Brood War launches so fast that you can't even see the Loading screen. Eventually you learn to turn off the game before talking to anyone after a mission since then at least you have an excuse to load the 3D briefing menu that Hyperion is. But no, really. Can you name one thing about the Hyperion that couldn't be done with Starcraft-style 2D screen? Why is it even 3D in the first place? Just like the non-linear campaign, this is more taking of a feature and then failing to utilize any of its strong points. At the very least they could let you walk around the ship yourself, but no, you only click the buttons to move between 3D set pieces. In other words, there is no reason AT ALL for all this to be in 3D and take minutes to load. It could have been talking portraits just like in days of yore and it would have worked exactly the same... Now this is a fair warning. I'm starting to talk about graphics now. If you're still reading this for some reason, now it's your last chance to stop and do something productive with your life. No? Okay. Here we go. ...just like REST OF THE GAME. Now I know that making a 3D game today is almost obligatory, even if it's a strategy game like Civilization it must be 3D or no one will buy it. Though this is a game by a company with practically infinite money, with huge recognition and enough hype for a Call of Duty 11. As unlikely as it would be, they COULD make it 2D(or at least release some kind of ESPORTS MODE which would be 2D overlay) and it would still sell millions. But as I said, making 3D games today is an obligation so I won't dwell further on the issue. What I will dwell on, hovewer, is graphics style and audio. It is one of Internet's greatest ironies that while Diablo 3 was being jumped on by thousands of nerds who were calling it a WoW clone simply because Blizzard dared to introduce things like ambient light from torches, the shift to cartoon-ish graphics in Starcraft 2 went almost completely unnoticed. Now the shift itself is not entirely unexpected as the same thing happened to Warcraft 3. Hovewer there is a subtle difference between Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2: Warcraft 3 is a FANTASY game and follows a series of FANTASY games whose graphics were almost just as cartoony. Starcraft 2 on the other hand is SCIENCE FICTION and follows Starcraft and Brood War which were SCIENCE FICTION and only slightly cartoony(if at all) and even that was a result of the technical limitations more than deliberate design. Otherwise... well I wouldn't call them gritty, and some liberies were taken for the sake of gameplay(Battlecruisers and Carriers as buildable units) but it was a pretty solid science fiction. Let's consider the Siege Tank as an example. In SC/BW, it's a tank with the siege mode added on. All siege mode does is extend the supports - quite reasonable - and basically turns the barrel(s) around to fire from the other end - not quite as reasonable but a pretty cool idea. Now how exactly the same unit works in SC2? First of all, the turret was made comically huge. Then additional set of tracks was added on the sides, like these bikes for kids with support wheels. But the worst of all is the siege mode - changing the barrel geometry is not a big deal, though definitely less interesting than the original breech reversal. Hovewer the supports now extend from these silly little extra tracks, which retract inside the hull, while the main tracks extend to the sides and life the entire tank up by around a meter or so. Now excuse me but this is retarded on so many levels that I need to spend a while talking about it. Just what the hell would lifting what is now na artillery piece up by one meter achieve? Artillery, by definition, is an indirect fire weapon so elevation is almost completely IRRELEVANT. Not to mention that after all that nonsense you actually REDUCED the area in which the tank touches the ground. You did the complete opposite of what extending the supports was supposed to achieve, that is reduce the point ground pressure when firing the siege cannon. And what do you mean the side tracks retract INSIDE the vehicle? What is there a bunch of empty space inside just for that? Where does that fat guy inside fits in then? You redesigned the entire unit and all you've achieved is stripping it of all pretense of realism and turned it into a toy, a LEGO toy. Not even LEGO Technic toy, this is some Duplo shit! What about the Goliath? THAT is one of the most bad-ass units in Starcraft? It looks like an outhouse on legs. And who is that fatso inside? THAT is one of the most bad-ass unit voices/portraits in Starcraft? How could you possibly fuck it up SO BADLY? Protoss units aren't much better. The cybernetic theme is almost completely gone, instead Protoss now utilize flimsy, delicate elf-like design. Hey Blizzard, you know what was the defining feature of Protoss in SC? Strong, but more importantly, TOUGH units. Almost all Protoss units have tons of HP and at least 1 Armor. Zealot, most basic Protoss unit, has more HP than a fucking TANK. But I guess that's too non-standard for all the casuals you're aiming for with this game. They can't get anything more complicated than humans-bugs-elves. Good fucking job, Blizzard. Keep pissing in your own cornflakes. At least Zerg got away relatively undumbed, as it's hard to fuck up a race of alien bugs. Units that are new are even worse. Now I don't want to hate on Blizzard too much for actually adding in new units, because people already bitch that "Starcraft 2 is just Starcraft in 3D" so I won't ask stupid questions like "If these Colossi were on Aiur all along, why didn't they help fighting against the Overmind" or "How the heck all three races managed to completely change most of their standing forces in just four years" and finally "If Protoss did change most of their units in just four years, how come they didn't change them ever again in hundreds of years before they took the last stand against the Hybrid". Making sequels is a bitch, you want to add new stuff but you have to find a way to explain why old stuff is now the new stuff which almost never works. No hate there. But the mechanics of the units themselves? Hooo boy. First of all, the units are obviously designed for multiplayer. That means instead of creating three distinct races and then designing units based on the "personalities" of the races, they made a bunch of units based on what the race needs in multiplayer to be competetive at any stage in the game. Example. In Starcraft, Terran units were mostly based on what actually exists: Infantry with assault rifles. Medics. Infantry with flamethrowers. Tanks. Fighters. Dropships. At no point they started adding in stupid crap like jetpack-equipped dual-pistol-wielding infantry, because that would be simply silly and unbelievable. But because design in SC2 started with multiplayer, and they wanted terran to be able to harass from the early stages of the game, they designed this abortion of a unit which feels as if it's straight from some badly written fanfic. Viking, another example. Why would you make a mech that turns into a plane? Would you rather just have better mech and better plane separately? But for some match balance reasons I can't even comprehend they decided it would be best to have an unit that only attacks ground when on the ground, and only attacks air when in the air, and thus Viking was born. Defying all common sense, but since when gameplay mechanics adhere to common sense? Finally I wanted to talk about dumbing down of the new units. We'll use Colossus as an example here. Colossus is obviously a Shuttle Reaver, except as a single unit so it's much easier to pull off and some nerfs were done so it won't be so extremely damaging/unbeatable in the right hands. Shuttle Reaver harass was extremely dangerous and could easily win you the game - if you did it right. And it was really damn hard to do it right with siege tanks, mines you can't see and Missile Turrets. Obviously Blizzard wanted to make Starcraft 2 more accessible so such dangerous extremes were removed from the game. There are many more examples of that line of thought, for example Spider Mines were completely removed from the game; Immortals were put in as a means of dealing with Siege Tanks lines; Queens were added to make management of the Zerg's "third resource" easier. A lot of improvements were done to the interface, insanely overpowered spells were removed from the game, and the game even auto-micros for you to a certain extent. And that's why Starcraft 2 will never be played as competetively as Brood War. It's simply too easy. One could say that only recently Brood War was truly mastered, over a decade after it was released. Starcraft played on professional level is a very hard game, personally I believe it's hardest game ever made. And that's what makes it such a competetive hit, because there's always the next peak to climb. Game as user-friendly as Starcraft 2 will be mastered quickly, players will quickly reach limits of the game and it will die just like all the other RTSes. Well said, but honestly I failed to see much said that hasn't been said before, with two notable exceptions. One being that the units and the feel surrounding the races no longer fits them. The Terrans feel to "clean", the Terrans of SC EPI were so strange for me, because I guess I was swept up in the clean future as presented in Star Wars and especially Star Trek, yet here come these men who look rough and give the feel of a true badass, as in a man who can survive, who is tough, and these rough people were about a thousand times cooler that the men of other SCI-FIs. Now this may be a personal choice but I don't have much gripe with the concept of a prophecy, maybe it is because I am a mystically inclined and religious person, and I can accept that certain things can be seen by extremely intelligent and wise entities as inevitable, certain things in the universe will have to happen because of the inexorable after effects of the past that will come to pass.... one day. Agreed this is all mystical and ethereal but the Protoss and the Xel'Naga are exactly that, so it fits them.But these entities can't truly see the future, they can see what the future will be about, due to their unimaginable (but still not endless) level of awareness of the present and the past, so for example no one could see that the Ultraulisk progenitor race will be found by the swarm, found worthwhile, swallowed and mutated in that exact way so they can than draw them on a cave wall (this is the second thing I found interesting), such level of detail in a prophecy would require omnivision, which means that you are aware of everything happening in existence and not only that but also the complete knowledge of the past, down to the smallest detail, which is something only a true God, like the one you pray to, can achieve. Before you say anything about the level of detail in the Overmind's vision, that he saw exactly how the future will play out in smallest details, including the look of the hybrids and the world they will fight on, the actual place and the final outcome... let me explain. First I think the visual part of the Overmind's prophecy was there for the players benefit, and to smoothly lead us into the last mission. What I think the Overmind foresaw was that the Fallen One will return as he probably knew of him when he absorbed the Xel'Naga, so he knows a lot about him,like what's he about, he knew he will want to make the hybrids as perversions of themselves and use them as a weapon, knowing the Fallen One so well the Overmind will also know that the he will destroy all he finds unworthy, that coupled with his knowledge of the Protoss he can foresee that inevitably the Protoss will be forced into a final confrontation with the Fallen One after which the universe will be remade in the Fallen Ones image. About him knowing about the fall of the Terrans (assuming that is not a part of the visualization for the players benefit) there are several possible explanations: First. The race exterminated before the Protoss is some generic race that the Overmind foresaw will become entangled in the conflict as he will need psionics and then this was turned to Terrans for the visualization. Second he may have been aware of the humans for a long time, with his deep space probes and realized that because he needs psionics he will attack them and this led to the prophecy or perhaps even a change in it,prophecy may not be constant but an ever evolving prophecy that becomes more detailed as it ages. And last idea and the simplest is that the prophecy was only realized after he attacked the humans. I have decided to edit the OP to reflect some of the things that were stated by people which opened my eyes, I will not blatantly steal these things, I will add them at the end and say that this was brought to my attention by other people. Nemanja | ||
Perscienter
957 Posts
On September 21 2010 05:56 strongwind wrote: Show nested quote + On September 20 2010 19:22 Perscienter wrote: The Diablo 2 cinematics? Do you mean those?
etc... Are you serious? 1) uhh...my audio and video were fine, I've never noticed any problems. And I've played on many different computers. 2) In D2 we don't get the typical "knight in shining armor" protagonist. Instead, we get a regular guy that's caught in the middle of PURE HELL happening around him. He acts accordingly. Personally I consider this one of the story's greatest strengths. 3) When you're scared to death and you don't know who to trust, you do some pretty strange things. I don't think any of his actions were that hard to understand. 4) Diablo looks like a dinosaur..........is this a serious argument? 5) The High Heavens and the Burning Hells have been warring for eons, why is this confusing? 6) At the end of the game it clearly shows Diablo and Mephisto's soulstones being destroyed at the Hellforge. etc... 1. @0:52 for example 2 and 3. A regular guy, who deliberately frees Baal. Without any reason. There is no excuse for this. 4. The same video at 2:34 and 2:54. It's personal opinion. 5. Confusing is, that the prime evils were cast away because of a civil war in hell. That is known as the dark exile. In Diablo 2 no explanation is given, why this has probably ended. 6. Right, ok. | ||
Birthday
17 Posts
On September 25 2010 07:38 nemanja1503 wrote:Well said, but honestly I failed to see much said that hasn't been said before, with two notable exceptions. Yes, I posted it without reading most of the thread so it was kind of embarassing to read it later on and notice everyone pointed out that stuff already... ooops. I guess that's just goes to show how blatant these problems are! | ||
Zergneedsfood
United States10671 Posts
None of her awesomeness came back in SC2. What did she do? She shot.....what looked like a gust of wind...and had like....5 lines? Her character was completely trashed and I felt like there was no justice to the greatest Queen in the history of history. | ||
mierin
United States4938 Posts
| ||
FlaShFTW
United States9655 Posts
| ||
| ||
The PiG Daily
Best Games of SC
Clem vs Rogue
Reynor vs ClemLIVE!
Dark vs ReBellioN
herO vs TBD
PiGStarcraft703
[ Submit Event ] |
StarCraft 2 StarCraft: Brood War Dota 2 League of Legends Super Smash Bros Other Games tarik_tv61073 gofns25932 summit1g10374 FrodaN4107 sgares588 shahzam543 WinterStarcraft409 NuckleDu114 Maynarde113 ViBE43 Organizations Other Games StarCraft 2 Other Games StarCraft: Brood War StarCraft 2 StarCraft: Brood War
StarCraft 2 • gosughost_ 29 StarCraft: Brood War• practicex 18 • aXEnki • intothetv • Gussbus • Kozan • IndyKCrew • LaughNgamez Trovo • Laughngamez YouTube • Migwel • Poblha Dota 2 League of Legends |
ESL Open Cup
ESL Open Cup
ESL Open Cup
GSL Code S
Maru vs TY
Creator vs SHIN
ESL Pro Tour
ESL Pro Tour
ESL Pro Tour
ESL Pro Tour
Online Event
ESL Pro Tour
[ Show More ] Hatchery Cup
BSL
ESL Pro Tour
Sparkling Tuna Cup
ESL Pro Tour
BSL
ESL Pro Tour
|
|