Introduction................................................................................................................................................................................................... Prefatory Content........................................................................................................................................................................................ The Story.......................................................................................................................................................................................................
Post Analysis............................................................................................................................................................................................... Appendix: Zerg History..............................................................................................................................................................................
So...I have been for some time now, on the fence as to whether or not I would actually get Heart of the Swarm or not. I've been teetering over period of a few months in looking at pros/cons, personal opinions, and I only finally caved and made the decision to purchase this first SC2 'expansion' a couple of weeks ago, though I was going to be entering with a rather large dose of skepticism.
Why? Well, like a good number of people I have been rather disappointed by Blizzard as of late with their recent releases of Wings of Liberty and Diablo III (late having the meaning of the last 4-5 years as I've known Blizzard as a gamer since 1994). While I don't really go out of my way to talk about it here, I have never really made it a secret that I strongly dislike both D3 and SC2:WoL in terms of their stories. As an artist and someone with considerable experience with the performing arts as an actor and singer I am always thinking very critically about such expositions of story, character motivations, or narrative choices, or at the very least have a high standard as to what is acceptable in terms of these ideas. It is no wonder then that both of the aforementioned titles disappointed me so much as those respective stories, the execution notwithstanding, are giant vacuous caricatures of once interesting ideas (I'll explain this a little more in detail later). I suppose that with my current feelings and apprehension then, that Heart of the Swarm would in my mind be either a necessary measure of redemption for Blizzard...or strike three in the story department. Does it correct many of the problems of Wings and recapture that old maniacally chaotic, and manipulative backstabbing of Brood War, or does it continue with its recent development of multiple personalities [citation needed] and flail wildly in every direction (if a picture says a 1000 words, what does this one say? + Show Spoiler +
yeaa...I thought as much.
)?
In order to be appropriately prepared for looking at Heart of the Swarm I also recently replayed through all of Star1 and Star2 a couple of weeks ago in order to refresh my memory of some of the story elements, character personalities and decisions they made, and other issues before I delve back into the Koprulu sector once more.
I will not talk about multi-player in this review as mainly because many of the new multiplayer units, strategies, maps, etc... are not of primary importance to the development of the main story elements, and where my heart primarily was invested in for Brood War (though issues regarding personal attachments to or enjoyment of units and the like may be touched upon). I also had planned to cover the newly improved Battle.net UI, but as Wings got this update a few weeks ago, you can find that review and analysis in the following post already. I also shouldn't need to mention this, but if you have negativity or non-constructive or critically developed ideas to say (e.g. 'no one plays Starcraft for the story, lol' or other less than constructive posts), please refrain from hitting the post button. I do welcome critical discussion however.
I will additionally be referencing the Wings and Brood War stories for obvious reasons in that context and systemic problems or ideas are important to note or reference.
Finally, and this is a huge disclaimer, but as an artist I know that our viewpoints on topics can be widely different at times when talking about certain ideas or executions, so keep in mind these are my own personal thoughts as someone who has more than 25 years of experience in creating and performing. That and there is an important distinction to be made near the end of the piece.
p.p.s. Additionally it should be noted that this write-up is more than 12,000 words long, so it may take a little while to get through it all.
PTSD, Rise of the Curtain If nothing else, the opening cinematic for Swarm is pretty (aside from faces and lips which still look really awkward at times), and makes me want those siege tanks (fun fact, those tanks have a ~7sec deployment time), though one need not even enter the game itself to see a glaring cue to the onset of 'Blizzard dementia', e.g. the Viking who thinks it's a good idea to take on an Ultralisk... I know the reason behind why it was done, obviously to feature in a "cool" way a Terran unit from the game but also in connecting the storyboard concepts of the Viking, but the decision to feature this questionable and suicidal strategic move (yes I do realize this is reflective of Wings TvZ and Ultra switches) in this cinematic harkens back to the previous brand of storytelling of the last installment, and made me cringe on an otherwise enjoyable entr'acte (as we realize later this is some sort of nightmare or vision, so maybe you could argue that it's a creative license of sorts, but it still would be out of place as imagery from a the mind of fully matured adult (this would be appropriate creative license from a younger person however, hint hint)). Actually, funny enough, watch at about 1:55 in this recent music video and the Viking is much more at home here.
What is a very interesting idea however that this cinematic touches upon or at least hints at is that Kerrigan may have developed a form of PTSD, and I rather liked that conceptual idea, ignoring the face palming nature of how we got to this place.
Flashpoint and the Problem with People I am not, nor will I am I ever likely to read supplemental materials to IP's such as this. The overall idea based around world building is a decent one but the problem that inevitably and consistently crops up is essentially this; if you rely on external materials/information to give your story proper context or explain things, fill in gaps, etc... (and this happens very often in video games) then your story is poorly written.
This is a problem with all episodic content in that the episodes must exist by themselves and be complete entities, save for a few circumstances where these episodes are in a sequence (TV, Episodic Movies, SC to SC2, Mass Effect 1-3, those kinds of instances). In those cases many times you have instantiated so much nuanced information that it would be impossible (or at the very least incredibly tedious) to re-expose your audience to this information every time you released new content (that and the periodicity of release between episodes plays a big part in this as well and how its treated). No disrespect to Christie Golden, but I won't be reading Flashpoint because it is episodically unimportant material. Yes you could probably argue that the book is in itself an episode of sorts, but it is because this chronology is in a different medium that a great number of people will not read it or never experience it. If this is the case and this information is used in this fashion you'll find many of the timeline, informational, or situational holes or problems begin to crop up. Essentially, if you assume your target audience is going to gobble up everything you release, then you're are already making a big mistake. People are individuals and not hive mind-like entities.
Ok ok, so positive or successful example of supplemental materials? Viral marketing. It's marketing for your product and serves to set up the upcoming story. Say what you will about Deus Ex Human Revolution, but its internet marketing was pretty well done, and served to set up the world and story you were going to soon explore without giving you pertinent information to understanding the story (project Blackstone is an example of this too). The main difference between this external information and that of a novel, is that a novel takes a considerable amount of time to read, and often (and more importantly) will contain 'critical' plot points that are then referenced whereas, in the case of viral marketing, most of the information is non-pertinent and only fleshes out the world in a generally non-invasive manner. This was one of the problems I had with the Mass Effect DLC in that the final DLC for ME2 attempted to be a bridge into ME3 and why you returned to earth (you + Show Spoiler +
blew up a Mass Relay
, though let's not get into the inconsistencies surrounding that). I never got Arrival, so I was left somewhat confused as to why I had returned to Earth, what were the circumstances, etc... Clearly they wanted you to play Arrival but didn't think entirely through the connectivity issues how to make it a feasible if you hadn't (somehow you were told to go back to Earth and be benched for some inexplicable reason, the game never made this clear).
So as my initial venture begins I am immediately given two bits regarding the prefatory content I wondered about. First, I don't know if flashpoint is important somehow, but thanks to the prologue the connectivity between Wings and Swarm doesn't create the same questionable holes I found in ME3. The other thing however is in talking about my interest in the possible psychological ramifications of being the Queen of Blades and PTSD, Blizzard didn't seem to deem this important to touch upon in the slightest. The only time you see this is from the opening cinematic, and never again. I can't help but feel this is a missed opportunity to explore something that games rarely ever do, the psychological ramifications of trauma (ME sort of did, but even there it was very cursory). I should mention that Kerrigan conveniently has amnesia and thusly doesn't need to remember or deal with that possible outcome, but what is perhaps more important to the opening cinematic, is that it's in fact a vision of the future, we just don't know that quite yet (so that my initial hypothesis turns out to be an erroneous supposition anyway).
Sector One: Missions 1-4Next I'd love to tell you that from here on we get a great and well developed story, but we don't even get to the second mission and already there are systemic problems cropping up (Wings problems notwithstanding). The first is that after Kerrigan lets loose Zerglings everywhere an causes mass panic Jim comes up to her post-op and kind of jokingly tells her that she made a mess of things down below...Shouldn't Raynor be concerned about Kerrigan lapsing into old behavior of being the Queen of Blades, or at the very least concerned with all the Zerg in the facility now? Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. When Kerrigan somewhat playfully asks if he regrets bringing her back, he laughs and says "Never." Did, uh, did we forget about what happened on Aiur, or Shakuras, or Char? And what about Fenix, or all the other billions of other people she killed?
Ok, so she has amnesia so she kind of can get a pass on her behavior to a degree...Wait. It is pretty well established in Star 1 that the infestation and acquisition of power corrupts Kerrigan to the point where she enjoys the new Sarah, and this is reinforced when the 'new' Overmind is being coalesced and she makes a move to permanently seize absolute power over the Zerg by killing it. Now whether this corruption has more to do with the infestation process or from Kerrigan actually liking this acquisition of power is left somewhat ambiguous, but regardless, it is pretty clear that Kerrigan is fully reticent of what has happened to her through her transformation so it seems to preclude the amnesia angle entirely. You may ask however, what about the artifact impacting this? Well, I'll get to that a bit later. Anyway, apart from this Jim Raynor most definitely does not get a pass as he's seen both sides of Kerrigan and swore that he'd kill her if it was the last thing he did, so he should be more than a little apprehensive, or at the very least concerned.
So I have to ask why is he being portrayed this way? Well, primarily it's because Blizzard has to sell us on the idea that Kerrigan and Jim were in love at some point and that it meant something, and they have to do this very quickly. Continuing with that, when the Dominion find the facility and Jim starts yelling "Sarah!" we get really good moment, and then an odd one.
A nice moment for a change.
When Jim hears Kerrigan get enraged behind closed doors, it's a palpable and nice moment of panic, but what I found much nicer about that sequence was when Raynor throws the rifle to Kerrigan and she gets a small moment to reflect upon the last time she held a gun. This is one of those Blizzard gets it right with its storyboarding concept, in that it's a powerful retrospective image (I even feel the take could have been longer), and also connects with the previously used cinematic in Wings (when Kerrigan is abandoned on Tarsonis). Then they mar that moment by having Sarah 'incidentally' get close to Jim so that she can kiss him and say "Yep, like riding a bike" Awwww....wait, that's not right...
I can't help at this early juncture that they are telling me "Hey, Listen! Hey, they're in love, go with it!" Well, I'd like buy into that but I am not a man of faith, and assuming that I am (or anyone else for that matter) and can take things at face value is a problem (one only need look at LOST or Battlestar Galactica to see how this can be incredibly polarizing or problematic when constructing a narrative). This is the first problem, and is what I talked about regarding Flashpoint and people's individuality. However, the biggest problem with setting up a believable love story between these characters is that because all of the important interpersonal interactions between these two happened off-screen, we as an audience have a really hard time believing this message. You tell me that they are in love but you never bothered to showed me, and this is partly a personal thing, but because I played SC1 there was never a clear indication throughout the campaign that they had developed a non-platonic relationship or shacked up before the fall of Tarsonis, so I have a really hard time buying into the idea that this was ever the case. Is it plausible? Sure, but it ends up being a very shaky premise because of the lack of development time. Let's look at Brood War as a litmus test to this conception.
In Brood War there are a few moments where we get any information regarding this possible outcome of their meeting. The first is when they first meet on Antiga Prime Jim thinks less than savory thoughts about Sarah, to which she interrupts herself:
Kerrigan: Captain Raynor, I've finished scouting out the area and... You pig! Raynor: What, I haven't even said anything? Kerrigan: But you were thinking it. Raynor: Oh yeah, you're a telepath! Look, let's just get on with this, ok?
The first moment you can tell from the dialogue that Jim thinks Kerrigan is pretty hot, and that she's not exactly appreciative of the thoughts she's hearing, but there's no indication that she is interested at this point.
The second moment is in the next mission briefing for Antiga Prime, there is a short bit in the pre and post op mission briefings:
Kerrigan ...Zerg are attuned to the psychic emanations of ghosts. Raynor: So the Zerg are here for you darlin? This keeps getting better and better. Kerrigan: Shut Up. There's been a lot of secret confederate....
During the Antiga Prime (Revolution) mission briefing there is that moment where Raynor makes this joke and she responds, but neither of these dialogue choices have an undercurrent of love to them. Raynor's jab is in line with his pigheadded thoughts of before, but we can also gather that Kerrigan has (from the execution of the dialogue) started to or become friends with Jim now. But is this the beginnings of love? There is still no clear indication here. In fact Kerrigan's response to this joke tells us one thing pretty clearly, that she has a duality towards his behavior. On one hand she assumes that he has made some sort of underlying sexual joke and is dismissive or groaning over it, but you can also tell that she has started to become more friendly with him at the same time, so she's more sarcastic with her response. Overall this interaction between the two is far more reminiscent of two friends or siblings poking at each other rather than overt sexual advances (it is slightly more in line with the romantic behavior of early puberty though, again, hint hint). I should also note at this point that Raynor's use of the word 'darling' is a character affectation and has no passionate undertones whatsoever.
The third moment is just before the New Gettysburg mission:
Raynor: This is bullshit! Kerrigan, are you reading this? Kerrigan: I've heard. I'm going down there. Arcturus knows what he's doing, I can't back out on him now. Raynor: Funny. I never thought of you as anyone's martyr.
Within the mission:
Raynor: Why are you doing this, Kerrigan? Look, I know about your past, I mean I've heard the rumors. I know you were part of those experiments with the Zerg, that Mengsk came and saved you. But you don't owe him this. Hell... I've saved your butt plenty of times. Kerrigan: Jimmy, drop the knight in shining armor routine. It suits you sometimes, just not... not now. I don't need to be rescued. I know what I'm doing. The Protoss are coming to destroy the entire planet, not just the Zerg. I know that because... well, I just know it. I am a ghost, remember? Once we dealt with the Protoss, we can do something about the Zerg. Arcturus'll come around. I know he will. Raynor: I hope you're right, darling. Good huntin'!
and Post Op:
Raynor: I can't believe he actually left her down there. I'm gone, and you better come with me. There's no telling who Arcturus will screw over next.
In this sequence Raynor is pissed that Sarah is being sent down with no backup, and while he's showing concern there is never any indication through the dialogue that they have become romantically entwined. What's more important here however is that this anger plays much more into Jim's own motivations for being a guy who does the right thing or is a quintisential 'good guy' so it's more about his moral qualms with this rather than anything regarding Kerrigan. Then we get to the in-mission dialogue. The important snippet is what Kerrigan says about Raynor being a "knight in shining armor". There does exist a duality to this phrase, but the intention here is to characterize beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jim Raynor is a good guy who will make the right choices, and one of the characters we should be rooting for. But what about the sappier side? While I did mention that there is a duality to this phrase I think it's very clear that it is the former and not the latter use of it. Also we also have to remember that Kerrigan has information because of her psionic abilities that Jim doesn't have, so this also can be seen as a subtle way to tell him that the stakes are too high to fail and that she has to do this.
The last telling bits are during the Zerg campaign and Kerrigan is in the chrysalis, about to be revealed to us:
Raynor: All right. All crews, stay frosty, and keep your eyes peeled for our target. Remember, not only are we up against the Zerg here, but our old pal General Duke may be creepin' around here, too. Let's hope this trip wasn't a big mistake...
and just a little later:
Raynor: Mother of god. Kerrigan, what have they done to you?
and at the end of the mission:
Raynor: Sarah, is that really you? Kerrigan: To an extent. I'm far more than I once was, Jim. You shouldn't have come here. Raynor: But, the dreams. I dreamed you were still alive, that somehow, you were... calling to me... Kerrigan: I was. While I was in the chrysalis, I instinctively reached out to you and Arcturus telepathically. Apparently, Arcturus sent Duke here to reclaim me. But that was then, Jim. I am one of the Zerg now, and I like what I am. You can't imagine how this feels. Raynor: So? What? Are you goin' to kill me now, darlin'? Kerrigan: It is certainly within my power, but you're not a threat to me, Jim. Be smart; leave here now and never seek to confront the Zerg again. Raynor: Doesn't look like I have much choice.
So how can we try to prove that its one way or the other? This final section gives us some important clues to this. From this series of lines we know that Sarah psychically reached out to Jim, and that he came to find and rescue her, but if you say it springs from love, you're wrong. While love is a powerful motivator to do questionable things, guilt and remorse are much more insidious motivators, especially when considering the character archetypes. First, because Raynor has been getting dreams or visions of Kerrigan (via her reaching out to him) we can gather one thing from this. She's reaching out to the people that she would even know to look for her in the first place. Mengsk, Duke, and Raynor were after all the last notable people she was with. But also remember that she didn't just call Jim here, but Mengsk as well (she doesn't know of Mengsk's betrayal yet).
So why would Jim come though? Guilt. Because of Arcturus' deceptions, Jim (remembering he is our white knight) was forced to take partake in something so morally dubious that his conscience simply cannot get over what he has done (even if it is somewhat by proxy as Mengsk is the one who initiated everything). This is intensified and rationalized in his mind because he and Kerrigan had become friends in their time together in the Sons of Korhal. Moreover, because of this level of guilt in leaving someone behind we can also extrapolate from this that psychologically, Raynor is desperately trying to recover a part of his own humanity by trying to save Kerrigan to make up for his questionable act (there are times sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders). But it's too late, and that's part of the tragedy and why Jim becomes yet a further damaged character.
None of this however indicates that there was anything more than just a camaraderie or friendship between Sarah Kerrigan and Jim Raynor. One way to help solve this however, if intending the love angle, would have been to use a flashback (or series of) in Wings before the Tarsonis cinematic so that we are given a setup, or some kind of insight into the development of this relationship so that it is more palpable to the audience (I'm still not convinced this one instance would be enough to sell us on the idea though).
Actually let's look at something similar. I have become a fan of the TV show Person of Interest since it began last year, but there is one thing in the inception of that series that is very similar to this current situation. When Person of Interest began last year it faced a rather large potential issue in that because of its story, it needed you to buy into the fact that one of our protagonists, John Reiss, was some sort of colossal badass. This is problematic because it is hard to buy into this idea without seeing his skills and bad-assery, so many people cannot buy this premise immediately. I was one of these people, but found that after about the first six episodes that I had finally begun to accept the fact that Reiss was in fact crazy good at what he did. This only happened as I had time to experience the character, and be shown is adeptness in a number of hairy situations. Now? It's one of my favorite shows currently, and that's thanks to their careful treatment of this and other characters, but also no small part of mine for sticking around to accept this overall premise.
A Return to Story In getting back to the story, Kerrigan rendezvous with the Hyperion and because of the lack of Jim being there both makes a scene and also decides to stay behind on the planet when the Dominion fleet arrives. In waiting and worrying about getting separated from Raynor, she overhears a Dominion broadcast that Jim has in fact been killed, and is the driving force for Kerrigan to take what she just did on the planet and become the Queen of Blades again (at least in the hopes of controlling the swarm to kill Mengsk). But Jim, dead? If they had the balls to do that I would have been amazed and may have marked this as a major turning point in the game, but as it stands, Jim Raynor is too lucrative a piece to just throw away so casually. Basically, they gave themselves away and they're not even trying to hide it. This is all about the suspension of disbelief and could have worked at least a little better, but because we are shown an interaction between Raynor and Nova (or Tosh maybe?) previously, you already know that he's not going to die by her hand due to the underlying dialogue (and previous help mission in Wings) between the two people. Is this intentional then? I can't help but think that it is, but it doesn't make sense as to why you would want to subvert the primary emotional drive for Sarah in order to tell us that the broadcast is more Dominion propaganda. The trade off isn't worth it.
There's yet another thing that I don't understand about this scene either. When Sarah finds out that Jim is dead she goes into a rage, but then immediately breaks down emotionally. This is supposed to be the turning point in the game, but there's something here that that Anita Sarkeesian is exploring in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games videos that I wanted to mention (I don't agree with everything she says, but there are a number of important things she talks about). I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
Sector Two: Mid Game Missions 5-15PreviousNext In arriving and finally starting our long process of being with the Zerg, Kerrigan is forced into making decisions that she wouldn't necessarily be keen on. I do like that she's being forced into morally questionable decisions, but the way it's imparted to us is somewhat uneven. In one moment she's determined, another apprehensive, and all the while she seems to be remaining the same person she is currently. I find this uneven because we are being told that there is a subtle breakdown of Kerrigan making decisions from bad to worse, just to sate her lust for vengeance, but I never got the feeling that the overarching narrative was working. This is because one moment she wrestles with bad memories, another she has no qualms infecting and straight up killing people or making morally dubious decisions (there is no decent into darkness, we're just all of a sudden here). An example of this is the way she finally takes out the Protoss ship, by infecting and killing a researcher and then sending her back. I like this idea. No, I really liked it, but how Kerrigan deals with the ramifications of that decision isn't consistent with this having to make bad choices to satisfy vengance. This is what's supposed to set up a big and somewhat poetic plot point later down the road, but the road is full of cracks and the impact is lessened because of it.
So either you finish Char or the Kaldir missions, and then, guess what.... your old friend Zeratul shows up.... I was dreading this moment even since I hit the purchase button, as it signals the laughably silly prophecy arc that so many feel is bad being explained more.
For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. Wait, why? Sarah Kerrigan as a human never met Zeratul, so why is she so angry at him and starts the fight? Wasn't it Kerrigan that was always manipulating Zeratul to do her dirty work in Brood War? Didn't she even force Zeratul kill his own Matriarch? Shouldn't this be reversed? Oh right, it's because it's an excuse for her and Zeratul to fight again (oooo pretty), except that in makes no sense. What makes even less sense is what happens next...
Kerrigan throws Zeratul around like a ragdoll for a little bit, and then Zeratul faceplams Kerrigan and shows her a vision he's had. Or memories, er...I'm a little confused at this point. Anyway, it is revealed to us that Zerus is a planet where the Zerg were born and evolved on, and it is here that Amon, the dark one, or fallen Xel'Naga altered them. Let's look at this shall we?
First, in Star 1 we initially learn that the Protoss and Zerg were created by the Xel'Naga, but this isn't entirely true. The Xel'Naga didn't create the Protoss or Zerg, but simply modified existing creatures (or insectoid life forms) and then developed them in to the two races that we know of today. It should be noted that we do know that life on the world of Aiur was at least in some ways initially engineered by the Xel'Naga, though Zerus does not follow this same path (this is less clear but it is heavily inferred in the writing). And I'll quote from the original SC Manual for this:
"Driven to perfect their science of proto-genetic evolution, the ancient, enigmatic race known as the Xel’Naga traveled to the distant fringe world of Aiur. The vast jungles of Aiur had produced the most advanced race that the Xel’Naga had ever seen. Believing that they could steer the race’s evolution to the pinnacle of physical perfection, the Xel’Naga began to conduct their proto-genetic experiments."
Continuing a few sentences later:
"Unfortunately, the Xel’Naga pushed their experiment too far. The inherent essence and sentience of the Protoss developed far too rapidly, leading to bitter strife and division between them and their creators. The Xel’Naga deemed that the purity of form they sought to create had been sullied by a conflict of essence and thus decreed that the Protoss were, in fact, a failed creation. The Xel’Naga abandoned their children and launched themselves into the void.
Travelling thousands of light years into the burning core of the galaxy, the Xel’Naga eventually settled upon the volatile ash-world of Zerus. The Xel’Naga planned to continue their Grand Experiment of evolution, only this time they dismissed their tenets of physical form and focused chiefly on the pursuit of a distinct purity of essence. Residing in their massive ships high above the fires of Zerus, the Xel’Naga began once again to challenge the wiles of fate.
The Xel’Naga were more successful with their second venture than they could have imagined."
So the cinematic, and what follows in Swarm seems to directly contradict this longstanding knowledge in that it infers that the Zerg evolved independently of the Xel'Naga. We know this isn't the case, so how do you explain this? Unfortunately, any of the inferences I had tried to initially come up with to explain this are rendered moot because of what's written in that same manual only moments later:
"They labored to advance the evolution of the most insignificant life form on Zerus, a race of miniature insectoids known as the Zerg. Through Xel’Naga proto-genetic manipulations, the Zerg survived the torrential firestorms of their world and thrived. Although extremely small, wormlike, and possessing no ability to manipulate their physical surroundings, the Zerg adapted to survive. They developed the ability to burrow into the flesh of the less vulnerable species indigenous to Zerus. Feeding off the nutrients contained within the spinal fluids of their hosts, the Zerg learned to parasitically merge with their host creatures. Once they became capable of controlling the metabolic and anatomical processes of their hosts, the Zerg used their new bodies to manipulate their surroundings."
And slightly later in the writing:
"As the swarms continued to grow and strengthen, the Overmind turned its thoughts towards its own future. It realized that within a few short centuries its race had assimilated all of the indigenous life upon Zerus. It knew that to further evolve the swarm, the Zerg would need to leave Zerus. The Overmind began to reach out with its senses, looking for something - anything - which would provide them with transport from this world. That opportunity soon arrived. A race of gargantuan, space-faring life forms passed through the Zerus system, and the Overmind called to them. Drawn to the barren world"
All of the indigenous life you say? Couldn't the Overmind have missed some of the indigenous life? Well...
"As the Zerg incorporated more and more host creatures into their fold, they began to assimilate their various genetic strains and processes. Zerg chemistry began to mutate and adapt according to the volume of new genetic material being processed. However, as diverse as the range of host creatures became, there was always the undeviating drive to consume only the most evolutionarily advanced species encountered. The Zerg were innately selective as to which species they consumed, ensuring that at every stage of their development they were at the top of the proverbial food chain. Any race that the Zerg came across that was deemed unworthy of assimilation was eradicated to further purify the strains."
So in looking over this material and understanding, a number of questions and possible outcomes immediately become impossible, or directly contradictory to this source material. These include the separate evolution of the Zerg, and even how they take the essence of others (in fighting, which is not what a parasitic organism does), any of Amons alterations, plans, or side experiments, the ancient spawning pool and the narrative treatment of is as a primordial and naturally indigenous thing, Zerus being a lush Triassic-like world, Zerg having psionic abilities and Primal Zerg not having a psychic link, and a host of other smaller problems surrounding these more primary of issues.
I can understand however, is the reasons for why Sarah wants to go to Zerus. In a quest for power, she is looking to unite the swarm for her own purposes and thusly 'ancient zerg' or the original location would be somewhat enticing (remembering what I just spoke of before). I am left with the somewhat perplexing question though of how does Zeratul know about this place anyway, and how did he learn about it? More scribbles on the wall? Voices in his head? This also begs the more important question as to why Kerrigan doesn't or didn't know about Zerus already, removing the necessity of Zeratul in the first place.
One last thing I wanted to touch on was why is the manual ok as a supplemental material to reference, but stated that the books aren't? The reason for this is because many decades ago, a games manual was a very important tool and most of the time was a direct extension of game. Especially if you talk about the Ultima series, but very often stories or parts of the stories relied on you having read the manual to get proper context to their world, or in many cases was a tutorial in how to navigate and play the game effectively. With the advent of the internet and better technological innovations this practice was eventually abandoned, and for a number of acceptable reasons, but this is an important note as the landscape of gaming has shifted monumentally since that time.
Ascension So apart from all of these issues, it is here at this moment that we know for sure, that Sarah is about to, of her own volition, become a Zerg again, I find this precipice to be lacking in steeled determination on Kerrigans part. She should at this point know that she's making the decision to forever lose her humanity and become a Zerg again, but there isn't even a blip, let alone a foreboding underpinning of this outcome. After all, it is this willful shedding of humanity that is supposedly the tragedy of this act, in that later when we find out that Raynor isn't dead, that she's also sacrificed the possibility of a life with him as well.
I also wondered why they in the cinematic had to show Mengsk and that he had acquired the artifact. I am left with the idea that, once its revealed why it was used in the first place, that Mengsk will inadvertently revive Amon, but that hypothesis is debunked almost as immediately as we learn of the artifact's purpose. If that's the case then, showing us the artifact preemptively like that, seems like it would undercut the final cinematic in that Mengsk isn't helpless. I originally didn't catch this and so the final cinematic was more impactful in the reveal, but in retrospect this decision seems in an odd place.
A Short Game Design Excursion: Really, It's Short This Time So I should take a short time to say that most of the campaign I found works ok, most of the system is fairly well designed, but two things really stuck out like a sore thumb in this space that really irked me.
The first is sound in sound design. So, I should mention if you didn't know already, but I am a professional musician, and I own a studio sound system for my professional use that is in the order of around $2600 (an audio interface, 2 monitors, and a sub). Basically, everything that I hear is acoustically more accurate than %99 of people in general. This isn't really a brag, but is necessary to explain a problem in Blizzards sound design. I have my subwoofer set to a relatively low level as I am a classical musician (in that it resonates and the proper amplitude for a naturally acoustic setting), and so bass heavy music acoustically speaking is not what I want nor need to hear. So when I'm playing SC2 many times I have to play at an incredibly low volume because the bass is so loud in comparison to other frequencies that if I turned my speakers up, I wouldn't hear anything else. In certain parts of Swarm, this has gotten even worse, to the point where at some point I had to pick up and use my headphones instead. Using these I am more likely to hear what Blizzard wants you to hear, but as a composer and someone who works in electronic music, this is something that shouldn't be an issue ever (you should always be designing for multiple platforms, e.g. bad speakers, professional speakers, headphones, earbuds, etc...).
The second thing that really irked me was I knew that Swarm would be more of an RPG-like event, and that's not necessarily bad, but when we got to the moment where it was kill or be killed on Zerus, all of a sudden I stopped playing Star 2 and started Playing Diablo III again... You can probably imagine how that made me feel. And as if the first three 'bosses' weren't enough, to add insult to injury Zuvran (the ancient zerg) turns out to be basically Belial (oh also if you didn't notice the other mini-bosses are not so subtle Diablo or WoW boss clones). Here's a comparison if you don't know what I'm referencing:
Belial
Definitely not Belial
I didn't really like Diablo III, and they're making me feel like I'm playing Diablo III again? I almost lost it at that point. But enough of that.
Sector Three: Revelations and the Endgame (Missions 16-27)Previous So now that we have our newfound power, we finally return and from a transmission from Mengsk find out that Jim is *gasp*, not dead! Yea I know already. But here again we never get this sense from Kerrigan that she realizes that she didn't have to sacrifice what she just a few moments ago did, and I am reminded of that... ok, I won't mention that again, suffice it to say this problem permeates all of her decision making with regards to this, and keeps cropping up.
Speaking of cropping up, guess who showed up in my game? Alexi Stukov?! Wait, didn't Duran murder him in cold blood in the Psi Distruptor years ago? Wasn't his body placed in a capsule and sent out into space? Well apparently that's not what happened. Now I can I guess from a pragmatic position see that this is a decision that could maybe be opened because hell, did we actually know %100 that his body was recovered? This is where my initial talk about Flashpoint begins to rear its head.
In a number of story-based scenarios that Blizzard released for Brood War, it is explained to us that Alexi Stukov was found and regenerated by a rogue cerebrate called Kaloth, bringing him back to life as an infested Terran. Later in the story Jim Raynor and the Protoss Taldarin (the first dragoon) attempt to de-infest Stukov and are in the end successful, but this and another couple of issues surrounding this story make Stukov's appearance in Swarm somewhat odd (for example if he is now de-infested why is he still an infested terran, also more problematic is why of all races did this serum to save Stukov get developed by the one race (Protoss) that believes that purification by fire is the only answer? Maybe Artanis is more evolved, but this is still really odd). Anyway this is a perfect example of this issue, that these missions are considered by Blizzard to be cannon but because they were never part of the original storyline nor are they explained in the slightest (in Swarm) to people who never knew this to be the case (as it is a supplemental material) we are left with rather large questions as to how and why Stukov is even here in the first place.
Anyway, regardless of the logistics or back-story, I actually vehemently disliked this decision to bring him out of the closet and dust him off, as it felt like an incredibly cheap and lazy tactic on Blizzards part to try to curry favor with the older audience, or those who've played Brood War at the very least. Why couldn't you use a scientist who worked with Narud, like maybe work Branamoor (the head researcher for project blackstone) into the equation instead?
Logistically however, the reason that Stukov is used is for narrative purposes only, as a means to talk about Narud and his experiments. I think I also found this silly because talking about Narud seems unnecessary as we need to know more about what he's doing, and from Narud's perspective specifically. An external source is only going to tell us so much, and leave out important elements that the audience needs to parse the situation properly.
This brings me to the Hybrids, Emil Narud, and the meaning of the artifact. The first thing I wanted to mention was that it is finally revealed to us that the Tal'Darim, that annoying Protoss faction from Wings that we have been fighting, actually worship the Xel'Naga Amon, which I actually felt works. It played into the Protoss Xel'Naga reverence ideas, but I felt that they could have done more to explain the sociological and historical position of the Tal'Darim as that has always seemed a little confusing in how they fit into Protoss society (the lore in the manual would lead me to believe that they were one of the factions that did not embrace the Khala). Cue yet another supplemental materials issue.
Christie Golden also wrote a series of books called The Dark Templar Saga, and this is the first appearance of the Tal'Darim. Here their origins and societal position are expounded upon along with many other bits of information on Protoss society in general, but I can't help but think that because this is yet again another supplemental material and not part of the episodic contents of the games, that there has to be some indication or introduction to all of this very convoluted historical material to the audience, else we will be left with a host of unanswered questions.
The Hybrids are also finally revealed to have a purpose, in that they siphon off (and store?) the psionic powers of others in order to gather this energy to revive/awaken/free, do something for Amon (how is this transferred?). This is also the purpose of the artifact. It may have destroyed most of the Zerg infestation of the Queen of Blades (wait, most? see ahead), but its purpose in Wings was to take her psionic energy and apply it to Amons rebirth. Err, awakening...I'm a bit confused on this one. This begs the question however that if Amon created this piece of technology for his own purposes, why then does it destroy his own pet creations, and even more importantly why doesn't flat out kill Kerrigan because it's supposed to steal her psionic energies (and kill her Zerg half, doesn't the hybridization process to her open the door for the artifact to drain all of her energies entirely)? To add to this, if it is supposed to steal the psionic emanations from creatures, why then doesn't it affect humans with psionic powers? This is sort of explained in that Amon could have attuned it specifically to affect only the creations of the Xel'Naga (also in that the hybrids have a direct correlation to them), but it still presents yet another problem. It is clearly explained that the Zerg do not posses psionic powers, only that they have a psychic link which is the explanation for how the hive-mind works (it is mentioned that psychic abilities are rooted in psionics, but that they are extremely rudimentary). If this is the case, then shouldn't the artifact not been able to kill Zerg at all? Shouldn't the artifact instead of killing them then, permanently sever the Zerg from the Hive-mind (Hue and the Borg collective) making the Zerg turn feral and wild (and ultimately uncontrollable)? Lastly though, in the upcoming cinematic Narud mentions that Amon has whispered to Kerrigan, and in Wings they also touch on this (this begs another question as to why the artifact severs Amons connection to Kerrigan). If that's the case, then Amon isn't dead in Wings of Liberty, and doesn't need the artifact to live again, or awaken (maybe he's in a prison and needs a certain amount of power in order to escape). Overall this artifact seems to have such a convoluted purpose and representation, and even could be used as a weapon against Amon at some point.
Thus we finally get to the (second) master manipulator of all of this, Samir Duran, or Emil Narud now. The portrayal of Duran also bothers me for a number of reasons. The most immediate of reasons is because his alter ego of Samir Duran is never revealed to Kerrigan (not even his voice). For an entity who fancies himself to be both omniscient and more powerful than any other being, this seems like a perfect time to flaunt to Kerrigan that he has been the one using her all this time. After all, this plays into his fanaticism to Amon, his hyper-intelligence, the reason for these experiments, and his overall personality in general as one who cannot be stopped even if you knew. And this is where I'd like to turn to Brood War and the secret mission.
The last time we saw Samir Duran, he explains to Zeratul about finding the first Hybrids, and I quote:
Duran: "Magnificent, isn't it?" Zeratul: "What? Who are you?" Duran: "I've had many names throughout the millennia, young prodigal. You would know me best as Samir Duran." Zeratul: "Kerrigan's consort! Is this part of her twisted schemes?" Duran: "No. Young Kerrigan could not have engineered this grand experiment. Although her rebirth into the Zerg Swarm has sped up my progress, I can assure you that this endeavor is quite beyond her narrow understanding." Zeratul: "If you are not her pawn, then what are you?" Duran: "I am a servant of a far greater power. A power that has slept for countless ages. And is reflected in the creature within that cell." Zeratul: "Have you any conception of what you've created here? Do you have any idea what this... this Hybrid is capable of?!" Duran: "Of course I do. This creature is the completion of a cycle. Its role in the cosmic order was preordained when the stars were young. Behold the culmination of your history!" Zeratul: "All I behold is an abomination." Duran: "Your violence, young prodigal, is typical. As is your inability to comprehend the greater scheme of things. You can destroy all of the specimens here. It will do you no good. For I have seeded the Hybrid on many, many worlds. You will never find them all before they awaken... And when they do... your universe will be changed... forever."
It's the second to last line from Duran that is primarily important here. We can clearly see that Blizzard took quite the literal approach to this, as an indication of a preordained prophecy, but I would like to highlight something that is psychologically more interesting. When Duran talks about this being written in the stars we have to remember that Duran is both a highly intelligent fanatic, and likely a creation of Amon, so his devotion to awakening his master has a level of calculated madness to him. By choosing those words, Duran is saying to Zeratul, if colorfully, that even if you tried your hardest, I am so far along in my work and have so many contingencies that you cannot hope to stop this from coming to pass anymore. Zeratul is an insect in Duran's eyes and entirely unimportant, so he embellishes and hides his true intentions with colorful imagery and eloquent prose. In fact, one could surmise here that Duran is perhaps even talking about himself, in that his own creation by Amon was for this purpose and that no one could stop his work and that it is now too late. After millennia, wouldn't you show signs of being a megalomaniac?
Coming to a Head Returning to the story, we finally get to the final arc of the story and the endgame; save Jim, and kill Mengsk. Saving Jim from the resurrection hub...wait, I'm sorry that's Battlestar, I got my worlds mixed up. Ok, saving Jim from the prison ship that doesn't jump to random locations, and doesn't remind me of the BSG resurrection hub (Star Craft does this thing called re-appropriation often) is, well... It's a silly idea upon a silly idea, upon an interesting idea that execution-wise has one or two things I felt were head scratching, or underdeveloped (or just a more obvious approach if you look at it another way), and something of importance. When Sarah busts down the door and walks into Jim's cell, he sees Sarah transformed again, and is aghast to this decision of hers. When she tries to justify it, he's pissed and starts going off on her.
From that basic standpoint, this moment kind of works (this of course is all supposing that you can get past all of the systemic issues I've already talked about), but let's look a little deeper into this. The first thing is when Sarah walks in that Jim sees what he wants to see, human Kerrigan, and I felt this was entirely unnecessary. He's been locked away for the whole show, in solitary isolation with almost no light for him this whole time. So when she busts in and there's finally light, his eyes need adjusting which they did cue in on. However, this is why the 'hallucination' is unnecessary because both this vision and then the subsequent reveal from the focusing of his eyes and the fog revealing her Zerg appendages, Jim is confronted with something he doesn't want to see (and we are, twice).
Here he also finally remembers, if for a small moment, that Kerrigan murdered a very close friend and ally Fenix, as well as countless billions of others and decides to make a scene (and while I'm on this, why does this game continually refer to things numbering in the millions? There are currently billions humans on the planet Earth, so a million is kind of a flash in the pan, especially when you remember that the Zerg are "without number"). This mention of Fenix was also another moment, like Stukov, where I felt that Blizzard was outright parading/abusing the lore to try to make a point hit harder, but is out of place and serves a very shaky purpose. This is because the character portrayal of Jim Raynor in SC2 has been up to this point so incredibly uneven swinging back and forth like a metronome from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other that it has become impossible to know just how he will react to stimuli. This only gets worse with time but I'll come back to this in just a bit.
Honestly, I find it rather hard to talk about this particular scene in general without getting really perturbed. Due to the fact that it brings together so much of why Star 2 is a pale shadow of what Brood War is all in one place, there are so many levels of reasons as to why this scene should never exist. Actually, let me list a few of them if they haven't been really clear up to this point:
The love story never existed in Star 1, and if in the event that it did, is never developed and is not palpable or believable by the audience due to the execution.
Kerrigan becomes the Queen Bitch of the Universe, and proceeds to kill billions of humans and turned countless worlds into smoldering piles of ash. Death and destruction includes the fall of Aiur and Protoss society, the death of Tassadar, Stukov, Raszagal, Fenix, Duke, DuGalle, and countless others.
As Fenix and Raynor were close friends and comrades, and Fenix is now dead, Jim swears that the last thing he'll ever do is kill Kerrigan.
If, in the event that they did somehow fall in love on Antiga Prime or Tarsonis, all the murderous backstabbing and wanton destruction between then and now precludes Raynor having any kind of warm feelings for her now, or makes him at the very least apprehensive towards her.
The convoluted and contradictory nature of the artifact shows leanings towards (in a specific light) the idea that Kerrigan should have been killed on Char and not simply de-infested. Additionally however, understanding the psychic link of the Zerg, the artifact should never have de-infested Kerrigan to begin with (perhaps only severs her link to the Zerg).
Raynor would not have saved Kerrigan as a result of all the aforementioned materials, nor would he have forgiven her for her actions in the unlikely outcome that he does (assuming that she doesn't die to the artifact), completely destroying the one reason that Sarah willfully chooses to become the Queen of Blades again (his 'death').
The Primal Zerg not actually being Zerg also precludes the possibility that Kerrigan becomes again a Zerg (ignoring the lore and following this most recent retcon).
Raynor has his gun on him, but if he's in his cell, where did it come from? No way Mengsk allows this possibly where they leave it on him to conspicuously allow himself to commit suicide, that would be a poor and sloppy use of a pawn (no Sarah does not have it, they were separated early remember?).
As you can see, the problem with why and how we get to this place is a series of cascading issues that make the situation we are currently experiencing seem so unbelievable or so implausible that we at some point reach the breaking point where we simply have to start dissociating ourselves with what we're experiencing in order to cope. This is not the kind of psychological trauma that I wanted to explore, but it seems is a facet that is becoming more and more unavoidable as time passes.
This sort of begs the question of why I've taken the time to analyze and look at the current story we're given here. The reason is that in an objective fashion I have to approach the story and look at the current character motivations and story in a manner devoid of this overarching content (e.g. Star 1's lore and story). This is primarily because the two stories are separated by so many years, and that a great number of people due to this will never have experienced Star 1 (additionally the maturity, nuance, and approach to the writing is far different from back when games were first starting to explore deeper content), but along with this, it also serves to show just how many pitfalls and mistakes Blizzard is still making in their approach, regardless of this overarching narrative. It therefore serves to show due to this approach, two levels of analysis that can be gleaned from this review, one that is more global, and one that is more immediate. Anyway, there's one last thing I need to talk about.
Final Set We come to at last this final set of missions to embark on killing Mengsk and reach the endgame scenario. Most the mission stuff is relatively unimportant save for being a sustained conflict as to mark the importance of this task in our minds (the way the invasion of Char was in Wings), though there is one major thing I need to talk about regarding the psi-destoyer mission. In order to explain my apparent 'confusion' surrounding this mission, we need to first turn back to our understanding of the Zerg origins:
"The new race, called Humanity, was mere generations away from developing into a formidable psionic power. But the Overmind also knew that Humanity was still in its infant stages, hardly capable of defending itself against the ravenous Zerg. Although a short-lived and seemingly frail species, the Overmind knew that Humanity would be the final determinant in its victory over the Protoss. If it could assimilate the psionic potential of Humanity, the Overmind would have the ability to combat the Protoss on its own terms."
This and other sections of the manual tell us very explicitly that the Zerg do not have psionic powers, and that the entire reason for the invasion of the Koprulu sector was to attempt to gain these powers. We can also further extrapolate that Sarah Kerrigan is patient zero and that because the Overmind was killed so soon after her birth that it was never able to find a way of incorporating psionic powers into the swarm. Because of this information then (and our understanding of psychic and psionic differences), it is impossible that Dahaka would not have a psionic link if he is in fact a Zerg, and therefore the entire psi destroyer mission cannot possibly end in Kerrigan and the Zerg winning this mission (for a whole host of reasons). This assumes of course that Mengsk somehow figured out, from either the artifact or other experiments with the psi disruptor, that he could use this as a weapon which I guess is somewhat believable; though if he has the artifact, why doesn't he just use it at a strategically opportune moment (forgetting the more important point that the Zerg do not have psionic powers and therefore should not die to the artifact at all)? Anyway, what is more important to this immediate story are the few things that I noticed in reaching the final sequence and cinematic.
First we need some additional context. Remember that leaked ending that's been floating around for a year or so now? well it turns out to be almost identical to the actual ending, save for a few minor tweaks. This important to note because in the updated and edited version there are some notable changes.
The first and biggest change is that in order to pacify Kerrigan, Mengsk originally implanted Sarah with a kill switch of sorts long ago when she was a member of the Sons of Korhal, but because of whatever influence, they changed this so that the kill switch is swapped out for the Xel'Naga artifact (and I would be remiss if I didn't ask the question as to why and how Mengsk is able to get the artifact to become a torture device and not its intended use). This does present the interesting possibility that Mengsk, ignoring what we already know, could inadvertently revive Amon, but of course isn't possible because he's already 'awake'. Unfortunately, this change didn't seem to make it to the writers, because Mengsk still has a line that says "Did you think I'd keep an animal like you close to me without some kind of insurance policy..." Oops, I guess he had another Xel'Naga artifact tucked away knowing that he'd eventually sacrifice Kerrigan on Tarsonis to become the Queen of Blades, and then... yea this is entirely implausible.
It also did not escape me that this scene is reflective of Return of the Jedi almost exactly, where Kerrigan is in the role of Luke, Mengsk is the Emperor, and Raynor as Darth Vader? Then there's the Artifact, that's the lightning, making Sarah pay for her lack of vision.
It also seemed that Mengsk's death was neutered because of the Teen rating, in that the death was basically Agent Smith's death in The Matrix: Revolutions (serves as an off-camera and no blood version, good for the kids...uhh). This did not seem like Kerrigans style as it wasn't very clean or precise or more, but more than that, it removes us from the scene and denies us as the audience the satisfaction of witnessing his death. Sure we witnessed it with the destruction of his office, but by doing it this way Blizzard removed a palpable and visceral level of impact from this scene that, if especially when colored by Kerrigans and the stories overall narrative ideas of revenge, is needed in subtly influencing that narrate. This is why Mengsk's teeth are shown just before his final moments, as it's a subtle reference to the more primal and violent nature of human beings, and also reminds us on a more instinctual level of a predator trying to attack its prey (like a dog showing its teeth to intimidate).
The final section of this cinematic is probably the moment that I finally had had it with this story, and for two small reasons. Firstly, apparently Kerrigan can fly? More importantly however, I understand why Jim would come along and help Kerrigan (because he too has a long history and score to settle with Mengsk), but his injection in to this push and final scene shows just how delusional Blizzard has become. When Sarah says "Thank you Jim, for everything." he replies "My pleasure darlin... Always was." Apparently, remembering our cascading problems from the cellblock and that he's said we're done for being so appalled at her decision to become the Queen of Blades, Jim has entirely forgotten that he was pissed at Sarah in the first, or second, or hell, fiftieth time at this point.
The underpinning idea here is that because of this being the last cinematic Blizzard is trying to impart upon us a sense of rest after a long and arduous journey. By portraying Jim to have warm feelings for Sarah in his words but also in his physicality, it imparts a level of completion and finality to the audience alongside the music and cinematic visuals, except it actually undercuts that intention entirely.
So the first thing that overall strikes me on this approach to the story is that it has become very apparent of the way in which Blizzard approaches writing the story and fleshing out concepts. When storyboarding a concept or narrative, writers and designers lay out graphic panes set in sequences that are shorthand to express the story in an overarching manner, or a macro oriented focus. This is a commonly used tool in cinematography, and is quite effective but here it illustrates the biggest problem in Blizzards approach to storytelling more than anything else. In this approach, each pane in the sequence acts as a singular event, closed off from the rest, and is directly reflected in the unevenness in the story of Wings, and in Swarm, in that each scene has a certain penchant to it, a certain character portrayal, and a specific overall goal that it needs to impart. It is because of these elements being so separated from each other that all of the systemic problems regarding character motivations, story elements, and other items stab wildly in the dark and is precisely why I initially, and colorfully, mentioned that Blizzard suffered from a mental disorder. It's because this approach reminds me of someone who has a dissociative identity disorder, where one moment you have one personality, but five minutes from now they could be wildly different even though they are the same individual.
Storytelling Problems: Why you Can't Have your Cake and Eat it Too So Blizzard is always placing in our heads and continually reinforcing that they want to tell their story (see their 'brand' of storytelling), and while that overtly sounds good, something has been occurring over the last number of years as a slow accumulation of rather large systemic problem. What is this problem? It's the WoW Effect... The crux of the problem is that the story they want to tell is in many ways incongruous with previously established narratives. Another way of putting it would be that if you establish a certain penchant or thematic idea for storytelling and then say, hey lets ignore everyone's character motivations, the overall ethos, the linear progression and development of the plot and specific points that have transpired, and just tell the story 'we' want to tell...well it shouldn't be too hard to figure out that while that is their prerogative, the resulting story will undoubtedly have problems. In fact, by conveniently disregarding these already established thematic choices or traits, this new story is in ways no longer part of the universe that was originally instantiated and could easily become some kitschy or terribly awkward alternate universe of sorts.
Even evil Spock can see that something is amiss here.
As an existing example, if a movie [insert conglomerate or individual] decided that they wanted to go and tell a particular story they had concocted, but ignore previously and already established themes/ideas, certain directions in mood, pacing, or other developmental considerations in order to make sure their idea worked in the existing world, then there are going to be rather apparent problems or unevenness in the storytelling, or characters, or mood, or all of the above... A more recent movie that makes this unfortunate mistake is The Hobbit. I'm not saying The Hobbit is necessarily a bad movie as it does a number of very good things, but it is terribly inconsistent from a storytelling angle due to the attempt at maturing the story to be in line with The Lord of the Rings while also coincidentally insisting on keeping the childlike tone of the source material in many places (such as the goblin king). Another more egregious and obvious example of this that I have already alluded to would be the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy (if you want to hear about a plethora of the issues that these movies have, visit the redlettermedia website for a rather comprehensive look at all three).
Now a big question here is, couldn't you do this and have it work? Yes, absolutely this can be the case. The problem with all of the aforementioned works however is that they all reference or use pre-existing materials or characters or events that have an existing history and therefore particular storytelling ascribed to them already. This is interestingly where looking at Valve can shed at least some light on the subject. In one corner, the Half-Life story arcs have one centralized theme and ethos to them, while in a different corner Portal is significantly different, yet, both of these stories exist in the same world and do so quite successfully with a large part due to their separateness. Should both of these worlds interact with one another in a direct way however (HL3 is a strong possibility), a number of problematic issues could easily arise, if not approached with a carefully thought out plan. Regardless though, their current incarnations function fairly well on their own.
Treating with the Heart of Children In continuing my thoughts on storytelling problems or issues, throughout all of this conceptualization I have been trying to wrestle into words the reason that the stories of Diablo III and Wings, and now Swarm were/are such spectacular failures, and I have been left after much pondering with but one inevitable conclusion. Blizzard is not designing games for me, and haven't for a good long while now. What, me specifically? Well, allow me to explain this.
The first clue is that along with their marketing tactics and press statements, there is a less discussed and more subtle issue with their 'brand'. Their style of storytelling is specifically aimed at reaching and hooking non-adults (likely the 16 and younger crowd). This business practice in fact looks conspicuously like the tobacco industry who continually market to children because of the saying "once you get them early..." And this seems to be Blizzards modus operandi exactly, and can be directly witnessed in how their stories are presented to the audience. They lack depth, they use tropes of all kinds and clichéd techniques in every possible place they can, and generally lack the maturity and subtle nuances in behavior or character motivations, or story aesthetics.
To a younger and inexperienced mind, many of these things can be great tools at portraying types of character motivations or the reasoning behind character actions. Look at children's programming or cartoons and you'll see these executions all over the place. They can clearly set up certain elements that can be easily parsed out by a young mind, they can even be humorous and fun while still retaining a measure of seriousness... and this works for this demographic. However, here is where I take serious umbrage with this mo.
I started gaming when I was 5. My first games included the Legend of Zelda, Duck Hunt, Ultima I-IV, Pool of Radiance, Super Mario Bros., Battletoads, and a laundry list of now ostensibly 'classic' video games. I've been around a long enough time to have developed highly sophisticated tastes in what I watch, like to play, and additionally developed a good eye for detail and nuance in narrative ideas along the way. But Blizzard doesn't design games for me. I'm 30, too old for their demographic, am past the age where I would be a seri....wait, hold on a tic...
So in postulating this question it dawned on me to go look at the gamer demographics, and how they look in today's terms. I found something rather unsettling in looking at this data. Remember how I mentioned that Blizzard is designing and catering their games to teens? Well apparently, and any of us who are older have probably cued on to this already, but the average gamer demographics have drastically changed since Blizzard Entertainment was founded. According to TeamLiquid's own 2010-11 census, the average user age is around 21 with a major chunk between 17 and 26, but this does not show the bigger picture. In looking at studies from ESA the average age of gamers has shifted in a monumental way in the last 2 1/2 decades that I have been playing games. The average age for gamers today is around 33 years old, but perhaps more telling, is that more than %15-20 of the total gamers are over 50 years old now. There is certainly some wildly swinging data (in that only a few years ago the annual study showed the average age to be 37) but it still shows, and quite clearly, that by catering to teenagers companies are, or could be, ignoring the tastes of more than %75 of the total population of gamers.
That is frightening, and so disheartening on a personal note. I grew up with Blizzard. The first game I ever played of theirs was Warcraft 1, and I played Diablo 1-2, War2-3, and Star1 as soon as they came out. Now? Well I'm an adult now and I don't play games anymore because I have a job, and a real life that takes up so much of my time and...oh wait...
Now the biggest issue (that I would be remiss in not mentioning) in trying to reach an audience or target is trying to guess what they want, and especially with younger audiences it can be tricky. But I wanted to point out one last thing of interest. Browsing TeamLiquid.net you know that a lot of people are pretty enamored of HBO's Game of Thrones. The reason I bring this up is because the story elements in that show (and books) are rather mature and most definitely nuanced, and yet people love it. Clearly the 18 and older demographic likes their stories to have a measure of depth and for entertainment to not pull punches or placate their audiences, so I am left confused as to why this business operation was originally agreed upon, and I'm not sure that I can appropriately answer this question as there are too many unknowns here, at least in my current position.
...
In retrospect, looking at and playing through Swarm has been like riding the Tower of Terror, whereas my equilibrium has been violently thrown around in the hopes of confusing and arousing me. I appreciate the all the technical expertise that went into making this game, and I would be remiss not to mention that technically speaking Blizzard is still quite capable as a company, but suffice it to say that without a literary and story-centric expertise, Heart of the Swarm has done something that I had not thought was possible with my relationship with games; a slow but methodical psychological dissociation with a story (that I used to love) to the point where I no longer care. Kerrigan has flown away, and so to have my expectations of Blizzard's ability to write from this point onward.
Please remember that his has been a look into the single player portion of this game and I have not, nor will I ever write a Op Ed on multiplayer as I simply do not have the expertise to make the proper types of value judgments on balance decisions. I have my own feelings, but they are a far cry from a measured and objective analysis at this point. Also thanks to a few guys on TL for pointing out some story related things that I had initially missed.
I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Edit: so I noticed a number of people are still missing pieces of information regarding the original StarCraft manual, so I decided to post the section on the Zerg origins so there's easy access to it.
Zerg History: The Grand ExperimentTop Driven to perfect their science of proto-genetic evolution, the ancient, enigmatic race known as the Xel’Naga traveled to the distant fringeworld of Aiur. The vast jungles of Aiur had produced the most advanced race that the Xel’Naga had ever seen. Believing that they could steer the race’s evolution to the pinnacle of physical perfection, the Xel’Naga began to conduct their proto-genetic experiments. The race that the Xel’Naga would eventually name ‘Protoss’ advanced rapidly and gained what their creators termed ‘a distinct purity of form’.
Unfortunately, the Xel’Naga pushed their experiment too far. The inherent essence and sentience of the Protoss developed far too rapidly, leading to bitter strife and division between them and their creators. The Xel’Naga deemed that the purity of form they sought to create had been sullied by a conflict of essence and thus decreed that the Protoss were, in fact, a failed creation. The Xel’Naga abandoned their children and launched themselves into the void.
The Birth of the Zerg Travelling thousands of light years into the burning core of the galaxy, the Xel’Naga eventually settled upon the volatile ash-world of Zerus. The Xel’Naga planned to continue their Grand Experiment of evolution, only this time they dismissed their tenets of physical form and focused chiefly on the pursuit of a distinct purity of essence. Residing in their massive ships high above the fires of Zerus, the Xel’Naga began once again to challenge the wiles of fate.
The Xel’Naga were more successful with their second venture than they could have imagined. They laboured to advance the evolution of the most insignificant life form on Zerus, a race of miniature insectoids known as the Zerg. Through Xel’Naga protogenetic manipulations, the Zerg survived the torrential firestorms of their world and thrived. Although extremely small, wormlike, and possessing no ability to manipulate their physical surroundings, the Zerg adapted to survive. They developed the ability to burrow into the flesh of the less vulnerable species indigenous to Zerus. Feeding off the nutrients contained within the spinal fluids of their hosts, the Zerg learned to parasitically merge with their host creatures. Once they became capable of controlling the metabolic and anatomical processes of their hosts, the Zerg used their new bodies to manipulate their surroundings.
As the Zerg incorporated more and more host creatures into their fold, they began to assimilate their various genetic strains and processes. Zerg chemistry began to mutate and adapt according to the volume of new genetic material being processed. However, as diverse as the range of host creatures became, there was always the undeviating drive to consume only the most evolutionarily advanced species encountered. The Zerg were innately selective as to which species they consumed, ensuring that at every stage of their development they were at the top of the proverbial food chain. Any race that the Zerg came across that was deemedunworthy of assimilation was eradicated to further purify the strains.
The Xel’Naga soon made an alarming discovery. The original races assimilated by the Zerg were hardly recognisable after only a few generations of their inception. Somehow the Zerg had developed the ability to supercharge and steer the latent evolutionary processes within their host creatures. The host creatures fell prey to the effects of gradual physical mutations that caused all of the various strains to grow armour piercing spines, razor-sharp limbs, and ultra dense carapaces. Over a surprisingly short amount of time, the strains grew to resemble a terrifyingly ravenous and unified race.
Overmind The Xel’Naga, remembering all too well that their failure with the Protoss was a result of pushing the sentience of the fledgling species too quickly, decided to follow a different path with the burgeoning Zerg. Attempting to waylay the potential hazards of differing egos, the Xel’Naga structured the collective sentience of the Zerg into a unified, amalgamated ‘Overmind’. The Overmind coalesced into a semi-sentient being that represented the primary drives and instincts of all of the Zerg strains. As time passed, the Overmind developed the rudiments of personality and advanced intellect.
Although the Overmind directed the actions of every creature within the swarm, it did so through the use of secondary agents. The Overmind created a new strain of Zerg that could facilitate the communication of its whims. These Cerebrates were massive versions of the original Zerg insectoids and were engineered to process and carry out the various objectives of the Overmind. Each Cerebrate had a unique objective, such as ‘defend the Hive’, ‘scout for potential strains’, ‘produce more warriors’, or ‘eradicate all life forms’. The Cerebrates were then empowered to build their own Hive clusters and carry out their intended agendas. Over time they developed personalities that corresponded to their primary drives. However, the Cerebrates were still genetically incapable of ignoring or overriding the commands of the Overmind.
The Zerg chain of command lengthened as new races were incorporated into the swarm. Cerebrates began to use secondary agents to communicate their orders as well. For the defense and productivity of the immediate Hive, the Cerebrates turned to Queens to further extend their control over the swarms. The Queens oversaw Drone activity throughout the resource lines of the Hives and kept a vigilant watch over the budding spore colonies of the collective. In times of battle, Cerebrates called upon the Overlords to directly relay their commands to the myriad warriors of the swarm. Overlords not only transported Zerg warriors into the fray, but also directed their attacks against their enemies. Just as the Cerebrates followed the Overmind, the Queens and Overlords were incapable of disobeying the commands from their Cerebrates. This rigid system of command kept the swarms at peak, savage efficiency.
As the swarms continued to grow and strengthen, the Overmind turned its thoughts towards its own future. It realised that within a few short centuries its race had assimilated all of the indigenous life upon Zerus. It knew that to further evolve the swarm, the Zerg would need to leave Zerus. The Overmind began to reach out with its senses, looking for something - anything - which would provide them with transport from this world. That opportunity soon arrived. A race of gargantuan, space-faring life forms passed through the Zerus system, and the Overmind called to them. Drawn to the barren worldby this beacon, they were quickly assimilated by the swarm. The inclusion of super-dense hides and the ability to exist in a vacuum bolstered the genetic pool of the swarm. Soon the Zerg warriors were conditioned to survive the harshness of space.
This pivotal moment in the development of the Zerg was not lost to the Xel’Naga. The Zerg, despite having an extreme physical handicap, had succeeded in not only surviving, but in retaining the purity of their terrible overriding essence. The Xel’Naga knew that they had achieved their goal.
The Fall of the Xel'Naga The pride in their achievements proved to be the fatal downfall of the Xel’Naga. The Overmind, while slowly expanding itself into the void of space, became aware of the mighty Xel’Naga world-ships hovering ominously above the skies of Zerus. The Xel’Naga, having kept a constant watch on the Overmind, were horrified to find that it had actually severed their psychic link, effectively hiding itself from their view. With its need to consume driving its minions into a lustful frenzy, the Overmind launched the now space-faring Zerg swarms at the unsuspecting Xel’Naga. The ancient race did what they could to stem the tide of the ever advancing Zerg onslaught, but in the end their efforts were in vain. Wave after wave of Zerg swarms hammered the reinforced hulls of the Xel’Naga’s ships with no signs of abatement. Within only a few hours the Zerg overran the defenses of their creators and laid waste to the Xel’Naga fleet.
As the greater whole of the Xel’Naga race was consumed by the raging, genetic whirlwind of the Zerg, the Overmind gained the knowledge and insights of its masters. The Overmind processed thousands of sentient beings into itself, causing it to grow far more powerful than it had ever imagined. It learned the secrets of the sacred Khaydarin Crystals, and began to incorporate the energies of these Crystals into its own. Through the intimate knowledge of evolution and proto-genetic physiology gained from the Xel’Naga, the Overmind was able to increase the level of sentience in many of the higher Zerg strains, while still keeping them fully under its control.
Through dissecting the memories of the Xel’Naga, the Overmind was made aware of the myriad races that had at one time or another been influenced by the ancient race. The Xel’Naga had kept a detailed genetic history of each race, giving the Overmind a clear understanding of their respective strengths and weaknesses. Most importantly, the Overmind learned of an exceedingly powerful race that lived near the galaxy’s fringe known only as the Protoss. The Overmind knew then that the Protoss and the Zerg would eventually be caught in an inevitable, apocalyptic conflict.
The Determinant The Zerg left the lifeless, burning world of Zerus and laid waste to every planet they found along their path towards the Protoss Homeworld. As they progressed slowly through the trackless dark between the stars, the Zerg assimilated only the strongest of the races that they came across. The swarm continued to build steadily, ever-increasing in size and power. As they progressed, the Overmind sent out numerous deep-space probes that scouted ahead of the swarm, searching for new worlds to plunder.
Despite innumerable victories, the Overmind was greatly disturbed. The Overmind was aware that the Protoss had become a highly psionic race, able to bend and warp the very fabric of reality to their whims. It sought a way to counter the awesome might of the Protoss, but found no answers among the genetic strains it devoured.
On the verge of despair, the Overmind made an amazing discovery. One of its deep space probes had relayed the location and vital statistics of a race that occupied a series of nondescript worlds, right under the shadow of the Protoss.
The new race, called Humanity, was mere generations away from developing into a formidable psionic power. But the Overmind also knew that Humanity was still in its infant stages, hardly capable of defending itself against the ravenous Zerg. Although a shortlived and seemingly frail species, the Overmind knew that Humanity would be the final determinant in its victory over the Protoss. If it could assimilate the psionic potential of Humanity, the Overmind would have the ability to combat the Protoss on its own terms.
Thus, the Zerg swarms slowly made their way towards the burgeoning worlds of Humanity. The journey lasted for sixty years, but eventually the massive, extended Zerg Swarm reached the outskirts of the Terran Sector of Koprulu. Sending in a scouting Brood, the Overmind soon discovered that the Humans dwelt on over a dozen different worlds within the Sector. Seeding the atmosphere of the planet called Chau Sara with rudimentary Hive-spores, the Overmind began to unfold its master plan to enslave Humanity. The Hive-spores gradually drifted down to the surface of Chau Sara and saturated the ground with their denuding, alien toxins. Although the Human colonists had no idea that the Zerg had subtly infested the topsoil of their world, Zerg minions began to descend to the planet’s surface and construct their bizarre structures and Hive clusters. Once the infestation of the colony was well underway, the Overmind sent its voracious children to the other nearby worlds. Insidious and elusive in their tasks, the agents of the Overmind soon infested the colonial worlds of Chau Sara, Mar Sara, Brontes, and Dylar IV, unnoticed by the denizens of those colonies.
Yet, from out of the cold void of space, a mighty fleet of Protoss warships emerged to combat the Zerg invasionary forces. The Overmind, anxious to learn what it could about the enigmatic Protoss, decided to let them hamper the initial infestation process. Holding its ravenous warriors at bay, the Overmind watched as the Protoss razed the colony of Chau Sara. Apparently, the Protoss were aware that the Hive Spores had already despoiled the planet and seeking to prevent further infestation, incinerated the planet.
Such decisive action pleased the Overmind, who could only marvel at how the Protoss wrought absolute devastation with such grace and power. Knowing that the coming conflict would be the greatest challenge of its existence, the Overmind pulled its forces back to observe how the Protoss, and Humanity, would react next.
Nice overview of the matter. I agree with many points you made. Personally I have such low expectations for Blizzard story telling at this point that I just enjoyed the gameplay for the most part and ignored the rest (though you have a point with Blizzard making the boss encounters seem very similar to their other games). Sadly if it hadn't been for the multiplayer I wouldn't buy the expansion in a million years (as well as D3 and the upcoming expansions). Sad really that they have gone from a auto buy dev to this.
I respect the amount of effort you put in to create this post OP. You make a lot of good points but at the end of the day it was a lot of fun. It is like watching Rambo and complaining about lack of depth. It doesn't make sense to complain aobut the depth when the entire starcraft series has always been cheesy and corny.
Personally I'm sick of people telling me I'm not allowed to enjoy the storyline of Wol and Hots because it isn't "mature" enough. I enjoyed it, you didn't. Can't we just leave it at that?
Nice read, I like the fact that you have compared the current HOTS with the SC and BW storyline taking key reference points as well - am really disappointed at the story , the only reason I love SC so much was cause of the story and depth. Now it seemed just like an RPG aimed at new players with no substance. Can someone confirm the writing team has changed in Hots from WoL (not too bad) or from BW end itself? That would explain quite a bit. But really surprsing is how Bill roper/Chris Metzen etc who made this their baby let it just roll off course. Thank god for the multiplayer - most of my friends have not even bothered to finish the campaign..
Blizzard games have always been about multiplayer and competition.
Even Diablo which is a hack&slash had as much longevity as it had due to the ladder. Gameplay, good controls, fluid engine, these are the things Blizzard has always been good at. You can throw in the cinematics as well but that's done by a separate team anyway.
As far as your conclusion is concerned, I think what you said is true for basically any modern AAA game. The "big" games now are made for the masses, not the small circle of people that were into gaming.
Maybe Witcher is one of the few examples that this is not true, but CDR had the whole world done for them by Sapkowski, which is quite a big deal.
@vahgar, The lead writer is Brian Kindregan who worked on Mass Effect. Also for Disney, maybe that's why we're reminded of them ~_~ + Show Spoiler +
On March 20 2013 22:15 GizmoPT wrote: i loved the originals and i liked this one thats all :p i just dont think too much about it i just enjoy it
Same here. They are just very different ways of approaching the same story. And I like variety. It's like playing StarCraft on PC, on N64, and the Boardgame. Different experiences, that touch the lore from different angles too.
I´m not surprised with Blizzard taking safe routes in their storytelling, when costs, risks and competition in the gaming industry have increased so much since SC1. I actually find it surprising how many people believe that Blizzard is "just stupid" and could not do better. You can bet your ass that these scripts have gone through countless hands, drafts by professionals and with SC being a multi-million dollar operation they decided for an absolutely standard story like most game developers do. It´s safe.
Though Raynor pulling a gun in his prison cell was hilarious! :D
meh, I played through it twice now, i thoroughly enjoyed the campaign start to finish. (except for the ancient boss fight)
but still, some people will hate movies for weird shit and dismiss them right away calling them crap pointing out all the flaws etc.
I play these games without any peconceptions bias or anything and i thoroghly enjoyed it, i liked it better than WoL even.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
anyway, very neat writeup youve taken the time with it. i personallly really enjoyed it and dont really share your view on this.
I completely agree with you on the Raynor - Kerrigan relationship. They merely flirted in StarCraft Episode 1, and in Episode 2 Kerrigan graciously let Raynor escape Char instead of killing him. As for Broodwar, in Episode 6 they grudgingly worked together but Jim was distrusting of her the entire time. And once her betrayal was revealed, he promised twice to kill her. That's the full extent of their relationship in StarCraft and Broodwar
Heart of the Swarm is a complete success in my book. The launch went well, no connection problems etc. The campaign was fun to play and the multiplayer games are so much more fun to play and watch. This has been by far the best release of Blizzard since Warcraft III The Frozen Throne.
Just to preempt this point.... Just because something is for the masses doesn't mean it has to be bad. Look at the avengers. It's a pop corn flick done good. We're not asking for Shakespeare with hots. Just something decent
I don't know if this is because I agree with most of what you wrote, but to me that's the deepest review of the SC2 storyline I've ever read. I consider myself to be fairly good at explaining my feelings, but I would never have been able to express half of that in words. The part when you talk about the "story they want to tell", or each arc being an individual tale and not linked to the others, exactly matches my feeling.
So yeah, this was one hell of an interesting read, I hope people will put an eye on this.
On March 20 2013 22:51 Champloo wrote: What a whiny review this is.
Heart of the Swarm is a complete success in my book. The launch went well, no connection problems etc. The campaign was fun to play and the multiplayer games are so much more fun to play and watch. This has been by far the best release of Blizzard since Warcraft III The Frozen Throne.
This so pretty rude. You are entitled to disagree but you can do so wwith a little more respect for someone that just typed out a well thought out essay.
Loving this review of the contradictions in the storyline. I also believed that it was a bit...flawed....
1) Never had any idea of a love story throughout BW
2) The Zuran fight was poor. I *instantly* felt like I was doing the Belial boss fight. The RPG-ness was emphasised waaay too heavily. I bought SC2:HotS for a strategy game. Not a half-arsed singleplayer RPG. Where I spent most of the campaign using the hero units due to them making the game unbelievably easy. Brutal difficulty is supposed to be at least a slight km I wish they had made the campaign unit choices in a way similar to WoL, just with Zerg flavouring. Would have felt much nicer to me.
And then you just proved all those thoughts I was having.
It's not like their other BW's story was good. The same go for all of their games. I will hate HotS's story if the previous games of Blizzard have good story. HotS story is ok by Blizzard standard imo. You can write this kind of article to trash on any of their game's story lol. Oh and I don't know how but the feeling I get from your post is that your stance was to hate anything SC2 related in the first place.
Wow, you put a lot of effort into this. Not sure if the HotS campaign (multiplayer is probably a different matter) is worth it. It is clearly a rushed, lackluster product, especially when compared to WoL. The writing is just bad - any half awake half decent writer could have done the whole thing on a rainy sunday. It is short. The "evolution missions" are a joke, they are not missions, they are demonstrations that perhaps at some point in the past were meant to become missions. They are boring and annoying, the loading time is longer than the thing itself. The "actual" missions were neither challenging nor particularly creative. No comparison to WoL. The writing was bad in WoL too, but the RTS missions were brilliant, extremely varied and real challenges sometimes, and if you wanted more challenges, you could go for the "hard" achievements. Wol on brutal was a tough piece of work, HotS on brutal i played through half asleep with less than three attempts per mission, except that one that for some reason only consisted of a series of boss fights. I replayed three HotS missions to get achievements yesterday, but since the achievements only require normal mode, there was zero challenge, it was really boring. Why they would have four difficulty settings and call the top one "brutal" and still refuse to make it difficult is beyond me. The campaign is mildly entertaining at best.
Yeah, there was pretty much zero development of Jim and Kerrigans relationship... it felt awkward to me, and I still have trouble accepting that they're in love. I'm about halfway done through the campaign. Fortunately I care much more about the multiplayer (which hasnt really amazed me yet either, but we'll see) ...
On March 20 2013 22:51 Champloo wrote: What a whiny review this is.
Heart of the Swarm is a complete success in my book. The launch went well, no connection problems etc. The campaign was fun to play and the multiplayer games are so much more fun to play and watch. This has been by far the best release of Blizzard since Warcraft III The Frozen Throne.
You're not getting it.
Basically everyone would agree that the gameplay was great (although entirely too easy).
The problem is the story. By any objective critiquing standards, the writing is God-awful, and the OP puts this in one incredible and comprehensive post. This should be posted on the Battle.net forums.
While I can see that the OP cares a lot about this and is a thoughtful person, I can't help but feel like this is a sort of pretentious approach to video game evaluation. I hang out with a number of Cinephiles, and in the past, my favourite movies have been The Seventh Seal, The Big Lebowski, A Clockwork Orange... Movies that met with their unanimous approval. But now, when I say my favourite movie is Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, they make it sound as if I've conceded I higher-minded desire for art in exchange for pop-corn entertainment.
Obviously I do not feel this way. In my opinion, art can't be evaluated based on a cookie-cutter guide to what makes a good story, because you never know what you are going to find striking or what is going to make you feel something. (Vis a vis, Taxi Driver could not have been written by following the consensus on art and character motivation, but change one minute of it and you'll be up to yr ears in angry letters.$
And Heart of the Swarm was enjoyable and moved me. I shall admit that most of the poetry from this game for me comes from the multiplayer, like a well played game of chess or a rivalry in hockey. But the campaign presented many things I enjoyed as well, and they mostly related to gameplay.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
Absolutely amazing read and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Before SC2 was released, I was looking forward to the single player campaign as much as the multiplayer because I had really enjoyed the storylines of their previous games, SC:BW and Warcraft III, and I was sure that at least the story-telling aspect of SC2 would definitely live up to my expectations. God was I disappointed. It was easily the worst part of an otherwise great game. Then Diablo III came out, and its writing and story-telling was even worse than SC2. So I never expected anything from HoTS in that department, and in my opinion it turned out to be a bit better that Diablo III and WoL, but still I absolutely hate the way they disregarded everything that was established about the world of Starcraft that they themselves created, and went with a story that could be written by a six-year old. "You will never defeat me!!!"
I will agree with you that the HotS storyline has many problems. Your review was well made and quite well written (but a bit smug sometimes).
However, what I don't necessarily agree with is that the Starcraft 1/BW story was so much better. Maybe, because of the technology back then, it wasn't possible to tell a story in a Hollywoodish fashion so it was easier for Blizzard to not fall into the same narrative traps. I do feel though that many see the original's story with rose-tinted glassed (I would make a comparison to Star Wars here: yes the new ones were not particularly good, but the old ones are put on a pedestal they don't truly deserve, and come on Star Trek is just better anyway).
Here I want to say something that is not specifically addressed at you and is more of a general comment/rant. People look at the form and judge the quality of the content based on it so much! A good example of it is with art/auteur movies. Yes in average they have a more thought-out narrative than the usual Michael Bay movie, but these movies have such a distinct look and feel that many people will think that a certain movie is supposed to be good just because it looks artsy or auteur-y. I study musical composition for orchestra at the university and you get to see so many pseudo-contemporary stuff that sounds like it's intellectually thought-out and special but really it's actually quite easy to get a piece to sound like Boulez and the rest. You tell these people to write a simple four-voice choral and it sounds like shit. Don't get me started on the electro-minimalism stuff, it's even worse, seriously people are you actually listening to.... hum well I think I'll just end my rant here before I get too far away from my initial point.
Another problem I have is that RTS were never a really good medium for narration. Sure, there are some example of passable storytelling (the first Starcraft is an example I guess) but really how many RTS you remember for the story? Personally I remember my RTS for multiplayer and level design for the single player, and I think Blizzard did a brilliant job on these front. The thing with RTS is that gameplay and narration get so much in the way of each other that you have to often find strange reasons to justify the missions, and then the story usually is either awkwardly told during the mission, or in between missions, and then you end up with a disjointed story arc that only make sense if you played the game when you were young (and then nostalgia gets you and you're unable to judge the story on its own merit). If you want a narration comparable to movie, I would say only first/third-person games can do it (most don't), and RPGs (and even then RPG gameplay gets in the way of narration quite often). I would say that I prefer sometimes the games that don't try to be a movie and convey an atmosphere, suggest feelings, rather that spell out a story. Games like Closure, Limbo, Faster Than Light (holy shit this game is brilliant), Amnesia, Mario, Minecraft, etc.
Do appreciate the effort in writing the review. The love story really irritated me. The first few missions in general kinda annoyed me. I wanted Kerrigan to bust out and overrun everyone with zerglings on the first mission. Irked me when she ordered them back to their cells. While I do understand the storyline problems and consistency, I did enjoy the idea of the primal zerg. The repeated boss fights were a little bit annoying.
Also, Brutal was a cakewalk :p, had the chance to go over 2 bases on ONE mission. Two mechanics that bothered me were the fact that almost every mission had some kind of timed element to it, and many had boss fights. Come on, RTS hello?
Overall I really enjoyed it though aside from those few glaring complaints. I would actually love it if in future a few really creative campaign makers came together and rewrote the story to still follow a general layout of the same plot but closed all the plot holes, made the whole thing a little more consistent and definitely more challenging.
I really wish they did more with the evolution missions, I thought they were really neat because of the mechanics, but virtually impossible to lose. There was a mission in BW you needed to kill Rhinadons to collect their genetic material for some purpose which was actually possible to lose. They should have been more like that.
An awesome read! To be honest though, I don't think Blizzard titles deserves this kind of afterthought, because to me it's pretty obvious that they themselves don't really give a shit about telling a good story. Basically HOTS is not worthy of this review
Like someone else wrote before me in this thread. The evolution missions were kinda pathetic. waste of time imo would rather see a proper mission for it. great read though. thanks alot
I think the notion that Blizzard caters their story telling to 12 year olds is correct. We are not their audience, Blizzard has ran their numbers and they discovered that they can make more money by targeting a younger, casual demographic.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Fortunately, Blizzard ain't going anywhere - so they *will* answer, sooner or later. I expect a lengthy Blizzcon session with many "glaring mistakes" being thoroughly clarified. If not even sooner - since Blizz lately is responding very quickly to community questions, at least when it comes to multiplayer. So, enjoy your time "dismantling" HotS campaign, cuz you're on a clock.
I haven't read this yet as I still haven't played through the campaign (will this weekend) and don't want to spoil it, but props for the title, had a good laugh!
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
The answer is: you don't need to care. When you pick up the DS/Wii Remote/controller/whatever, you are the guy in the green tunic and you have to save the world. What happened in the game's past does not matter any more.
And if you respond that well, that's not a very good story, no it isn't. But Legend of Zelda was never really about the story.
Now onto Starcraft.
The Heart of the Swarm story was kinda cheesy. Specifically, it was not really the dialogue (I've seen worse blockbuster movies), but how linear the story was. You are Kerrigan, you go grab your underlings and restore your power, and then you pwn whatever is between you and Mengsk. For me it wasn't obnoxious to the level that other people have said, like you have to rant about it all day on TL.net.
The story is not the most relevant part of the campaign to me though. I don't play campaign for the story; if I did I would go watch a movie or read a book. I play campaign to have fun, build stuff, kill stuff, and get that "Heart of the Swarm Campaign completed: Brutal". And it does a really good job of being fun to play, so I'm satisfied.
On March 20 2013 22:51 Champloo wrote: What a whiny review this is.
Heart of the Swarm is a complete success in my book. The launch went well, no connection problems etc. The campaign was fun to play and the multiplayer games are so much more fun to play and watch. This has been by far the best release of Blizzard since Warcraft III The Frozen Throne.
You're not getting it.
Basically everyone would agree that the gameplay was great (although entirely too easy).
The problem is the story. By any objective critiquing standards, the writing is God-awful, and the OP puts this in one incredible and comprehensive post. This should be posted on the Battle.net forums.
Yea, I am not really commenting on the gameplay of the campaign at all here, save for the one little spot where I do.
While I can see that the OP cares a lot about this and is a thoughtful person, I can't help but feel like this is a sort of pretentious approach to video game evaluation. I hang out with a number of Cinephiles, and in the past, my favourite movies have been The Seventh Seal, The Big Lebowski, A Clockwork Orange... Movies that met with their unanimous approval. But now, when I say my favourite movie is Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, they make it sound as if I've conceded I higher-minded desire for art in exchange for pop-corn entertainment.
Obviously I do not feel this way. In my opinion, art can't be evaluated based on a cookie-cutter guide to what makes a good story, because you never know what you are going to find striking or what is going to make you feel something. (Vis a vis, Taxi Driver could not have been written by following the consensus on art and character motivation, but change one minute of it and you'll be up to yr ears in angry letters.$
And Heart of the Swarm was enjoyable and moved me. I shall admit that most of the poetry from this game for me comes from the multiplayer, like a well played game of chess or a rivalry in hockey. But the campaign presented many things I enjoyed as well, and they mostly related to gameplay.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
Yea I can understand that this is a pretty in-depth look at things, but part of this issue is around the suspension of disbelief, but the bigger part is ignoring the previously established narrative in Brood War (which did start off a little more casual, but quickly developed into something much more serious).
The more problems that you have in a product, the less the product can suspend your disbelief and draw you in to its narrative. For example, I really liked Mass Effect quite a bit (1 especially), but there are still a lot of little things that, if looked at in an objective fashion, are inconsistent or odd. These could be a potential issue for some people, but because the writing is really stellar in many places it allows you a measure of leniency in looking at the piece positively. Another really good example is in the episode The Next Phase in Star Trek The Next Generation. If Geordi and Ro are phased, shouldn't they just pass through the Enterprise floor and float out into space? Well, yea. But that didn't matter because the story and what it explored was incredibly compelling and allowed you to ignore that oddity.
Also, popcorn entertainment has its place, and i'm not saying this is bad in any way. In fact I like the differences between high art and ostensibly mainstream or popular genres (you might be shocked at how varied my musical tastes are). But the thing you have to remember is, these popular genres aren't trying to be anything except what they are, so they end up being fine and enjoyable. An example that I really like is the movie The Fifth Element, and its precisely because that movie doesn't take itself too seriously that its a great flick.
On March 20 2013 23:54 Grumbels wrote: I think the notion that Blizzard caters their story telling to 12 year olds is correct. We are not their audience, Blizzard has ran their numbers and they discovered that they can make more money by targeting a younger, casual demographic.
The biggest thing to take note on ^^ is that. It colors the entire review in a very important way.
Having played the sc1 campaigns like 10 times, i especially agree with the pointed out inconsistencies between sc1 (both vanilla and bw) and wol. I haven't completely played through the campaign of hots yet, but for me, the story ends with bw. Maybe i'm partly nostalgic, but i liked the sc1 story way more, in terms of plot, dialogue and overall sentiment. It felt way more serious and mature (i hope i don't offend anyone with this, don't mean to, at least).
For example, in sc1, there is a mission (the one you encounter reavers and can make guardians for the first time) where you have to destroy a small protoss force and then let kerrigan 'duel' with tassadar. It was all a trap in order to kill the cerebrate szasz (don't remember how you write it), tassadar was an illusion. Tassadar learned her a lesson by the words (roughly): 'So long as you continue to be so predictable, I need not face you at all. You are your own worst enemy'. This gives pause to the swarm for some time. In bw, when kerrigan kills fenix, she says something along the lines 'you protoss are all so headstrong and predictable, you are your own worst enemy.' Fenix: 'That's ironic, i remember tassadar teaching you a very similar lesson on char'. Kerrigan: 'Yes, and ik took that lesson to heart'
Okay, now, why do i like this? First the vanilla mission: this makes perfectly clear how the starcraft world 'works'. There is the zerg, with kerrigan as their new agent. Very ambitious, she makes mistakes in her aggressive stance. The consequences are immediately made clear by tassadar, a protoss hero. The protoss are the 'higher' race, with a lot of history and wisdom, as is made clear by tassadar's words on protoss strategy. The pride of protoss warriors enables them to sacrifice a large group of warriors to enable the destruction of a cerebrate. These few sentences provide a large pool of information, even when they're only words on the current situation. Then going on to the bw part. This makes clear that kerrigan is now more experienced. First she lays a trap (work together with fenix, not mentioned above), and then kills fenix. The irony pointed out by fenix however is twofold. It's ironic that kerrigan uses similar words to how tassadar spoke to her. It's even more ironic that it is a protoss suffering from this weakness (being predictable). This is an excellent example of an interesting development. Kerrigan has grown into a killing machine, much more cunning than she was in vanilla, while the protoss have dulled, the aura of their superiority has lessened, up to the point where they do remember their wisdom, but don't have the strength to realise it. Again, this becomes clear by just a few sentences. I'd almost call on the cliche 'less is more'.
I have to say, this is how i experienced it, there may be incorrect things in what i wrote as i played the campaign, but never did anything else regarding to lore.
I haven't yet seen anything similar to this in sc2. Maybe the last expansion will change this. More things i liked in sc1 were for example the opening of the first zerg campaign (obviously) and the first 4 missions of the first protoss campaign; all these missions are great in defining the mindset of the races, imo.
I'm going to approach this game the same way I did WoL
Different writers, different people making the game, and so long as they keep the SC2 Lore consistent within its trilogy I can deal with it. I play the game for the multiplayer anyway and just happen to enjoy the campaign (and its achievements )
I'm just pissed I waited 12 years to find out what happens after BW, and I get...this. Admittedly the original story wasn't a masterpiece, but it struck the right tone, but it was competently told, and I honestly felt bad for Raynor and Zeratul and outrage towards Kerrigan. It was a good backdrop for multiplayer.
The SC2 story evokes the same disgust you get from watching those half-assed Disney direct-to-video sequels. So blatantly cheesy, cliched, and inferior that it mars the original achievement and ruins the artistry of the whole story.
Well written but I personally have very little expectations from Blizzard when it comes to story. Due to that I had fun blasting through the campaign once and moved on with my life after that. However I can understand why BW story enthustiastics would be upset with some of the things going on in the story.
My friend that played through the campaign before me called the story "shounen", in Japan thats what they call anime/manga that are aimed towards boys, not men (DBZ, Naruto etc).
Video games in general just aren't there yet when it comes to storytelling, sure theres some exceptions but these games either have no multiplayer or have very poor multiplayer, all the development effort goes into the short single-player experience.
This did not seem like Kerrigans style as it wasn't very clean or precise or more, but more than that, it removes us from the scene and denies us as the audience the satisfaction of witnessing his death. Sure we witnessed it with the destruction of his office, but by doing it this way Blizzard removed a palpable and visceral level of impact from this scene that, if especially when colored by Kerrigans and the stories overall narrative ideas of revenge, is needed in subtly influencing that narrate. This is why Mengsk's teeth are shown just before his final moments, as it's a subtle reference to the more primal and violent nature of human beings, and also reminds us on a more instinctual level of a predator trying to attack its prey
... pure gold here...
But (as many that have posted here) I have really enjoyed HotS, regardless of these issues.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
I agree that the story overall sucks, atleast compared to bw. I dont necessarily agree with all the instances you brought up however. I thought that the 'tal darim are sudden bad guys' was pretty dumb. The love story was pretty stupid as well, and probably only enjoyable if you are a child of have the mind of one. But what pissed me off the most was that they killed off Duran just like that. He was by far the coolest character. Goddamnit.
On March 20 2013 22:55 Big-t wrote: WTF are you really telling me that you did not enjoyed the hots campaign? You should take a break from gaming dude...
You can still enjoy the campaign, but agree that the story telling was pretty shitty. I also think your post is pretty offensive (and so are some of the other posts here) to someone who just put so much effort in writing about the flaws of the games blizzard are making at the moment. I obviously commend blizzard for the things they do right, but I think that it's unforgivable that a company of their level is making us cringe at the sight of their cinematics / story. I personally didnt mind the bossfights (even tho I fully agree D3 was a complete failure), and I still liked sending swarms of units at my opponents. But there are some elements that were just really really bad. All we can look towards now is the multiplayer, because people are willing to forget the flaws mentioned if blizzard could manage to complete a good competitive and spectator-friendly rts.
I think I fully played through SC1 and BW, but it was so long ago I don't really remember. I also sucked so much at the game many of missions were hard, and my friends wanted me to play some BGH vs the AI.
Even still, I didn't like the fact that Raynor falls madly in love with Sarah. They don't have a great relationship from what I remember in SC1, and the reason he saved her at the end of WOL, in my eyes, was because she was the only one who could save the universe.
He apparently forgets all that, including his mission to bring down Mensk and end his tyranny, and wants to run away with Sarah so they can be together. He sounds like a dumb teenager. Very immature.
And this is especially ironic to me, because Ariel Hanson offers him a chance to live on Haven with her. Raynor brushes it off, saying that he can't have that life, and that has other important things to do (stop Kerrigan and bring down Mensk). Apparently that tentacle hair is what convinced him to settle down. Very unrealistic.
Other than the love story, I enjoyed the rest of HOTS, not as much as WOL, HOTS doesn't feel as polished and feels rushed, but it was fun. That said, I don't remember much of Stukov from BW, but I'm sure it would bother me if it happened as you described. And I think you didn't drive home the part about the Zerg on the Zerus enough. The SC manual makes it seem like the Overmind took control (or killed) everything on Zerus. Thus the idea of primal Zerg being the planet after the Overmind took over is essentially impossible. While you hint strongly at it, you don't come out and say it outright.
Great read though. Too bad Blizzard doesn't put the effort into their lore as you did to this piece.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
Mad props for this shot at a comprehensive story analysis. Solid critique.
I think of Blizzard like a certain famous coffee chain, if you follow my analogy:
In the beginning, a company produced a solid cup of coffee that everybody loved. It was popular and successful. However, as time went on, for the sake of business, profits, greed, etc. the quality decreased and with the passage of time the product lost its original soul. It is no longer the golden liquid that we savored as children, but a bastardized broth.
Having said that, if I choose to lower calibrate my expectations (or never tried the coffee until recently), I can go buy and enjoy this dumbed down fast food product. I just have to pretend that the past didn't happen.
The post is really good in showing the story is messed up, but sadly it won't get any better. Heart of the Swarm was a pretty big succes overall, and the only way to punish the storyline mistakes would be a massive drop in sales. Blizzard, like basically all the big film companies, put a really thick layer of exciting features to hide everything else, and most people won't notice.
I guess in order to make a 3 part game you have to stretch the story quite a lot, so at least they have a decent excuse.
That is a lot of Text, great work. I read it all and I agree with many Points. but more interesting than the lore dissecting you have done was this entire part.
So in postulating this question it dawned on me to go look at the gamer demographics, and how they look in today's terms. I found something rather unsettling in looking at this data. Remember how I mentioned that Blizzard is designing and catering their games to teens? Well apparently, and any of us who are older have probably cued on to this already, but the average gamer demographics have drastically changed since Blizzard Entertainment was founded. According to TeamLiquid's own 2010-11 census, the average user age is around 21 with a major chunk between 17 and 26, but this does not show the bigger picture. In looking at studies from ESA the average age of gamers has shifted in a monumental way in the last 2 1/2 decades that I have been playing games. The average age for gamers today is around 33 years old, but perhaps more telling, is that more than %15-20 of the total gamers are over 50 years old now. There is certainly some wildly swinging data (in that only a few years ago the annual study showed the average age to be 37) but it still shows, and quite clearly, that by catering to teenagers companies are, or could be, ignoring the tastes of more than %75 of the total population of gamers.
As I am on of these 30+ in age gamers I acknowledged that game franchises do not grow as we age along them, rather each new Iteration or follow up part of a game grows back to be designed for the current generation hence many problems.
But I am not sure what could be ultimately done about that in the end it is a business.
Heart of the swarm came out, and i was really not interested. I stopped playing a year ago, starcraft 2 had come to a stale form of a game, and i started playing more fun games at the time (not LoL jesus christ). When the cutscenes were online on youtube, i saw them instantly, and i was mad. I could not even begin to understand the lack of information, cohesive storyline that was shown to me, not mentioning the leaked ending. Despite my reaction i bought the game 1 day after thinking. And after i ended the campaign on brutal, it made me a believer, but not totally. I think this story can only be evaluated after the third expansion, because of the missing links, and plot holes that exist, but if we think wol's plotholes and how they got fixed in HOTS, i do like the prospect of Legacy of the Void, of fixing the game, being the last chapter and answering the rest of the questions left unanswered. BW into Wol inconsistencies are very opinion based, i agree with some, i disagree others.
I do have to agree on blizzard's tendency of introducing characters/making moments too quickly or too abruptly. It is a bad practice on storytelling: it doesnt mean the story is bad, its the presentation that suffers.
Interesting critique on Blizzard. Not that I agree much with it, but it left stuff to think about. It definitely wouldn't hurt if Blizzard would read it. A few points that might improve their story telling, if they take it to heart.
But I rather prefer the old way of their story telling. Only Filling stuff between the Missions and you being the silent commander. Not Jimmy who's destiny is to be betrayed by everyone. Sure the story won't have depth that way, but the Story should aid the game not carry it. Atleast if it is a RTS.
It seems most people jump on a train though with a cool looking direction. Many complaints are rather strange. For example everyone that played BW and commented how it is strange that Jim Raynor would save Kerrigan and not kill her. They seem to have forgotten that Raynor also worked together with Mengsk and he had way more reasons to simply kill Mengsk right there when they met. Sure Kerrigan killed his friend, but Mengsk did something far worse to his love. And I doubt that Jimmy would go to Char just to save a flirt. Just like a flirt that turned Zerg wouldn't let someone go that invaded her new home planet.
But all the Blizzard hate and love aside. It is really sad that they tried to rush out Sc2 and changed their production direction a few times. But I am rather impressed how they try to save it. Everyone else would have started to work on Sc3 to fix the problems gain more money and make people forget fast.
I really can't be the only one who finds every single story Blizzard ever came up with incredibly predictable and clichéd? Diablo's story is just an excuse to kill an infinite amount of monsters (let's be honest here, the story is just ridiculous), Warcraft is a collection of fantasy clichés and starcraft's story is a combination of sci-fi stuff from the 80ies. I mean, we're talking video games here, not art movies or literature. The best story ever told in a video game was Bioshock, and even that story pales in comparison with a good book.
Video games are mainly about the gameplay. I went into WoL and HOTS expecting a good RTS game with a clichéd and cheesy story, and that is exactly what I got.
On March 21 2013 01:00 maartendq wrote: I really can't be the only one who finds every single story Blizzard ever came up with incredibly predictable and clichéd? Diablo's story is just an excuse to kill an infinite amount of monsters (let's be honest here, the story is just ridiculous), Warcraft is a collection of fantasy clichés and starcraft's story is a combination of sci-fi stuff from the 80ies. I mean, we're talking video games here, not art movies or literature. The best story ever told in a video game was Bioshock, and even that story pales in comparison with a good book.
Video games are mainly about the gameplay. I went into WoL and HOTS expecting a good RTS game with a clichéd and cheesy story, and that is exactly what I got.
Thats a really well thought-out, and well written, review there wo1fwood.
I dont *agree* with pretty much any of it, and I definitely agree with some of the other folks who think you come across smug/with an axe to grind against blizzard/sc2.
Pretty much the only thing I agree with you on is the love story feeling forced/dumb. I've read the books, and ok, they try to fit it in there leading up to HoTS so you are prepared for it... but meh. They could've just done without it. I actually maintain that Raynor's motivations make more sense without it. He's trying to restore her because what Mengsk did was *unjust* or wrong or whatever and that goes against his "do what's right" mentality - though it does still go against what he'd said previously about hunting her down. So there's a bit of a problem there. The love story was their attempt at fixing that. Sure, he SAID he'd hunt her down, but he loves her, so he couldnt do it and had to save her instead. I guess its OK. I can look past it.
Aside from that, I didnt have any major problems with the storytelling, or the story itself. Loved every minute of it.
On March 21 2013 01:14 FilthyRake wrote: Thats a really well thought-out, and well written, review there wo1fwood.
I dont *agree* with pretty much any of it, and I definitely agree with some of the other folks who think you come across smug/with an axe to grind against blizzard/sc2...
I understand how you can enjoy the story except for the love piece, because I enjoyed it.
But how can you not agree with his conclusions? Logically, you have to.
The SC1 manual states that the Overmind took control or kill everything on Zerus. But then we have the primal Zerg in HOTS? How can that be? It is in fact, impossible as those are mutually exclusive.
Either the Overmind didn't take control or kill everything on Zerus (and in fact left at least some of the planet intact before leaving) and the primal Zerg existed alongside the Overmind or the primal Zerg were killed off or assimilated into the Swarm. Both things could not have happened, yet according to Blizzard they did!
You can't just create a piece of the story, conveniently forget it completely, and then remake the story around another plot. It would be like Blizzard creating the character Jim Raynor in BW as they did, but then in WOL saying that he was a farmer from Agria who was mad the dominion left him when the Zerg came, and decided to create an outfit called Raynor's raiders and start the story from there.
I laugh so hard with the Duran/Narud cinematic fight. Somebody need to add dragon balll Z sound to this cinematic: Kerrigan power explosion like a super sayen and a wonderful kamehameha by Duran/Narud. Oh and Zeratul win the award of "useless character for fan service".
The story is not really good, that's true. They had the opportunity to do so many good things and they just made a Hollywood scenario where you can't be surprise. Btw, it seems that the end of the story will be like War3 with the bad guys and the good guys becoming the best friends to kick the ass of a big-mega monster/xel'naga who wants to destroy the universe (because he don't have television and want to have some fun).
>This is why Mengsk's teeth are shown just before his final moments, as it's a subtle reference to the more primal and violent nature of human beings
Liked that line. Very good (and long) write-up. However, I disliked how you sometimes used other games to get your point across like you did with mass effect. While you can expect most people to have watched star wars you can't assume everyone will be able to follow you when you talk about any other games. One example of another game with a detailed explanation as to how it's similar would have been better for getting your point across in my opinion, but that only made up a small portion of your post anyway.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I played the bw campaign a couple of times and have it still pretty well memorized, but I forgot almost everything from WoL and I felt like the summary blizzard gave us during the installment of the game was severely lacking and the entire story and reasoning was completely confusing. For the most part I had actually no idea what was going on or why we are doing the things we're currently doing.
And the whole love story was just cringeworthy and out of place. I hope you get paid for this.
While you raise some good points on the story of SC2, your overall attitude doesn't do you any good. We get that you have high standards without writing 6 paragraphs about it.
And maybe the character development in SC1 was better more consistent, but you are also willingly ignoring the worse parts of Starcraft1. Take for example the last two missions from the invasion of Aiur: You have to collect a crystal from a sacred crystal formation and bring it to the temple where the the Xel'Naga first set foot on Aiur. Because only there the Overmind can manifest. And of course the Overmind would give up the relative safety of Char to relocate onto Aiur, the stronghold of the enemy.
This is fucked up in so many ways I really doubt your high standards.
And don't get me started on the whole Brood War Protoss campaign which is a giant quest to gather two crystals to activate an ancient Xel'Naga Temple (Do you see the pattern?!).
You just nitpick the better parts - SC1 Terran and BW Zerg and ignore all the mess that the rest of the campaign is.
The story is bad, big whoop, the gameplay was really fun and of course the mutiplayer is the real deal, if you want a good story read a book or play a RPG.
On March 21 2013 01:14 Plexa wrote: This is really well written! Spotlighted it.
Wow. I, uh. I honestly did not expect this, especially because of some of the somewhat controversial or difficult topics discussed here. ♥'s TL!
On March 21 2013 01:27 decaf wrote: >This is why Mengsk's teeth are shown just before his final moments, as it's a subtle reference to the more primal and violent nature of human beings
Liked that line. Very good (and long) write-up. However, I disliked how you sometimes used other games to get your point across like you did with mass effect. While you can expect most people to have watched star wars you can't assume everyone will be able to follow you when you talk about any other games. One example of another game with a detailed explanation as to how it's similar would have been better for getting your point across in my opinion, but that only made up a small portion of your post anyway.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I played the bw campaign a couple of times and have it still pretty well memorized, but I forgot almost everything from WoL and I felt like the summary blizzard gave us during the installment of the game was severely lacking and the entire story and reasoning was completely confusing. For the most part I had actually no idea what was going on or why we are doing the things we're currently doing.
And the whole love story was just cringeworthy and out of place. I hope you get paid for this.
I actually got a few responses from friends along those lines as well. I suppose it's hard for me not to as I've been playing games for so long, but it is definitely an important thing to consider (and maybe requires small excursions to help those who don't or haven't experienced these things).
On March 21 2013 01:19 BronzeKnee wrote: I understand how you can enjoy the story except for the love piece, because I enjoyed it.
But how can you not agree with his conclusions? Logically, you have to.
The SC2 manual states that the Overmind took control or kill everything on Zerus. But then we have the primal Zerg in HOTS? How can that be? It is in fact, impossible as those are mutually exclusive.
Either the Overmind didn't take control or kill everything on Zerus (and in fact left at least some of the planet intact before leaving) and the primal Zerg existed alongside the Overmind or the primal Zerg were killed off or assimilated into the Swarm. Both things could not have happened, yet according to Blizzard they did!
You can't just create a piece of the story, conveniently forget it completely, and then remake the story around another plot. It would be like Blizzard creating the character Jim Raynor in BW as they did, but then in WOL saying that he was a farmer from Agria who was mad the dominion left him when the Zerg came, and decided to create an outfit called Raynor's raiders and start the story from there.
So what do you not agree with?
I dont have it in front of me, but was this the WoL manual or the HoTS manual? If it was the WoL manual, then it is easily explained as being *wrong*. Not non-cannon, or anything. Just treat it as information from the game universe, as it is known at that time IN the game universe. It was believed, even within the swarm, that that was what happened. So thats how information is presented. Zeratul discovers that it was not the reality of the situation, corrects Kerrigan, and reveals the truth, that the overmind failed to control/kill everything on Zerus (the specifics of how/why are completely unimportant).
If it was the HoTS manual, well, really my biggest gripe is treating the game manuals for SC2 as any part of legitimate story/cannon. As far as I'm concerned, only in-game or in-book (not game manual) counts as real/official info.
Give this man a star! And yeah, blizzard hire him!
A systematic and thorough analysis. Just...wow. A lot of people taking about the many issues with the campaign but this is far and away the most amazing :O
On March 21 2013 01:19 BronzeKnee wrote: I understand how you can enjoy the story except for the love piece, because I enjoyed it.
But how can you not agree with his conclusions? Logically, you have to.
The SC2 manual states that the Overmind took control or kill everything on Zerus. But then we have the primal Zerg in HOTS? How can that be? It is in fact, impossible as those are mutually exclusive.
Either the Overmind didn't take control or kill everything on Zerus (and in fact left at least some of the planet intact before leaving) and the primal Zerg existed alongside the Overmind or the primal Zerg were killed off or assimilated into the Swarm. Both things could not have happened, yet according to Blizzard they did!
You can't just create a piece of the story, conveniently forget it completely, and then remake the story around another plot. It would be like Blizzard creating the character Jim Raynor in BW as they did, but then in WOL saying that he was a farmer from Agria who was mad the dominion left him when the Zerg came, and decided to create an outfit called Raynor's raiders and start the story from there.
So what do you not agree with?
I dont have it in front of me, but was this the WoL manual or the HoTS manual? If it was the WoL manual, then it is easily explained as being *wrong*. Not non-cannon, or anything. Just treat it as information from the game universe, as it is known at that time IN the game universe. It was believed, even within the swarm, that that was what happened. So thats how information is presented. Zeratul discovers that it was not the reality of the situation, corrects Kerrigan, and reveals the truth, that the overmind failed to control/kill everything on Zerus (the specifics of how/why are completely unimportant).
If it was the HoTS manual, well, really my biggest gripe is treating the game manuals for SC2 as any part of legitimate story/cannon. As far as I'm concerned, only in-game or in-book (not game manual) counts as real/official info.
As far as the manuals not being legitimate story answer these four questions: You'd be okay if I told you a story, then had you play a game based on the story, except the game has nothing to do with the story and completely contradicts it?
Why would I bother telling you the story? Why did Blizzard even include stories in the manuals then? Why fill in blanks with misinformation, instead of just leaving it blank?
If Blizzard hadn't written that in the SC1 manual, everything would have been fine. They shot themselves in the foot and hoped you wouldn't noticed when they wrote that, then decided it didn't fit their plot and changed it.
On March 21 2013 01:38 Aerisky wrote: Give this man a star! And yeah, blizzard hire him!
A systematic and thorough analysis. Just...wow. A lot of people taking about the many issues with the campaign but this is far and away the most amazing :O
Blizzard might read it but hiring? no way. Criticizing a script/story is waay easier then actually making one.
On March 21 2013 01:19 BronzeKnee wrote: I understand how you can enjoy the story except for the love piece, because I enjoyed it.
But how can you not agree with his conclusions? Logically, you have to.
The SC2 manual states that the Overmind took control or kill everything on Zerus. But then we have the primal Zerg in HOTS? How can that be? It is in fact, impossible as those are mutually exclusive.
Either the Overmind didn't take control or kill everything on Zerus (and in fact left at least some of the planet intact before leaving) and the primal Zerg existed alongside the Overmind or the primal Zerg were killed off or assimilated into the Swarm. Both things could not have happened, yet according to Blizzard they did!
You can't just create a piece of the story, conveniently forget it completely, and then remake the story around another plot. It would be like Blizzard creating the character Jim Raynor in BW as they did, but then in WOL saying that he was a farmer from Agria who was mad the dominion left him when the Zerg came, and decided to create an outfit called Raynor's raiders and start the story from there.
So what do you not agree with?
I dont have it in front of me, but was this the WoL manual or the HoTS manual? If it was the WoL manual, then it is easily explained as being *wrong*. Not non-cannon, or anything. Just treat it as information from the game universe, as it is known at that time IN the game universe. It was believed, even within the swarm, that that was what happened. So thats how information is presented. Zeratul discovers that it was not the reality of the situation, corrects Kerrigan, and reveals the truth, that the overmind failed to control/kill everything on Zerus (the specifics of how/why are completely unimportant).
If it was the HoTS manual, well, really my biggest gripe is treating the game manuals for SC2 as any part of legitimate story/cannon. As far as I'm concerned, only in-game or in-book (not game manual) counts as real/official info.
I think he mis-spoke there. This information that he cites comes directly from the original Star 1 manual, so it predates everything else.
On March 21 2013 01:38 Aerisky wrote: Give this man a star! And yeah, blizzard hire him!
A systematic and thorough analysis. Just...wow. A lot of people taking about the many issues with the campaign but this is far and away the most amazing :O
Blizzard might read it but hiring? no way. Criticizing a script/story is waay easier then actually making one.
They go hand in hand actually.
If you can criticize work well, then you can create good work, because you can criticize your own work when isn't good and work on it until it is good. Being able to critique work is part of being able to produce good work.
On March 21 2013 01:19 BronzeKnee wrote: I understand how you can enjoy the story except for the love piece, because I enjoyed it.
But how can you not agree with his conclusions? Logically, you have to.
The SC2 manual states that the Overmind took control or kill everything on Zerus. But then we have the primal Zerg in HOTS? How can that be? It is in fact, impossible as those are mutually exclusive.
Either the Overmind didn't take control or kill everything on Zerus (and in fact left at least some of the planet intact before leaving) and the primal Zerg existed alongside the Overmind or the primal Zerg were killed off or assimilated into the Swarm. Both things could not have happened, yet according to Blizzard they did!
You can't just create a piece of the story, conveniently forget it completely, and then remake the story around another plot. It would be like Blizzard creating the character Jim Raynor in BW as they did, but then in WOL saying that he was a farmer from Agria who was mad the dominion left him when the Zerg came, and decided to create an outfit called Raynor's raiders and start the story from there.
So what do you not agree with?
I dont have it in front of me, but was this the WoL manual or the HoTS manual? If it was the WoL manual, then it is easily explained as being *wrong*. Not non-cannon, or anything. Just treat it as information from the game universe, as it is known at that time IN the game universe. It was believed, even within the swarm, that that was what happened. So thats how information is presented. Zeratul discovers that it was not the reality of the situation, corrects Kerrigan, and reveals the truth, that the overmind failed to control/kill everything on Zerus (the specifics of how/why are completely unimportant).
If it was the HoTS manual, well, really my biggest gripe is treating the game manuals for SC2 as any part of legitimate story/cannon. As far as I'm concerned, only in-game or in-book (not game manual) counts as real/official info.
I think he mis-spoke there. This information that he cites comes directly from the original Star 1 manual, so it predates everything else.
I remember thinking at the end of WOL that surely Blizzard isn't retarded enough to make Zergs a clone of the orcs from Warcraft. I underestimated them.
On March 21 2013 01:00 maartendq wrote: I really can't be the only one who finds every single story Blizzard ever came up with incredibly predictable and clichéd? Diablo's story is just an excuse to kill an infinite amount of monsters (let's be honest here, the story is just ridiculous), Warcraft is a collection of fantasy clichés and starcraft's story is a combination of sci-fi stuff from the 80ies. I mean, we're talking video games here, not art movies or literature. The best story ever told in a video game was Bioshock, and even that story pales in comparison with a good book.
Video games are mainly about the gameplay. I went into WoL and HOTS expecting a good RTS game with a clichéd and cheesy story, and that is exactly what I got.
You're not alone.
This really shouldn't be anything new because Blizzard has always been this way, they've always retconned things and bent the lore in a series when they've released a new game in that series. The stories told within the games have always been cheesy and the dialogue has always been filled with cheesy one liners. So that they've made changes to the lore doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I enjoyed the HotS story even though it was super cliche at times.
As much as I'd like to remember some mystical Blizzard that never had a cheesy story, never had balance issues, never did things that I questioned, I can't do it because it never happened. Blizzard has always been Blizzard and they've been going down this same road for as long as I've played Blizzard games. The only real noticeable difference with Blizzard is that now they communicate with fans more so that we have some idea of upcoming changes to the games, and they're more cautious with their changes than they used to be.
Really though if people are expecting a really well written story then they're looking at the wrong medium, because video games just don't do it. The lore stuff outside some of the games, Blizzard games included, is really good... In-game? Almost never.
I would like to add something to the discussion, but my English is so bad that i am not capable of expressing my thoughts well enough.
- Movie industry is suffering from the same problem. Movies are made for kids even when the majority of people watching the movies aren´t Teenagers anymore. Plots are so flat and stupid that i feel betrayed after watching some of the movies.
- When i started playing Video games (i am in the same age as you) i was fascinated from the stories and from the possibilities the game mechanics gave me (without every mission beeing a tutorial mission). I wanted to explore everything in the game, it was my own journey my own will to do things. Sometimes the game wasn´t telling you anything (find a hiding spot to evolve -> here seems to be a save place!) and still i was motivated to play for hours, no frustration but fascination. So, remeber i was a kid and played matured video games and still got hooked up!
- Huge part of the success that TV-shows have is because they give characters room to grow and they are made for adults. Maybe budget is a part of it if you only have money for Actors you have to work out a damn well written story because there will not be any explosions that amaze the audience.
- I hope Blizzard and the whole gaming industry will step back from there premise that they produce a product that have to be sold, and that they see that Video games are a interactive form of Art. (still have to be sold)
- I am sad that you will never again commentate on a Video game from Blizzard because your Articles are AMAZING.
On March 21 2013 01:43 BronzeKnee wrote: I meant to write SC1 manual. My mistake.
In this case then my explanation still totally works. It was the knowledge of events as it had happened at the time. New knowledge = old data was wrong/out of date.
While I don't like the tone of the post and I think the OP doesn't take into account the need to sometimes force dialogue to support game-play elements (make the game fun to play). Posts that put in this kind of effort and thought def deserve a spotlight.
You bring up a lot of great points that I think are relevant for Blizzard if they actually make the movie but I personally think are too picky when brought into the context of the game elements. I would rather have blizzard spend their time on the fun-to-play factor VS the story-line which I think is just a bonus for this franchise. I'd buy the game if the single player story mode didn't even exist so I have no complaints with Blizzard over single player.
On March 21 2013 01:00 maartendq wrote: I really can't be the only one who finds every single story Blizzard ever came up with incredibly predictable and clichéd? Diablo's story is just an excuse to kill an infinite amount of monsters (let's be honest here, the story is just ridiculous), Warcraft is a collection of fantasy clichés and starcraft's story is a combination of sci-fi stuff from the 80ies. I mean, we're talking video games here, not art movies or literature. The best story ever told in a video game was Bioshock, and even that story pales in comparison with a good book.
Video games are mainly about the gameplay. I went into WoL and HOTS expecting a good RTS game with a clichéd and cheesy story, and that is exactly what I got.
The Star1\SCBW campaign ranks in my top 5 (maybe top 3 or top 1) campaigns of any game, comparable even to Star Wars: Kotor.
I think something to take away from this, however, is that at this point Blizzard can put out essentially any game with any story, and if the game play is remotely palpable, people will play it. That's what happens when you have a tried and true formula for popular games. Why put all the time into making a truly epic story, when ultimately, it's very likely the exact same number of consumers will buy your product with a shittier one?
I agree with so much of what was said in this OP. You pretty much took all of my thoughts and jumbled feelings of dissatisfaction with this game and put it in words that make coherent sense.
On March 20 2013 22:26 mGGNoRe wrote: I respect the amount of effort you put in to create this post OP. You make a lot of good points but at the end of the day it was a lot of fun. It is like watching Rambo and complaining about lack of depth. It doesn't make sense to complain aobut the depth when the entire starcraft series has always been cheesy and corny.
Personally I'm sick of people telling me I'm not allowed to enjoy the storyline of Wol and Hots because it isn't "mature" enough. I enjoyed it, you didn't. Can't we just leave it at that?
They could do both, you know. It's not like you can't make non-shallow storyline that's enjoyable on the surface as well. Apparently somewhere doesn't care...
On March 20 2013 22:58 Telenil wrote: I don't know if this is because I agree with most of what you wrote, but to me that's the deepest review of the SC2 storyline I've ever read. I consider myself to be fairly good at explaining my feelings, but I would never have been able to express half of that in words. The part when you talk about the "story they want to tell", or each arc being an individual tale and not linked to the others, exactly matches my feeling.
So yeah, this was one hell of an interesting read, I hope people will put an eye on this.
It was. It was more in-depth than I thought anyone will be willing to write. I'd like Blizzard to read it and elaborate (not just comment) on it. To explain all these changes, go through their decisions making etc.
This is an absolutely fantastic post and encompasses every single gripe I've been posting over and over again on these "HotS review" threads. Well said and well-spoken. This is what an educated mind thinks when he/she looks at this game and plays it (we see crap).
On March 21 2013 01:00 maartendq wrote: I really can't be the only one who finds every single story Blizzard ever came up with incredibly predictable and clichéd? Diablo's story is just an excuse to kill an infinite amount of monsters (let's be honest here, the story is just ridiculous), Warcraft is a collection of fantasy clichés and starcraft's story is a combination of sci-fi stuff from the 80ies. I mean, we're talking video games here, not art movies or literature. The best story ever told in a video game was Bioshock, and even that story pales in comparison with a good book.
Video games are mainly about the gameplay. I went into WoL and HOTS expecting a good RTS game with a clichéd and cheesy story, and that is exactly what I got.
I don't agree that Starcraft's story was predictable. Kerrigan getting abandoned and "killed" only to be revealed to be infested, and then becoming the most bad-ass being in the Universe, manipulating everyone to her own benefit, and the whole story ending with her Zerg basically taking over the galaxy.. I though that was quite cool and fresh. No "the good guys have to win", "the boy gets the girl", "let's all just be friends" and all that bullshit.
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
Already Wol did hurt me. I expected more of Starcraft and got a cheesy cowboy setting. The mission (gameplay-wise) were good, but the tone of the story was lame and had a lot of bad moments (with the bar fight being the worst.)
I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector. The mystery around Duran was a cheap way to create material for discussion.)
Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector.)
Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief.
you got me there. This wasn´t the serious part of my post :D. Well true that i expected more from WoL than from C&C but is that a bad think? This means that Blizzard was capable of writing a good story ones so why not doing it a second time.
In reality i expect better storytelling in the most video games, for me this is not a Starcraft specific thing. The problem is that statistics show that the audience is kind of matured and thus they should at least try to write stories that are somewhat of matured.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
I fail to see a well written story in SC1. The insta-crush of Jimmy on Kerrigan, the rebellion against the confederacy, a cliche driven "story" with missions which hardly ever had actually anything to do with the story (beside the inclusion of some hero units.)
I still consider the SC1 campaign a good game in comparison to other RTS titles.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
I'll just requote myself from 1 page before:
Take for example the last two missions from the invasion of Aiur: You have to collect a crystal from a sacred crystal formation and bring it to the temple where the the Xel'Naga first set foot on Aiur. Because only there the Overmind can manifest. And of course the Overmind would give up the relative safety of Char to relocate onto Aiur, the stronghold of the enemy.
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
Having never played SC1 or BW, I did think there was something going on between Kerrigan and Raynor after the WoL campaign, and I wasn't surprised in the slightest by their kissing scene (awkward as it was), much more surprised by Jim throwing a fit when she rescues him.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
Take for example the last two missions from the invasion of Aiur: You have to collect a crystal from a sacred crystal formation and bring it to the temple where the the Xel'Naga first set foot on Aiur. Because only there the Overmind can manifest. And of course the Overmind would give up the relative safety of Char to relocate onto Aiur, the stronghold of the enemy.
I really see the well written story there.
well, you are right on that i never claimed that sc1 is a perfect well written story with a good connection to the missions. it´s pretty clear that sc1 and bw story had their flaws too. Still i think we should have higher expectations on story writing in video games. I can enjoy a video game with bad story to some degree but for me its more than playing the mechanical site of the game i want to be entertained in a good way and a good story and plausible characters are a part of it.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
Take for example the last two missions from the invasion of Aiur: You have to collect a crystal from a sacred crystal formation and bring it to the temple where the the Xel'Naga first set foot on Aiur. Because only there the Overmind can manifest. And of course the Overmind would give up the relative safety of Char to relocate onto Aiur, the stronghold of the enemy.
I really see the well written story there.
You can't just bring up a point from the story and say "That's bad writing!" without actually explaining why it's bad writing.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
Blizzard is getting downhill,after wow's first or second expansion. MoP, d3 and sc2 wol/hots are a disgrace to the stories of the original games.
D1/D2 and wc stories may be cliche fantasy themes, but please, the way they developed and were told, and the whole dark theme was among the best I've seen in games.
Nowadays the stories are so childish even my 8 yo cousing can tellthey are bullsh1t.
This encapsulates pretty much everything that most of us "older" guys and girls have been critisizing. Blizzard storytelling and writing just aint the same, and hasn't been the same for ages now.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
And your point is ridiculous. LoZ's storytelling is completely different. It's like trying to compare a stream-of-consciousness novel with a different storytelling style, maybe something akin to Harry Potter, and saying that you can come up with the same criticisms for both, therefore both stories are bad. It's completely absurd.
Sure, you can play video games for the fun and not the story, but plenty of people think otherwise, and your attitude only hurts video games as a storytelling medium, as does Blizzard's trashy attempt at telling a story.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
The Expendables is a cartoon, with all that entitles. Starcraft is supposed to be a coherent, consistent story, and the writers tried to make it so (they weren't trying to make it so bad it's entertaining), but they failed, and that's where the criticism is coming from. No one is saying that they should go back and change it; this isn't a criticism of the multiplayer balance. Critiquing the single player writing is akin to critiquing a book or a movie. You don't go to the writers and say, "Oh, go back and change it and re-publish it". It's a critique, plain and simple.
Oh, and people were very pissed about how terrible the Star Wars prequels were, just in case you lived under a rock for the last 15 years. As for Aliens, well, you deserve to be smacked if you try to write of the story and script of Aliens as cheesy, cliche, or otherwise the same thing as SC2. Things like Starship Troopers and Aliens defined what sci-fi cliches were.
On March 21 2013 02:48 Aterons_toss wrote: Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
People I don't think are saying it should be fixed; it should've never happened in the first place. The disparity in writing between SC1 and SC2 is so apparent. The first game didn't rely on so many cliches. It felt really grounded and original, at least for the time. There was genuine surprise and thrills in the narrative and the way it was used in conjunction with the game mechanics and design.
Star Wars, the original trilogy, was not the exact same thing. And Aliens has some of the most sophisticated sci-fi writing that doesn't rely on cliche. It set the bar. The opening, the style, the writing, the acting, the cast. I saw it the other day in a theater and it still holds up.
I don't even know what to do with your last sentence. What are you trying to say?
On March 21 2013 01:00 maartendq wrote: I really can't be the only one who finds every single story Blizzard ever came up with incredibly predictable and clichéd? Diablo's story is just an excuse to kill an infinite amount of monsters (let's be honest here, the story is just ridiculous), Warcraft is a collection of fantasy clichés and starcraft's story is a combination of sci-fi stuff from the 80ies. I mean, we're talking video games here, not art movies or literature. The best story ever told in a video game was Bioshock, and even that story pales in comparison with a good book.
Video games are mainly about the gameplay. I went into WoL and HOTS expecting a good RTS game with a clichéd and cheesy story, and that is exactly what I got.
There is so much wrong with this post that my head might explode.
Yes, every Blizzard story has had a large number of predictable cliches, but just about every story does. The difference is script and presentation. Older Blizzard games did all of this quite well; SC2 and D3 does them horribly.
Your attitude about, "This is video games, not literature", is exactly what's wrong with all of this. It hurts this medium as a storytelling medium when plenty of people reasonably want it to be a quality storytelling medium because it is perfectly capable of doing so.
And Bioshock? First, Bioshock is a perfectly good story, and to say it doesn't even compare to a good book is a bold claim. You'll actually have to back that up with something of substance. Second, Bioshock is a perfectly good story. However, by saying that you think it's the best video game story out there, you lead me to believe that you've played very few video games in your lifetime.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
And your point is ridiculous. LoZ's storytelling is completely different. It's like trying to compare a stream-of-consciousness novel with a different storytelling style, maybe something akin to Harry Potter, and saying that you can come up with the same criticisms for both, therefore both stories are bad. It's completely absurd.
Sure, you can play video games for the fun and not the story, but plenty of people think otherwise, and your attitude only hurts video games as a storytelling medium, as does Blizzard's trashy attempt at telling a story.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
The Expendables is a cartoon, with all that entitles. Starcraft is supposed to be a coherent, consistent story, and the writers tried to make it so (they weren't trying to make it so bad it's entertaining), but they failed, and that's where the criticism is coming from.
Oh, and people were very pissed about how terrible the Star Wars prequels were, just in case you lived under a rock for the last 15 years.
So the first 3 where apparently non is guarding the fucking emperor on his capital ship ( after we just saw 4 fucking guards that suddenly vanished the vader attacked him ) Or the part where this Death star needs "air vents" that run directly to the core of the ship and can be killed by a fucking torpedo Or the freaking part where you have every main character escape with his life intact after and intense near-death situation every 10 min Or the one where the bad guys do not hit a single shoot with the futuristic laser rifles
Is that "good writing" ? Is that not the same horri-bad like Jim having a gun with him in the cell or a viking landing in front of an ultralisk ?
If the writers of starcraft actually came out and said "Hi, we are trying to write this very good SF story that is a stand alone artwork that we have great pride in and should be taken very seriously" than I would say that's up for criticism but ,much like in expendables, they are just writing a silly story to go with the queen bitch of the universe one liners and fantastic gameplay.
I mean for fucks sake, half of that story seems to be made for the sake of making references to other games/movies/books.
Very well written and I agree with a lot of your posts - however it seems to me like you don't wanna leave anything open for interpretation and I believe that is a mistake.
I'm still reading your post. Some nice analysis, but I would like to comment on one of the things you said.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. Wait, why? Sarah Kerrigan as a human never met Zeratul, so why is she so angry at him and starts the fight? Wasn't it Kerrigan that was always manipulating Zeratul to do her dirty work in Brood War? Didn't she even force Zeratul kill his own Matriarch? Shouldn't this be reversed? Oh right, it's because it's an excuse for her and Zeratul to fight again (oooo pretty), except that in makes no sense. What makes even less sense is what happens next...
The reason she starts to fight him as I understood it was because she recently faced the protoss on Kaldir, so she believes the protoss want to kill her because of what she has done as the queen of blades. So she tries to protect herself thinking Zeratul might be sent to assassinate her. (dark templars are assassins after all, no?) This doesn't relate to if she really met zeratul before or not.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
And your point is ridiculous. LoZ's storytelling is completely different. It's like trying to compare a stream-of-consciousness novel with a different storytelling style, maybe something akin to Harry Potter, and saying that you can come up with the same criticisms for both, therefore both stories are bad. It's completely absurd.
Sure, you can play video games for the fun and not the story, but plenty of people think otherwise, and your attitude only hurts video games as a storytelling medium, as does Blizzard's trashy attempt at telling a story.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
The Expendables is a cartoon, with all that entitles. Starcraft is supposed to be a coherent, consistent story, and the writers tried to make it so (they weren't trying to make it so bad it's entertaining), but they failed, and that's where the criticism is coming from.
Oh, and people were very pissed about how terrible the Star Wars prequels were, just in case you lived under a rock for the last 15 years.
So the first 3 where apparently non is guarding the fucking emperor on his capital ship ( after we just saw 4 fucking guards that suddenly vanished the vader attacked him ) Or the part where this Death star needs "air vents" that run directly to the core of the ship and can be killed by a fucking torpedo Or the freaking part where you have every main character escape with his life intact after and intense near-death situation every 10 min Or the one where the bad guys do not hit a single shoot with the futuristic laser rifles
Is that "good writing" ? Is that not the same horri-bad like Jim having a gun with him in the cell or a viking landing in front of an ultralisk ?
If the writers of starcraft actually came out and said "Hi, we are trying to write this very good SF story that is a stand alone artwork that we have great pride in and should be taken very seriously" than I would say that's up for criticism but ,much like in expendables, they are just writing a silly story to go with the queen bitch of the universe one liners and fantastic gameplay.
I mean for fucks sake, half of that story seems to be made for the sake of making references to other games/movies/books.
You're being willfully ignorant and almost Stockholm Syndrome-esque. Blizzard has put an incredible amount of money and resources into making this story. Their are entire panels, development teams, writing teams, and interviews dedicated to making and explaining this story and universe. Metzen's entire job is to be the head developer and writer for the Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft story franchises. Really, basically the entire cost of the Heart of the Swarm expansion went into the campaign; we got like two new units for each race and a couple of maps that shouldn't and wouldn't cost money on their own. You are literally going against all evidence by trying to claim that they tried to make this story a crap, cliche story on purpose just to be a joke and make money.
The reason she starts to fight him as I understood it was because she recently faced the protoss on Kaldir, so she believes the protoss want to kill her because of what she has done as the queen of blades. So she tries to protect herself thinking Zeratul might be sent to assassinate her. (dark templars are assassins after all, no?) This doesn't relate to if she really met zeratul before or not.
Except that she says his name with disdain right before she attacks him. She clearly recognizes him (an inconsistency) and then attacks him specifically for being Zeratul (another inconsistency).
On March 21 2013 03:08 Stratos_speAr wrote: Yes, every Blizzard story has had a large number of predictable cliches, but just about every story does. The difference is script and presentation. Older Blizzard games did all of this quite well; SC2 and D3 does them horribly.
Exactly ... the "how it is told" is more important than the story itself ... or else you could never say that "this remake of an awesome classic movie is really terrible (again)" because they would have the same story.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
And your point is ridiculous. LoZ's storytelling is completely different. It's like trying to compare a stream-of-consciousness novel with a different storytelling style, maybe something akin to Harry Potter, and saying that you can come up with the same criticisms for both, therefore both stories are bad. It's completely absurd.
Sure, you can play video games for the fun and not the story, but plenty of people think otherwise, and your attitude only hurts video games as a storytelling medium, as does Blizzard's trashy attempt at telling a story.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
The Expendables is a cartoon, with all that entitles. Starcraft is supposed to be a coherent, consistent story, and the writers tried to make it so (they weren't trying to make it so bad it's entertaining), but they failed, and that's where the criticism is coming from.
Oh, and people were very pissed about how terrible the Star Wars prequels were, just in case you lived under a rock for the last 15 years.
So the first 3 where apparently non is guarding the fucking emperor on his capital ship ( after we just saw 4 fucking guards that suddenly vanished the vader attacked him ) Or the part where this Death star needs "air vents" that run directly to the core of the ship and can be killed by a fucking torpedo Or the freaking part where you have every main character escape with his life intact after and intense near-death situation every 10 min Or the one where the bad guys do not hit a single shoot with the futuristic laser rifles
Is that "good writing" ? Is that not the same horri-bad like Jim having a gun with him in the cell or a viking landing in front of an ultralisk ?
If the writers of starcraft actually came out and said "Hi, we are trying to write this very good SF story that is a stand alone artwork that we have great pride in and should be taken very seriously" than I would say that's up for criticism but ,much like in expendables, they are just writing a silly story to go with the queen bitch of the universe one liners and fantastic gameplay.
I mean for fucks sake, half of that story seems to be made for the sake of making references to other games/movies/books.
I'm not sure if you just have no idea how to analyze or if you just really didn't like Star Wars, but your arguments are once again completely nonsensical.
1: He's the emperor. He has the power to kill masses with a single thought. When he commanded everyone to leave that throne room, its entirely in line with the story and makes sense.
2: An exhaust port (not an air vent) would in fact lead to the source of the exhaust (duh). Also getting past all the defenses and firing into that tiny vent gave them the sense of arrogance that they were "undefeatable".
3: If there was an intense near-death situation every 10 minutes, the movies would've been nothing but punctuated action scenes with a splash of story. Instead, the story is quite deep and even though there is indeed a love interest, it takes a sidebar to the main story (as it should).
4: You do have the laser rifles right, but everyone knows that one.
The problem is that we were given a premise and that premise has been completely destroyed. Its been replaced with this new storyline that most if not all educated and analytical minds would find insulting at best. In the decade+ between BW and SC2's new arc, I at no point ever gave a flying f*ck about Raynor and Kerrigan's love interest. Nobody did because it plain old wasn't there. All this new crap is coming out of the woodwork and its annoying to see such a great story completely smashed because of a dumb, poorly-executed love story.
This is EXACTLY what happened in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars and it made a lot of people very angry at the whole franchise. Most still consider "4,5,6 were the only real ones" and I feel that intelligent people will feel no differently about the new Starcraft story arc vs the old one.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
I'll just requote myself from 1 page before:
Take for example the last two missions from the invasion of Aiur: You have to collect a crystal from a sacred crystal formation and bring it to the temple where the the Xel'Naga first set foot on Aiur. Because only there the Overmind can manifest. And of course the Overmind would give up the relative safety of Char to relocate onto Aiur, the stronghold of the enemy.
I really see the well written story there.
well, you are right on that i never claimed that sc1 is a perfect well written story with a good connection to the missions. it´s pretty clear that sc1 and bw story had their flaws too. Still i think we should have higher expectations on story writing in video games. I can enjoy a video game with bad story to some degree but for me its more than playing the mechanical site of the game i want to be entertained in a good way and a good story and plausible characters are a part of it.
Well I also don't like the retcons of Blizzards' games but for one time the "BW was that much better" hipster train is simply not true. And I don't like the elite attidue of the op who has high standards.
Sure games should try to tell a better story, but I'm not that unhappy with what I got. Maybe it's the same as with the Michael Bay movies. I don't like them but they seem to appeal their audience. Or maybe the Hollywood plots have softened me up through all these years that I accept weaknesses in plots as long as they don't jump in my face.
....I am not saying "fook the hard to please customers". The core of the fans should of course be satisfied. I don't approve, but understand that Blizzard is rather going for the bigger sales with a more cheesy story as an excuse for the missions.
And why do you think a wider audience would like to see a cheesy story more than a well written story? And do you think a well written story don´t function in conjunction with good missions? SC1 showed that it works.
I'll just requote myself from 1 page before:
Take for example the last two missions from the invasion of Aiur: You have to collect a crystal from a sacred crystal formation and bring it to the temple where the the Xel'Naga first set foot on Aiur. Because only there the Overmind can manifest. And of course the Overmind would give up the relative safety of Char to relocate onto Aiur, the stronghold of the enemy.
I really see the well written story there.
You can't just bring up a point from the story and say "That's bad writing!" without actually explaining why it's bad writing.
I don't even. . . Why would the Overmind leave Char (safe) to relocate to Aiur (not safe)? Why can't he send his cerebrates? He knows dt's are around, so it's not safe. Why can he invade any other planet but Aiur? Is there some mystical "anti-overmind" shield around this planet? Who build that? The Protoss? The Xel'Naga? Why is said shield impenetrable for the overmind but not for all other creatures of the swarm? Why is some mystical crystal the solution to the overminds' manifestation problem? Why haven't the Protoss discovered that this crystal formation posses magical unknown powers that can be used against them. It's their homeworld for thousands of years. Why do we need to bring said crystal to the temple of where the xel'naga first set foot on the planet? What is so special about this place? Is it the temple or the place? Why is this the only place he can enter Aiur?
for something with such deep following, it would have been nice if story telling was done properly to every detail. (live up to lore, etc.) but yeah, it was on par with some straight to DVD PG films.
i think campaign gameplay was OK, i honestly didn't expect much but it had some different dynamics like boss fighting, would have been nice if they implemented some concepts from custom maps (that never went popular thanks to the system like side scroll, racing, 3rd person).
from a casual player's view, it was enjoyable and nothing special. from a enthusiast's point of view, disappointment.
I don't even. . . Why would the Overmind leave Char (safe) to relocate to Aiur (not safe)? Why can't he send his cerebrates? He knows dt's are around, so it's not safe.
Because he is the leader of the Swarm and his goal is to absorb the Protoss? And no, there weren't Dark Templar on Aiur. They were exiled and, at the time, hadn't returned.
Why can he invade any other planet but Aiur? Is there some mystical "anti-overmind" shield around this planet? Who build that? The Protoss? The Xel'Naga? Why is said shield impenetrable for the overmind but not for all other creatures of the swarm? Why is some mystical crystal the solution to the overminds' manifestation problem? Why haven't the Protoss discovered that this crystal formation posses magical unknown powers that can be used against them. It's their homeworld for thousands of years. Why do we need to bring said crystal to the temple of where the xel'naga first set foot on the planet? What is so special about this place? Is it the temple or the place? Why is this the only place he can enter Aiur?
It is so wrong on so many levels.
The Overmind is (at the time) the most powerful and psionic being out there. Aiur is the homeworld of the Protoss, with billions of them there and an untold amount of defenses. Perhaps he needs some sort of anchor to this incredibly well-defended and psionic-inhabited planet to have a firm hold on the planet? It is entirely plausible and doesn't even require the mental back-flips that making SC2 consistent does to understand why it might be reasonable for it to be difficult for the Overmind to just auto-invade Aiur.
I mean yea, we could even grant you that it's a little convoluted or potentially unnecessary. But please explain how this is comparable to any of the absolutely ridiculous plot holes or terrible writing that we see from SC2.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
And your point is ridiculous. LoZ's storytelling is completely different. It's like trying to compare a stream-of-consciousness novel with a different storytelling style, maybe something akin to Harry Potter, and saying that you can come up with the same criticisms for both, therefore both stories are bad. It's completely absurd.
Sure, you can play video games for the fun and not the story, but plenty of people think otherwise, and your attitude only hurts video games as a storytelling medium, as does Blizzard's trashy attempt at telling a story.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
The Expendables is a cartoon, with all that entitles. Starcraft is supposed to be a coherent, consistent story, and the writers tried to make it so (they weren't trying to make it so bad it's entertaining), but they failed, and that's where the criticism is coming from.
Oh, and people were very pissed about how terrible the Star Wars prequels were, just in case you lived under a rock for the last 15 years.
So the first 3 where apparently non is guarding the fucking emperor on his capital ship ( after we just saw 4 fucking guards that suddenly vanished the vader attacked him ) Or the part where this Death star needs "air vents" that run directly to the core of the ship and can be killed by a fucking torpedo Or the freaking part where you have every main character escape with his life intact after and intense near-death situation every 10 min Or the one where the bad guys do not hit a single shoot with the futuristic laser rifles
Is that "good writing" ? Is that not the same horri-bad like Jim having a gun with him in the cell or a viking landing in front of an ultralisk ?
If the writers of starcraft actually came out and said "Hi, we are trying to write this very good SF story that is a stand alone artwork that we have great pride in and should be taken very seriously" than I would say that's up for criticism but ,much like in expendables, they are just writing a silly story to go with the queen bitch of the universe one liners and fantastic gameplay.
I mean for fucks sake, half of that story seems to be made for the sake of making references to other games/movies/books.
You're being willfully ignorant and almost Stockholm Syndrome-esque. Blizzard has put an incredible amount of money and resources into making this story. Their are entire panels, development teams, writing teams, and interviews dedicated to making and explaining this story and universe. Metzen's entire job is to be the head developer and writer for the Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft story franchises. Really, basically the entire cost of the Heart of the Swarm expansion went into the campaign; we got like two new units for each race and a couple of maps that shouldn't and wouldn't cost money on their own. You are literally going against all evidence by trying to claim that they tried to make this story a crap, cliche story on purpose just to be a joke and make money.
The reason she starts to fight him as I understood it was because she recently faced the protoss on Kaldir, so she believes the protoss want to kill her because of what she has done as the queen of blades. So she tries to protect herself thinking Zeratul might be sent to assassinate her. (dark templars are assassins after all, no?) This doesn't relate to if she really met zeratul before or not.
Except that she says his name with disdain right before she attacks him. She clearly recognizes him (an inconsistency) and then attacks him specifically for being Zeratul (another inconsistency).
Well, as long as you think the money went into the writing and the writing was supposed to be one of the pillars of the campaign than i agree with you, you should complain... even more, you should have not bought the fucking game at all after WOL.
For all I care I felt like the campaign could have been expensive and was really good because it had those very cool, very different mission... which ,though i found relatively east as a high master player, most would have found challenging or at least fun to play trough.
But yes, if they actually tried to make and Arthur Clark SF universe or a Leo Tolstoy novel plot... if they invested money toward it and had good writers writing it than i agree, they failed miserably. Indeed they failed so miserably I assumed they did not even try, thus I believe your point to be more than valid if that is the case and you have evidence, because i confess i did not follow HOTS development or read any interviews with the writers.
That doesn't change the fact that I am more than happy with my 40$ purchase and the fact that if the main thing you are looking for in this game is story you should have likely stopped buying after WOL came out... because I don't really see how that got any better of a story.
On March 21 2013 02:48 Aterons_toss wrote: Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens.
I've seen many people shit on Star Wars. What are you talking about? Considering you brought up the topic of movies. I really wonder how they're going to treat Warcraft with Legendary pictures. It should be interesting.
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector. The mystery around Duran was a cheap way to create material for discussion.)
Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief.
The thing is that games like Red Alert and even SC1 had SIMPLE STORIES which FIT AN RTS GAME. They have "acquire this resource" or "defend this position" kind of missions in there.
But what does SC2 have? Those missions are bathed in this love story which totally blunts any urgency of a mission, because you dont ever have any "defend these civilians" kind of missions which really have an impact or could punish you if you fail / decide not to do them or so. It all gets sacrificed for a cheesy story which has no real place in an RTS game. Mistrust and hate and betrayal are all fine, but love doesnt fit!
If HotS had stuck to the "Kerrigan goes after Mengsk" path they could have made a nice and interesting campaign where these two kinda play chess against each other with each of them taking a move, but everything is overshadowed by that love story and this is bad. Sure enough Raynor didnt play a big part during most of the campaign, but the end really is Hollywood style.
There probably was a one-sided love relationship in SC1 with Raynor thinking Kerrigan quite hot and then going on a rampage to save her. She probably didnt really love him that much (she is a career girl with a job after all) but fell for him when he rescued her in WoL.
Complex character developing love stories work for an RPG but not an RTS ... but then they want to sell books too and there they want to be cheesy as cheese can be for maximum sales.
On March 21 2013 03:22 sCCrooked wrote: The problem is that we were given a premise and that premise has been completely destroyed. Its been replaced with this new storyline that most if not all educated and analytical minds would find insulting at best. In the decade+ between BW and SC2's new arc, I at no point ever gave a flying f*ck about Raynor and Kerrigan's love interest. Nobody did because it plain old wasn't there. All this new crap is coming out of the woodwork and its annoying to see such a great story completely smashed because of a dumb, poorly-executed love story.
This is EXACTLY what happened in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars and it made a lot of people very angry at the whole franchise. Most still consider "4,5,6 were the only real ones" and I feel that intelligent people will feel no differently about the new Starcraft story arc vs the old one.
Are you trying to put as many insults into as few lines as possible? Fortunately I don't care if you deem me intelligent, but I liked the HotS singleplayer. Mostly because of the gameplay. However the story wasn't that bad by any means. Of course it was full of clichés and cringeworthy at some points, but overall it was just a simple, basic story. Personally, I love love stories, so Raynor loving Kerrigan, Kerrigan loving Raynor and Mengsk finally dying (I waited for that one since I was six years old) was okay for me.
Feel like a lot of people are just nostalgia whores for the most part. Not saying that Hots storytelling was perfect or that BW was bad. I just think that people have a bias in favor of the first thing to ever come out, and that nothing will ever live up to the image they have of it in their minds.
Also the fact that original Starcraft was released so long ago, means that a lot of people were kids and teens when the story first came out. Hence far less critical of trivial things.
Really feel like the truth is somewhere between this over-hype of blizzards old storytelling, and bias against blizzards newer games.
Personally i don't really care, I had fun with Hots campaign just as it had fun with BW's campaign, now its all about multiplayer.
I'm not sure you should evaluate video games by analyzing their plot as if these were consistent characters behaving rationally because ultimately the trick that a good video game pulls off is making you believe you are those characters. We are talking about an interactive medium where we as players can make choices for characters that make no sense (make nothing but banelings on the final mission, ya?) but we can get lost in that interactivity.
Suffice it to say, many here did not get lost in the game and did not enjoy playing it. But I did, so it is hard for me to see the constant justifications on the forum that the game is verifiably bad and that the plot is incoherently written and that Blizzard have sold out their souls by turning their favourite wargame into a romance. (We don't play any missions where this is relevant; we mostly play missions where we kill things!)
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
OP doesnt say anything about missions themselves being bad... the story and dialogues interlinking them are bland and sometimes you cannot justify to yourself coherently why kerrigan makes this or that decision.
Link and Mario actually have coherent behavior in all of his videogames , they are heroes who save princesses and they act like it through all of the videogames in which they appear.
the problem here is that were being sold a kerrigan that sometimes acts like a fierce killer in a quest for power to kill mengsk and then romantically sighs for jim raynor and tries to save civilians lives, even after being transformed (because of his desire for vengeance) again into the queen of blades.
its confusing and made me enjoy less the story , its not the end of the world , but i appreciate good storylines especially when you try to drive a plot through main characters (like SC2 tries to do) , for example any game of CoD makes a MUCH better work of doing this , and their storylines are not what you would call brilliant.
Right, so here is my criticism of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, based solely om the storyline and dialogue:
Is Link mute? This fairy is obnoxious. EVERYBODY in this game behaves like gross caricatures. Why doesn't Link have any weapons and armor, like those I got for him last game? Did the game just undo EVERYTHING that happened in a previous game? When did Zelda and Link turn into a love story? Previous games were about the triforce mostly, now I feel like Nintendo just inserted a love story out of nowhere and asked us to believe it? Is Ganon really this cartoonishly evil? Why do we keep going into dungeons?
all you're doing is being immature and obnoxious. There are massive differences between the SC series and the LoZ series, and you're being childish if you think that these criticisms are comparable.
There are massive differences between the two series, and I happen to love both. My point was merely that a deeper analysis of the plot of video games held in universal regard would lead me to many of the same criticisms that they have about Heart of the Swarm.
I don't like to play video games that tell me the plot of a movie wrapped up with gameplay interludes. I don't think this is how video games as a medium should be used to tell a story, so most of the criticisms of Heart of the Swarm relating to the 'story' for me fall on deaf ears. I think the real plot and story of HotS and Ocarina are the ones told in the gameplay.
@OP's Response: I actually dig your complaints about suspension of disbelief. I think it is already such a ridiculous universe that I threw mine away a long time ago! (Also: ecelectic music fan: http://www.last.fm/user/SlappyMcGee )
And your point is ridiculous. LoZ's storytelling is completely different. It's like trying to compare a stream-of-consciousness novel with a different storytelling style, maybe something akin to Harry Potter, and saying that you can come up with the same criticisms for both, therefore both stories are bad. It's completely absurd.
Sure, you can play video games for the fun and not the story, but plenty of people think otherwise, and your attitude only hurts video games as a storytelling medium, as does Blizzard's trashy attempt at telling a story.
Next up: " Why Expendables 2 is unrealistic and cliche".
I do admire that dedication some people have to pick every little detail in blizzard stories and explain exactly why they are unrealistic, cliche, over the top and sometimes downright cringe-wrothy but I am yet to see someone suggest why this should be fixed ( assuming that this fix would cost a lot of money ) and how it can be fixed without fucking with part of the game audience and having to spend more money without getting much back.
Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. Yes, if some game universes took themselves more seriously and tried having a better story that could be ok but you than risk having a bad story that is in the same time not over the stop enough to justify it being "bad".
The Expendables is a cartoon, with all that entitles. Starcraft is supposed to be a coherent, consistent story, and the writers tried to make it so (they weren't trying to make it so bad it's entertaining), but they failed, and that's where the criticism is coming from.
Oh, and people were very pissed about how terrible the Star Wars prequels were, just in case you lived under a rock for the last 15 years.
So the first 3 where apparently non is guarding the fucking emperor on his capital ship ( after we just saw 4 fucking guards that suddenly vanished the vader attacked him ) Or the part where this Death star needs "air vents" that run directly to the core of the ship and can be killed by a fucking torpedo Or the freaking part where you have every main character escape with his life intact after and intense near-death situation every 10 min Or the one where the bad guys do not hit a single shoot with the futuristic laser rifles
Is that "good writing" ? Is that not the same horri-bad like Jim having a gun with him in the cell or a viking landing in front of an ultralisk ?
If the writers of starcraft actually came out and said "Hi, we are trying to write this very good SF story that is a stand alone artwork that we have great pride in and should be taken very seriously" than I would say that's up for criticism but ,much like in expendables, they are just writing a silly story to go with the queen bitch of the universe one liners and fantastic gameplay.
I mean for fucks sake, half of that story seems to be made for the sake of making references to other games/movies/books.
You're being willfully ignorant and almost Stockholm Syndrome-esque. Blizzard has put an incredible amount of money and resources into making this story. Their are entire panels, development teams, writing teams, and interviews dedicated to making and explaining this story and universe. Metzen's entire job is to be the head developer and writer for the Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft story franchises. Really, basically the entire cost of the Heart of the Swarm expansion went into the campaign; we got like two new units for each race and a couple of maps that shouldn't and wouldn't cost money on their own. You are literally going against all evidence by trying to claim that they tried to make this story a crap, cliche story on purpose just to be a joke and make money.
The reason she starts to fight him as I understood it was because she recently faced the protoss on Kaldir, so she believes the protoss want to kill her because of what she has done as the queen of blades. So she tries to protect herself thinking Zeratul might be sent to assassinate her. (dark templars are assassins after all, no?) This doesn't relate to if she really met zeratul before or not.
Except that she says his name with disdain right before she attacks him. She clearly recognizes him (an inconsistency) and then attacks him specifically for being Zeratul (another inconsistency).
Well, as long as you think the money went into the writing and the writing was supposed to be one of the pillars of the campaign than i agree with you, you should complain... even more, you should have not bought the fucking game at all after WOL.
For all I care I felt like the campaign could have been expensive and was really good because it had those very cool, very different mission... which ,though i found relatively east as a high master player, most would have found challenging or at least fun to play trough.
But yes, if they actually tried to make and Arthur Clark SF universe or a Leo Tolstoy novel plot... if they invested money toward it and had good writers writing it than i agree, they failed miserably. Indeed they failed so miserably I assumed they did not even try, thus I believe your point to be more than valid if that is the case and you have evidence, because i confess i did not follow HOTS development or read any interviews with the writers.
That doesn't change the fact that I am more than happy with my 40$ purchase and the fact that if the main thing you are looking for in this game is story you should have likely stopped buying after WOL came out... because I don't really see how that got any better of a story.
Just because we are incredibly disappointed with WoL's story doesn't mean that everyone who wasn't pleased with HotS's writing should give up and not express their discontent. This is how change and various opinions come about. Besides, many of us still enjoy our purchase; I enjoyed the gameplay of the campaign quite a bit (even if I HATED the writing), and the multiplayer is a huge improvement over WoL's and has made it much more fun. Doesn't mean we can't critique the single player story.
Feel like a lot of people are just nostalgia whores for the most part. Not saying that Hots storytelling was perfect or that BW was bad. I just think that people have a bias in favor of the first thing to ever come out, and that nothing will ever live up to the image they have of it in their minds.
Also the fact that original Starcraft was released so long ago, means that a lot of people were kids and teens when the story first came out. Hence far less critical of trivial things.
Really feel like the truth is somewhere between this over-hype of blizzards old storytelling, and bias against blizzards newer games.
Personally i don't really care, I had fun with Hots campaign just as it had fun with BW's campaign, now its all about multiplayer.
I swear, these "nostalgia" responses pop up every 5 pages in single player story-related threads. You really need to read the actual threads, since every one of them has in-depth explanations and comparisons of why SC2 is 1) inconsistent with and 2) just plain worse than BW in terms of writing and storytelling.
A very comprehensive review it is hard not to agree with. However, for my taste it is going into too much detail. What's the harm in that? The harm is that the really important points you do make get lost in that amount of detail. A lot of the discussion, it seemed to me, would only be relevant to hardcore lore nerds. Also, the question as to how HotS ties in to SC1 really is a different one from how HotS itself works (i.e. doesn't) as a story. The latter one is far more important.
The most important thing that you did repeatedly mention but could have emphasized more is that the love story wasn't established. It is important because it is supposed to explain the motive of the protagonist to make the most extreme decision anyone could ever think of; the decision to become a monster and a mass-murdering dictator. I didn't remember Brood War that well and when I played HotS, I assumed that Raynor and Kerrigan did fall in love back then. If that were the case, HotS would still suck because they do have some interactions in the beginning that do not show us that love; only a random kiss out of nowhere. This can't be emphasized enough; the whole character development of the protagonist and thus the whole story rests on a relationship dynamic that isn't there.
The second biggie concerning Kerrigan's decision is that she makes it on the basis of news broadcast on a fucking propaganda channel that is known for exaggerating the regime's victories, or even inventing them. Gee, if Mengsk says it, it must be true! Kerrigan's character is thus hollow from the start. This continues in the inconsistency of her - we never know if she is really just heartbroken, desparate, has lost all hope and faith in humanity/the universe and can only think of revenge, or if she's just being pragmatic ("I need an army") or if she actually likes the zerg or if she's evil or what.
This leads to another point that I think you did not mention. Towards the ending, they transmit the idea that this is a different, more benign Queen of blades. She delays her attack in order to spare civilians, and she cooperates on an almost friendly basis with Valerian and Horner, and she acknowledges Valerian for showing morals. This is supposed to explain why Raynor forgives her in the end. Hard to believe after her slaughtering Billions, but better than nothing, and maybe an interesting perspective. Could the whole zerg race develop morals through her influence? The problem is that we heard her yell "kill everyone" repeatedly, and we never really learn what is going on with her. This could be explained through an inner struggle. Maybe after her re-conversion she felt the old bloodlust and rage against Mengsk and the whole world, but after having fought a few battles, she felt remorse. But it isn't explained. There is no detectable sign of an inner struggle, nor of her reconsidering anything. The things she does are extreme, but her whole demeanor is almost indifferent and business-like. The character doesn't work at all.
Talking about storytelling, the zerg characters on the Leviathan have to be mentioned. They are utterly boring, and saying they're two-dimensional would give them too much credit. They hang around in the mouth of the Leviathan all day doing nothing. They don't interact. We don't even know whether they are aware of each other. Everything they say is stereotypical and meaningless. The one guy is all about essence. Great, tell me the tenth time. The queen doesn't question Kerrigan's position because she wants to learn from her. The supposed rivalry between them is meaningless, and the learning/teaching process is meaningless. These are plot elements that could have been a story but are never developed to be one. This calls into question the whole between-missions portion of the story. It is pretentious. There's nothing there. 80 percent of the characters have absolutely nothing interesting about them, no real motives, no conflicts, no dynamics. I think this deserves a mention when criticizing storytelling. The game pretends to be a genre mix, extending beyond RTS. And while the RTS portions of the game have been cut back and are pretty thin, what has taken their place is a pretentious bubble of nothing.
And I could be wrong, but I'm under a very strong impression that what we see in HotS isn't an "approach" to storytelling, except if you want to call not giving a fuck an "approach". It is extremely sloppy work, it is rushed, it reeks of not making an effort. Take the "evolution missions" which are a mockery, made worse by them actually being listed in the "missions" archives. I feel it is important to say this clearly. They did not attempt to make something notable, or even something solid. They made the minimum they felt they could get away with. My best guess would be simply that they focused their resources elsewhere; on multiplayer and battle.net, and, well, at least they did something we can enjoy. But it's definitely not the campaign.
Side note about the catering for 12-year-olds thing: I think 12-year-olds aren't as dumb as many people apparently believe.
I feel that kerrigan realized that Raynor was one of the only people who truly cared about her. Also i think you would most likely develop feelings for someone who shows they cared about you so much that they traveled the sector trying to change you back.
The only thing I would question about Blizzard's choices with the story is that they decided to include a love story. I mean, I loved this and the entire story, but it seems like there is nothing alot of nerds hate more than this(with happy endings being a close second which they also included) so it's kinda risky to include when nerds are basically their entire target audience
You need to defend in this mission, maybe you should build siege tanks and deploy them here and here.
You need to find a safe place on this ship. Fortunately, it's in the next area (click here).
World of Warcraft used to have open ended dungeons with a ton of different quests. At some point they switched to the dungeon on rails model, where you couldn't ever get lost and simply moved from one zone to the other. Later they added boss warnings into the game, so you never had to find out anything on your own and had large markers on the screen to tell you what to do and where to stand. They also made sure that tanking became more easy, with no need for advanced crowd control techniques, so you didn't need to even pause for a moment as a group to discuss tactics. Then they added the cross server dungeon finder which puts you in a group of strangers in a second. And generally speaking, dungeons became easier (stats etc.) The result of all of this was that people would just queue up, spam one or two skills without thought, not say a word and just rush through an instance.
I get it, people are annoyed at having to search for groups for hours, at not being able to do an instance because they are too dumb they don't have the right classes. They want to run instances over and over for points and they don't want them to be difficult or to require thought. They don't want to have people with side quests that take extra time, or people that want to appreciate the aesthetics of a dungeon, or those that enjoy overcoming difficult fights for the first time without a guide handy, purely by coming up with solutions as a group. If it wasn't for my online friends I would never have enjoyed my last few years of playing.
This approach also exists in SC2. I want to have missions that don't explain everything to me, because I take joy in discovering new ways to solve something. This is a strategy game, yet Blizzard feeds you the steps of what to do, so what's the point of even playing?
It also exists in the story telling of the campaign. Everything has to be telegraphed, there can be no depth to the story.
Amon can't simply be the leader of a Xel'Naga faction with ambiguous goals and designs. No, he has to be a God, older than the universe, more powerful than anyone. Why? Not because it makes sense, since he's just a member of a race of similar beings, who are mostly just very good scientists. Rather, it has to be because Blizzard wants a comic book style of heroes and villains and 1v1 battles and super powers. Note that Amon is going to probably be a direct copy of Archimonde in WC3.
Ok, so she has amnesia so she kind of can get a pass on her behavior to a degree...Wait. It is pretty well established in Star 1 that the infestation and acquisition of power corrupts Kerrigan to the point where she enjoys the new Sarah, and this is reinforced when the 'new' Overmind is being coalesced and she makes a move to permanently seize absolute power over the Zerg by killing it. Now whether this corruption has more to do with the infestation process or from Kerrigan actually liking this acquisition of power is left somewhat ambiguous, but regardless, it is pretty clear that Kerrigan is fully reticent of what has happened to her through her transformation so it seems to preclude the amnesia angle entirely.
You completely leave out the fact that it was Amon who had strong influence over the Zerg hivemind (he created the Overmind according to HotS, which is only half true if you read the prologue of starcraft 1, where all the Xel'Naga decide to tame the Zerg with the Overmind to be able to keep them at bay, but just one 'bad' xel'naga).
Although long dead, Amon supposedly still has influence over the mechanic of infestation because it is how he designed the Swarm in the first place - to have a single purpose (create the hybrid by invading Aiur). This would include the infestion on Kerrigan, eventhough her infestation was the Overmind';s desperate attempt to free the Zerg of Amon's influence.
With the Xel'Naga artifact purging most of the 'old' infestation process (read, corrupted by Amon), Kerrigan's rebirth on Zerus into the Primal Queen of Blades is clearly made to change how she is and how she acts - independant and more human. She has come to accept her role and pretends to be a cruel being as she was as the old queen of blades, while in truth she is now a 'truly free zerg'.
This is a good concept, and you completely skip over it.
That doesn't fix the Raynor character though, which I believe is the core mistake of the whole SC2 storyline. Raynor swore he'd kill Kerrigan after she killed Fenix. Now he has grown hair, become an alcoholic, seems to have forgotten campaign 2 and 3 of SC1, and campaign 1, 2 and 3 of SC2 and hops back into the single event in which Arcturus leaves Kerrigan behind. That is retarded, put in the most friendly way possible towards their narrative skills.
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector. The mystery around Duran was a cheap way to create material for discussion.)
Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief.
The thing is that games like Red Alert and even SC1 had SIMPLE STORIES which FIT AN RTS GAME. They have "acquire this resource" or "defend this position" kind of missions in there.
But what does SC2 have? Those missions are bathed in this love story which totally blunts any urgency of a mission, because you dont ever have any "defend these civilians" kind of missions which really have an impact or could punish you if you fail / decide not to do them or so. It all gets sacrificed for a cheesy story which has no real place in an RTS game. Mistrust and hate and betrayal are all fine, but love doesnt fit!
If HotS had stuck to the "Kerrigan goes after Mengsk" path they could have made a nice and interesting campaign where these two kinda play chess against each other with each of them taking a move, but everything is overshadowed by that love story and this is bad. Sure enough Raynor didnt play a big part during most of the campaign, but the end really is Hollywood style.
There probably was a one-sided love relationship in SC1 with Raynor thinking Kerrigan quite hot and then going on a rampage to save her. She probably didnt really love him that much (she is a career girl with a job after all) but fell for him when he rescued her in WoL.
Complex character developing love stories work for an RPG but not an RTS ... but then they want to sell books too and there they want to be cheesy as cheese can be for maximum sales.
Just because you don't like to have love in this universe doesn't automatically not fitting.
While the OP is very well written (which I admit even though I don't agree to some points) many postings in this thread are not. I see a lot of bitter nerds here, not able to stand a love cliche in the SC2 story line.
On March 21 2013 03:50 Shakattak wrote: And as a side note, i did enjoy playing the campaign regardless.
Me too, even though I had several facepalm moments. The OP still provide good points, though I consider the premise debatable (which seems to be the need to have a well-done story in the first place.)
On March 21 2013 03:22 sCCrooked wrote: The problem is that we were given a premise and that premise has been completely destroyed. Its been replaced with this new storyline that most if not all educated and analytical minds would find insulting at best. In the decade+ between BW and SC2's new arc, I at no point ever gave a flying f*ck about Raynor and Kerrigan's love interest. Nobody did because it plain old wasn't there. All this new crap is coming out of the woodwork and its annoying to see such a great story completely smashed because of a dumb, poorly-executed love story.
This is EXACTLY what happened in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars and it made a lot of people very angry at the whole franchise. Most still consider "4,5,6 were the only real ones" and I feel that intelligent people will feel no differently about the new Starcraft story arc vs the old one.
Are you trying to put as many insults into as few lines as possible? Fortunately I don't care if you deem me intelligent, but I liked the HotS singleplayer. Mostly because of the gameplay. However the story wasn't that bad by any means. Of course it was full of clichés and cringeworthy at some points, but overall it was just a simple, basic story. Personally, I love love stories, so Raynor loving Kerrigan, Kerrigan loving Raynor and Mengsk finally dying (I waited for that one since I was six years old) was okay for me.
You are simply easily amused by a very low-grade basic storyline and that's perfectly fine. If the truth is insulting to you, perhaps a change is in order.
However making a ridiculous statement like you waiting for Raynerrigan to happen since you were 6 is what makes the people defending this seem utterly uneducated. You can't possibly have waited for that because if you did, then you made something up in your head that wasn't even hinted at and at the age of 6 desired 2 arch-enemies at each others' throats who are the basis for the entire story arc to stop hating each other and suddenly fuck. That statement contradicts itself and is completely illogical.
Liking the story is fine and so is liking the new arc they're adding, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the cold facts that this is not the Starcraft Universe we were presented and given a complete base of. Its some other weird arc that didn't exist, wasn't hinted at and it alienates everything that defined the first game and its expansion. These are not things that can be argued.
I don't even. . . Why would the Overmind leave Char (safe) to relocate to Aiur (not safe)? Why can't he send his cerebrates? He knows dt's are around, so it's not safe.
Because he is the leader of the Swarm and his goal is to absorb the Protoss? And no, there weren't Dark Templar on Aiur. They were exiled and, at the time, hadn't returned.
Why can he invade any other planet but Aiur? Is there some mystical "anti-overmind" shield around this planet? Who build that? The Protoss? The Xel'Naga? Why is said shield impenetrable for the overmind but not for all other creatures of the swarm? Why is some mystical crystal the solution to the overminds' manifestation problem? Why haven't the Protoss discovered that this crystal formation posses magical unknown powers that can be used against them. It's their homeworld for thousands of years. Why do we need to bring said crystal to the temple of where the xel'naga first set foot on the planet? What is so special about this place? Is it the temple or the place? Why is this the only place he can enter Aiur?
It is so wrong on so many levels.
The Overmind is (at the time) the most powerful and psionic being out there. Aiur is the homeworld of the Protoss, with billions of them there and an untold amount of defenses. Perhaps he needs some sort of anchor to this incredibly well-defended and psionic-inhabited planet to have a firm hold on the planet? It is entirely plausible and doesn't even require the mental back-flips that making SC2 consistent does to understand why it might be reasonable for it to be difficult for the Overmind to just auto-invade Aiur.
I mean yea, we could even grant you that it's a little convoluted or potentially unnecessary. But please explain how this is comparable to any of the absolutely ridiculous plot holes or terrible writing that we see from SC2.
I brought up the dt's because they were a real threat to the cerebrates so there might be others unknown to him lurking on Aiur (with an untold amount of defenses.) Why the fuck would I go willingly to the most dangerous place in the known universe for me if I had a safe backup plan: Sit there and let the cerebrates do the work? Let alone the fact that the protoss were not broken by the time the overmind entered their world. I will also not go with you into speculations as why he would need the crystal/temple. It is not told to me in the campaign and it's not my task to fill the holes the writers left there. As it stands both missions need further explanations or are highly unreasonable.
I choose this example because I thought it was a quite obvious example of bad storywriting but there are others. (the whole BW: Protoss campaign is basically a quest for crystals. to activate a temple. from the xel'naga. to kill zerg. which landed undetected. on the homeworld of the dts.)
I guess it comes down to personal preferences if you are more willing to forgive the SC/BW plot in comparison to the WoL/HotS plot. But to make a black and white statement like BW was the culmination of storytelling is clouded judgement.
I can appreciate the amount of thought and effort that the OP put into this topic, but at the end of the day Starcraft 2 is a video game - not a Tom Clancy novel. Any critique of the campaign that doesn't cover the story AND gameplay is ultimately a waste of everyone's time. This critique really misses the mark by failing to address any of the gameplay features other than the obvious Belial/Zerus boss fight comparison.
That being said I thought the gameplay was very good. There was a nice mix of hero-type missions and macro-oriented style zerg missions. Kerrigan's skill tree felt balanced and proper skill selection for specific missions was often necessary (at least in brutal mode). The evolution mission feature is also really cool because it allows you to essentially make your own custom units. HotS is a good expansion, and if you had "been teetering over period of a few months in looking at pros/cons, personal opinions, and [you] only finally caved," then maybe you shouldn't have purchased the game in the first place.
Great analysis. It was a pleasure to read, unlike playing HotS campaign.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: [The other thing however is in talking about my interest in the possible psychological ramifications of being the Queen of Blades and PTSD, Blizzard didn't seem to deem this important to touch upon in the slightest. The only time you see this is from the opening cinematic, and never again. I can't help but feel this is a missed opportunity to explore something that games rarely ever do, the psychological ramifications of trauma .
The PTSD was left for those brave souls who managed to play until the end of the campaign.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: This brings me to the Hybrids, Emil Narud, and the meaning of the artifact. The first thing I wanted to mention was that it is finally revealed to us that the Tal'Darim, that annoying Protoss faction from Wings that we have been fighting, actually worship the Xel'Naga Amon, which I actually felt works. It played into the Protoss Xel'Naga reverence ideas, but I felt that they could have done more to explain the sociological and historical position of the Tal'Darim as that has always seemed a little confusing in how they fit into Protoss society (the lore in the manual would lead me to believe that they were one of the factions that did not embrace the Khala). Cue yet another supplemental materials issue.
What doesn't make any sense or is explained, is why did Dr. Narud hired Raynor to steal artifacts from the Tal'Darim (in WoL). In HotS we discover that the Tal'Darim work for Narud. Anyway, it's just another plot hole in the midst of so many others.
Another point that I would have liked to see addressed is the fact that Kerrigan, the leader of an evolutionary race and the apogee of Zerg evolution, evolved high heels in her feet. I wonder what are the evolutionary advantages of high heels! Ridiculous.
On March 21 2013 03:44 Stratos_speAr wrote: I swear, these "nostalgia" responses pop up every 5 pages in single player story-related threads. You really need to read the actual threads, since every one of them has in-depth explanations and comparisons of why SC2 is 1) inconsistent with and 2) just plain worse than BW in terms of writing and storytelling.
I do agree that SC2 is inconsistent. But I don't see BW any better in storytelling. SC1 was groundbreaking then despite the many cliches. Having talking heads in the mission screen, who advance the story, was very good to immerse in the story. The story itself however was imo not as good and got even worse in BW. BW needed to have new plots, so we got the UED and other random stuff. I didn't see a fleshed out plan for the story which included BW.
However I still regard SC1+BW as one of the few games which are true art. The impact this game including its expansion had are visible still today.
On March 21 2013 04:08 Warpish wrote: Another point that I would have liked to see addressed is the fact that Kerrigan, the leader of an evolutionary race and the apogee of Zerg evolution, evolved high heels in her feet. I wonder what are the evolutionary advantages of high heels! Ridiculous.
I also thought about it, she had high heels in Wol already. A transparent trick to make her more sexy despite her zerg appearance. It still is one of the thing I can live with, even though it *is* ridiculous. As are the woman in every historical hollywood movie. The girl always fits the fashion of the time, she never looks like a contemporary woman. Absolute BS. But Starcraft design is over the top anyways, so I accepted natural high heels for the queen of blades even though they make absolutely no sense.
Retcons aside, I just don't think the RTS genre is appropriate for the kind of story Blizzard is trying to tell. If a game is played at a macro scale then the story needs to be at a similar scale. Lots of characters, factions, diplomatic intrigue. This is why the war room style briefings in SC/BW worked better than a million cutscenes centered around a single character. (There was a similar problem with coupling Diablo, a series that has always been about emergence and replayability, with such an intrusive, overbearing story in 3.)
On March 21 2013 04:03 focusfight wrote: I can appreciate the amount of thought and effort that the OP put into this topic, but at the end of the day Starcraft 2 is a video game - not a Tom Clancy novel. Any critique of the campaign that doesn't cover the story AND gameplay is ultimately a waste of everyone's time. This critique really misses the mark by failing to address any of the gameplay features other than the obvious Belial/Zerus boss fight comparison.
That being said I thought the gameplay was very good. There was a nice mix of hero-type missions and macro-oriented style zerg missions. Kerrigan's skill tree felt balanced and proper skill selection for specific missions was often necessary (at least in brutal mode). The evolution mission feature is also really cool because it allows you to essentially make your own custom units. HotS is a good expansion, and if you had "been teetering over period of a few months in looking at pros/cons, personal opinions, and [you] only finally caved," then maybe you shouldn't have purchased the game in the first place.
I found some of the missions pretty tiresome. There are a lot of gimmicks but most macro missions still follow the same structure of giving you 1 or 2 obvious expands and saturating the entire map with enemy units and static defenses, and then constantly throwing a small number of units at you. So you just build up a wrecking ball army and kind of mindlessly 1a through everything. Why not play to SC2's strengths and give the enemy an actual economy with workers to harass, and expansion timings on their end.
And for me a preferable mix of hero missions would be basically zero but I realize I'm in the minority there.
On March 21 2013 03:22 sCCrooked wrote: The problem is that we were given a premise and that premise has been completely destroyed. Its been replaced with this new storyline that most if not all educated and analytical minds would find insulting at best. In the decade+ between BW and SC2's new arc, I at no point ever gave a flying f*ck about Raynor and Kerrigan's love interest. Nobody did because it plain old wasn't there. All this new crap is coming out of the woodwork and its annoying to see such a great story completely smashed because of a dumb, poorly-executed love story.
This is EXACTLY what happened in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars and it made a lot of people very angry at the whole franchise. Most still consider "4,5,6 were the only real ones" and I feel that intelligent people will feel no differently about the new Starcraft story arc vs the old one.
Are you trying to put as many insults into as few lines as possible? Fortunately I don't care if you deem me intelligent, but I liked the HotS singleplayer. Mostly because of the gameplay. However the story wasn't that bad by any means. Of course it was full of clichés and cringeworthy at some points, but overall it was just a simple, basic story. Personally, I love love stories, so Raynor loving Kerrigan, Kerrigan loving Raynor and Mengsk finally dying (I waited for that one since I was six years old) was okay for me.
You are simply easily amused by a very low-grade basic storyline and that's perfectly fine. If the truth is insulting to you, perhaps a change is in order.
However making a ridiculous statement like you waiting for Raynerrigan to happen since you were 6 is what makes the people defending this seem utterly uneducated. You can't possibly have waited for that because if you did, then you made something up in your head that wasn't even hinted at and at the age of 6 desired 2 arch-enemies at each others' throats who are the basis for the entire story arc to stop hating each other and suddenly fuck. That statement contradicts itself and is completely illogical.
Liking the story is fine and so is liking the new arc they're adding, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the cold facts that this is not the Starcraft Universe we were presented and given a complete base of. Its some other weird arc that didn't exist, wasn't hinted at and it alienates everything that defined the first game and its expansion. These are not things that can be argued.
I put the brackets behind the word dying for a reason. Aside from that, it still seems pretty obvious to me that Raynor really loved Kerrigan. Maybe it's the german voice acting, but they just sound that way.
I stand by what I have said in the past: Metzen is the only old name I see on all of these titles that isn't in an executive/head position. If you go and look at the developers/story writers on BW and WC3 (even vanilla WoW), they have all moved on to higher, less interactive positions with the actual games. My only hope is that they moved to Titan, but I highly doubt I'll be right.
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector. The mystery around Duran was a cheap way to create material for discussion.)
Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief.
The thing is that games like Red Alert and even SC1 had SIMPLE STORIES which FIT AN RTS GAME. They have "acquire this resource" or "defend this position" kind of missions in there.
But what does SC2 have? Those missions are bathed in this love story which totally blunts any urgency of a mission, because you dont ever have any "defend these civilians" kind of missions which really have an impact or could punish you if you fail / decide not to do them or so. It all gets sacrificed for a cheesy story which has no real place in an RTS game. Mistrust and hate and betrayal are all fine, but love doesnt fit!
If HotS had stuck to the "Kerrigan goes after Mengsk" path they could have made a nice and interesting campaign where these two kinda play chess against each other with each of them taking a move, but everything is overshadowed by that love story and this is bad. Sure enough Raynor didnt play a big part during most of the campaign, but the end really is Hollywood style.
There probably was a one-sided love relationship in SC1 with Raynor thinking Kerrigan quite hot and then going on a rampage to save her. She probably didnt really love him that much (she is a career girl with a job after all) but fell for him when he rescued her in WoL.
Complex character developing love stories work for an RPG but not an RTS ... but then they want to sell books too and there they want to be cheesy as cheese can be for maximum sales.
Just because you don't like to have love in this universe doesn't automatically not fitting.
While the OP is very well written (which I admit even though I don't agree to some points) many postings in this thread are not. I see a lot of bitter nerds here, not able to stand a love cliche in the SC2 story line.
An RTS is a game about CONFLICT and STRATEGY; love is about "happy times", getting together and having fun and those are kinda the opposite to each other. So they dont fit and its not just "my preference" ... unless you can come up with an explanation of why people who love each other (but never actually were together) would rip apart a lot of planets in the process.
The key is in the telling and that whole "Oh Jim" part of Kettigan is too much. They could have done the same campaign with an "I'll rescue that Raynor guy because he was nice to me" reasoning behind it and everything would be fine, but nooo they had to have their stupid and cheap dialogues / monologues instead. With the focus on the love story Mengsk had to take a full backseat and that was really terrible, because he became the two-dimensional cardboard villain instead of the scheming and manipulating badass we knew from SC1 ...
To be honest, I played the hots campaign once and I stopped after 10 or so missions. Maybe someday I'll think about finishing it but I'd have to redo all of it since after a few missions I skipped all dialogues and just wanted to go in the gameplay.
I didn't buy hots for its story/campaign because I agree that Blizzard makes their story super cheesy and predictable. On the other hand, I'm having a blast online !
Ok we don't need a Shakespear story for hots but if you are gonna make a story might as well make it as good as possible, not jsut good enough. Good read
Wow, that was quite the read and I agree with most of it. It's so strange to witness time and time again this "aiming for younger audiences and the masses" by game developers and movie makers alike. It's a completely wrong approach too because the older original works were much better and they were the ones that made the franchises in the first place. Why not just make these stories enjoyable for everyone. The people who don't see the difference don't care anyway and you don't lose the interest of the rest. So strange.. Did they just forget how to write and present a good story?
On March 21 2013 04:45 Penev wrote: Wow, that was quite the read and I agree with most of it. It's so strange to witness time and time again this "aiming for younger audiences and the masses" by game developers and movie makers alike. It's a completely wrong approach too because the older original works were much better and they were the ones that made the franchises in the first place. Why not just make these stories enjoyable for everyone. The people who don't see the difference don't care anyway and you don't lose the interest of the rest. So strange.. Did they just forget how to write and present a good story?
No, I highly doubt that they forgot how to tell a good story. Its been like 13-14 years since the first two games and times change. The audience changes. I believe that even if Blizzard kept their style with WoL and HOTS as they did with the first two games that the audience from back then wouldn't be good enough for good business. They aren't stupid and are pretty damn smart. Its just that that need more people to buy their game to make it seem justifiable in my opinion.
I loved WoL and HOTS and had huge fun in both games. The story isn't great but it isn't bad either like all of these other people are making it out to be. Can it be better? Obviously, and Blizzard can do it too, but they rather not because they don't want to take the risk. Is it possible they will take the risk on Legacy of the Void? I doubt it but anything can happen.
I enjoyed WoL and HOTS story for what they were and that was a decent continuation from the first two games.
On March 21 2013 04:45 Penev wrote: Wow, that was quite the read and I agree with most of it. It's so strange to witness time and time again this "aiming for younger audiences and the masses" by game developers and movie makers alike. It's a completely wrong approach too because the older original works were much better and they were the ones that made the franchises in the first place. Why not just make these stories enjoyable for everyone. The people who don't see the difference don't care anyway and you don't lose the interest of the rest. So strange.. Did they just forget how to write and present a good story?
No, I highly doubt that forgot how to tell a good story. Its been like 13-14 years since the first two games and times change. The audience changes. I believe that even if Blizzard kept their style with WoL and HOTS as they did with the first two games that the audience from back then wouldn't be good enough for good business. They aren't stupid and are pretty damn smart. Its just that that need more people to buy their game to make it seem justifiable in my opinion.
I loved WoL and HOTS and had huge fun in both games. The story isn't great but it isn't bad either like all of these other people are making it out to be. Can it be better? Obviously, and Blizzard can do it too, but they rather not because they don't want to take the risk. Is it possible they will take the risk on Legacy of the Void? I doubt it but anything can happen.
I enjoyed WoL and HOTS story for what they were and that was a decent continuation from the first two games.
And yes, I've played SC1 and Brood War.
I disagree. If Blizzard made a game called SC2 and it was just a repackaged Space Invaders with a picture book story many people would have bought it anyway. The original made their sales for them. I know I only bought it because SC:BW captured my imagination and drew me into an RTS.
Now, the market is being pioneered by the personalities that emerged from the advent of livestreaming. A lot of what makes SC2 successful has nothing at all to do with the gameplay: single player or multi-player.
On March 21 2013 04:45 Penev wrote: Wow, that was quite the read and I agree with most of it. It's so strange to witness time and time again this "aiming for younger audiences and the masses" by game developers and movie makers alike. It's a completely wrong approach too because the older original works were much better and they were the ones that made the franchises in the first place. Why not just make these stories enjoyable for everyone. The people who don't see the difference don't care anyway and you don't lose the interest of the rest. So strange.. Did they just forget how to write and present a good story?
No, I highly doubt that forgot how to tell a good story. Its been like 13-14 years since the first two games and times change. The audience changes. I believe that even if Blizzard kept their style with WoL and HOTS as they did with the first two games that the audience from back then wouldn't be good enough for good business. They aren't stupid and are pretty damn smart. Its just that that need more people to buy their game to make it seem justifiable in my opinion.
I loved WoL and HOTS and had huge fun in both games. The story isn't great but it isn't bad either like all of these other people are making it out to be. Can it be better? Obviously, and Blizzard can do it too, but they rather not because they don't want to take the risk. Is it possible they will take the risk on Legacy of the Void? I doubt it but anything can happen.
I enjoyed WoL and HOTS story for what they were and that was a decent continuation from the first two games.
And yes, I've played SC1 and Brood War.
If both the SC2 stories would have been written/ presented better the sales would've been the same is what I was trying to say in my post. Maybe even better but at least the same. Audiences didn't change, the producers did. They are wrong but it doesn't matter as long as sales are good (enough) sadly.
Seriously, I could care less about the story. If I wanted a good story I would just re-watch The Shawshank Redemption. What I care about is that at least for now(I haven't finished the campaign) it seems fun and dynamic. Much better then Dune2 if anyone remembers lol
I want to make one point. Caveat: I read only up through the critique of how far I've played in the story so far.
Starcraft, like most action sci-fi stories, is such a load of horseshit at every turn that it's ridiculous to criticize it on its own level. If you focus on problems with the portrayal of gender, other stereotypes, blah blah, fine that's a social messaging problem worth discussing. But at no point can the story be taken seriously, so why bother? When we were kids, sure it was fun and even captivating. That's because the motivations are bite-sized since they are meant to explain game missions; perfect for young or thoughtless players. The arc is meant to lead to epic cut scenes, not shattering revelations on the human condition. If there happens to be a resemblance, kudos to the writers for pulling one off.
Blockbuster games are not a medium for deep or subtle expression. They're a great medium for storytelling. "Art games" strive for and sometimes achieve what we expect of "art". But even then it cannot compare to a good novel for shear mass, and I'm not sure if it ever will.
Excelent post. I agree with (almost) everything you say about the plot and personality changes, but I really don't mind because wasn't expecting anything better, to be honest. Blizzard was never a good storyteller, even when the lore behind these stories are great. And... I play the game much more because of it's gameplay and fun, where SC delivers a lot.
Good post and good effort OP....I must admit I had similar thoughts while playing the campaign throughout all aspects. However at the end of the day I still enjoyed it. Blizz has never been master storytellers. Starcraft is by far the best universe/story they created. Look at diablo and story's basically non-existent there, warcraft is pretty cool lore wise but besides warcraft 3 hasn't been displayed decently in game. Knowing all this, could blizz have done a better job following up the original SC story wise? Maybe....but I still had fun playing through both SC2 campaigns so far and look forward to see how they conclude it in the next one.
Thank you for your very long insight. Although I'd rather see it as an outsight.
So, could you please define "mature" in this context? What is a mature story? Romeo and Juliet, where two teenagers from rivaling clans fall in love with each other? What about Faust, where the Devil is betting with God on a guy who thinks is really clever? Or Don Quijote, a crazy nobleman who is travelling through a post-mediaeval spanish region, thinking he is a knight? All these, and I can bring up dozens of more stories if you wish, have extreme simple plots at first. Even more, I claim those stories are only successful because their protagonists behave romantic, which in essence is childish.
To summarize, I do not know a "mature story", because there are only successful stories that are not mature. Well-written, or well-narrated stories with extreme childish plots.
To span the arc to SC: The SC story was never ever in range of the examples above. Also in my opinion the BW story was the worst part of the SC universe that was made. Feel free to hate me now for killing your sacred cow, but if you look at all parts of SC, the development from SC to BW is confusing, narrow, far-fetched, and, sorry, childish. Look at those things you yourself point out, all those dialogue examples lead to this point. But I really enjoyed it, with one exception: The UED, the reasons for this have been pointed out a lot of times before.
Now to SC2: Raynor and Kerrigan both act sometimes like children, you are right. But it makes sense. If you think about it and throw away your nostalgia, they do not act like grown-ups, as you say, no, they don't. Why is this bad? Literature is full of similar behaviour. Stories start to become interesting when people behave like this.
Also you say there are some things in the SC2 story that are not made clear in BW or new or transformed characters that do not make sense. OK? Could you point out the problem with this?
Is Frodo a far-fetched character, because Tolkien did not mention him in The Hobbit? Let us stay with Middle Earth: Is The One Ring a strange, idiotic, or even scary transformation from the simple magic item in The Hobbit? Not to me, because it is a sequel!
In my opinion you are missing some crucial points, and forget to compare the story to other stories.
I also played Blizzard RTS games from the beginning, from WC: Orcs and Human to HotS. So I feel free to say: Stop poking meee! In other words: No matter how elabourated your post is, a lot of other people on this forum who share your opinion like to make us, who like the story, feel bad.
Also, I do not like Game Of Thrones, although I like Lena Headey and Sibel Kekili.
No matter how I disagree with you, I thank you for your long and interesting post.
This definitely belongs in blog. I won't make any comment on it since it would be insulting fro you to read a two line critics of such a complete article.
That being said, I need to remind you that if one wants an original story, one can read the bible, the ramayana or any mythology compendium. All Mankind is written there.
Thanks for this post OP. It is quality and really shows the amount of time/effort you put into it.
I am going to agree with you on Starcraft II writing, but for many different reasons. I can tell that you based this review somewhat on the Plinkett reviews of the original Star Wars trilogy (Nice!). You even mention it in the OP (again, Nice!).
Although this post is filled with a lot of the same diction Plinkett uses, you actually take an entirely different approach than he does.Your approach is somewhat complex, his approach is quite simple. At one point he has non-star wars nerds describe the characters in the prequel trilogy without mentioning their look/wardrobe, and he does the same for the original trilogy. The effect is hilarious, because many people are unable to describe the prequel characters.
Starcraft II does not have this problem. Many of the protagonists are easily described (Raynor: Rebel/Virtuous/Hick (Han Solo role), Kerrigan: Smart/Mad/Bad-A/Witty/Sexy (Leia Role etc.))etc. etc. The problem with Starcraft II is the quality of the antagonists (which I don't think you mention). I don't care about Mengsk, he's freaking boring. He is completely devoid of character. I can't describe him. I also don't care about Amon or Duran or whoever. I don't know a thing about them. And I am not afraid of them (which is the biggest deal). Plinkett would probably compare this to Darth Maul, who is powerful, but void of personality. So I wasn't face palming at Kerrigan's love for Raynor (which may be unwarranted, but is a hell-of-a-lot more interesting), I was face palming at her desire for revenge. She's mad cause she was betrayed and became zerg right? So why does she willingly make herself Zerg? (I'm sure you agree there, but I didn't see you mention it).
You also mention a lot of the reasons why this is incompatible with Starcraft and Brood War. I don't think Plinkett is as concerned with this. He mentions the new Star Trek movie as a good example of writing, which is cringe inducing to many Trekkies because of retcon and other things (like how fast the elevator moves and how it is much more like sci fantasy then sci fiction). Even though you are right (and so are the Trekkies), it is still possible for Starcraft II to completely ignore Starcraft I and be a good story on its own (in the same way Star Trek was a good story on its own). Because of that, I disagree with the points you made about its inconsistencies with Brood War.
I think the main reason Starcraft II is badly written is because the main tragedy doesn't make sense. I don't care about Mengsk, and I certainly don't want Kerrigan to become a Zerg again, yet she becomes one anyways and for no reason (or apparent gain). The only part I was emotionally involved in was when she was searching for Raynor (because I care about him), and the reveal was a let down (as you said). The ending also is a let down, as Mengsk dieing is not the emotional high note (because who cares about Mengsk). As someone who cares about Kerrigan and Raynor, I am not satisfied unless their story is resolved (and I am not even talking about Love, it's whether or not they are friends/allies or enemies sworn on killing each other). In the end she says thank you and he says my pleasure and they go their separate ways. I'm like what are they business partners now?
Also, I am gonna say something that might offend a lot of people (including you, forgive me!): the writing in Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War is also not good. I say this for many different reasons, but I think the penultimate one is that it's boring. It just has a lot of exposition and very little happening, really the exact reason why the prequels weren't good.
Because Brood War also has issues, I don't think this game (StarCraft II) necessitates a Plinkett review. If anything, StarCraft II has improved upon the story telling of Brood War (as it is atleast an attempt at making the story interesting).
Though honestly, if we're going to be super literary about good story telling, than we should be comparing the works to something like The Great Gatsby, which is start to finish a masterpiece and near perfection. I think many works of likable fiction fall short compared to Gatsby, but I think it's really easy to find problems in stories when comparing.
Again, I liked your post, but I am going to respectfully kinda disagree. Warm Regards!
On March 21 2013 05:35 papalion wrote: Thank you for your very long insight. Although I'd rather see it as an outsight.
So, could you please define "mature" in this context? What is a mature story? Romeo and Juliet, where two teenagers from rivaling clans fall in love with each other? What about Faust, where the Devil is betting with God on a guy who thinks is really clever? Or Don Quijote, a crazy nobleman who is travelling through a post-mediaeval spanish region, thinking he is a knight? All these, and I can bring up dozens of more stories if you wish, have extreme simple plots at first. Even more, I claim those stories are only successful because their protagonists behave romantic, which in essence is childish.
To summarize, I do not know a "mature story", because there are only successful stories that are not mature. Well-written, or well-narrated stories with extreme childish plots.
To span the arc to SC: The SC story was never ever in range of the examples above. Also in my opinion the BW story was the worst part of the SC universe that was made. Feel free to hate me now for killing your sacred cow, but if you look at all parts of SC, the development from SC to BW is confusing, narrow, far-fetched, and, sorry, childish. Look at those things you yourself point out, all those dialogue examples lead to this point. But I really enjoyed it, with one exception: The UED, the reasons for this have been pointed out a lot of times before.
Now to SC2: Raynor and Kerrigan both act sometimes like children, you are right. But it makes sense. If you think about it and throw away your nostalgia, they do not act like grown-ups, as you say, no, they don't. Why is this bad? Literature is full of similar behaviour. Stories start to become interesting when people behave like this.
Also you say there are some things in the SC2 story that are not made clear in BW or new or transformed characters that do not make sense. OK? Could you point out the problem with this?
Is Frodo a far-fetched character, because Tolkien did not mention him in The Hobbit? Let us stay with Middle Earth: Is The One Ring a strange, idiotic, or even scary transformation from the simple magic item in The Hobbit? Not to me, because it is a sequel!
In my opinion you are missing some crucial points, and forget to compare the story to other stories.
I also played Blizzard RTS games from the beginning, from WC: Orcs and Human to HotS. So I feel free to say: Stop poking meee! In other words: No matter how elabourated your post is, a lot of other people on this forum who share your opinion like to make us, who like the story, feel bad.
Also, I do not like Game Of Thrones, although I like Lena Headey and Sibel Kekili.
No matter how I disagree with you, I thank you for your long and interesting post.
You completely missed the point in every possible way.
The problem isn't using cliche plot points or whatever. The problem is made up of two things.
1) Consistency. Adding new things in sequels is fine (like your LotR example). The problem is that SC2, when compared to SC/BW, contradicts what was previously established and/or acts like something was previously established when it clearly was not. Romantic stories are fine. Romantic stories randomly thrown in that radically change and retcon everything about the established lore and universe are not.
2) Presentation. Again, it's perfectly fine to have romantic characters. The problem is when the presentation is incredibly poor. HotS's script is painfully cliche; full of one-liners that the writers want to be memorable, but instead they come across as incredibly fake, convoluted, and obnoxious. Everything down to Izsha's script during your missions sounded incredibly awkward. It's one thing to use eloquent language that humans never do when you're in a far-passed medieval time or are a different species (such as the Protoss or the Overmind + Cerebrates), but pretty much every character in WoL/HotS (including Kerrigan) is (at least primarily) human, and they talk in a dialect that is very comparable to ours. Using trashy Hollywood-esque one-liners and awkward sentences doesn't cut it in terms of the script.
On March 21 2013 02:07 [F_]aths wrote: The OP is good, yet missing an important point:
SC2 is made to sell to a large audience, not just to SC1 fans.
you missed the point of the post. It´s not about satisfing hardcore sc1 fans and ther expectations, it´s about writting a good story, following your own primise, let charachters do plausible things and don´t tell us kerrigan and jim are a couple when they never where.....
All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector. The mystery around Duran was a cheap way to create material for discussion.)
Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief.
The thing is that games like Red Alert and even SC1 had SIMPLE STORIES which FIT AN RTS GAME. They have "acquire this resource" or "defend this position" kind of missions in there.
But what does SC2 have? Those missions are bathed in this love story which totally blunts any urgency of a mission, because you dont ever have any "defend these civilians" kind of missions which really have an impact or could punish you if you fail / decide not to do them or so. It all gets sacrificed for a cheesy story which has no real place in an RTS game. Mistrust and hate and betrayal are all fine, but love doesnt fit!
If HotS had stuck to the "Kerrigan goes after Mengsk" path they could have made a nice and interesting campaign where these two kinda play chess against each other with each of them taking a move, but everything is overshadowed by that love story and this is bad. Sure enough Raynor didnt play a big part during most of the campaign, but the end really is Hollywood style.
There probably was a one-sided love relationship in SC1 with Raynor thinking Kerrigan quite hot and then going on a rampage to save her. She probably didnt really love him that much (she is a career girl with a job after all) but fell for him when he rescued her in WoL.
Complex character developing love stories work for an RPG but not an RTS ... but then they want to sell books too and there they want to be cheesy as cheese can be for maximum sales.
Just because you don't like to have love in this universe doesn't automatically not fitting.
While the OP is very well written (which I admit even though I don't agree to some points) many postings in this thread are not. I see a lot of bitter nerds here, not able to stand a love cliche in the SC2 story line.
An RTS is a game about CONFLICT and STRATEGY; love is about "happy times", getting together and having fun and those are kinda the opposite to each other. So they dont fit and its not just "my preference" ... unless you can come up with an explanation of why people who love each other (but never actually were together) would rip apart a lot of planets in the process.
The key is in the telling and that whole "Oh Jim" part of Kettigan is too much. They could have done the same campaign with an "I'll rescue that Raynor guy because he was nice to me" reasoning behind it and everything would be fine, but nooo they had to have their stupid and cheap dialogues / monologues instead. With the focus on the love story Mengsk had to take a full backseat and that was really terrible, because he became the two-dimensional cardboard villain instead of the scheming and manipulating badass we knew from SC1 ...
Your vision of an RTS being about upper-case conflict and strategy maybe not apply to anybody. The dialogues in SC1 weren't any better. I still remember how 'This is Jimmy' and Sarah met. I moaned.
On March 21 2013 04:52 Disengaged wrote: No, I highly doubt that they forgot how to tell a good story. Its been like 13-14 years since the first two games and times change. The audience changes. I believe that even if Blizzard kept their style with WoL and HOTS as they did with the first two games that the audience from back then wouldn't be good enough for good business. They aren't stupid and are pretty damn smart. Its just that that need more people to buy their game to make it seem justifiable in my opinion.
Indeed. While I do want a good story, I also want good production value. That means I must accept a story which appeals to a wide audience.
On March 21 2013 06:31 Emzeeshady wrote: Also is there anyone that honestly thinks SC: BW was far superior in terms of writing to SC2? Please look at them with an unbiased review. Neither are fantastic but I think SC2's are slightly better.
I think they're about the same really. The SC1 story was darker than the SC2 story. Certain parts of the SC2 story that are supposed to feel urgent get shoved aside for ZOMGVENGEANCE! and that's really the only complaint I have with it. I'd put Brood War slightly ahead of SC2 as far as the writing goes, but not nearly as far as some people with rose tinted glasses claim.
Very thorough post man. I appreciate it very much. I actually agree with most if not all of your reservations about the single player story except I've chalked it all up to it being another Blizzard fail and have already written them off as just another mainstream gaming developer forgetting their roots.
There are however a lot of things I disagree with so let me post them here and see what you think. Like you, I've been a fan of Blizzard games for years. I never read any of the suplementary materials. I had my disallusion with WC3, then after careful analysis realized that the things I blamed that story for have always been present in Blizzard games but I was to young to understand.
Some comments
Shouldn't Raynor be concerned about Kerrigan lapsing into old behavior of being the Queen of Blades, or at the very least concerned with all the Zerg in the facility now?
Maybe a little. But she send them back into the holding cells, makes it clear she purposly made sure there where no casualties and did it to mess with Valerian, something Raynor liked to do in WoL as well. No reason for him to freak out I'd say.
So why would Jim come though? Guilt.
Honestly there is little to believe love was his motivator just like you said. However there is even less reason to believe guilt was his motivator. I'd go for the fact that Raynor is the 'knight in shining armor' type of guy and leave it at that. Although flying to a zerg infested planet partially occupied by dominion forces on the off-chance that his dream: 'The Dream' cutscene was actually a real vision is pretty damn extreme if not motivated by somthing as powerful as love.
Raynor's love for Kerrigan was not presented to the players very well in Brood War. This is a story problem that lies in BW not in SC2. Her feelings for him are presented a bit more clearly as she constantly leaves him alive and feels the need to justify her actions towards him which she does to nobody else. It is somewhat poor storytelling of BW.
I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
Woah, stop it right there! Tell me if you've hear this story before: protagonist lives happy with love interest. Villain kills/kidnaps love interest, protagonist goes have revenge. Love interest is only used as a motivator for the protagonist but serves no purpose other then a potential 'reward' for the protagonist. HotS is a gender-inversed version of a very typical somewhat sexist game story.
If Mario has a sexist story because he has to rescue a helpless woman, then a story were the woman rescues Mario can't also be sexist because she cannot live without the man. If you play it like that, you're always right.
Fact is, Kerrigan is a badass in the story and Raynor spends 90% of his time needing to get rescued (and this trend continues in the final mission). Kerrigan can solo almost every mission and never doubts her capability to defeat Mengsk while Raynor is quite wimpy in this campagin. I'm not seeing any disempowerment here at all.
The misconception about Kerrigans and Raynors characters in BW The 'kill you one day' quote been used a lot while critisising WoL and now HotS, however I feel this comes from a misunderstanding of Kerrigan and Raynors character.
Raynor We are introduced to Raynor as the 'hero' of the story. He does all the good guy things and is described as 'knight in shining armor'. As I mentioned before, he goes to Char, knowing it's dangers on the extremely unlikely chance he might be able to get Sarah back. This is a guy that will go to hell and back to rescue people, especially Sarah.
Kerrigan When we last see Sarah Kerrigan, the human, she is engaged with the Protoss. Why? "The Protoss are comming to destroy the entire planet not just the Zerg." She believes she is saving the people on Tarsonis. Even though the fall of Tarsonis would be victory for her side, she cannot accept that amount of collateral damage. But isn't the planet going to be wiped out by the Zerg lured by the Psi-Emitters? Yes, however Kerrigan believes: "Once we've dealt with the Protoss, we can do something about the Zerg. Arcturus will come around, I know he will".
Sarah 'dies' trying to protect her enemies because of her attempt to save innocent civilians.
Fast Foreward to her hatching from the crysalis. She slaughters Raynors men, her old companions, and leaves Raynor alive. This is THE pivitol moment in her characterisation. On the one hand she is shown to be completely different from the person I just described by casually murdering her old compatriots. On the other hand there is still some of her old personality left that makes her leave Raynor alive. From this moment on we, the players, are left wondering for each of her actions if it is her old personality, her zerg side, the overminds influence or possibly even her old personality but with more power. This makes her such an interesting character as we can never predict how she will act.
In Brood War she tries to convince everybody that she is back to her old self and it was all because of the will of the overmind. Remember this quote:
Let her go Zasz. The greatness of her spirit has been left to her; that the swarm might benefit from her fiery example. Fear not her designs for she is bound to me as intimately as any Cerebrate.
There is the implication that she still has free will although she is also bound to the Zerg. The notion that she only did what she did because of the Overmind forcing her, is one that we as players know to be false.
Raynor again Unlike Zeratul and Artanis (facepalm) Raynor doesn't buy it. He 'loves to believe she's on the level, but part of me just knows better'. Raynor has witnessed the slaughter of his men AND how she left him alive. He knows part of the Queen of Blades is still the Sarah he cared about and part of her is Zerg. He hopes that with the overmind gone, there is still enough Sarah left but is very suspicious. Then Kerrigan kills Fenix showing him that there is little of the woman he loved left, although her agitation at Raynors anger shows there is still some of it.
So what should we have expected from Raynor in WoL? From the above we should expect that Raynor no longer believes the Queen of Blades can find salvation and should be killed. What do we see him do in WoL?
He mourns Sarah as though she was dead and acts hostile towards the Queen of Blades. In short Raynor starts out acting exactly like we should expect based on his actions in Brood War. And because he is in no way capable of harming her, he goes after his other enemy, Acrturus instead.
Then the Artifact happens. This is were many people seem to misunderstand who Kerrigan was in BW. As I mentioned before, the genius of her character was that you never knew wether it was the 'real' Kerrigan or her Zerg part acting. Neither does Raynor. So when the option is presented to him that maybe, all the evil she did was only because of her Zerg influence and he can undo that influence, he can 'end' the Queen of Blades and get Sarah back. This is a maybe because it is also possible that the old Sarah 'was' in control and liked what she had become. She mentions this twice in SC1.
We don't know which and neither does Raynor. This is why the 'kill you one day' quote is so misunderstood. Raynor has proven to be the kind of guy that would go to Char headlong into the swarm on the small chance he might get Sarah back and he does this again. If he's right, the Queen of Blades will be 'dead' anyway, if he's wrong he dies. So Raynor goes all-in.
Raynor would never choose revenge on one entity over rescuing another.
Back to the OP [/QUOTE]For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight.[/QUOTE] He's a Dark Templar. They are assassins. She believes the Protoss are about to kill her and deny her her vengence on Mengsk. Zeratul is no pushover, she believes she's in for the fight of her life.
Zerg on Zerus. So Zerus went from vulcanic world to lush jungle world. Yup, that's a retcon. I believe the idea was that the Primals somehow got split up from the rest of the Zerg before the Overmind formed, thus being forgotten by the Overmind and never being part of the hive mind. Still, it's obvious they wanted a slighty different backstory for the Zerg and retconned a lot. You can think about this a lot, but ultimately it doesn't make sense and never will. Kind of like the backstory of the UED.
I also wondered why they in the cinematic had to show Mengsk and that he had acquired the artifact
Foreshadowing. Called a Genius Bonus on TV Tropes. I missed it the first time too. Guess I'm not a genius.
Stukov Let's not spend too much words on him. His infestation story was written by other writers. Blizzard didn't want him in the canon originally (or at least were not sure if to include him) but fans kept asking about him on lore panels so they included him as a bonus for those fans. Lazy and cheap or rewarding your most loyal lore fans? Can't please them all I guess. I was neutral about the whole affair.
The Hybrids are also finally revealed to have a purpose, in that they siphon off (and store?) the psionic powers of others in order to gather this energy to revive/awaken/free, do something for Amon (how is this transferred?). This is also the purpose of the artifact. It may have destroyed most of the Zerg infestation of the Queen of Blades (wait, most? see ahead), but its purpose in Wings was to take her psionic energy and apply it to Amons rebirth.
Zerg don't have psionic powers. They use the power of the void, like the Dark Templar. So the artifact is void-power-related I guess. Then again, that contradicts miss Hanson's assumption about the artifact. She DID pick up that the artifact was YOUNGER then the Xel'naga, implying somebody ELSE made it for a DIFFERENT PURPOSE. I admit I don't really care if the space-magic is lore-tight but there's more elements to this then in your post so I suggest more study is required should anybody care.
Rescuing Jim Raynor. I already explained how I disagree with your view on their relationship. In my view, this is the curcial moment. Raynor banked everything on the artifact removing all her Zerg tendancies. Seeing her back as Queen of Blades volentarily changes his hopes that the artifact could change everything and implies that killing Fenis WAS Sarah's own choice after all and not the Zerg influence. This breaks all his hopes. Kerrigans offer to let him kill her confuses him however, so he leaves not knowing what to think.
As Raynor tries to come to terms with what he's witnessed, Valerian negotiates with Kerrigan for the civilians and she agrees. The old Queen of Blades would never have agreed. Because of this, Raynor helps her out in the final mission. For Raynor and ourselves, Kerrigan's true personality is left ambigous. Again, Raynor is left wondering if THIS Queen of Blades can be trusted but her actions during the assault on Korhal speak in her favor.
Psi Destroyer More of the Primal-Zerg-Split-Before-Overmind stuff.
I thought it was cool it was included. Normally in stories you'd have a tool as powerful as the Psi-Disruptor that never get's mentioned again after it's used. Here it all comes back. This gives me hope that the Shakuras Temple is going to be mentioned again. For a videogame this is a lot more coherent world building then usual.
The Artifact I found it easy to believe Arcturus would wait with using the Artifact untill after he taunted Kerrigan personally. That and using it only when Kerrigan is right next to it would decrease the chance of her escaping. Remember he cares nothing for his men. If this gave him a slight advantage he would do it.
I also don't get why people say it does something different now. It shoots lightning. The lightning destroys Zerg or Zerg parts of people. Considering it burns the Zerg to a crips in All-In I'd expect it to hurt a lot when it changed Kerrigan back the last time and does so again now.
Has the quality of the story really changed since Brood War? Do you remember this mission?
In it, Raynor and Fenix agree to attack the neutral nation of Kel-Moria, steal their minerals and kill their security guards. Fenix even mocks them for being 'greedy' because they stay out of the war and focus on economy instead, all the while stealing their stuff. Worse still, Fenix shoots a hole in their command centers so queens can enter and invest the miners allowing them to be used as involentary suicide bombers in the next mission. Woah. That's some seriously dickish move right there!
If you can accept this as canon, without feeling that Fenix' and Raynors characters have been ruined forever, you can accept anything in SC2. This is the most character-breaking moment in the franchise by far. If this kind of disregard for storytelling was in SC2, the shitstorm would have been uncontrolable.
Conclusion On the one hand, I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about the story of Starcraft which fuel a lot of contempt for the story unnessarily.
On the other hand, I feel that people have very unrealistic expectations. A similar analysis of BW or even vanilla would reveal so many terrible story elements as I showed with just 1 mission.
On the third hand, the story isn't that great. Don't think I'm defending the story as a zealous fanboy. I even admit I hate the whole Amon plotline. It sounded cool in BW but in hindsight, I cannot imagine any way for it to play out that I would really like to see. I just don't like the black&white thinking that makes people put BW on a pedestal and SC2 in the garbage bin. SC1 certainly had some beautiful english lines that SC2 is sorely missing.
On the fourth hand, Blizzard has changed the way they write stories. From WC1 to HotS, Blizzard has slowly moved away from the 'nations at war / every mission is a region on the map to conquer' to a more personal story. It's very possible this style does not suit you and therefore newer Blizzard games will not be appealing to you. If you look at all their RTS games, you can see this trend slowly happening. That, I believe, should be a real discussion. Which do you like better?
On March 21 2013 06:31 Emzeeshady wrote: Also is there anyone that honestly thinks SC: BW was far superior in terms of writing to SC2? Please look at them with an unbiased review. Neither are fantastic but I think SC2's are slightly better.
Then you're being willfully delusional. BW may not have been fantastic, but SC2's script is fucking atrocious, and it blows my mind that people think it's comparable. The sheer amount of contradictions, cliches, and cringe-worthy one-liners in the SC2 script makes them borderline impossible to sit through.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
I mean really, COME ON. If you try to tell me that the SC2 script is better than the SC/BW one, then I'm sorry, but you're just objectively wrong. Just copy/pasting that brought back how pissed off I am at how terrible WoL was.
I don't understand what people have against the viking in the opening cinematic. It's obviously that he sacrificed himself to give the tanks time to siege up. If I was in that situation playing SC2, I would have landed the viking also so the tanks gain a few seconds to siege...
In it, Raynor and Fenix agree to attack the neutral nation of Kel-Moria, steal their minerals and kill their security guards. Fenix even mocks them for being 'greedy' because they stay out of the war and focus on economy instead, all the while stealing their stuff. Worse still, Fenix shoots a hole in their command centers so queens can enter and invest the miners allowing them to be used as involentary suicide bombers in the next mission. Woah. That's some seriously dickish move right there!
If you can accept this as canon, without feeling that Fenix' and Raynors characters have been ruined forever, you can accept anything in SC2. This is the most character-breaking moment in the franchise by far. If this kind of disregard for storytelling was in SC2, the shitstorm would have been uncontrolable.
I don't know if you're trolling but your description of that mission is laughable. I question if you actually know the story of BW, or even watched that video that you linked. Kel-Moria isn't a neutral nation, Fenix isn't mocking them, he's incredulous that they would still keep trying to mine resources instead of running when the UED are slaughtering everyone, Fenix helps infest the command centers because that would help Kerrigans assault, ...
Just watch the video again. Also, explain exactly what you think Raynor and Fenix's characters are like. You want dick move? Protoss glass entire planets with billions of innocents on it just to slow down the zerg invasion.
I agree and I think the problem is Chris Metzen copy/pasting dialogue from Steven Seagal movies these last years. Can't be helped, probably easiest way to get the story done with your feet on the desk.
Just read through all of that, was a pleasure to read really. Thanks a lot for not sounding like a whiny bitch either which makes most posts like these infuriating to read.
In general I agree with most your sentiments albeit some stuff would fall under nitpicking to me, that said even nitpicking can be appropriate and it does hold true that there are plenty minor issues.
I'm personally just really disappointed that Blizzard's writing and storytelling just does not match their overall production quality. I mean shit, even though I love the gameplay and (most) of the presentation in the campaign I just constantly was disappointing in storytelling and their writing quality.
I really have to wonder why this is the case and can't come up with a much better explanation other than that probably Chris Metzen has become this kind of George Lucas that has simply degenerated in terms of his storytelling quality (for normal reasons such as being responsible for too many huge franchises etc.) and none dares to say "no, this is stupid Chris". Even the other higher ups are probably all friends with him and it's just darn awkward to go ahead and call him out.
I've gotten the collector editions for WoL, Diablo 3 and HotS and in all of them there are parts where you feel like Chris Metzen is hampering the storytelling. For example in Diablo 3 it was apparently him who proposed the female Diablo and most people were against it (says so himself in the behind the scenes stuff). Guess what, it made it into the game (and while I have nothing against a female Diablo per say it did turn out badly, considering that it wasn't executed well at all).
After Diablo III blizzard could only do better. That is why I am somewhat positive about HotS. The magic in the gaming industry is just gone. Blizzard isn't the only one suffering from it. At least the magic that I always felt when I was younger, the urge and joy while playing games. Maybe we are just getting old...
Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.
I felt the same about Blizzard. It wasn't just that they made great games, they had great content that attracted gamers. Content that made people care about their games in a personal way.
The way they have gone through each of their franchises, one by one, each offering a hope to long time fans that a different outcome was possible has been detrimental to the brand. At this point, if Kerrigan sprouted butterfly wings and Raynor started an AA group, it wouldn't register.
In addition, growing up I had a faint notion about the companies behind the games I played or even the differences between developer and publisher, etc (even ones I liked). With Blizzard being the exception. I cared about Blizzard but only because I cared about their games first. From there, educating myself about the gaming industry only seemed relevant from that vantage point.
I used to be interested in debating the merits of the (Blizzard) games but at this point I know for a fact that you literally have to be a non thinking individual to swallow whole most of what's being sold to us. Its especially aggravating interacting with folks who will actually try to advance that the SC2 is story is better. I'm not interested in being part of that kind of a community.
That isn't to debase or discredit the equally vibrant StarCraft community that bonded on the multiplayer side (and even that has a lot of contention) and I honestly wish the best for them in regards to esports (really).
As it is, I no longer have any buy in the future of Blizzard Activision.
- - - @Splines
Raynor's love for Kerrigan was not presented to the players very well in Brood War. This is a story problem that lies in BW not in SC2. Her feelings for him are presented a bit more clearly as she constantly leaves him alive and feels the need to justify her actions towards him which she does to nobody else. It is somewhat poor storytelling of BW.
Hahahaha xD You've got to be kidding me. SC2 is faulty not because it really is, but because the storyline from 10 years earlier on, couldn't anticipate the bullshit we're trying to sell you on.
I saw at a Blizzcon Q&A where a fan asked a question if SC2 was heading the same way as WoW, where all the races team up in the end against the evil Xel Naga and you could just see Metzen and the other guys thinking *oh shit he knows*. It's the worst possible ending I can imagine and that is most likely what is going to happen. I am so disgusted by this thought. Does anyone know where to find that Blizzcon Q&A? I'd love to see that fan ask the panel that again.
Since WoW expansions, Diablo 3, WoL and now HotS I have completely lost any "faith" in Blizzard story telling. I read the whole article and pretty much agree with everything you say. I kinda accepted the WoW stories cause I only cared about playing with my friends and story came last in that game.
WoL was the first indication that something was horribly wrong with the writing team and it's only snowballed on from there.
With Diablo 3 I just lost it, I couldnt believe they turned one of my favorite franchises (especially Diablo 1) into such vile bullshit storytelling, a rush of emotions just came over me and I knew Blizzard storytelling was dead to me. This is not even including the poor game design choices which is for a whole other discussion.
I had to put the difficulty to Casual on the few last missions just to get it over with, just show me the last cinematic so I never have to play another second of that dreadful campaign.
On March 21 2013 07:18 Koshi wrote: After Diablo III blizzard could only do better. That is why I am somewhat positive about HotS. The magic in the gaming industry is just gone. Blizzard isn't the only one suffering from it. At least the magic that I always felt when I was younger, the urge and joy while playing games. Maybe we are just getting old...
Go play some of those old games. Planescape: Torment comes to mind. You are not getting old. The storytelling died somewhere between here and there though.
On March 21 2013 04:45 Penev wrote: Wow, that was quite the read and I agree with most of it. It's so strange to witness time and time again this "aiming for younger audiences and the masses" by game developers and movie makers alike. It's a completely wrong approach too because the older original works were much better and they were the ones that made the franchises in the first place. Why not just make these stories enjoyable for everyone. The people who don't see the difference don't care anyway and you don't lose the interest of the rest. So strange.. Did they just forget how to write and present a good story?
No, I highly doubt that forgot how to tell a good story. Its been like 13-14 years since the first two games and times change. The audience changes. I believe that even if Blizzard kept their style with WoL and HOTS as they did with the first two games that the audience from back then wouldn't be good enough for good business. They aren't stupid and are pretty damn smart. Its just that that need more people to buy their game to make it seem justifiable in my opinion.
I loved WoL and HOTS and had huge fun in both games. The story isn't great but it isn't bad either like all of these other people are making it out to be. Can it be better? Obviously, and Blizzard can do it too, but they rather not because they don't want to take the risk. Is it possible they will take the risk on Legacy of the Void? I doubt it but anything can happen.
I enjoyed WoL and HOTS story for what they were and that was a decent continuation from the first two games.
And yes, I've played SC1 and Brood War.
If both the SC2 stories would have been written/ presented better the sales would've been the same is what I was trying to say in my post. Maybe even better but at least the same. Audiences didn't change, the producers did. They are wrong but it doesn't matter as long as sales are good (enough) sadly.
I don't believe that sales will be the same. Maybe in the US but not worldwide. Again, not everywhere has the same internet penetration even till today. I got hooked into StarCraft because I lived in a place where single player was the only real option. You will not believe how exciting it was to play multiplayer by modem. A good story has people coming back, sharing the game, and people caring about the product. If I didn't care about the original SC, I wouldn't have bothered with WoL.
On March 21 2013 07:18 Koshi wrote: After Diablo III blizzard could only do better. That is why I am somewhat positive about HotS. The magic in the gaming industry is just gone. Blizzard isn't the only one suffering from it. At least the magic that I always felt when I was younger, the urge and joy while playing games. Maybe we are just getting old...
Go play some of those old games. Planescape: Torment comes to mind. You are not getting old. The storytelling died somewhere between here and there though.
I don't think the magic is gone. I just think that big companies that make games for profit are losing it. Blizzard, EA, and Activision being the big companies.
I'm almost 100% certain at this point that if Riot decided to make an competitive RTS, that it would blow SC2 out of the water.
On March 21 2013 06:39 vitruvia wrote: fancy words, shallow review. I remember use to read a similar review on shawshank redemption, and boy was he arrogant.
And your critique of his review lacks fancy words and even more shallow. It fact, it also lacks basic grammar.
Eventhough I find the HotS campaign storyline lacking at several points, and agree with much of your analysis, there are some points where I feel you are stretching it. You criticism of the psi-destroyer based on lore seems excessive, considering the existance of other psi-based devices that affect the zerg (the psi-emitters and psi-disruptor from BW). While Blizzard might have not described it in the most clear of manners, the device is not a flaw to the plot by any means.
Besides these details, why didn't you analyze the removal of the parts of the original trailer involving the freedom of the Zerg? I'm just interested in why.
While I appreciate the OP for the time it must have took to write this post, I can't help but feel he is trying to analyze the subtle textures, aromas and flavors of a McDonalds hamburger. His time might be better spent summarizing his thoughts on some of the great literary classics like LOTR, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, etc.
Blizz stories are really just pulp fiction and deserve no further thought for the mature mind.
On March 21 2013 06:31 Emzeeshady wrote: Also is there anyone that honestly thinks SC: BW was far superior in terms of writing to SC2? Please look at them with an unbiased review. Neither are fantastic but I think SC2's are slightly better.
Then you're being willfully delusional. BW may not have been fantastic, but SC2's script is fucking atrocious, and it blows my mind that people think it's comparable. The sheer amount of contradictions, cliches, and cringe-worthy one-liners in the SC2 script makes them borderline impossible to sit through.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
I mean really, COME ON. If you try to tell me that the SC2 script is better than the SC/BW one, then I'm sorry, but you're just objectively wrong. Just copy/pasting that brought back how pissed off I am at how terrible WoL was.
This. A hundred times this.
People should at least replay SC1/BW (just rush through with cheat codes if you're impatient) before throwing out the 'nostalgia' argument.
Anyone knows of a good criticism of the Diablo III story, similarly comprehensive to the OP of this thread? I personally never understood why that game's story received so much hate, especially since nobody I encounter can articulate what they dislike about it, but I'm open to other perspectives.
If you play a game for the story you might aswell go read a book, since a books story is almost always going to be better than that of a game, since the story in a game pretty much always has to make sacrifices for gameplay.
On March 21 2013 05:35 papalion wrote: Thank you for your very long insight. Although I'd rather see it as an outsight.
So, could you please define "mature" in this context? What is a mature story? Romeo and Juliet, where two teenagers from rivaling clans fall in love with each other? What about Faust, where the Devil is betting with God on a guy who thinks is really clever? Or Don Quijote, a crazy nobleman who is travelling through a post-mediaeval spanish region, thinking he is a knight? All these, and I can bring up dozens of more stories if you wish, have extreme simple plots at first. Even more, I claim those stories are only successful because their protagonists behave romantic, which in essence is childish.
To summarize, I do not know a "mature story", because there are only successful stories that are not mature. Well-written, or well-narrated stories with extreme childish plots.
To span the arc to SC: The SC story was never ever in range of the examples above. Also in my opinion the BW story was the worst part of the SC universe that was made. Feel free to hate me now for killing your sacred cow, but if you look at all parts of SC, the development from SC to BW is confusing, narrow, far-fetched, and, sorry, childish. Look at those things you yourself point out, all those dialogue examples lead to this point. But I really enjoyed it, with one exception: The UED, the reasons for this have been pointed out a lot of times before.
Now to SC2: Raynor and Kerrigan both act sometimes like children, you are right. But it makes sense. If you think about it and throw away your nostalgia, they do not act like grown-ups, as you say, no, they don't. Why is this bad? Literature is full of similar behaviour. Stories start to become interesting when people behave like this.
Also you say there are some things in the SC2 story that are not made clear in BW or new or transformed characters that do not make sense. OK? Could you point out the problem with this?
Is Frodo a far-fetched character, because Tolkien did not mention him in The Hobbit? Let us stay with Middle Earth: Is The One Ring a strange, idiotic, or even scary transformation from the simple magic item in The Hobbit? Not to me, because it is a sequel!
In my opinion you are missing some crucial points, and forget to compare the story to other stories.
I also played Blizzard RTS games from the beginning, from WC: Orcs and Human to HotS. So I feel free to say: Stop poking meee! In other words: No matter how elabourated your post is, a lot of other people on this forum who share your opinion like to make us, who like the story, feel bad.
Also, I do not like Game Of Thrones, although I like Lena Headey and Sibel Kekili.
No matter how I disagree with you, I thank you for your long and interesting post.
You completely missed the point in every possible way.
The problem isn't using cliche plot points or whatever. The problem is made up of two things.
1) Consistency. Adding new things in sequels is fine (like your LotR example). The problem is that SC2, when compared to SC/BW, contradicts what was previously established and/or acts like something was previously established when it clearly was not. Romantic stories are fine. Romantic stories randomly thrown in that radically change and retcon everything about the established lore and universe are not.
2) Presentation. Again, it's perfectly fine to have romantic characters. The problem is when the presentation is incredibly poor. HotS's script is painfully cliche; full of one-liners that the writers want to be memorable, but instead they come across as incredibly fake, convoluted, and obnoxious. Everything down to Izsha's script during your missions sounded incredibly awkward. It's one thing to use eloquent language that humans never do when you're in a far-passed medieval time or are a different species (such as the Protoss or the Overmind + Cerebrates), but pretty much every character in WoL/HotS (including Kerrigan) is (at least primarily) human, and they talk in a dialect that is very comparable to ours. Using trashy Hollywood-esque one-liners and awkward sentences doesn't cut it in terms of the script.
This time 100. In my opinion, all the basic plots were pretty average yet interesting. The execution was flawed however in SC2. In my opinion, there aren't a lot of plot holes, but a lot of incredibly convoluted and complex things that we either have to work out on our own or assume. For instance, at first glance, Zerus is a plot hole due to its distance, landscape, and inhabitants. However, one can work out in a very convoluted way why things are the way they are. This may work, but it is not ideal, you want clear and simple connections rather than'oh worlds change in time due to x and y' or assumptions like 'oh maybe technology is better'. I don't have a problem with Kerrigan seeking power to kill Mengsk. Its like the same as old SC, join rebels to beat the dominion. The execution though was lacking.
I liked the gameplay, although it felt dumbed down and all those choices were not BIG or influental choices. Viper or Broodlord? Zerus or Char? (don't remember the planets' order correctly, please excuse, point still stands). I got the "this is D3!!"-feeling quite often as well. Lvling, chosing skills/mutations... Pseudo-choices. I like to have some RPG elements in a strategy game, but it was way better in WC3 than in HOTS. Maybe I'm just idealizing the past...
On March 21 2013 08:25 ElMeanYo wrote: While I appreciate the OP for the time it must have took to write this post, I can't help but feel he is trying to analyze the subtle textures, aromas and flavors of a McDonalds hamburger. His time might be better spent summarizing his thoughts on some of the great literary classics like LOTR, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, etc.
Blizz stories are really just pulp fiction and deserve no further thought for the mature mind.
I unfortunately agree with what is said here. I (painfully) read through the wall of text. Basically, I agreed on almost all points, but the reading was still painful.
Probably because the base material that is studied is so intrinsically basic.
On March 21 2013 07:18 Koshi wrote: After Diablo III blizzard could only do better. That is why I am somewhat positive about HotS. The magic in the gaming industry is just gone. Blizzard isn't the only one suffering from it. At least the magic that I always felt when I was younger, the urge and joy while playing games. Maybe we are just getting old...
Go play some of those old games. Planescape: Torment comes to mind. You are not getting old. The storytelling died somewhere between here and there though.
I don't think the magic is gone. I just think that big companies that make games for profit are losing it. Blizzard, EA, and Activision being the big companies.
I'm almost 100% certain at this point that if Riot decided to make an competitive RTS, that it would blow SC2 out of the water.
I really doubt that
If Valve and Riot both decided to make an RTS to rival Blizzard I'm pretty sure at least one of them would be a superior multiplayer experience.
On March 21 2013 08:47 Tedde93 wrote: If you play a game for the story you might aswell go read a book, since a books story is almost always going to be better than that of a game, since the story in a game pretty much always has to make sacrifices for gameplay.
and why can't we have good story in the game? Some games have great storyline and script and SC2/D3 are just terrible at it.
SC1/BW Raynor: "Kerrigan i'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do!"
WoL Raynor " Sarahhhhhh i luvvvvv youuuuuu" Me"What the..." Kerrigan" I'm going to destroy the universe" Me"Well... k..."
HotS Kerrigan" I luvvvvvv youuuuuu Jimmmmmm" Raynor " I luvvvv youuuuuu toooooo" Me "Alright wtf is with this"
Your description of SC1/BW to SC2 Words I could never hope to have that describe my confusion and disappointment of the SC universe better than I could imagine.
Story line aside, the gameplay is quite fun even if I was playing against belial at one point.
On March 21 2013 08:38 Grumbels wrote: Anyone knows of a good criticism of the Diablo III story, similarly comprehensive to the OP of this thread? I personally never understood why that game's story received so much hate, especially since nobody I encounter can articulate what they dislike about it, but I'm open to other perspectives.
Very similar to SC2's problems. The script was complete and utter trash in every way. The villains are entirely one dimensional and have childish supervillain scripts. The plot is full of massive holes and is also predictable and so cheesy that it will give your 55 year-old obese father a heart attack.
Very well written, many people complained but not in such a way that made much sense. I too am 30 but have learned one major thing about games and game stories that while disappointing always holds true. Almost no series in the history of gaming does a good job of holding to their cannon. So I inherently go into any game not expecting the story line to hold to what you think it should. Now for mainly multi-player games such as Starcraft, I don't mind this factoid. Largely because I didn't buy the game for the campaign in the first place.
I would say however, that it is 'too bad' that no developer can seem to do both. Make a game that in itself is amazing to play, and also put in a story that is absolutely riveting and makes sense from point A to B.
I think a great contrasting example to HoTS is SWOTOR, the story telling in that game and leveling experience for an MMO was 2nd to none. The game play however was terrible, and for that reason I no longer play the game.
But there's a reason I just don't over analyze each and every bit of every pixle on the screen, there's flaws to be had left and right, and you're better off just enjoying what's to enjoy and let a few things slide.
I think my biggest gripe is how the zerg kerrigan in HotS isn't the same persona as the BW one. She's just the ghost kerrigan in a new getup. So you have good kerrigan, evul kerrigan, and good zerg kerrigan... Not saying it's a problem, people just seem to expect the same things fromt HotS queen as they did BW queen.
So, Rayor dislikes BW Kerrigan for what she did, but when she's back to her old self it's all good, cause she was a different persona enterily during most of BW. Wich is why I didn't have a problem with him accepting her in the end, as all she's done is suited back into the zerg suit, without the crazy bw queen personality.
Anyways! Overall I enjoyed the campagain, story is well cheesy I'd say but nothing to get up in arms about.
Read through the whole thing, and you pretty much mentioned everything I subconsciously found "wrong" in the game. I mean, my Zerg-fan bias tried to suspend disbelief for some of the story elements, but I guess I overlooked a lot of inconsistencies.
On March 21 2013 08:38 Grumbels wrote: Anyone knows of a good criticism of the Diablo III story, similarly comprehensive to the OP of this thread? I personally never understood why that game's story received so much hate, especially since nobody I encounter can articulate what they dislike about it, but I'm open to other perspectives.
On March 20 2013 22:51 Champloo wrote: What a whiny review this is.
Heart of the Swarm is a complete success in my book. The launch went well, no connection problems etc. The campaign was fun to play and the multiplayer games are so much more fun to play and watch. This has been by far the best release of Blizzard since Warcraft III The Frozen Throne.
User was warned for this post
I'm in agreement with him, why was he warned? he let people know his opinion and he is warned? my opinion is the same, the story was meh but the gameplay was great and I don't really care that much to be honest. Childhood is going to get ruined no matter what these days, just let the nostalgia of the olden blizzard games go.
OP, you must be one of those people who just sees shit every wherever he goes, it's going to hurt you in life.
I caught many of the contradictions in lore that you caught. However, reading your post just made me even more depressed.
I thought the story was fucking terrible. Absolutely garbage. To the point they were taking a dump on the Starcraft universe. Reading this only reinforces my belief.
This is perhaps the single most perfect encapsulation of my own feelings. I have had a growing unease with the narrative arcs of Blizzard games, which stand in stark contrast to the stories that inspired my fanatical devotion in games such as Starcraft, Broodwar and Warcraft 2.
I have a point to add that I felt was ignored and I believe to be a serious part of the flawed nature of Starcraft 2's story. The original campaigns, in both Starcraft and Broodwar, had two limitations that in retrospect contributed to the crafting of a coherent narrative: the fact that the original campaign sections of each race were limited, so as to allow equal time for each race to be played, and the fact that with the release of Starcraft, Blizzard was in affect introducing the world to its new game, including the units and macro oriented structure. These two ideas are crucial to understanding the reasons behind many of Blizzard's narrative choices.
The original Starcraft campaign was meant to be the entire game, not an extension of the multiplayer experience that Starcraft 2 has become. This is clearly the case as each mission begins with an often painfully long experience of building up your forces, upgrading your units, and expanding to new locations. The exact experience that we now associate primarily with the multiplayer experience of Starcraft 2 was the central experience of the original Starcraft. Each mission allowed you to "play the game" and in a slow and methodical manner new units were added and explained along the way. This led to missions that were forced to include a unit introduction as part of the story. In Starcraft 2, new units are used as filler, using a Diamondback to take down a train or a Thor (Odin) to destroy an entire cities garrison. You never need use the unit again, it is simply an exciting extension of the mission and henceforth the "plans" are now in your back pocket to use at your discretion. In the original Starcraft the introduction of a unit was forced to serve the story. Acquiring Battlecruisers set you out to capture a crucially important production platform or acquiring Dark Templar required escaping from a ruined home world to join with a previously shunned group of Protoss. These kinds of decisions are engaging, enhancing the connection you feel to the game and the units you are utilizing. In WOL and HOTS new units are either "plans" or "essence" easily aquired and inconsequential. Raynor is supposedly leading a rag tag band of rebels that can find the "plans" for a Battlecruiser and then henceforth produce them easily. Units are no longer a part of story because the game of Starcraft is no longer what Blizzard intends you to play. In HOTS I often wondered if Blizzard was afraid to allow a simple build, expand, and conquer type of mission because it is too similar to the multiplayer experience. I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
Which bring me to the second problem. A key limitation forced on original Starcraft is that all three races had to be playable within one game. By forcing the narrative for each race to be expressed into a scant 10 or so missions Blizzard was unable to present anything but its best and most coherent content. I suspect due the limited amount of dialogue even possible in the original Starcraft (considering that every conversation resulted in watching floating heads talk over a paused game) the designers were extremely critical of each piece of content. In contrast WOL and HOTS are full of missions that are intended to be entertaining, but leave difficult and endlessly long periods of time in which the story has to come to a screeching halt. The major plots points become repetitious so as to fill time, collecting artifacts, defeating Primal Zerg clans, and other inane tasks. When each section of the story must be compressed into a few missions the overall narrative is pushed towards quick, and meaningful experiences. This is further supported by the fact that when each faction is allowed a section of the narrative a new perspective is allowed. In HOTS Kerrigan is surrounded by useless side characters that are attempting to create a perspective on the story outside of Kerrigan. In Broodwar specifically, the alternate views of Kerrigan, and her interactions in each section of the story are what made her such an interesting and compelling villian/anti-hero. Blizzard has fallen into the classic pitfall of narrative, that more is better, and judging by the story that has been presented through WOL and HOTS this is clearly not the case.
By being handicapped in these instances Blizzard was pushed into a situation that allowed for a concise and engaging story to develop. Game design and story cannot be separated, especially with a game like Starcraft, and the complete change in Blizzard's attitude towards game design has completely altered their ability to tell a compelling story.
Once again, the OP is amazing and I loved this article. I hope my two cents added something of value to the conversation.
After playing some of the Black Isle games I really find it hard getting excited about story lines in games, especially Blizzard games who have never really made a game with a truly great story as of yet. I am an old school gamer and go back in RTS to original C&C. I have to say although it was nice when SC1 brought some nice lore to RTS it was never the story back then which was the determining factor to whether an RTS game was a success but more the units, mission, gameplay and even for me the music and sound effects was more important.
I found HotS a good RTS campaign, although not a classic I certainly enjoyed it. I have to agree the story was not the best lol. Writers could do with maybe some inspiration at Blizzard although they may well be instructed to write stories in a certain way to appeal to a broad playerbase.
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
On March 20 2013 22:51 Champloo wrote: What a whiny review this is.
Heart of the Swarm is a complete success in my book. The launch went well, no connection problems etc. The campaign was fun to play and the multiplayer games are so much more fun to play and watch. This has been by far the best release of Blizzard since Warcraft III The Frozen Throne.
User was warned for this post
I'm in agreement with him, why was he warned? he let people know his opinion and he is warned? my opinion is the same, the story was meh but the gameplay was great and I don't really care that much to be honest. Childhood is going to get ruined no matter what these days, just let the nostalgia of the olden blizzard games go.
OP, you must be one of those people who just sees shit every wherever he goes, it's going to hurt you in life.
It isn't really hard to figure out why. The OP had nothing to do with the launch, the connection, how fun the campaign was to play or how much multiplayer games are to play or watch.
It had to do with the story, which you admit yourself was "meh."
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
Ashamed? Gameplay wise Starcraft 2 has the best single player in an RTS exactly because it so varied. Having 30 missions of "you build base and kill enemy" is so silly. You want that? Do skirmish against the AI or multiplayer. This is exactly what Blizzard tried to prevent and i applaud them for it.
thank you Sir, for an extremely detailed review of the story. I played SC1 and BW back in the day when I didn't understand a single word of English. Now it's all become clear. Very interesting read =)
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
Ashamed? Gameplay wise Starcraft 2 has the best single player in an RTS exactly because it so varied. Having 30 missions of "you build base and kill enemy" is so silly. You want that? Do skirmish against the AI or multiplayer. This is exactly what Blizzard tried to prevent and i applaud them for it.
While the SC2 campaigns have been fun gamplay-wise, I can think of many RTS's that have had more enjoyable campaigns.
Examples:
Homeworld (and expansion) Homeworld 2 Sacrifice Warcraft 3 (and expansion) Warlords Battlecry 2 Starcraft (and expansion) Dawn of War (and expansions) Dawn of War 2 (and expansions) Battle for Middle Earth 2
Why? Because all of these actually have you playing an RTS (instead of throwing in cheesy RPG-esque fights), they are actually difficult, and they come with writing that isn't so incredibly insulting to the brain that it forcefully pulls you out of the gameplay experience.
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
Ashamed? Gameplay wise Starcraft 2 has the best single player in an RTS exactly because it so varied. Having 30 missions of "you build base and kill enemy" is so silly. You want that? Do skirmish against the AI or multiplayer. This is exactly what Blizzard tried to prevent and i applaud them for it.
If I wanted an RPG and not an RTS I would have bought a bloody RPG... When you in all missions have an immortal superhero who even on brutal can damn near solo the game in an RTS there is something wrong imo. But I guess that we will have to agree to disagree as this is a subjective thing unlike the story which can objectively be recognised as terrible.
@OP While I dare not attempt to address the entire post I found the most critical part at the end. Sadly as a 24 year old I also could help but to find the story too childish. I was also very confused about why Kerrigan attacked Z'tul. I thought BW was extremely well writen- though the whole Toss issue with the prophecy was a little much, and was sad to see how they really took the low road in the quality department.
I do disagree about the romanace. I knew it exsisted, by the end of BW to me it was there- but I can understand your concern and your points are very valid.
Hopefully Blizzard remembers their core audience and makes the needed changes before LotV. I hope time reduces your feelings, and you'll give LotV a chance- even only to bring closure to the story.
With the exception of Jimmy somehow having his revolver in his cell (yeah, what was up with that?), I feel like this is one of those reviews that's intent was to be entirely critical. You may say "Well no shit captain obvious," but frankly I feel like this negative attitude towards what is plausibly supposed to only be entertainment is simply becoming a mannerism for most of our society now. Just as you have those who immediately accept it for being God's gift to the gaming world, you have those who will immediately condemn it as a failure to all gamedom.
I don't feel like there's much for me to talk about before the ending, since you bring up many valid points that could have just as many valid answers. I'll simply talk about how a lot of people really, REALLY dislike the ending, yourself included. For starters, the problem I have with the common criticism of "WTF IS WITH KERRIGAN FLYING" is that in all her Psionic capacity, wouldn't you think she could fly? It honestly didn't surprise me that she could given who the hell she is and the high level of power she has. Technical, she levitated before to confront Narud and kill Zerus' Ancient One. I feel like that is one of those criticisms made simply to criticize.
Then there's Mengsk's death, which I thought was quite fantastic. Think of all the ways Kerrigan has killed a character in the games? Has she ever literally pinned someone against a wall, sent psionic energy into their bodies, then cause them to explode at such a force that it blew up part of a building? It may not have been a gruesome, Zerg way to kill someone, but it was definitely a special and planned execution from Kerrigan. You also state that it was censored and that ruined the death sequence. Once again, I feel like this criticism was meant for the sake of being critical to be critical about anything. Showing Mengsk's body exploding would have made little difference; in fact, it would have been extraneous to the viewer. Sure it was dumbed down for the sake of the younger crowd or for the ESRB (I don't know, point being you state it was dumbed down because Blizzard is playing towards the Teen crowd), but if you have to have intense gore or intense death sequences to understand/enjoy a cinematic where the protagonist vanquishes the antagonist then I think you're really ruining some stuff for yourself.
Finally, we have the whole controversy with Jim Raynor being a total ham the entire story. He went out of his way to change Kerrigan back for a second chance at humanity, then he was incarcerated, then she went out of her way to become more Zerg-like then before to destroy Mengsk and tackle Amon, then he finds out after being broken out of jail by her (which the hallucination could also be a result of alcohol withdrawal mind you) and is super pissed like we all think he would, then later he realizes Kerrigan is an antihero performing evil to destroy the greater evil when she agrees not to kill civilians if she can, and finally he realizes that regardless of what she is she is still Sarah Kerrigan. Yeah it's cheesy, but who's to say that couldn't happen? Jim has been exposed to and involved in more than any single man probably has in the entire series. He has also relived the Prophecy Zeratul gave him, something he probably realized was true upon Kerrigan's change from a blood-thirsty tyrant trying to kill another tyrant to a calculating empress trying to tie off a loose end to fight a greater monstrosity.
One thing Blizzard has mentioned time and time again is that these characters have been through hell and back numerous times, continuing to do so psychological on a regular basis. In fact, human beings are ALWAYS CHANGING some part of who they are. If anything the climax and conclusion were more so realism than a melodramatic spectacle like many make it out to be. I'm not saying wrong or wrong for criticizing the story, but I am saying that you're being almost overcritical. You mention redlettermedia and the reviews on the prequels, which completely warranted being shat upon for their inconsistencies. Heart of the Swarm, however, is nothing like that. It may not be incredibly elaborate or flawless by any means, but given what we got out of it and given how it is still very entertaining for what it is (which is what it's trying to accomplish here), I feel like a lot of the hate on the series storyline and Blizzard is truly overdramatic or unwarranted.
On a bright note, this review is very well written. Best regards to whatever career you pursue or are pursuing!
When IGN isn't paid enough to praise a big name company's story, you know the story is pretty awful.
One thing Blizzard has mentioned time and time again is that these characters have been through hell and back numerous times, continuing to do so psychological on a regular basis. In fact, human beings are ALWAYS CHANGING some part of who they are. If anything the climax and conclusion were more so realism than a melodramatic spectacle like many make it out to be. I'm not saying wrong or wrong for criticizing the story, but I am saying that you're being almost overcritical. You mention redlettermedia and the reviews on the prequels, which completely warranted being shat upon for their inconsistencies. Heart of the Swarm, however, is nothing like that. It may not be incredibly elaborate or flawless by any means, but given what we got out of it and given how it is still very entertaining for what it is (which is what it's trying to accomplish here), I feel like a lot of the hate on the series storyline and Blizzard is truly overdramatic or unwarranted.
You say that HotS doesn't deserve the criticism that the SW prequels got because HotS is nothing like those inconsistencies. The problem is that it is. This is exactly what the OP and countless other posts are saying. SC2 has a massive number of plot holes and (using your example) not character developments/changes, but character inconsistencies. This happens when a character acts completely foreign or contrary to their past nature without a plausible (or ANY) explanation as to why.
And all of this criticism is entirely deserved. This isn't meant to be some cheap, McDonald's level quality entertainment. Blizzard actually tries with this stuff. Watch the interviews, watch the lore panels, watch the behind-the-scenes DVD's (I did just recently). They put the money, time, and effort into making this story and trying to actually make it good. The problem is, they've failed.
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
Ashamed? Gameplay wise Starcraft 2 has the best single player in an RTS exactly because it so varied. Having 30 missions of "you build base and kill enemy" is so silly. You want that? Do skirmish against the AI or multiplayer. This is exactly what Blizzard tried to prevent and i applaud them for it.
While the SC2 campaigns have been fun gamplay-wise, I can think of many RTS's that have had more enjoyable campaigns.
Examples:
Homeworld (and expansion) Homeworld 2 Sacrifice Warcraft 3 (and expansion) Warlords Battlecry 2 Starcraft (and expansion) Dawn of War (and expansions) Dawn of War 2 (and expansions) Battle for Middle Earth 2
Why? Because all of these actually have you playing an RTS (instead of throwing in cheesy RPG-esque fights), they are actually difficult, and they come with writing that isn't so incredibly insulting to the brain that it forcefully pulls you out of the gameplay experience.
Apart from wc3 and sc1 I am not sure I would any others of that list ahead of of HotS tbh as there are some pretty mediocre games on it. Total Annihilation, wc2, some titles from the C&C series and AoE1&2 would have been some better ones to choose from the RTS genre.
I think you could either pick at the story line as a book and critique the heck out of it. Or look at HotS as an entire different chick flick spinoff which I found quite entertaining, if you allow your emotions to float around with Kerrigan.
When IGN isn't paid enough to praise a big name company's story, you know the story is pretty awful.
To be fair, he never reviewed the story at all in that review, only the gameplay.
On March 21 2013 12:21 Stratos_speAr wrote: You say that HotS doesn't deserve the criticism that the SW prequels got because HotS is nothing like those inconsistencies. The problem is that it is. This is exactly what the OP and countless other posts are saying. SC2 has a massive number of plot holes and (using your example) not character developments/changes, but character inconsistencies. This happens when a character acts completely foreign or contrary to their past nature without a plausible (or ANY) explanation as to why.
And all of this criticism is entirely deserved. This isn't meant to be some cheap, McDonald's level quality entertainment. Blizzard actually tries with this stuff. Watch the interviews, watch the lore panels, watch the behind-the-scenes DVD's (I did just recently). They put the money, time, and effort into making this story and trying to actually make it good. The problem is, they've failed.
Criticism is most always deserved, that's part of producing, but that doesn't mean it can't be overdramatic or unwarranted. No, I simply disagree that SC2 is anything like what the Prequels were, primarily because you can surmise valid fillings to any plot holes you find minus a few (such as Raynor magically having his revolver). Blizzard has also stated that they were capitalizing on character inconsistencies because of what all of these characters have gone through. The way I see it, they've all gone through such trauma that inconsistency is more of an understatement. Regardless, they have roles they must fill and find ways to cope with the trauma to fulfill those roles. Yes, they are inconsistent, but aren't people inconsistent in real life for whatever reasons? That's my point: the inconsistencies are qualified by how inconsistent people can be in real life. Hence, that is why I mentioned realism versus melodrama.
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
Ashamed? Gameplay wise Starcraft 2 has the best single player in an RTS exactly because it so varied. Having 30 missions of "you build base and kill enemy" is so silly. You want that? Do skirmish against the AI or multiplayer. This is exactly what Blizzard tried to prevent and i applaud them for it.
While the SC2 campaigns have been fun gamplay-wise, I can think of many RTS's that have had more enjoyable campaigns.
Examples:
Homeworld (and expansion) Homeworld 2 Sacrifice Warcraft 3 (and expansion) Warlords Battlecry 2 Starcraft (and expansion) Dawn of War (and expansions) Dawn of War 2 (and expansions) Battle for Middle Earth 2
Why? Because all of these actually have you playing an RTS (instead of throwing in cheesy RPG-esque fights), they are actually difficult, and they come with writing that isn't so incredibly insulting to the brain that it forcefully pulls you out of the gameplay experience.
Apart from wc3 and sc1 I am not sure I would any others of that list ahead of of HotS tbh as there are some pretty mediocre games on it. TA, wc2, some titles from the C&C series and AoE1&2 would have been some better ones to choose from the RTS genre.
While Dawn of War is really a game for 40k fans to enjoy and Sacrifice/WBC2 are almost completely unknown games, Homeworld is one of the single best RTS games ever made bar none, so to lump it in the "mediocre" category should entail a smack upside the head. The story and atmosphere are absolutely fantastic and the gameplay is incredibly enjoyable and very difficult.
To be fair, he never reviewed the story at all in that review, only the gameplay.
You should read the first third of the review. Here, I'll make it easy.
Heart of the Swarm's story can't fix the fact that the plot of the StarCraft II trilogy is a deluge of cliches hurtling toward a predictable "warring races unite to confront a powerful god-like enemy" conclusion (gosh, where have we seen that before?), but at least it feels like it's actually trying now. Little time is wasted in reversing Sarah Kerrigan's de-zergification at the end of Wings of Liberty – a decision she wrestles with for the entire... tutorial – and setting her out on a quest for long-overdue revenge against Dominion Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Don't expect many surprises, but the cinematics are of the beautiful quality we've come to expect from Blizzard, so at least it looks good. It's a relief, at least, to see that this time Kerrigan is treated like an actual character who prides herself in her use of cunning as opposed to the blindly rampaging, smack-talking monster of Wings of Liberty. Blizzard does a reasonably good job of transitioning her to a non-evil but still dangerous state of mind. She'll now go out of her way to avoid slaughtering innocents, but still finds ample opportunity to mercilessly order her swarm of alien bug monsters to "kill them all!" when facing an enemy. This crew of monsters is by far more memorable than Raynor's bunch. Despite cliche-heavy dialogue, I enjoyed chatting with her zerg lieutenants aboard her ship between missions, especially resident genetic engineer and gross caterpillar-like creature, Abathur. His ethics-free conversations with Kerrigan are a good way to showcase her newfound morality, while exposing more of the zerg backstory. I was glad to only have to put up with Captain Bland...I mean Horner... for the one non-zerg mission where you control Jim Raynor's battlecruiser, Hyperion, in a great little space battle. That one's a welcome intermission that wisely doesn't make you re-learn how to play as terran to succeed.
In case we're wondering, not a single good thing was said about the story in WoL's review.
On March 21 2013 10:41 Hungry Cerberus wrote: I love Starcraft, I want to play the game that Blizzard hooked me with, not engage in boss battles, space themed mini games, and an endless parade of single base-limited-resource-attack-the baddie-right-this-moment missions. WOL and HOTS are intended to be unique experiences because we already know what to expect from Starcraft, as most of the units are essentially identical to the previous game. Blizzard is trying to offer something new, but as an RTS fanatic, I am desperate for the basic tried and true RTS campaigns of old and the functional and game enhancing stories that go with it. But as the OP said, Blizzard doesn't make games for me.
It feels to me like the single player seeks to draw in a casual audience that recognizes Kerrigan on the cover. The function of the campaign then is to hammer home the identity of the main characters, to ensure that newer generations will keep finding them iconic and as a result will buy more Blizzard games in the future. Therefore the campaign is primarily designed to not be too offensive, it's not supposed to really challenge anyone, it just has to somewhat entertain people for a couple of hours, while they absorb the atmosphere and learn to recognize the characters.
This becomes obvious when half of the missions aren't even an RTS. It's almost like Blizzard is ashamed of the game's core gameplay and tries to hide it behind mini games and excursions into more fashionable genres like MOBAs and RPGs. And the actual Starcraft that you can play in the single player is rather simplistic. I was thinking about how novices to RTS games would feel about it based on their experience with HotS's single player. In most of the missions you can start out establishing an economy, this is a rather trivial task in itself; then you produce the unit of your choice; then you attack move and kill the enemy. There is just nothing to it, all parts of this are extremely simple. This simplicity works very well in multiplayer because there your opponent can fight back and more complex dynamics emerge, but the computer just sits still and doesn't put any pressure on you, so what's the point?
Ashamed? Gameplay wise Starcraft 2 has the best single player in an RTS exactly because it so varied. Having 30 missions of "you build base and kill enemy" is so silly. You want that? Do skirmish against the AI or multiplayer. This is exactly what Blizzard tried to prevent and i applaud them for it.
The experience isn't "varied" in a good sense, and it's varied for the sake of being varied. Yes I'd like to build up a base, expand, and take out my enemy. That's generally what an RTS is. SC and BW did it epicly. Every mission was different but was still founded on that concept. You don't have that in ANY mission in friggin' SC2 WoL or HOTS. The last friggin' mission of the campaign you won on 2bases. Which, mind you, even on Brutal, you secured your second base with your INITIAL STARTING ARMY WTF. Things like "you have to defend Jim Raynor" made it interesting, although impossible to do correctly on your first play through if you weren't expecting it. For example, my first time playing that mission on brutal, within the first 10 seconds of "discovering" Jimmy and him setting up, he was already being overrun... he didn't even get the blasted bunker up! I don't mind replaying missions for these reasons... these timings... I enjoyed those, kept me on my toes. I like that, being kept on my toes. None of hte other missions but the final mission did that. Still wish I had to expand beyond 2 (basically starting with 2 as well mind you) bases.
I'm not going to expand my thoughts as you did but I just loved all of hots. The campaign was fun as hell and and ending perfect in my book. So many feelings expressed through so few words. There's always this issue of Kerrigan going through far for her revenge, but she had no limits for very obvious reasons. What Mengsk did to her (personally) was unforgivable, and Jim understands. It goes beyond all of his past crimes.
In the end, when Jim shows his understanding of the entire situation, all is perfect in the world for those two, who have been through so much.
I do agree with the above poster that there could of been some more 'RTS' mission, but tbh I play thousands of ladder games, my mechanics don't need validation. Even on brutal, whenever I was able to get a quick expo, I could tech directly to broodlord infestor and roll over everything. It was hilarious and I only had 2 expos, lol.
On March 21 2013 12:35 Steel wrote: Great post, hell of an interesting read.
I'm not going to expand my thoughts as you did but I just loved all of hots. The campaign was fun as hell and and ending perfect in my book. So many feelings expressed through so few words. There's always this issue of Kerrigan going through far for her revenge, but she had no limits for very obvious reasons. What Mengsk did to her (personally) was unforgivable, and Jim understands. It goes beyond all of his past crimes.
In the end, when Jim shows his understanding of the entire situation, all is perfect in the world for those two, who have been through so much.
How was it unforgiveable? I never even understood such a premise. Was her life significantly more (morally) valuable than all the other Terrans that were left behind to the swarm? Than all the other humans that were killed or were collateral damage or fucked over somehow by Mengsk before that when she served him (or whoever, really?).
I'm genuinely surprised how many people thought the campaign was super fun though, I just simply really hated it... I still have BW in my head I guess. I feel like they just ruined the characters. In BW, every mission felt absolutely crucial... in WoL and HOTS they felt gimmicky and unnecessary... gameplay aside. Gameplay itself was OK. But I feel like you play the campaign primarily for the story, not as much the gameplay... (which as said, 1base or 2base every map was fairly lame...).
EDIT: I didn't even need BL/Infestor. I won every single map with mass ling pretty much. Wild mutation + speedling + raptor ling > any unit, really. Oh what, I have 20+ lings with 235 HP, starting off with 7 dmg instead of 5, 2x attack speed, and fucking insta surround my enemies?! With that ability, I just took my initial starting army and wiped out the enemy almost everytime...
I'd love the mechanical validation. Make Brutal hard as fuck, make it hard for the players in top masters to beat, make them struggle like shit to take another expansion. Adds to the epicness, imo. The epicness of you playing the underdog overcoming the super entrenched, superior enemy... I still remember the SC:BW mission where you had to choose between getting destroyed by BCs or nukes early on by Mengsk. Now THAT was fun and epic to me.
Heart of the Swarm's story can't fix the fact that the plot of the StarCraft II trilogy is a deluge of cliches hurtling toward a predictable "warring races unite to confront a powerful god-like enemy" conclusion (gosh, where have we seen that before?), but at least it feels like it's actually trying now. Little time is wasted in reversing Sarah Kerrigan's de-zergification at the end of Wings of Liberty – a decision she wrestles with for the entire... tutorial – and setting her out on a quest for long-overdue revenge against Dominion Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Don't expect many surprises, but the cinematics are of the beautiful quality we've come to expect from Blizzard, so at least it looks good. It's a relief, at least, to see that this time Kerrigan is treated like an actual character who prides herself in her use of cunning as opposed to the blindly rampaging, smack-talking monster of Wings of Liberty. Blizzard does a reasonably good job of transitioning her to a non-evil but still dangerous state of mind. She'll now go out of her way to avoid slaughtering innocents, but still finds ample opportunity to mercilessly order her swarm of alien bug monsters to "kill them all!" when facing an enemy. This crew of monsters is by far more memorable than Raynor's bunch. Despite cliche-heavy dialogue, I enjoyed chatting with her zerg lieutenants aboard her ship between missions, especially resident genetic engineer and gross caterpillar-like creature, Abathur. His ethics-free conversations with Kerrigan are a good way to showcase her newfound morality, while exposing more of the zerg backstory. I was glad to only have to put up with Captain Bland...I mean Horner... for the one non-zerg mission where you control Jim Raynor's battlecruiser, Hyperion, in a great little space battle. That one's a welcome intermission that wisely doesn't make you re-learn how to play as terran to succeed.
I don't consider it a review if he doesn't even spend a 1/3 of the review actually reviewing the story. He mentions it and doesn't nearly come close to reviewing it like the chap here did (who did a fantastic job too). That is not a review of the story at all, but rather a review on the narration, which is perfectly valid. Yeah he states that there is that primary cliche, but that aside he quickly states it's getting better then proceeds with a summary that basically outlines the rest of the review without touching on gameplay yet.
I'm also primarily talking about HotS. Everyone knows WoL has plenty of faults, but I do not feel you can justly compare HotS to the Prequels without trying to find ways to be overcritical.
This story is so full of plot holes, oddities and cheesiness that it's beyond redemption. What a shame...
Regarding the gameplay, I am not satisfied either.
The campaign was too much like a RPG game instead of a RTS. There is too much focus in Kerrigan instead of focus on the Zerg themselves. Given the concept of the Swarm it would be much more interesting to command massive Zerg armies instead of walking around babysitting Kerrigan. I wished the focus was on the armies and in the strategy instead of focus in a single boring and inconsistent character like Kerrigan.
The campaign difficulty is dumbed down. The dialogs are dumbed down. Everything is made to the lowest common denominator. There are no larva injects, not enough bases and not enough units.
The missions are too constrained and scripted. You just need to attack-move Kerrigan and spam silly abilities throughout a predetermined outcome. Many of them are shameless copies from D3 and WoL.
The evolution missions area an abomination. They are boring, redundant and make no sense.
I have not experienced the Swarm and its power or a grandiose campaign; I experienced the tale of Kerrigan and the seven zerglings.
As I've said in another thread, the only thing that really really bugged me about HotS was that I knew immediately Jim wasn't actually dead since they spoiled it in one of the trailers by using a line of dialogue he doesn't use before he "dies" ("Sarah... what have you done?" in the prison cell). Admittedly I didn't think Blizzard would kill him anyway and I'd have doubted it without the spoiler, but I never believed it for a second.
I despise it when things are spoiled in adverts/previews.
I applaud you for making this post. It has disturbed me for quite some time that nobody has really brought this up. Fortunately you took the time to come up with a well thought out post, and I am thankful for that. And I completely agree. The storys of Wings and Swarm were absolutely appalling. It felt like a total smack in the face for a veteran of the series who was justly expecting a story of the same quality as the past.
It's simply the style of Blizzard storytelling that you're not happy with, and the story wasn't the one you wanted. If from this point forward you divorce yourself from any and all Blizzard games, you were already looking to justify your decision, and HOTS' storyline was the last straw.
It's coming from the lens of a person who already harbored a dislike for the game and barely convinced himself to buy it. Further, from your background, you state you have a high standard that is understandable, however you do forgive the many cliches and plot holes present even in the BW campaign.
As others here have said better than I, it sounds like you have an axe to grind with Blizzard.
The real truth here? You wanted a movie. A movie which has the right hooks, in the right places, to introduce gameplay. I'm not sure you understand why you were so angry just because one boss fight reminded you of the battle vs Belial. Could it be, that maybe Blizzard in fact, intended that? They do all kinds of stuff like that throughout the game.
Honestly - you were looking for a way out, and HOTS gave you that.
On March 21 2013 13:13 D_K_night wrote: It's simply the style of Blizzard storytelling that you're not happy with, and the story wasn't the one you wanted. If from this point forward you divorce yourself from any and all Blizzard games, you were already looking to justify your decision, and HOTS' storyline was the last straw.
It's coming from the lens of a person who already harbored a dislike for the game and barely convinced himself to buy it. Further, from your background, you state you have a high standard that is understandable, however you do forgive the many cliches and plot holes present even in the BW campaign.
As others here have said better than I, it sounds like you have an axe to grind with Blizzard.
The real truth here? You wanted a movie. A movie which has the right hooks, in the right places, to introduce gameplay. I'm not sure you understand why you were so angry just because one boss fight reminded you of the battle vs Belial. Could it be, that maybe Blizzard in fact, intended that? They do all kinds of stuff like that throughout the game.
Honestly - you were looking for a way out, and HOTS gave you that.
...No. Blizzard wrote a fucking atrocious story, and we're calling them out on it. You're the one trying to find a way out of holding Blizzard accountable for terrible writing. It's not that we didn't get the story we liked, it's that we didn't get a story that made any sense.
None of Blizzard's games have ever had good stories. The only thing that has changed since the 90s is people have way higher expectations and for whatever reason it's in to bash on Blizzard nowadays. Holding BW/WC3 stories and B.Net 1.0 as being amazing is just silliness/nostalgia.
A very concise review, indeed! I felt like Heart of the Swarm was an improvement over Wings of Liberty in quality, but it is rather jarring and not congruent.
On March 21 2013 12:18 Jasiwel wrote: With the exception of Jimmy somehow having his revolver in his cell (yeah, what was up with that?)
Kerrigan gives it to Jim. Rewatch closely.
I want this note to be written in blood across the entire TL banner, because every second person keeps talking about it.
I had a feeling that's what happened. Maybe it's the only way it makes sense, but for some reason (maybe my watchful eyes caught it and I didn't notice) I always felt she'd given him the revolver.
On March 21 2013 13:44 Antisocialmunky wrote: Was it me or did Stukov's resurrection turn him German? :\
On March 21 2013 13:30 oxxo wrote: None of Blizzard's games have ever had good stories. The only thing that has changed since the 90s is people have way higher expectations and for whatever reason it's in to bash on Blizzard nowadays. Holding BW/WC3 stories and B.Net 1.0 as being amazing is just silliness/nostalgia.
I don't know about you, but my from my memory I really loved some parts of Brood War/Starcraft, particularly emperor Mengsk's speech when he founds the dominion, or Samir Duran's mysterious speech to Zeratul. I disliked Kerrigan because her character was just about petty revenge which was stupid to me, but loved the overmind and his meaningful goal of evolving the swarm and seeking perfection (again, great speeches). Basically the writing was incredibly good, and some cutscenes were classic and memorable (infested science center, the intro to starcraft I, among so many others). I didn't dislike them then, and I don't dislike them now. I don't think you can really, credibly claim to know how people feel about this game .
These were really interesting, powerful ideologies from interesting characters. I think its undeniable that the stories we get today aren't as good as they used to be, they seem like Hollywood writing. Everything in Starcraft just seemed more realistic, more natural...more realistic. It just felt like an adult game, I don't know how to explain it.
When I play SC2, it feels more like I'm playing a movie, with epic scenes. I feel like the game isn't as mature and realistic as the old games were...its now much more focused on creating a romantic interplay between Sarah and Raynor, and also adding in fun, interesting places to go to make the game interesting, like an adventure game. Besides that, they have the prophecy which is kind of lame, but I don't think I ever liked that about the protoss.
I think where I differ from this review, is that aside from Zerus and the origins of the zerg (which I didn't properly learn before this review), the story does seem plausible, even if it is a little predictable and fairy tale like. Particularly with Kerrigan and Raynor's affection for her, I just view it as Raynor realizing Kerrigan had changed (I simply imagine that infestation truly did corrupt her, as well as Amon's lingering influence), in combination with the passage of time, allowing his anger to diminish.
I guess if you're one of those people who know the lore inside and out, and expect a very serious following of canon, then you would be upset. But I don't care that much or know that much, and so I enjoyed the story quite a bit, as well as the romance between Raynor and Kerrigan. I liked the ending too (I hoped the little zergling would reappear too ). Many of the contradictions people see I can easily rationalize or imagine a solution to, although perhaps a more technical, exact, rigorous reading of canon would show that my explanations are not possible.
I think that Blizzard probably did bend the story, but they bent it in ways that made it a fun, movie-like adventure. I hope there's a nice happy ending where Kerrigan is turned into a human again, gets together with Raynor, and then the cute little zergling jumps out and gets adopted as their pet lol. Yeah its silly, but I guess I don't take it so seriously as others do. Perhaps too much time has passed, and I find it easier to just enjoy a game than mercilessly critique it based on canon (not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's what you naturally do!)
On March 21 2013 13:30 oxxo wrote: None of Blizzard's games have ever had good stories. The only thing that has changed since the 90s is people have way higher expectations and for whatever reason it's in to bash on Blizzard nowadays. Holding BW/WC3 stories and B.Net 1.0 as being amazing is just silliness/nostalgia.
It is absolutely not nostalgia. There is a definite difference in the quality of the story. SC/BW managed to make the campaign feel like every mission was further advancing you while you were on the constant brink of survival. Throughout it you were encountering manipulative, backstabbing characters with distinct personalities. The dialogue wasn't remotely as cheesy or cliche.
In SC:BW the plots were simply awesome, even going back and replaying it (which I've done). Nothing felt super forced, like "Wow Tal'Darim are suddenly worshipping the hybrids and working for Narud, even though in WoL you were Terran killing the Tal'Darim on behalf of Narud's orders..." That was nothing more than an excuse to have a TvP level.
In SC, you got to experience a ZvZ because wow, all of a sudden a Protoss (dark templar, never previously encountered) managed to kill a cerebrate causing the Zerg to go rogue and the overmind was unable to respawn Zasz. You managed to have a PvP because you were forced to recruit said Dark Templar because you found it was a way to kill the Zerg cerebrates when they had been outcasted from the Khala. You had TvP because you were trying to conduct an experiment with a Psi Emitter on the Zerg and were preventing the Protoss from wiping out the Zerg infestation. And in the Protoss campaign, there was no PvT because there simply wasn't a need for it... so it simply wasn't forced.
It wasn't nostalgia. It was simply a difference in quality. A massive difference. If blizzard failed to raise the bar but kept it constant, people would be happy. But they dropped it, and not even slightly.
Maybe I'll give it a full read in the future - probably not. (No offence intended.)
I read about half (every other section or so) and I pretty much agree with what you're saying.
When first revealed, I wasn't worried about the story being split into 3 parts (2 expansions). However, IMO, HotS suffers the same way every "trilogy sequel" does.
However, my biggest gripe was with the actual missions. You were spot on with many of them being recycled and I was not a fan of the rpg/hero elements (It just felt like it was aimed at the non-sc2 crowd) and it felt easy and underwhelming. (Compare the last mission in WoL vs HotS.)
On March 21 2013 13:13 D_K_night wrote: It's simply the style of Blizzard storytelling that you're not happy with, and the story wasn't the one you wanted. If from this point forward you divorce yourself from any and all Blizzard games, you were already looking to justify your decision, and HOTS' storyline was the last straw.
It's coming from the lens of a person who already harbored a dislike for the game and barely convinced himself to buy it. Further, from your background, you state you have a high standard that is understandable, however you do forgive the many cliches and plot holes present even in the BW campaign.
As others here have said better than I, it sounds like you have an axe to grind with Blizzard.
The real truth here? You wanted a movie. A movie which has the right hooks, in the right places, to introduce gameplay. I'm not sure you understand why you were so angry just because one boss fight reminded you of the battle vs Belial. Could it be, that maybe Blizzard in fact, intended that? They do all kinds of stuff like that throughout the game.
Honestly - you were looking for a way out, and HOTS gave you that.
After reading all of his post. Do you really believe that the romance of kerrigan and Jim ever existed in sc1? It hard to say after reading OP. He found great evidence in change with the transition from sc1 to sc2. It almost like the writer died and a completely new writer was given the task of finishing off sc2. Harboring dislike or not, you can not defend the romance and how it was suddenly just forced onto sc2. Jim and Kerrigan character and personality was completely changed. The only one that still SEEMS to be in context with their personality is Zeratul and Mengsk which just ended up being a dry generic evil clique villian thus never really had a personality to begin with.
I’m agree with many points made in the op. And I applaud you for going into such depth.
If I may now add my own thoughts on the story. Of which there will probably be some overlap.
The Starcraft 2 storyline was just garbage in so many ways: Characters were not only inconsistent with what they were in Broodwar, but they (in particular, as mentioned in the op, Kerrigan) are inconsistent in simply this storyline.
Then you have the Xel’Naga artifacts that are all over the place. The Tal’Darim that have so little depth cardboard cutouts would have more character then them. (For reference the Tal’Darim do about two things in sc2. 1. They worship Xel’Naga. 2. They get mad at people and attack them. That is literally the character of the Tal’Darim in sc2, I cannot think of a single moment where they showed any depth. They were a walking excuse for Blizzard to say "You fought some Protoss as Terran.")
Massive retcons are one thing. Massive retcons to create huge, big chinned, english speaking, tribal aliens whose entire point in the story is to make Kerrigan more powerful and make-no-sense their way past a psi-disrupter, are quite another. (Which the op goes into very nice detail about. So I won’t repeat it here.)
And of course the characters, specifically Raynor, still throw around one liners like they’re candy. (“Change of plans!” is a notable offender. Though I think there were more in WoL) I can handle some cheesy/corny if it’s the right kind. So obviously there is room for personal taste in story, as there always is. But I really don’t know why they think this kind of dialogue could even resemble something good.
And then there are just massively weird things that make no sense. The characters of Raynor and Kerrigan don’t act like people, they act more like leaves drifting in whatever storyline the writers whims take them today. Raynor can apparently forget Kerrigan’s duplicity in BW and totally trust her, even while she murders millions more (if not billions) and goes on a mad quest for power and revenge. (Sound familiar?) Okay, I get it, he loved her. The op is right about his analysis of the whole thing. But let’s say I totally bought that he was in love with Kerrigan before she was abandoned.
However, if I was him, and I partially removed her Zerginess, it would take years for me to totally gain trust in her, even if she didn’t raid a facility at the beginning of the game with Zerglings, then as I mentioned, go on a quest for power and revenge, killing millions along the way. If that happened, and I had the events of BW in my mind, red lights would be flashing all over the place in my head. But he’s all like “Naw, it’s fine, let me help you kill Mengsk.”
I mean, yeah, Mengsk is bad. But is he really that bad? Raynor’s entire attitude towards Mengsk in sc2 is kind of weird. Especially when we consider that he went to some pretty extreme lengths in BW to save Mengsk. Yeah, he didn’t like he guy. In fact, he probably hated him. But killing him wasn’t at the top of his priority list. And somehow that changed after The Queen of Blades became the most powerful (known) force in the sector, and killed his best buddy? No sense, it makes no sense.
Once again, I bring up the line I just used in reference to Mengsk. “Is he really that bad?” It’s an important question for me. Because in my opinion, one bad man, does not justify taking over entire planets with the Zerg and killing Protoss because they might (rather justifiably) zap her into smithereens in the future. If it was just Kerrigan justifying herself this way, I might be fine. But it felt like Raynor was totally in on it too. Raynor! Probably the only good Terran in sc1, just decides that the ends justify the means? Maybe the planets Kerrigan took over were barren wastelands with no people on them, but I didn’t get that impression.
Rewinding the clock a bit, to WoL there was also the news. The news was occasionally amusing. But the overall question for that amusement was: “But at what cost!?” The cost in my humble opinion was making Mengsk appear less threatening. Some quotes, if it’s not too much trouble, from Blizzards own article on Mengsk, which can be found here.
“On top of simply trying to exterminate these rebels, Mengsk has also used propaganda to turn public opinion against them and paint their leader, Jim Raynor, as nothing more than a ruthless terrorist.”
“Through his oratorical mastery and firm control over the media, he has kept his past – and present – atrocities hidden from the public.”
Under what circumstances does letting a complete rogue reporter like Kate Lockwell run amok equal “firm control over the media”? Basically this is supposed to be one of Mengsk’s strongpoints, and he clearly has shaky control over the media at best. It severely diminishes how threatening he is. And as a result, he never felt like he was as powerful a villain as he should have been. In short, the funny news segments turned Mengsk into a joke.
P.s. Hopefully this post didn’t come across as too bitter, or mad. But as an aspiring writer I personally disapprove of the way blizzard has told their story. Yes it’s not a movie, yes it’s not a book. But you’d think they could at least piece together characters that made sense and were vaguely consistent. But it seems even that is beyond their writing ability. And even though a decent number of people say that BW story sucked, I’m not so sure. It’s certainly better than this pile of crap. I’ll tell you that much.
Also I apologize for the overuse of these babies () and italics. I just can’t help myself An extra apology if there were a large amount of typos/grammar mistakes.
Afterthoughts (Aka criticism that I’m not elaborating on, most likely due to laziness, and thus should probably be ignored). + Show Spoiler +
There were other problems, of course. Narud was a joke of an enemy, where Duran was never mentioned despite Stukov’s presence. (Which is another topic altogether. Luckily the op touches very nicely on this character.)
Then there’s the prophecy and the artifacts, which are taking the bad crystal collecting concept from BW (my least favorite story point in that game, btw) and making it even worse.
On March 21 2013 06:44 Splines wrote: An Excelent analysis! Well written.
There are however a lot of things I disagree with so let me post them here and see what you think. Like you, I've been a fan of Blizzard games for years. I never read any of the suplementary materials. I had my disallusion with WC3, then after careful analysis realized that the things I blamed that story for have always been present in Blizzard games but I was to young to understand.
Shouldn't Raynor be concerned about Kerrigan lapsing into old behavior of being the Queen of Blades, or at the very least concerned with all the Zerg in the facility now?
Maybe a little. But she send them back into the holding cells, makes it clear she purposly made sure there where no casualties and did it to mess with Valerian, something Raynor liked to do in WoL as well. No reason for him to freak out I'd say.
Honestly there is little to believe love was his motivator just like you said. However there is even less reason to believe guilt was his motivator. I'd go for the fact that Raynor is the 'knight in shining armor' type of guy and leave it at that. Although flying to a zerg infested planet partially occupied by dominion forces on the off-chance that his dream: 'The Dream' cutscene was actually a real vision is pretty damn extreme if not motivated by somthing as powerful as love.
Raynor's love for Kerrigan was not presented to the players very well in Brood War. This is a story problem that lies in BW not in SC2. Her feelings for him are presented a bit more clearly as she constantly leaves him alive and feels the need to justify her actions towards him which she does to nobody else. It is somewhat poor storytelling of BW.
I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
Woah, stop it right there! Tell me if you've hear this story before: protagonist lives happy with love interest. Villain kills/kidnaps love interest, protagonist goes have revenge. Love interest is only used as a motivator for the protagonist but serves no purpose other then a potential 'reward' for the protagonist. HotS is a gender-inversed version of a very typical somewhat sexist game story.
If Mario has a sexist story because he has to rescue a helpless woman, then a story were the woman rescues Mario can't also be sexist because she cannot live without the man. If you play it like that, you're always right.
Fact is, Kerrigan is a badass in the story and Raynor spends 90% of his time needing to get rescued (and this trend continues in the final mission). Kerrigan can solo almost every mission and never doubts her capability to defeat Mengsk while Raynor is quite wimpy in this campagin. I'm not seeing any disempowerment here at all.
The misconception about Kerrigans and Raynors characters in BW The 'kill you one day' quote been used a lot while critisising WoL and now HotS, however I feel this comes from a misunderstanding of Kerrigan and Raynors character.
Raynor We are introduced to Raynor as the 'hero' of the story. He does all the good guy things and is described as 'knight in shining armor'. As I mentioned before, he goes to Char, knowing it's dangers on the extremely unlikely chance he might be able to get Sarah back. This is a guy that will go to hell and back to rescue people, especially Sarah.
Kerrigan When we last see Sarah Kerrigan, the human, she is engaged with the Protoss. Why? "The Protoss are comming to destroy the entire planet not just the Zerg." She believes she is saving the people on Tarsonis. Even though the fall of Tarsonis would be victory for her side, she cannot accept that amount of collateral damage. But isn't the planet going to be wiped out by the Zerg lured by the Psi-Emitters? Yes, however Kerrigan believes: "Once we've dealt with the Protoss, we can do something about the Zerg. Arcturus will come around, I know he will".
Sarah 'dies' trying to protect her enemies because of her attempt to save innocent civilians.
Fast Foreward to her hatching from the crysalis. She slaughters Raynors men, her old companions, and leaves Raynor alive. This is THE pivitol moment in her characterisation. On the one hand she is shown to be completely different from the person I just described by casually murdering her old compatriots. On the other hand there is still some of her old personality left that makes her leave Raynor alive. From this moment on we, the players, are left wondering for each of her actions if it is her old personality, her zerg side, the overminds influence or possibly even her old personality but with more power. This makes her such an interesting character as we can never predict how she will act.
In Brood War she tries to convince everybody that she is back to her old self and it was all because of the will of the overmind. Remember this quote:
Let her go Zasz. The greatness of her spirit has been left to her; that the swarm might benefit from her fiery example. Fear not her designs for she is bound to me as intimately as any Cerebrate.
There is the implication that she still has free will although she is also bound to the Zerg. The notion that she only did what she did because of the Overmind forcing her, is one that we as players know to be false.
Raynor again Unlike Zeratul and Artanis (facepalm) Raynor doesn't buy it. He 'loves to believe she's on the level, but part of me just knows better'. Raynor has witnessed the slaughter of his men AND how she left him alive. He knows part of the Queen of Blades is still the Sarah he cared about and part of her is Zerg. He hopes that with the overmind gone, there is still enough Sarah left but is very suspicious. Then Kerrigan kills Fenix showing him that there is little of the woman he loved left, although her agitation at Raynors anger shows there is still some of it.
So what should we have expected from Raynor in WoL? From the above we should expect that Raynor no longer believes the Queen of Blades can find salvation and should be killed. What do we see him do in WoL?
He mourns Sarah as though she was dead and acts hostile towards the Queen of Blades. In short Raynor starts out acting exactly like we should expect based on his actions in Brood War. And because he is in no way capable of harming her, he goes after his other enemy, Acrturus instead.
Then the Artifact happens. This is were many people seem to misunderstand who Kerrigan was in BW. As I mentioned before, the genius of her character was that you never knew wether it was the 'real' Kerrigan or her Zerg part acting. Neither does Raynor. So when the option is presented to him that maybe, all the evil she did was only because of her Zerg influence and he can undo that influence, he can 'end' the Queen of Blades and get Sarah back. This is a maybe because it is also possible that the old Sarah 'was' in control and liked what she had become. She mentions this twice in SC1.
We don't know which and neither does Raynor. This is why the 'kill you one day' quote is so misunderstood. Raynor has proven to be the kind of guy that would go to Char headlong into the swarm on the small chance he might get Sarah back and he does this again. If he's right, the Queen of Blades will be 'dead' anyway, if he's wrong he dies. So Raynor goes all-in.
Raynor would never choose revenge on one entity over rescuing another.
Back to the OP
For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. He's a Dark Templar. They are assassins. She believes the Protoss are about to kill her and deny her her vengence on Mengsk. Zeratul is no pushover, she believes she's in for the fight of her life.
Zerg on Zerus. So Zerus went from vulcanic world to lush jungle world. Yup, that's a retcon. I believe the idea was that the Primals somehow got split up from the rest of the Zerg before the Overmind formed, thus being forgotten by the Overmind and never being part of the hive mind. Still, it's obvious they wanted a slighty different backstory for the Zerg and retconned a lot. You can think about this a lot, but ultimately it doesn't make sense and never will. Kind of like the backstory of the UED.
I also wondered why they in the cinematic had to show Mengsk and that he had acquired the artifact
Foreshadowing. Called a Genius Bonus on TV Tropes. I missed it the first time too. Guess I'm not a genius.
Stukov Let's not spend too much words on him. His infestation story was written by other writers. Blizzard didn't want him in the canon originally (or at least were not sure if to include him) but fans kept asking about him on lore panels so they included him as a bonus for those fans. Lazy and cheap or rewarding your most loyal lore fans? Can't please them all I guess. I was neutral about the whole affair.
The Hybrids are also finally revealed to have a purpose, in that they siphon off (and store?) the psionic powers of others in order to gather this energy to revive/awaken/free, do something for Amon (how is this transferred?). This is also the purpose of the artifact. It may have destroyed most of the Zerg infestation of the Queen of Blades (wait, most? see ahead), but its purpose in Wings was to take her psionic energy and apply it to Amons rebirth.
Zerg don't have psionic powers. They use the power of the void, like the Dark Templar. So the artifact is void-power-related I guess. Then again, that contradicts miss Hanson's assumption about the artifact. She DID pick up that the artifact was YOUNGER then the Xel'naga, implying somebody ELSE made it for a DIFFERENT PURPOSE. I admit I don't really care if the space-magic is lore-tight but there's more elements to this then in your post so I suggest more study is required should anybody care.
Rescuing Jim Raynor. I already explained how I disagree with your view on their relationship. In my view, this is the curcial moment. Raynor banked everything on the artifact removing all her Zerg tendancies. Seeing her back as Queen of Blades volentarily changes his hopes that the artifact could change everything and implies that killing Fenis WAS Sarah's own choice after all and not the Zerg influence. This breaks all his hopes. Kerrigans offer to let him kill her confuses him however, so he leaves not knowing what to think.
As Raynor tries to come to terms with what he's witnessed, Valerian negotiates with Kerrigan for the civilians and she agrees. The old Queen of Blades would never have agreed. Because of this, Raynor helps her out in the final mission. For Raynor and ourselves, Kerrigan's true personality is left ambigous. Again, Raynor is left wondering if THIS Queen of Blades can be trusted but her actions during the assault on Korhal speak in her favor.
Psi Destroyer More of the Primal-Zerg-Split-Before-Overmind stuff.
I thought it was cool it was included. Normally in stories you'd have a tool as powerful as the Psi-Disruptor that never get's mentioned again after it's used. Here it all comes back. This gives me hope that the Shakuras Temple is going to be mentioned again. For a videogame this is a lot more coherent world building then usual.
The Artifact I found it easy to believe Arcturus would wait with using the Artifact untill after he taunted Kerrigan personally. That and using it only when Kerrigan is right next to it would decrease the chance of her escaping. Remember he cares nothing for his men. If this gave him a slight advantage he would do it.
I also don't get why people say it does something different now. It shoots lightning. The lightning destroys Zerg or Zerg parts of people. Considering it burns the Zerg to a crips in All-In I'd expect it to hurt a lot when it changed Kerrigan back the last time and does so again now.
Has the quality of the story really changed since Brood War? Do you remember this mission?
In it, Raynor and Fenix agree to attack the neutral nation of Kel-Moria, steal their minerals and kill their security guards. Fenix even mocks them for being 'greedy' because they stay out of the war and focus on economy instead, all the while stealing their stuff. Worse still, Fenix shoots a hole in their command centers so queens can enter and invest the miners allowing them to be used as involentary suicide bombers in the next mission. Woah. That's some seriously dickish move right there!
If you can accept this as canon, without feeling that Fenix' and Raynors characters have been ruined forever, you can accept anything in SC2. This is the most character-breaking moment in the franchise by far. If this kind of disregard for storytelling was in SC2, the shitstorm would have been uncontrolable.
Conclusion On the one hand, I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about the story of Starcraft which fuel a lot of contempt for the story unnessarily.
On the other hand, I feel that people have very unrealistic expectations. A similar analysis of BW or even vanilla would reveal so many terrible story elements as I showed with just 1 mission.
On the third hand, the story isn't that great. Don't think I'm defending the story as a zealous fanboy. I even admit I hate the whole Amon plotline. It sounded cool in BW but in hindsight, I cannot imagine any way for it to play out that I would really like to see. I just don't like the black&white thinking that makes people put BW on a pedestal and SC2 in the garbage bin. SC1 certainly had some beautiful english lines that SC2 is sorely missing.
On the fourth hand, Blizzard has changed the way they write stories. From WC1 to HotS, Blizzard has slowly moved away from the 'nations at war / every mission is a region on the map to conquer' to a more personal story. It's very possible this style does not suit you and therefore newer Blizzard games will not be appealing to you. If you look at all their RTS games, you can see this trend slowly happening. That, I believe, should be a real discussion. Which do you like better?
Thank you for reading.
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Spot on Splines! I feel like the OP approached the story with a few incorrect assumptions about the original storyline, as well as rushed through Kerrigan's character development, resulting in the belief that she is "behaving out of character".
To expand on this a bit more.
If Kerrigan had been left in her Brood War state, being the Queen of Blades, she basically turns into a one dimensional character. She's evil, she's powerful and cunning, and she's out to take over the universe. Her arc throughout starcraft 1 has basically been about her becoming more powerful and cunning.
So instead of Blizzard telling a story of "Kerrigan kills A, B, C" they decided to create a character who's slightly more interesting than "Evil All-powerful Villain #257". By using the Xel Naga artifact arc, they bring back her humanity, and let her contemplate being the "Queen of Blades" (How silly would it be for the BW Kerrigan to say 'Hey, I don't like killing people anymore, lets stop, party's over guys send all the zerglings home')
So Kerrigan's first thought is "Kill Mengsk", followed by "Save Jim". Now these decisions are made by the "New Gettysburg" Kerrigan. She's angry that she's lost everything (Not to mention the people she tried to save) due to Mengsk's betrayal. Also, she tries to show how she's different from Mengsk, by saving Raynor.
I do agree, that this wasn't very clear, that Kerrigan wanted to show her difference from Mengsk, or why she instantly believes Mengsk and tries to save Raynor. It would've been much more interesting had there been more deception definitely. Or if Kerrigan had doubted whether Mengsk really had Raynor and wasn't trying to trick her.
I think the biggest issue for this game, is that it was too short for some players. Most of the missions could be beaten within 10-20 minutes, some taken like a minute to beat, which made the story move too fast, and harder to follow. However, the game was obviously designed for players to take maybe an hour or 2 for some of the later missions (including restarts) so it was paced accordingly. Basically the campaign was designed for Bronze/Silver players in mind, so higher level players moved at a much faster pace than Blizzard expected.
And of course, the writing is on the level of an original Sci Fi channel movie, or Creature Feature, where the plot is only there to distract you until you get to see your ultralisks rip marines apart. I hope this helps clear up peoples misconceptions, as well as their grand expectations for the game.
I haven't even bothered playing HOTS at all, but my feeling about WOL and of course D3 is similar to what you wrote there. Thank you for such a detailed analysis.
Great post OP and I agree with you. What bothers me mostly on SC2 is the inconsistency with SC1 and BW story and established cannons.
I loved the purity of essence of the zerg and know is just an instant darwanian evolution thru food. So much for Xel'Naga Inteligent Design.
I wanted to see again how it was to be a zerg, to work with one mind for one purpose like with the overmind. Instead this campaign focuses on humanizing the savage and single minded zerg... And the brand of Kerrigan humanizing is just 'do not eat everything, and plan for the future'.
They made zerg into savage tribes, I hope on legacy of the void they do not make the protoss into just snobby conservatives.
Characterization was beyond awful. All they need is Nova to be into Raynor and we would have Twilight in space with reversed genders.
The antagonists in this game, oh wait there weren't any antagonists it was just kerrigan butchering everybody in an emotional rage. Going infested drove her baby-crazy IMO.
It's a great post, carefully analyzed, well worded. I really liked it. But don't agree with it, don't think it was as contradicting as it is said to be. I feel people keep making the story as if it has only one outcome or one explanation, while it can have paths and open to a certain degree of interpretation. Oh they didn't tell us they were in love? OMG then it is not plausible or is wrong. Im missing info! Some gaps exists and they leave it open for people to interpret it. Also, there's some of the feelings between Kerrigan and Jim explained in Liberty's Crusade. That's very telling about the feelings they had for each other.
I just feel everyone is hard-set on not liking the approach Blizzard took. And that's fine, Blizz messed up afew things in the game. But people are hammering on the story abit too hard. Just be open minded and fill the gaps and everything is fine.
Time elapses between events, there's change both physically and emotionally within the characters and places. Things don't just stay the same. Some things arent revealed to us yet. Maybe they will later on.
People have to understand also that SC2 revolves around the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan. So it stands to reason that they'll show the humanistic and emotional responses of Kerrigan as she loses Raynor, then seeks revenge. That's the push she needed to become Zerg again, but free of Amon's presence now. It was needed, they sort of told us that in WoL.
I just hope LotV helps people see the light and stop being so critical of a story that's based on linear missions and a few words off an instruction manual.
I can't help but feel that Blizzard wanted the people who are after a deep, long lasting, affecting experience to play the multiplayer; and the people who want a quick hard blast through some crazy fun times to play the campaign. You got it the wrong way round, dude
I think for people that have followed Starcraft longer there seems to be a lot of distaste for the story in Heart of the Swarm. I've only been playing Starcraft since Wings of Liberty and so for me Heart of the Swarm seems and feels like a logical continuation. But given what I've read from this thread and others, it seems like if you followed the earlier versions then this story seems to feel wrong and off.
It really seems that no one in the Blizzard team cared to do a thorough official-lore check of the story. Which is really sad since there is actually very little, game manuals and ingame dialog of 2 games. They could have leaved the whole game almost the same but just with some alterations to address the facts already stablished. For example: -Jim and Kerrigan. Just a couple of dialog lines (even in game or just ones after clicking the units one too many times) that had those two remembering some date in Tarsonis, or a passionate night right before the betrayal of Mensk would do wonders to give backstory to this forced love story -Zerus description. Just make it an ash world, an ash forest even, just paint everything black. And for the primordial zerg, just make then insectlike instead of beast like. All this retcon into huge mammal like beasts is entirely unnecesary since zerg already look more insect with the multiple eyes and chitinous plates. Primordial Ultralisk should be like horned beetles, not some gorilla. And roaches are just exactly the same. -Kerrigan attacking zeratul. Have zeratul just before the cutscene, tell kerrigan of all the atrocities she did as the queen of blades, so she feels threatened and compeled to attack, instead she just attacks blindly an enemy that she is supposed to not even remember.
This are just some examples that make me think they just do not care about the story.
I also enjoyed the HotS campaign, I didn't play BW story as seriously, but I do remember most of the SC story. and I agree almost 100% with the OP.
There was no evidence of a love relationship. There are massive holes in the story, and I think that even compared to WoL story, HotS is bad. The fact that HotS's story is better than probably 90% of the games I am going to play this year doesnt mean that I am "OMGWTFOP!!!"
SC and SC: BW story's pulled you in. You didn't listen to the character dialogue because of an achievement, but because it actually added something.
I think that developers have kind of gone "well, since we can make them listen to it, with uninterruptible cut-scenes, or silly achievements, lets cut down on quality".
I must also admit that the HotS videos have had less of an effect of me than War 3's intro video. Even the opening cinematic for HotS was cool. But it wasn't as :O as a grunt and a knight going at it on a grassy battlefield, with that monologue and the story.
Since it was a dream state, I almost would have preferred a single zergling drawing in two marines into the mouth of a nydus worm, also with a monologue (use zeratul for something) and then have them be picked up by the queen of blades and watch countless zergs run past, and then queue the city scene with the vikings, etc.
That opening cinematic did less for the story of HotS than their previous games, imho
On March 21 2013 09:17 InsidiA wrote: Belial, Zurvan thing was so obvious
And the mission where you use drones to harvest biomass from dead animals while the primal zerg try to stop you is an exact copy of a Wings mission where you harvest some kind of gas with SCVs and the Tal'Darim try to stop you. All proves my point that they simply didn't make an effort and tried to get away with as little as possible.
The Overmind is (at the time) the most powerful and psionic being out there. Aiur is the homeworld of the Protoss, with billions of them there and an untold amount of defenses. Perhaps he needs some sort of anchor to this incredibly well-defended and psionic-inhabited planet to have a firm hold on the planet? It is entirely plausible and doesn't even require the mental back-flips that making SC2 consistent does to understand why it might be reasonable for it to be difficult for the Overmind to just auto-invade Aiur.
I mean yea, we could even grant you that it's a little convoluted or potentially unnecessary. But please explain how this is comparable to any of the absolutely ridiculous plot holes or terrible writing that we see from SC2.
I brought up the dt's because they were a real threat to the cerebrates so there might be others unknown to him lurking on Aiur (with an untold amount of defenses.) Why the fuck would I go willingly to the most dangerous place in the known universe for me if I had a safe backup plan: Sit there and let the cerebrates do the work? Let alone the fact that the protoss were not broken by the time the overmind entered their world. I will also not go with you into speculations as why he would need the crystal/temple. It is not told to me in the campaign and it's not my task to fill the holes the writers left there. As it stands both missions need further explanations or are highly unreasonable.
I choose this example because I thought it was a quite obvious example of bad storywriting but there are others. (the whole BW: Protoss campaign is basically a quest for crystals. to activate a temple. from the xel'naga. to kill zerg. which landed undetected. on the homeworld of the dts.)
I guess it comes down to personal preferences if you are more willing to forgive the SC/BW plot in comparison to the WoL/HotS plot. But to make a black and white statement like BW was the culmination of storytelling is clouded judgement.
I think you are missing the point. People are not saying that Brood War was perfect, they are saying that it was good. Of course Brood War had some weak plot points, such as the Overmind going to Aiur before the Protoss are defeated, Aldaris not telling anyone what he knew about Raszagal, or really most of the second Protoss campaign. But that really doesn't make Starcraft 2 any better, nor does it detract from the actual strong points of the Brood War storyline - indeed, people don't talk about Artanis and Zeratul turning crystals into a nuke when asked what they liked in Brood War.
Incidentally, I find quite telling that lots of people answer "Brood War is better" not by saying that SC2 is great, but that Brood War was bad.
It annoys me to no end, how people defend the SC2 script and dialogue...
Yes, SC/BW, might've had the same half-cheesey and simplistic STORY, but what it ALSO had was excellent dramatic elements, dialogue, presentation, excellent script with excellent exposition by its characters.
Why is this so important?
Because it means that you can take basically ANY fucking story, and make it great, make it believable, as long as the WAY in which the story is told, is solid, engaging, dramatic and intellectually challenging to the audience.
Why are tarentino's movies so good?
The stories of Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, True Romance... all movies with relatively basic stories right? Some drugdealers, some bad guys, some good, and it all goes wrong, and there's a few love making scenes and shit like that...
But what makes these movies so excellent, is the focus on the WAY in which the stories are told. Through dialogue, presentation, twists and turns, and deeper characterization and motives of their minds, makes it more believable, and FAR more engaging to the viewer.
Comparing movies with games is interesting, because both mediums try to tell stories, interactively. Why can't games borrow more narrative techniques from movies? Or hell, even form the fucking books.
On March 21 2013 16:58 AztecTemplar wrote: It's a great post, carefully analyzed, well worded. I really liked it. But don't agree with it, don't think it was as contradicting as it is said to be. I feel people keep making the story as if it has only one outcome or one explanation, while it can have paths and open to a certain degree of interpretation. Oh they didn't tell us they were in love? OMG then it is not plausible or is wrong. Im missing info! Some gaps exists and they leave it open for people to interpret it. Also, there's some of the feelings between Kerrigan and Jim explained in Liberty's Crusade. That's very telling about the feelings they had for each other.
I just feel everyone is hard-set on not liking the approach Blizzard took. And that's fine, Blizz messed up afew things in the game. But people are hammering on the story abit too hard. Just be open minded and fill the gaps and everything is fine.
Time elapses between events, there's change both physically and emotionally within the characters and places. Things don't just stay the same. Some things arent revealed to us yet. Maybe they will later on.
People have to understand also that SC2 revolves around the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan. So it stands to reason that they'll show the humanistic and emotional responses of Kerrigan as she loses Raynor, then seeks revenge. That's the push she needed to become Zerg again, but free of Amon's presence now. It was needed, they sort of told us that in WoL.
I just hope LotV helps people see the light and stop being so critical of a story that's based on linear missions and a few words off an instruction manual.
First of all
Also, there's some of the feelings between Kerrigan and Jim explained in Liberty's Crusade. That's very telling about the feelings they had for each other.
See the op’s argument about content outside the games. One of the critical parts of storytelling is that something should be able to stand on it’s own. (Obviously things like the individual books in trilogies don't technically stand on their own, but the trilogy itself should) And if you make a game that requires people to go read side books, you’ve already failed.
I mean, maybe it’s partly SC1's fault. SC1 wasn’t perfect as Splines pointed out. (Though in my opinion it was good despite it’s flaws, whereas SC2 has more bad stuff, and no redeeming qualities. But that’s another can of worms.)
People have to understand also that SC2 revolves around the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan.
There’s a writers podcast called Writing Excuses, done by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and Mary Robinette Kowal. In it they’ve often mentioned making "promises" to the reader, this is a very important concept as far as the transition from SC1 into SC2 goes.
Basically as you begin your story it makes an impression on the reader (or in this case the player). Unmentioned “promises” where the reader slowly infers from the tone (amongst many other things) at the start and onwards, and expects the story to move along the general path of this tone, perhaps with some deviations, maybe some well foreshadowed twists that aren’t too far off the path. It may seem complicated to pull off as a writer, but at the end of the day, all that’s required is consistency. And paying attention to what you’ve done previously in the story. (There's more to promises than just tone. But I would take forever to go over all it's aspects, and as such I'll hope this is enough.)
So basically to use an extreme, and rather strawman like example: Story starts out like really dark, blood, undead, torture devices, gray or outright evil characters. Then, suddenly, halfway through the story . . . rainbows, flowers, happy people in happy land! Everything in fiction makes promises. The Teletubbies aren’t going to pull out axes and start murdering each other, Gandalf isn’t going to start saying “fuck” and James Bond isn’t going to talk like he’s in a Shakespear play. Once again, I’m using very ridiculous and extreme examples. Hopefully I've gotten the point of "promises" across. But there it is. Back to SC2.
You kind of say part of it yourself. SC2 revolves the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan. Now these aren’t just plain old main characters like they were in SC1. No, they’re viewpoint characters now. We see everything in WoL and HotS through their journey. In SC1 they’d fairly often disappear, only to reappear later in the story. Is this that big a deal? Does this ruin the story? No. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but already there’s a shifting of perspective. And already the promises of a more wide angle shot of the story like we had in BW are slowly draining away.
But in SC1, what was it about? What was the tone? (From my own impression of the game) It had a dark tone, it was about the Zerg consuming, treachery, ignorance, backstabbing and selfish motives, highlighted now and then by the heroic efforts of a few. It was about the races, the wars, the factions, the struggles. There was never even a mention of romance. At best, there's extremely vague hinting.
What is SC2 about? It’s about Jim Raynor, Sara Kerrigan and their relationship. And finally it’s about Amon. Yes, of course there are still the leftover elements from the first game, and I'm looking at the stories from a slightly different angle, but the focus has unquestionably shifted. The primary elements we remember from SC1/BW have vanished. The tone has changed it's tune.
Gaps and interpreting is all well and good. I’d have zero problems if Jim and Sara had shacked up and were totally in love before she turned into a Zerg. (And to clarify. SC1 is still exactly the same in this example. We wouldn’t know this happened for sure unless we play SC2 or read novels.) My problem is when it magically becomes the focus of the story. If you play BW and then SC2. It comes out of no where. And since you should be telling the story strictly through these two games, it simply doesn’t fly with me.
You can't make such a massive plot point hinge on something so foreign to the original game, while also seemingly discarding bucketloads of stuff from SC1, and having the characters seemingly act extremely out of character, while having serious forms of amnesia. (Of which only Kerrigan's was canon I think. But even in WoL and she was the QoB she didn't act like she did in BW.)
The Root of Things?
As far as our viewpoint characters go, the relationship is perhaps the single most important thing in the SC2 for them. This isn't the plot we were promised. We were promised Jimmy's revenge. That, I think, is the reason people constantly bring up the whole "I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan." moment in Broodwar. It was the climax of their relationship in Broodwar. (Bwahaha, sounds dirty. Whatever.) People had been waiting over ten years with the promise that Jim motherfucking Raynor was going to kill Kerrigan. Obviously there was other things going on in the story, like there always was with Starcraft. We were promised the Hybrids, as well as some other things. But the thing is. The Hybrids didn't capture us emotionally the same way Kerrigan's betrayal did. That kind of stung. And When Jim promised to hunt her down. We wanted to go with him. But nope, suddenly he's in love with a girl we never really knew he was in love with and there's a convenient artifact to cure her. And oh, what's this? She's the only one who can save the galaxy? You mean Raynor couldn't even kill her if he wanted to? The revenge we were promised for Kerrigan killing half the cast of Starcraft? Gone.
And yes, things don’t stay the same, they do change. But in order to make a good story, it’s your job as a writer to make sure it forms a satisfying cohesive whole. Something I personally believe Blizzard has completely failed to do. Partially because of BW/SC1? Perhaps. But if they knew their stuff they should have realized the problems they’d be facing. (they had like ten years to mull it over.)
And this is just another one of the many things I think is wrong with the story in this game.
I didn't mean for this post to be so long. And sorry if it seems like I'm directing hostility at you. I think your post is totally valid, even if I disagree, and I started talking to other comments in the thread, as well as, perhaps, myself. Apologies if my whole "promises" spiel was condescending or patronizing. It was not my intent. And I have a distinct possibility of being wrong. Not only on the definition of these "promises" but also in my conclusions on the story.
On March 21 2013 06:04 Emzeeshady wrote: I had no clue people cared so much about single player. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
I had no clue people didn't care. It's probably nostalgia of the superior theme & storytelling of SC1/BW that caused people like myself to facepalm repeatedly throughout the collage of cheesy moments based on trash script and random retcon events that comprised the HoTS campaign. Sad but not at all surprised to see ActivisionBlizzard rape the SC legacy and further alienate the core community by again lowering both target audience bar and standards of story quality to below that of 'Twilight'.
@OP Thank you for this read. Aligns somewhat with my non-verbalized grief during the new campaign playthrough. Luckily and above all there is multiplayer!
While the original Starcraft doesn't really show they are in love, it certainly doesn't show that they are not in love. Jim cares about Kerrigan, and we just don't know to what extent. Also kerrigan is a psychic so she doesn't really have to converse her feelings out loudly.
When Sarah finds out that Jim is dead she goes into a rage, but then immediately breaks down emotionally. This is supposed to be the turning point in the game, but there's something here that that Anita Sarkeesian is exploring in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games videos that I wanted to mention (I don't agree with everything she says, but there are a number of important things she talks about). I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
She's not been a ghost for quite a long time now. Jim was the only one who could still see her human side, pretty much everyone else wants to see her burned. Him getting taken away from her means she's all alone in the galaxy. That's a pretty good reason to be sad.
For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. Wait, why? Sarah Kerrigan as a human never met Zeratul, so why is she so angry at him and starts the fight? Wasn't it Kerrigan that was always manipulating Zeratul to do her dirty work in Brood War? Didn't she even force Zeratul kill his own Matriarch? Shouldn't this be reversed? Oh right, it's because it's an excuse for her and Zeratul to fight again (oooo pretty), except that in makes no sense. What makes even less sense is what happens next...
Zeratul is a master assassin, last time they met he chopped off one of her blades... Also she just destroyed all protoss on Khaldir so it is save for her to assume he is after her. Him randomly appearing on her ship just scared the shit out of her, so it was a fight or flight reaction and she obviously chose to fight.
-orignal manual zerg backstory- So in looking over this material and understanding, a number of questions and possible outcomes immediately become impossible, or directly contradictory to this source material. These include the separate evolution of the Zerg, and even how they take the essence of others (in fighting, which is not what a parasitic organism does), any of Amons alterations, plans, or side experiments, the ancient spawning pool and the narrative treatment of is as a primordial and naturally indigenous thing, Zerus being a lush Triassic-like world, Zerg having psionic abilities and Primal Zerg not having a psychic link, and a host of other smaller problems surrounding these more primary of issues.
The Xelnaga experiments happened ages ago. They altered a species of worms to make them adapt and assimilate other species. In the end the whole overmind structure with psionic links was made to prevent internal strife like what happened with their failed experiment, the protoss. The overmind called some space fairing creatures and eventually left the planet with his swarm. How is it not possible that some of the original genetically altered zerg worms survived, and evolved over thousands of years when the swarm was absent? These worms are not part of the overmind-zerg and therefore are not bound by this psionic link. And all the genetic experiments could have easily turned a lava world into a jungle world over a long time period, a jungle is the epitome of a biotope after all.
The love story never existed in Star 1
Meh, it was never denied either.
Kerrigan becomes the Queen Bitch of the Universe, and proceeds to kill billions of humans and turned countless worlds into smoldering piles of ash. Death and destruction includes the fall of Aiur and Protoss society, the death of Tassadar, Stukov, Raszagal, Fenix, Duke, DuGalle, and countless others. As Fenix and Raynor were close friends and comrades, and Fenix is now dead, Jim swears that the last thing he'll ever do is kill Kerrigan.
Fenix and Raynor being close friends has no backstory in SC1 either. They were respected allies, but if there was a really personal friendship? And in the end of WoL, he does kill the Queen of Blades, by de-infesting her with the artifact.
If, in the event that they did somehow fall in love on Antiga Prime or Tarsonis, all the murderous backstabbing and wanton destruction between then and now precludes Raynor having any kind of warm feelings for her now, or makes him at the very least apprehensive towards her.
This was the Queen of Blades, an altered being created by the (corrupted) overmind. It is different from Kerrigan in essence, as is shown in several talks with Abathur where he mentions the Queen of Blades as a seperate creature with a different structure.
The convoluted and contradictory nature of the artifact shows leanings towards (in a specific light) the idea that Kerrigan should have been killed on Char and not simply de-infested. Additionally however, understanding the psychic link of the Zerg, the artifact should never have de-infested Kerrigan to begin with (perhaps only severs her link to the Zerg).
Yeah mystic artifacts are pretty lame, but SC1 was full of them aswell. (khaydarin crystals etc)
The Primal Zerg not actually being Zerg also precludes the possibility that Kerrigan becomes again a Zerg (ignoring the lore and following this most recent retcon).
The new kerrigan isn't really Zerg in the traditional way, she is now 'pure'. Whatever that means is unknown, but it's a really powerful psionic creature different from the Queen of Blades from SC1, Abathur also states something like this.
In the end, you bring up a lot of things as if they were facts why the story is so bad, while in fact they are just a subjective and selective interpretation of the lore or backstory. Sure the story is cheesy and I didn't like it either that it focused so much on a few characters, and there are some stupid plotholes, but it certainly wasn't really bad. I enjoyed playing through it.
I feel like I should take a second to just say thanks to a number of people in this thread who have tried to be thoughtful about their discussing this review and the story in general, without resorting to ad hominem attacks. I may not agree with some of the analyses here because of my understanding and perspective, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.
Only read a bit cuz I'm still scrambling for time to finish the story, but I agree that the Raynor-Kerrigan love thing seemed pretty arbitrarily. Gameplay wise though, it's WAY better than Diablo 3 or WoL. Baby steps
Treating with the Heart of Children In continuing my thoughts on storytelling problems or issues, throughout all of this conceptualization I have been trying to wrestle into words the reason that the stories of Diablo III and Wings, and now Swarm were/are such spectacular failures, and I have been left after much pondering with but one inevitable conclusion. Blizzard is not designing games for me, and haven't for a good long while now. What, me specifically? Well, allow me to explain this.
The first clue is that along with their marketing tactics and press statements, there is a less discussed and more subtle issue with their 'brand'. Their style of storytelling is specifically aimed at reaching and hooking non-adults (likely the 16 and younger crowd). This business practice in fact looks conspicuously like the tobacco industry who continually market to children because of the saying "once you get them early..." And this seems to be Blizzards modus operandi exactly, and can be directly witnessed in how their stories are presented to the audience. They lack depth, they use tropes of all kinds and clichéd techniques in every possible place they can, and generally lack the maturity and subtle nuances in behavior or character motivations, or story aesthetics.
To a younger and inexperienced mind, many of these things can be great tools at portraying types of character motivations or the reasoning behind character actions. Look at children's programming or cartoons and you'll see these executions all over the place. They can clearly set up certain elements that can be easily parsed out by a young mind, they can even be humorous and fun while still retaining a measure of seriousness... and this works for this demographic. However, here is where I take serious umbrage with this mo.
I started gaming when I was 5. My first games included the Legend of Zelda, Duck Hunt, Ultima I-IV, Pool of Radiance, Super Mario Bros., Battletoads, and a laundry list of now ostensibly 'classic' video games. I've been around a long enough time to have developed highly sophisticated tastes in what I watch, like to play, and additionally developed a good eye for detail and nuance in narrative ideas along the way. But Blizzard doesn't design games for me. I'm 30, too old for their demographic, am past the age where I would be a seri....wait, hold on a tic...
So in postulating this question it dawned on me to go look at the gamer demographics, and how they look in today's terms. I found something rather unsettling in looking at this data. Remember how I mentioned that Blizzard is designing and catering their games to teens? Well apparently, and any of us who are older have probably cued on to this already, but the average gamer demographics have drastically changed since Blizzard Entertainment was founded. According to TeamLiquid's own 2010-11 census, the average user age is around 21 with a major chunk between 17 and 26, but this does not show the bigger picture. In looking at studies from ESA the average age of gamers has shifted in a monumental way in the last 2 1/2 decades that I have been playing games. The average age for gamers today is around 33 years old, but perhaps more telling, is that more than %15-20 of the total gamers are over 50 years old now. There is certainly some wildly swinging data (in that only a few years ago the annual study showed the average age to be 37) but it still shows, and quite clearly, that by catering to teenagers companies are, or could be, ignoring the tastes of more than %75 of the total population of gamers.
That is frightening, and so disheartening on a personal note. I grew up with Blizzard. The first game I ever played of theirs was Warcraft 1, and I played Diablo 1-2, War2-3, and Star1 as soon as they came out. Now? Well I'm an adult now and I don't play games anymore because I have a job, and a real life that takes up so much of my time and...oh wait...
Now the biggest issue (that I would be remiss in not mentioning) in trying to reach an audience or target is trying to guess what they want, and especially with younger audiences it can be tricky. But I wanted to point out one last thing of interest. Browsing TeamLiquid.net you know that a lot of people are pretty enamored of HBO's Game of Thrones. The reason I bring this up is because the story elements in that show (and books) are rather mature and most definitely nuanced, and yet people love it. Clearly the 18 and older demographic likes their stories to have a measure of depth and for entertainment to not pull punches or placate their audiences, so I am left confused as to why this business operation was originally agreed upon, and I'm not sure that I can appropriately answer this question as there are too many unknowns here, at least in my current position.
...
In retrospect, looking at and playing through Swarm has been like riding the Tower of Terror, whereas my equilibrium has been violently thrown around in the hopes of confusing and arousing me. I appreciate the all the technical expertise that went into making this game, and I would be remiss not to mention that technically speaking Blizzard is still quite capable as a company, but suffice it to say that without a literary and story-centric expertise, Heart of the Swarm has done something that I had not thought was possible with my relationship with games; a slow but methodical psychological dissociation with a story (that I used to love) to the point where I no longer care. Kerrigan has flown away, and so to have my expectations of Blizzard's ability to write from this point onward.
Please remember that his has been a look into the single player portion of this game and I have not, nor will I ever write a Op Ed on multiplayer as I simply do not have the expertise to make the proper types of value judgments on balance decisions. I have my own feelings, but they are a far cry from a measured and objective analysis at this point. Also thanks to a few guys on TL for pointing out some story related things that I had initially missed.
I'm one of the numerous lurkers on TL, but your blog prompted me to lend my support to your ideas. I seem to be in a very similar situation to you - I'm 27 and grew up on Blizzard games (War 1,2 and 3, BW, D1 and 2, and WoW). I only read the last part of your blog (haven't played HOTS yet) but figured I would lend my voice in support of your post. All I can hope is that someone somewhere within Blizzard reads this and that they can change.
It's late at night and I'm tired after just submitting my PhD, so this post is rather short, but thank you for writing concisely and eloquently what I (and probably a LOT of other gamers young and old alike) have been thinking for a while.
I want games that are fun due to good content, not because their developer is telling us what they think is fun. Hopefully this message sinks through to the people who have the power to make changes, but the sceptic in me thinks this might only happen if their future titles flop.
I don't know. I loved HoTS campaign and found story to be pretty good, considering it's an RTS game.
I get that some people are not impressed because they wanted something more.
I don't get those people who, for some reason, think SC:BW story was a work of art. That's just silly. I can't find any plot hole in SC2 bigger than UED in BW.
Gotta say i kinda agree with the OP. I started the WoL campaign when it came out but got bored and annoyed quite quickly with the rather childish dialogue and the new "all-american hero" SC2 Raynor rather than the "likeable rogue" SC1 Raynor.
However when HotS came out I played it non-stop until I finished the campaign, and I would say that I had a lot of fun. Could the story have been a lot better? Yes probably, but did the shaky story ruin the campaign? No it didn't. To be honest it's been so long since i played sc1 that i wasnt really clear on the storyline anyway.
The primal zerg homeworld was a really cool idea and i don't think it should have been left out just for the sake of lore that makes sense. Stukov turning up was a bit uncalled-for, but he did at least have a great Russian accent, so that made up for it somewhat. The Belial fight was a bit silly but it must be hard to think up a truly original bossfight these days. Especially one that works for players on both Brutal and Easy mode.
Interestingly, both IGN's and Gamespot's review agree the writing was pretty weak, though the game as a whole was good (8.6 and 8, respectively). Contrast with the praise Gamespot gave to BW's writing many years ago (IGN makes no mention, just says the single player is good).
Very well thought out. Do I enjoy playing the campaign? I do. However, this post makes me think about another Teamliquid thread. Can games be considered art? A lot people in this thread have been saying "oh if I wanted depth, I could read a book, watch a movie, play an rpg." Now which is nice, yes, but yet in the other teamliquid thread, most people were in agreement that games are an art form. Tricky, tricky. Suddenly, it's the time you ask the question, and the way you ask a question. Can games truly evolve beyond simple one liners, into something like...well I enjoyed The King's Speech as a movie for instance.
Can games get to this point, if most people just think that cookie cutter material is fine? Going the safe route does indeed generate revenue, but in the end it cannot be art. I used to think that games could be art, but many recurring thread responses have convinced me otherwise. No, games can not be considered art in this current abominable form, in a industry purely driven for profit, Starcraft 2 is not art, it is a popcorn flick. Yes, at the end of the day I did have fun, but the characters are forgettable. Which is a regret for me, seeing as Kerrigan, Mengsk, and Duran were characters I could appreciate even a decade ago.
On March 21 2013 22:08 Spidinko wrote: I don't know. I loved HoTS campaign and found story to be pretty good, considering it's an RTS game.
I get that some people are not impressed because they wanted something more.
I don't get those people who, for some reason, think SC:BW story was a work of art. That's just silly. I can't find any plot hole in SC2 bigger than UED in BW.
Then you're being willfully ignorant. The UED isn't even a plot hole.
Treating with the Heart of Children In continuing my thoughts on storytelling problems or issues, throughout all of this conceptualization I have been trying to wrestle into words the reason that the stories of Diablo III and Wings, and now Swarm were/are such spectacular failures, and I have been left after much pondering with but one inevitable conclusion. Blizzard is not designing games for me, and haven't for a good long while now. What, me specifically? Well, allow me to explain this.
The first clue is that along with their marketing tactics and press statements, there is a less discussed and more subtle issue with their 'brand'. Their style of storytelling is specifically aimed at reaching and hooking non-adults (likely the 16 and younger crowd). This business practice in fact looks conspicuously like the tobacco industry who continually market to children because of the saying "once you get them early..." And this seems to be Blizzards modus operandi exactly, and can be directly witnessed in how their stories are presented to the audience. They lack depth, they use tropes of all kinds and clichéd techniques in every possible place they can, and generally lack the maturity and subtle nuances in behavior or character motivations, or story aesthetics.
To a younger and inexperienced mind, many of these things can be great tools at portraying types of character motivations or the reasoning behind character actions. Look at children's programming or cartoons and you'll see these executions all over the place. They can clearly set up certain elements that can be easily parsed out by a young mind, they can even be humorous and fun while still retaining a measure of seriousness... and this works for this demographic. However, here is where I take serious umbrage with this mo.
I started gaming when I was 5. My first games included the Legend of Zelda, Duck Hunt, Ultima I-IV, Pool of Radiance, Super Mario Bros., Battletoads, and a laundry list of now ostensibly 'classic' video games. I've been around a long enough time to have developed highly sophisticated tastes in what I watch, like to play, and additionally developed a good eye for detail and nuance in narrative ideas along the way. But Blizzard doesn't design games for me. I'm 30, too old for their demographic, am past the age where I would be a seri....wait, hold on a tic...
So in postulating this question it dawned on me to go look at the gamer demographics, and how they look in today's terms. I found something rather unsettling in looking at this data. Remember how I mentioned that Blizzard is designing and catering their games to teens? Well apparently, and any of us who are older have probably cued on to this already, but the average gamer demographics have drastically changed since Blizzard Entertainment was founded. According to TeamLiquid's own 2010-11 census, the average user age is around 21 with a major chunk between 17 and 26, but this does not show the bigger picture. In looking at studies from ESA the average age of gamers has shifted in a monumental way in the last 2 1/2 decades that I have been playing games. The average age for gamers today is around 33 years old, but perhaps more telling, is that more than %15-20 of the total gamers are over 50 years old now. There is certainly some wildly swinging data (in that only a few years ago the annual study showed the average age to be 37) but it still shows, and quite clearly, that by catering to teenagers companies are, or could be, ignoring the tastes of more than %75 of the total population of gamers.
That is frightening, and so disheartening on a personal note. I grew up with Blizzard. The first game I ever played of theirs was Warcraft 1, and I played Diablo 1-2, War2-3, and Star1 as soon as they came out. Now? Well I'm an adult now and I don't play games anymore because I have a job, and a real life that takes up so much of my time and...oh wait...
Now the biggest issue (that I would be remiss in not mentioning) in trying to reach an audience or target is trying to guess what they want, and especially with younger audiences it can be tricky. But I wanted to point out one last thing of interest. Browsing TeamLiquid.net you know that a lot of people are pretty enamored of HBO's Game of Thrones. The reason I bring this up is because the story elements in that show (and books) are rather mature and most definitely nuanced, and yet people love it. Clearly the 18 and older demographic likes their stories to have a measure of depth and for entertainment to not pull punches or placate their audiences, so I am left confused as to why this business operation was originally agreed upon, and I'm not sure that I can appropriately answer this question as there are too many unknowns here, at least in my current position.
...
In retrospect, looking at and playing through Swarm has been like riding the Tower of Terror, whereas my equilibrium has been violently thrown around in the hopes of confusing and arousing me. I appreciate the all the technical expertise that went into making this game, and I would be remiss not to mention that technically speaking Blizzard is still quite capable as a company, but suffice it to say that without a literary and story-centric expertise, Heart of the Swarm has done something that I had not thought was possible with my relationship with games; a slow but methodical psychological dissociation with a story (that I used to love) to the point where I no longer care. Kerrigan has flown away, and so to have my expectations of Blizzard's ability to write from this point onward.
Please remember that his has been a look into the single player portion of this game and I have not, nor will I ever write a Op Ed on multiplayer as I simply do not have the expertise to make the proper types of value judgments on balance decisions. I have my own feelings, but they are a far cry from a measured and objective analysis at this point. Also thanks to a few guys on TL for pointing out some story related things that I had initially missed.
I'm one of the numerous lurkers on TL, but your blog prompted me to lend my support to your ideas. I seem to be in a very similar situation to you - I'm 27 and grew up on Blizzard games (War 1,2 and 3, BW, D1 and 2, and WoW). I only read the last part of your blog (haven't played HOTS yet) but figured I would lend my voice in support of your post. All I can hope is that someone somewhere within Blizzard reads this and that they can change.
It's late at night and I'm tired after just submitting my PhD, so this post is rather short, but thank you for writing concisely and eloquently what I (and probably a LOT of other gamers young and old alike) have been thinking for a while.
I want games that are fun due to good content, not because their developer is telling us what they think is fun. Hopefully this message sinks through to the people who have the power to make changes, but the sceptic in me thinks this might only happen if their future titles flop.
This has been my feeling for a long while as well. I'm 29 and I grew up playing videogames. I keep hearing statistics from the ESA and the gaming media about how the average age of gamers is in the 30s, even 40s sometimes and how around half are women. I look around and all I can say to that is "BULLSHIT!"
Maybe they include cell phone games, online Hearts and other games like that. But there's no way the average age of the current crop of AAA titles even approaches 30. I'd say WoW is an exception as there are plenty of older gamers playing it. But SC2? D3? The innumerable amount of FPS games in the market? It's in the low 20s. I'd say even late teens for the CoD and Halo crowd. I doubt there's enough indie games with older players to swing these averages as high as the ESA is claiming.
Treating with the Heart of Children In continuing my thoughts on storytelling problems or issues, throughout all of this conceptualization I have been trying to wrestle into words the reason that the stories of Diablo III and Wings, and now Swarm were/are such spectacular failures, and I have been left after much pondering with but one inevitable conclusion. Blizzard is not designing games for me, and haven't for a good long while now. What, me specifically? Well, allow me to explain this.
The first clue is that along with their marketing tactics and press statements, there is a less discussed and more subtle issue with their 'brand'. Their style of storytelling is specifically aimed at reaching and hooking non-adults (likely the 16 and younger crowd). This business practice in fact looks conspicuously like the tobacco industry who continually market to children because of the saying "once you get them early..." And this seems to be Blizzards modus operandi exactly, and can be directly witnessed in how their stories are presented to the audience. They lack depth, they use tropes of all kinds and clichéd techniques in every possible place they can, and generally lack the maturity and subtle nuances in behavior or character motivations, or story aesthetics.
To a younger and inexperienced mind, many of these things can be great tools at portraying types of character motivations or the reasoning behind character actions. Look at children's programming or cartoons and you'll see these executions all over the place. They can clearly set up certain elements that can be easily parsed out by a young mind, they can even be humorous and fun while still retaining a measure of seriousness... and this works for this demographic. However, here is where I take serious umbrage with this mo.
I started gaming when I was 5. My first games included the Legend of Zelda, Duck Hunt, Ultima I-IV, Pool of Radiance, Super Mario Bros., Battletoads, and a laundry list of now ostensibly 'classic' video games. I've been around a long enough time to have developed highly sophisticated tastes in what I watch, like to play, and additionally developed a good eye for detail and nuance in narrative ideas along the way. But Blizzard doesn't design games for me. I'm 30, too old for their demographic, am past the age where I would be a seri....wait, hold on a tic...
So in postulating this question it dawned on me to go look at the gamer demographics, and how they look in today's terms. I found something rather unsettling in looking at this data. Remember how I mentioned that Blizzard is designing and catering their games to teens? Well apparently, and any of us who are older have probably cued on to this already, but the average gamer demographics have drastically changed since Blizzard Entertainment was founded. According to TeamLiquid's own 2010-11 census, the average user age is around 21 with a major chunk between 17 and 26, but this does not show the bigger picture. In looking at studies from ESA the average age of gamers has shifted in a monumental way in the last 2 1/2 decades that I have been playing games. The average age for gamers today is around 33 years old, but perhaps more telling, is that more than %15-20 of the total gamers are over 50 years old now. There is certainly some wildly swinging data (in that only a few years ago the annual study showed the average age to be 37) but it still shows, and quite clearly, that by catering to teenagers companies are, or could be, ignoring the tastes of more than %75 of the total population of gamers.
That is frightening, and so disheartening on a personal note. I grew up with Blizzard. The first game I ever played of theirs was Warcraft 1, and I played Diablo 1-2, War2-3, and Star1 as soon as they came out. Now? Well I'm an adult now and I don't play games anymore because I have a job, and a real life that takes up so much of my time and...oh wait...
Now the biggest issue (that I would be remiss in not mentioning) in trying to reach an audience or target is trying to guess what they want, and especially with younger audiences it can be tricky. But I wanted to point out one last thing of interest. Browsing TeamLiquid.net you know that a lot of people are pretty enamored of HBO's Game of Thrones. The reason I bring this up is because the story elements in that show (and books) are rather mature and most definitely nuanced, and yet people love it. Clearly the 18 and older demographic likes their stories to have a measure of depth and for entertainment to not pull punches or placate their audiences, so I am left confused as to why this business operation was originally agreed upon, and I'm not sure that I can appropriately answer this question as there are too many unknowns here, at least in my current position.
...
In retrospect, looking at and playing through Swarm has been like riding the Tower of Terror, whereas my equilibrium has been violently thrown around in the hopes of confusing and arousing me. I appreciate the all the technical expertise that went into making this game, and I would be remiss not to mention that technically speaking Blizzard is still quite capable as a company, but suffice it to say that without a literary and story-centric expertise, Heart of the Swarm has done something that I had not thought was possible with my relationship with games; a slow but methodical psychological dissociation with a story (that I used to love) to the point where I no longer care. Kerrigan has flown away, and so to have my expectations of Blizzard's ability to write from this point onward.
Please remember that his has been a look into the single player portion of this game and I have not, nor will I ever write a Op Ed on multiplayer as I simply do not have the expertise to make the proper types of value judgments on balance decisions. I have my own feelings, but they are a far cry from a measured and objective analysis at this point. Also thanks to a few guys on TL for pointing out some story related things that I had initially missed.
I'm one of the numerous lurkers on TL, but your blog prompted me to lend my support to your ideas. I seem to be in a very similar situation to you - I'm 27 and grew up on Blizzard games (War 1,2 and 3, BW, D1 and 2, and WoW). I only read the last part of your blog (haven't played HOTS yet) but figured I would lend my voice in support of your post. All I can hope is that someone somewhere within Blizzard reads this and that they can change.
It's late at night and I'm tired after just submitting my PhD, so this post is rather short, but thank you for writing concisely and eloquently what I (and probably a LOT of other gamers young and old alike) have been thinking for a while.
I want games that are fun due to good content, not because their developer is telling us what they think is fun. Hopefully this message sinks through to the people who have the power to make changes, but the sceptic in me thinks this might only happen if their future titles flop.
This has been my feeling for a long while as well. I'm 29 and I grew up playing videogames. I keep hearing statistics from the ESA and the gaming media about how the average age of gamers is in the 30s, even 40s sometimes and how around half are women. I look around and all I can say to that is "BULLSHIT!"
Maybe they include cell phone games, online Hearts and other games like that. But there's no way the average age of the current crop of AAA titles even approaches 30. I'd say WoW is an exception as there are plenty of older gamers playing it. But SC2? D3? The innumerable amount of FPS games in the market? It's in the low 20s. I'd say even late teens for the CoD and Halo crowd. I doubt there's enough indie games with older players to swing these averages as high as the ESA is claiming.
I suspect those stats would be different if they would use weighted averages, such as taking into account how much people game instead of only if people game.
Even all my good will cant make me ignore the diablo3-esque enemies that keep taunting you only to die in 3 seconds, so fucking pathetic they turn enemies into jokes. The real biggest cheeser of starcraft is Blizzard themselves.
I'm surprised you didn't enjoy the campaign on a gameplay level (the Diablo 3 boss fight not withstanding). It was very fun, as a zerg player, to basically go "Screw you" to the usual anti-zerg obstacles. Siegetanks? Permanent mind control. Stim marines? Slow roaches. Etc. etc. I think your mistake is you are playing an RTS and expecting a story, whereas the goal of an RTS is not primarily a story telling medium, but a gameplay one. And from a gameplay standpoint, I found HotS succeeded quite well.
On March 21 2013 04:08 Warpish wrote: Another point that I would have liked to see addressed is the fact that Kerrigan, the leader of an evolutionary race and the apogee of Zerg evolution, evolved high heels in her feet. I wonder what are the evolutionary advantages of high heels! Ridiculous.
I also thought about it, she had high heels in Wol already. A transparent trick to make her more sexy despite her zerg appearance. It still is one of the thing I can live with, even though it *is* ridiculous. As are the woman in every historical hollywood movie. The girl always fits the fashion of the time, she never looks like a contemporary woman. Absolute BS. But Starcraft design is over the top anyways, so I accepted natural high heels for the queen of blades even though they make absolutely no sense.
Stuff can evolve because it allows the organism to mate more effectively. Like a peacock tail.
Kerrigan's heels allow her to bewitch Jim into forgetting everything she did as the queen of blades in broodwar and is the ultimate sex trait in this regard.
However, it also serves as a potent weapon (in the WoL cinematic, you can see a scene in which she is clearly kicking Zeratul)
The story was crap and it completely ruined the lore. That said, it was a fun campaign and I consider it worth $40 even regardless of all the awfulness. My expectations were so low after WoL that this actually seemed ok.
In my opinion, WoL was the Phantom Menace while HotS is the Attack of the Clones: not any better storywise, but at least it wasnt responsible for setting (and ruining) the entire story. It also had better visuals (hello intro cinematic) and music and stuff and had some decent potential (some have mentioned that Jim's death, kerrigan's reinfestation, zagara's challenge/learning, Stukov, Narud/Duran etc could, in the hands of a competent writer, been very powerful moments for Starcraft).
My biggest concern is that WoL and HotS do not even attempt to emulate the spirit of their predecessors. The mission briefing room, while unwieldy and likely unsuitable for today's audiences in its SC1 form, should have been the essence of these games (and could have been, if the hyperion bridge/communicator had been the focus instead of the stupid star map). Multiple people, multiple perspectives, all arguing and fighting amongst each other for control of their corner of space. Terrans against Terrans, Zerg against Terrans, Zerg against Protoss. The diplomatic and private and personal interactions of all these numerous characters: that is Starcraft.
SC2 had so much potential with a zerg swarm that could finally begin to think and become more human, offering the promise of a zerg presence in the briefing room beyond simply Kerrigan.
And that was the overmind's vision of the swarm, realized at last through kerrigan: a zerg swarm that benefited from the addition of humanity and their psionic potential to its ranks. It would have been fucking terrifying to see more infested ghosts like duran (even though this ultimately wasnt the case), controlling the swarm like cerebrates.
And the idea that they alluded to briefly about the swarm evolving too much (to the point where kerrigan might lose control of the queens because they developed too much independence) might have been an interesting angle for a work that has always been obsessed with the idea of independence and authority (hint, hint, Wings of LIBERTY). And that would ultimately call into question the entire premise of the zerg: that without an overmind, their true ruler (is it the heart? or the mind?), they are no longer a perfect hive mind, but one capable of infighting and political intrigue of its own, with the strongest and most cunning coming out on top. That, after all, is evolution at its finest. And that could make an immensely interesting story if you throw it into a world that is rife with this constant battling for supremacy.
On March 21 2013 04:08 Warpish wrote: Another point that I would have liked to see addressed is the fact that Kerrigan, the leader of an evolutionary race and the apogee of Zerg evolution, evolved high heels in her feet. I wonder what are the evolutionary advantages of high heels! Ridiculous.
I also thought about it, she had high heels in Wol already. A transparent trick to make her more sexy despite her zerg appearance. It still is one of the thing I can live with, even though it *is* ridiculous. As are the woman in every historical hollywood movie. The girl always fits the fashion of the time, she never looks like a contemporary woman. Absolute BS. But Starcraft design is over the top anyways, so I accepted natural high heels for the queen of blades even though they make absolutely no sense.
Stuff can evolve because it allows the organism to mate more effectively. Like a peacock tail.
Kerrigan's heels allow her to bewitch Jim into forgetting everything she did as the queen of blades in broodwar and is the ultimate sex trait in this regard.
However, it also serves as a potent weapon (in the WoL cinematic, you can see a scene in which she is clearly kicking Zeratul)
The story was crap and it completely ruined the lore. That said, it was a fun campaign and I consider it worth $40 even regardless of all the awfulness. My expectations were so low after WoL that this actually seemed ok.
In my opinion, WoL was the Phantom Menace while HotS is the Attack of the Clones: not any better storywise, but at least it wasnt responsible for setting (and ruining) the entire story. It also had better visuals (hello intro cinematic) and music and stuff and had some decent potential (some have mentioned that Jim's death, kerrigan's reinfestation, zagara's challenge/learning, Stukov, Narud/Duran etc could, in the hands of a competent writer, been very powerful moments for Starcraft).
Man I almost got in trouble for laughing in class... LOLOL you're brilliant.
But actually I wonder if LOTV will be Star Wars: Episode III?
On March 22 2013 00:11 Velr wrote: Raynor becomes Darth Vader?
I thought that was closer to Stukov, someone who underestimated a certain power and then became what he tried to destroy after his body was almost destroyed.
Expected nothing of the story, and I enjoyed the game. After WoL, how could anyone have expected Blizzard to be any good at writing stories for their games? After Diablo 3?
The only thing they seem to be able to do well, is short stories like the ones they've been releasing.
On March 21 2013 23:57 dinosrwar wrote: I'm surprised you didn't enjoy the campaign on a gameplay level (the Diablo 3 boss fight not withstanding). It was very fun, as a zerg player, to basically go "Screw you" to the usual anti-zerg obstacles. Siegetanks? Permanent mind control. Stim marines? Slow roaches. Etc. etc. I think your mistake is you are playing an RTS and expecting a story, whereas the goal of an RTS is not primarily a story telling medium, but a gameplay one. And from a gameplay standpoint, I found HotS succeeded quite well.
You're making assumptions that aren't intrinsic to what an RTS is. Plenty of RTS's have a fantastic story and are entirely story-driven (example, Homeworld, one of the greatest RTS's ever made). Furthermore, all of those cool things you mentioned were cool, but took ALL difficulty out of the entire campaign.
To the story-telling debate: obviously, the primary goal of a video game isn't to tell a story. That is the primary goal of literature and literature alone. However, you'd be crazy to suggest that story isn't important to film, and that isn't the primary purpose of film. Just because it isn't literature doesn't mean it shouldn't or can't be a quality story-telling medium. Video games have fantastic potential to tell a story in a different manner than literature or film, but idiot writers are fucking it up by setting the bar too low.
On March 21 2013 23:57 dinosrwar wrote: I'm surprised you didn't enjoy the campaign on a gameplay level (the Diablo 3 boss fight not withstanding). It was very fun, as a zerg player, to basically go "Screw you" to the usual anti-zerg obstacles. Siegetanks? Permanent mind control. Stim marines? Slow roaches. Etc. etc. I think your mistake is you are playing an RTS and expecting a story, whereas the goal of an RTS is not primarily a story telling medium, but a gameplay one. And from a gameplay standpoint, I found HotS succeeded quite well.
10/10. I agree on every single point and I appreciate the time you spent getting this written down for others to absorb.
TL needs to get this guy a Blizzcon ticket so he can go to the lore panel Q&A and tear them a new asshole. Red shirt guy 2.0, except this time it's Starcraft and that's some serious fucking business! Get him a TL shirt for his appearance and there will be rationally thinking disappointed Blizzard customers flocking here in droves. :D
I would love to sit down with a pint an go over this, because while your post is very well written and you clearly have a better understanding of the technical side of story telling than I do. The whole business is at the end of the day subjective and I formed very different opinions and understandings of the story to you. You could say that I have taken what Blizzard have delivered and worked for them in my own mind to cover their errors. But I don't believe I have and if I did it certainly doesn't feel like I worked very hard
Sadly I don't have your enthusiasm for writing so I will not go over all your points here. But one example is your referencing Kerrigan's breakdown after finding out Jim is 'dead' as a lack of fortitude. Personally that is not how I interpreted the scene.
My take was that she had seen Jim as the one thing that could possibly prevent her from going down the bloody path of revenge. Once she finds out Jim is 'dead' I don't see her crying because she has been deprived of her love, but because she has lost her only hope of avoiding what she knows will be a bloody path to her revenge against Mengsk.
She may not explicitly remember her time as the queen of blades but she has a good idea how much pain and suffering she caused. I see her break down as she loses her internal struggle to not go down the bloody path and as she is crushed under the weight of realization that without Jim she is going to give in to her want for revenge and again cause suffering to many innocent people, just as she did as the queen of blades and in the knowledge that this time she can not even offer her self the excuse she is infested. She knows it is all on her, at this point she is effectively giving up her humanity for revenge and the magnitude of the decision is not lost on her.
That would certainly make me have a sit down for a minute!
On March 21 2013 23:57 dinosrwar wrote: I'm surprised you didn't enjoy the campaign on a gameplay level (the Diablo 3 boss fight not withstanding). It was very fun, as a zerg player, to basically go "Screw you" to the usual anti-zerg obstacles. Siegetanks? Permanent mind control. Stim marines? Slow roaches. Etc. etc. I think your mistake is you are playing an RTS and expecting a story, whereas the goal of an RTS is not primarily a story telling medium, but a gameplay one. And from a gameplay standpoint, I found HotS succeeded quite well.
You're making assumptions that aren't intrinsic to what an RTS is. Plenty of RTS's have a fantastic story and are entirely story-driven (example, Homeworld, one of the greatest RTS's ever made). Furthermore, all of those cool things you mentioned were cool, but took ALL difficulty out of the entire campaign.
To the story-telling debate: obviously, the primary goal of a video game isn't to tell a story. That is the primary goal of literature and literature alone. However, you'd be crazy to suggest that story isn't important to film, and that isn't the primary purpose of film. Just because it isn't literature doesn't mean it shouldn't or can't be a quality story-telling medium. Video games have fantastic potential to tell a story in a different manner than literature or film, but idiot writers are fucking it up by setting the bar too low.
Where did you get the idea that telling a story is the goal of literature? It may be sometimes. And that telling a story is the goal of film? It may be sometimes.
(As of here I'm not refering to the person I responded to, just people in general)
Video games are perfectly able of telling good stories, it's just uncommon, Heavy Rain for example while not being the most compelling story personally for me proves that video games are perfectly able of telling stories. Amnesia while having a simple story is a game whose ambiance is totally built around its story and while the game was terrifying for me I kept playing because I was curious of what had happened(I don't like any of the characters though, a common grievance for me). Video games have the unique advantage of letting you cruise around the ambiance of that story - it naturally makes you feel immersed, for instance Bioshock 1 tells its story not only with its dialogues but with every detail you see in the environment. Elder Scroll Series and RPGs alike may not tell one grandiose compelling story(at least for me I never like the main story in these games) but they tell a lot of smaller stories while letting you decide their outcome and that's something unique in story-telling as well. I just wish video game makers focused on the story and when they do focus on the story explored character development and character interactions with more subtlety and coherence. And yeah, they could think out of the box sometimes as well, all the same tropes are used over and over again as if anything different would physically hurt the gamer crowd.
Seriously, not recognizing video-games capability in story-telling is a unhealthy mix of naivety and blindness.
I do agree, with a lot of points there, but I feel I'm lack lacking the knowledge in this theme and in the overall story line of SCtoHOTS (hell, even my english is too weak), to make a decent judgmental call.
Overall, nice job. Hope someone will read this from blizzard.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: Speaking of cropping up, guess who showed up in my game? Alexi Stukov?! Wait, didn't Duran murder him in cold blood in the Psi Distruptor years ago? Wasn't his body placed in a capsule and sent out into space? Well apparently that's not what happened. Now I can I guess from a pragmatic position see that this is a decision that could maybe be opened because hell, did we actually know %100 that his body was recovered? This is where my initial talk about Flashpoint begins to rear its head.
On March 21 2013 23:57 dinosrwar wrote: I'm surprised you didn't enjoy the campaign on a gameplay level (the Diablo 3 boss fight not withstanding). It was very fun, as a zerg player, to basically go "Screw you" to the usual anti-zerg obstacles. Siegetanks? Permanent mind control. Stim marines? Slow roaches. Etc. etc. I think your mistake is you are playing an RTS and expecting a story, whereas the goal of an RTS is not primarily a story telling medium, but a gameplay one. And from a gameplay standpoint, I found HotS succeeded quite well.
You're making assumptions that aren't intrinsic to what an RTS is. Plenty of RTS's have a fantastic story and are entirely story-driven (example, Homeworld, one of the greatest RTS's ever made). Furthermore, all of those cool things you mentioned were cool, but took ALL difficulty out of the entire campaign.
To the story-telling debate: obviously, the primary goal of a video game isn't to tell a story. That is the primary goal of literature and literature alone. However, you'd be crazy to suggest that story isn't important to film, and that isn't the primary purpose of film. Just because it isn't literature doesn't mean it shouldn't or can't be a quality story-telling medium. Video games have fantastic potential to tell a story in a different manner than literature or film, but idiot writers are fucking it up by setting the bar too low.
I think good story is secondary to gameplay for RTS. If it's there, that's great, if it's not, then I don't really mind as long as the gameplay was crisp. I remember Homeworld for its space combat, and when I get nostalgic about it, I don't want a continuation of its story, just its gameplay. Take Red Alert for example. The story was silly, campy, and terrible if you examine it from a literary perspective. But I loved the campaign's "story mode" because it was just a cheesy 80's movie made into a game, and the gameplay was completely engrossing. Similarly, Company of Heroes 2 is being looked forward to (rightly so), but the first game didn't really have a story beyond, "World War 2 stuff happens, tanks!"
Obviously it's possible for a game to have great story and gameplay -- to me a recent example would be World in Conflict -- but I don't think it's necessary to have a great story for the gamplay to be fun. WIC's predecessor Ground Control I/II had an almost non-existant/cliche story, but the squad based combat was extremely pleasing and I wish they would make more simply because it's fun.
So back to HotS -- yes the campaign was on the easy side, but I don't agree with difficulty = fun. If I want difficulty I'll just ladder. I had a good time leveling up Kerrigan and rolling over everything. I'm not exactly for setting a lower bar on story, but rather, I would prefer to hold the gameplay up to a higher standard. I approach RTS like I do with casual/intermediate wargames (Panzer General, and the like), and I like premade scenarios that just let me mess around with my units
Like I would understand a campaign critique from a gameplay perspective (which is debatable), but to dislike it for its story feels contrary to what an RTS is to me. I barely remember the story from SC1/BW -- but I do remember the crazy doom drop I had to do in the end of the 1st terran campaign to get past the missile turrets guarding the Ion Cannon. To me, those types of moments are what make RTSs fun and good.
First of all, I believe that this game is very good. (just to make my position clear)
I noticed that your disapointment with this game seems to originate from the expectations SC1 and BW set for you, the inconsistencies in the storytelling, and the heavy use of clichés. While I believe the first source is one that impair your judgement somehow, because you're not looking at the game, you're looking at what you want the game to be, the two others are quite true. Inconsistencies are so common nowadays that most of the time it's better to ignore them entirely. I think that it is so because of the fact that a good show that is always exciting needs to bend its own setting to set a pace with the most action possible whereas a realistical show will have some dull or quiet moments (which bore most gamers I believe. ) Nonetheless, I agree that it lowers the quality of the title. But for the cliché part, not only I think that there are a lot of these in BW even if they don't appear as strongly as in WoL and Hots because of the more cartooney graphics and written story, but I also feel that it is NEEDED in a game, as it is the reward for the spectator. A twist or suprising turn of event is only good because most of the other times, you get what you expect. Most of all, if you beat a hard mission and you get cheated of the development that you tried so hard to get, you can feel frustrated with the game (at least some players will ). I know I got this feeling with a lot of titles.
Overall you are mostly right, but it seems that you miss the fun of this kind of story: to get you into the action, without thinking much, and have strong emotional moments that you can cling to. And I think on that front HotS delivered.
I do agree with you, their strengths clearly don't lie in storytelling. I was livid on the kill or be killed bit too,I mean the mini bosses were beyond a joke, I was sitting and complaining about how it was just all recycled material and then I hit (Belial) i mean Zurvus, I was in complete and utter disgust.
On March 22 2013 01:25 WolfStar wrote: I would love to sit down with a pint an go over this, because while your post is very well written and you clearly have a better understanding of the technical side of story telling than I do. The whole business is at the end of the day subjective and I formed very different opinions and understandings of the story to you. You could say that I have taken what Blizzard have delivered and worked for them in my own mind to cover their errors. But I don't believe I have and if I did it certainly doesn't feel like I worked very hard
Sadly I don't have your enthusiasm for writing so I will not go over all your points here. But one example is your referencing Kerrigan's breakdown after finding out Jim is 'dead' as a lack of fortitude. Personally that is not how I interpreted the scene.
My take was that she had seen Jim as the one thing that could possibly prevent her from going down the bloody path of revenge. Once she finds out Jim is 'dead' I don't see her crying because she has been deprived of her love, but because she has lost her only hope of avoiding what she knows will be a bloody path to her revenge against Mengsk.
She may not explicitly remember her time as the queen of blades but she has a good idea how much pain and suffering she caused. I see her break down as she loses her internal struggle to not go down the bloody path and as she is crushed under the weight of realization that without Jim she is going to give in to her want for revenge and again cause suffering to many innocent people, just as she did as the queen of blades and in the knowledge that this time she can not even offer her self the excuse she is infested. She knows it is all on her, at this point she is effectively giving up her humanity for revenge and the magnitude of the decision is not lost on her.
That would certainly make me have a sit down for a minute!
That's an excellent point to be honest with you. Things will be perceived differently by different people and it was interesting to read your take on it.
That being said, I appreciate what the OP has done here. I agree with everything that he's saying and I mourn for what could have been an absolutely amazing story had they taken a chance on the other 75% of the demographic. These stats were mind-blowing, by the way. Suddenly I don't feel so worthless playing video games at 25 years of age.
However, I did enjoy the campaign. Some of the moments were cringe-worthy and I think I had to dissociate myself from the Star 1 storyline entirely to do so. It's give and take I suppose.
LOL the plotline has holes large enough to fly a battlecruiser through. It almost feels like the love story was slapped on mid-production. But even that doesn't make sense.
I find it ironic that Blizzard is making games to attract a young audience but don't have any games that will appeal to them when these people enter their twenties. Trying to gain new customer while being unable to retain existing ones isn't a viable strategy.
On March 22 2013 01:25 WolfStar wrote: My take was that she had seen Jim as the one thing that could possibly prevent her from going down the bloody path of revenge. Once she finds out Jim is 'dead' I don't see her crying because she has been deprived of her love, but because she has lost her only hope of avoiding what she knows will be a bloody path to her revenge against Mengsk.
She may not explicitly remember her time as the queen of blades but she has a good idea how much pain and suffering she caused. I see her break down as she loses her internal struggle to not go down the bloody path and as she is crushed under the weight of realization that without Jim she is going to give in to her want for revenge and again cause suffering to many innocent people, just as she did as the queen of blades and in the knowledge that this time she can not even offer her self the excuse she is infested. She knows it is all on her, at this point she is effectively giving up her humanity for revenge and the magnitude of the decision is not lost on her.
That would certainly make me have a sit down for a minute!
I agree with that take on , but you didnt feel afterwards that she still kept quite a lot of her humanity?
I mean , the end with that "thank you jim... for everything"...saving the civilians... Every action she took afterwards in regards to the terrans was a little bit underwhelming from my point of view from a character that supposedly has given away her humanity.
i mean , the story could be legitimate , but one can only stand so many awkward moments before wanting to drown kerrigan deep in the ocean forever.
still was better than WoL ; but the whole arc is not up to BW nor WC3 stories IMO.
Yea I agree the mission structure left something to be desired (mainly with the boss fights) but overall I really had no problem with the storyline.
I didn't buy this game expecting to find the second coming of a baldur's gate or planescape storyline. But then NO strategy game can create a truely deep storyline, its the way of the genre.
The story was enteretaining. and I honestly disagree with the inability for the audience to see a relationship between Jim and Kerrigan.
I played a shit ton of the BW campaign, and I always felt that the two of them had something more. No it wasn't overt, but then it was BW, so the story was told mainly through those tv screen things.
It was entertaining, and I have no complaints, I think some people are way to critical of stuff. Blizzard is excellent at making an entertaining game, and they are damn well the best in the business in terms of RTS. No blizzard has NEVER written an amazing storyline. In any game. Even Brood War wasn't amazing. it was simply solid. If you want a good storyline. Play torment or BG2, don't find them in an RTS
It isn't really so much that the story is cliche. Cliche itself isn't bad. What is bad is the way Heart of the Swarm is presented, and, with the exception of the visuals, the presentation was very lackluster.
That isn't even the main gripe I have with the campaign and how the story is unfolding so far. Like many others I'm just appalled at the utter lack of creativity from the developers at Blizzard. For years now they have been recycling, re-appropriating and cross pollinating not just mechanics but story elements from all their franchises.
The Xel'Naga from the Starcraft Universe :: The Titans from the Warcraft Universe Amon a fallen Xel'Naga and his Hybrid Army :: Sargeras the fallen Titan and his Burning Legion Amon enslaved Zerg for his own means :: Sargeras enslaved the Orcs for his own means Kerrigan infested by Zerg and eventually becomes Queen :: Arthas corrupted by the Scourge and eventually becomes King Kerrigan human/zerg rallies the zerg and sets off to fight Amon :: Thrall an orc raised by humans rallies the orcs to fight the Legion
Titan is going to be a Starcraft MMO. With the way they have treated the Zerg in Heart of the Swarm it's exactly the same way the Orcs went from a demon worshipping horde of pure evil to unfortunate tools used by a greater power. Blizzard is trying to humanize the Zerg so they can be a playable race in an MMO scenario
Everyone is probably familiar with Chris Mezten and his "I'm a one trick pony" line, but I'm just shocked that they don't even try to differentiate.
I find with Blizzard storytelling, you're better off just enjoying the ride and not thinking too much about the plot holes.. If I want a good story, I'll go play Mass Effect or something..
On March 22 2013 04:17 emesen wrote: It isn't really so much that the story is cliche. Cliche itself isn't bad. What is bad is the way Heart of the Swarm is presented, and, with the exception of the visuals, the presentation was very lackluster.
That isn't even the main gripe I have with the campaign and how the story is unfolding so far. Like many others I'm just appalled at the utter lack of creativity from the developers at Blizzard. For years now they have been recycling, re-appropriating and cross pollinating not just mechanics but story elements from all their franchises.
The Xel'Naga from the Starcraft Universe :: The Titans from the Warcraft Universe Amon a fallen Xel'Naga and his Hybrid Army :: Sargeras the fallen Titan and his Burning Legion Amon enslaved Zerg for his own means :: Sargeras enslaved the Orcs for his own means Kerrigan infested by Zerg and eventually becomes Queen :: Arthas corrupted by the Scourge and eventually becomes King Kerrigan human/zerg rallies the zerg and sets off to fight Amon :: Thrall an orc raised by humans rallies the orcs to fight the Legion
Titan is going to be a Starcraft MMO. With the way they have treated the Zerg in Heart of the Swarm it's exactly the same way the Orcs went from a demon worshipping horde of pure evil to unfortunate tools used by a greater power. Blizzard is trying to humanize the Zerg so they can be a playable race in an MMO scenario
Everyone is probably familiar with Chris Mezten and his "I'm a one trick pony" line, but I'm just shocked that they don't even try to differentiate.
On March 22 2013 04:17 emesen wrote: It isn't really so much that the story is cliche. Cliche itself isn't bad. What is bad is the way Heart of the Swarm is presented, and, with the exception of the visuals, the presentation was very lackluster.
That isn't even the main gripe I have with the campaign and how the story is unfolding so far. Like many others I'm just appalled at the utter lack of creativity from the developers at Blizzard. For years now they have been recycling, re-appropriating and cross pollinating not just mechanics but story elements from all their franchises.
The Xel'Naga from the Starcraft Universe :: The Titans from the Warcraft Universe Amon a fallen Xel'Naga and his Hybrid Army :: Sargeras the fallen Titan and his Burning Legion Amon enslaved Zerg for his own means :: Sargeras enslaved the Orcs for his own means Kerrigan infested by Zerg and eventually becomes Queen :: Arthas corrupted by the Scourge and eventually becomes King Kerrigan human/zerg rallies the zerg and sets off to fight Amon :: Thrall an orc raised by humans rallies the orcs to fight the Legion
Titan is going to be a Starcraft MMO. With the way they have treated the Zerg in Heart of the Swarm it's exactly the same way the Orcs went from a demon worshipping horde of pure evil to unfortunate tools used by a greater power. Blizzard is trying to humanize the Zerg so they can be a playable race in an MMO scenario
Everyone is probably familiar with Chris Mezten and his "I'm a one trick pony" line, but I'm just shocked that they don't even try to differentiate.
This. Yea I don't have a problem with the story for the story's sake cause I didn't play this game for its storyline. Just entertained. and then play the matchmaking.
But the creativity in the main stream video game market is becoming a little ridiculous. So rare to find more orignal games.
This and Tomb Raider are the last AAA titles I've bought and will buy for a long time. And I bought them because I'm a fan of the franchises.
Saving my money for games that are creative or simply well planned. (New torment on kickstarter, project eternity, Witcher 3, and lots of indie games)
On March 22 2013 04:05 Meatloaf wrote: I agree with that take on , but you didnt feel afterwards that she still kept quite a lot of her humanity?
I mean , the end with that "thank you jim... for everything"...saving the civilians... Every action she took afterwards in regards to the terrans was a little bit underwhelming from my point of view from a character that supposedly has given away her humanity.
i mean , the story could be legitimate , but one can only stand so many awkward moments before wanting to drown kerrigan deep in the ocean forever.
still was better than WoL ; but the whole arc is not up to BW nor WC3 stories IMO.
Indeed she evidently did manage to hold on to some shreds of humanity. Remember that the times this became evident she was being directly confronted/appealed to. Other times, such as when she was sending her brood mothers to invade planets of strategic value she made no such concessions. This could be taken as inconsistency but I can relate, she would feel pressure from the zerg to act in this way and she did need to appease them, so it would be easier for her to just allow slaughter in those situations.
Ultimately though I guess at the age of 31 I am still just a sucker for a happy ending and feel a powerful affection for characters I met when i was in my teens. high level adult story telling be dammed
Great Review, I really enjoyed reading it. This will probably get buried but I think you grossly overestimate the ability for most people to think critically about storylines in general, even if they are 30+ years old. The fact is that most people will not be able to think about the story on this level let alone are able to organize most of the ideas that happened in Brood War. For blizzard to make everything co align with every idea would take a lot of work (not saying it shouldnt be done) and I think they just decided they didnt care because less that .001% of the people that play the game are even going to realize the incongruencies,
Anyway Thanks for the article, Ill probably read it a couple more times ^^.
"Finally, and this is a huge disclaimer, but as an artist I know that our viewpoints on topics can be widely different at times when talking about certain ideas or executions, so keep in mind these are my own personal thoughts as someone who has more than 25 years of experience in creating and performing."
This sounds more like a warning shot than any sort of disclaimer. I disagree with most of the points in the original post, and believe opinions posted here are set up to be read as fact. This is misleading and an unfortunate use of 12,000 words. The run-on sentences (in "Prefatory") and generalizations (the story is bad if it relies on supplemental material) are off-putting.
I did not expect the story from HoTS to melt the skin off my face, and Blizzard has never been known by me to throw together an infallible and fleshed-out story from within campaign mode. The Starcraft series has never done this, and I doubt anyone else was expecting Mass Effect when they bought any entry in the series, from SC vanilla to the current.
I agree completely with all your points, excellent analysis. I still enjoyed the campaign for the gameplay, but since WoL my expectations for Blizzard's storytelling have plummeted so all the inconsistencies/problems didn't bother me too much. I guess at this point it's clear that Blizzard has some overarching plot arc that they're trying to mold the past lore into and they don't care so much about the collateral damage. For me I appreciated the fact that they gave some closure to the whole Mengsk storyline, so that the last game can be completely focused on the final war or whatever.
Also, my friend pointed this out, why, in the mission where Raynor and Kerrigan are separated but Kerrigan is near the dropship, does Kerrigan not just fly the dropship over to Raynor and pick him up? This whole sorry mess of a plot could have been avoided completely! I guess Kerrigan is just really dumb now after all that trauma.
Edit: Oh, by the way, when they revealed the motivation for the Hybrids, was anyone else thinking "Reapers. We have dismissed that claim."? It's basically the same mechanism for reproduction for the Xel'Naga and the Reapers from Mass Effect (which I also thought was a really weird plot device in ME).
On March 22 2013 04:04 uanime5 wrote: I find it ironic that Blizzard is making games to attract a young audience but don't have any games that will appeal to them when these people enter their twenties. Trying to gain new customer while being unable to retain existing ones isn't a viable strategy.
D2/BW/WC3 appeals a ton of people in their twenties.
This is a really excellent write-up. I think it's important to demand more from our video game stories, because if we don't it makes it much less likely that video games as a whole will mature into a respectable narrative device. And if there's one thing I want to see in my lifetime, it is the acceptance of video games as a legitimate storytelling device.
Very well written, elaborate, detailed...so much so that I feel like ive been brainwashed until now.
Not gonna lie...back when i played BW campaign i got so hyped when Raynor said he was going to kill Kerrigan...and of course i was hugely dissapointed with the courses that WoL and HotS took. (Wheres the love for Fenix? T_T) I never really understood how Kerrigan assumes virtually the exact same form after her Zerus-boost-incarnation as she was as Queen of Blades except with a few color changes either.
for 40$ for an expansion i suppose i would expect a solid story, but in reality...i didnt pay for the story...i paid for being able to use those unit upgrades and the incredible fun that ensues >_>
even though the sc2 story's been a sort of disapointment til now somehow im still hopeful that LotV will be fulfilling...but now im very doubtful..
"Finally, and this is a huge disclaimer, but as an artist I know that our viewpoints on topics can be widely different at times when talking about certain ideas or executions, so keep in mind these are my own personal thoughts as someone who has more than 25 years of experience in creating and performing."
This sounds more like a warning shot than any sort of disclaimer. I disagree with most of the points in the original post, and believe opinions posted here are set up to be read as fact. This is misleading and an unfortunate use of 12,000 words. The run-on sentences (in "Prefatory") and generalizations (the story is bad if it relies on supplemental material) are off-putting.
I did not expect the story from HoTS to melt the skin off my face, and Blizzard has never been known by me to throw together an infallible and fleshed-out story from within campaign mode. The Starcraft series has never done this, and I doubt anyone else was expecting Mass Effect when they bought any entry in the series, from SC vanilla to the current.
Posts like this make me rage so hard. I lack the ops skills with the english language to accurately describe as he has done just how terrible this story was compared to sc1/bw. But the fact that you completely miss everything he says... its almost like you didn't read any of it. I don't expect everyone to understand poor story writing but surely you can read?
I guess I am getting old when I expect more from a story than the same rehashed bs that every movie/game uses these days without any originality. The original SC had a GOOD STORY. Go play it. And then if you can honestly still say sc2's story was even close to it in terms of quality then you are a waste of the use of logic and reasoning. Agree to disagree.
Blizzards original writing team is clearly gone. Whoever is the lazy retconning bastard they have now obviously is a soulless machine that just rehashes the same garbage over and over for each game. I would kill for a true story sequel to sc1/bw. I was looking forward to it so much. The conclusion to the beginnings laid out for me. 10 years I waited. And what I got was a quickly thrown together piece of turd that people say I am being picky about. I don't pay hundreds of dollars for turd after seeing the original 3 course meal made by a gourmet chef and not think I am being ripped off.
Blizzard made a great multiplayer game. Blizzard made a technically amusing campaign and I can see why people enjoyed it. BUT PEOPLE NEED TO STOP SAYING THEY MADE A GOOD STORY! Praise them for what they did right. Not the turd they wrapped in gold foil.
well I finished SC1 and BW campaign finally a few days ago. The story really isn't all that impressive, I won't even say it's better than WoL and HotS. Maybe it's because kerrigan inner conflict was really interesting for me
"Finally, and this is a huge disclaimer, but as an artist I know that our viewpoints on topics can be widely different at times when talking about certain ideas or executions, so keep in mind these are my own personal thoughts as someone who has more than 25 years of experience in creating and performing."
This sounds more like a warning shot than any sort of disclaimer. I disagree with most of the points in the original post, and believe opinions posted here are set up to be read as fact. This is misleading and an unfortunate use of 12,000 words. The run-on sentences (in "Prefatory") and generalizations (the story is bad if it relies on supplemental material) are off-putting.
I did not expect the story from HoTS to melt the skin off my face, and Blizzard has never been known by me to throw together an infallible and fleshed-out story from within campaign mode. The Starcraft series has never done this, and I doubt anyone else was expecting Mass Effect when they bought any entry in the series, from SC vanilla to the current.
If you're going to disagree "with most of the points" you should at least present some counterarguments rather than being a lazy hack and trying to discredit the OP with grammar nazism (run-on sentences, really?). I never got the impression that this was supposed to be some definitive factual analysis of the starcraft storyline but you can take that as you wish. Your last point is also pretty sad- just because you have low standards for their product excuses them for actually putting out a shitty product? I would hope for better from an established game producer that actually has the resources to produce a game with at least a fairly decent story.
I disagree with the OP on so many accounts, and your complaints often have nothing to do with the effectiveness of the storytelling, but rather a direction. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa, and asking da Vinci, "Why didn't you paint a man instead?" I, for one, would have hated a pity-fest of Kerrigan with post-traumatic stress disorder, and preferred her voluntary choice to once again become a powerful, ruthless lord of war. Further, I also disagree with your interpretation of Kerrigan's and Raynor's relationship in BW. When they first met, they instantly became compatible, and if you listen to Kerrigan's voice inflection, she is clearly flirting with Raynor when she calls him a pig, etc etc. She is not disgusted, simply a tad distant and intent on establishing her independence, which is why she almost never listened to Raynor. Raynor, on the other hand, had no intention of hiding his feelings for Kerrigan, and made it clear that he loved her and wanted to be with her. When she fell due to Mengsk's betrayal, Raynor wanted to leave the Son of Korhal not only out of a sense of justice, but because he wanted to exact revenge. They were not merely acquaintances. Raynor was deeply in love, and Kerrigan was distrustful because of her traumatic past, and had difficulties letting anyone into her life. Finally, in the beginning of HotS, when Raynor proved himself to her by risking literally everything he had for her, she finally lets her own feelings of love blossom without restraint, and returns the favor by doing whatever it takes to rescue him. I find it sort of strange that your guff is with the love story component, because personally I thought it was the most compelling. I do think that Blizzard did a great job on HotS, especially the multiplayer (which is not a topic of interest in this thread, but is nonetheless a significant part of the $40 price tag for the game). I do have a few complaints of my own, although I'll wait until I play through LotV before I formulate any conclusive opinion. First, Narud's story arch came to a shockingly mundane splat without any intrigue or suspense whatsoever. I felt after Kerrigan killed him, that it was the equivalent of any other household chore, like picking up the dry-cleaning, or weeding the garden. It was merely something that must be done, but doesn't incite any joy or pleasure from doing so. Second, this could be merely a pet peeve of mine, but the concept of biological evolution was depicted in such an absurd and fantastical manner that it was a little disappointing for a biology major like myself. Similarly, I really enjoyed the - relative - realism of Brood War (although Protoss have always been essentially magical). For example, in Brood War, when Kerrigan first emerged as a Zerg, she attained more power by reversing the inhibitors left inside her brain during her Terran Ghost training. Her increase in strength was very tangible. In HotS however, she continually defeated tougher and larger enemies, gathering 'essence' and 'power,' but it was very difficult in conceiving what this power really meant. For example, how much stronger was Kerrigan after defeating the primal Zergs? I dunno: she seemed about the same to me, and therefore the plot failed to move me.
Regardless of my qualms, I'll make my stand beside HotS. I think it is a great game, worth $40. It's not perfect, but I'm generally pleased with Blizzard's performance.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
I don't necessarily disagree with this. The BW campaign was not nearly as good as the original starcraft one.
I really, really do believe that vanilla SC had a much, much better storyline. It was awesome. My first experience with it was the single player (way back when it first came out), and it was awesome in the Terran campaign discovering who the zerg were, trying to figure out what they wanted, playing through missions that felt hard at the time where you felt you were in constant retreat from an overwhelming force just trying to stay alive (Note: I replayed the evacuation mission when I didn't suck at video games, and I wiped out the zerg off the map with ten minutes to spare, but playing it for the first time as your first RTS that shit was hard!). Allying yourself with terrorists when your government abandons you because you had to survive, then actually launching a crusade against that government, and THEN ditching the sons of Korhal because they became what you were fighting against. All while maintaining a little bit of subtlety in the dialogue, without needing to say cheesy lines where characters point out exactly what's going on (MENGSK YOU R EVIL, WE FIGHT FUR FREEDUMS)
Then you actually get to be the creepy-ass zerg and play from the "bad-guy" perspective, which was actually an interesting experience in and of itself. All WoL and HotS do is make you play as the pristine, white-washed, easy-choice never-do-any-wrong knights in shining armour. The zerg are good guys now? Jesus christ....It was awesome playing the zerg campaign, and fucking everyone's shit up, all with the justifying goal of "obtaining perfection". Creepy shit. And they wrote it well!
The protoss campaign was sweet, too. Fighting to save your homeworld against an overwhelming invasion from a totally alien threat, again with the feeling of constant retreat in the face of overwhelming forces, discovering who the dark templar are, how they relate to the Aiur protoss, fighting the civil war (though I admit I even thought the Tassadar rescue mission was fucking stupid), and then ultimately suicide bombing a ship (with Tassadar on it, the most awesome character in the game) into the overmind (also, I sucked at video games, so that mission was hard as well, when I replayed it later I fucking wrecked the overmind's shit), only to view the wreckage and destruction left on your homeworld, and knowing that Kerrigen was still out there.
And Tassadar is alive now? Awesome retconn bullshit, if a character dies heroically, it's the sacrifice of his life that makes the death tragic, meaningful, and heroic. If he goes on to live in some mystical magical plan where everything is kittens and ice cream, it completely negates the impact of his death.
Anyways, I didn't mean to get into such a huge rant. I was just reminiscing about how great starcraft was.
Oh yeah, and I did play it recently, before WoL came out, to get myself hyped for the game. And the campaign was still fucking awesome.
I didn't expect a good story(why would I? Everything after WC3 have sucked story-wise), but I wanted missions that were fun to play. And I must say that they delivered there! I have enjoyed this campaign a lot, and I found that it was a good variation in the missions etc.
"Finally, and this is a huge disclaimer, but as an artist I know that our viewpoints on topics can be widely different at times when talking about certain ideas or executions, so keep in mind these are my own personal thoughts as someone who has more than 25 years of experience in creating and performing."
This sounds more like a warning shot than any sort of disclaimer. I disagree with most of the points in the original post, and believe opinions posted here are set up to be read as fact. This is misleading and an unfortunate use of 12,000 words. The run-on sentences (in "Prefatory") and generalizations (the story is bad if it relies on supplemental material) are off-putting.
I did not expect the story from HoTS to melt the skin off my face, and Blizzard has never been known by me to throw together an infallible and fleshed-out story from within campaign mode. The Starcraft series has never done this, and I doubt anyone else was expecting Mass Effect when they bought any entry in the series, from SC vanilla to the current.
Posts like this make me rage so hard. I lack the ops skills with the english language to accurately describe as he has done just how terrible this story was compared to sc1/bw. But the fact that you completely miss everything he says... its almost like you didn't read any of it. I don't expect everyone to understand poor story writing but surely you can read?
I guess I am getting old when I expect more from a story than the same rehashed bs that every movie/game uses these days without any originality. The original SC had a GOOD STORY. Go play it. And then if you can honestly still say sc2's story was even close to it in terms of quality then you are a waste of the use of logic and reasoning. Agree to disagree.
Blizzards original writing team is clearly gone. Whoever is the lazy retconning bastard they have now obviously is a soulless machine that just rehashes the same garbage over and over for each game. I would kill for a true story sequel to sc1/bw. I was looking forward to it so much. The conclusion to the beginnings laid out for me. 10 years I waited. And what I got was a quickly thrown together piece of turd that people say I am being picky about. I don't pay hundreds of dollars for turd after seeing the original 3 course meal made by a gourmet chef and not think I am being ripped off.
Blizzard made a great multiplayer game. Blizzard made a technically amusing campaign and I can see why people enjoyed it. BUT PEOPLE NEED TO STOP SAYING THEY MADE A GOOD STORY! Praise them for what they did right. Not the turd they wrapped in gold foil.
I replayed BW before HotS because I was excited and wanted to remind myself of the story. And actually, while the BW story was as enjoyable as I remember it, I did find myself thinking 1) the story is a lot more generic and trope-driven than I remember it (warring species join forces to defeat an alien overmind, alien hero defies the traditions of his race to save lesser humans, hero sacrifices himself for the greater good, etc etc) 2) the story is really quite "badly" told from an artistic point of view
As far as I can see, the WoL and HotS stories are told in almost the exact same way as the SC and BW stories - very blunt, in your face overdone story telling with no subtlety, characters following very clear directions for rather unclear motivations, very well done cut scenes that are more just cool and nice to watch than actually advancing story.
I can understand people not liking the story or story telling in HotS or WoL. I don't really understand when people then start drawing up comparisons to SC or BW, because as far as I can see those are just as good/bad in every respect.
The OP is correct the single player is a woeful disappointment. The story from the original and brood war were fantastic. Now the dialogue and plot are poor. Old characters are a pale comparison of their former selves. Character history and motivations are largely ignored. This is a really wasted opportunity and in my opinion has really damaged the franchise. The missions were fine for the most part but the story was a disaster. Clearly almost all of Blizzards focus was on mutli-player.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
I cannot express just how ridiculous this statement is. The Protoss campaign was fairly cheesy, but at least each campaign in SC/BW was cohesive and consistent, actually understandable, didn't have trite BS love stories and prophecies, didn't use obnoxious deus ex machina plot devices to do exactly what the characters needed, and actually had a decent script.
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
Go ahead, tell us that the SC2 script is better than SC/BW's with a straight face.
On March 22 2013 22:44 Arnstein wrote: I didn't expect a good story(why would I? Everything after WC3 have sucked story-wise)
Come on, the first WoW had good bits too. Onyxia's reveal in Stormwind Keep, Vaelastrasz's demise or the Fordring quest chain all were memorable stories.
On March 22 2013 23:49 Stratos_speAr wrote:
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
The most striking comparison I've seen was made in one of Broodmywarcraft's videos. The videos themselves are often more insulting than necessary, but that minute sort of speaks for itself.
On March 22 2013 22:44 Arnstein wrote: I didn't expect a good story(why would I? Everything after WC3 have sucked story-wise)
Come on, the first WoW had good bits too. Onyxia's reveal in Stormwind Keep, Vaelastrasz's demise or the Fordring quest chain all were memorable stories.
I actually don't think WoW has been terrible, it's just suffered from the MMO syndrome: everyone character that we cared about has been killed off, the story is of no consequence because it's so difficult to tie it into the gameplay effectively, and none of the current characters matter.
I'm still waiting a couple weeks for work to calm down before I buy HotS, but I really appreciated this critical analysis. I'm not terribly invested in the story (which is why i didn't mind reading this in advance of playing through it), but I found the WoL campaign to be highly enjoyable even as the story itself was problematic. And the main reason is one you cite repeatedly: there was never anything romantic between Raynor and Kerrigan in SC/BW. The other numerous lore contradictions are interesting, and stuff like that always bothers me. It reeks of laziness (can't they go back and read their own source material) and a lack of creativity. I had similar feelings after watching Terminator 3 many years ago. I definitely like your analysis that these issues almost always arise when the target demographic is young teenagers or children.
The only way to describe the way I think Blizzard's changed is that it feels like they used to make games for themselves that happened to be blockbusters, whereas they're now making games to be blockbusters. The quality of their games is still excellent, but there's definitely something special lacking.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
I cannot express just how ridiculous this statement is. The Protoss campaign was fairly cheesy, but at least each campaign in SC/BW was cohesive and consistent, actually understandable, didn't have trite BS love stories and prophecies, didn't use obnoxious deus ex machina plot devices to do exactly what the characters needed, and actually had a decent script.
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
Go ahead, tell us that the SC2 script is better than SC/BW's with a straight face.
I'll agree with you that the original story was better (though by how much is left to debate), but this does not prove anything. You don't get to choose the best from SC1 and compare it to the worst from SC2 and call it objective criticism. Also quality of the language used does not equal to better story, it just equals to nerds getting impressed by something any litterature student can produce in its sleep.
In short, you're right, but not because of the reasons you give.
On March 22 2013 22:44 Arnstein wrote: I didn't expect a good story(why would I? Everything after WC3 have sucked story-wise)
Come on, the first WoW had good bits too. Onyxia's reveal in Stormwind Keep, Vaelastrasz's demise or the Fordring quest chain all were memorable stories.
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
The most striking comparison I've seen was made in one of Broodmywarcraft's videos. The videos themselves are often more insulting than necessary, but that minute sort of speaks for itself.
Yeah, there were some outstanding stories in WoW, including some I wish had been resolved in game. It was like Blizzard planted this tree, but the bigger it got, the more crooked and ugly the branches got.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
I cannot express just how ridiculous this statement is. The Protoss campaign was fairly cheesy, but at least each campaign in SC/BW was cohesive and consistent, actually understandable, didn't have trite BS love stories and prophecies, didn't use obnoxious deus ex machina plot devices to do exactly what the characters needed, and actually had a decent script.
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
Go ahead, tell us that the SC2 script is better than SC/BW's with a straight face.
I'll agree with you that the original story was better (though by how much is left to debate), but this does not prove anything. You don't get to choose the best from SC1 and compare it to the worst from SC2 and call it objective criticism. Also quality of the language used does not equal to better story, it just equals to nerds getting impressed by something any litterature student can produce in its sleep.
In short, you're right, but not because of the reasons you give.
Find a better quote from WoL and HotS. Go ahead, try. I couldn't. They're all the same.
And as I said, the script directly reflects several of the plot points; for instance, the entire Protoss section of the WoL campaign (Tassadar pulling an Obi Wan on us) was one massive fuck-up. That video that another poster linked explains quite nicely how it is absolutely absurd in every possible way. Mengsk's and Zeratul's speeches show us that, unlike in SC2 where they are either generic Saturday Morning Supervillains or useless old men telling crazy prophecies, in SC/BW they are actually characters with some level of depth to them.
1) Stop living in the past. 2) Dont overthink. 3) Enjoy what you've got.
I loved Sc and BW too, but it was throught my child/teenager's eyes. The Sc2 campagn is quite ok for such a big current game. It totatally met my (maybe lower) expectations. The tone is different, less mature, but it's a different game. Dont see sc2 as the actual sequel of sc and it will be easier to sleep.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
I cannot express just how ridiculous this statement is. The Protoss campaign was fairly cheesy, but at least each campaign in SC/BW was cohesive and consistent, actually understandable, didn't have trite BS love stories and prophecies, didn't use obnoxious deus ex machina plot devices to do exactly what the characters needed, and actually had a decent script.
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
Go ahead, tell us that the SC2 script is better than SC/BW's with a straight face.
I'll agree with you that the original story was better (though by how much is left to debate), but this does not prove anything. You don't get to choose the best from SC1 and compare it to the worst from SC2 and call it objective criticism. Also quality of the language used does not equal to better story, it just equals to nerds getting impressed by something any litterature student can produce in its sleep.
In short, you're right, but not because of the reasons you give.
I have to disagree with you. Most of those conversations are from pretty pivotal moments in the SC2 campaign. If he's not allowed to use dialogue from the most important parts of the SC2 story, then what IS he allowed to use?
I had fun with the campaign sure it could have been stronger. And yes the hots campaign is going in a wc 3 direction. But really what matters is did u have fun. I don't think people should worry if they are hesitant to buy it. If you like sc you'll buy it and have fun.
I partially disagree with what you wrote, because I thoroughly enjoyed the HotS campaign, but there were some things that made me say "What the fuck?"
E.G. Jim being locked in his cell WITH a gun and WITH cigarettes Kerrigan flying away The death of Narud/Duran/whatever - this should have been a much more revealing moment IMO. And the fact that, at the end, there was no hint of beginning to fight Amon anytime soon.
So overall, it was, like someone said, the best Blizzard release since WC3, but there were, infact, some problems.
But really, even with a company like Blizzard, you can't expect it to be perfect.
Skyrim, Far Cry 3, all the best games have some story problems like this. Great writeup overall though, but much too critical.
On March 22 2013 18:28 Darksoldierr wrote: I dont know, where are people coming from who says SC+BW had an amazing story. It was ok but by far wasn't god made paperwork at all.
People just remember the epic dialog and not the mediocre stuff that is really happening. Campaign story wise both the terran and protoss BW campaigns are (infinitely) worst than WOL or HOTS.
I cannot express just how ridiculous this statement is. The Protoss campaign was fairly cheesy, but at least each campaign in SC/BW was cohesive and consistent, actually understandable, didn't have trite BS love stories and prophecies, didn't use obnoxious deus ex machina plot devices to do exactly what the characters needed, and actually had a decent script.
Here, I'll copy/paste a script comparison I brought up earlier. The script being a direct representation of the story (Tassadar goes fucking Obi Wan on us?), it should give us a few talking points for the actual story and not just the script.
Compare these,
You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities. Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream! A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare. (Zeratul, speaking to Aldaris)
You'll regret that. You don't seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! (Mengsk, speaking to Raynor)
I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided be the petty strife of our common history, the tide of greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge on higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom... a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection? The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and villages destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time. The time has come my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner. In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us. Out of the many we shall forge an indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne. And from that throne, I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no man consort with alien powers, and to all the enemies of humanity: seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through, no matter the cost! (Mengsk, Episode I ending cinematic)
To this.
Gabriel Tosh: You guys did good. Now me and my Spectre's will finish the job. We'll kill Mengsk, and burn his Dominion to the ground. Matt Horner: Overthrowing Mengsk is just the start. This is about building a better tomorrow. Don't you see? We just released every scientist, philosopher and free thinker that ever challenged Mengsks' rule. That was our real victory today. Gabriel Tosh: You really that naive? Tomorrow there'll be a new Mengsk. And another one after that. Your great shining dream of the future is just an illusion. Jim Raynor: So if it's all so bleak, why are you here Tosh? What do you get out of all this? Gabriel Tosh: Same thing as you brother. I don't quit 'till Mengsk is dead Matt Horner: Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution is about freedom. Jim Raynor: You'll see that better future Matt. [turning to Tosh] Jim Raynor: But it ain't for the likes of us
General Warfield: The Xel'Naga artifact's been assembled. I hope to God it does what we think it does. Tychus Findlay: Damn straight. Bettin' our asses on some alien piece of crap don't sit right with me. Jim Raynor: I hear ya, Tychus. But I was bankin' everything on that I'd be quit already. 'Cause here we are in the mouth of hell, an' we made it this far by leanin' on each other. General Warfield: Whether it's blind luck or damn-fool courage - in all my years, I've never seen anything like what you two jokers have pulled off. Jim Raynor: That thing may be the key to stopping the Queen of Blades - but it's our sweat and blood that'll make it happen. After everything we've been through, past all the fire and fury... the one thing I know - is that we can count on each other to get the job done. Or die trying, if that's what it takes. Jim Raynor: [It stops raining and everyone is bathed in sunlight] ... because some things are just worth fighting for.
Kate Lockwell: Sir, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule? Arcturus Mengsk: Well, of course! I was called upon to serve the greater interest of humanity! Personal power was never my goal! Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? Arcturus Mengsk: [recording] ... I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me... Arcturus Mengsk: I... I won't STAND for this! You jackals think you can come in here and question ME? This interview is OVER!
Zeratul: The final piece of the prophecy. It speaks of one who shall "... break the cycle of the gods..." Karass: Most ominous. But if the Queen of Blades seeks this prophecy, we must keep it from her. Zeratul: The rest is obscured... what? Sarah Kerrigan: You might peel away the prophecy's layers, Zeratul - but you cannot outrun the doom that awaits us all! [Kerrigan's minions unburrow] Zeratul: We cannot prevail against so many! Karass: I will stand against the Queen of Blades while you escape with the fragments! Zeratul: I will not abandon you! Karass: This prophecy is more important than either of us! Reveal its secrets, Zeratul! The future rests on it!
Tassadar: Greetings, brother. I speak to you... from the Beyond. Zeratul: Tassadar! But... you died... slaying this cursed Overmind! Tassadar: I have never tasted death, Zeratul - nor shall I. But that is a tale for another time. I have come to tell you of this creature's... courage. Zeratul: Courage? It was an abomination! Tassadar: Not always. The zerg were... altered. A single over-riding purpose was forced upon them: the destruction of our people. The Overmind was formed with thought and reason... but not free will. It screamed and raged within the prison of its own mind. Zeratul: Who did this? Why? Tassadar: I know not. But the Overmind found a way to resist its all-consuming directive. It created a chance... a hope of salvation. The Queen of Blades. Zeratul: Madness! Tassadar: Only she can free the zerg from slavery - and in so doing, save all that is... from the flame. Zeratul: I do not understand, brother. Tassadar: Forget what you know, Zeratul. The Overmind saw a vision... the end of all things. And now you must see it too. Zeratul: No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!
Go ahead, tell us that the SC2 script is better than SC/BW's with a straight face.
I'll agree with you that the original story was better (though by how much is left to debate), but this does not prove anything. You don't get to choose the best from SC1 and compare it to the worst from SC2 and call it objective criticism. Also quality of the language used does not equal to better story, it just equals to nerds getting impressed by something any litterature student can produce in its sleep.
In short, you're right, but not because of the reasons you give.
Find a better quote from WoL and HotS. Go ahead, try. I couldn't. They're all the same.
And as I said, the script directly reflects several of the plot points; for instance, the entire Protoss section of the WoL campaign (Tassadar pulling an Obi Wan on us) was one massive fuck-up. That video that another poster linked explains quite nicely how it is absolutely absurd in every possible way. Mengsk's and Zeratul's speeches show us that, unlike in SC2 where they are either generic Saturday Morning Supervillains or useless old men telling crazy prophecies, in SC/BW they are actually characters with some level of depth to them.
I personally believe that both of the games had their good and bad moments. You might dislike WoL and HotS, but overall I like the way it's going. I am looking forward to LotV, and really, SC, BW, WoL, and HotS were all well made games. Anyway, you wanted us to tell you that the SC2 scripts is better than SC/BW's. I won't do that, but I will say that they are very close to the same in my opinion.
On March 23 2013 00:45 Psychonian wrote: I partially disagree with what you wrote, because I thoroughly enjoyed the HotS campaign, but there were some things that made me say "What the fuck?"
E.G. Jim being locked in his cell WITH a gun and WITH cigarettes Kerrigan flying away The death of Narud/Duran/whatever - this should have been a much more revealing moment IMO. And the fact that, at the end, there was no hint of beginning to fight Amon anytime soon.
So overall, it was, like someone said, the best Blizzard release since WC3, but there were, infact, some problems.
But really, even with a company like Blizzard, you can't expect it to be perfect.
Skyrim, Far Cry 3, all the best games have some story problems like this. Great writeup overall though, but much too critical
Yeah the Duran death was cheap. It is kind of waste. The Duran/Norad character and his hybrids could have offered a greater challenge than simply "kill the weak Mengkst entrenched behind his barricade" and that would have given Kerrigan a better reason to give up on his humanity. It should have been the final boss. For instance great idea: Mengst was already dead, Norad took his place with his ability and use terran tools to revive his god. It would have been great to see Kerrigan reaction in such a case.
On March 22 2013 22:58 Nick! wrote: I liked how my decisions in the WoL campaign affected the HoTS story! Matt - '' I'll have my associate Tosh deal with that.''
Kerrigan - ''No thanks''
Golden
This is one of my favourite observations thus far. Well said
On March 23 2013 00:45 Psychonian wrote: But really, even with a company like Blizzard, you can't expect it to be perfect.
Of course we're not expecting perfection. Hell, at these point we're not even expecting a good story. The people protesting here were simply expecting an average story that made sense and that it was not full of plot holes and massive retcons. The sad part, is that we didn't even got that...
I love reading reviews that sound just like it was me writing them for me. All the points are nailed perfectly - especially the notion about Blizzard continuing to cater to their perception of who the consumer of their product is while being completely oblivious to the arising mountain of proof that this particular perception may just be horribly flawed.
Also.. it's one thing when a continuation of a story makes you angry and when you feel it disrespects the original material. It's much worse when you realize that this continuation actually made you stop caring completely. Somewhere between the latter half of WoL and the beginning chapters of HotS I realized... I just don't care. At all. I care not what happens to Kerrigan, I care not what happens to Raynor, and I'm not the least bit interested how the story will end in the last part of the trilogy. I enjoy the game purely from a mechanical standpoint, but HotS has pretty successfully detached me from its world and setting completely - if LotV was released just as a series of missions with no context, cutscenes or narrative, I wouldn't mind at all, the only difference being that I would need to hit the escape button little less frequently.
It's all a bit sad. But hey, the multiplayer's kinda fun, init?
It's so unfortunate. If the three campaigns were not stretched out like mad, having a complete campaign would feel so much more epic and satisfying. The massive 'main plot breaks' in the two games are horrible tbh. They were drawn out to unnecessary portions (artifact retrieval, etc). If they weaved everything into one succinct, coherent and reasonably lengthy campaign, it would deliver far more impact than it's current form. While Hots for me is about multiplayer, the campaign is supposed to be an epic continuation from Brood War. Too bad it took 6 years and drawn out plots to cover the entire story. Even if they did end it in WoL, i'm certain the creative team could have designed it's own campaign that flows from the defeat of Amon. Stupid Activision and its corporate strategy.
the op's post is a very prettily wrapped turd that isn't worth the time It took to read. most if not all his/her points were a misconception on his part rather then a failure of the actual story.
tldr I'll never get back the time you wasted I hope your proud of yourself
Crazy good post sir, you really summed up and put into perspective why I always had this lingering doubt in my mind about why the hots story didn't make much sense and left me feeling very disapointed compared to my experience with the BW campaign. I played the original sc and BW campaign maybe twice, 10 + years ago so my memory of specific events was very hazy, but even then, I felt the relationship between kerrigan and raynor was completely off, the crystal made no sense, what's the deal with Duran and Alexi Stukov, etc...
But again, I can excuse if there's a giant change and the story of sc vs sc2 gets completely retconned, so sc2 stands alone, but what I cannot forgive are the shallow caricatures the main characters have been turned into and the over used plot devices told to tell a dumbed down, and boring story.
I'm going have to play through the original starcraft and BW campaigns again now just to get that nasty WOL and HOTS taste out of my mouth.
EDIT: I'm pretty saddened to see that most of the responses to the OP are thinly veiled tldr; comments
I'm going to do a follow up post once I've played through the orignal sc and BW campaigns to see if sc2's brand of story telling really is that bad, or that I've simply matured in the intervening 10 year gap between sc1 and 2 so my expectations are unrealistically high, or maybe I'm just looking at sc1's campaign with rose tinted glasses.
I don't really understand why people seem to single Blizzard out for bad storytelling. The stories in the last few games haven't been masterpieces by a long shot, but go look at the stories for some other games that are out there.
A lot of games barely manage to make their plot coherent, let alone have things like understandable character motivations, and yet I really don't hear a lot of complaints about them. Modern Warfare 2 for example had plot elements that made almost no sense whatsoever, and yet I never hear anyone criticizing its story line. I've played several other games that had stories that were awful, but nobody seems to call them out. Whenever its a game by Blizzard though, everyone seems to freak out and talk about how terrible their writers are.
I'd suppose I'd attribute this to 2 main things:
1. Hating on Blizzard has been "the cool" thing to do on the Internet since WoW became immensely popular.
2. The community on Team Liquid in particular is extremely negative about just about everything. I really don't come to this site that much anymore because almost every thread I visit is just people complaining about everything. If its a thread about story, people talk about how the story is the worst thing ever written. If its a thread about balance, people talk about how Blizzard is run by retards who don't understand balance at all. If its a thread about a tournament, people complain about how the tournament is run terribly. Doesn't much seem to matter what the topic is, this community will find reasons to hate it.
What do you mean "people seem to single out Blizzard"? There is plenty of criticism for a lot of companies and a lot of modern games (see criticism of the Mass Effect 3 ending for one of many examples). This is TL, though, a site created around SC, so it's natural that SC/Blizzard-related stuff gets a lot more attention.
Modern Warfare 2 had a crappy story, but so what? Does that mean that every game now can dismiss the possibility of having a good story?
Also, if you think everything the community creates is inherently negative, then there's really nothing to do for you but hope you can overcome your own bias.
On March 23 2013 03:04 Thingdo wrote: I don't really understand why people seem to single Blizzard out for bad storytelling. The stories in the last few games haven't been masterpieces by a long shot, but go look at the stories for some other games that are out there.
A lot of games barely manage to make their plot coherent, let alone have things like understandable character motivations, and yet I really don't hear a lot of complaints about them. Modern Warfare 2 for example had plot elements that made almost no sense whatsoever, and yet I never hear anyone criticizing its story line. I've played several other games that had stories that were awful, but nobody seems to call them out. Whenever its a game by Blizzard though, everyone seems to freak out and talk about how terrible their writers are.
I'd suppose I'd attribute this to 2 main things:
1. Hating on Blizzard has been "the cool" thing to do on the Internet since WoW became immensely popular.
2. The community on Team Liquid in particular is extremely negative about just about everything. I really don't come to this site that much anymore because almost every thread I visit is just people complaining about everything. If its a thread about story, people talk about how the story is the worst thing ever written. If its a thread about balance, people talk about how Blizzard is run by retards who don't understand balance at all. If its a thread about a tournament, people complain about how the tournament is run terribly. Doesn't much seem to matter what the topic is, this community will find reasons to hate it.
No, it's because their prior stories have been significantly better. Of course SC/BW, WC3, and D2 didn't have great stories by any means, but they were passable and had great atmosphere. SC2 and D3 have horrible writing that is completely inconsistent with the already established lore and terrible scripts that violently remove you from the immersion.
Well honestly I can't really claim that I would have expected anything story wise after WoL, Diablo 3 and World of Meme/popculturereference Craft. I bought the game just for a couple rounds of multiplayer. This is what Blizzard titles are.
Good read. I would have liked to see a treatise on the supporting characters of HotS (Dehaka et. al.) a la redlettermedia's exposure of the shitty Star Wars characters (see 6:46: .
In broodwar the story was focused around the plot and the doings of the characters. Because of this focus, people could get past the cheesy dialogue. In wings and HoTS they made a huge mistake of having the emphasis and story complete revolve around the undeveloped, shallow, and stupidly inconsistent characters of Jim & Kerrigan. The story is pretty much non existant.
Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story.
On March 20 2013 22:47 Crisium wrote: I completely agree with you on the Raynor - Kerrigan relationship. They merely flirted in StarCraft Episode 1, and in Episode 2 Kerrigan graciously let Raynor escape Char instead of killing him. As for Broodwar, in Episode 6 they grudgingly worked together but Jim was distrusting of her the entire time. And once her betrayal was revealed, he promised twice to kill her. That's the full extent of their relationship in StarCraft and Broodwar
But now they are in love...
The book "Queen of Blades" Expands on it alot. I went into WoL thinking they they were madly in love, but broken apart. Atleast that´s what I took away from that book.... Also if you don't read the shortstory or the books around the Lore it's actually really hard to grasp the importance of certain events. It feels like that a lot of people aren't actually fully informed. Most I feel only played the game, but did not read anything nor did they play through the campaign multiple times.... We can argue that that shouldn't be necessary, but oh well.
On March 23 2013 03:58 GoodSirTets wrote: In broodwar the story was focused around the plot and the doings of the characters. Because of this focus, people could get past the cheesy dialogue. In wings and HoTS they made a huge mistake of having the emphasis and story complete revolve around the undeveloped, shallow, and stupidly inconsistent characters of Jim & Kerrigan. The story is pretty much non existant.
Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story.
Did you actually play through the campaign?
There's a story about about a son rebelling against his father. There's a story about a man traveling the universe on a seemingly hopeless mission to return some sort of purpose to his life. There's a story about a looming threat that threatens to wipe out the races. There's a story about a woman struggling between her desire for vengeance and her morality. There's quirky side stories like Matt and Mira.
There are plenty of story lines. If you dislike the main characters, well there's nothing that can be done to help you there. But if you fail to notice the many story lines that have happened in WoL and HotS, then you might want to consider replaying the campaigns.
I don't understand why threads like these exist. It creates partisanship in the community. There isn't any purpose besides, this is what I think, agree with me.
On March 23 2013 03:58 GoodSirTets wrote: In broodwar the story was focused around the plot and the doings of the characters. Because of this focus, people could get past the cheesy dialogue. In wings and HoTS they made a huge mistake of having the emphasis and story complete revolve around the undeveloped, shallow, and stupidly inconsistent characters of Jim & Kerrigan. The story is pretty much non existant.
Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story.
This guy gets it. At least in every mission in StarCraft and Brood War, you felt like you had something to play for, an epic development of the story in most missions. WoL and HotS missions are pseudo significant fetch quests or "kill these things in X amount of time" for little to no story gain.
If you want to look at the story as just a supplemental to some fun and different missions, then that's fine and it works on that level. I enjoyed the HotS campaign on a 'gaming' level, as in I had fun playing the missions. But not in a 'oh shit what's going to happen next' 'it's on the line' feeling that I get from SC or BW. The new games just don't have that pacing or momentum.
Your points may be valid. I cannot say. I have not played the campaign yet.
However, your writing is convoluted to the point of absurdity.
If you write short simple pieces it wouldn't be an issue. By all means, hack away. However, if you are going to write spotlighted posts with heavy analysis, I would suggest improving your prose. Even if you have good things to say it's hard to take someone who writes like you do very seriously.
You can start by writing shorter sentences and getting rid of that faux-analytical tone. Happy editing!
On March 23 2013 03:58 GoodSirTets wrote: In broodwar the story was focused around the plot and the doings of the characters. Because of this focus, people could get past the cheesy dialogue. In wings and HoTS they made a huge mistake of having the emphasis and story complete revolve around the undeveloped, shallow, and stupidly inconsistent characters of Jim & Kerrigan. The story is pretty much non existant.
Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story.
Did you actually play through the campaign?
There's a story about about a son rebelling against his father. There's a story about a man traveling the universe on a seemingly hopeless mission to return some sort of purpose to his life. There's a story about a looming threat that threatens to wipe out the races. There's a story about a woman struggling between her desire for vengeance and her morality. There's quirky side stories like Matt and Mira.
There are plenty of story lines. If you dislike the main characters, well there's nothing that can be done to help you there. But if you fail to notice the many story lines that have happened in WoL and HotS, then you might want to consider replaying the campaigns.
I don't understand why threads like these exist. It creates partisanship in the community. There isn't any purpose besides, this is what I think, agree with me.
You could say the same for Phantom Menace actually. There's lots of "stories" but nothing makes sense, the acting is lame and the script is wooden. Just lots of flashy action and graphics.
Honestly, Blizzard and Metzen should be embarressed by this mess. It's as if the story was written by a 8year old trying to mimic Transformers style story writing. I've gone back and played Wings campaign, and while still horrible, has some of the charm of the original with a lot less of the emo drama stuff (tho obviously it is still there since Jim is in it...).
On top of that, gameplay wise SC2 feels more like DoTA/D3/LoL now. Why do we need a hero on EVERY SINGLE LEVEL (except the tutorial)? Why? We didn't have that in WoL.
Tone wise, SC feels less and less like a sci-fi game and more like a fantasy game. Everything on Zerus screamed WC3/WoW.
HoTS is a fucking joke. The only thing Blizzard can do atm is game good gameplay (only thing holding up Diablo/Starcraft at this point), but even that is getting worse imo.
Edit: To respond to all the people saying we shouldn't expect anything from a game, I would generally agree. However this is Starcraft TWO. There were games before this and those had significantly better writing. Imagine if Transformers 2 was the same, but Transformers 1 was instead Pulp Fiction.
I didn't understand everything you said but I think I get (and agree with) with the overall idea. I just finished playing through the HOTS campaign and I felt rather let down by the story just like WOL, mainly due to the cliches and "uneven" characters. The Kerrigan/Raynor relationship is basically a joke now. I also agree that everyone would benefit from Blizzard writing better, more mature stories (like they used to) and I do not understand why they've settled on dumbing down the storylines (and in many cases gameplay) of their games in the past decade.
Technically, the HOTS campaign is great and has that Blizzard touch of quality, but I'm really getting tired of the crappy story. As soon as I started playing I knew I'd see Metzen's name in the ending credits and lo and behold it was there. They should reassign that guy already.
Well the OP has a lot of points that I agree with and a lot I disagree with.
I also think that there is some overanalysis or over thinking of portions of it and giving bw a bit more credit then it deserves.
But its a great OP post (while biased) still is good enough to admit this and have an expanded discussion of multiple aspects of the plot/story. Really gives a lot better room to discuss multiple view points and interpretations. Way better then the other thread where the story is being discussed.
The OP was a bit unfocused, I think. The fact that a professional musician didn't like the sounds were obvious and completely unnecessary, as were the forays into other games.
I don't think a critique of the HOTS campaign needs to be any longer than "none of the characters or their actions make any sense". Maybe with a footnote about inconsistensies and outright disregard for established cannon, but really, it's just so obviously bad that an in-depth review is completely superfluous. If you liked it, you have no concept of good storytelling. That's not a diss, it's not an insult, it's stating and obvious fact while looking at very clear evidence.
I will still buy LotV because unlike D3, in spite of the horrendous storytelling, the gameplay of SC2 is still fun. And if Blizzard doesn't need good writing to sell me their shit I guess I can understand why they don't make an effort :p
Well done wo1fwood (OP) I am 30 myself and I have a simmilar experience to you. I think that in general (there are many good exceptions) focus their attention too much on the younger player and even then they dumb their content down. It is my sincerest believe that even teenagers would enjoy and want more indepth story and not just *cool* features and terrible terrible damage*. I also think they are not even taking the younger players seriously when using dumbed down catch phrases.
I also agree that the quality of the game is good in a pure quality sense, but it lacks of depth in story telling and perhaps depth in other qualities aswell.
It is the same with Diablo 3 it lacked depth in story and most of all gameplay. And diablo 3 was a game that many of the older gamer generation were wairing for and Blizzard in my opinion was not aiming for them and thats why most people were dissapointed.
What a great post you have made here, specially about a subject so hard to write convincingly about as what is a good story or not (Art being one of the most subjective matters around).
Despite there's a huge ammount of stuff you have spelled more coherently than what I could ever do, one thing stroke me heavier than most:
To a younger and inexperienced mind, many of these things can be great tools at portraying types of character motivations or the reasoning behind character actions. Look at children's programming or cartoons and you'll see these executions all over the place. They can clearly set up certain elements that can be easily parsed out by a young mind, they can even be humorous and fun while still retaining a measure of seriousness... and this works for this demographic. However, here is where I take serious umbrage with this mo.
When I played the campaign, I also felt disturbed by the whole "What? this game wasn't supposed to be about love", but I was also able to detect the subtlest of rejoicing in myself about it. "Why?" I forced myself to answer? The answer was simple: Because, in the bottom (and this is quite personal) when playing cs1/broodwards as a teenager I really wanted the love story to be there. I made it work into my head back then (succesfully, mainly because of the vast ammount of storytelling that was left to our imagination in sc1, where the story was barely told by the mission briefings/in mission dialog snippets). I think it's as simple as you stated it: For an expectator who is not wary about discerning what he likes to spectate (either by inexperience, like I was as a teenager, or by choice, like when you enjoy a horrible pop-corn flickr just for the sake of it) these kind of narratives work quite well. Not that it's wrong to avoid discerning, at the end, art (maybe not all of it but definitively videogames) are consumed for their entertainment value, so if the story was enjoyed, it depends entirely on the spectator perspective, thus it's value as an entertainment piece can be validated.
That is something that could be causing issues here with the different appreciations (and even maybe a certain sense of self-entitlement for the entertainment we just paid for). I for one, after realizing that it was my youth's voices the ones that were making me forgive and actually sort-of-enjoy the story, felt compelled to set myself on that "non discerning" state of mind to go an enjoy the whole ride, but then felt alienated by the fact that I was actively forcing me to enjoy this, instead of being taken there as some other better written pieces have done in the past.
Also, regarding HOTS value as a piece of entertainment, I think Sherlock-Canada nailed something:
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
If for some reason a story (or lack thereof) can become a reflect of your own motivations, then it will be auto-validated as a piece of entertainment, since at the emotional level, this is extremely powerfull (and some great storytellings have succeded not by writing a compeling story, but by creating the perfect empty space were we can fill the blanks with whatever we like - like the muted Gordon Freeman). At least for me it didn't worked that way, but I can certainly see where Sherlock is comming from.
Love the OP. The story had a ton of potential, yes, even after the mess that was WoL. In my opinion, Blizzard committed two major mistakes that trainwrecked the story for me.
1) Forcing the plot. Wtf was Raynor doing with a gun in that cell... oh, he was just setting up a "Hollywood Line" moment.
2) Not even bothering to come up with an alternative to magically depowering Kerrigan, causing obviously transplanted lines of dialogue. This one bites the hardest, it basically screams that Blizzard didn't give a fuck about the story. Trying and failing is part of creative risk, I can accept that shit happens. But when the lack of care is so blatant, I can't help but rage at the story that could have been.
Also. Prophecy. Fuck you, Blizzard. Even Homeworld 2 handled that with just a little more finesse and that's saying a lot. Prophecy is a plot device to facilitate the telling of a story, not the story itself.
Eh. I found the story enjoyable. Nothing special, but the reviewer seems to intentionally pick the worst interpretation. This was abundantly clear of the treatment of the last scene.
I found it rather understandable that Raynor came to help Kerrigan, and also the bittersweet ending scene: Kerrigan has shown that the new Queen of Blades is NOT the same as the BW one. She shows she has not forsaken her human ties this time, by going to save Raynor (as opposed to murdering Duke and Fenix in cold blood) and additionally promises to spare civilians on two accounts. You can point to the ruthless extermination of the protoss colonists as a counterexample, but the scenes surrounding those missions give a good explanation of the difference between the two situations: the protoss were intent on destroying the swarm there (or at least calling in the fleet to do so) and there was no hope of live and let live, whereas the civilian terrans on Korhal had no such intentions and Valerian/Raynor could be trusted to not backstab Kerrigan.
Another point I disagree with the reviewer is that I found the whole bit about Zerus rather pleasant. The SC1 manual's description is not entirely inline, but the Spawining Pool could have been created by the Xel'Naga: it isn't mentioned as being natural, and how would be primal Zerg know anyway? The rest, about the fighting to consume essence I agree seems somewhat in conflict, but it is such a minor detail that it doesn't matter, and the missions on Zerus were fun. Boss fights have a limited number of mechanics and complaining about "dodge this" fights is ridiculous. If that's your qualm, then they are all ripoffs of the first Mario (and maybe even earlier).
Finally, I'm glad the reviewer is not one of those nitpickers about the Tal'Darim. I can absolutely imagine them occupying the Xel'Naga temple and Narud manipulating them into serving his/Amon's purposes. They worship anything Xel'Naga. Amon was a Xel'Naga and Narud is continuing his work. It is not a long stretch to see them as his servants.
Am I here to defend the story? No. It was not a story for the ages and will probably not instill awe in children the way Tassadar sacrificing himself to fly his Carrier into the Overmind instilled awe in me as a child. However, there was nothing really wrong about the story either... and it was quite a bit better than WoL.
The campaign was entertaining and fun, and the story supported it sufficiently.
Halfway through I felt like I was playing an Rpg / warcraft 3 hero campaign. This is an rts and shouldnt be dumbed down so much by hero/gimmick mechanics. The diablo 3 fight was well done, but did NOT fit the game at all. We all bought your diablo 3 and thought it was terrible, dont make us play through it again on the merit of the HOTS campaign.
Well written criticsm and for all the nay-sayers, It is great you enjoyed the campaigns gameplay, so did we, but you cannot reject the storyline was an absolutely trainwreck even more so than the WOL one.
On March 23 2013 05:35 Slaughter wrote: Well the OP has a lot of points that I agree with and a lot I disagree with.
I also think that there is some overanalysis or over thinking of portions of it and giving be a bit more credit then it deserves.
But its a great OP post (while biased) still is good enough to admit this and have an expanded discussion of multiple aspects of the plot/story. Really gives a lot better room to discuss multiple view points and interpretations. Way better then the other thread where the story is being discussed.
I'm finding other peoples perspectives on this topic pretty interesting at times. I think that's also why I've sort of bowed out of the conversation, as I've already said a lot and should leave room for others to freely voice their opinions (hopefully in a constructive way).
One thing I felt wo1fwood didn't mention was some of the problems with the antagonists in HotS. Here are the problems I had with how Blizzard represented them.
Warfield
Warfield barely appear in WoL and is equally scarce in HotS, despite being one of the Dominion's best generals. In the missions where he does appear he's either easy to beat, needs rescuing, or needs you to do something that doesn't involve him. As a result the player never learns much about him and has no reason to care when he dies.
Though Warfield is similar to Edmund Duke from the original SC (you even rescue him the same way) Duke provides useful information before the missions, moves the story along during the missions, and you even get to control a unit he's in. As a result the player is more connected to Duke, so his death has a much greater impact on the player.
Narud
Narud has a similar problem to Warfield as he gets almost no screen time in SC2, so the player has little reason to care about him. Seriously you're told who he is and what he's doing, then 2 missions later he's dead and doesn't matter anymore. He really should have been someone that Kerrigan was hunting for much of HotS because of his hybrids or the artefact, not the boss of a story arc that was suddenly introduced.
He was far better in BW where he directly played a major role in the Terran and Zerg campaigns.
Mengsk
Why is Mengks the enemy of both Raynor and Kerrigan? If Raynor doesn't like the Dominion he can go live with the Protoss, while Kerrigan can take the Swarm and go to another galaxy. Neither needs to kill/overthrow Mengsk, yet killing/overthrowing him is the goal of both WoL and HotS.
I suspect trying to overthrow Mengsk is the plot of WoL because Blizzard is trying to recycle the same plot from the original SC (Mengsk trying to overthrow the Confederacy). So they need Mengsk to be the villain, even though neither Mengsk nor Raynor have any real reason to fight each other.
In HotS they needed a reason why Kerrigan would want to become the Queen of Blades, even though part of the previous game was about turning her human again. So rather than have Amon be the main villain and require Kerrigan to control the Zerg to prevent them being used by Amon Blizzard decided to go with Kerrigan is very upset with Mengsk for killing Raynor, so she decided to kill him and millions of Dominion troops. Amon is pretty much ignored for most of HotS even though he's meant to be a major threat.
Amon / Dark Voice
He's meant to be this great evil but we know almost nothing about him or why he wants to stop the Xel'naga's plan (whatever this is). He's also meant to be a major threat even though his Dominion ally has been crushed, Kerrigan is preventing him controlling the swarm, and the Tal'Darim are only a small part of the Protoss armies. So unless he suddenly has access to a huge army of hybrid he won't be any threat in LoV.
In conclusion the antagonists were underused, so they had little impact on the player.
I applaud the effort that's gone into the OP, but I honestly think you're undersimplifying
If you wrote a synopsis of the HotS storyline, it would be perfectly fine. You could put it next to the synopsis of a really good novel and nobody would be able to say, purely by inspection, which summarised the better story. It's simply the case that whoever fleshed out that storyline - turned it into scenes and especially dialogue - just wasn't super good at it. Writers are perfectly capable of producing bad work without any help from a conspiracy to target a younger demographic, especially when obliged to drop heavy-handed gameplay hints amongst the angst. Kinetic Blast, anyone?
The notable exception is the dude in the evolution pit. He's a marvellous character and generally fed solid, believable lines - a feat, I suspect, aided greatly by his constrained manner of speech. At the other end of the scale are the unbearably chatty Primals.
That's pretty much it, really: weak dialogue that tends to the obvious, spoiling an otherwise perfectly sound storyline. It happens all the time. Anyone interested in experiencing the polar opposite - exquisite dialogue glossing over the most trivial of plots - should grab themselves the Jeeves books by P.G.Wodehouse. I'm not being a literary snob here; I was almost physically pushed into them nose-first by a friend and I immediately understood what she was talking about.
I feel as though I'd have to agree. Blizzard has, for lack of a better term,"dumbed down" the contents of all their games. Why does this matter? It's simple: it offends me. I'm not stupid. Well, maybe I am for paying for these games. Seriously though, I spent money on these games and I should be afforded a similar amount of satisfaction and entertainment from some of the other great titles I've spent similar amounts of money on. A 12 hour campaign is embarrassingly short. It felt like they put vast amounts of more time into some of the cut scenes than the actual story. I'm with you man, it's unacceptable, WoL, Diablo 3, HotS, the campaign and execution, at least in my opinion, were poor at best.
Also, I thought it was funny you mentioned the fact that Blizzard keeps borrowing the same mechanics from game to game, the Belial fight, Time warp is a direct copy from Zoltan Kuule's time bubble as well. I've always felt that they kept recycling things as well, I do not know why it bothers me so much but it honestly frustrates the hell out of me. I just feel like someone could have sat down and come up with SOMETHING!
lol i was about to write something like this when i finished the hots campaign, but you've done it 1000000x better than i could have. you have raised every single issue i have with SC2 story.
I appreciate your efforts, and the amount of thought you've put into your review. However, from a purely story perspective, the story as told from SC1 through HotS is not logical. Logic plays very little into the hearts and minds of fictional characters, especially in fantasy science fiction. (Less so in "hard" science fiction.)
There may or may not have been a love interest between Raynor and Kerrigan at first, or even before she becomes Queen of Blades - but it is shown that Raynor does feel something, even if it is just the camaraderie and protectiveness of a fellow warrior for an ally. This feeling can be used to explain later development - Kerrigan is the first friend to fall as a part of Mengsk's betrayal, and because men are often times idiots about this, Raynor could see himself as responsible. Everything that follows is a consequence of his being unable to convince Kerrigan prior to New Gettysburg, and over time he builds up an image in his mind. One that means that saving Kerrigan could be his own salvation, and one that leads him to fall in love for Kerrigan while retaining his hatred of the Queen of Blades for all of the death she's caused. Raynor's Raiders fighting Mengsk is a sign of that - a way of redeeming his failure to protect Kerrigan from Mengsk's betrayal by stopping Mengsk from reaping the rewards of that act.
Is it logical? No, but human beings are not logical. There are a lot of things that thread through popular fiction that are illogical, and seem stupid, but which can carry through believably in the settings they take place. Quite a few years have passed to enable people to move on and change off-camera - not unlike the time period between Star Wars and Empire, which is often overlooked but which allows Skywalker and Solo to come in as a trusted part of the Rebellion rather than just some hick hayseed that got a lucky shot and a smuggling scumbag making a payday.
It's not perfect, but in the context it has been delivered in it's a believable story, and does its job of making the Queen of Blades someone understandable, from a human point of view. It's a good plotline that has carried countless movies, TV series, books, etc - why mess with it? It's entertainment, not high art.
Enjoyed reading the review, and I agree on most parts. Though, it's not the bad story elements that bothers me most, it's the fact that they had time to develop rag doll physics for an expansion (ooo shiny), but they couldn't find an hour to write a decent story line. Imagine if the story was anywhere near the graphics.
However characters are important in a character driven story, and they were all extremely shallow and I felt no empathy for any of them. The execution of the story was horrid.
On March 23 2013 17:01 felisconcolori wrote: It's not perfect, but in the context it has been delivered in it's a believable story, and does its job of making the Queen of Blades someone understandable, from a human point of view. It's a good plotline that has carried countless movies, TV series, books, etc - why mess with it? It's entertainment, not high art.
So in another words, since we are all bombarded with mediocre crap on daily basis, we should completely stop striving for something better. And if we still insist on at least some degree of quality or at least competence, then we suddenly want "high art".
With that attitude you really do not deserve anything better.
I agree with all points - what makes it so painful is that blizzard have the resources to develop a truly amazing story by perhaps getting some good writers for a start Problem is blizzard isn't subject to the same critical evaluation as other games because of the fan base. Whenever I have tried to make similar points regarding stories I have been rebuffed by blizz fans that "your standards are just too high" or other equally odd remarks. Good to see an article of such high quality discussing this.
On March 23 2013 17:01 felisconcolori wrote: It's a good plotline that has carried countless movies, TV series, books, etc - why mess with it? It's entertainment, not high art.
Because it can be both. There is no reason games can't be excellent story telling vehicles, on par with the best of novels, TV shows, and movies. And there is no reason such a big budget studio like Blizzard in particular should feel the need to settle for a passable but utterly uninteresting story, especially when they already had a set-up for something much more unique in place.
I get that "high art" in your claim is meant to refer to an extreme and niche level of storywriting enjoyable only by a select few, but even if that is the extreme, it's a false dichotomy to claim it's either entertainment or that. There are plenty of works out there in various other mediums that tell a more unique and complex story, but are still accessible and enjoyed by the masses (Game of Thrones is the perfect example). Why does gaming have to be any different?
As for the logical flow of the story, you are right that it can fit if you account for the setting and spacing of the titles, but that wasn't really why people are mad about the differences between BW and SC2. BW set us up to go in a certain direction and left us with an amazingly interesting bad-guy-winning cliffhanger for 12 years. From there, they could have gone a lot of ways, but they seem to have chosen a rather uninspiring path. Sure, it may make some sense (if you aren't too critical), but is that really the bar you want to set for storytelling in gaming, making sense?
It's a disservice to the entire medium to always settle for, or even argue in favor of simplified cookie-cutter storylines in games these days, especially when the average age of the gamer has risen so much. There is no reason a game like SC2 in particular has to be written like a Disney movie (with less character) when, with a little more nuance and risk, it could have satisfied both that niche and the masses at once.
I honestly think you put too much thought into it and hold it to a higher standard than you should, it's excellent for what it is and is supposed to be.
As for demographics, yeah you are right, the age of gamers has shifted, and that's because people never stopped being gamers once they started for the most part, so the people who were the 16 year olds back in 2003, are 26 year olds now, and still gaming.
This doesn't mean they aren't marketing to their target audience correctly because they are still targeting younger audiences, it's the idea that once they get the younger audiences hooked, they will continue being their audience into adulthood, whether or not the material is targeted at their age group then.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them in arguments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
You leave out a lot of reasons to hate the SC2 story, you could literally fill a book with it. I've argued my brains out in in the HotS story discussion thread, but I'm pretty sick of doing that now. That thread is over 50 pages, I haven't read it since page ~36. On page 1 of that thread I made a poll which right now has over 1000 replies, and 54% of people responded favourably to the HotS story.
I don't understand it at all. It's like how at least 45% of the country will vote Republican in every Presidential election. Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them on argiments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
I really dont like postings such as this. Calling the OP Elitist who spreads bullshit after writing a carefully thought out thread with good formating pictures wordings and arguments is just outrageous. If you disagree with him, then formulate your points and explain them and provide facts why you disagree with him and why you think the story of hots is a good one. I think that for responds of this kind you should receive a warning. I do not mind if you disagree with the OP but I do mind the way you are doing it. You are not argumenting you are just talking down on him without providing any argument facts or real content.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote: Read most of OP, haven't read thread.
You leave out a lot of reasons to hate the SC2 story, you could literally fill a book with it. I've argued my brains out in in the HotS story discussion thread, but I'm pretty sick of doing that now. That thread is over 50 pages, I haven't read it since page ~36. On page 1 of that thread I made a poll which right now has over 1000 replies, and 54% of people responded favourably to the HotS story.
I don't understand it at all. It's like how at least 45% of the country will vote Republican in every Presidential election. Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
Wow, so much hate. o_O I get the feeling that there's something entirely different bothering you in your life and you just use HotS as a vent. It's just a game after all.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote: Read most of OP, haven't read thread.
You leave out a lot of reasons to hate the SC2 story, you could literally fill a book with it. I've argued my brains out in in the HotS story discussion thread, but I'm pretty sick of doing that now. That thread is over 50 pages, I haven't read it since page ~36. On page 1 of that thread I made a poll which right now has over 1000 replies, and 54% of people responded favourably to the HotS story.
I don't understand it at all. It's like how at least 45% of the country will vote Republican in every Presidential election. Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
I'd be happy if someone who liked it could at least explain why. Like, make some kind of list of the story's, the dialogue's or the characters' strong points, because I'm not seeing any.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
Overall, thanks for your post, mirrors my feelings exactly. As for the "too high standards" argument, some seem to think that us critics are comparing the HotS story to some kind of high literature, thus being unfair. That is simply not true, we (including the OP) are gamers, and we're obviously comparing it to other games. It is entirely possible for a game to have ok storytelling; why would it be impossible to write a non-self-contradictory, consistent story for a game? Of course, you need to accommodate gameplay into a story which creates some constraints, but why would that force you to be inconsistent? Why, for example, if gameplay requires a character to behave differently in a subsequent mission, is it impossible to spend a moment in a cinematic explaining that change in behavior? I promise you, there are millions of millions of writers who could easily do that. It is generally true that video game stories tend to use cliché and aren't exactly inventing the wheel. But good storytelling, i.e. witty dialogue, good continuitiy, believable character motivation, atmosphere and suspense can make up for that. Blizzard failed to deliver any of that.
Oh, and that link you gave - oh my gosh. Heart and soul? I'm speechless.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them on argiments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
I really dont like postings such as this. Calling the OP Elitist who spreads bullshit after writing a carefully thought out thread with good formating pictures wordings and arguments is just outrageous. If you disagree with him, then formulate your points and explain them and provide facts why you disagree with him and why you think the story of hots is a good one. I think that for responds of this kind you should receive a warning. I do not mind if you disagree with the OP but I do mind the way you are doing it. You are not argumenting you are just talking down on him without providing any argument facts or real content.
its 3 AM here and I cant ever hope to top a 10 page argument in kind. And it is wasted in team liquid since most seem to hate the story for some reason or another but you guys are very much a minority. Battle net forums, reddit, Amazon and metacritics all have high praises for HOTS so the story/campaign stands very well on its own without my arguments. OP's writing just reeks of elitism in my opinion and the fact that he went ahead and said "I know you will all agree with me here" really just tops that. He is preaching to the choir here and he knows it.
Edit: it looks like even in TL you must have very strong dissenters to the idea that the story was bad so guys like this (quote below) are fretting openly about it. It is a highlight of a great story when it has strong and passionate defenders even in a very hostile environment.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote:
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
FYI Gatekeeper. I am 29. I have read songs of ice and fire and most of G.R.R.Martins other books. I have played the baldur's gate series, planescape torment, witcher series, sc1/bw and many others. The problem is most likely with you and not the quality of the material here.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote: Read most of OP, haven't read thread.
You leave out a lot of reasons to hate the SC2 story, you could literally fill a book with it. I've argued my brains out in in the HotS story discussion thread, but I'm pretty sick of doing that now. That thread is over 50 pages, I haven't read it since page ~36. On page 1 of that thread I made a poll which right now has over 1000 replies, and 54% of people responded favourably to the HotS story.
I don't understand it at all. It's like how at least 45% of the country will vote Republican in every Presidential election. Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
Wow, so much hate. o_O I get the feeling that there's something entirely different bothering you in your life and you just use HotS as a vent. It's just a game after all.
If you ask me, yes, people half-assing things and getting away with it creates a lot of avoidable mediocrity in the world, robbing others of the good that should have been and could have been. HotS is hardly the only example of that.
Have you said "It's just a game after all" to any of the many, many people who said they "love" StarCraft in the past? Why not? Love is a strong feeling and a big word, and it's just a game! Progamers devoting their lives to it? This site being up for 10 years? Masses of people spending hours over hours on it? It's just a game!
If nothing else, the disappointment follows from that love. Also, from the love for a good story in general, and the love for quality.
I know the reason behind why it was done, obviously to feature in a "cool" way a Terran unit from the game but also in connecting the storyboard concepts of the Viking, but the decision to feature this questionable and suicidal strategic move (yes I do realize this is reflective of Wings TvZ and Ultra switches) in this cinematic harkens back to the previous brand of storytelling of the last installment, and made me cringe on an otherwise enjoyable entr'acte (as we realize later this is some sort of nightmare or vision, so maybe you could argue that it's a creative license of sorts, but it still would be out of place as imagery from a the mind of fully matured adult
While I cringed at the Viking suicide tactic for the same reason . I find your point about adults having dreams without irrational actions off-base based on personal experience. Quite a few of my nightmares involve 3rd parties doing contrarian things just to force me to do things that are the opposite of what I originally planned to do in my dream (hence why they end up being a nightmare).
The other thing however is in talking about my interest in the possible psychological ramifications of being the Queen of Blades and PTSD, Blizzard didn't seem to deem this important to touch upon in the slightest. The only time you see this is from the opening cinematic, and never again. I can't help but feel this is a missed opportunity to explore something that games rarely ever do, the psychological ramifications of trauma (ME sort of did, but even there it was very cursory).
I decided to not buy HOTS because of the single player campaign and how Blizzard underperformed in developing Battle.net. But I was willing to change my mind on that decision if I saw the storyline improving for the better.
It didn't but as I was sitting through videos on the campaign I was wondering where Blizzard could've turned around the narrative and plot disaster that was Wings of Liberty and you are just making me realize this was one of their opportunities to fix the story.
One of the things Brood War establishes is that all zerg units are severed from the Overmind. This is why the Zerg even though they were defeated ALL OF THEM just rampaged on Aiur and still kicked the Protoss asses instead of some of them surrendering or retreating like beings with higher mental capacities would because most of the zerg are just animals that work on instinct. Anything that isn't similar to them is food.
Of course this also means the Zerg who do have higher critical thinking capabilities are also free to think in the manner they deem fit. That's why the Brood Wars happened. Eventually the Cerebrates and Kerrigan regained their composure and decided they would reunite the Zerg swarm under a new banner. Most of the Cerebrates decided the best way to do this was to merge and form a new Overmind but Kerrigan and a few other Cerebrates decided they would be top dogs and merge with no one.
Kerrigan since the beginning of Broodwar was performing of her own free will.
WoL contradicts this towards the end of the campaign when we see Nova I mean Kerrigan with Nova's face cry out for help from Jim. At that point they indicate human Kerrigan is trapped within Zerg Kerrigan.
That means Kerrigan has a split personality where the human side wasn't acting of her own free will.
If they had continued exploring the idea that Kerrigan had PSTD they could've confronted this discontinuity and have KErrigan reflect on the fact that she wasn't under Zerg control since Broodwar and she lusted for power. It still wouldn't make sense but by acknowledging this fact they could've made WoL ending more palatable by bullshitting us that while Kerrigan does have her own free will a part of her admired Jim's willingness to still try to be one with her even after all the betrayals and atrocities she committed. It's not uncommon for beings to have illicit thoughts they consciously don't want to have but their subconscious will bring up on occasion.
They could've exploited that quirk of human nature to make WoL a lot more believable.
This is supposed to be the turning point in the game, but there's something here that that Anita Sarkeesian is exploring in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games videos that I wanted to mention (I don't agree with everything she says, but there are a number of important things she talks about). I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
It's ironic you bring up Sarkeesian because your perception of this situation is flawed.
If we recall her explanation of "Woman in a Fridge" Kerrigan is given the same plot a male character is given to purposefully make them relevant again a stagnant storyline. The subversion to this trope is that since Raynor is man and not a woman it turns out his death was fake instead of permanent. If the genders were reversed Kerrigan would've stayed dead and Raynor would be trapped to play his part in an even shittier story.
For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. Wait, why? Sarah Kerrigan as a human never met Zeratul, so why is she so angry at him and starts the fight? Wasn't it Kerrigan that was always manipulating Zeratul to do her dirty work in Brood War? Didn't she even force Zeratul kill his own Matriarch? Shouldn't this be reversed? ....
Ripped the thoughts right out of my mind. This scene was so dumb.
So in looking over this material and understanding, a number of questions and possible outcomes immediately become impossible, or directly contradictory to this source material. These include the separate evolution of the Zerg, and even how they take the essence of others (in fighting, which is not what a parasitic organism does), any of Amons alterations, plans, or side experiments, the ancient spawning pool and the narrative treatment of is as a primordial and naturally indigenous thing, Zerus being a lush Triassic-like world, Zerg having psionic abilities and Primal Zerg not having a psychic link, and a host of other smaller problems surrounding these more primary of issues.
The only thing I forgot was that Zerus was an ash world. Something about the jungle was trigerring alarms but I couldn't figure it out. It's unbelievable how much of the previous game they are retconning and for no good reason.
What Blizzard should've done was instead of have Kerrigan track down Zerg on the homeworld that would've been barren of life, is to track down the Cerebrates that were never in the Koprulu sector in the first place. It was made abundantly clear that the OVermind sent out cerebrates with the explicit goal of finding any species that could help them combat the Protoss. It was made ambiguous if recalled all of its teams after the Terrans were discovered. Who's to say it didn't order some of them to continue with their normal goal of just finding new genetic strains to experiment with. They didn't just have to go back to the Koprulu sector to achieve their results. They could of stayed in the other sectors and increased the Swarms chances of finding new material faster than just wasting time going all the way to Koprulu from where ever else they were.
Of course this solution runs into the problem of contradicting a point made in the book after the Broodwar concluded that Kerrigan had hunted down and killed off every remaining cerebrate and some how the single one (we originally played as) that was under her command got assassinated *shrugs*. Yet Blizzard had no problem contradicting novels made explicitly to explain the Wings of Liberty campaign a few months before it came out. Nothing could stop them from doing the same for a book made years ago.
This also begs the more important question as to why Kerrigan doesn't or didn't know about Zerus already, removing the necessity of Zeratul in the first place.
This thought hadn't occurred to me. Good observation. Your article has been very good so far.
I also wondered why they in the cinematic had to show Mengsk and that he had acquired the artifact. I am left with the idea that, once its revealed why it was used in the first place, that Mengsk will inadvertently revive Amon, but that hypothesis is debunked almost as immediately as we learn of the artifact's purpose. If that's the case then, showing us the artifact preemptively like that, seems like it would undercut the final cinematic in that Mengsk isn't helpless. I originally didn't catch this and so the final cinematic was more impactful in the reveal, but in retrospect this decision seems in an odd place.
This touches on why I'm mad at Blizzard's writing. As much as I despise the retcons I understand how someone would want to tell a different story. What I found even less forgivable was the atrocious directing decisions in WoL. This level of incompetence harks back to how Blizzard undermined Finley's betrayal in WoL by having Mengk's voice acting as the voice in Tychus's head as he is released from prison "mysteriously."
There are other examples of this unrefined work like the way Duran was handled in Hots and that female Doctor in WoL. Blizzard has been so sloppy in execution its surprising that a decent number of the original team that crafted the SC1 and Broodwar are still doing this story today. It's like they lost the passion for their work and just only care about paying the bills.
Anyway, regardless of the logistics or back-story, I actually vehemently disliked this decision to bring him out of the closet and dust him off, as it felt like an incredibly cheap and lazy tactic on Blizzards part to try to curry favor with the older audience, or those who've played Brood War at the very least. Why couldn't you use a scientist who worked with Narud, like maybe work Branamoor (the head researcher for project blackstone) into the equation instead?
Well if Blizzard was smart they could've curried enough favor by giving us more cool sequences like the opening of HOTS (suicide Viking notwithstanding)
What I found painfully bizarre was that after all the CGI was done I still didn't see what the inside of hatchery was like. I still didn't get a sense of how Zerg infest machinery. They never once made a sequence in the Zerg environment. I just don't understand why they didn't think of it or did think of but thought it wasn't feasible.
We can also further extrapolate that Sarah Kerrigan is patient zero and that because the Overmind was killed so soon after her birth that it was never able to find a way of incorporating psionic powers into the swarm.
***Your memory of SC is wrong. The overmind did give the zerg psionic abilities. More specifically he gave them defenses against psionic abilities. That is why the Zerg invaded and were able to conquer Aiur.
It was explained in writing after the zerg acquired the kydarian crystals to power up these nascent defenses they acquired after assimilating Kerrigan. I maybe spelling that crystal's name wrong.
The first clue is that along with their marketing tactics and press statements, there is a less discussed and more subtle issue with their 'brand'. Their style of storytelling is specifically aimed at reaching and hooking non-adults (likely the 16 and younger crowd). This business practice in fact looks conspicuously like the tobacco industry who continually market to children because of the saying "once you get them early..." And this seems to be Blizzards modus operandi exactly, and can be directly witnessed in how their stories are presented to the audience. They lack depth, they use tropes of all kinds and clichéd techniques in every possible place they can, and generally lack the maturity and subtle nuances in behavior or character motivations, or story aesthetics.
I fully agree with your assessment that they are deliberately changing the story. Why they are doing it I don't agree with because pinning down motivations is a lot harder to achieve since you can't directly observe thoughts.
Personally I have my own suspicions on why they went this way but going into that isn't important. What is important is making it clear to Blizzard they have slipped a lot in quality and they are devalueing their brand with their sloppiness. They also need to be told that telling new stories is fine but if you want to do this you need to do one of two things.
1)just be upfront you don't care about the previous stories you established 10+ years ago and you want to go in an entirely new direction.
This would have some negative consequences but ultimately I don't think long term sales would be impacted as much among people who just focus on the singleplayer campaign and the story.
2) Make the new stories you want to make in a different game.
It's definitely expensive to make entirely new games but blizzard hasn't been afraid of making distinct variations of the same genre. They did come out with Broodwar and WC3 in close proximity of each other. They created a TCG and are now making a digital game taking advantage of what the digital space allows over meat space. They will still support WoW and will have Titan in the future.
Blizzard could've avoided being perceived as a less professional developer if the experimented with a new type of story in a different game.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote: Read most of OP, haven't read thread.
You leave out a lot of reasons to hate the SC2 story, you could literally fill a book with it. I've argued my brains out in in the HotS story discussion thread, but I'm pretty sick of doing that now. That thread is over 50 pages, I haven't read it since page ~36. On page 1 of that thread I made a poll which right now has over 1000 replies, and 54% of people responded favourably to the HotS story.
I don't understand it at all. It's like how at least 45% of the country will vote Republican in every Presidential election. Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
Maybe a new thread should be made were the goal is to see if people change their minds after we judge WoL and HoTs without the baggage of Broodwar and Starcraft.
There are a lot of things wrong with each both structurally when looked at as independent stories.
Maybe most people who are arguing against the badness of WoL and HOTS just look at the criticisms of retcon and not living up to previous standards and focus so heavily on that they completely ignore how sloppy the editing, writing and direction and even production has been even if they are ignorant of SC and BW.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them on argiments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
I really dont like postings such as this. Calling the OP Elitist who spreads bullshit after writing a carefully thought out thread with good formating pictures wordings and arguments is just outrageous. If you disagree with him, then formulate your points and explain them and provide facts why you disagree with him and why you think the story of hots is a good one. I think that for responds of this kind you should receive a warning. I do not mind if you disagree with the OP but I do mind the way you are doing it. You are not argumenting you are just talking down on him without providing any argument facts or real content.
its 3 AM here and I cant ever hope to top a 10 page argument in kind. And it is wasted in team liquid since most seem to hate the story for some reason or another but you guys are very much a minority. Battle net forums, reddit, Amazon and metacritics all have high praises for HOTS so the story/campaign stands very well on its own without my arguments. OP's writing just reeks of elitism in my opinion and the fact that he went ahead and said "I know you will all agree with me here" really just tops that. He is preaching to the choir here and he knows it.
Edit: it looks like even in TL you must have very strong dissenters to the idea that the story was bad so guys like this (quote below) are fretting openly about it. It is a highlight of a great story when it has strong and passionate defenders even in a very hostile environment.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
FYI Gatekeeper. I am 29. I have read songs of ice and fire and most of G.R.R.Martins other books. I have played the baldur's gate series, planetescape torment, witcher series, sc1/bw and many others. The problem is most likely with you and not the quality of the material here.
Ratings and reviews are obviously taking multiplayer into account or even focusing on it, but that isn't what we're talking about here, most of TL seems to agree that HotS multiplayer is good. You smuggle in the false conclusion that everybody who praised the game thought the story was well written. I sampled through three reviews linked in Wikipedia and Metacritics and all of those had a word or two to say about the storytelling, some of these words being "silly" and "overwrought". The giantbomb.com critic who gave 100 out of 100 called the love story (which is supposed to explain nothing less but the whole motivation of the protagonist) "somewhat out-of-left-field romantic cheese". I'm not going to read all of them, but my random sample of three doesn't leave me with the impression that the popular opinion deems the story "great" as you claim.
Jims love/guilt for Kerrigan stems not from their brief time together but rather as Jim's reconciliation for the loss of his own wife and children. He needs to save kerrigan because he wasnt able to save so much else in this war.
Likewise Kerrigans fraility/vengence are based in her murder of her parents and the subsequent abuses of the confederacy. This is a frightened girl who was a monster before the Zerg ever found her. And in the swarm she found the family she never had.
TLDR: These are two broken characters whose actions reflect past injuries.
In it, Raynor and Fenix agree to attack the neutral nation of Kel-Moria, steal their minerals and kill their security guards. Fenix even mocks them for being 'greedy' because they stay out of the war and focus on economy instead, all the while stealing their stuff. Worse still, Fenix shoots a hole in their command centers so queens can enter and invest the miners allowing them to be used as involentary suicide bombers in the next mission. Woah. That's some seriously dickish move right there!
If you can accept this as canon, without feeling that Fenix' and Raynors characters have been ruined forever, you can accept anything in SC2. This is the most character-breaking moment in the franchise by far. If this kind of disregard for storytelling was in SC2, the shitstorm would have been uncontrolable.
I don't know if you're trolling but your description of that mission is laughable. I question if you actually know the story of BW, or even watched that video that you linked. Kel-Moria isn't a neutral nation, Fenix isn't mocking them, he's incredulous that they would still keep trying to mine resources instead of running when the UED are slaughtering everyone, Fenix helps infest the command centers because that would help Kerrigans assault, ...
Just watch the video again. Also, explain exactly what you think Raynor and Fenix's characters are like. You want dick move? Protoss glass entire planets with billions of innocents on it just to slow down the zerg invasion.
Please don't throw the troll-card around if somebody has a different opinion.
Kel-Moria is neutral the same way Switserland was neutral during WW2. You can blame them for not taking a stand against an obviously evil nation going rampant, but infesting them is still 'not nice'. I bring this up because the 'Raynor steals artifacts from Tal'darim' has been thrown around a lot as how out-of-character and bad storytelling that was and this supposidly didn't happen in BW.
Protoss glassing planets was kind of the important character development of the Protoss as a whole in SC1. They initially didn't care about humans but Tassadar eventually rebelled against the orders of the Conclave and wanted his bretheren to see humans as more then cattle. Yes, that was a dick move, but the theme of the Protoss campaign is that they stop being dicks.
I think it's quite possible for you and others to love the Original/BW story more, but only because you like it's high points better then SC2's high points. All these topics about pointing out plot holes are looking at the wrong things to compare because plot holes have always been present and no Blizzard game ever made can stand up to this kind of methodical deconstruction. Never could, and probably never will. Go play Planescape Torment (again). Chris Avalone games, each time you dig deeper, you find more awesome!
Anyway. It's actually nice to see the reactions to HotS.
From the moment SC2 was announced, there have been a lot of people active on the forums trying to fuel a hate campaign against it. Their high point, and the low point of all SC2 forums intelligence was when they convinced everybody that HotS was going to be a full priced stand alone expansion. Saying HotS was going to be an expantion would get you branded as troll. Every 'fan' site of every gaming franchise i've been a fan of has been completely taken over by hate threads these last years. However, it seems the haters here are slowly running out of breath and some people seem to be getting sick of the constant negativity surrounding the community. HotS is getting a much better response so far. Maybe one day the general forums on teamliquid will be back to normal.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see Day9 enjoy this game.
I'll say it again and I'm not ashamed. I enjoyed the story of HOTS. I had alot of fun with the campaign. The story isn't as BAD as alot of people are making it out to be. The story isn't great and nor is it good. It's decent. WoL's story was decent as well. The script could've been alot better, yes, but I enjoyed it for what it is.
Honestly, though, SC1 and BW story was also decent at best. It was a great story for its time but looking back at it now it was very simple but was executed quite nicely. Wasn't hard to understand at all. Yes, I've played the first 2 games.
The only REAL BIG disappointment for me as I said before in another post was how they handled Narud/Duran. It could've been done so much better and the payoff for the people who have played the first 2 games would've been great. They didn't have Narud/Duran mention anything from brood war. How he used the UED/Stukov and Kerrigan/Swarm to further his own agenda. How neither of them had the slightest clue and etc. That could've been done to further Kerrigan and Stukov's characters in some way.
The love story, yes, was cheesy but I guess you could say it was always hinted at back in the first game at some points but nothing major. We don't know what went down on the ship in between missions but lets not kid ourselves.
[B]On March 23 2013 20:09 DaveVAH wrote: its 3 AM here and I cant ever hope to top a 10 page argument in kind. And it is wasted in team liquid since most seem to hate the story for some reason or another but you guys are very much a minority. Battle net forums, reddit, Amazon and metacritics all have high praises for HOTS so the story/campaign stands very well on its own without my arguments. OP's writing just reeks of elitism in my opinion and the fact that he went ahead and said "I know you will all agree with me here" really just tops that. He is preaching to the choir here and he knows it..
Almost every review of the game highlights the story as its weakest point. You can like it, but that doesn't make it good. And holding to high critical standards doesn't make someone elitist, it makes them someone who wants to see things improve. Ultimately that is the purpose of criticism.
As for the somewhat blind defence of HOTS some people are coming out with, it's nothing but 'shoot the messenger'.
What is good about it, if the OP is so wrong about what he's saying? And no, 'I liked it' doesn't count as an argument.
On March 23 2013 19:00 Keldrath wrote: I honestly think you put too much thought into it and hold it to a higher standard than you should, it's excellent for what it is and is supposed to be.
As for demographics, yeah you are right, the age of gamers has shifted, and that's because people never stopped being gamers once they started for the most part, so the people who were the 16 year olds back in 2003, are 26 year olds now, and still gaming.
This doesn't mean they aren't marketing to their target audience correctly because they are still targeting younger audiences, it's the idea that once they get the younger audiences hooked, they will continue being their audience into adulthood, whether or not the material is targeted at their age group then.
They "targeted me" with Diablo 1 , Warcraft 1 and later Starcraft 1 when i was 14, so following this argument i must assume that the dumbed down ones are not only the games but the new audience itself too.
But i disagree with this statement because a good and a well written story is for everyone ,regardless age or sex or what salt in your mind and now we are facing a retarded plot that litterally none can take seriously.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote: Read most of OP, haven't read thread.
You leave out a lot of reasons to hate the SC2 story, you could literally fill a book with it. I've argued my brains out in in the HotS story discussion thread, but I'm pretty sick of doing that now. That thread is over 50 pages, I haven't read it since page ~36. On page 1 of that thread I made a poll which right now has over 1000 replies, and 54% of people responded favourably to the HotS story.
I don't understand it at all. It's like how at least 45% of the country will vote Republican in every Presidential election. Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
There were people in that other thread that argued to their last that the HotS story was good, using all manner of disgusting arguments that I don't even care to repeat here. For many of these wretched people, no amount of writing, discussion, analysis or evidence is going to change their minds. In fact, I'd be very interested to know if there is anyone that had a strong, favourable opinion about the storyline of SC2, read OP's entire post, and changed their minds. If there is even one person like that out there, it would surprise and elate me.
You don't need to read this fucking novel of a post to know that the HotS/SC2 storyline was terrible, you just need a functioning adult brain and to have played through both games. If this post makes me sound extremely cynical, it's because I am. First, cynical about Blizzard for making this game and and insulting the consumer by pretending it's good. And second, and this the part that really, really makes me sad, cynical about how so many of those consumers ate this shit sandwich right up and asked for seconds. They then went on Yelp.com, gave the meal a favourable review, and downvoted and criticised any negative reviews of the same meal.
Wow, so much hate. o_O I get the feeling that there's something entirely different bothering you in your life and you just use HotS as a vent. It's just a game after all.
He should at least try not to call those who disagree with him "wretched people". And of course, normally shouldn't care so much about the fact that the majority disagrees with him. Whatever, after all.
These threads in TL don't even reflect the real force of appreciation that HotS is enjoying, because of two factors. First, TL is wildly elitist place compared to the average SC2 fan, and a lot of the nostalgia turns into belligerence every now and then. Second, the people who enjoy HotS just don't care enough to write full length essays why they do and what is so awesome about it, nor do they care to argue with those who seem so eager to convince the whole world how bad HotS is.
On March 23 2013 19:10 Gatesleeper wrote: Read most of OP, haven't read thread.Like, you have all the facts, the answer is clear, but you choose to remain wrong in the face of that.
Yeah, what the hell! People can't have other opinions! They can't enjoy something I don't!
Finally manned up to read the whole thing and may I say very well written and thorough story knowledge. To me I believed in that there could be a love story, but it definitely exploded into what the entire campaign was all about and it made me dislike Kerrigan very much. She was cool man, now she's just a subject to love and revenge. I don't really get why they would cleanse her from Zerg to then make her Zerg again, story-wise. In WoL I thought it was some scheme of greater things to get an even stronger Queen of Blades, to infest Nova. There wasn't a lot of epicness to this story and I think it very much took the Terran perspective of the Zerg, so I feel like I almost played two Terran campaigns in a row, god I hated that mission where you have to level Hyperion up. That was not what you wanted to do, at that current stage, you wanna do Zerg stuff, not be a band of brothers helping each other out. I'm a Protoss player and so I'm most in love with the Protoss side of things and I'm sure there will stuff actually happening in Legacy of the Void, actually some change to the settings of things. I don't wanna be Zerathul getting help from Kerrigan and Jim Raynor to fend of Narud and his evil plannings.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them on argiments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
I really dont like postings such as this. Calling the OP Elitist who spreads bullshit after writing a carefully thought out thread with good formating pictures wordings and arguments is just outrageous. If you disagree with him, then formulate your points and explain them and provide facts why you disagree with him and why you think the story of hots is a good one. I think that for responds of this kind you should receive a warning. I do not mind if you disagree with the OP but I do mind the way you are doing it. You are not argumenting you are just talking down on him without providing any argument facts or real content.
its 3 AM here and I cant ever hope to top a 10 page argument in kind. And it is wasted in team liquid since most seem to hate the story for some reason or another but you guys are very much a minority. Battle net forums, reddit, Amazon and metacritics all have high praises for HOTS so the story/campaign stands very well on its own without my arguments. OP's writing just reeks of elitism in my opinion and the fact that he went ahead and said "I know you will all agree with me here" really just tops that. He is preaching to the choir here and he knows it.
Edit: it looks like even in TL you must have very strong dissenters to the idea that the story was bad so guys like this (quote below) are fretting openly about it. It is a highlight of a great story when it has strong and passionate defenders even in a very hostile environment.
There are a LOT of posts on any forum talking about HotS that bash the single player story for being shit. Also, show me one review that actually praises the story please.
This thread blows my mind. But then, gaming standards are at an all time low these days. There is hope in the future however thanks to games that are being funded through kickstarter, let's hope companies like Blizzard eventually crash and burn. Worst of all is that people are defending what companies like Blizzard are doing by saying shit like "what do you expect? It's a game, you have too high standards." This kind of mentality makes me really sad. Are all gamers today too young to have been gamers during the glory days? Or have most people forgotten? We should always have high standards, how else can gaming companies be forced to put more work into their games? We shouldn't just be happy with the turds that they shit out. If you like cheesy stories, that's fine, but don't tell me that games have to be like that.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them on argiments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
I really dont like postings such as this. Calling the OP Elitist who spreads bullshit after writing a carefully thought out thread with good formating pictures wordings and arguments is just outrageous. If you disagree with him, then formulate your points and explain them and provide facts why you disagree with him and why you think the story of hots is a good one. I think that for responds of this kind you should receive a warning. I do not mind if you disagree with the OP but I do mind the way you are doing it. You are not argumenting you are just talking down on him without providing any argument facts or real content.
its 3 AM here and I cant ever hope to top a 10 page argument in kind. And it is wasted in team liquid since most seem to hate the story for some reason or another but you guys are very much a minority. Battle net forums, reddit, Amazon and metacritics all have high praises for HOTS so the story/campaign stands very well on its own without my arguments. OP's writing just reeks of elitism in my opinion and the fact that he went ahead and said "I know you will all agree with me here" really just tops that. He is preaching to the choir here and he knows it.
Edit: it looks like even in TL you must have very strong dissenters to the idea that the story was bad so guys like this (quote below) are fretting openly about it. It is a highlight of a great story when it has strong and passionate defenders even in a very hostile environment.
There are a LOT of posts on any forum talking about HotS that bash the single player story for being shit. Also, show me one review that actually praises the story please.
I can show you lost of posts and reviews that praise the story, however you will probably call into question the sanity and intelligence level behind the person so easily amused by horrible incongruous storytelling and kindergarten-level plot development in order to hand-hold the common moron.
Beautiful review of the story, if i had thought it worth the time i might have written something similar. The only thing i missed was a reference to WoL when the Taldarim came up. Because Raynor going all imperialistic and blowing them up so he can claim their religious artifacts was another thing that realy bugged me ... and doesnt fit with the persona described in BW at all.
I have never taken the campaign seriously because it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. I feel the same about most of what Blizzard has done, atleast recently. It feels like they have taken all the cheese that has ever happened on the ladder and poured it all over the already lacking campaign and then polished it with their technical knowledge.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Hell no I dont. Take your elitist bullshit elsewhere.
I personally very much enjoyed the story and thought it was a big step up from wol. I say goodbye and goodriddance if you are moving on from reviewing anymore of these games, you are just not that good at it.
i think the fact that you were already disjointed at blizzard for their latest releases has seriously hindered your ability to enjoy what they have released here (i could be wrong)
Yeb. I see so many of these critics of HOTS that when you dig deep enough with them on argiments start talking about the evils of activition and how D3 has ruined the good reputation of blizzard. They don't know or seem not to care that there are almost completely different teams working on these projects and chris metzen who made this story was also the story writer for sc1. It is not some evil activision dude in suite trying to milk peoples money with bad stories. Not in this case anyway.
I really dont like postings such as this. Calling the OP Elitist who spreads bullshit after writing a carefully thought out thread with good formating pictures wordings and arguments is just outrageous. If you disagree with him, then formulate your points and explain them and provide facts why you disagree with him and why you think the story of hots is a good one. I think that for responds of this kind you should receive a warning. I do not mind if you disagree with the OP but I do mind the way you are doing it. You are not argumenting you are just talking down on him without providing any argument facts or real content.
its 3 AM here and I cant ever hope to top a 10 page argument in kind. And it is wasted in team liquid since most seem to hate the story for some reason or another but you guys are very much a minority. Battle net forums, reddit, Amazon and metacritics all have high praises for HOTS so the story/campaign stands very well on its own without my arguments. OP's writing just reeks of elitism in my opinion and the fact that he went ahead and said "I know you will all agree with me here" really just tops that. He is preaching to the choir here and he knows it.
Edit: it looks like even in TL you must have very strong dissenters to the idea that the story was bad so guys like this (quote below) are fretting openly about it. It is a highlight of a great story when it has strong and passionate defenders even in a very hostile environment.
There are a LOT of posts on any forum talking about HotS that bash the single player story for being shit. Also, show me one review that actually praises the story please.
I can show you lost of posts and reviews that praise the story, however you will probably call into question the sanity and intelligence level behind the person so easily amused by horrible incongruous storytelling and kindergarten-level plot development in order to hand-hold the common moron.
He asked for just one review (which is silly because of outliers). How about you show him since you are so confident?
Nevermind. I'll do it for both of you.
Giantbomb
There are worse video game stories out there, and it's a lot easier to forgive since the single-player game is so much fun, but at this point the overall plot arc of StarCraft II is a bit easier to enjoy if you don't take it too seriously.
They found certain things they genuinely liked but they still thought it was bad and only forgave it because the gameplay was actually good.
Strategy Informer
Heart of the Swarm now continues the guilty treat of Blizzard’s B-movie extravaganza. The lines can be cheesy, the plot bonkers, villains given plenty of moustache twirling – but it’s what makes you march your units to victory.
Guilty pleasures signify something so bad it's good. I don't actually accept that logic because it just means you found the whole experience to be funny. You can interrupt this however you want.
Insidegaming
The campaign’s story is satisfactory for a second act–one villain is dispatched while another, more serious one is introduced. Blizzard-familiar themes like revenge and corruption pop up, though the studio’s story charm is always in the telling rather than the plot. In that regard the story is pretty good.
There we go. A definitive positive review and I only had to search the first 3 out of the 50 on metacritic.
Can we go on and stop pretending there aren't people who looked at this story favorably? (looking at Stratos_speAr)
Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
Kerrigan, Raynor and Zeratul unite their races to fight a common foe. They use this alliance to defend x xel'naga artifact from the army of hybrids for y seconds.
When y=0 the artifact destroys all the hybrids everyone lives happily ever after and Kerrigan is miraculously cured of the hyperevolutionary virus.
Kerrigan and Raynor get a nice little house on charr where they have pet zerglings etc, grow their own produce and grow old happily together in a life of harmony.
Zeratul falls in love with nova because she's hot and they have hybrid babies which leads to the plot for sc3.
Despite all the streamers of the single player being incredibly exicted about it. Despite every single one of my friends being blown away. Despite 6/12 reviews that I have found giving it a perfect score with the rest giving close to perfect. Despite a poll on TL showing that the majority of the user base liked the campaign(and this is TL - the most critical place ever :p ).
There are still so many posts claiming that the story was just objectively bad.
I mean, share your opinion all you like, but don't act like your evaluation of the story is anything more than an opinion.
On another note, with all this in mind and my own experience of the story, it blows my mind that some people can be so negative about it - but this is just my opinion.
^ by that logic Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1/2/3 are the best games ever made. Dang!
On March 24 2013 00:16 zbedlam wrote: Legacy of the Void Last mission:- + Show Spoiler +
Kerrigan, Raynor and Zeratul unite their races to fight a common foe. They use this alliance to defend x xel'naga artifact from the army of hybrids for y seconds.
When y=0 the artifact destroys all the hybrids everyone lives happily ever after and Kerrigan is miraculously cured of the hyperevolutionary virus.
Kerrigan and Raynor get a nice little house on charr where they have pet zerglings etc, grow their own produce and grow old happily together in a life of harmony.
Zeratul falls in love with nova because she's hot and they have hybrid babies which leads to the plot for sc3.
You're welcome.
sad truth is that there is a huge chance the first and the second and the third paragraph will actually happen...
the story was bad, sure, but it was fun to play, the cinematics were pretty and it was funny if you looked at it in the right light. Don't take this shit so seriously, blizzard story lines are all about simplicity, cheese and pop-culture/gaming culture references, not about actual drama or compelling story lines.
On March 24 2013 00:16 zbedlam wrote: Legacy of the Void Last mission:- + Show Spoiler +
Kerrigan, Raynor and Zeratul unite their races to fight a common foe. They use this alliance to defend x xel'naga artifact from the army of hybrids for y seconds.
When y=0 the artifact destroys all the hybrids everyone lives happily ever after and Kerrigan is miraculously cured of the hyperevolutionary virus.
Kerrigan and Raynor get a nice little house on charr where they have pet zerglings etc, grow their own produce and grow old happily together in a life of harmony.
Zeratul falls in love with nova because she's hot and they have hybrid babies which leads to the plot for sc3.
You're welcome.
sad truth is that there is a huge chance the first and the second and the third paragraph will actually happen...
What logic? The logic that evaluations of the story are opinions? Whaat?
On March 24 2013 00:27 Tayar wrote: the story was bad, sure, but it was fun to play, the cinematics were pretty and it was funny if you looked at it in the right light. Don't take this shit so seriously, blizzard story lines are all about simplicity, cheese and pop-culture/gaming culture references, not about actual drama or compelling story lines.
To be fair, the difference is though that the people disliking twillight is a massive group whereas the people disliking this is a much smaller group. On a side note this is great to make a point: I don't personally enjoy twillight too much, but I do feel that it suffers for people being too hateful towards it. It's just kind of law of nature that if something that some people didn't like gets too much praise and attention then they are more likely to hate it even more if it hadn't received the popularity in the first place. It's like a law of balance.
On March 24 2013 00:18 Cereb wrote: This is actually funny to me.
Despite all the streamers of the single player being incredibly exicted about it. Despite every single one of my friends being blown away. Despite 6/12 reviews that I have found giving it a perfect score with the rest giving close to perfect. Despite a poll on TL showing that the majority of the user base liked the campaign(and this is TL - the most critical place ever :p ).
There are still so many posts claiming that the story was just objectively bad.
I mean, share your opinion all you like, but don't act like your evaluation of the story is anything more than an opinion.
On another note, with all this in mind and my own experience of the story, it blows my mind that some people can be so negative about it - but this is just my opinion.
Game reviews are really meaningless. For instance, how are you going to give a score to something like the multiplayer improvements? And if the single player is targeted towards people that are inexperienced with the game, then that would include most game reviewers (since they probably don't have a lot of time to play any one game), but it says nothing about whether it really stands up to someone that has played Starcraft before.
And there are some objectively negative things to say about the game. A lot of the missions are straight rip-offs of WoL or other games, the campaign was really short, even game reviewers picked up on the dialogue being cheesy and the story being generic. More experienced players, like you might find on TL, might have more in-depth criticism, which one could dismiss as cynicism, but there is still a real basis for the backlash.
On March 24 2013 00:18 Cereb wrote: This is actually funny to me.
Despite all the streamers of the single player being incredibly exicted about it. Despite every single one of my friends being blown away. Despite 6/12 reviews that I have found giving it a perfect score with the rest giving close to perfect. Despite a poll on TL showing that the majority of the user base liked the campaign(and this is TL - the most critical place ever :p ).
There are still so many posts claiming that the story was just objectively bad.
I mean, share your opinion all you like, but don't act like your evaluation of the story is anything more than an opinion.
On another note, with all this in mind and my own experience of the story, it blows my mind that some people can be so negative about it - but this is just my opinion.
There is one instance where it isn't subjective. That is when the story contradicts itself.
OK let me put of cynic hat and state what is *objectively* bad.
1) Retconning is bad. It's a clear sign of laziness or incompetence - you don't retcon unless you have a damn good reason to do that. "It doesn't fit with the story I want to tell" is not one of them.
2) Changing character's motivations and personalities to suit the plot is bad. Especially when a character shifts his traits from scene to scene. SC2 basically does this with ALL the characters.
3) Almost any plot relying on a "prophecy" is objectively bad. It becomes even more bad when your story has a character whose only purpose is to randomly pop up and deliver said prophecy.
4) Telling instead of showing is bad. Repeatedly telling is even worse. If your characters constantly feel the need to explain everything and constantly reiterate what they are doing and why... bad.
5) Having villains whose 90% of the dialogue boils down to taunting the protagonists - bad.
6) "Killing" main characters off-screen is bad. Unless you have the balls to actually kill them, which we know you don't. HotS does this twice. Bad.
7) Recycling the story already used in your previous game is bad.
8) Resurrecting characters only to have them nothing substantial to do - bad. Doubly so if this newly resurrected character could easily be exchanged with a completely different character without requiring almost any rewrites of the plot.
9) Making the entire plot blatantly obvious, so obvious that you don't lose nothing by revealing it in its entirety in the trailer - bad.
9 and 10 is subjective but can be arguably objective given the context.
7 then is definitively subjective.
You're other seven points either coincide with my own thoughts or point out things I didn't take the time to think about.
7 is subjective because reusing story elements appeals to the audience you built up. Certain people may get bored with the recycling but that's a risk you take as a writer. If a person was trying to sell books and found a formula that works it isn't in their interest to deviate from that formula when it pays the bills and it still helps them retains a large portion of the fans they acquired or even expand on it.
9 is subjective because we do have stories that reveal a whole bunch of things at the beginning and then the story revolves around how reached that point. A story that sells itself with a trailer that spoils its plot is ultimately relying on the journey being more important than the resolution.
Of course the risk with that is that by revealing too much the emotional resonance can be undermined because you know to reach a certain plot point something else that is currently happening can't have certain outcomes.
10 can always be handwaved away with the limitations of what perspectives you are viewing the story from. Things could potentially happen offscreen or onsceen that is unstated.
Overall it is a good list on how criticisms can be objective.
On March 23 2013 23:57 mutantmagnet wrote: Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
There's no pretending about it. If you liked this story or you supported it, it means you find simplistic basic-level writing with highly-predictable recycled storylines with random interjections from plot lines that are neither relevant nor helpful to the main arc, but rather harmful and even destructive to the main story somehow favorable.
If these are indeed your standards, there's nothing wrong with it, but stop lying to yourselves that this is anything other than the cold hard facts. You like more simple, more predictable things you've already seen a million times before.
Its this outright denial of their very personal traits that makes the defenders look so silly. Its like religious zealots who answer with random "doctrine" or "scripture" readings whenever you try to pose a serious question to them that an established association should have no trouble answering. It goes far beyond stories like this, but into movies as of late, the takeover of technology vs talent in the arts and many other facets of our daily lives that are being played for profit rather than good product.
I just wish people could be honest instead of pretending that they're all connoisseurs for liking Grade 1 reading.
On March 23 2013 23:57 mutantmagnet wrote: Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
There's no pretending about it. If you liked this story or you supported it, it means you find simplistic basic-level writing with highly-predictable recycled storylines with random interjections from plot lines that are neither relevant nor helpful to the main arc, but rather harmful and even destructive to the main story somehow favorable.
If these are indeed your standards, there's nothing wrong with it, but stop lying to yourselves that this is anything other than the cold hard facts. You like more simple, more predictable things you've already seen a million times before.
Its this outright denial of your very personal traits that makes the defenders look so silly. Its like religious zealots who answer with random "doctrine" or "scripture" readings whenever you try to pose a serious question to them that an established association should have no trouble answering. It goes far beyond stories like this, but into movies as of late, the takeover of technology vs talent in the arts and many other facets of our daily lives that are being played for profit rather than good product.
Your vitriolic attack on a VIDEO GAME STORYLINE and those who enjoy it is far more silly than anything else posted in this thread. 'Tis also funny that you mention doctrine when your post seems copy and pasted from the Hipster's Guide to Internet Self-Righteousness. Not everyone interfaces with various forms of media alike; I love complex and confusing novels in addition to abstract art, but when it comes to video games, I don't mind the occasional breezy popcorn tale that simply serves as a gameplay vehicle. This societal extrapolation nonsense, blaming those who enjoy the game for the general degradation of "taste" in the arts, is narrow minded judgement wearing the clothes of critical theory.
In other words, get off your high horse and put down the red plastic gavel.
On March 23 2013 23:57 mutantmagnet wrote: Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
There's no pretending about it. If you liked this story or you supported it, it means you find simplistic basic-level writing with highly-predictable recycled storylines with random interjections from plot lines that are neither relevant nor helpful to the main arc, but rather harmful and even destructive to the main story somehow favorable.
If these are indeed your standards, there's nothing wrong with it, but stop lying to yourselves that this is anything other than the cold hard facts. You like more simple, more predictable things you've already seen a million times before.
Its this outright denial of your very personal traits that makes the defenders look so silly. Its like religious zealots who answer with random "doctrine" or "scripture" readings whenever you try to pose a serious question to them that an established association should have no trouble answering. It goes far beyond stories like this, but into movies as of late, the takeover of technology vs talent in the arts and many other facets of our daily lives that are being played for profit rather than good product.
Your vitriolic attack on a VIDEO GAME STORYLINE and those who enjoy it is far more silly than anything else posted in this thread. 'Tis also funny that you mention doctrine when your post seems copy and pasted from the Hipster's Guide to Internet Self-Righteousness. Not everyone interfaces with various forms of media alike; I love complex and confusing novels in addition to abstract art, but when it comes to video games, I don't mind the occasional breezy popcorn tale that simply serves as a gameplay vehicle. This societal extrapolation nonsense, blaming those who enjoy the game for the general degradation of "taste" in the arts, is narrow minded judgement wearing the clothes of critical theory
In other words, get off your high horse and put down the red plastic gavel.
This is the kind of misinterpretation and wrongful reaction I was expecting and predicted. Once again, its the company's duty to provide a good product. The complete murder of the storyline was upsetting to many.
Most of your response is simply nonsensical and doesn't deserve answering, but your conclusion that I'm on some high horse is quite obviously incorrect. I spoke completely objectively without emotion when I said that the storyline possessed those qualities. Deciding to like and favor those qualities in your tastes in writing/media/etc is perfectly fine. Just don't deny your preferences to be what they are. The definitions of those words are not up for debate. Its you who place the derogatory or positive connotation on it.
I thought Hots story was better than WoL's. But still quite bad overall, and terribly disappointing to someone who grew up with and loved the sc1 story. There are tons of plot holes, under developed characters, and lots of ridiculous, childish dialogue. Not sure why anyone would defend Blizzard on this. It's clear that their writing team has been just God awful lately (WoL and D3). If anything we should be demanding more of such a big and prestigious company. I don't see why we should be happy with a mediocre at best story-line from arguably the best game developer there is. Recent blizzard games are becoming bad and childish. SC, diablo and warcraft series' deserve better than this.
On March 23 2013 23:57 mutantmagnet wrote: Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
There's no pretending about it. If you liked this story or you supported it, it means you find simplistic basic-level writing with highly-predictable recycled storylines with random interjections from plot lines that are neither relevant nor helpful to the main arc, but rather harmful and even destructive to the main story somehow favorable.
If these are indeed your standards, there's nothing wrong with it, but stop lying to yourselves that this is anything other than the cold hard facts. You like more simple, more predictable things you've already seen a million times before.
Its this outright denial of your very personal traits that makes the defenders look so silly. Its like religious zealots who answer with random "doctrine" or "scripture" readings whenever you try to pose a serious question to them that an established association should have no trouble answering. It goes far beyond stories like this, but into movies as of late, the takeover of technology vs talent in the arts and many other facets of our daily lives that are being played for profit rather than good product.
I'm confused by your response. I didn't like the HOTS storyline and haven't indicated otherwise in the past few pages. I did find proof for your argument that atleast one reviewer likes it and that was all I was supporting.
On March 23 2013 23:57 mutantmagnet wrote: Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
There's no pretending about it. If you liked this story or you supported it, it means you find simplistic basic-level writing with highly-predictable recycled storylines with random interjections from plot lines that are neither relevant nor helpful to the main arc, but rather harmful and even destructive to the main story somehow favorable.
If these are indeed your standards, there's nothing wrong with it, but stop lying to yourselves that this is anything other than the cold hard facts. You like more simple, more predictable things you've already seen a million times before.
Its this outright denial of your very personal traits that makes the defenders look so silly. Its like religious zealots who answer with random "doctrine" or "scripture" readings whenever you try to pose a serious question to them that an established association should have no trouble answering. It goes far beyond stories like this, but into movies as of late, the takeover of technology vs talent in the arts and many other facets of our daily lives that are being played for profit rather than good product.
Your vitriolic attack on a VIDEO GAME STORYLINE and those who enjoy it is far more silly than anything else posted in this thread. 'Tis also funny that you mention doctrine when your post seems copy and pasted from the Hipster's Guide to Internet Self-Righteousness. Not everyone interfaces with various forms of media alike; I love complex and confusing novels in addition to abstract art, but when it comes to video games, I don't mind the occasional breezy popcorn tale that simply serves as a gameplay vehicle. This societal extrapolation nonsense, blaming those who enjoy the game for the general degradation of "taste" in the arts, is narrow minded judgement wearing the clothes of critical theory
In other words, get off your high horse and put down the red plastic gavel.
This is the kind of misinterpretation and wrongful reaction I was expecting and predicted. Once again, its the company's duty to provide a good product. The complete murder of the storyline was upsetting to many.
Most of your response is simply nonsensical and doesn't deserve answering, but your conclusion that I'm on some high horse is quite obviously incorrect. I spoke completely objectively without emotion when I said that the storyline possessed those qualities. Deciding to like and favor those qualities in your tastes in writing/media/etc is perfectly fine. Just don't deny your preferences to be what they are. The definitions of those words are not up for debate. Its you who place the derogatory or positive connotation on it.
You are asserting that a person's artistic taste can be measured and judged based on their reception of a single work. This is childish. You are asserting a uniform standard in artistic critique that conforms with your chosen frame of reference, that being something about "qualities". This is childish. You are assuming that because someone likes a simple video game story that they then must also enjoy simple storylines elsewhere. This is childish.
If you'd like me to define any of the words that I use so that you are able to better understand what I am saying, please, just ask. It must be upsetting when you are unable to understand those who disagree with you.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I'd also just like to quickly note that now that I have finished with my thoughts and whatnot, that it is unlikely I will write a review on a Blizzard title again. I can only handle so much critical analysis and especially in this instance, somewhat disenfranchising thoughts, and I know you probably have similar feelings regarding this. So I should apologize for what I had to do here as I felt it necessary to explain how unacceptable I've felt this kind of writing/execution is from a company that supposedly is one of the "best" in the business (they do so many things right, why not this).
Also this was intended to go in the Campaign forum, so I would request that it be moved there when that subforum goes up.
Very good read. I agree, Blizzards story telling is very bad, they cover it up with flashy CGI movies and attempts at emotional connections.
The game is good, not great, and a little quick. It also seems easier that WOL campaign (on Brutal).
P.S. The fight with the Prime beasty on Zerus also reminded me of that crappy game Diablo 3.
Being a philistine isn't a moral failing; people shouldn't be so offended by this thread. All the OP is pointing out is that the plotline of this game is a simplistic, trope-ridden mess and that it insults his tastes in fiction.
If anything, the problem with this thread is that the OP overestimates the SC2 audience.
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: I didn't really like Diablo III, and they're making me feel like I'm playing Diablo III again? I almost lost it at that point. But enough of that.
So..., if you had not played Diablo III, you would have enjoyed that moment more. That really make sense...
On March 23 2013 23:57 mutantmagnet wrote: Can we stop pretending if we actually use our brain cells there are a bunch of elements in the story that pull you out whether or not you know about the previous games? (looks at sCCrooked )
There's no pretending about it. If you liked this story or you supported it, it means you find simplistic basic-level writing with highly-predictable recycled storylines with random interjections from plot lines that are neither relevant nor helpful to the main arc, but rather harmful and even destructive to the main story somehow favorable.
If these are indeed your standards, there's nothing wrong with it, but stop lying to yourselves that this is anything other than the cold hard facts. You like more simple, more predictable things you've already seen a million times before.
Its this outright denial of your very personal traits that makes the defenders look so silly. Its like religious zealots who answer with random "doctrine" or "scripture" readings whenever you try to pose a serious question to them that an established association should have no trouble answering. It goes far beyond stories like this, but into movies as of late, the takeover of technology vs talent in the arts and many other facets of our daily lives that are being played for profit rather than good product.
I'm confused by your response. I didn't like the HOTS storyline and haven't indicated otherwise in the past few pages. I did find proof for your argument that atleast one reviewer likes it and that was all I was supporting.
I didn't mean you as in you specifically so much as I meant "you" the people defending the storyline as being good.
You are asserting that a person's artistic taste can be measured and judged based on their reception of a single work. This is childish. You are asserting a uniform standard in artistic critique that conforms with your chosen frame of reference, that being something about "qualities". This is childish. You are assuming that because someone likes a simple video game story that they then must also enjoy simple storylines elsewhere. This is childish.
If you'd like me to define any of the words that I use so that you are able to better understand what I am saying, please, just ask. It must be upsetting when you are unable to understand those who disagree with you.
Once again your entire first part doesn't even make sense. Its like you're trying to respond to points that haven't been made and it just makes you look silly. Not to mention its sad to see such an emotion-bound egomaniac trying desperately to establish dominance on the internet. You've actually resorted to attempting to be some sort of silly holier-than-thou rambler instead of producing any actual material. The one lacking comprehension here is clearly not me, however I doubt someone of your caliber has the capacity to understand why this case has already been proven by your own posts beyond any possible alternative conclusion.
LOL so I checked out the official TEAM LIQUID thread on the story and a majority (54%) find the story an improvement on wol or steller overall. The folks like gatesleeper who though the story was horrible at are 30%.
This is the case of a small small but loud minority here bashing a great story. You cant even muster the numbers in team liquid to say otherwise. No where close to it in fact. 30% LOL.
On March 24 2013 05:11 DaveVAH wrote: LOL so I checked out the official TEAM LIQUID thread on the story and a majority (54%) find the story an improvement on wol or steller overall. The folks like gatesleeper who though the story was horrible at are 30%.
This is the case of a small small but loud minority here bashing a great story. You cant even muster the numbers in team liquid to say otherwise. No where close to it in fact. 30% LOL.
Posting this in every thread you can find on this topic?
TL is an educated authority on playing video games not on writing or reviewing fiction. Polling TL readers on this subject is not going to yield a determination on whether HOTS is well written. It will tell us whether or not it is up to the literary standards of TL readers (which may or may not be at an early high school level).
Posting this in every thread you can find on this topic?
You mean the two threads it was relevant on?
On March 24 2013 05:16 Cyrak wrote:TL is an educated authority on playing video games not on writing or reviewing fiction. Polling TL readers on this subject is not going to yield a determination on whether HOTS is well written. It will tell us whether or not it is up to the literary standards of TL readers (which may or may not be at an early high school level).
So the even TL posters are not elite enough for you? All I have to say is that again you folks are a small minority within a minority. Enjoy shouting on top of your lungs but I doubt many will hear your or care what you have to say.
Im curious. As a creative experiment could those who are well versed is SC lore make Wings and Swarm work given the known established constraints and settings set by its predecessor? Like make inferences and connections that while not expilicitly stated or even inferred in the actual game/story, but are still well within logical reason and ultimately "make it work."
On March 24 2013 05:16 Cyrak wrote:TL is an educated authority on playing video games not on writing or reviewing fiction. Polling TL readers on this subject is not going to yield a determination on whether HOTS is well written. It will tell us whether or not it is up to the literary standards of TL readers (which may or may not be at an early high school level).
So the even TL posters are not elite enough for you? All I have to say is that again you folks are a small minority within a minority. Enjoy shouting on top of your lungs but I doubt many will hear your or care what you have to say.
Elite at what? Can you not grasp the idea that playing competitive video games and consuming fiction are two different pursuits that don't particularly overlap?
On March 24 2013 05:11 DaveVAH wrote: LOL so I checked out the official TEAM LIQUID thread on the story and a majority (54%) find the story an improvement on wol or steller overall. The folks like gatesleeper who though the story was horrible at are 30%.
This is the case of a small small but loud minority here bashing a great story. You cant even muster the numbers in team liquid to say otherwise. No where close to it in fact. 30% LOL.
This is the kind of person that points to box office numbers or imdb ratings as evidence that a film is good. Look how proud you are, so assured in your victory that you have won this argument by using the "Popularity = Good" fallacy, with zero self awareness.
On March 23 2013 20:09 DaveVAH wrote: FYI Gatekeeper. I am 29. I have read songs of ice and fire and most of G.R.R.Martins other books. I have played the baldur's gate series, planescape torment, witcher series, sc1/bw and many others. The problem is most likely with you and not the quality of the material here.
29 years old and you think A Song of Ice and Fire is the pinnacle of literary storytelling. That speaks well enough for itself.
Wow this is actually quite a wonderful review of the game, I have to congratulate you on a very thorough review of a game that I was hoping to be good. I haven't visited TL in a very long while as I stopped paying attention to WoL since it grew stale over a year and a half ago and an imbalanced Hots beta did little to hold my interest as well. I did not buy Hots because I am not interested in buying it, I already wasted 60$ on WoL so I'm not making that mistake again. I watched the Hots let's play to see if the story had improved from WoL, in some aspects it did but in the end a turd with chocolate chips on it its still a turd. I thought that in this game being completely devoted to the Zerg we would see Kerrigan going back to her old self (BW) instead of this cutesy zerg princess who just can't help herself to be in love with a man who not long ago (BW) wanted to kill her when she's not too busy getting her revenge. I didn't find some of the changes they made to the campaign to be bad, some things were good and some things were awful like the boss battles BUT at least they added some variety from WoL.
I entirely agree 100% with your view of where Blizzard's intentions are now days, the Blizzard of old is gone to never return and instead we have this Zynga like Blizzard that delivers games only to please kids and new comers to the game instead of delivering a game that will please the old fan base. WoL was the last game that I bought from Blizzard as I do not see them really making good games and I think you're probably right about this being the WoW effect, its quite evident how much they have sided with this fan base, seems to me every new game they try to make its made exclusively to get those 10 million people who still play that god awful game to buy the new one. You can obviously see that in D3 and how dumbed down it is and now again in Hots with how they have nerfed the MP and the SP resembles more to an RPG than an RTS. I really just disliked WoL for many reasons the story being the least of its issues since I was a MP only player, the game its just so dumbed down from how BW was that it has lost all of its spectacle and instead we get what WoW players would like if they were to play RTS, tank units who can take tons of damage, gigantic maps so they can just max out before even meeting their enemy and just terrible combat to make it easier for them to approach the game instead of just encouraging people to discover and engage in a far more complex but satisfying game.
Game developers now days are afraid of throwing gamers any semblance of a challenge because they might get scared away and not buy their game, you can see this not just in Blizz's Zynga-like games but with almost every developer out there and its a shame. Games are no longer made for our generation.
On March 24 2013 05:11 DaveVAH wrote: LOL so I checked out the official TEAM LIQUID thread on the story and a majority (54%) find the story an improvement on wol or steller overall. The folks like gatesleeper who though the story was horrible at are 30%.
This is the case of a small small but loud minority here bashing a great story. You cant even muster the numbers in team liquid to say otherwise. No where close to it in fact. 30% LOL.
This is the kind of person that points to box office numbers or imdb ratings as evidence that a film is good. Look how proud you are, so assured in your victory that you have won this argument by using the "Popularity = Good" fallacy, with zero self awareness.
On March 23 2013 20:09 DaveVAH wrote: FYI Gatekeeper. I am 29. I have read songs of ice and fire and most of G.R.R.Martins other books. I have played the baldur's gate series, planescape torment, witcher series, sc1/bw and many others. The problem is most likely with you and not the quality of the material here.
29 years old and you think A Song of Ice and Fire is the pinnacle of literary storytelling. That speaks well enough for itself.
Can you objectively describe a work and derive what's good from it by only following the general guidelines of what makes specific stories great?
I understand people's troubles with HotS, but from the tone of many such posters it seems to me that they know what "higher-art" is.
Imo it is very hard to quantify the quality of literature(let's say only related to games). And if so, I would like to see what you people consider as something great.
Personally I enjoyed the campaign. The dialogue was cheesey at some points, the storyline was awkward generally, some characters like Abathur seemed really great while others had little to add to the storry(like Stukov).
As far as video games are concerned there's very little games that I can remember that would blow my mind story/dialogue-wise. Only PS:T comes to mind and that's a game that's more similar to a reading adventure than anything else and on top of that is in the genre of cRPGs which are most of the time story-focused.
RTS games tend to have "weaker" writing than RPGs and that's what I've come to expect from them. When I think back I can't remember a RTS game that would just stand out with its story. Dune, the Earth series, Sacrifice, Homeworld all had interesting stories, characters and the latter two(especially Sacrifice) great characters&writing as far as characters are concerned. But they were just that, great - not something to make a fuss about as far as story is concerned.
One thing to note is that modern games have shifted in terms of how storylines are presented. Back then almost everything was presented in text form with little graphical "interference" like we get in modern games with everything being shown as if it was a movie. Most of the old games that you play, your imagination takes care of the graphical-aspects of the story(you imagine most of the stuff being described, the limitations of engines/graphics in general made you do this) - now it's very different.
I understand your point of the starcraft story losing in quality, however I see it as less of a problem.
Its a video game, if your playing it solely for the story you might as well read a book.
You are of course right with the points you bring up. Just relax and see Blizzard for what they are - Still produce excellent games, yet with their best times behind them, their priorities, devteams and everything has changed, and no crying will ever bring them back.
I think you're all barking up the wrong tree. You can knock or dislike Blizzard's implementation of the storyline, but it's hard to attack the storyline itself. It's not original to Blizzard, and I don't see people bitching about the many many classic works that critics fall over themselves to applaud which use the same plot.
Is it the fault of Blizzard that this basic plot is so entrenched in western culture that they can sketch it out and let your own mind fill in the details?
Hell, they didn't even have the "happy ending" where Jim uses the artifact recovered from Mengsks' office to re-cure Sarah and they both live happily ever after rebuilding the Dominion, while special queen learns compassion for the swarm.
We should also bear in mind that the person experiencing the story of HotS may be very different from the person he or she was when SC1 was released. When I was younger I absolutely devoured E.E 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series, and I always remembered them fondly. It occurred to me a few months ago to see if I could track them down on the internet and enjoy them again on my Kindle.
On March 24 2013 06:53 felisconcolori wrote: I think you're all barking up the wrong tree. You can knock or dislike Blizzard's implementation of the storyline, but it's hard to attack the storyline itself. It's not original to Blizzard, and I don't see people bitching about the many many classic works that critics fall over themselves to applaud which use the same plot.
Is it the fault of Blizzard that this basic plot is so entrenched in western culture that they can sketch it out and let your own mind fill in the details?
Hell, they didn't even have the "happy ending" where Jim uses the artifact recovered from Mengsks' office to re-cure Sarah and they both live happily ever after rebuilding the Dominion, while special queen learns compassion for the swarm.
What? Of course people do but this goes beyond that and in to the actual implementation of the plot itself. This isn't about using an overused cliched storyline on its own. You can still write a storyline with those qualities without gaping plotholes, inconsistent characters, and horribly executed decision making.
I think that people generally miss the point of what a campaign is supposed to be. Too often I've seen in this thread that "I don't play the Campaign for something as laughable as a story," when that's really entirely the POINT of a Campaign. If it wasn't they'd just give you an arbitrary mission list/web to pick off of and go from there with absolutely no story telling what so ever. They don't do that though...because it would be fucking horrible and everyone knows it.
So yes it's entirely the fault of blizzard. It's on them to actually develop the story in to something that isn't a damn mess. If you want a basic love story like this then at least DEVELOP said love. It's not exactly much to ask for. Or at the very least never claim that games are a type of artform again because if this is the standard then ...damn help us all.
Great post. I do feel though you read far too deeply into some circumstances though. Kinda like when kids argue about which superhero would beat who: "Well obviously Goku would beat Naruto because he's a supersaiyan" etc. I found this especially prominent when you were trying to establish that the artifact SHOULDN'T kill the Zerg. You've read way too far into the canon and missing the point.
The whole Jim/Sarah love story is pretty true though, its a very weak plot to be basing one campaign off. I personally enjoyed the WoL story as many background figures had interesting stories but in HotS is was just pure vengeance and 'powering up' with little thought/care on behalf of Sarah / other prominent characters.
I watched the carbot animation version of the HotS trailer and in the end when it shows Kerrigan I thought she looked rather cool there, something I don't feel with the real Kerrigan anymore. I think it that if Blizzard had given the campaign a more funny and charming tone then the story and setting would've been more appropriate.
On March 24 2013 12:42 Grumbels wrote: I watched the carbot animation version of the HotS trailer and in the end when it shows Kerrigan I thought she looked rather cool there, something I don't feel with the real Kerrigan anymore. I think it that if Blizzard had given the campaign a more funny and charming tone then the story and setting would've been more appropriate.
It wouldn't change the fact the entire HotS campaign was pointless. They only "big thing" that happened was the hinting of the hybrids. I wouldn't count the death of Mengsk as something important in the SC universe. Specially because we saw it coming since WoL.
On March 24 2013 12:42 Grumbels wrote: I watched the carbot animation version of the HotS trailer and in the end when it shows Kerrigan I thought she looked rather cool there, something I don't feel with the real Kerrigan anymore. I think it that if Blizzard had given the campaign a more funny and charming tone then the story and setting would've been more appropriate.
It wouldn't change the fact the entire HotS campaign was pointless. They only "big thing" that happened was the hinting of the hybrids. I wouldn't count the death of Mengsk as something important in the SC universe. Specially because we saw it coming since WoL.
I feel hots was meant to try and wrap up the whole Mengsk affair before delving in the Amon/Xelnaga issue and the Protoss/Zerg relationship. It would be interesting if the UED was brought in a bit towards the end, with Nova being a double agent or something. Kind of like her helping set stuff up for Jim/Sarah to take down the dominion, or maybe Amon is chilling on Earth or something.
I agree with and respect most of the points brought up in this article. There are definitely some deep flaws in the story. This does not change the fact that I really enjoyed the campaign; I was always looking forward to the next mission. The central idea of Kerrigan sacrificing her humanity for vengeance, while poorly executed, was still fun. I like to pretend that the gun in Raynor's cell came from a marine that died outside.
In short, really fun, but I do hope the storytelling improves in LoTV.
I was extremely disappointed that Nova didn't have more of a role other than just a cutscene. You'd think she would be more involved considering the entire Terran planet/race is in danger plus she was in the trailer.
Good points, but I disagree with at least 2 things:
1. I'm pretty damn sure in the leaked video that's a clone. It would bring up new questions, but at least it doesn't have the question "how did Mengsk get the Xel'naga artifact from Valerian's (and/or Narund's) control?". That's something you didn't touch on at all, and I think is far more relevant than "how did it turn into a torture device?" which I think is a completely pointless and insignificant question.
2. Regarding the Kerrigan-Raynor relationship, sometimes people have attitude swings with regards to feelings for someone; at the start of WoL they're quite clearly saying that with the time he's had to thought of it, he really dwelled on this crush/relationship he had, which isn't too unrealistic. He did say he would kill the Queen of Blades, and he did, so there's no conflict there. It didn't necessarily kill her entirely, but the entity that was there was eradicated (or at least so it seems). Bodies don't just make people, the configuration of the brain makes people.
Other points I've said before or are obvious/agreement with many people: - Zeratul—Kerrigan fight was absolutely nonsensical as was said here - The fact Duran wasn't mentioned at all was annoying, but perhaps justifiable. One didn't consider that Narund is perhaps distinct from Duran and that there's more than 1 follower/helper of Amon (despite the 'coincidence' with the names) - New Stukov looks ridiculous to me and looks nothing like the old one; doesn't seem to do anything of importance in the game, which is strange/silly considering his supposed power and backstory.
On March 24 2013 16:57 wptlzkwjd wrote: I was extremely disappointed that Nova didn't have more of a role other than just a cutscene. You'd think she would be more involved considering the entire Terran planet/race is in danger plus she was in the trailer.
It's even worse for Tosh. Blizzard cannon is that Raynor sided with Tosh, but he essentially doesn't even appear in HotS.
While essentially I think this is a very long post touching the least important aspect of HotS, the post itself is great. It shows that bringing a Mass Effect 2 writer doesn't make a good story. I did like Abathur, probably because he reminded me this guy: + Show Spoiler +
I have watched the cinematics, and the gameplay of SC2 campaign upload by somebody else.
I prefer the realistic way of storytelling in SC/BW way than SC2 way.
I feel hard to express myself. Let me try to express myself, and try to understand where I come from, okay?
I feel SC/BW story is realistic, everything interwined together, there are many characters around you and YOU are part of the story being the commander or the executor or some high rank officer.
The story is Real-Time with real situation, and then the story goes on bit by bit.
The SC2 story is, more like a storybook story. Zeratul can appear anytime he wants. Queen of blade trying to obtain the ultimate power for revenge. And the dark master amon is actually a very very powerful dark lord from the void.
The dictatorship of acturus is also very bland, it is so obvious he is bad guy. It feels like in SC2 they wan to tell u acturus is evil. But I feel in SC/BW they just show, but do not tell at all.
I do not like the " Hey, I tell you in your face, acturus is truely a dictator." Look at WOL 1st mission where the acturus give a very obvious progpaganda message. Or the newscastor showing too obvious cover up of the story.
Too obvious till the real-time feel is gone. Like a storybook tale.
The real time feel is LOST. It is imediately a storybook. And the characters around the main character is, u can feel, like a puppet to support the main character. They are at Hyperion/Leviathan supporting Raynor/ Kerriggan.
In SC/BW u noe where each character comes from.
Example ------- Aldaris is a traditional rigid old protoss. Loyalty to protoss and the conclave and believe conclave way is right. Still his heart is for the best interest of protoss, just like any other proud protoss. Though he rebel, but not because he is evil, but for protoss interest, he found out Kerrigan secret and the Matriach.
Zeratul did not say something like "Aldaris did not betray the protoss, he did it because he knew of Matriach corruption"
I found out because Aldaris last word before he died. His reason to rebel -------
2nd example
General Duke, a war veteran whom battle knowledge is valued by acturus himself. A top dog in confederate decided to betray COnfederate maybe because he knew confederate is falling apart. And maybe to save his own ass because only the Rebel could save him at that point of time. Acturus made a very good offer to Duke. Give him good position in his team, and save his ass. DUke decided to say Okay, although reluctantly. Then slowly becoming more and more loyal to Acturus.
I dont really see any character stand out, it is all interwined, given situation given character personality, then story develops.
In SC2,
You will see, someone standout more than others. (Raynor, Zeratul, Kerrigan) And evil guy are bland like tal darim. Queen of blade trying to steal artifact and always fail. took all of the real-time feel away...
I am sorry, if I cannot describe it any better. It is difficult my feelings in just few words. I will stop here. Or esle it might become too long winded.
I really like your expalantion, Xiao. I agree it feels like you're looking at an emotionless storyboard before the actors have given it life when you compare SC2's story to BW's.
Wow can't believe I read the whole text. That was an entertaining and thoughtful analysis. The bit about Raynor's gun cracked me up - don't know how I missed that.
On to the more serious mistakes in the story, I agree on a lot of them. I liked the WC3 story when I was younger (I'm 22), but the SC2 one just isn't doing it for me. I don't know if it's worse or not, or if I'm just older now and expect a bit more. Still, I do enjoy the gameplay itself, which makes it even worse that the story is terrible. With a good story these campaigns would be the go-to example of how to make a perfect campaign.
I like the comparison with Game of Thrones. In GoT there is no true "good side" and no true "bad side", which i really like because thats usually how it goes in real life. But Blizzard is really trying to make Mensk the "bad guy" even though he never appeared that evil to me in Starcraft 1, in fact i actually liked the character quite a bit. What i also like about GoT is that the author has the balls to kill some of his maincharacters ;-) I really wish Blizzard would have killed Raynor for real, that would have been a REAL turning point... But as it seems Blizzard doesn't want to invent new characters and rather abuses the old ones.
The whole artefact stuff is also pissing me off... Why the hell didn't Mensk use that damn thing earlier to defend the city?
Blizzard has managed to destroy it's own lore, both in the Warcraft and the Starcraft universe. The story of BW was one of the main reasons why I was looking forward to SC2. It's a real shame how poorly they developed this.
On March 24 2013 20:21 Tink0r wrote: I like the comparison with Game of Thrones. In GoT there is no true "good side" and no true "bad side", which i really like because thats usually how it goes in real life. But Blizzard is really trying to make Mensk the "bad guy" even though he never appeared that evil to me in Starcraft 1, in fact i actually liked the character quite a bit. What i also like about GoT is that the author has the balls to kill some of his maincharacters ;-) I really wish Blizzard would have killed Raynor for real, that would have been a REAL turning point... But as it seems Blizzard doesn't want to invent new characters and rather abuses the old ones.
The whole artefact stuff is also pissing me off... Why the hell didn't Mensk use that damn thing earlier to defend the city?
Because apparently the whole purpose of an ancient artifact of immeasurable power created eons ago by a long-since extinct race of vastly superior (yet still were wiped out inexplicably) beings was so that some hybrid Zerg used-to-be queen could turn back to human and have sex with a depressing sad pussy-excuse-for-a-man of a Raynor character.
Agreed. Story presentation was poor with the cut scene don't really tell you much, talking to characters inside leviathan was like the worst chat ever. There weren't any dark, horror, intense atmosphere around zerg. Although Sarah keep saying if I die in battle or something, I was confused. We had the "Bad ass" empire down to his last defense, we are !@#$ winning with no chance of losing the war whatsoever. Then I was wondering if I will actually ever get a chance to see the Starcaft universe galaxy map or some sort. All I see when choosing a mission was a tiny picture of a planet. I have no idea where it at and where I am, never get a glimpse of the world T_T.
There are not much happening in Hots imo, the story was basically Sarah trying to kill the never appear in-game empire then having Zeratul saying if you want to know the future part buy Starcraft II:Legacy of the Void!
I still believe that the SC2 campaigns are among the best single player campaigns I have played. And the cut scenes look very nice, compared to most other games out there (some exceptions I guess, as always..).
I'm sure there are some holes in the plot here and there, but so is the case in most movies. If one is too much digging into the details on these things, I don't think you can enjoy that much of the media produced out there. Which is mostly unfortunately for you I guess..
On March 24 2013 18:37 XiaoJoyce- wrote: I feel SC/BW story is realistic, everything interwined together, there are many characters around you and YOU are part of the story being the commander or the executor or some high rank officer.
The story is Real-Time with real situation, and then the story goes on bit by bit.
The SC2 story is, more like a storybook story. Zeratul can appear anytime he wants. Queen of blade trying to obtain the ultimate power for revenge. And the dark master amon is actually a very very powerful dark lord from the void.
The dictatorship of acturus is also very bland, it is so obvious he is bad guy. It feels like in SC2 they wan to tell u acturus is evil. But I feel in SC/BW they just show, but do not tell at all.
I do not like the " Hey, I tell you in your face, acturus is truely a dictator." Look at WOL 1st mission where the acturus give a very obvious progpaganda message. Or the newscastor showing too obvious cover up of the story.
Too obvious till the real-time feel is gone. Like a storybook tale.
You articulated a lot of the issues I was feeling with the campaign. Overall, I still enjoyed playing through it, but a lot of it just didn't feel quite right.
On March 24 2013 18:37 XiaoJoyce- wrote: I feel SC/BW story is realistic, everything interwined together, there are many characters around you and YOU are part of the story being the commander or the executor or some high rank officer.
The story is Real-Time with real situation, and then the story goes on bit by bit.
The SC2 story is, more like a storybook story. Zeratul can appear anytime he wants. Queen of blade trying to obtain the ultimate power for revenge. And the dark master amon is actually a very very powerful dark lord from the void.
The dictatorship of acturus is also very bland, it is so obvious he is bad guy. It feels like in SC2 they wan to tell u acturus is evil. But I feel in SC/BW they just show, but do not tell at all.
I do not like the " Hey, I tell you in your face, acturus is truely a dictator." Look at WOL 1st mission where the acturus give a very obvious progpaganda message. Or the newscastor showing too obvious cover up of the story.
Too obvious till the real-time feel is gone. Like a storybook tale.
Yup, my thought exactly.
I don't recall Arcturus being evil at all in sc1. He was ruthless yes, but he was no more evil than any other character.
The plot of sc2 where the races unite against a common foe is the same as tft and bw. The only difference is how it is told. Instead of intrigue and well defined bad guys you have a bunch of stereotypical villains giving you one liners with no characterization to speak of.
There are no losses, no twists, there wasn't even an antagonist in HotS for fucks sake it was just kerrigan grinding levels and stomping everything in sight for revenge because essentially she thinks he killed her bf, which is also poorly developed and I can't imagine anyone feeling any empathy for these two.
They just threw on the "mengsk is bad mmmk" to make it seem a bit less retarded as Kerrigan has no other reason to hate mengsk aside from the whole raynor thing. She got over him abandoning her a long time ago (several lines from bw) and as for him being a big bad guy manipulating people and killing people? She is an ex ghost, by lore are basically cyborg spec ops. She was also the queen of blades. This means her entire life she has been killing/manipulating people why the hell would she have a problem with mengsk, hell she had no problem killing billions of innocents just to get to him just rofl.
The way this plot is portrayed is so bad it is literally worse than D3 and that in itself is an accomplishment.
On March 24 2013 18:37 XiaoJoyce- wrote: I feel SC/BW story is realistic, everything interwined together, there are many characters around you and YOU are part of the story being the commander or the executor or some high rank officer.
The story is Real-Time with real situation, and then the story goes on bit by bit.
The SC2 story is, more like a storybook story. Zeratul can appear anytime he wants. Queen of blade trying to obtain the ultimate power for revenge. And the dark master amon is actually a very very powerful dark lord from the void.
The dictatorship of acturus is also very bland, it is so obvious he is bad guy. It feels like in SC2 they wan to tell u acturus is evil. But I feel in SC/BW they just show, but do not tell at all.
I do not like the " Hey, I tell you in your face, acturus is truely a dictator." Look at WOL 1st mission where the acturus give a very obvious progpaganda message. Or the newscastor showing too obvious cover up of the story.
Too obvious till the real-time feel is gone. Like a storybook tale.
Yup, my thought exactly.
I have to mention, how SC/BW story embed in my mind for more than 10 years.
Character development like, how Duran from Confederate Resistance, to UED advisor to DuGale, and then Kerrigan Consort, then to some ancient intelligent guy serving a greater power, calling powerful individual as young...
This is like developing from a new beginning giving me hope to see how the story develops, and then giving me wonderful climax I need to change my pants. Yet the climax serve as a stepping stone to a greater beginning.
Or Tassadar, fallen executor turned hero, on the 10 campaign , and there I was, the executor. Being through thick and many rains, seeing him met with obstacle even from his protoss brothers/kin. Sticking firm with his belief, saving terran, reconciling with the dark templars. And then he sacrifice himself for the whole universe...
I remember I cried, back then. Actually I didnt noe Tassadar died until I play BW episode 1. I cried when I play BW episode 1.
Shit, so much love for him.
Now, I forgot most of the things happened in Wings of Liberty. Although it is only 2-3 years of release. Well, not most. but there is no memorable event, such as Kerrigan vs Tassadar, the infestation of Kerrigan, how conferderate falls.
There is only, Kerrigan failing, or maybe bad guy taunting. You will never beat me. You are weak. Like the Diablo 3 Belial.
Potrait comes out : You will never beat me. Potrait comes out : OH?????? It is okay, small setback for me, but still my power/army overwhelm you. Potrait comes out : NOOOO
On March 24 2013 23:13 ShotgunMike wrote: I'm sure there are some holes in the plot here and there, but so is the case in most movies. If one is too much digging into the details on these things, I don't think you can enjoy that much of the media produced out there. Which is mostly unfortunately for you I guess..
Right.
God Forbid the people who wrote the story for HOTS have any regard for previous SC history. God Forbid they read anything that Blizzard had ever written before, and instead let them go ahead willy nilly and write whatever they want, and we if we dig "too" deep, then that is our problem. Seriously, is that the argument?
Now I enjoyed the campaign, it would just be better without the plot issues, which aren't hard to fix. It just takes some effort, which Blizzard didn't put in based on the story.
It isn't that hard to write a story based on another story without having a lack of continuity, and without disregarding the previous story. I learned how way back in high school writing and film class.
On March 24 2013 18:37 XiaoJoyce- wrote: I feel SC/BW story is realistic, everything interwined together, there are many characters around you and YOU are part of the story being the commander or the executor or some high rank officer.
The story is Real-Time with real situation, and then the story goes on bit by bit.
The SC2 story is, more like a storybook story. Zeratul can appear anytime he wants. Queen of blade trying to obtain the ultimate power for revenge. And the dark master amon is actually a very very powerful dark lord from the void.
The dictatorship of acturus is also very bland, it is so obvious he is bad guy. It feels like in SC2 they wan to tell u acturus is evil. But I feel in SC/BW they just show, but do not tell at all.
I do not like the " Hey, I tell you in your face, acturus is truely a dictator." Look at WOL 1st mission where the acturus give a very obvious progpaganda message. Or the newscastor showing too obvious cover up of the story.
Too obvious till the real-time feel is gone. Like a storybook tale.
Yup, my thought exactly.
I have to mention, how SC/BW story embed in my mind for more than 10 years.
Character development like, how Duran from Confederate Resistance, to UED advisor to DuGale, and then Kerrigan Consort, then to some ancient intelligent guy serving a greater power, calling powerful individual as young...
This is like developing from a new beginning giving me hope to see how the story develops, and then giving me wonderful climax I need to change my pants. Yet the climax serve as a stepping stone to a greater beginning.
Or Tassadar, fallen executor turned hero, on the 10 campaign , and there I was, the executor. Being through thick and many rains, seeing him met with obstacle even from his protoss brothers/kin. Sticking firm with his belief, saving terran, reconciling with the dark templars. And then he sacrifice himself for the whole universe...
I remember I cried, back then. Actually I didnt noe Tassadar died until I play BW episode 1. I cried when I play BW episode 1.
Shit, so much love for him.
Now, I forgot most of the things happened in Wings of Liberty. Although it is only 2-3 years of release. Well, not most. but there is no memorable event, such as Kerrigan vs Tassadar, the infestation of Kerrigan, how conferderate falls.
There is only, Kerrigan failing, or maybe bad guy taunting. You will never beat me. You are weak. Like the Diablo 3 Belial.
Potrait comes out : You will never beat me. Potrait comes out : OH?????? It is okay, small setback for me, but still my power/army overwhelm you. Potrait comes out : NOOOO
Something like that, I have been observing...
I'll stop here. Too many thoughts on my mind.
Or how about Kerrigan and Fenix? The proud, battle-scarred old warrior defiantly back-talking the malevolent mastermind in the face of his own death. Or DuGalle's remorse: "Alexei, what have I done?" Or the final mission, where Kerrigan's crimes come back to repay her all at once? And even despite that, evil triumphs over good? Powerful scenes, all of them. I loved every character from SCBW. Raynor and Mengsk, Kerrigan and Duke, the Overmind and Zasz, Fenix and Tassadar, Zeratul and Artanis, Stukov and DuGalle, Duran and the Matriarch, even Aldaris, the old codger. Each had something interesting and different to offer to the story, and each was an active agent in what happened. They all fit together into a greater whole. I just don't feel that from SC2, which is a shame.
On March 24 2013 18:37 XiaoJoyce- wrote: I feel SC/BW story is realistic, everything interwined together, there are many characters around you and YOU are part of the story being the commander or the executor or some high rank officer.
The story is Real-Time with real situation, and then the story goes on bit by bit.
The SC2 story is, more like a storybook story. Zeratul can appear anytime he wants. Queen of blade trying to obtain the ultimate power for revenge. And the dark master amon is actually a very very powerful dark lord from the void.
The dictatorship of acturus is also very bland, it is so obvious he is bad guy. It feels like in SC2 they wan to tell u acturus is evil. But I feel in SC/BW they just show, but do not tell at all.
I do not like the " Hey, I tell you in your face, acturus is truely a dictator." Look at WOL 1st mission where the acturus give a very obvious progpaganda message. Or the newscastor showing too obvious cover up of the story.
Too obvious till the real-time feel is gone. Like a storybook tale.
Yup, my thought exactly.
I have to mention, how SC/BW story embed in my mind for more than 10 years.
Character development like, how Duran from Confederate Resistance, to UED advisor to DuGale, and then Kerrigan Consort, then to some ancient intelligent guy serving a greater power, calling powerful individual as young...
This is like developing from a new beginning giving me hope to see how the story develops, and then giving me wonderful climax I need to change my pants. Yet the climax serve as a stepping stone to a greater beginning.
Or Tassadar, fallen executor turned hero, on the 10 campaign , and there I was, the executor. Being through thick and many rains, seeing him met with obstacle even from his protoss brothers/kin. Sticking firm with his belief, saving terran, reconciling with the dark templars. And then he sacrifice himself for the whole universe...
I remember I cried, back then. Actually I didnt noe Tassadar died until I play BW episode 1. I cried when I play BW episode 1.
Shit, so much love for him.
Now, I forgot most of the things happened in Wings of Liberty. Although it is only 2-3 years of release. Well, not most. but there is no memorable event, such as Kerrigan vs Tassadar, the infestation of Kerrigan, how conferderate falls.
There is only, Kerrigan failing, or maybe bad guy taunting. You will never beat me. You are weak. Like the Diablo 3 Belial.
Potrait comes out : You will never beat me. Potrait comes out : OH?????? It is okay, small setback for me, but still my power/army overwhelm you. Potrait comes out : NOOOO
Something like that, I have been observing...
I'll stop here. Too many thoughts on my mind.
Or how about Kerrigan and Fenix? The proud, battle-scarred old warrior defiantly back-talking the malevolent mastermind in the face of his own death. Or DuGalle's remorse: "Alexei, what have I done?" Or the final mission, where Kerrigan's crimes come back to repay her all at once? And even despite that, evil triumphs over good? Powerful scenes, all of them. I loved every character from SCBW. Raynor and Mengsk, Kerrigan and Duke, the Overmind and Zasz, Fenix and Tassadar, Zeratul and Artanis, Stukov and DuGalle, Duran and the Matriarch, even Aldaris, the old codger. Each had something interesting and different to offer to the story, and each was an active agent in what happened. They all fit together into a greater whole. I just don't feel that from SC2, which is a shame.
YES! My thoughts! EXACTLY!
And their in-game unit voice
Terran is like bad gangster.
Marine: You want a piece of ME boy!? Ghost: Somebody call for an exterminator? Now, reap the whirlwind! FireBat: Need a Light? Siegetank: Tadadada Tdadadadada~ BattleCruiser:Battle cruiser operational.
Protoss is powerful , proud warrior race. And they sound robotic for robot, and professional for warrior. And mysterious/powerful for darktemplar/ templar.
Zealot: My life for Aiur Archon: Poweroverwhelming Dragoon : ..
I noe archon and ghost use the same lines as BW. But the voice they potray. It is storybook voice. No longer professional feel. I feel it this way , at least.
Does zerg sound more zerglish? I am not sure about zerg... I didnt go and listen to zerg voice.
Yea, even when zealot dies, it is a warrior cry. Now a zealot die, like screaming. Maybe I am biased..never mind I will stop here.
Still, in the story. When zerg fight protoss unit, Protoss say something like, they are too many. Ahh~~~ Or get slow down by roach acid The zealot will say : Ah, too hard to move...
It is more like how human would say, not powerful protoss would say.
I was hoping for some strong powerful proud warrior lines. Just like how BW protoss episode one when 2-3 zealots intend to join their brothers to fight the zerg on the battlefield.
It goes something like En taro adun, we must join our brothers in the fight against the zerg on the battlefield.
When they die it is always for AIUR! For ADUN! For Tassadar!
In SC2, it feels like they are trying to make zerg feel strong by saying ahhh, zerg is too many. Or something like that.
On March 20 2013 22:43 Daswollvieh wrote: I´m not surprised with Blizzard taking safe routes in their storytelling, when costs, risks and competition in the gaming industry have increased so much since SC1. I actually find it surprising how many people believe that Blizzard is "just stupid" and could not do better. You can bet your ass that these scripts have gone through countless hands, drafts by professionals and with SC being a multi-million dollar operation they decided for an absolutely standard story like most game developers do. It´s safe.
Though Raynor pulling a gun in his prison cell was hilarious! :D
He does not pull it. Kerrigan puts it into his hand and points it at her own head.
You did an amazing work summing up everything that's wrong with SC2 storyline and narrative. Worth the read after forcing myself to end this disappointing gaming experience by playing most of it today. It also enlighted the fact that i need to play SC/BW campaign again.
It took a bit of time to try and mentally decipher why my sentiment for the scbw story far-exceeded its sequels... scbw, imo, felt as rich as the novel Dune... Its like.. WoL and HoTS were fanfiction stories in comparison to original content quality..Honestly felt like it was written by stephenie meyer. TT
After watching the old leaked version of the final cinematic, I have to say Blizzard got really lazy.
"Did you think I'd keep an animal like you close to me without some kind of insurance policy?" That line by Mengsk - in the original version where he activates the kill switch - makes sense. Granted Kerrigan still knew Mengsk had a kill switch in her during Brood War and so that line could use reworking, but whatever the situation is still believable. Now in the new version where he pulls out the artifact they changed how Mengsk stops Kerrigan but keep the line. That line no longer makes any sense. Kerrigan being close to Mengsk and the artifiact are completely unrelated.
Frankly it feels like bullshit because now you know that in the design process Blizzard had this original kill switch plan, but then someone suggested "Hey why don't we just bring the artifact back in! Everybody will love this great thing we put in last game!" (Bringing in the artifact also raises more questions which annoys the audience, like "Why doesn't Mengsk blow up Kerrigan's attack on his palace?) So they re-animate everything but don't even bother checking if the dialogue still works.
Also the OP is incredible. I wish it was a blog so I could 5-star it.
I thought the HOTS story was pretty good. Much better than in previous SC games. I think a lot of the flak comes from some people (my guess being the younger crowd) wanting a more plot driven / lore based story rather than the character driven story we got.
I had not really recalled the original story so well to notice the inconsistencies of the recent releases. I remember siege tanks and boom boom. that said, really impressive work
On March 25 2013 02:37 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I thought the HOTS story was pretty good. Much better than in previous SC games. I think a lot of the flak comes from some people (my guess being the younger crowd) wanting a more plot driven / lore based story rather than the character driven story we got.
I think a lot of people seem to confuse the gameplay for SC2 vs. SC/BW. Think about how in the first two games you are not really the first person. You're more-or-less a piece of the puzzle, the Judicator, the Adjucant, or the Cerebrate. You aren't really an important character so the story unfolds through a 3rd person view.
In SC2 the way the story is told changes ever so slightly. Now it's not so much of an adventure with all of these heroes that you are a part of, but more the stories of these hero's being played out in a more first person aspect. You ARE Jim Raynor. You ARE Sarah Kerrigan. I would bet you ARE going to be Zeratul in the third one. The difference is that in these stories you are the person the world revolves around, so it's decisions are based upon the character, whereas in the first games you are always kinda told what to do and stick to the script. You didn't 'control' much aside from your part to play in the grand scheme.
I thought the story was pretty good. It was a little disappointing because I felt like not a lot happened. All of a sudden I save Raynor and "oh hay lets go kill Mengsk now." When the last mission at Korhal was played I honestly was like "oh... that's it?" There was so little interaction between the Zerg and the Protoss, aside from the Tal Darim which were touched upon in the first campaign in different scenarios. I think it's interesting how this game was more-or-less strictly Kerrigan vs. The Dominion. Like what the hell is going on with Artanis & the rest of the Protoss? Why are the Tal Darim fanatics? Will the 3rd game turn out to be Protoss vs. Protoss exclusively? I think the third game is going to be the most interesting to see develop since there are so many more potential interactions between characters, both old and new.
Also the above shouldn't necessarily impact ones views on the campaign. I just think it's interesting to look at how the story has been interpreted by others.
Another part of why SC1/BW was so much better is that we play almost all the factions. We played with Jim under the Confederates than part of the Sons of Korhal with kerrigan and Edmund. We played under the Overmind to take Aiur then as the Protoss to defend Aiur. We play as the Protoss as they were manipulated by Kerrigan and then the UED to beat everyone then as Kerrigan again to once again fight everyone
I am not sure if others point it out..maybe because i like the way old school games tell stories..i do not enjoy the 'interactive' dialogue you can with any character. Between every game there are 'new' conversations where you have to click on each to find out what's going on. They ain't critical to the game, they can completely be skipped. I guess these dialogues are meant to give you more of the background of each character. But i find them not engagement and dry. I spent more of my time skipping these parts quickly because they don't push the story foward.
I like the old way SC/BW tell the story. You have to sit and read/listen through the story because every part is important. The 'freedom' you have with hunt new conversations in the in between game menu isn't as enticing. I just want to get into the plot, get into the story and see how it unfolds. I rather have set of missions for planets that you get into. But once you are into, it pulls you along. The lines are pre-sent and you see how the characters develop. I don't need to choose your own adventures in such a way that doens't develop the characters.
Plus the evolution missions are soooo easy. Mabye they are to introduce new units but they really ain't worth the time to load. It would be nice if these these are much more difficult where you really have to earn these strains for new mutations.
On March 25 2013 12:37 BigRedDog wrote: I am not sure if others point it out..maybe because i like the way old school games tell stories..i do not enjoy the 'interactive' dialogue you can with any character. Between every game there are 'new' conversations where you have to click on each to find out what's going on. They ain't critical to the game, they can completely be skipped. I guess these dialogues are meant to give you more of the background of each character. But i find them not engagement and dry. I spent more of my time skipping these parts quickly because they don't push the story foward.
I like the old way SC/BW tell the story. You have to sit and read/listen through the story because every part is important. The 'freedom' you have with hunt new conversations in the in between game menu isn't as enticing. I just want to get into the plot, get into the story and see how it unfolds. I rather have set of missions for planets that you get into. But once you are into, it pulls you along. The lines are pre-sent and you see how the characters develop. I don't need to choose your own adventures in such a way that doens't develop the characters.
Plus the evolution missions are soooo easy. Mabye they are to introduce new units but they really ain't worth the time to load. It would be nice if these these are much more difficult where you really have to earn these strains for new mutations.
The conversations are just supplemental and like you said rarely part of pushing the main plot along. They seem to be there just to help establish personalities and expand upon motivations or reactions. Maybe if you could engage some of the conversation in-game during slow parts, that could keep down some of the tedium associated with the more insignificant dialogue.
Thank you. Blizzard is even more guilty than the standard soap opera in ignoring their characters established traits & personalities, not to mention changing canon whenever one of their writers is too lazy to change their story idea. All that criticism is well justified & oddly the absolutely atrocious story telling is one of the reasons I stopped playing WoW & basically ignore any and all single-player elements in Blizzard games. So yeah, I really appreciate you putting into words the many disappointments of Blizzard's game worlds.
I dunno. I don't think either of the SC2 stories were particularly good, but its clear that the author here and others have set very high standards for a video game story, and I am not sure where that came from. Most will say that it is because SC1/BW had very good stories, but I am not sure that is the case. I think many peoples memories of the SC1 campaign are colored by nostalgia and/or how young they were at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I think the story of both SC1 installments were better than both SC2 installments, but they were really only slightly above average for a video game. There are plot devices that are used way too often, most notably a character being infested/evil/planning a betrayal the whole time. I don't know how many times in BW characters were stuck scratching their heads saying "Golly gee guys, that wily Queen of Blades pulled a fast one on us again." Very few characters are actually that developed, and the plot has kind of a weird structure at some points, particularly in Broodwar, where there isn't a real definite enemy that gets defeated, so there isn't exactly a traditional climax and end.
I'm not saying the SC1/BW stories are bad by any means, I just don't think they are quite as good as some people think they are 10 years later. They're no Star Wars or Dune. Hell, they're no Mass Effect.
You have to read the books to get the most out of the story within the games. I agree with your sentiment that it is different media, but it's the storytellers right to dictate how it is told, and the audience can only properly review it when they have experienced the "full" story. I have been in the entertainment business for over twenty years. Blizzard has made mistakes, some glaring, in execution of their narratives. However, the character depths, themes, and choices made in many cinematics, especially in Heart of the Swarm, have a deeper meaning with grandiose aesthetic power from a simple image or action.
SO MANY ASSUMPTIONS. Kerrigan knew everything going on and had the human reasoning that she regained while in BW? Ha... I definitely did not get that impression. She changed big time in BW the moment she was infested. The rest is pretty ridiculous too. HotS was actually fairly well put together story wise and kept BW in mind quite well too. It just didn't go the way a bunch of people apparently wanted and thus the constant whining about love stories. It was also one of the best put together campaigns I have played in any game. So what of the boss fight was similar to Belial? It wasn't like that was the first time a fight of that style was done in a game anyways. Belial was similar to another fight which was similar to another fight. Go complain about those designers too. There were more than enough differences for anyone not ridiculously picky to get by with.
On March 20 2013 22:58 levelping wrote: Just to preempt this point.... Just because something is for the masses doesn't mean it has to be bad. Look at the avengers. It's a pop corn flick done good. We're not asking for Shakespeare with hots. Just something decent
It was decent. Heck I would say more than decent. You are clearly expecting Shakespeare because this was no worse than most of BW. It just focused on individual storylines a bit more.
I dunno why everyone is so surprised at Kerrigan flying, if she can lift stuff bigger than herself with telekinesis surely she can use that to fly right?
On March 25 2013 18:32 targ wrote: I dunno why everyone is so surprised at Kerrigan flying, if she can lift stuff bigger than herself with telekinesis surely she can use that to fly right?
On March 25 2013 18:32 targ wrote: I dunno why everyone is so surprised at Kerrigan flying, if she can lift stuff bigger than herself with telekinesis surely she can use that to fly right?
On March 25 2013 18:32 targ wrote: I dunno why everyone is so surprised at Kerrigan flying, if she can lift stuff bigger than herself with telekinesis surely she can use that to fly right?
i normally dont think through the story too much in these kind of games i just go with what im seeing without thinking it through too much. but man this story was pretty terrible even for my low standards. first of all when you look at the overall picture what did happen in the 25 or so episodes? you killed mengsk, found out a little more about the hybrids and thats basically it
raynor gets killed early on without any drama so that was a given he wasnt really dead and was coming back which i think is pretty lame. then the kiss scene? wtf? now i had played the original starcraft games years ago and i didnt remember any resemblance of romance whatsoever in the whole game/s so this stroke me as odd and unfitting
the last scene is the worst however. with mengsk acting all cool because of his trap thing (okay so you got kerrigan what about the billion of zerg outside the building? and why was kerrigan alone? and why was only raynor there alone as well?) and the classic hero coming at the end to save the girl from the bad guy
On March 25 2013 18:32 targ wrote: I dunno why everyone is so surprised at Kerrigan flying, if she can lift stuff bigger than herself with telekinesis surely she can use that to fly right?
Voldemort can fly too.
He can? I mean without a broom.
It's a jump the shark moment for some Harry Potter fans.
so in summary, after 2/3 of the story we have that mengsk is dead, and kerrigan is Raynor's bitch who will leave terran and protss in peace likely. that's it. i mean, really?
I find it interesting that so many people are saying that people have high standards for a video game story. The original story was no work of art but in its simplicity you got a decent story, memorable characters, and a universe you wanted to follow. The story so far in SC2 hasn't been terribly interesting to me. I think is due in large part to the inconsistencies between the stories in SC1 and SC2, and the fact that we have pretty different characters in each series despite them having the same names.
It all kind of makes me wonder if I would be more involved in the story if these inconsistencies weren't there or I hadn't played through the SC1 campaign before SC2. It's easy to overlook plot holes and continuity issues if the story is engaging and there are a lot of examples of this in VG and Movie history.
On March 25 2013 14:40 TheLetterQ wrote: I dunno. I don't think either of the SC2 stories were particularly good, but its clear that the author here and others have set very high standards for a video game story, and I am not sure where that came from. Most will say that it is because SC1/BW had very good stories, but I am not sure that is the case. I think many peoples memories of the SC1 campaign are colored by nostalgia and/or how young they were at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I think the story of both SC1 installments were better than both SC2 installments, but they were really only slightly above average for a video game. There are plot devices that are used way too often, most notably a character being infested/evil/planning a betrayal the whole time. I don't know how many times in BW characters were stuck scratching their heads saying "Golly gee guys, that wily Queen of Blades pulled a fast one on us again." Very few characters are actually that developed, and the plot has kind of a weird structure at some points, particularly in Broodwar, where there isn't a real definite enemy that gets defeated, so there isn't exactly a traditional climax and end.
I'm not saying the SC1/BW stories are bad by any means, I just don't think they are quite as good as some people think they are 10 years later. They're no Star Wars or Dune. Hell, they're no Mass Effect.
Yes, the standard is incredibly high. Consistency and a script that's better than some trashy fan fiction plot is a very high standard.
In all seriousness, the standards are quite low. Consistency, cohesiveness, and a none-horrific script are not high standards.
I dunno why everyone is so surprised at Kerrigan flying, if she can lift stuff bigger than herself with telekinesis surely she can use that to fly right?
The problem is this; if Kerrigan can fly, why the fuck hasn't she flown in the three other SC games we've seen her in? It'd be a huge tool for a lot of challenges she's faced.
On March 26 2013 04:50 Stratos_speAr wrote: The problem is this; if Kerrigan can fly, why the fuck hasn't she flown in the three other SC games we've seen her in? It'd be a huge tool for a lot of challenges she's faced.
Because she´s a lady and know how good her zerg high heels looks when she walkz.
Read this very long post and I have to agree- the story is indeed bad. I hope it can get better but I don't expect it.
On a more positive note, the single player, despite the bad story, was A LOT of fun for me even though brutal was a bit too easy. Overall heart of the swarm is a big success, could've been even more awesome with a better story.
On the points raised about the inexplicable presence of (re-)infested Stukov in the OP, I honestly believe that he was shoehorned in just so they could give us the incredibly awesome portrait.
On March 25 2013 14:40 TheLetterQ wrote: I dunno. I don't think either of the SC2 stories were particularly good, but its clear that the author here and others have set very high standards for a video game story, and I am not sure where that came from. Most will say that it is because SC1/BW had very good stories, but I am not sure that is the case. I think many peoples memories of the SC1 campaign are colored by nostalgia and/or how young they were at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I think the story of both SC1 installments were better than both SC2 installments, but they were really only slightly above average for a video game. There are plot devices that are used way too often, most notably a character being infested/evil/planning a betrayal the whole time. I don't know how many times in BW characters were stuck scratching their heads saying "Golly gee guys, that wily Queen of Blades pulled a fast one on us again." Very few characters are actually that developed, and the plot has kind of a weird structure at some points, particularly in Broodwar, where there isn't a real definite enemy that gets defeated, so there isn't exactly a traditional climax and end.
I'm not saying the SC1/BW stories are bad by any means, I just don't think they are quite as good as some people think they are 10 years later. They're no Star Wars or Dune. Hell, they're no Mass Effect.
Yes, the standard is incredibly high. Consistency and a script that's better than some trashy fan fiction plot is a very high standard.
In all seriousness, the standards are quite low. Consistency, cohesiveness, and a none-horrific script are not high standards.
I don't know about your standards, but the author of this topic wrote a very long essay that is basically a moment-by-moment breakdown of the campaign, that touches on such topics as how the game deals with PTSD, gender relations, and the game being too kid friendly. It is pretty clear that the author of this article at least sets very high standards.
I don't particularly want to act as an apologist for the HOTS campaign story, as I believe too that it wasn't really that good, but I will say that I will take the fun gameplay and crappy story of the two SC2 campaigns over the passable story and subpar gameplay of SC1/BW any day.
Even the supporting cast of was weak. Zagarra was childish, Izsha was a ditz and Abathur was just the resident curmudgeon. And how did Kerrigan try to develop her lieutenant, Zagarra? Did she offer instruction and example? No, she just says, "Vision," and sends her down to have more play-doe syringed into her brain mass.
Each of these characters had an opportunity to represent different aspects of Kerrigan's development as leader of the zerg. Zagarra represented strategy and patience versus blind ferocity. Izsha represented heritage and sense of identity conflicting with altering fundamental aspects of who and what the Queen of Blades is and who she could be, and the same for the Swarm. Abathur is an example of cruelty for the sake of efficiency, and all Kerrigan does is complain about his methods.
I only started playing SC with WoL, and even I thought Jim had some hardcore rose colored tint on his glasses. Also, I'm almost 30 and would appreciate matured characters. This story had so much potential.
On March 26 2013 04:50 Stratos_speAr wrote: The problem is this; if Kerrigan can fly, why the fuck hasn't she flown in the three other SC games we've seen her in? It'd be a huge tool for a lot of challenges she's faced.
She couldn't fly while she was the Queen of Blades. She gained the ability when he went to Zerus and was remade by the primal Zerg. Then she didn't use it until she saw Raynor, and she did so to impress him and try to win him back, because she knew he'd be upset with her and her new Zerg body.
On March 26 2013 04:50 Stratos_speAr wrote: The problem is this; if Kerrigan can fly, why the fuck hasn't she flown in the three other SC games we've seen her in? It'd be a huge tool for a lot of challenges she's faced.
She couldn't fly while she was the Queen of Blades. She gained the ability when he went to Zerus and was remade by the primal Zerg. Then she didn't use it until she saw Raynor, and she did so to impress him and try to win him back, because she knew he'd be upset with her and her new Zerg body.
It worked, as we saw.
Maybe she was on a thin zerg string from the leviathan, pulling her like a spiders thread.
I loved your critique and enjoyed your display of taste!
An anecdote I think was funny: I watched some of the Day9 playthrough vids of the first few missions when my flat mate walked in during a cut scene and asked me how the campaign looks so far. Me: "Up till now Raynor's contribution basically is condensed down to just saying 'Sarah!'." -*Scene of Dominion drop ships impacting. Cut to Raynor*- Raynor: "Sarah!" Felt like a satire of their own story..^^
On March 24 2013 23:13 ShotgunMike wrote: I'm sure there are some holes in the plot here and there, but so is the case in most movies. If one is too much digging into the details on these things, I don't think you can enjoy that much of the media produced out there. Which is mostly unfortunately for you I guess..
Right.
God Forbid the people who wrote the story for HOTS have any regard for previous SC history. God Forbid they read anything that Blizzard had ever written before, and instead let them go ahead willy nilly and write whatever they want, and we if we dig "too" deep, then that is our problem. Seriously, is that the argument?
Now I enjoyed the campaign, it would just be better without the plot issues, which aren't hard to fix. It just takes some effort, which Blizzard didn't put in based on the story.
It isn't that hard to write a story based on another story without having a lack of continuity, and without disregarding the previous story. I learned how way back in high school writing and film class.
Not God Forbid at all! I agree, there could have been more done to the story. But nonetheless, I do enjoy the game so I guess I was not bothered enough by it to write a whole wall of text trying to pick it apart. That seems like wasting time in my eyes. But hey, we can all chose to spend our time differently. My point was that I'm sure that there are holes in there, I just did not find them that bothersome and I still enjoy the game - money well spent!
I agree with OP on allot of things, disagree on a couple of key points. First I will get out of the way that I completely think Blizzards writing has gone to shit and the over all Wing's and Swarm's stories could be written better even by me. (Maybe I will write up my own lore just to see how it compares) Second just as a disclaimer, I didn't read OP's entire post, I skimmed and read most of it, but not every sentence..
That out of the way here is what I disagree with. First and probably the biggest thing, is as apposed to OP I think the love story between Sarah and Jim is very very believable. I have played SC1/BW at least a good half dozen times all the way through and I always felt there was sexual/romantic tension between these two characters, even from the little dialog that was spoken. Because there was so little dialog we are left to fill in allot of the blanks ourselves. And what each character feels about what they say is also largely open to interpretation. (I like to think Sarah rather enjoyed Jim's lewd thoughts and was berating him more so because they had a job to do/and or to tease him but that's beside the point) Perhaps the strongest evidence of Jim's love for her is his determination to kill what she had become, the queen of blades. (Arguably in Wings he succeeded and managed to avenge Fenix and other fallen comrades if you consider the queen of blades and Sarah Kerrigan to be two separate characters which I, and clearly Jim do.) In conclusion, I feel that the love story in of itself is fine. (They didn't tell it well at all, but I do easily feel these characters love each other.)
On to the second disagreement., and that is OP's interpretation of Jim Raynor as a character and the decisions that he makes given the context. I'm gonna drive straight into the deep end and talk about the scene that he is reunited with Sarah in the prison cell and try to address all the OP's "problems" with it. OP's first problem is the "nonexistent love story." if you read my post so far, it will be easy to understand that I don't feel this is a problem at all. OPs second problem/s (I'm gonna lump a few of them together.) is that the Queen of blades killed billions of people and several named characters that we(And Jim.) are supposed to (and in the case of Fenix absolutely) feel angry about. Jim is clearly angry, both at seeing all he efforts being thwarted seeing Sarah as the queen of blades once more and at the reignited memories of the murders she committed. So I see no problem here. OP brings up that Jim swore he would kill Kerrigan if its the last thing he does, and that all her actions as queen of blades would remove any kind of connection he feels to this woman. Again I counter point by saying Jim feels the Queen of blades and Sarah Kerrigan are two completely different people. And now he has a gun pointed at her head. (Ignoring how he has a gun, Yeah I do agree with OP's final 'wrong' about this scene.) So why doesn't he kill her? Two reasons, the most important reason is Jim trusts Zeratul and knows about the prophecy. Jim is a good guy but he is also a guy for the greater good. This alone is enough for me to justify Jim putting his own feelings aside and not killing her. Secondly, and this one is more subjective, is that I think Jim see's the old Sarah in this new queen of blades, despite her appearance. But he has mixed feelings, of anger, love regret/pity/what ever else is going on this mans brain, so it makes sense that he would just say "Fuck it we're done." And storm out, leaving her alive because he trusts Zeratul and doesn't know what to make of his own feelings. All that said, I think this scene was actually one of the few they did well, and makes sense to me given the context and my interpretation of the characters. Of course all of that is shat on in the final scene where he says "My pleasure darlin, always was." Jim's character is allot more complex than that bullshit. But what ever lol.(Maybe he is just saying that cause he wants some Queen of Blades pussy.)
Well if you managed to read my crappy run on post thanks, just to note again. Don't think I am defending Blizzard or this games writing, overall I agree, its horrible. I'll be back for legacy of the void though to see how things all come together. (And ultimately destroy one of my favorite franchises.)
Some TL;DR and random thoughts/notes.
-Jim and Sarah do love each other and this is believable
-Jim's actions during the "prison scene" make sense in context.
-Sarah being able to fly isn't so far fetched, her psionic power alone is enough to levitate and throw things great distances, why is it unreasonable that she can do this to herself?
-I didn't know about the extra BW campaigns where Alexi is revived, I hated him in Swarm, why the hell did they bring him back. Complete disrespect for an awesome character, fuck you Blizzard, even if he was brought back, why the hell does he side with the Queen of blades of all people, it would make more sense if he offed himself like DuGalle given what he has become and his history. (Or perhaps try to return to earth despite his appearance.)
-How do mutalisks fly in space by flapping their wings.
-If I wrote the story Jim Raynor would have ended up a part of Kerrigan's swarm. Forever fighting by her side as a powerful general. What better happy ending can you ask for?
-lol primal zerg, I thought the zerg and protoss were completely engineered by the Xel'naga not altered from existing organisms.
-Nova's appearance and character continues to disappoint me on several levels. Its like she exists just to remind us of the failure of Starcraft:Ghost. She has no character development, no purpose and where the hell did she go after capturing Jim? Why isn't she defending Mengsk? She is such a wasted opportunity. (Oh I get it, just like Ghost, haha! Good one Blizzard)
On March 26 2013 12:29 TheLetterQ wrote: ... I will take the fun gameplay and crappy story of the two SC2 campaigns over the passable story and subpar gameplay of SC1/BW any day.
You're using the word "subpar" incorrectly. See, the context you used that word in implies that the subject has somehow slipped beneath a predetermined standard or "par" that has been established through a renowned work in the genre. SC1/BW became the new standard for years. Its fine to prefer SC2, but don't use words you don't understand to put down BW because it will just make you look less credible due to the implication of the existence of an intellectual deficiency on your part.
BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
On March 26 2013 23:48 sCCrooked wrote: BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans.
On March 26 2013 23:48 sCCrooked wrote: BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans.
Considering the topic of the OP, I laugh at the notion of this being a possibility.
On March 26 2013 23:48 sCCrooked wrote: BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans.
Considering the topic of the OP, I laugh at the notion of this being a possibility.
Yet you don't address the argument at all. You said that BW had far superior gameplay because SC2 tries to stick close to how that game played, by referencing the interface (which by the way, is completely disconnected from your premise, but never mind). The reason they don't radically change how the game feels (or, for that matter, how the interface looks) is so that people still feel like they're playing Starcraft. Can you imagine the uproar if the interface and all the mechanics were completely changed?
I kind of liked the missions for the most part. Except they were waaaay too easy, even on brutal. And i felt they get even easier as the game went on.
IMHO that is because of 3 main flaws:
- A spell that permanently gives you enemy units, without any supply cost is just plain stupid. The Hive-Mind-Controller was stupid in WoL and the Infestor in the campaign is stupid too. Almost every mission, i had like 5 Thors, 2 BCs and a couple of Viking/Banshee which almost did the job by themselves.
- WHY did they remove the inject mechanic from the campaign? WHY don't have the hatcheries the usual larva-limit of 3. I am a gold/plat player, so my Macro is pretty shitty, but without the inject mechanic, you just need to spam some five or so Hatcheries and you have plenty of larvae ready at every point.
- Some units get incredibly imba and other are just plain useless. Why have units like the Abberation? They were "good" in that one mission, the rest of the time they are completly useless. I found the swarmling, the vile roach and the zombie ultralisk to be incredibly imba. Just massing these, throw in 3 infestors to take over every shit that comes near and run over each mission. The way Blizzard tries to tackle this problem is pathetic. They try to layout the missions so that the unit you get new in this mission, is the one unit you need to win. With that they want to make us (the players) use all the units in the game. Its like they think we are apes or something: Here is a a new tool, USE IT! HURR DURR. For me that invokes a rebelling feel inside, to AVOID those units at all cost, so i end up going roach/ling/ultra/queen every mission.
2. Story
I don't want to kick a dead horse here, but the story is a mess:
- Love Story between Raynor / Kerrigan is just bad. - Dialog is cringeworthy alot (Raynor: "My hair got more gray" Kerrigan: "Yes, and mine got more zerg.") - The whole plot is a revenge plot for something that is so obviously a fake and not established. it makes no sense. - Why all the Bullshit with getting stronger and gathering the swarm, when you just want to kill ONE MAN? Kerrigan even spares most of the innocent terrans. Kerringan tells over and over again, it will be sooo hard to kill Mengsk. WHY? He is just a normal dude. Just assassinate that fucker and move on. - What in the name of fuck drives Kerrigan to go back to the Queen of Blades-Outfit? I thought she was happy to be kind of human again. What are her long-term goals after Mengsk is dead. I imagine her looking at here body and be all like "how am i getting rid of this shit again?" - Who is Stukov? Why is here there? He is a half-dead infested terran and he seems to be totally cool with that. That makes no sense. He also serves no purpose whatsoever. - The whole Broodmother thing makes no sense. Why is Zagara so supportive all of a sudden? She says MULTIPLE TIMES, she wants to take over the swarm someday, yet she never even tries to backstab Kerrigan. - The Zerg as a race made much more sense (and were a lot cooler) when they were controlled by one mysterious entity "THE OVERMIND". The idea of a collective conscience controlling these uncountable masses suit the concept of the race a lot better (just like the Borg), than some nameless and boring "Broodmothers" and their "tribes" or whatever.
- Finally and most important: What made the SC1/Broodwar-Story so awesome is the fact that you felt, the FATE OF THE UNIVERSE is at stake and every race is trying to backstab each other, to survive. In both WoL and HotS your perspective is limited to one person, which is essentially a maniac going ape shit for his/her own personal goals.
On March 26 2013 23:48 sCCrooked wrote: BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans.
Considering the topic of the OP, I laugh at the notion of this being a possibility.
Yet you don't address the argument at all. You said that BW had far superior gameplay because SC2 tries to stick close to how that game played, by referencing the interface (which by the way, is completely disconnected from your premise, but never mind). The reason they don't radically change how the game feels (or, for that matter, how the interface looks) is so that people still feel like they're playing Starcraft. Can you imagine the uproar if the interface and all the mechanics were completely changed?
You seem to be completely missing my point of the irony in that you're asking these sorts of hypothetical questions when the reality that they alienated a significant portion of their old base by demolishing the old storyline and characters is right before us.
The truth is the introduction of so many key elements in the BW interface is what led to the evolution of what we consider "standards" for RTS interfaces and games in general today. You're attempting to make the incorrect assumption that comparing SC2's features to BW's is somehow Blizzard's attempt to keep the players feeling like they're playing Starcraft when in reality more players felt SC2's playstyle was closer to WC3's.
I could go on, but if you don't already know why BW was so revolutionary in its timeframe and why these sorts of wild story arcs kill the feeling of "still being in Starcraft" then you're quite frankly too far behind for me to take the time to catch you up. Don't be lazy, just research if you weren't personally a part of it.
**Edit**
Rather than bump the whole thread for a ridiculous response, I'll just state that after this:
On March 27 2013 01:09 Gogo1 wrote: What, exactly, is your point? I'll admit that I have yet to play SC1 (and Brood War), so I don't know the storyline before WoL.
You have lost all credibility. You're posting in a thread griping about the incongruities we see between the original story arc and this weird off-pattern love story we're suddenly being forced to watch for HotS and you haven't even played BW. You can't imagine the difference it makes having experienced the game and even if you did that, you can't imagine the difference it makes having that game be a pillar for what you believed was the standard for a "good" rts game since childhood and then in your adult years having that completely scrapped for some BS that isn't plausible and didn't exist.
You're 2 entire worlds away from even understanding where we're coming from much less being on a level to discuss it. Everything other than this part in your response is utter nonsense and isn't even a concern to anyone but you apparently.
On March 26 2013 23:48 sCCrooked wrote: BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans.
Considering the topic of the OP, I laugh at the notion of this being a possibility.
Yet you don't address the argument at all. You said that BW had far superior gameplay because SC2 tries to stick close to how that game played, by referencing the interface (which by the way, is completely disconnected from your premise, but never mind). The reason they don't radically change how the game feels (or, for that matter, how the interface looks) is so that people still feel like they're playing Starcraft. Can you imagine the uproar if the interface and all the mechanics were completely changed?
You seem to be completely missing my point of the irony in that you're asking these sorts of hypothetical questions when the reality that they alienated a significant portion of their old base by demolishing the old storyline and characters is right before us.
The truth is the introduction of so many key elements in the BW interface is what led to the evolution of what we consider "standards" for RTS interfaces and games in general today. You're attempting to make the incorrect assumption that comparing SC2's features to BW's is somehow Blizzard's attempt to keep the players feeling like they're playing Starcraft when in reality more players felt SC2's playstyle was closer to WC3's.
I could go on, but if you don't already know why BW was so revolutionary in its timeframe and why these sorts of wild story arcs kill the feeling of "still being in Starcraft" then you're quite frankly too far behind for me to take the time to catch you up. Don't be lazy, just research if you weren't personally a part of it.
What, exactly, is your point? I'll admit that I have yet to play SC1 (and Brood War), so I don't know the storyline before WoL. But anyway, from what I've read I can understand that the story alienated people, but you are talking about the interface, and somehow make the connection that interface = gameplay. And though my assumption may be incorrect (and let me just state that it was a suggestion, not a rhetorical question), you still don't show how it is so. You just say "many people say it feels like WC3", but how?
Also, if you're gonna go with the argument that the masses are right, then I am sorry to tell you that the majority posts I've read on these forums say that from a gameplay standpoint HotS beats Brood War hands down, but it's in the story department the game's lacking.
I just finished reading your "thesis" and have to say, i pretty much agree with all your points. I am pretty much in exactly the same situation as you are both in demographic and in experiences with games and i completely understand your feelings and dissociation effect.
It is a damned shame. I did "enjoy" (big brackets here) in part the HotS campaign (as in i didn't regret playing it, nor was i offered something to be enthusiastic about) but as a story of something else entirely, not connected to the Starcraft universe i know and love.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to write this down, it was a pleasure to read such a well informed and accurate review.
On March 27 2013 00:55 reapsen wrote: - The whole plot is a revenge plot for something that is so obviously a fake and not established. it makes no sense.
The main story is about defining who / what Kerrigan is. Her revenge against Mengsk is just a vehicle for exploring that.
Thanks for this review. I enjoyed the campaign as a whole, but that's because I only played through the campaigns of SC and BW a couple of times many, many years ago. I didn't remember the backstory as intimately as you did, and I guess that allowed me to suspend my disbelief in certain story elements that nagged at me. I felt that I was just mis-remembering things that happened in SC because I thought that they surely wouldn't retcon the backstory so drastically. Things like Kerrigan having deep feelings for Jim, Stukov being alive, and Kerrigan being enraged at the sight of Zeratul kind of shocked me out of my immersion to say, "wait, that's not right... is it?"
Thanks for pointing out what really happened and making me feel like I'm not crazy!
I think the big reason people are so critical is because of all of the missed opportunities. A lot of people were jaded by the story in WoL, but HotS seemed to be promising. You got to play as Kerrigan, who had just recently been cleansed of the Zerg by the artifact. Was she on the side of the good guys now? Or somewhere down there, is she still the same Queen Bitch of the Universe that we loved to hate?
This also gave us a good chance to delve into the inner workings of the Zerg. We know that the Zerg have a hive mind mentality, but the Broodmothers as shown by Zagara do have ambition. Could this possibly lead to disobedience to the hive mind or betrayal? Abathur was also decently entertaining and provided a good example of the mentality of the Zerg compared to humans, which have the capability of feeling emotion.
I would have preferred if a few things changed. I would have liked Kerrigan to show more hesitation when choosing to abandon her humanity. Would she really be able to rejoin humanity that easily? Even if she truly couldn't remember what she had done, every human being will remember the millions/billions (Starcraft numbers are so inconsistent) of people she killed as the Queen of Blades. Jim most likely would be the only person willing to accept her. Over the course of the campaign, she would gain a greater understanding of how the Zerg work and maybe even sympathize with them. Near the end, she would make the difficult decision to remain with the Zerg instead of staying as a human because even though Jim went to great lengths to purify her, things wouldn't have a fairy tale ending like he had hoped. With her newly acquired moral guidance (thanks to Jim's efforts), she could keep the Zerg under control so they would not mercilessly conquer worlds needlessly. Just like Kael'thas wanted to cure his people of the addiction to magic, Kerrigan might want to remove Amon's taint (still awkward saying) so the Zerg wouldn't be overwhelmed with the need to consume. It would be a bittersweet but somewhat happy ending, and would set the stage for the large battle with Amon. A tad cliche I suppose, but it would work.
On March 27 2013 03:00 Kitai wrote: Thanks for this review. I enjoyed the campaign as a whole, but that's because I only played through the campaigns of SC and BW a couple of times many, many years ago. I didn't remember the backstory as intimately as you did, and I guess that allowed me to suspend my disbelief in certain story elements that nagged at me. I felt that I was just mis-remembering things that happened in SC because I thought that they surely wouldn't retcon the backstory so drastically. Things like Kerrigan having deep feelings for Jim, Stukov being alive, and Kerrigan being enraged at the sight of Zeratul kind of shocked me out of my immersion to say, "wait, that's not right... is it?"
Thanks for pointing out what really happened and making me feel like I'm not crazy!
Its not "technically" ret-conning, exactly--it simply requires you to have used their other less popular products.
I mean, it is problematic, and a lot of their execution sucked even when I sort of "knew" what they were going for. And thats speaking as someone who did not find the dialogue or plot to be the least bit cheesy. Okay, a tiny bit cheesy, but in a good way.
I was more estranged by the lack of cohesion between many of the missions. It was the same problem I had with WoL.
In WoL Raynor is supposedly doing his best to go save/kill Kerrigan. But you spent so many missions randomly robbing trains and killing Protoss that it never felt like you were on a clock.
It's the same thing in HotS. Sure, she says that Mengsk is her priority--but she then spends forever playing king of the hill with a bunch of lizards.
Because most of SC1/BW was more abstract, it painted in broad strokes only giving tiny glimpses of personal information. This made it so that the plot held together more easily. We knew what "The Terran" or "The Protoss" were doing and we knew what a few key players were doing within them. But in WoL/HotS the opposite happened. We only really follow the motivations of 2-3 people and the "overall narrative" of Terrans fighting Protoss and Zergs gets lost.
Do you know what the Protoss are doing as a whole? I don't.
How about the Terrans? No? You just know what one space ship is doing? Yeah, I got that feeling too.
It is evident that you put a lot of time and effort into this, and I appreciate that. It is also true, that there are blazing holes in the storyline (e.g. what's with the gun in the cell?). However, your perspective is heavily biased from the start, IMO. In cases where things could be ambiguous, you CHOSE to believe in the side that's retrograde to Blizzard's intention. It is true that both sides have valid arguments, but for the sake of convenience and enjoyment, I see no reason why we can't just buy what Blizzard's feeding us (as long as there's no holes so obvious it's absurd).
Anyway, Blizzard's strength has always been the gameplay, the competitive element and the engine. Even WC3 (a game that I love and still play from time to time), to me it was always the multiplayer.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
Couldn't read it all and skimmed it, but so far, this reflects what i felt about the mission perfectly, and i know at least 3 people (the only people i talked to the mission about) who feel EXACTLY the same.
I loved the Brood-war story and was looking forward to SC2, and as much as i tried enjoying the story, I actually told everyone i liked it after playing, I just cannot close my eyes and ignore the many faults in the storyline.
Thank you for writing this, maybe it'll reach blizzard... but hey, i don't really think they care anymore.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal.
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you?
I could probably enjoy the SC2 story except for one bit, it's completely inconsistent with SC1. The SC2 story isn't great by any means, but entertaining enough. I enjoy the campaign because the missions have been well designed in both WoL and HotS.
What really kills it for me is that at every turn they introduce story which doesn't fit with the existing SC universe. All I want is some consistency.
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal.
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you?
I just love this line of argument: Yeah, it's bad, but bad is good enough!
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal.
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you?
I don't agree. I think sc2 with its huge focus on esports was meant to be something that keeps people interested for a multitude of years, much like BW managed to do. Similarly, I think the RMAH in d3 was meant to provide similar legs that would keep people playing the game and grinding it out for hours upon hours upon years for as long as possible. Instead, the game surrounding the concepts of esports or the RMAH simply weren't that good, and both fell short of providing Blizzard quality which has kept fans playing their previous games for many years without ever getting bored.
Saying d3 and sc2 were MEANT to be light hearted weekend wasters does not change the fact that that is what they essentially are. I don't believe that was ever the goal, the games just weren't good enough to live up to expectations.
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal.
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you?
Please explain the perfect score Bioshock: Infinite is getting everywhere on the back of its story and setting and writing. Please provide examples of websites publishing "The writing in Portal 1 and 2 was just a bit too good for our taste".
Just because you're happy with 'bad' and think that is good enough doesn't actually make 'bad' better than 'good'. Even if you wouldn't enjoy it more with good writing, can you really say it would make the game worse?
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
Well... yes and no. I still think SC/BW have far more superior and effective cutscenes (even accounting how aged they look) and while the story may be convoluted and often quite a bore, it is never really "cringeworthy". As opposed to HotS, where quite a few scenes are really, really cringeworthy - I really cannot find anything in BW that comes even close to the embarassing exchanges between Sarah and Raynor.
And I agree nostalgic bias is hard to turn off completely. But it's not impossible to try and account for that. For example, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun was one of my favorite games back in the days and I thought it had spectacular cutscenes and great story, but I can quite honestly state now that the game itself was rather pedestrian and that the cutscene are cheesy and laughable. Ditto for the Wing Commander series. But old Blizzard's hits, especially original Starcraft and Diablo.. they actually hold up pretty well.
On March 27 2013 22:56 Lachrymose wrote: Just because you're happy with 'bad' and think that is good enough doesn't actually make 'bad' better than 'good'. Even if you wouldn't enjoy it more with good writing, can you really say it would make the game worse?
Yep, there is a singificant amount of people who realize how bad the story is but see nothing wrong because it's just a game. Well, yes. It's just a game. It's the age of mediocrity, Twilight movies are constantly being given best movie of the year award, Justin Bieber is one of the most popular music performers... so why not be completely content with games that offer semi-polished gameplay, surprisingly mediocre story and hammy cutscenes? And that from a company previously known for highly polished gameplay, enjoyable stories and spectacular cutscenes? Because "it's a game". Right.
It's not like in recent years you get to see games that manage to actually tell a decent story. Like Spec Ops:The Line. Portal 2. Mass Effect. Bioshock. Telltale's Walking Dead. Even bloody Tomb Raider for chrissakes. But nope, Starcraft should get a free pass. It's just a game.
On March 26 2013 12:29 TheLetterQ wrote: ... I will take the fun gameplay and crappy story of the two SC2 campaigns over the passable story and subpar gameplay of SC1/BW any day.
When did this thread become about the gameplay? Don't be ridiculous.
On March 26 2013 23:48 sCCrooked wrote: BW had far superior gameplay. The proof is in the fact that SC2 tries hard to base itself in BW's engine while somehow being its own thing. They wouldn't stick so closely to the original template of the interface if it wasn't something incredibly solid to begin with.
Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans.
There's a valid reason why you see so many redesigned units that try to carry similar tasks to their BW counterparts with added features. It's because the game design was flawed and missing certain things. We've had a lot of threads where we discussed such things. I suggest you look for them and give them a bump if you feel you have something new to add but judging from what you already said. I doubt that. Let's try to keep this thread on topic, shall we? ._.
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal.
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you?
I don't agree. I think sc2 with its huge focus on esports was meant to be something that keeps people interested for a multitude of years, much like BW managed to do. Similarly, I think the RMAH in d3 was meant to provide similar legs that would keep people playing the game and grinding it out for hours upon hours upon years for as long as possible. Instead, the game surrounding the concepts of esports or the RMAH simply weren't that good, and both fell short of providing Blizzard quality which has kept fans playing their previous games for many years without ever getting bored.
Saying d3 and sc2 were MEANT to be light hearted weekend wasters does not change the fact that that is what they essentially are. I don't believe that was ever the goal, the games just weren't good enough to live up to expectations.
Releasing more expansion packs certainly helps generate an influx. I'd like to see more companies do more updates with the release of patches. Similarly to MMOs to keep people interested. There's all sorts of things you can introduce and what do you know Blizzard did work on the U.I. in such patches at the same time.
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal.
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you?
Please explain the perfect score Bioshock: Infinite is getting everywhere on the back of its story and setting and writing. Please provide examples of websites publishing "The writing in Portal 1 and 2 was just a bit too good for our taste".
Just because you're happy with 'bad' and think that is good enough doesn't actually make 'bad' better than 'good'. Even if you wouldn't enjoy it more with good writing, can you really say it would make the game worse?
Pretty much. See, a good storyline is what I want Starcraft to be compared to. Even jokingly, when people say "better love story then twilight", I cringe inside. Why is it even referred to in the first place? Would you jokingly refer to Bioshock Infinite as - better then "Insert steamy pile of shit" here? Being a parody of hollywood, and done poorly at that does not amuse me.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
No. This has been explained time and time again. It isn't just rose-tinted glasses. If you're going to bring a point up, at least endeavor to check the thread to see if we haven't already addressed it 8 other times.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't like that if you dont absolutely hate it then you must be stupid and love it. I agree with most if not all of the OP yet I am not so blinded by rage that I need to attack or belittle anything and everything about SC2. To some people SC2 will forever be a glass half empty. Others who are perhaps less jaded or at least not so completely and utterly invested in a single game have the ability to enjoy SC2 for what it is, hope that errors get fixed and improvements made, but ultimately can fulfill their need for a deep and engrossing story elsewhere.
In fact, I would be probably be much more openly critical of the games flaws and short comings if I didn't absolutely hate the kind venomous and destructive circle jerk that happens any time someone puts the time and energy in to making a critique like a OP's. The passion and relentlessness with which a group of posters preach hate for this game almost makes you think its their profession.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
I would like to add that I think it's pretty important to remember the historical considerations of what is going on regarding storytelling in games now, and what was happening 15 years ago (technical advancements, et al.). It's a really important perspective that really shouldn't be glossed over as you lose an important context without it. The trick with this however is, are you experienced enough to dissociate your nostalgia/bias from what you thought you saw, and what was actually there.
This is one of the reasons I'm still continually impressed with Brood War as the story is still good today, even if it is somewhat underdeveloped by today's standards. It's like, trying to evaluate a story or game that was made more than a decade ago in today's perspective. I actually recently did this with System Shock 2 having never played it till this year, and in all honesty, it's better than Bioshock from a storytelling perspective. I'm not saying that I disliked Bioshock because it is a good game, but System Shock 2 was a tighter experience overall, though I would imagine that its pretty difficult to get past the idiosyncrasies of The Dark Engine to see this.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Where's the depth? Oh right, there is none.
BW wasn't fantastic, but it was cohesive and passable. Point out the "shallow and cliche" storytelling elements so we can see your reasoning, or so we can realize that you're just making shit up.
Oh, and the UED was fine. You're just grasping at straws.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Everything you said there is no more than an opinion built out of misconceptions or misunderstandings. Its typical of the supporter of things like this to try to dismantle the current "standard" as if theirs somehow even qualifies as a decent work in the company of such legendary examples (See "Twilight" scenario for similar situation taking place in the literary world). The truth is still the same as its always been and its very different from what you're mentally concocting.
I don't like that if you dont absolutely hate it then you must be stupid and love it.
This isn't the case either. Its fine to like the game and its new story arc they're passing as "the main arc", but it does in fact (without any consideration for useless things like emotions) mean people that don't dislike or even preferred it must find qualities like "simplistic", "incongruous" and "disappointingly predictable" to be favorable.
There's a million examples just like Starcraft where awaited sequels brought complete shame on a brand and alienated huge portions of their old fanbase throughout media all across the board. It happens. There's still a fanbase and it might even have attracted enough new ones to outnumber the old ones, but it doesn't change the fact that the product is something completely different than the original and has no base anymore.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Where's the depth? Oh right, there is none.
BW wasn't fantastic, but it was cohesive and passable. Point out the "shallow and cliche" storytelling elements so we can see your reasoning, or so we can realize that you're just making shit up.
Oh, and the UED was fine. You're just grasping at straws.
Kerrigan's characterization - her decision to be "human" or "zerg" as well as the overall theme of "what is 'human'?" were very well done and had quite a bit of depth to them.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Everything you said there is no more than an opinion built out of misconceptions or misunderstandings. Its typical of the supporter of things like this to try to dismantle the current "standard" as if theirs somehow even qualifies as a decent work in the company of such legendary examples (See "Twilight" scenario for similar situation taking place in the literary world). The truth is still the same as its always been and its very different from what you're mentally concocting.
My mental concoctions are generally pretty good. What's 'the truth' in this case that I'm so far out from?
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Where's the depth? Oh right, there is none.
BW wasn't fantastic, but it was cohesive and passable. Point out the "shallow and cliche" storytelling elements so we can see your reasoning, or so we can realize that you're just making shit up.
Oh, and the UED was fine. You're just grasping at straws.
Kerrigan's characterization - her decision to be "human" or "zerg" as well as the overall theme of "what is 'human'?" were very well done and had quite a bit of depth to them.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Everything you said there is no more than an opinion built out of misconceptions or misunderstandings. Its typical of the supporter of things like this to try to dismantle the current "standard" as if theirs somehow even qualifies as a decent work in the company of such legendary examples (See "Twilight" scenario for similar situation taking place in the literary world). The truth is still the same as its always been and its very different from what you're mentally concocting.
My mental concoctions are generally pretty good. What's 'the truth' in this case that I'm so far out from?
Kerrigan is responsible for the deaths of billions of innocents, yet she conveniently doesn't need to engage in any self-reflection because she has amnesia. She has no qualms simply continuing with controlling zerg and reinfesting herself, similarly she also slaughters many protoss and terran on her campaign of revenge against Mengsk. By all accounts she is a terrible person, yet the game never acknowledges this. And as far as we know, the only real difference between Brood War Kerrigan and HotS Kerrigan is that she lost her memory and hence forgot about many of her evil actions. Her actions since, the ease with which she turned into the queen of blades again and all that comes with that position, show that given a somewhat blank slate (amnesia) she makes many of the same decisions as she did in BW.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Where's the depth? Oh right, there is none.
BW wasn't fantastic, but it was cohesive and passable. Point out the "shallow and cliche" storytelling elements so we can see your reasoning, or so we can realize that you're just making shit up.
Oh, and the UED was fine. You're just grasping at straws.
Kerrigan's characterization - her decision to be "human" or "zerg" as well as the overall theme of "what is 'human'?" were very well done and had quite a bit of depth to them.
And no, the UED was stupid as balls.
Edit:
On March 28 2013 01:13 sCCrooked wrote:
On March 28 2013 00:55 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
On March 27 2013 21:58 sCCrooked wrote:
On March 27 2013 21:00 mprs wrote:
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Everything you said there is no more than an opinion built out of misconceptions or misunderstandings. Its typical of the supporter of things like this to try to dismantle the current "standard" as if theirs somehow even qualifies as a decent work in the company of such legendary examples (See "Twilight" scenario for similar situation taking place in the literary world). The truth is still the same as its always been and its very different from what you're mentally concocting.
My mental concoctions are generally pretty good. What's 'the truth' in this case that I'm so far out from?
Kerrigan is responsible for the deaths of billions of innocents, yet she conveniently doesn't need to engage in any self-reflection because she has amnesia. She has no qualms simply continuing with controlling zerg and reinfesting herself, similarly she also slaughters many protoss and terran on her campaign of revenge against Mengsk. By all accounts she is a terrible person, yet the game never acknowledges this. And as far as we know, the only real difference between Brood War Kerrigan and HotS Kerrigan is that she lost her memory and hence forgot about many of her evil actions. Her actions since, the ease with which she turned into the queen of blades again and all that comes with that position, show that given a somewhat blank slate (amnesia) she makes many of the same decisions as she did in BW.
Well, the terrans she killed were Dominion troops, so it can kinda be covered by the revenge part. Also, using that as an argument is kind of senseless in my opinion, because without the combat you don't really have much of a game. Though, this may be because I'm not creative enough to think of something else, so I'd love to hear how you guys would improve it. (These improvements are often interesting to read to be honest. I remember I read an alternate ending to HotS that would have been arguably better than the one we got, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to share). The same premise really goes for the protoss. Excluding them would have lead to people feeling that the protoss are deliberately being left behind (there is a thread specifically talking about how protoss are neglected and simply portrayed as pansies, so maybe there should have been more protoss?). Blizzard explain the protoss killing using the Tal'Darim, who seek to ressurect Amon, so they are essentially evil and must be removed. Doing such heroic deeds can't really be attributed to the old Queen of Blades. The events on Kaldir were in self-defence, so you have to cut Kerrigan some slack there.
EDIT: I'll admit that it's kind of weak, but it's what we got from Blizzard.
I think one of the problems that people have with SC2 is that it's not the story of the terrans, the protoss or the zerg. It's the story of Raynor, Kerrigan and Zerathul (assuming he's gonna be the main character in LotV). Having this perspective you naturally lose the epic proportions that were in BW. Someone complained that we didn't know what the protoss or the terran Dominion were up to, but this is only follows the established narrative. Personally, I don't mind the strong focus on these individual characters, but then again I haven't played through BW, so I may be missing out on something much better.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Where's the depth? Oh right, there is none.
BW wasn't fantastic, but it was cohesive and passable. Point out the "shallow and cliche" storytelling elements so we can see your reasoning, or so we can realize that you're just making shit up.
Oh, and the UED was fine. You're just grasping at straws.
Kerrigan's characterization - her decision to be "human" or "zerg" as well as the overall theme of "what is 'human'?" were very well done and had quite a bit of depth to them.
And no, the UED was stupid as balls.
Edit:
On March 28 2013 01:13 sCCrooked wrote:
On March 28 2013 00:55 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
On March 27 2013 21:58 sCCrooked wrote:
On March 27 2013 21:00 mprs wrote:
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Everything you said there is no more than an opinion built out of misconceptions or misunderstandings. Its typical of the supporter of things like this to try to dismantle the current "standard" as if theirs somehow even qualifies as a decent work in the company of such legendary examples (See "Twilight" scenario for similar situation taking place in the literary world). The truth is still the same as its always been and its very different from what you're mentally concocting.
My mental concoctions are generally pretty good. What's 'the truth' in this case that I'm so far out from?
Kerrigan is responsible for the deaths of billions of innocents, yet she conveniently doesn't need to engage in any self-reflection because she has amnesia. She has no qualms simply continuing with controlling zerg and reinfesting herself, similarly she also slaughters many protoss and terran on her campaign of revenge against Mengsk. By all accounts she is a terrible person, yet the game never acknowledges this. And as far as we know, the only real difference between Brood War Kerrigan and HotS Kerrigan is that she lost her memory and hence forgot about many of her evil actions. Her actions since, the ease with which she turned into the queen of blades again and all that comes with that position, show that given a somewhat blank slate (amnesia) she makes many of the same decisions as she did in BW.
Well, the terrans she killed were Dominion troops, so it can kinda be covered by the revenge part. Also, using that as an argument is kind of senseless in my opinion, because without the combat you don't really have much of a game. Though, this may be because I'm not creative enough to think of something else, so I'd love to hear how you guys would improve it. (These improvements are often interesting to read to be honest. I remember I read an alternate ending to HotS that would have been arguably better than the one we got, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to share). The same premise really goes for the protoss. Excluding them would have lead to people feeling that the protoss are deliberately being left behind (there is a thread specifically talking about how protoss are neglected and simply portrayed as pansies, so maybe there should have been more protoss?). Blizzard explain the protoss killing using the Tal'Darim, who seek to ressurect Amon, so they are essentially evil and must be removed. Doing such heroic deeds can't really be attributed to the old Queen of Blades. The events on Kaldir were in self-defence, so you have to cut Kerrigan some slack there.
EDIT: I'll admit that it's kind of weak, but it's what we got from Blizzard.
I think one of the problems that people have with SC2 is that it's not the story of the terrans, the protoss or the zerg. It's the story of Raynor, Kerrigan and Zerathul (assuming he's gonna be the main character in LotV). Having this perspective you naturally lose the epic proportions that were in BW. Someone complained that we didn't know what the protoss or the terran Dominion were up to, but this is only follows the established narrative. Personally, I don't mind the strong focus on these individual characters, but then again I haven't played through BW, so I may be missing out on something much better.
I kind of think that using zerg to slaughter dominion troops, many of whom are only enlisting in the military to protect humanity against the zerg to begin with, is something that should give Kerrigan pause, but it hardly ever does in HotS. She makes a few concessions to avoid some of the casualties, but she is mostly using her vendetta against Mengsk to excuse a lot of horrible actions.
And Blizzard is still going to redeem her in the end with the prophecy story line...
I see your point of it possibly being a bit too much of the "dominion bad, must kill" side, but we also do see that Kerrigan does care about people. After the missions on Char, she lets those marines go, but perhaps the biggest example is how she allowed millions of people to be evacuated from Korhal. Personally, I think this is enough, but at that point we simply have conflicting opinions.
On March 28 2013 05:24 Gogo1 wrote: Well, the terrans she killed were Dominion troops, so it can kinda be covered by the revenge part. Also, using that as an argument is kind of senseless in my opinion, because without the combat you don't really have much of a game. Though, this may be because I'm not creative enough to think of something else, so I'd love to hear how you guys would improve it. (These improvements are often interesting to read to be honest. I remember I read an alternate ending to HotS that would have been arguably better than the one we got, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to share).
Assuming the point is to have a reformed Kerrigan, have Abathur test the new strains against other Swarm creatures, rather than Protoss who didn't threaten her. If you need more ZvP action, have the Golden Armada actually attack the Swarm. No one would blink if Artanis and Selendis launched an offensive, and you can a few lines with Kerrigan saying "well, now we are ready to face them" to have Kaldir make a real difference. Speaking of Kaldir, Lessara is absolutely right when you start thinking about it : Kerrigan could have fled Kaldir. This means that the Protoss would be after her, but since her next move is to go to Char and have Terran shout her name on all frequencies, it was going to happen anyway. So I wouldn't consider that self-defense, especially since we didn't see the time Kerrigan gained make any difference either...
but perhaps the biggest example is how she allowed millions of people to be evacuated from Korhal. Personally, I think this is enough, but at that point we simply have conflicting opinions.
Well it's not as simple as that: she was ready to have millions die in the crossfire without blinking an eye, just to get a tactical advantage. She only changed her mind, reluctantly, because Valerian insisted. It's still something, it is not the same as if she had spontaneously made the suggestion.
On March 28 2013 05:24 Gogo1 wrote: Well, the terrans she killed were Dominion troops, so it can kinda be covered by the revenge part. Also, using that as an argument is kind of senseless in my opinion, because without the combat you don't really have much of a game. Though, this may be because I'm not creative enough to think of something else, so I'd love to hear how you guys would improve it. (These improvements are often interesting to read to be honest. I remember I read an alternate ending to HotS that would have been arguably better than the one we got, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to share).
Assuming the point is to have a reformed Kerrigan, have Abathur test the new strains against other Swarm creatures, rather than Protoss who didn't threaten her. If you need more ZvP action, have the Golden Armada actually attack the Swarm. No one would blink if Artanis and Selendis launched an offensive, and you can a few lines with Kerrigan saying "well, now we are ready to face them" to have Kaldir make a real difference. Speaking of Kaldir, Lessara is absolutely right when you start thinking about it : Kerrigan could have fled Kaldir. This means that the Protoss would be after her, but since her next move is to go to Char and have Terran shout her name on all frequencies, it was going to happen anyway. So I wouldn't consider that self-defense, especially since we didn't see the time Kerrigan gained make any difference either...
but perhaps the biggest example is how she allowed millions of people to be evacuated from Korhal. Personally, I think this is enough, but at that point we simply have conflicting opinions.
Well it's not as simple as that: she was ready to have millions die in the crossfire without blinking an eye, just to get a tactical advantage. She only changed her mind, reluctantly, because Valerian insisted. It's still something, it is not the same as if she had spontaneously made the suggestion.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm? Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
And you do have a point about what happens on Korhal. She was willing to just ignore the civilians, as she saw the notion of helping them as yet another obstacle in getting to Mengsk. But, note how she changes her mind when Valarian reminds her that these are people, not just random objects. I think that's the important part in that conversation.
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Where's the depth? Oh right, there is none.
BW wasn't fantastic, but it was cohesive and passable. Point out the "shallow and cliche" storytelling elements so we can see your reasoning, or so we can realize that you're just making shit up.
Oh, and the UED was fine. You're just grasping at straws.
Kerrigan's characterization - her decision to be "human" or "zerg" as well as the overall theme of "what is 'human'?" were very well done and had quite a bit of depth to them.
And no, the UED was stupid as balls.
Edit:
On March 28 2013 01:13 sCCrooked wrote:
On March 28 2013 00:55 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
On March 27 2013 21:58 sCCrooked wrote:
On March 27 2013 21:00 mprs wrote:
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment.
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package.
Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS?
I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category.
I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards.
I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging".
There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not.
BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche.
HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth.
Everything you said there is no more than an opinion built out of misconceptions or misunderstandings. Its typical of the supporter of things like this to try to dismantle the current "standard" as if theirs somehow even qualifies as a decent work in the company of such legendary examples (See "Twilight" scenario for similar situation taking place in the literary world). The truth is still the same as its always been and its very different from what you're mentally concocting.
My mental concoctions are generally pretty good. What's 'the truth' in this case that I'm so far out from?
Kerrigan is responsible for the deaths of billions of innocents, yet she conveniently doesn't need to engage in any self-reflection because she has amnesia. She has no qualms simply continuing with controlling zerg and reinfesting herself, similarly she also slaughters many protoss and terran on her campaign of revenge against Mengsk. By all accounts she is a terrible person, yet the game never acknowledges this. And as far as we know, the only real difference between Brood War Kerrigan and HotS Kerrigan is that she lost her memory and hence forgot about many of her evil actions. Her actions since, the ease with which she turned into the queen of blades again and all that comes with that position, show that given a somewhat blank slate (amnesia) she makes many of the same decisions as she did in BW.
Kerrigan isn't really given the chance for a lot of self reflection. She wakes up in a research lab, gets put through tests and is then attacked by the Dominion. I'm not sure why having that scene would be better than not having it... self-reflection (or at least acknowledgement of her past) does happen, just not all at once.
Kerrigan absolutely does have qualms over controlling the Zerg. The entire first mission is her pissed that Valarian wants her to test out her Zerg controling powers. She only returns to the Zerg because she has no where else to go. When she found out that Jim 'died' she felt alone (who would accept her) until she realized that cute puppy dog zerglings still loved her.
Kerrigan certainly was a terrible person as the Queen of Blades and the game acknowledges that. Kerrigan says that everyone's hands are bloody - including hers. She also says that everyone is a monster - including herself. Also, the Protoss and Terrans aren't about to make peace with the Zerg. It's kill or be killed and the Zerg have just as much a right to life as the other two races.
While Kerrigan turns back into the Queen of Blades she's not the same. This time she has her humanity. For example, she will now avoid fighting in civilian zones because it's the "right" thing to do - even though it will cost more Zerg soldiers their lives.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead. I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
On March 28 2013 05:02 Grumbels wrote: And as far as we know, the only real difference between Brood War Kerrigan and HotS Kerrigan is that she lost her memory and hence forgot about many of her evil actions.
Well...there's also the painted-on bodysuit, organically grown high heels and a tendency to strike dramatic poses, don't forget those.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
On March 28 2013 07:41 Grumbels wrote: The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Because that's what we all truly want. For all races to hug each other, make up and have a giant party. If they could throw in some Ewoks for good measure, too, it would be the most phenomenal ending in video game history.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
Kerrigan attacking these "worlds" is the same as the Brood queens joining Kerrigan and being told to attack such and such planet.
Its terribly executed, like most of the campaign, but she wasn't killing Terrans and Protoss willy nilly. It was her mind being one with the swarm, she was attacking those planets at the same time she's on zerus, or char, or any of the other planets shes on.
Second,
The entire point of the ice planet mission was to show that Kerrigan did not want to have a fight with the protoss because how strong they are. She attacks a random colony and then spends the next 2-3 missions doing everything she can to stop the actual protoss army from showing up.
Once again, it's presented and executed poorly. But it technically has a purpose.
Don't forget what the evolution mission were supposed to accomplish in the first place. They weren't supposed to be part of the main plot at all. They included them to fix one of the problems people had with WoL: the research upgrades. I read somewhere (I forget where, unfortunately) that people had to look up online what to pick, because they couldn't really tell what was good. So what Blizzard decided - and in my opinion it was a good way of solving the issue - was that you have these mini-missions that aren't important, but they highlight what the evolution / research does. That way you have more of a basis to choose from, instead of just estimation.
EDIT: Just realized I really like starting paragraphs with "I think"... Changed that.
On March 28 2013 08:29 Gogo1 wrote: I think people forget what the evolution mission were about. They weren't supposed to be part of the main plot at all. They included them to fix one of the problems people had with WoL: the research upgrades. I read somewhere (I forget where, unfortunately) that people had to look up online what to pick, because they couldn't really tell what was good. So what Blizzard decided - and in my opinion it was a good way of solving the issue - was that you have these mini-missions that aren't important, but they highlight what the evolution / research does. That way you have more of a basis to choose from, instead of just estimation.
those decisions weren't really important.. it was more about how YOU want to play the game. or maybe just a little slaying part which many player seem to enjoy (diablo).
On March 28 2013 08:29 Gogo1 wrote: I think people forget what the evolution mission were about. They weren't supposed to be part of the main plot at all. They included them to fix one of the problems people had with WoL: the research upgrades. I read somewhere (I forget where, unfortunately) that people had to look up online what to pick, because they couldn't really tell what was good. So what Blizzard decided - and in my opinion it was a good way of solving the issue - was that you have these mini-missions that aren't important, but they highlight what the evolution / research does. That way you have more of a basis to choose from, instead of just estimation.
those decisions weren't really important.. it was more about how YOU want to play the game.
Sure, but I read somewhere that people found it to be an issue that they didn't know what was objectively stronger. It probably has something to do with them struggling on Brutal or something. Either way, that's why Blizzard made these mission. And like I said, I liked them. It's nice to see both evolutions in effect, and then make a decision from there.
On March 28 2013 08:29 Gogo1 wrote: I think people forget what the evolution mission were about. They weren't supposed to be part of the main plot at all. They included them to fix one of the problems people had with WoL: the research upgrades. I read somewhere (I forget where, unfortunately) that people had to look up online what to pick, because they couldn't really tell what was good. So what Blizzard decided - and in my opinion it was a good way of solving the issue - was that you have these mini-missions that aren't important, but they highlight what the evolution / research does. That way you have more of a basis to choose from, instead of just estimation.
those decisions weren't really important.. it was more about how YOU want to play the game.
Sure, but I read somewhere that people found it to be an issue that they didn't know what was objectively stronger. It probably has something to do with them struggling on Brutal or something. Either way, that's why Blizzard made these mission. And like I said, I liked them. It's nice to see both evolutions in effect, and then make a decision from there.
yup and either way you decide, you can move on and solve the next mission. you just have to adapt your playstyle or adapt your decisions upon your playstlye. nothing is just wrong.
edit just watch day9 playing the campaign on brutal.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
Yeah, the evolution missions could have been handled as secondary objectives during a more plot relevant mission instead. Not optional, but more of a boost "needed" to beat the primary objective and is retained after the mission. Hell and achievement couldve been related to not evolving and only using WoL and/or BW type Zerg Units.
Plot holes aside, of which there are many I felt curiously unimmersed in things and I feel this was part of the reason why. All through BW you are specifically mentioned as adjucant [sic], executor etc etc. Your disembodied vision is really that of some military commander, and you are privy to conversations between the main characters of the game, or there in person.
Now in SC2, you tend to experience things as 'Kerrigan' in HoTS, or generally Raynor in WoL. You go arounnd the ship, and talk to the various characters. I for one loved Abathor and his strange chat in this one. Even the bridge of the hyperion/HoTS equivalent storytelling mechanism, which I actually quite like didn't really work for me.
I think the issue is that you are so manifestly put into a certain characters shoes, rather than being some blank canvas who you fill as you go along. There is a great frustration to me, that when the characters do silly things, or out-of-character kind of actions, you are forced to just 'go along with it'.
I don't know I just felt this kind of breaks the immersion entirely. You are not 'The Executor', chilling on the bridge with Zeratul, Tassadar and the boys, who follows orders to the best of his ability when ordered to by his superiors, you are 'Kerrigan' and all the frustration of this kind of for me is that you are playing as a character with the actual power to shape the events, who keeps on doing things that are quite frankly retarded.
In Brood War I was never snapped 'out' of the world once I was in it, because I felt like some badass comamander, hell I mightn't agree with whatever Kerrigan/Artanis/Mengsk are sending me out to do, but hey such is the life of a subordinate, better get on with it.
With the SC2 arc on the whole, it's just ridiculous act after ridiculous act, but there's not that sense of 'duty' to the commander if you will, you are that commander and it's really irritating me over time.
On March 28 2013 08:29 Gogo1 wrote: Don't forget what the evolution mission were supposed to accomplish in the first place. They weren't supposed to be part of the main plot at all. They included them to fix one of the problems people had with WoL: the research upgrades. I read somewhere (I forget where, unfortunately) that people had to look up online what to pick, because they couldn't really tell what was good. So what Blizzard decided - and in my opinion it was a good way of solving the issue - was that you have these mini-missions that aren't important, but they highlight what the evolution / research does. That way you have more of a basis to choose from, instead of just estimation.
I don't think anyone ever complained about evolution missions existing, and I consider the mutation/evolution mechanic to be the best idea they ever had in the SC2 single player. But that's irrelevant when discussing the story. Evolution missions are missions, what happens there is as relevant as what happens in the 20 core missions.
On March 28 2013 07:41 Grumbels wrote:
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Back in Starcraft 1, the Zerg won a lot of battles offscreen in the first Terran campaign. The Protoss had a major victory by killing a Cerebrate in the Zerg campaign. A UED level ended with the UED force being defeated by a massive Zerg force and the enemy you were hunting down escaping. Of course the player's race will win most of the time, but it is possible to add setbacks or make it clear that your victory was not a decisive won.
Her actions seem to be misleading... But that was is neccessary are her flashbacks at the moment she decides to do the action...
The moment she kisses Raynor, is kind of awkward... of course, its not a typical dialog, neither a typical scene like we know it. Just think about yourself right before you decide to do some action, you think about your experience and the emotions you had right at that time. This amplifies your decision to an extend that everything doesnt matter.
Back to Kerrigan, she was a Ghost and did some special training. Still, she kind of steamrolled over the world while being the queen of blades in brood war. She played with people and probably wasnt interested in the rest after she got the confirmation what she is capable of.
There is no clear reason why she was inactive the time between brood war and wings of liberty. Everyone aggrees that there is something that we dont know yet and that there is something that she was probably doing during that time. She's not the kind of person that didnt do things without reason.
Everyone that read the manga "bleach" can compare her with "aizen sousuke", which is one of the evil guys that planned out nearly everything, maybe even everything, because the current actions also come back to his actions...
The dialogs dont fit for the most of us, but that has to be like that, because this is a different world with different experiences... There are phraises we use, that are probably different in their worlds meaning.
There is no full translation for their world to ours, this is what makes it special. If it would be "perfect", then it would seem unrealistic and get even worse...
The only thing what i find could have been a big improvement was some flashbacks.
- When Kerrigan gets the sniper rifle (just one scene of her fighting with raynor at her side) - When Kerrigan is close to Raynor (just before the kiss, a moment when she was happy <--- which was a long time ago...) - When Kerrigan gets the Information that Raynor died (Kerrigan rages first, then should have been a flashback to that time when she loses her parrents, because of her powers) - When Kerrigan becomes the Primal Queen of Blades (before coming out of the Egg, she should have a flashback of Mengsks action, that make her go mad)
On March 28 2013 17:41 NeoCyberD wrote: For my part, there is one thing that is missing:
Her actions seem to be misleading... But that was is neccessary are her flashbacks at the moment she decides to do the action...
The moment she kisses Raynor, is kind of awkward... of course, its not a typical dialog, neither a typical scene like we know it. Just think about yourself right before you decide to do some action, you think about your experience and the emotions you had right at that time. This amplifies your decision to an extend that everything doesnt matter.
Back to Kerrigan, she was a Ghost and did some special training. Still, she kind of steamrolled over the world while being the queen of blades in brood war. She played with people and probably wasnt interested in the rest after she got the confirmation what she is capable of.
There is no clear reason why she was inactive the time between brood war and wings of liberty. Everyone aggrees that there is something that we dont know yet and that there is something that she was probably doing during that time. She's not the kind of person that didnt do things without reason.
Everyone that read the manga "bleach" can compare her with "aizen sousuke", which is one of the evil guys that planned out nearly everything, maybe even everything, because the current actions also come back to his actions...
The dialogs dont fit for the most of us, but that has to be like that, because this is a different world with different experiences... There are phraises we use, that are probably different in their worlds meaning.
There is no full translation for their world to ours, this is what makes it special. If it would be "perfect", then it would seem unrealistic and get even worse...
The only thing what i find could have been a big improvement was some flashbacks.
- When Kerrigan gets the sniper rifle (just one scene of her fighting with raynor at her side) - When Kerrigan is close to Raynor (just before the kiss, a moment when she was happy <--- which was a long time ago...) - When Kerrigan gets the Information that Raynor died (Kerrigan rages first, then should have been a flashback to that time when she loses her parrents, because of her powers) - When Kerrigan becomes the Primal Queen of Blades (before coming out of the Egg, she should have a flashback of Mengsks action, that make her go mad)
About what Kerrigan did after BW, I dissagree a bit. BW ended with her complete dominance over the sector, but her final lines are that she would "allow them (her unlikely allies) repreive" and "in time test their resolve". This means to me that she was content with chilling at that point. What we're missing is how Kerrigan found out about the whole prophecy thing and how/why she thought she could use the Zelnaga artifact to stop it.
On a side note, it's interesting that in BW Kerrigan even allowed Mengks to live, making both the humanized and primal Kerrigan more revenge bent than our BW-zerg kerrigan (to whom leaving Arcturus with a burning Dominion was enough revenge).
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
First dear OP i liked the read and i´m stunned how much effort you put into it. Nonetheless i have some points i think you make a misinterpretation or i just have another opinion then you. I would like to share my thoughts about your thread with you.
PTSD, Rise of the Curtain This part shows how you wanted to lead your reader in a direction. I don´t follow you here. Sure the conception of showing off the Viking is true. But the scene let space for interpretation. I must question the scene here: Why only one Viking of the squadron landed? I come to the conclusion that there is maybe a story behind what you see. I also think it was suicidal or let me be clearer a moment of madness. I interpreted the scene immediately as a "revenge madness". In the tank that got smashed was the son of the Viking pilot.
The sentence "..but it still would be out of place as imagery from a the mind of fully matured adult.." is looking like an argument but it´s only your personal opinion here.
Flashpoint and the Problem with People A good text. I support what you said there nontheless the information in it are canon.
Sector One: Missions 1-4 Well here´s a big part where i just have a different opinion then you and am quite happy with it. This remembers me of one of my favorite books and a conversation with a friend about it. A character with a very weird name was in it and so we talked about the book, the story and well about that character. I had a total different pronunciation of the name then my friend. He corrected me and well he was right with the spelling. I said to him you know i don´t give a fuck about how you spell it, the character will always have MY spelling in MY head.
The same thing i apply to your try of explaining me the story between Kerrigan and Raynor. I never ever even was in question if the two had "something" since sc1/bw. And i really like the love story (It´s funny though that my perception or interpretation of the story between them in sc1/bw was underpinned in sc2).
Anyway. One thing to add to this chapter. You´re questioning why Raynor isn´t concerned about what happened down there in the lab. Well in first place Raynor is pissed about the "tests" they do with Kerrigan. Then the son of the one both have sworn death is testing Kerrigans ability to control the swarm again (Like father, like son). I think this mix is one in the eye for Valerian and overcomes the concerns Raynor maybe have. And why shouldn´t he say "Never"? Their band is thin enough. Why destroy it with negative comments from Jim? I also imply that he thinks Kerrigan is already purified of her old alter ego.
A Return to Story Here i totally agree with what you said about the broadcast and how Kerrigan falls to this. This was a really poor moment of storytelling. Though the next part of this section i would call (Sorry for that) utterly bullshit. Let´s just accept that she really believes now that Raynor is dead. She is alone, powerless, hunted by nearly the whole universe and her best friend is dead. It doesn´t matter if the character in this moment is a man or a woman or if she "was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector". It´s just a very human behavior.. finally. Also the moment when she looked up to the zergling was a strong picture you seem totally forgot to mention.
Sector Two: Mid Game Missions 5-15 You´re totally right there´s no explanation of how groups of the primal zerg were able to survive/hide/overlooked-by the creation of the Overmind and the alteration of Amon. What really pisses me off btw. Blizzard is introducing a new story arc but only with a blink on it. And how Zeratul should know about the power on Zerus and where it is. I CAN imagine however where he pulled this off but it´s just inconsistent storytelling blizzard is doing here. But I would be cautious with your following interpretation of how Zerg evolved. Only the very first Zergs were purely parasitic. The problem in the canonical history of Zerg evolution is that there are missing links and not described mechanism till HotS how they assimilate other species. There are also examples of specimen that were assimilated but were not annihilated (Dune runner).
Ascension Here i´m a bit lost about what you mean. She steps into the pool knowing it would probably kill her. What would be more steeled determination? Oo Also they showed the artifact as counterpart of the new acquired power of Kerrigan and to produce a viewer question which power will be stronger.
A Short Game Design Excursion: Really, It's Short This Time Good point about the sound. Also your thoughts on the RPG -> other bliz games parts are a strong point of what´s wrong. Sector Three: Revelations and the Endgame (Missions 16-27) Full support your thoughts about Stukov here.
The hybrid and Xel Naga device are a sensitive story. You´re mixing here conclusions with questions so I skip this whole part because it seems you didn´t put much effort into this paragraph. A problem here´s also flashpoint and the statement of Nurad that the device destroys DNS. The Duran Part has one big major flaw. You compare alien psychology with human psychology. Coming to a Head Your arguments are based on an opinion here. My opinion always was and will be that Kerrigan and infested Kerrigan were always two different personas. Therefor there would be nothing to discuss here for us two and I also liked the scene very much.
Final Set Again you´re basing your facts on missing links and assumption. First, cerebrats have psionic powers. Also psychic powers ARE psionic powers. Dunno what you´re thinking here.
The next thing about Darka. We just not know how exactly the first Overmind was created and how he/it developed telepathy to control the first zergs. You argumentation really confuses me here.
The last scene. Well. While I absolutely think Kerrigan is able to fly I didn´t liked it. Muta-Taxi would have been better. But the sentence Jim said is absolutely ok. Oo Quote from Chris Metzen:”Jim Raynor… man struggling with his own demons while saving a woman from her own”
Treating with the Heart of Children Good points. =)
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
Kerrigan must have absolutely insane mechanical chops, probably make Jaedong's stream look like it was in slow motion
Players expected Jim to kill Kerrigan. Jim didn't kill Kerrigan.
Players expected SC2 to be well written, like BW. SC2 wasn't well written.
Players expected characters to make sense. Characters don't make sense.
Now, I fully agree with the above, but, overall, I enjoy the story. It's cheesy space opera, and that's all it will ever be, and all I appreciate it for.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
Abathur is a main character in the zerg history of starcraft. He´s a missing link. His appereance firstly describes how zerg assimilation of other specis is working for the swarm. Directly analysis of DNS material per telepathy/feeding, near instant modification and adaption. You won´t find any source how assimilation of other species is working before HotS.
On March 28 2013 06:58 Gogo1 wrote: I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first paragraph. Are you suggesting that instead of having protoss on Kaldir, they should just have had some random creatures whose genetics Abathur could weave into the swarm?
I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph.
Also, having the Golden Armada attacking the Swarm may not have been such a bad idea, but wouldn't that leave the protoss basically defenseless? I don't know Starcraft lore in detail, so I don't really know how that would work out. And you'd also have the people who enjoy the protoss race cry over how their epic army gets beaten by Kerrigan.
Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing.
It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil.
On March 29 2013 03:29 jeeeeohn wrote: A Breakdown of Players' Qualms With The Story:
Players expected Jim to kill Kerrigan. Jim didn't kill Kerrigan.
Players expected SC2 to be well written, like BW. SC2 wasn't well written.
Players expected characters to make sense. Characters don't make sense.
Now, I fully agree with the above, but, overall, I enjoy the story. It's cheesy space opera, and that's all it will ever be, and all I appreciate it for.
+1 its almost like the pro wrestling story lines they have to come up with when 1 of the main wrestler guys quits and leaves for Japan....they come up with a fake knee injury or sometimes... he just becomes an "unperson" and is never talked about.
like the WWF tried to do with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall after they first left.
as soon as they greatly modified the appearance of Raynor in SC2:WoL you knew they would come up with whatever dumb excuses they could to change the storyline to suit whoever the new writers were for the SC2 trilogy.
i love the excuses/reasons they give for no more Vultures, or Firebats. All the Firebat suits are being used by Marauders now lol.
Let´s all grab our torches and forks for the best storyline and game presentation of a RTS game out there. I demand rivers of blood and piles of skulls.
On March 28 2013 07:08 Telenil wrote: [quote]I wasn't very clear, but I was refering to evolution missions. There are some levels when you get new DNA, and Kerrigan says "hey, what about slaughtering these Protoss over there!" That's where Abathur could put Swarm creatures against each other instead.
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
I only start talking about Kaldir in the second paragraph. [quote]Obviously, but I am kind of a Protoss fan myself and I wouldn't expect the Protoss to defeat the entire Swarm on their own either. You can have them kill a Brood Mother, force Kerrigan to re-deploy her forces to face them, and generally have the attack disrupt her plans. There is a big difference between "the Golden Armada shows up and gets stomped", and "the Protoss do good damage before being forced to retreat at the end of 2-3 missions". The problem some people have with Protoss in Starcraft is not that they get defeated, it is more like they don't seem to ever be a threat. They come at the start of the level, get rolled over and die without being much more than a nuisance.
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing.
It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil.
It technically does advance the story--for much the same reason "take over such and such planet faceless brood mother joining the swarm" advances the story.
It is Kerrigan's reach spreading across the stars, it is the campaign showing us that kerrigan was not just hanging out at zerus, that she is constantly and continually attacking multiple planets constantly, it is showing us that SHE IS THE FUCKING SWARM. Literally, it is the manifestation of the her never ending phrase of I AM THE SWARM.
The only thing it doesn't progress is the revenge narrative => which pretty much none of the other plot points really progress.
And how can you say that its not referred to later? The physical and literal shape and composition of the swarm is determined by this. In essence, the pixels on your screen that are killing other pixels on your screen look and act only how the evolution missions dictates how they act. More so than any other mission their effects are felt and seen literally affecting the world as the narrative progresses.
And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans.
The problem with the design was there was no benefit or consequence for picking neither, for telling abather to shut his pie hole and stop killing innocents. So we as the player feel forced to kill marines and zealots because we're literally gimping ourselves if we don't. Kerrigan was strong enough to say "hey dude, no more okay" but we as players have no reason to follow suite.
Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
On March 29 2013 03:29 jeeeeohn wrote: A Breakdown of Players' Qualms With The Story:
Players expected Jim to kill Kerrigan. Jim didn't kill Kerrigan.
Players expected SC2 to be well written, like BW. SC2 wasn't well written.
Players expected characters to make sense. Characters don't make sense.
Now, I fully agree with the above, but, overall, I enjoy the story. It's cheesy space opera, and that's all it will ever be, and all I appreciate it for.
+1 its almost like the pro wrestling story lines they have to come up with when 1 of the main wrestler guys quits and leaves for Japan....they come up with a fake knee injury or sometimes... he just becomes an "unperson" and is never talked about.
like the WWF tried to do with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall after they first left.
as soon as they greatly modified the appearance of Raynor in SC2:WoL you knew they would come up with whatever dumb excuses they could to change the storyline to suit whoever the new writers were for the SC2 trilogy.
i love the excuses/reasons they give for no more Vultures, or Firebats. All the Firebat suits are being used by Marauders now lol.
In fairness, they're sticking very closely to canon--the problem being that their canon comes from books that most TL visitors don't read. The other problem being that SC is famous for being a videogame, not a book, so it doesn't matter that there was 100+ pages of Raynor/Kerrigan love years and years before SC2--our demographic didn't read it so we pretend it doesn't count.
On March 28 2013 07:41 Grumbels wrote: [quote] The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself) [quote] The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing.
It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil.
It technically does advance the story--for much the same reason "take over such and such planet faceless brood mother joining the swarm" advances the story.
It is Kerrigan's reach spreading across the stars, it is the campaign showing us that kerrigan was not just hanging out at zerus, that she is constantly and continually attacking multiple planets constantly, it is showing us that SHE IS THE FUCKING SWARM. Literally, it is the manifestation of the her never ending phrase of I AM THE SWARM.
The only thing it doesn't progress is the revenge narrative => which pretty much none of the other plot points really progress.
And how can you say that its not referred to later? The physical and literal shape and composition of the swarm is determined by this. In essence, the pixels on your screen that are killing other pixels on your screen look and act only how the evolution missions dictates how they act. More so than any other mission their effects are felt and seen literally affecting the world as the narrative progresses.
And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans.
The problem with the design was there was no benefit or consequence for picking neither, for telling abather to shut his pie hole and stop killing innocents. So we as the player feel forced to kill marines and zealots because we're literally gimping ourselves if we don't. Kerrigan was strong enough to say "hey dude, no more okay" but we as players have no reason to follow suite.
Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
I think the problem with the missions is that they were incredibly, incredibly easy. The format was fine in terms of the storytelling/Zerg lore kind of angle
1. Find some weird creature with some mutation 2. Kill it or something, assimilate it and test it out
The issue was that part 2 never really seemed at all challenging, it would have been cool if you got to play around a bit more and use your new toys in a less constrained 'Zergling B can jump up cliffs, jump some up some cliffs' kind of way
On March 28 2013 08:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: [quote]
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing.
It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil.
It technically does advance the story--for much the same reason "take over such and such planet faceless brood mother joining the swarm" advances the story.
It is Kerrigan's reach spreading across the stars, it is the campaign showing us that kerrigan was not just hanging out at zerus, that she is constantly and continually attacking multiple planets constantly, it is showing us that SHE IS THE FUCKING SWARM. Literally, it is the manifestation of the her never ending phrase of I AM THE SWARM.
The only thing it doesn't progress is the revenge narrative => which pretty much none of the other plot points really progress.
And how can you say that its not referred to later? The physical and literal shape and composition of the swarm is determined by this. In essence, the pixels on your screen that are killing other pixels on your screen look and act only how the evolution missions dictates how they act. More so than any other mission their effects are felt and seen literally affecting the world as the narrative progresses.
And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans.
The problem with the design was there was no benefit or consequence for picking neither, for telling abather to shut his pie hole and stop killing innocents. So we as the player feel forced to kill marines and zealots because we're literally gimping ourselves if we don't. Kerrigan was strong enough to say "hey dude, no more okay" but we as players have no reason to follow suite.
Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
I think the problem with the missions is that they were incredibly, incredibly easy. The format was fine in terms of the storytelling/Zerg lore kind of angle
1. Find some weird creature with some mutation 2. Kill it or something, assimilate it and test it out
The issue was that part 2 never really seemed at all challenging, it would have been cool if you got to play around a bit more and use your new toys in a less constrained 'Zergling B can jump up cliffs, jump some up some cliffs' kind of way
I personally think that the evolution missions were an abomination and an insult on my intelligence. I was mostly just pointing out that there weren't just filler, that they actually do progress the story.
Now, I personally find this style of unit integration much more appealing than "oh, btw, here's unit ______ its so convenient that we finally have access to them just when we got to this part in the narrative when you need them "
Because that old SC1 style of introducing new units is just dumb and reeks of deus ex machina. But SC1 was so engaging that cheesy stuff like that didn't bother me. Telling me "hey, this planet has a bunch of jumpy stuff that are only able to navigate their planet because they're jumpy--lets steal that idea!" is a much better and more fluid transition into new units. That being followed through by "lets attack a terran base conveniently hiding up cliffs" is dumb.
Jumping banelings made sense because it was a known terran planet and so the baneling who adapted to the planet were better able to attack a terran base. Attacking a protoss zoo in order to get BroodRoaches was just non-sense.
So, no, I agree that these were bad missions. But its a great direction conceptually for an RTS to go towards assuming the execution can be fixed.
On March 29 2013 06:51 Nachtwind wrote: The problem with the missions is not only they are easy it´s also that blizzard totally drift away from the old option of storytelling IN A MISSION.
Only rendered videos will tell you know the story while in BW story was a piece of mission design.
Sort of...
Nothing happened plot wise for the first 3 missions of SC1's Rebel Yell campaign. Which also happened to be 33% of the campaign.
You then had two-three actual missions, followed by the downward spiral.
first 1/3 of the missions had no plot 2nd 1/3 of the missions was fake plot (mostly it was to lull you into thinking the narrative was going to be plain) last 1/3 of the missions are the ones you actually care about
I'm not saying SC1 was bad--but it fucked up less because it really only had 4ish missions worth of story in it per race. the rest were broad stroke summaries of what the 3 races were up to "in general" and nothing too specific.
Campaign design wise, I much prefer the blander more broad stroke style of BW. But don't pretend like it was wall-to-wall narrative because it wasn't.
On March 28 2013 07:41 Grumbels wrote: [quote] The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself) [quote] The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win.
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing.
It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil.
Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
I use the word filler in the context of episodic television shows, where an episode that doesn't advance the plot or tell us anything meaningful about the characters is called a filler episode. Note that there are degrees of an episode being filler (it could only be filler-ish), that people are allowed to disagree and that just because something is filler doesn't mean it's bad. The evolution missions have no role in the plot, they do tell us something about Kerrigan's character, but this goes unexamined, Blizzard doesn't expect us to remember and the events are never referred to again later on. The fact that you can use a unit later on doesn't mean it's not filler, just that it's not purely filler. By your definition there could be an episode of Lost which is just a character stubbing his toe and then when he is slightly limping the next episode you could point out: see that wasn't a filler episode, it's integral to the plot.
On March 29 2013 06:51 Nachtwind wrote: The problem with the missions is not only they are easy it´s also that blizzard totally drift away from the old option of storytelling IN A MISSION.
Only rendered videos will tell you know the story while in BW story was a piece of mission design.
Sort of...
Nothing happened plot wise for the first 3 missions of SC1's Rebel Yell campaign. Which also happened to be 33% of the campaign.
You then had two-three actual missions, followed by the downward spiral.
first 1/3 of the missions had no plot 2nd 1/3 of the missions was fake plot (mostly it was to lull you into thinking the narrative was going to be plain) last 1/3 of the missions are the ones you actually care about
I'm not saying SC1 was bad--but it fucked up less because it really only had 4ish missions worth of story in it per race. the rest were broad stroke summaries of what the 3 races were up to "in general" and nothing too specific.
Campaign design wise, I much prefer the blander more broad stroke style of BW. But don't pretend like it was wall-to-wall narrative because it wasn't.
It´s a difference though if 0 of 27 has no story telling in the missions. Most argumentation of "how things work" in starcraft are based of the "last 1/3" you mentioned.
edit: And are also used when people are swinging the bw story > sc2 story bat
On March 28 2013 08:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: [quote]
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes.
They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe.
Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm.
When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet.
And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm.
Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass.
Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification.
It isn't justification, it's what we are presented.
She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions.
Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented.
After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry.
No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative.
Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet.
Boring =/= filler
Boring = boring
Filter = filter
The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story.
But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler.
I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing.
It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil.
Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
I use the word filler in the context of episodic television shows, where an episode that doesn't advance the plot or tell us anything meaningful about the characters is called a filler episode. Note that there are degrees of an episode being filler (it could only be filler-ish) and that people are allowed to disagree. The evolution missions have no role in the plot, they do tell us something about Kerrigan's character, but this goes unexamined, Blizzard doesn't expect us to remember and the events are never referred to again later on. The fact that you can use a unit later on doesn't mean it's not filler, just that it's not purely filler. By your definition there could be an episode of Lost which is just a character stubbing his toe and then when he is slightly limping the next episode you could point out: see that wasn't a filler episode, it's integral to the plot.
The fact that they tells us about Kerrigan and tells us about what Zerg is doing in the grander scheme of things is the reason its not filler.
Its bad story telling, and its bad mission design, but its not "filler"
Having a character limping is not filler, but it is boring. Having these evolution missions was not filler, but they are boring.
Filler is Duran showing up for no reason other for older fans to go "hey look its Duran!"
Filler is having Duran tell us everything about Narud instead of us/Kerrigan figuring it out for ourselves. It's filler because it literally replaces character progression with a talking head to fill you in on what you're supposed to know. We actually know less about Kerrigan *because* we're spending time listening to Duran recite the answers to us instead of having Kerrigan learn about whatever she's facing.
Filler is having Raynor rob trains in the middle of his rebellion/saving the love of his life in that he literally stops going after the two things he cares about (Mengsk/Kerrigan) and spends a mission robbing trains.
Showing that Kerrigan can multitask almost as much as Bisu is the opposite of that because as she is becoming the swarm the game needs to show her being the swarm.
Blizzard simply threw the entire opportunity away! No conversations about it, no terrans going "I've never seen that before!" no Protoss going all "I thought Zerg only did ______!!!!" etc.... No conversations about planets missing, installations ravaged, etc... It was a perfect time for Kerrigan to do something like listen to the news and hearing about all the lives she was ending as she was become one with the swarm and then cutting off psionic connection from it while Zagara is all "what's wrong my queen?" and Kerrigan is all "it's nothing, stop asking stupid questions!"
But they didn't. And it makes all the evolution missions feel so impotent. Which is why you feel like they're filler. They're not--they're actually very important for the narrative. its just that they wasted it like they wasted a good chunk of the campaign....
And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans.
Back in WoL, the only missions that had to be completed were the Mar Sara, artefact and Char missions. Technically, Raynor could refuse to follow Tosh to Redstone, yet HotS is based on the premise that every single mission happened, not just the three "central" arcs. So even if you, as the player, choose not to play the evolution missions, they happened in-universe anyway. Optionnal stuff is always considered to have happened by the next episode in Blizzard games.
On March 29 2013 07:20 Nachtwind wrote: filler is a silly usage of word regardless of your discussion hence this is no anime and has nothing to do with drawing styles
and the discussion about what´s a filler it´s just useless usage of words and a derail of this thread
The anime community didn't invent the word filler and they have a different meaning for it anyway, it's not related to this discussion.
I guess it's a useless discussion though, you are right.
And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans.
Back in WoL, the only missions that had to be completed were the Mar Sara, artefact and Char missions. Technically, Raynor could refuse to follow Tosh to Redstone, yet HotS is based on the premise that every single mission happened, not just the three "central" arcs. So even if you, as the player, choose not to play the evolution missions, they happened in-universe anyway. Optionnal stuff was always considered to have happened by the next episode in Blizzard games.
I agree, and its a big reason why the narratives of both WoL and HotS feels so terrible.
If you boiled it down the WoL campaign probably had at best 5-8 actual missions that mattered? Out of 30??
In HotS its much the same, you don't have the choice to leave random protoss settlements alone, you don't have a choice but to attack random terran outposts and then you're asked to believe that she feels bad for her actions? That she isn't a psychotic killer?
No way.
You're asked to believe that Raynor only cares about Mengsk and Kerrigan while he robs places for some random buyer?
No way.
In BW they literally forced you to kill Fenix with your own two hands. As planets were lost you had whole conversations talking about how bad people felt about stuff they did. The psi emitter being used to call in zerg, you finding out that your first protoss victory was made moot by the zerg retaking it and killing fenix in the process. etc....
As the story went you had wins and losses and the losses hurt you. The bad decisions haunted you. You made decisions that felt right, and then you're shown that you've been manipulated the whole time. Manipulated into doing things the characters regret. People were hurt and broken and all hope felt lost.
That is what people actually remember from BW. Not the story, not the characters, but the sense of hopelessness being overcome by camaraderie and brotherhood. It was Raynor and Tassaddar turned outcasts by their own people and having to find strength in each other--that was what people remember.
Decisions meant something in BW. Decisions mean nothing in SC2. The story assumes you said yes to all options and doesn't punish you at all for making any of your decisions.
The one thing they did that was interesting was leaving raynor behind and having her feel bad for doing it. That is what we needed more of.
Why you talking about forcing then decisions while you talking about the same game?
You have the feeling that decisions were made inside the story but you as player was never able to make those decisions. That´s a mix of story telling and nostalgia.
On March 29 2013 07:43 Nachtwind wrote: Why you talking about forcing then decisions while you talking about the same game?
You have the feeling that decisions were made inside the story but you as player was never able to make those decisions. That´s a mix of story telling and nostalgia.
Of course we as the player never made those decisions in BW, but not all the decisions in BW lead to good results.
Take the first three Protoss missions in SC1
Mission one, save a town from zerg. Sounds good.
Mission two, save a different town from zerg. Sounds good.
While you were gone the first town got overrun and your friend is dead.
Had you stayed, the town would have been safe and Fenix would have been alive. Instead by doing the right thing you lost two things.
You then eventually kill a cerebrate, which turns out resurrected.
You find our how to kill cerebrates, only to realize you won't get homeworld support if you do it.
Half the time when your character made the "right" choice it had bad consequences because of those choices. It made it engaging because you didn't feel like an unstoppable force. It felt like the Protoss were losing, despite you winning all the missions.
In WoL/HotS none of the decisions you make affect anything. You actually just always win, constantly. The times where you don't are the side plots that are not relevanat to the overall narrative of the raynor/mengsk/kerrigan trifecta. The doctor dying and you having to kill her, tychus turning on you at the last minute (which would have been much better if Mengsk wasn't involved and was simply him wanting to take vengeance on Kerrigan for what she did, mengks was a cop out)
imagine if it was kerrigan you killed instead of the doctor? imagine if horner was the traitor--instead of tychus? Imagine if saving the prisoners caused more mayhem and more reason for the people to trust mengsk? Imagine if bad decisions you made actually affected the narrative. Because bad decisions made in BW did affect the narrative.
Something that hasn't exactly been mentioned yet is the perception of 'filler' or extraneous materials in entertainment, etc, and how this is somewhat misleading or misrepresented. Whatever you want to call it, this episodic stuff often disguises itself as unimportant material, nonsensical, or otherwise if looking at the main story arc (a very common tactic in Television) but end up being very important in the end. The reason for this is because the story needs the adequate amount of time to mature and set up the proper materials, and get the audience into the position that the writers want them to be in, so that once they move the main arc forward, you have a better sense of how the characters perceive the following cascade of events. This kind of expectation of character or events is something that is often played around with in entertainment (in that they can be fulfilled or thwarted by the writers depending on the underlying intent).
One really good (read obvious) example of this is the whole 'farm' sequence of episodes in season 2 of The Walking Dead. Many, many people felt that these episodes (and encompassing material) were extraneous, stupid, or only used to draw out the plot and had no purpose, but this isn't entirely true. The show actually had to sit you down and experience all of the surrounding materials of 'being' on the farm (social, psychological, location, etc...) in order to properly set up the sequence of events that would eventually occur later and get the main arc really moving again, or initiate actions that had consequences down the road. So in this instance, and I would imagine that most people who experienced this would say this, but these episodes and the material while they masqueraded themselves as unimportant, they were in fact incredibly important, but on an extraordinarily subtle level.
That being said, the execution of this series of episodes was most times on the scale of mediocre to atrocious, but that doesn't mean that this idea isn't valid because you see these kind of "setting up certain expectations into fulfilling or denying them" arcs all the time in Television.
I don´t know what you want, really. You´re acting like all those things in sc1/bw were decisions up to the players choice.
The story was forced upon the player in sc while you could for the first time actually decide story elements in WoL. Now you´re acting this don´t ever happened in WoL. The missions in Haven for example.
What you´re name and shame her is the art of storytelling. This is a problem (in my eyes) the OP of this thread has mentioned because of "children".
Imagine the storytelling for example what was done in haven in a sc1/bw enviroment and you get what i think.
Then you want backstabing at your decisions. Well one of your best friends want to kill your lady. One of your other friends told you he is not trust worthy. You said everything is okay.
You helped Narud to escape from Kerrigan.
You played into the plans of Narud and Amon with the Xel Naga device.
See. You already made decisions but are too blind to see them.
On March 29 2013 08:21 Nachtwind wrote: I don´t know what you want, really. You´re acting like all those things in sc1/bw were decisions up to the players choice.
The story was forced upon the player in sc while you could for the first time actually decide story elements in WoL. Now you´re acting this don´t ever happened in WoL. The missions in Haven for example.
What you´re name and shame her is the art of storytelling. This is a problem (in my eyes) the OP of this thread has mentioned because of "children".
Imagine the storytelling for example what was done in haven in a sc1/bw enviroment and you get what i think.
Then you want backstabing at your decisions. Well one of your best friends want to kill your lady. One of your other friends told you he is not trust worthy. You said everything is okay.
You helped Narud to escape from Kerrigan.
You played into the plans of Narud and Amon with the Xel Naga device.
See. You already made decisions but are too blind to see them.
Before I get to your main point, I'd like to talk about Tychus and Narud.
I would have preferred the backstabbing friend to have been the friend instead of Mengsk telling your friend to do it. Much more painful if your friend was willing to end your friendship to save the universe--and then failing at it.
I mean, I like that they were playing it off as if Tychus was a mole the whole time. It would have been a great twist if he was not a mole and simply wanted to end Kerrigan's reign Raynor be damned. I wish it was painful, and personal, and not just another mengsk goon.
But I do like the points you bring up. I like that we help Narud, I had forgotten about that. I wish there was more of it. I wish Kerrigan was a bit bitter about Raynor having saved Narud in the first place upon finding out how bad he was. I wish Kerrigan was more conflicted.
What I mean about choice is not the physical act of choosing. In SC1/BW all the choices your character made all seemed like the right call at the time, which is easy to do in a linear story like SC1 and BW were.
The problem with multi-choice version is that it never felt like having a choice to take one path or the other, it felt like you were given the choice to skip content or not.
Here's what I mean by this.
You have a choice of two planets, but its not really a choice of two planets since choosing one does not prevent you from going back to the other. The assumption is that you have control of the order of events, but not the choice of events.
Going back to my previous example about the toss campaign in SC1.
You save the first town, Fenix thanks you. You hear that another town is in trouble, so you go save it also. Because your character made that decision, Fenix dies.
They did not have the option to do that in WoL. In WoL, it doesn't matter which planet is picked, you'll get through all of them eventually.
In SC1 you use the psi emitter to call in zerg to kill dominion forces allowing you to escape. Kerrigan, Jim, and you feel bad about doing that to your enemies even though it was the only way you guys could escape.
In HotS you wipe out a planet (personally) or fight the protoss as you stop them from wiping out a planet.
Does Horner treat you differently? Does the media treat you differently? [Raynor, Genocidal maniac wipes out planet _____ , no survivors] etc....
It doesn't. It doesn't matter which one you pick since the narrative after it has to play out in a bleh enough fashion so that it would fit no matter which decision you made. Because Blizzard gave us the choice we removed the ability for them to punish us for bad decisions.
Its easy to make bad decisions in linear games since you know (as a designer) how the information plays out. That is absent when you have choose your own adventure.
Imagine, for example, if choosing to do missions with Tychus allowed mengks and kerrigan to build up forces because you wasted time robbing trains. Suddenly you get to the last missions and there's almost double the number of troops waiting for you.
Then imagine skipping the tychus adventures and just charging at Char--except since you ignored Mengsk he's also in the map attacking you and kerrigan at the same time (not mengks hmself, but his men). Imagine if depending on which missions you chose to skip and not skip would change how many troops you faced, how much tech you had, and how much money you had available. Imagine if you simply charged towards Char in WoL skipping everything. You get to the last mission and you have no money and no tech and have to start a cc with the one scv you have. There's almost no zerg on the map, and Kerrigan attacks you half as much. But maybe the second playthrough you do ALL the missions and have ALL the tech. Suddenly the game starts with you already having a big base and zerg everywhere inside your base, outside your base, and you spend the first few minutes just saving supply depots and running scvs away from lings.
If they give you choices it has to have consequences. In BW, choices were made for you and they had their own consequences. That is what I'm talking about by choice.
You´re looking with the eyes of a bw fan here. Imagine sc2 in 10+ years and da dude_of_the_first_hour talking about the story. He´ll call sc1/bw a nice introduction to THE SC2!! while bashing about sc3. It´s hyperbole though what i´m using but hope you get my point. =)
And yes you´re right that the "freedome" of decision in WoL is a mere illusion since they have no effect and/or you can skip missions.
The thing is, those options you mentioned would go beyond the scope of the production. The games WoL and HotS are a compromise between perfection and time.
edit: But interestingly the "feel" of guilt of decission is based on things that are happening inside the missions. That´s what i talked about at the start of this. Videos are the story tellers while the game degrades to mere kill X.
edit: Also one thing is most people just don´t want to see big things like the creature Abathur. People calling him a filler. If they would know how important this creature is to clear flaws in the zerg history since sc1. The ignorance on the canon here is stunning.
I have no idea how long you spent typing such a long post just to nit-pick. You probably should have spent this time doing something else. It's frustrating how society currently spends far more time complaining and bitching about miniscule and unimportant details.
It was a great game, a lot of interesting quirks, no two levels felt the same, some of the mastery achievements were difficult.
After reading your post I can conclude that you are a hipster that was looking for any flaw you could find while playing the game, get over yourself it was great.
On March 29 2013 09:49 lachy89 wrote: I have no idea how long you spent typing such a long post just to nit-pick. You probably should have spent this time doing something else. It's frustrating how society currently spends far more time complaining and bitching about miniscule and unimportant details.
It was a great game, a lot of interesting quirks, no two levels felt the same, some of the mastery achievements were difficult.
After reading your post I can conclude that you are a hipster that was looking for any flaw you could find while playing the game, get over yourself it was great.
It's frustrating how society frown upon actual well-founded, long opinion pieces with the 'you should get a life' riposte. Oh noes, somebody actually uses their brain and hands to formulate a proper review of kinds. 100x more preferable than people going on message boards and basically saying 'I agree' or 'I disagree' to everything with bugger all to back that up.
Gaping and nonsensical plotholes are not 'miniscule' details. Yeah they don't overly effect me, I tend to play for the multiplayer but it's annoying some of the ones that got the game primarily for the single player. There's a bit of nostalgia in me as well from BW, so it would have been nice for some of the plotholes not to be there, or at least the characters to display some consistency between the two games.
Did the OP play SC1 and BW? Dont seem like it. Anyway i just briefly read parts and bits of it as i am of limited time atm but everything i saw from the OP make me wonder if he completly missed the story of this game from start to where we are today.
On March 30 2013 00:05 SuperGnu wrote: Did the OP play SC1 and BW? Dont seem like it. Anyway i just briefly read parts and bits of it as i am of limited time atm but everything i saw from the OP make me wonder if he completly missed the story of this game from start to where we are today.
er... please do read the whole thing when you have more time. I think you missed most of the content of his post. He clearly has played SC1 and BW.
That was....epic! Gonna have fun reading all of it at work!
I came to the part where he said there was no sign of any more romantic feelings betveen Jim and Sarah and frankly that is not true at all and most other stuff made me go "what? did you even listen to the story?"
He listed ALL of the interactions between Jim and Sarah in SC Vanilla-BW in text form. It is shown and explained very clearly that Jim and Sarah had a platonic/war buddy type relationship. Anyways I agree with this review entirely. Even though the GAMEPLAY and multiplayer is quite fun, the boss battles are lame and unoriginal, and the plot is honestly Twilight level horseshit. I really enjoyed SC1 for its storyline and felt it was quite eloquent by video game standards. To me, SC1 to SC2 has been like Star Wars OT, followed by Prequels where they butcher all the characters you came to love.
For those that say story doesn't matter in video games, just look at Bioshock series, Mass Effect (except that ending), Final Fantasy (before they became shit), Elder Scrolls, Fallout etc. People love video games, but they also love video games that tell a good story at the same time. Mario/Zelda games were NEVER about the story, all about gameplay, so that's fine. SC1 had a great, complex story with lots of backstabbing and interesting characters that develop. SC2 drops that for characters that flip-flop, are one-dimensional and entirely predictable. Yes, the gameplay is fine, the multiplayer is deep, the missions are varied in gameplay, but the horribly B-grade movie story is just disappointing
On March 30 2013 00:05 SuperGnu wrote: Did the OP play SC1 and BW? Dont seem like it. Anyway i just briefly read parts and bits of it as i am of limited time atm but everything i saw from the OP make me wonder if he completly missed the story of this game from start to where we are today.
er... please do read the whole thing when you have more time. I think you missed most of the content of his post. He clearly has played SC1 and BW.
I came to the part where he said there was no sign of any more romantic feelings betveen Jim and Sarah and frankly that is not true at all and most other stuff made me go "what? did you even listen to the story?"
On March 30 2013 00:05 SuperGnu wrote: Did the OP play SC1 and BW? Dont seem like it. Anyway i just briefly read parts and bits of it as i am of limited time atm but everything i saw from the OP make me wonder if he completly missed the story of this game from start to where we are today.
er... please do read the whole thing when you have more time. I think you missed most of the content of his post. He clearly has played SC1 and BW.
I came to the part where he said there was no sign of any more romantic feelings betveen Jim and Sarah and frankly that is not true at all and most other stuff made me go "what? did you even listen to the story?"
He address that, go read it if you're going to disagree afterwards, by all means do so.
As I have the uncanny ability to piece together plot holes automatically ion my head such things rarely gives me any pause in movies, books or games. Plot inconsistensies though is a whole other ballpark and unfortunately Blizzard excels at those too.
I have to say though that when Stukov appeared in HotS I actually hoped it would be Duran/Narud in disguise, there to make the story interesting again but I gave Blizzard way too much credit
All in all this is an amazing post and it stated most of the things I disliked about WoL and HotS. Well written wo1fwood.
One of the things I disliked was the notion of "gaining power". What kind of power? Psionic power? Military power? Speaking of power in those terms is like watching Dragon Ball Z. "Warfield, what does the scouter say about her power level?" That may be fine for Warcraft, but that isn't what Starcraft is about. Starcraft is about forming unlikely alliances and betrayal. Taking a bath on Zerus is not going to make invading the Dominion capital planet any easier. If there was talk about being able to command larger forces then it might have been more believable. A max supply limit that grows larger as Kerrigan increases her command over the Swarm may have been a neat mechanic for the campaign. Human Kerrigan is only able to control 100 supply of units, while acquiring allies can increase that limit higher. When she's QoB Kerrigan, it could go all the way up to 200 or 300. Gives a lot more of the swarm feel. Might have been better than just having an OP Kerrigan around in every mission, but I guess some people liked that.
Another thing is I felt Kerrigan was going at her revenge in the wrong way. The more she attacked Dominion planets, the easier it will be for Mengsk to rally his people under the guise that the Zerg are the enemy of humanity and that he is the only one that can protect him. It would only allow him to expand the Dominion's military power. In Wings of Liberty you went through a good portion of the campaign to broadcast the recording of Tarsonis and discredit Mengsk. Human Kerrigan and Raynor should have kept hammering that until Mengsk lost his power. The Dominion isn't Kerrigan's enemy. Only Mengsk is. WoL made it very clear that Mengsk was running the Dominion like a dictatorship and that he didn't have a lot of support from the masses (at least from the people on Backwater. The UNN reports were mainly for comedic effect but Lockwell could possibly have been the "true" voice of the people). The one thing that allowed Mengsk to keep his power so well was the threat of the Zerg. Now that the Queen of Blades was transformed back into a human, he wouldn't have anything to fall back on.
I just can't believe they turned Raynor into a little lovesick bitch I mean, fucking Fenix, let's just forget that you killed him and billions others because I fancy you a bit? Come on
my biggest problem was that it's really realy easy, even on brutal. The only map i struggled with was the one you name a "belia-clone" yeah i dont play WoW and boss fights like that, but every map which needed sc skills were super easy. I mean there are different difficulty levels for a reason, no? Blizzard is fully aware that a good chunk of his customers are actually fucking good at this game and should make the last difficulty level REALLY hard.
I havent played a single game for over a year and pwned the last mission with my first try... that's anticlimatic. Why did i bother thinking so much on the evolution pit choices, when they dont really matter since with any unit mix you can easily roll all the missions....
I really appreciate your post, OP. Starcraft II concerns more on personal feelings and love affairs, especially between our hero Jim Raynor and heroine Sarah Kerrigan, while Starcraft I is all about macro stuffs, the huge wars bursted among three races, the traitors, the strategies, the plots and so on. It's an evolution of the game itself, due to the pure RTS games are not the mainstream these days. PC games are going into two extremes, cartoon-like recreational (like LOL) & more and more realistic (like Battlefield 4, CODs). Blizzard wanna attract as many people as possible, thus combine RPG elements in the HotS. It's just an inevictable trend that should be followed. The story itself isn't that appeal as Starcraft I any more. It's really hard for the Blizzard to balance the personal emotions as well as macro storyline in the whole universe. Starcraft II HotS is okay with me, but I really hate the RPG-like Boss killing levels. It isn't RTS at all!
It's an evolution of the game itself, due to the pure RTS games are not the mainstream these days. PC games are going into two extremes, cartoon-like recreational (like LOL) & more and more realistic (like Battlefield 4, CODs). Blizzard wanna attract as many people as possible, thus combine RPG elements in the HotS
I gotta disagree Its a "devolution" at best and its not because RTS isn't mainstream. They've never really been mainstream and therefore the best thing to do is appeal to the core audience you know you have secured just because you're releasing a major title in the very shallow game pool. From a business sense, it makes far more sense to at least hit your guaranteed targets and then try to grab a few from other market appeals as well.
The strategy of "combining RPG elements in the HotS" would be very counter-productive as well. By trying to make it more like an RPG in the design, you start alienating the strategists who bought the RTS for an RTS. What we see are a group who bought it for the storyline and then an overwhelming amount who bought it solely for the multiplayer and the fact we're being forced to buy this thing to keep playing. The point isn't the countless ways they've caused new unsolvable errors or server/lag issues with their multiplayer base, but its how they've completely demolished their own campaign storyline by ditching the old universe and making it into quite literally "All My Children" in space with worse love scene writing than we saw in Star Wars III.
Your expectations of SC2's story were too high (mine were a bit high as well), and SC1 nostalgia is a bit too much. If one thing I would agree with, SC1's story was simple--too simple to give rise to contradictions.
However, it was also so simple that the story was basically done at the end of BW. Yes, I really wanted to know what happens next, but the way Duran tells it, the demons win. There's no reason to think, from all the SC1 lore about the Protoss and Zerg having such complementary strengths (Form and Essence, you could say), that the Terrans or Protoss would stand up to the hybrid. As to the Zerg, their goal under the Overmind always appeared to be to assimilate the Protoss.
As we know, BW ended with the Zerg under Kerrigan's control instead of the Overmind's, so there is room to wonder, "will the zerg end up teaming up with the T and P, just like the orcs teaming with humans vs the demons in WCIII RoC?"
Where I'm going with this is that there wasn't much story to tell without a bit of retcon here and there. Zerus isn't an ash world, it's lush. Well, good for us not having to see another Char. The varied mission objectives serve the purpose of teaching new players or players new to zerg. So too bad, Valerian gets the short end of that stick in looking like an idiot. Conjure me up a great idea to teach players to build a hatchery, mine minerals, and start building economy, when human Kerrigan is the star at the beginning of the campaign.
They have to work with constraints such as where the story left off in WoL, which is, for better or worse, more relevant than the 12 year old SC1 story.
A lot of the writing does meander though, and some lines I just don't eat up like I did in SC1. Still, a lot of that could be because I'm 30, not 15. Plus, I've gone through Mass Effect disappointment for months after ME3's release, slowly visiting their forums less and less, as it's become increasingly apparent that Bioware still stonewall on the real issues of the ending, instead providing fan service DLCs. At least Blizzard listens (look at new battle.net features such as clans and global play, as well as listening to pro-gamers on balance, etc., etc.). As far as storyline, maybe they listened a bit less, or maybe they just tried and failed, but they are still listening. The out of place references to Fenix or Duran I took as them listening, not fan servicing.
And honestly, as much as I would have loved to see a reference to Samir Duran, that would have made no sense to someone who only played SC2. "Who's this black guy with the beret?" they would wonder. The Fenix reference also fails in that sense, so you're basically screwed either way, since you risk confusing people who never played SC1.
TL:DR I agree the writing is weak a lot of places, but it's almost a waste of time to worry about inconsistencies with SC1, if they at least manage to be believable between three SC2 campaigns.
Also, expectations ruin experiences. You say you had low expectations, but wanting a lot amounts to the same result of being let down.
P.S. Admittedly, I began skimming around Spock, but I also read some things you say about whether Zerg have "psi," but you don't seem to account for the psi-disruptor of BW completely throwing the zerg into disarray. Granted, it didn't damage them directly, but I have to take the copout: it's one of those gameplay mechanic things where it trumps story.
That reminds me of another problem WCII, SC1, and WCIII all had: you achieve great success as one race, then you smash it down in the next campaign, making your previous "you" look like a tool. Case in point, the UED commander you "play" as in the BW terran campaign. I'm pretty sure if it was myself as the zerg vs myself controlling terran and zerg (the latter being the UED), the terran and zerg wins. But as we know, the campaign is meant to be defeated, not defeat the player automatically. This isn't JRPG where I resolve a personal matter and come back over 9000 and smash the uber boss who previously smashed me.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, except I'm pretty sure you could examine the old games mentioned and find flaws of this nature, aside from them having relatively simple stories that are difficult to bungle. It's always a bit harder with sequels. Yes, I do like ME2 more than ME1, but not for its main story, and yes, I did like the WC3 story more than WC2, but that's mostly because WC2 was just some commander blaring at you your objectives, plus the human and orc campaigns were mutually exclusive (only one can be canon, or some blend if you're writing Deus Ex games).
Since the prophesy arc reared its head in wings I've been reaaaally lukewarm on the sc2 story. There's plenty of material for politicking/betrayal/other interesting stuff with the characters that exist which doesn't involve you fighting "THE MOST ULTIMATE EVIL YET!" Tons of potential with kerrigan becoming the Queen of Blades again which is just totally wasted.
On March 31 2013 03:01 Ansinjunger wrote: Where I'm going with this is that there wasn't much story to tell without a bit of retcon here and there. Zerus isn't an ash world, it's lush. Well, good for us not having to see another Char.
You've already accepted that Kerrigan needs to go back to Zerus to regain her power, which is already pretty boring generic fantasy. They destroyed a lot of compelling ideas on Zerus. Zerg is no longer a hyper-evolved hivemind parasite that realised that their ecosystem was collapsing and they had to leave the planet (cue Protoss). They're now a savage/tribal creature that regularly attack other tribes for floaty reasons (essence), and they were enslaved to a hivemind that was created from an all-powerful entity for some reason. Which is exactly what needed to happen for the all-powerful entity to be stopped due to some ageless prophecy. It's almost like Amon helped the demise of his plan to... something.
There's good retcons and there's bad retcons. I find the primal zerg less compelling than the original backstory. I would think coming from Mass Effect you would know about that, given how they butchered the main story arc from what was originally fairly interesting (dark energy). Both Mass Effect and Starcraft made a rocky switch from science fiction to science fantasy. A lot of the interesting ideas about the relays and the reapers and the geth had to be sacrificed for their big finale, much like how a lot of the interesting ideas of the original Zerus had to be sacrificed so that Kerrigan could get her stiletto heels back in some big climactic set piece.
On March 31 2013 03:01 Ansinjunger wrote:At least Blizzard listens (look at new battle.net features such as clans and global play, as well as listening to pro-gamers on balance, etc., etc.).
You say that... but the fans have been asking for these features for three years (since beta). SC2 has been slowly suffocating without them. If HotS released without those features, I'm pretty sure I would have quit and I doubt I would be alone. That is kind of off-topic though.
On March 31 2013 03:01 Ansinjunger wrote:And honestly, as much as I would have loved to see a reference to Samir Duran, that would have made no sense to someone who only played SC2. "Who's this black guy with the beret?" they would wonder. The Fenix reference also fails in that sense, so you're basically screwed either way, since you risk confusing people who never played SC1.
So, they shouldn't have done it because the player would be emotionally disconnected and confused. And yet, here I am, emotionally disconnected and confused with the SC2 story. While the retcons certainly play a role in that, the main problem is that the story isn't worth a closer look unless it's to pick it apart. It's an uninspired mess that is only elevated above a typical fan fiction due to Blizzard's production quality.
And yet, here I am, emotionally disconnected and confused with the SC2 story. While the retcons certainly play a role in that, the main problem is that the story isn't worth a closer look unless it's to pick it apart. It's an uninspired mess that is only elevated above a typical fan fiction due to Blizzard's production quality.
To be fair, I've just finished going through the Terran campaign of SC1 this morning and I have to tell you, its blander than either WoL OR HotS.
However, since bland political intrigue is more interesting than bland love stories--I still like it better than SC2.
SC1
Nothing happens for the firs two missions, you get rescued in the 3rd mission, the fourth mission you do rebel stuff to show you mengks is a good guy, the 5rth mission you find disks, the 5th mission you rescue someone. Its not till the 6th mission that plot happens. Missions 7-9 is the turn where we find out mengks is evil, and the final mission is just a retreat mission.
All of them easier than any of the missions in HotS and WoL.
So plot wise, the terran missions in SC1 spends 10 missions to show us that people in power are corrupt. The first 5 missions shows us that the dominion is evil and doesn't care about the little guy. Then the next 5 missions shows us that Mengsk is evil and doesn't care about the little guy.
However, since they kept the narrative arc simple and precise, they were able to flesh it out much easier and with much more craft than they did with WoL or HotS. Since it didn't have a lot to say, they were able to keep the telling of the little they said as tight as possible--which I liked.
WoL and HotS feel like watching a 2 hour movie telling a 1.5 hour long story. It's good, but it keeps going on so long that you just stop caring after a while. And when you extend something so long you will eventually be forced to add in irrelevant stuff to actually fit the mission minimums.
SC1 only had about 3 missions of actual meta-plot in it. And even those missions gloss over the details. By time I finish the SC1 campaign I'm certain I'll notice only 2-4 plot points TOPS. But since they spend 4-5 missions explaining and expanding the plot points, and the side missions they give you are missions to veer you away from the plot points--the plot points always feel surprising and new.
The first 2 missions is Raynor being Raynor--then he gets in trouble from the dominion.
The third mission is the zerg overrunning the planet--and he gets saved by Mengks. At this point you're made to think that the dominion is the bad guy.
You spend about 2 missions being rebels, helping small outposts with revolutions while breaking into installations. You even save Edmund Duke despite him being the bad guy because that's what lawful good rebels do even though Raynor is against it.
You then find out what the dominion's research has been doing--but its too late you're surrounded. So you're forced to use the dominion tools (the zerg) against them--for the greater good and all.
And then you make a big push against the dominion--but that's when Mengks uses the zerg against the dominion even though he's no longer stuck in a corner.
And then mengks leaves Kerrigan.
And then you leave mengks because he's gone crazy.
Half the missions is the turn, making you think the story is going one way--and then you're "forced" to use evil methods to survive a mission, but you Sarah and Raynor feel bad about it. And then the end of the terran missions is you realizing that Mengks does not feel bad at all about using it.
It took 10 missions to explore that, and since you were forced to only focus on those missions you were immersed in the narrative of a failed revolution. It is tight, it is crisp, and it makes up for a bland narrative and a lacking storyline with excellent execution.
Aside from the fact that in Sc2 I don't feel immersed at all, simply because unlike in Sc/Bw where I was a part of that universe, a commander/zerebrat/executor and addressed as such by all characters, now I feel like some invisible watcher who just goes along with the missions to get the next part of the movie.
The story itself seemed half baked to me. I have no problems with the Raynor/Kerrigan love story (their flirting seemed obvious to me in Sc/Bw) but the whole primal zerg stuff just seemed ludicrous. We spent the entire WoL campaign to make Kerrigan human again and it takes 3 introduction missions for blizzard to go: oops, Zerg again, sorry! (but not that old kind of zerg, a really really new kind of zerg, promise).
Also Zerg isn't Zerg anymore. When Starcraft started, Zerg was this primal force- an entire race of mindless killers led by a single (hive-)mind. Now maybe that doesn't go well with the target group of 6 year olds (even though my 4 year old niece seems to like the "bugs" best) but everyone else liked it because it was something special. I already disliked Kerrigan taking over from the Overmind particularly for that reason, but I could live with one somewhat human being leading the Zerg. But now they seem to have let the WoW writers at the story and suddenly everything gets humanized. The entire Zerg concept gets thrown overboard. Who wants personalities in the Zerg race? Maybe you can't sell as many action figures with the old Zerg concept but I don't give a damn. Suddenly every fucking Zergling seems to have an opinion, the "Queen of Blades" has heaps of dialogues with her underlings, teaches them tactics and asks about their toughts. Bullshit. They're also not evil mindless killers anymore (WC3 orks anyone?) they're just defending themselves (yeah those protoss civilians had to die because, uh, well, else they call for help and attack us and we can't just leave because Kerrigan doesn't "want to run anymore"). Very strong storytelling, thumbs up guys *rolleyes*.
Oh and also it's cool for Kerrigan to invade Korhal killing millions in it's defense, because Mengsk totally was a bad dude and she agreed to let some civilians live. Raynor approves.
Blizzard needs to get their heads out of their asses and realize that people like diversity and that includes playing evil/bad guys. People loved the original Orks and the Zerg precisely because they weren't the good guys.
Buried my hopes for Legacy of the void and the Starcraft franchise, glad I didn't buy Hots (played on friends account).
Very interesting post, though I disagree with you in a lot of ways.
First off, if you don't consume all the content, you don't get the whole story and I'm not sure why you think you should. It's their story, they don't HAVE to pack it all in to games. Yes the games and series itself need to stand alone, but to say that they need to explicitly show you everything I think is flawed. And no, Flashpoint doesn't help the Kerrigan/Jim development that much, he still loves her right away, though it does go into the PTSD stuff you were talking about and that was neat.
Second, you talk about Narud and Duran being the same person. There's no concrete evidence of this, though blizzard has said they're connected. Honestly playing through I thought it would make a lot of sense if Narud was Duran and he revealed how he manipulated Kerrigan as you outlined though, and I think it would have been a stronger way to go.
Third, you're audio argument makes no sense whatsoever. You can't just make something sound good on every audio set up. The only way would be if the game could sense your sound balance setting (which it can't) and your particular setup, what speakers, what wattage, how high the sub is set (which it can't). Assuming you could get that impossible information in the game engine, you'd then need to create a balancer system that will work with every combination of the above impossible to obtain information. This would be a difficult task for a company dedicated to music and signal processing, much less a gaming company. Sorry if I sound like a jerk, but I'm really tired of people saying "this should just work" on the internet when they have no idea how they'd implement it.
Forth, I agree the Zorak fight was a lame reproduction. I didn't mind that mission as a whole though. Though if they had done that on more than one mission I would've been upset.
Last here are some other points I have comments on.
- The love story never existed in Star 1, and if in the event that it did, is never developed and is not palpable or believable by the audience due to the execution.
Well, I just point blank disagree, I always thought they had a relationship through the first games. I dislike people using an absolute phrase when it's simply an opinion. Though I agree that Jim should have had more reluctance when she first became human again. I always thought there was additional time skips and story not shown in the original Starcraft games, so the fact the relationship didn't fully develop never bothered me.
- Kerrigan becomes the Queen Bitch of the Universe, and proceeds to kill billions of humans and turned countless worlds into smoldering piles of ash. Death and destruction includes the fall of Aiur and Protoss society, the death of Tassadar, Stukov, Raszagal, Fenix, Duke, DuGalle, and countless others.
Yes, but how much of that is her, how much was the overmind, Amon's influence? Also it's hinted at that Kerrigan is preparing for something external coming to the galaxy, so maybe she was beating back the protoss and terran for strategic reasons? We don't know yet, Kerrigan still hasn't recovered her memories as the Queen of Blades. Again, yes Jim should be more hesitant when she first turned.
-As Fenix and Raynor were close friends and comrades, and Fenix is now dead, Jim swears that the last thing he'll ever do is kill Kerrigan.
Yes I agree, Jim should've had more conflict.
-If, in the event that they did somehow fall in love on Antiga Prime or Tarsonis, all the murderous backstabbing and wanton destruction between then and now precludes Raynor having any kind of warm feelings for her now, or makes him at the very least apprehensive towards her.
This is really just the same point you've stated many times.
-The convoluted and contradictory nature of the artifact shows leanings towards (in a specific light) the idea that Kerrigan should have been killed on Char and not simply de-infested. Additionally however, understanding the psychic link of the Zerg, the artifact should never have de-infested Kerrigan to begin with (perhaps only severs her link to the Zerg).
I don't quite know what you mean here. Is it not possible that an ancient Xel'Naga artifact functions in more than one way? It's not really a stretch, he's had time to study it between games too.
-Raynor has his gun on him, but if he's in his cell, where did it come from? No way Mengsk allows this possibly where they leave it on him to conspicuously allow himself to commit suicide, that would be a poor and sloppy use of a pawn (no Sarah does not have it, they were separated early remember?).
Hahaha, yeah, that one's a pretty big hole.
Anyway, good post, I just think you've read too much into what should be a fun campaign story. The original campaigns weren't amazing masterpieces of storytelling either, and if you think so you're just looking at them through pink coloured glasses cause you played them when you were younger.
However, adding in this silly romantic sub-plot, and not developing it properly kind of killed a lot of the potential of doing it in the first place. I didn't mind the idea of it, was warming to it. Then within a couple of levels Kerrigan just reverts back to Zerg, goes back to doing her thing, Raynor seemingly forgives this within the space of one mission, and returns at the end going 'the pleasure was all mine darlin'' or something?
There is nothing wrong with such a sub-plot if it is developed at a proper pace, but the pacing of it was totally wrong.
The first two games in the franchise had a lot of political shenanigans behind the scenes and differing motives, some hidden, from of the perpetrators. I don't really see why there needs to be this 'prophecy' angle. Whoever had claimed that SC's story went from science-fiction to science-fantasy put it incredibly well, I was struggling to verbalise what kind of made me uneasy about parts of it.
Now, as somebody who primarily plays SC for the multiplayer ladder, these aren't massive turnoffs for me at all. There's just so much better that could have been done with the source material.
I don't necessarily blame Blizzard for this either, it's a common theme across the industry. People seem to equate 'good' or 'deep' storytelling with a lot of gimmicks, and what have you. Consumers seem to be demanding what I would call the 'Hollywood' style of storytelling in gaming, and it pisses me off. String sections to denote what you are supposed to feel at every juncture, endless, endless exposition to explain the subtleties and intrigues that do remain etc.
On April 02 2013 05:48 Wraith.978 wrote: Anyway, good post, I just think you've read too much into what should be a fun campaign story. The original campaigns weren't amazing masterpieces of storytelling either, and if you think so you're just looking at them through pink coloured glasses cause you played them when you were younger.
Correction--he played it when he was part of their target demographic.
On April 01 2013 09:21 Lobotomist wrote: Since the prophesy arc reared its head in wings I've been reaaaally lukewarm on the sc2 story. There's plenty of material for politicking/betrayal/other interesting stuff with the characters that exist which doesn't involve you fighting "THE MOST ULTIMATE EVIL YET!" Tons of potential with kerrigan becoming the Queen of Blades again which is just totally wasted.
You speak my mind.
Tychus was one of the pleasant surprises for me in WoL though. He realises halfway through the campaign that if they continue, he or Raynor has to die because his mission is to kill Kerrigan. Watching him struggle with this issue, first by trying to pursuade Raynor from abandoning his mission, then by seeing him trying to pursuade himself that he has the right to betray Raynor because he already did time for him, then by trying to warn Raynor for his own betrayal by reminding him of Mengsk and finally standing over Kerrigan, unable to pull the trigger before confessing everything,
for me that was the best 'personal' storyline in SC so far.
HotS started promising, exploring how much of Kerrigans actions as the Queen of Blades were her own dark desires and how much of it was Zerg corruption was interesting. Seeing her forced into taking up the role of queen of the Zerg again, even if it meant Protoss and Terran would never forgive her again was nice. After the first two planets, the story kinda slowed down and I missed something to keep me enthralled.
BW's Protoss campaign still holds the position of 'worst' story of all the campaigns for me though. It's villains (the Shakuras Cerebrates) were just generic Zerg with no names. It's plot (collect the crystals) was uninteresting. The results basically returned the status quo (by introducing Zerg on Shakuras then killing them). It killed off one of my favorite characters (Aldaris) in a stupid, excuse for a PvP, way (by not having him tell Artanis that the Matriarch is mind controlled at the beginning of his mission). And it featured Artanis and Zeratul acting like idiots believing Kerrigan without a doubt and not killing the Overmind when they had a perfect chance. Two plot elements on which the rest of BW's story is based.
The Rebel Yell is still my favorite campaign. It characterises the Zerg and Terran really well and Mengsk's betrayal was fun to watch. You'd think he was a hero if it weren't for the fact that his symbol was a hand holding a whip. It really introduces the SC universe in a compelling way. Too bad the missions were so easy though, as they were the tutorial mission to the game which gave Terrans less interesting challenges to play with.
I hope LotV get's some more interesting characters then Zeratul, Artanis and Selendis. Zeratul hasn't been interesting since BW were half his lines were 'what is going on here?' and Artanis and Selendis just aren't as interesting as Tassadar or Aldaris were. I miss old mysterious Zeratul, too bad BW already ruined him and now he's turned into another different equally uninteresting character.
Blizzard surprised me with Tychus though, so I'll keep some hope up. Still, I know I'll enjoy the next chapter too.
Agreed on Tychus being a very underrated character, he had his own agenda and it wasn't described to the audience slowly in many different ways.
He had a believeable, relatable personality. AND it fit with the starcraft universe with manipulation conflict of interest etc.
His character does give me hope with blizzard's characterisation but its a faint glimmer as they have sytematically butchered every other character and faction in the starcraft universe.
On April 02 2013 03:09 Monsen wrote: Also Zerg isn't Zerg anymore. When Starcraft started, Zerg was this primal force- an entire race of mindless killers led by a single (hive-)mind.
No. no no no
Zerg wasn´t ever like that. While the highest possible order came from the overmind/amon, cerebrats, broods or special entitys in the swarm always possed all "free" will. They couldn´t resist orders from higher beeings in the command line though.
On April 02 2013 03:09 Monsen wrote: Also Zerg isn't Zerg anymore. When Starcraft started, Zerg was this primal force- an entire race of mindless killers led by a single (hive-)mind.
No. no no no
Zerg wasn´t ever like that. While the highest possible order came from the overmind/amon, cerebrats, broods or special entitys in the swarm always possed all "free" will. They couldn´t resist orders from higher beeings in the command line though.
Zerg have free will when they were a unified force under a single hivemind and couldnt' resist commands from it?
On April 02 2013 03:09 Monsen wrote: Also Zerg isn't Zerg anymore. When Starcraft started, Zerg was this primal force- an entire race of mindless killers led by a single (hive-)mind.
No. no no no
Zerg wasn´t ever like that. While the highest possible order came from the overmind/amon, cerebrats, broods or special entitys in the swarm always possed all "free" will. They couldn´t resist orders from higher beeings in the command line though.
Zerg have free will when they were a unified force under a single hivemind and couldnt' resist commands from it?
lol what.
First i put "free" in brackets so discuse this word with caution. Then had the overmind freewill? No?!
Though he was able to "produce" the Queen of Blades. Hm werd.
That is the basic of every underlying commando basis. A cerebrat for example get the order to search and assimilate new strains into the swarm. How he do it and how to command the forces is up to "him". While the lesser layers need to follow the orders they may have thoughts of resist. I´m not talking about a mere zergling here though.
On April 02 2013 03:09 Monsen wrote: Also Zerg isn't Zerg anymore. When Starcraft started, Zerg was this primal force- an entire race of mindless killers led by a single (hive-)mind.
No. no no no
Zerg wasn´t ever like that. While the highest possible order came from the overmind/amon, cerebrats, broods or special entitys in the swarm always possed all "free" will. They couldn´t resist orders from higher beeings in the command line though.
Zerg have free will when they were a unified force under a single hivemind and couldnt' resist commands from it?
lol what.
First i put "free" in brackets so discuse this word with caution. Then had the overmind freewill? No?!
Though he was able to "produce" the Queen of Blades. Hm werd.
That is the basic of every underlying commando basis. A cerebrat for example get the order to search and assimilate new strains into the swarm. How he do it and how to command the forces is up to "him". While the lesser layers need to follow the orders they may have thoughts of resist. I´m not talking about a mere zergling here though.
Well yeah, all zerg leaders including the overmind were given things they needed to accomplish, they have no freedom as whether or not to follow these imperatives. How they went about following these imperatives was up to them, I'm not sure this is classified as free will.
If I recall correctly the overmind was essentially a commander designed to weaponize the zerg created by the xel'naga with the one goal to evolve the swarm and assimilate/destroy anything in its path.
Also the overmind was just created by the xel naga because they didn´t want that zergs go nuts like the protos and guide the zerg race to natural merge with the toss. But amon ordered them to go nuts and thus ereased the overminds "freewill". ^^
I played every BLIZZARD game, and this one is the first one I did not really enjoy, because of the GOD-AWFUL writing as many people said before... Gameplay is excellent, but the storytelling is just too bad.
Well at last somebody could sum it all up. TL mods should keep this post in tops forever.
Clever and well-argumented, though a long read it summed up all that I've been thinking for a long time. Blizzard have lost (literally) a lot of talent since 1998 and basically have been riding the success of the original BW, Warcraft and Diablo for a long time now. I stopped playing SC2 after several missions, just could not stand the dialogs and the rest of this soap opera.
On the other hand what modern games with a good story can you list? I'm 28 and the only good games I've played were made by independent developers, ones that were funded through kickstarter and ones that anybody barely knows about.
Having played through WoL and HotS once more now, the thing that bugged me most aside from some story elements (didn't care too much for them by now since I already knew): It really destroyed immersion into "being" (playing) Zerg that every goddamn thing can talk. It does not only communicate with me in some way, which would be strange already, but no, every bit of ever so strange space creature has to have some kind of mouth which moves while that thing "talks" to me. I can accept that Leviathan command lady talking since she was obviously created by Kerrigan to mimic the usual terran command ladies. Zagara and Abathur had their "mouths" moving in some way as if they were talking in the usual sense, but I was able to ignore that due to their "mouths" not being very prominent features. However, the primal Zerg "talking" was completely and utter crap. I guess they can't have psi powers to communicate with me like the Protoss do (I think?), since that would make the whole motivation for the Swarm to assimilate the Terrans unnecessary in the first place, but seriously, then just make them shut up. Think about something if you really need that ancient guy communicating in some way (hell just let Kerrigan read his mind or something..), but every other "wild" creature should NOT be talking (this was really painful in the mission where you protect Kerrigan hatching into the new queen.. HAR HAR ME PRIMAL ZERG ME KILL YOU NOW, constantly bragging...).
Also, am I the only one who thought that the introduction of Stukov was .. weird? He just occurs at some mission briefing and talks for a bit, Abathur even says something along "second most powerful signature he ever saw", there's no introduction to his goals and motivations, yet he is perfectly welcome and to be trusted..?
And yet, here I am, emotionally disconnected and confused with the SC2 story. While the retcons certainly play a role in that, the main problem is that the story isn't worth a closer look unless it's to pick it apart. It's an uninspired mess that is only elevated above a typical fan fiction due to Blizzard's production quality.
To be fair, I've just finished going through the Terran campaign of SC1 this morning and I have to tell you, its blander than either WoL OR HotS.
However, since bland political intrigue is more interesting than bland love stories--I still like it better than SC2.
SC1
Nothing happens for the firs two missions, you get rescued in the 3rd mission, the fourth mission you do rebel stuff to show you mengks is a good guy, the 5rth mission you find disks, the 5th mission you rescue someone. Its not till the 6th mission that plot happens. Missions 7-9 is the turn where we find out mengks is evil, and the final mission is just a retreat mission.
All of them easier than any of the missions in HotS and WoL.
So plot wise, the terran missions in SC1 spends 10 missions to show us that people in power are corrupt. The first 5 missions shows us that the dominion is evil and doesn't care about the little guy. Then the next 5 missions shows us that Mengsk is evil and doesn't care about the little guy.
However, since they kept the narrative arc simple and precise, they were able to flesh it out much easier and with much more craft than they did with WoL or HotS. Since it didn't have a lot to say, they were able to keep the telling of the little they said as tight as possible--which I liked.
WoL and HotS feel like watching a 2 hour movie telling a 1.5 hour long story. It's good, but it keeps going on so long that you just stop caring after a while. And when you extend something so long you will eventually be forced to add in irrelevant stuff to actually fit the mission minimums.
SC1 only had about 3 missions of actual meta-plot in it. And even those missions gloss over the details. By time I finish the SC1 campaign I'm certain I'll notice only 2-4 plot points TOPS. But since they spend 4-5 missions explaining and expanding the plot points, and the side missions they give you are missions to veer you away from the plot points--the plot points always feel surprising and new.
The first 2 missions is Raynor being Raynor--then he gets in trouble from the dominion.
The third mission is the zerg overrunning the planet--and he gets saved by Mengks. At this point you're made to think that the dominion is the bad guy.
You spend about 2 missions being rebels, helping small outposts with revolutions while breaking into installations. You even save Edmund Duke despite him being the bad guy because that's what lawful good rebels do even though Raynor is against it.
You then find out what the dominion's research has been doing--but its too late you're surrounded. So you're forced to use the dominion tools (the zerg) against them--for the greater good and all.
And then you make a big push against the dominion--but that's when Mengks uses the zerg against the dominion even though he's no longer stuck in a corner.
And then mengks leaves Kerrigan.
And then you leave mengks because he's gone crazy.
Half the missions is the turn, making you think the story is going one way--and then you're "forced" to use evil methods to survive a mission, but you Sarah and Raynor feel bad about it. And then the end of the terran missions is you realizing that Mengks does not feel bad at all about using it.
It took 10 missions to explore that, and since you were forced to only focus on those missions you were immersed in the narrative of a failed revolution. It is tight, it is crisp, and it makes up for a bland narrative and a lacking storyline with excellent execution.
I think the key difference with how the op and you view the sc1 terran campaign initial missions (basically 1-5 or 6) is based on the atmosphere created by the campaign based on your knowledge (or lack thereof) of what the zerg are. You, having played SC2, already have a preconcieved concept of the zerg. You know who, and what, they are, what they're doing, why the came to Mar Sara, etc.
However, when you play the campaign the first time through, with no knowledge of who the zerg are and what's happening (and the missions are also harder because you're a teenager with minimal experience in RTS, remember, starcraft broke an insane amount of ground in RTS mechanics and skill development), those initial missions are actually pretty creepy and well done. You basically spend the first 5 missions getting swarmed by this entire race of creepy unknown aliens, you have no idea what they want other than the fact that they're assimilating/destroying everything in their path, and you're just trying to gtfo and survive the onslaught and your own dictatorial government as best you can. An additional nice touch with the storyline, too, is that the terran campaign actually feeds you wrong information (that the dominion created the zerg as a weapon) that you don't even realize was wrong until you play the zerg campaign.
People who play the sc1 campaign retroactively AFTER they've played sc2 aren't taking into account information you don't possess during your first playthrough, and skill developed from playing lots of RTSs after theory and mechanics have been developed, and this applies to all three campaigns (zerg + protoss too). All the info revealed during the campaigns puts together a pretty nice story and universe, I think. It maintains and aura of mystery where new things are gradually revelaed about each race, the story fits together reasonably coherently, doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief, and is pretty dark overall. I really liked it.
And yet, here I am, emotionally disconnected and confused with the SC2 story. While the retcons certainly play a role in that, the main problem is that the story isn't worth a closer look unless it's to pick it apart. It's an uninspired mess that is only elevated above a typical fan fiction due to Blizzard's production quality.
To be fair, I've just finished going through the Terran campaign of SC1 this morning and I have to tell you, its blander than either WoL OR HotS.
However, since bland political intrigue is more interesting than bland love stories--I still like it better than SC2.
SC1
Nothing happens for the firs two missions, you get rescued in the 3rd mission, the fourth mission you do rebel stuff to show you mengks is a good guy, the 5rth mission you find disks, the 5th mission you rescue someone. Its not till the 6th mission that plot happens. Missions 7-9 is the turn where we find out mengks is evil, and the final mission is just a retreat mission.
All of them easier than any of the missions in HotS and WoL.
So plot wise, the terran missions in SC1 spends 10 missions to show us that people in power are corrupt. The first 5 missions shows us that the dominion is evil and doesn't care about the little guy. Then the next 5 missions shows us that Mengsk is evil and doesn't care about the little guy.
However, since they kept the narrative arc simple and precise, they were able to flesh it out much easier and with much more craft than they did with WoL or HotS. Since it didn't have a lot to say, they were able to keep the telling of the little they said as tight as possible--which I liked.
WoL and HotS feel like watching a 2 hour movie telling a 1.5 hour long story. It's good, but it keeps going on so long that you just stop caring after a while. And when you extend something so long you will eventually be forced to add in irrelevant stuff to actually fit the mission minimums.
SC1 only had about 3 missions of actual meta-plot in it. And even those missions gloss over the details. By time I finish the SC1 campaign I'm certain I'll notice only 2-4 plot points TOPS. But since they spend 4-5 missions explaining and expanding the plot points, and the side missions they give you are missions to veer you away from the plot points--the plot points always feel surprising and new.
The first 2 missions is Raynor being Raynor--then he gets in trouble from the dominion.
The third mission is the zerg overrunning the planet--and he gets saved by Mengks. At this point you're made to think that the dominion is the bad guy.
You spend about 2 missions being rebels, helping small outposts with revolutions while breaking into installations. You even save Edmund Duke despite him being the bad guy because that's what lawful good rebels do even though Raynor is against it.
You then find out what the dominion's research has been doing--but its too late you're surrounded. So you're forced to use the dominion tools (the zerg) against them--for the greater good and all.
And then you make a big push against the dominion--but that's when Mengks uses the zerg against the dominion even though he's no longer stuck in a corner.
And then mengks leaves Kerrigan.
And then you leave mengks because he's gone crazy.
Half the missions is the turn, making you think the story is going one way--and then you're "forced" to use evil methods to survive a mission, but you Sarah and Raynor feel bad about it. And then the end of the terran missions is you realizing that Mengks does not feel bad at all about using it.
It took 10 missions to explore that, and since you were forced to only focus on those missions you were immersed in the narrative of a failed revolution. It is tight, it is crisp, and it makes up for a bland narrative and a lacking storyline with excellent execution.
I think the key difference with how the op and you view the sc1 terran campaign initial missions (basically 1-5 or 6) is based on the atmosphere created by the campaign based on your knowledge (or lack thereof) of what the zerg are. You, having played SC2, already have a preconcieved concept of the zerg. You know who, and what, they are, what they're doing, why the came to Mar Sara, etc.
However, when you play the campaign the first time through, with no knowledge of who the zerg are and what's happening (and the missions are also harder because you're a teenager with minimal experience in RTS, remember, starcraft broke an insane amount of ground in RTS mechanics and skill development), those initial missions are actually pretty creepy and well done. You basically spend the first 5 missions getting swarmed by this entire race of creepy unknown aliens, you have no idea what they want other than the fact that they're assimilating/destroying everything in their path, and you're just trying to gtfo and survive the onslaught and your own dictatorial government as best you can. An additional nice touch with the storyline, too, is that the terran campaign actually feeds you wrong information (that the dominion created the zerg as a weapon) that you don't even realize was wrong until you play the zerg campaign.
People who play the sc1 campaign retroactively AFTER they've played sc2 aren't taking into account information you don't possess during your first playthrough, and skill developed from playing lots of RTSs after theory and mechanics have been developed, and this applies to all three campaigns (zerg + protoss too). All the info revealed during the campaigns puts together a pretty nice story and universe, I think. It maintains and aura of mystery where new things are gradually revelaed about each race, the story fits together reasonably coherently, doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief, and is pretty dark overall. I really liked it.
Account for the meta!
I first played SC1 in 1999, the most difficult part of the missions is the fact that you're a coward and don't like getting units killed. If you simply take your troops out of your base you kill everything. Young cowardice and bad mechanics made it hard much like good mechanics made HotS and WoL easy.
I don't really see why this game should escape scrutiny. I mean it's just not in comparison to Brood War, but also Warcraft 3 in which the story fails to shine. It's comparison with games from the same medium that bring its problems into focus more than anything
i finally got to play the campaign and read this thread, and while it definitely raises some valid points, i found the experience to be very good gameplaywise, and lorewise, well i dont even read the books and the likes, but it really helps to let your imagination fill out blanks, you know if they kiss and are loveydovey, then there is love, even if we actually dont know anything about going out / sex / confessions / proposals
Nice write up. No time to read it all, but maybe later.
I agree with the recent negative development. But I also doubt it will change.
Blizz has gone in a different direction. They want to make d3 available to console games. And as of now, it's not that bad as it's been. I am not playing it anymore for months, but I know it can be fun. The only problem is the crushed economy. Path of exile is 10 x d3 though
Hellow. First of all: Nice discusion here! And pretty nice analyssis (even if someone is not agree with what it sais).
AS someone said before, a possible issue is that english spoken actors are not as convincing as other location's. So I rewatched the videos, & trully belive that some of the problems that OP mentions are reinforced because Kerrigan isn't convincig us. Her acting (the animator work, that is awesome in many aspects) don't convince us. I trully belive that, in the first videos, she is changing her mind about Jim. I think they are trying to tell us that she is confused, that she is no longer a zerg, so she can try something new, like to love a man. And Jim is not any man. Is a man who look for her along all the galaxy.
But there is a rule about videos in Videogames, so they either have the skillz or the bracket of time enouth to deal wit all this info & tell it to us.
Sure, the action parts of the videos are cool, fast, epic. But there are some clues (when kerrigan is angry) that point in that direction. Any actor (or animator) knows that any expression must be the GREATEST expression of his kind. So if someone is angry, you dont only do an angry face (working most on eyebroush & mouth) but in the rest of the body aswell.
The annimators shows us great skills in combat videos, but they have to improve in the clossest moments work, so all those "not-plot-convincing momments" become convincing.
Im pretty sure that, if they improve in those little thinks (as they are important too), your next post will talk about "great plot-switch", "twisted of mind", "emmotion complexity" etcétera-. You won't imagine what kind of thinks can the people belive if u just tell them the story with emotion enouth.
P.S: Sorry, but english is not my original language.
Finally i could read the entire tread just to see if some things were mentioned and this is my opinion on the whole HOTS stoyline.
First of all, i loved both SC and BW, and after the first line of dialog of the overmind, i decided that the zerg would be my main race now and forerver. The thing is, i disliked the whole "We must kill the cerebrates that want to recreate the overmind" in the BW zerg campaign, mostly because i loved the concept of the cerebrates, and the overmind, and i in many ways disliked not having a choice between kerrigan and the surviving cerebrates, so i reluctantly killed the other zerg brood. Then kerrigan behave so cruel, manipulative and evil, that i accepted her as the new leader of the swarm, the final cinematic made me feel awesome, (too bad that she killed me to replace the cerebrates with brood mothers).
So with the new campaign, i was nervous that it would be too "human" and less zergy... And then the 3° mission kicked in, the first brood mother the campaign presents, and it was very good, when she goes with "come out my children" or something like that, it was great and then the "kill the terrans, let no one live" made the deal.
These things where more than mobile cerebrates, they where protective, savage queens of a great swarm, and it worked soo good. The zerg elements that where explored, (with abathur, zagara and izsha) made me really glad that these creatures could talk and communicate, yes they are one-dimensional and not very deep, but to be honest, i would have been mad if they were.
On the topic of useless missions, i only really count kardis (the ice planet) as a unnecesary filler,(the protoss ship mission was awesome tough). Things like regaining char, getting the primal Zergs power, killing the hybrids, finding raynor and finally facing mengsk and the entire (well almost) terran dominion where part of the plot, whether you consider those filler or not is up to you. The reason i see those as part of the plot is because it focus on making kerrigan and the swarm stronger or weakening the dominion, both are needed to succesfully and efficiently kill mengsk
and now the bad stuff... -The things that made me cringe were raynor saying that this was about them and shiz, it was a really bad line. -The forced Jungle planet retcon for Zerus, and the design of the primal zerg, who were units re-skins except for the ultra (and what the hell, the guardians were primal zergs?) -The justification for the space mission with the Hyperion (the mission was awesome, but what the hell, what was the point of that) -Narud was careless, being that it was a servant of a greater power, i expected a part where he lols at kerry killing him and fades away like an allucination (sp?) -Stukov would have been a great character if they had a proper introduction for him, not just, "hey kerrigan i escaped that lab, and it was bad, you should destroy it while i chill here in the leviathan" -How can mengsk still mantain power after all the bad press and the revelation of his use of psy emitters (unless those where entirely optional and thus not canon) -And the final gripe, i don't have a problem with Kerry flying, i do have a problem with her looking like a freaking angel ascending to gosh darn zerg heaven.
Overall, i enjoyed the Brood mothers, abathur, the evolution "misions", the zergs and the gameplay, but the story lacked a purpose, i hate revenge quests in any stories since they devolve into "hurr i need to kill _____" and generally do not leave much room for more.
that is all thanks for your time and have a nice day.
On April 05 2013 14:27 Arkandir wrote: i hate revenge quests in any stories since they devolve into "hurr i need to kill _____" and generally do not leave much room for more.
But that's the whole point. The entire SC2 is built upon the most simplistic story structure you can think of.
WoL: "Prophecy". There's a mysterious prophecy which requires assembling a random McGuff... I mean an artifact.
HotS: "Revenge". Kerrigan is pissed, she wants revenge.
LotV: "Hey ho let's unite against common enemy". Previous enemies must unite to beat the common threat.
Overarching thread: Raynor and Kerrigan wuv each other but can't be together because (insert random plot development).
You just can't get more basic, more simplistic than this.
On April 05 2013 14:27 Arkandir wrote: i hate revenge quests in any stories since they devolve into "hurr i need to kill _____" and generally do not leave much room for more.
But that's the whole point. The entire SC2 is built upon the most simplistic story structure you can think of.
WoL: "Prophecy". There's a mysterious prophecy which requires assembling a random McGuff... I mean an artifact.
HotS: "Revenge". Kerrigan is pissed, she wants revenge.
LotV: "Hey ho let's unite against common enemy". Previous enemies must unite to beat the common threat.
Overarching thread: Raynor and Kerrigan wuv each other but can't be together because (insert random plot development).
You just can't get more basic, more simplistic than this.
But then, how can you make a good story based on the swarm?, Dawn of war tried the "Hivemind" eating everything with the tyranids, but it just felt bland, the revenge plot altough incredibly stupid let's us kill entire planets and assault both terran and protoss, if it wasn't for that, it would be just mindless evil killing just for the sake of it, which doesn't truly respect the idea of the zerg of assimilating, evolving, consuming, rinse and repeat.
So i would love to have a deep story, maybe kerrigan just wants a stronger swarm and that is the purpose of the plot, maybe she wants to consume planets because that makes her stronger, or keeps runnig away from the dominion until she is strong enough to strike back, i don't know... but it just feel like wasted potential to just have "go kill mengsk" as a motivator to kill protoss children (since they were colonist i don't see it so far fetched).
On April 05 2013 14:27 Arkandir wrote: i hate revenge quests in any stories since they devolve into "hurr i need to kill _____" and generally do not leave much room for more.
But that's the whole point. The entire SC2 is built upon the most simplistic story structure you can think of.
WoL: "Prophecy". There's a mysterious prophecy which requires assembling a random McGuff... I mean an artifact.
HotS: "Revenge". Kerrigan is pissed, she wants revenge.
LotV: "Hey ho let's unite against common enemy". Previous enemies must unite to beat the common threat.
Overarching thread: Raynor and Kerrigan wuv each other but can't be together because (insert random plot development).
You just can't get more basic, more simplistic than this.
But then, how can you make a good story based on the swarm?, Dawn of war tried the "Hivemind" eating everything with the tyranids, but it just felt bland, the revenge plot altough incredibly stupid let's us kill entire planets and assault both terran and protoss, if it wasn't for that, it would be just mindless evil killing just for the sake of it, which doesn't truly respect the idea of the zerg of assimilating, evolving, consuming, rinse and repeat.
So i would love to have a deep story, maybe kerrigan just wants a stronger swarm and that is the purpose of the plot, maybe she wants to consume planets because that makes her stronger, or keeps runnig away from the dominion until she is strong enough to strike back, i don't know... but it just feel like wasted potential to just have "go kill mengsk" as a motivator to kill protoss children (since they were colonist i don't see it so far fetched).
Oh really? How about a constant struggle between the guilt from her days as QoB and how she is now? How the hunger for the power and control before consumes her when she feels powerless in front of Mengsk's forces? How about her struggle to cope with her sudden changes in body and mind, since she can't remember what happened as QoB she is effectively in hibernation all this time? All these things would make for deep plot points.
On April 05 2013 14:27 Arkandir wrote: i hate revenge quests in any stories since they devolve into "hurr i need to kill _____" and generally do not leave much room for more.
But that's the whole point. The entire SC2 is built upon the most simplistic story structure you can think of.
WoL: "Prophecy". There's a mysterious prophecy which requires assembling a random McGuff... I mean an artifact.
HotS: "Revenge". Kerrigan is pissed, she wants revenge.
LotV: "Hey ho let's unite against common enemy". Previous enemies must unite to beat the common threat.
Overarching thread: Raynor and Kerrigan wuv each other but can't be together because (insert random plot development).
You just can't get more basic, more simplistic than this.
But then, how can you make a good story based on the swarm?, Dawn of war tried the "Hivemind" eating everything with the tyranids, but it just felt bland, the revenge plot altough incredibly stupid let's us kill entire planets and assault both terran and protoss, if it wasn't for that, it would be just mindless evil killing just for the sake of it, which doesn't truly respect the idea of the zerg of assimilating, evolving, consuming, rinse and repeat.
So i would love to have a deep story, maybe kerrigan just wants a stronger swarm and that is the purpose of the plot, maybe she wants to consume planets because that makes her stronger, or keeps runnig away from the dominion until she is strong enough to strike back, i don't know... but it just feel like wasted potential to just have "go kill mengsk" as a motivator to kill protoss children (since they were colonist i don't see it so far fetched).
Oh really? How about a constant struggle between the guilt from her days as QoB and how she is now? How the hunger for the power and control before consumes her when she feels powerless in front of Mengsk's forces? How about her struggle to cope with her sudden changes in body and mind, since she can't remember what happened as QoB she is effectively in hibernation all this time? All these things would make for deep plot points.
Stop it with you and your logic! Flame wars can't happen with reasoned examples and thought our statements!
On April 05 2013 14:27 Arkandir wrote: i hate revenge quests in any stories since they devolve into "hurr i need to kill _____" and generally do not leave much room for more.
But that's the whole point. The entire SC2 is built upon the most simplistic story structure you can think of.
WoL: "Prophecy". There's a mysterious prophecy which requires assembling a random McGuff... I mean an artifact.
HotS: "Revenge". Kerrigan is pissed, she wants revenge.
LotV: "Hey ho let's unite against common enemy". Previous enemies must unite to beat the common threat.
Overarching thread: Raynor and Kerrigan wuv each other but can't be together because (insert random plot development).
You just can't get more basic, more simplistic than this.
But then, how can you make a good story based on the swarm?, Dawn of war tried the "Hivemind" eating everything with the tyranids, but it just felt bland, the revenge plot altough incredibly stupid let's us kill entire planets and assault both terran and protoss, if it wasn't for that, it would be just mindless evil killing just for the sake of it, which doesn't truly respect the idea of the zerg of assimilating, evolving, consuming, rinse and repeat.
So i would love to have a deep story, maybe kerrigan just wants a stronger swarm and that is the purpose of the plot, maybe she wants to consume planets because that makes her stronger, or keeps runnig away from the dominion until she is strong enough to strike back, i don't know... but it just feel like wasted potential to just have "go kill mengsk" as a motivator to kill protoss children (since they were colonist i don't see it so far fetched).
Oh really? How about a constant struggle between the guilt from her days as QoB and how she is now? How the hunger for the power and control before consumes her when she feels powerless in front of Mengsk's forces? How about her struggle to cope with her sudden changes in body and mind, since she can't remember what happened as QoB she is effectively in hibernation all this time? All these things would make for deep plot points.
Yeah, that would be a very deep and good story, BUT it wouldn't be "Zerg", i wanted the story to focus on the swarm AND kerrigan, not just kerrigan. So all i am saying is that i want the zerg swarm to be more than "kerrigan feels ___" and more of the evolution missions executed correctly, to go and attack planets to get new strains of DNA to evolve the swarm, going to the original places where the zerg creatures originated and reintegrate them in the swarm, killing the dune runers, the sloths, the bats, all those creatures that made the swarm units, adapting to new situations by either searching new creatures (swarm host, Vyper) or recovering old ones (Lurker, defiler), attacking a protoss zoo (i know that sounds lame) to get creatures, Gather biomass from a terran militarized planet, etc...
Some of this kinda got into the HOTS storyline, but it was sooo secondary, if the focus of HOTS were the swarm and kerrigan evolving together to overcome something, or just for the sake of evolving, i would have loved the story.
edit: i made a sin for the english language and now it is purged.
Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
I finally purchased HOTS today after watching GSL. I know what to except this time, I was disapointed with WOL campaign, cheesy line, Raynor now with big arm and tatoos, because it looks "cool".. well, I know it's going to be shit again so i'll just play multiplayer straight away.
I bought 2x D3 (for me and GF) and we played about 1 week - the game is now in the trash, we play Path of exile for hackNSlash now
Starcraft is probably going to be the last game I buy from them. RIP Blizz, bad business model, free to play is the way to go nowaday..
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
Or, you know, fly to him....
She wasn't the Queen then.
If she can lift valerian, she can lift herself.
I could probably lift you, but there is no way I could ever lift myself.
so I feel the same way as you do sir. Thought this was a game with a deep story and deep characters, it isn't. The dialogue was so goddamn awful, the story is dead at this point imo. just play multiplayer and maybe enjoy some quirky satisfying things in the campaign, but dont expect anything to have substance or meaning. or to be involved in any of it. clearly the illuminati, having seen the vast influence this franchise has, whored it into a subliminal factory of profit.
laddering and medals are the most important things now. of course not as much as playing with friends all over the world. thats all this game is for imho. it used to be about the story, i was into it the first games, but since wol, it just sucks. glad mengsk is dead though, i guess. dont really know what im doing here. this is the least productive thing i could be doing at the moment... hope all is well with everyone here... lol peace
This review is exactly the type of critical breakdown that is needed to open the eyes of the people or even the writers if they happen to come across it (even though they probably don't give a fuck). It's kind of disgusting to see so much laziness in something that could have been so much more.
Obviously it has to do with marketing, and apparently the fact that Blizzard thinks everyone playing their games can't handle a well-written story.
Excellent review, I agree almost 100% with all your post.
I had minimal hopes after playing WoL. But after seeing some teaser material in 2011, I tought it was a perfect chance for Blizzard to go back to its storytelling origins. Sadly, they ignored 90% of the feedback and took the same direction they did on Diablo III: cheese, forced and inconsistent stories.
Letting away the cheese and some retcons (no problem, I can live with Zerus being a jungle and with Raynor and Kerrigan loving each other in SC), the point that bothered me the most was how forced the story was, mainly regarding the new Kerrigan character.
Something I really dislike was the amnesia thing. To me, it felt very noisy because how forced and selective (plot convenience) was.
Regarding how evil she was and how many people she murdered, she has total amnesia. That was very convenient plot wise because that made her exempt of all her crimes, so she could resume his love story with Raynor at the last point it was (otherwise the love story couldn't have resumed, because Raynor hates the old QoB - by the way, why Raynor has 100% trust on her without even discover her new personality?).
But on the other hand, she is still evil, she still knows how to control zerg armies, she wipes entire planets without a second tought (something the old QoB would do), she has bloodlust against the protoss (like the old QoB), she has revenge desire against Mengsk (old QoB), she had no problem using the zerg as a weapon (old QoB, and something the human Sarah was against to!). Contradictorily, she is in love with Raynor (the exact same state she was before her first infestation) and would do everything for him, she doesn't like murdering, and she saves a bunch civillians two times.
Not to mention: why she is so upset with Mengsk? Her last memories was getting surrounded by zerg in Tarsonis! She realized Mengsk betrayal being the QoB, so how did she even had anger towards Mengsk? Also, how she remember who Zeratul is, and the hatred she had with him and the protoss? And, this is very subjective, but why she had all her human memories when she was first infested, but she doesn't had any of her being the QoB when she was deinfested?
That's why I think the amnesia thing was totally forced, and anti-climatic. She remembers or forgets selectively things according to if it was convenient for the plot or not. Artifact felt way too fantastic (in the bad way, maybe good for a Warcraft game but not here) to me.
Other thing I felt really bland was the fact that almost everything you do was for revenge's sake (gathering broods, reinfestation, the attack on the hybrid's lab). First, that made the new Kerrigan totally unidimensional and boring. And second, invading Mengk again, Blizzard? C'mon, he was stomped so many times in the entire SC story, it gets old having to attack him again.
It's a shame, it was a pretty good chance to Blizzard to improve the story. But ok, I've already know a while ago that I won't buy any other of his games for the story. Fortunately there's still a very good multiplayer .
To be honest, I agree with the general point you are making about HotS. I too was disappointed by the story, especially since I had just replayed the whole SC1 and BW campaign (SC2BW yay!) before release.
But I have one gripe with your work: You talk a lot about Kerrigan's and Raynor's psychological reasons for what they're doing and most of the time you keep to the material at hand and interpret it your way (which is absolutely fine). At some point you start psychologizing the characters beyond what we ever see or hear in any of the campaign (specifically Raynor's guilt) - points which are alluded to but never actually put in the open. Since these characters are fictional and the writers behind them/their story have most probably not lived through what their characters have, this psychological component is highly speculative and can lead to all the wrong conclusions. Personally I agree with your interpretation(s), but the first thing I learnt about literary theory is that it is a terrible mistake to psychologize.
All in all, just a little detail that caught my eye. Overall I found your comments on the campaign to be mostly spot on and was very sad to read that you won't write up another one for LotV.
I disagree that Raynor and Kerrigan didn't show signs of a relationship developing... I simply read the lines from SC and BW differently than you did here, but otherwise I agree completely. I think there are potentially some interesting thematic points to be made by the development of the love interest between these two characters, but it should be done in the context of a believable, immersive, thoughtful and detailed world -- the world of SC1. I don't think this is something you can chalk up to age demographics, it seems to be simply the decline of once revolutionary video game story-telling into a pathetic spectacle of laziness and idiocy. I couldn't be bothered to research and find out, but the new generation of games give the impression that new writers are trying, and somehow failing, to coast to shore upon the tidal wave of talent that produced the engrossing and intricate story of SC1.
i really like your deep analysis and agree to most of it, thank you for your work. I have to say that i disagree on some points though. I dont think that kerrigan's breakdown in the early phase is out of character, because essentially kerrigan is currently lost. Raynor was her anchor and she lost him, so she is clueless of what to do and desperate, in addition to the fact that controlling the zerg cant be a pleasant ability for her, because even though she lost her memory, she must have heard of what she did as the qob. That is also why Raynor doesnt question her in the beginning.
I agree and am pretty mad about the fact that they drop so much potential by never letting kerrigan have a moment of thinking things through and by loosing her memories, her character had lots of unused potential. On the other hand most of the game is happening in cutscenes, which are a bad medium for a monologue. The result are lots of scenes where the player might think that she is sad (like the moment after she frees raynor and the zergs are asking because she closed her connection to them), but it never really becomes clear. Her story is full of desperation and struggle and while they try to present that in the first two or three cutscenes, her reacton on raynor's escape is really underwhelming.
I think the gun in the prison scene is a gun she brings from outside. She puts it into his hand.
Imo the deciding fact in the raynor-kerrigan relationship in the later part is that kerrigan is not the qob anymore, but kerrigan with qob-powers. Her character didnt change at all after her transformation on Zerus, which is showcased e.g. when valerion bids for more time, which is the deciding factor for raynor swinging back again.
I also agree on the fact that the ending is disappointing. The explosion scene is unsatisfying, as is her artificial weakness in front of the artifact (which doesnt make sence considering that she is a primal zerg now and is just there to redeem her for her upcoming murder).
I think the overall result that can be seen at hots is what we see in lots of games: the fact that a flashy presentation nowadays is more important (for developpers and sells) than the story itself.
I had had a lot of the same issues with the story, I liked the "leaked" ending much better. To be honest, I bet the leaked end really was the end at the time then Blizzard was like "wtf, it got out? Screw this, we're changing it, that'll teach'em", but didn't think through on what they replaced it with... at all.
The whole "monster" exchange between Mengsk and Kerrigan made no sense at all, and the flying was like "wtf...?"
I enjoyed the story so long as I didn't think about it and just went with w/e, but as a lore guy that just doesn't cut it. :/
Shitting on everything that's popular is fashionable, I get it.
There were several moments in the game where I actually cared about the characters (namely Kerrigan), something that didn't really happen in WoL, BW or 99% of the games I play.
Frankly, the biggest thing I picked up from this review is you. You start off by telling us how disappointed you were in some other Blizzard games. That should have sent out huge red flags. That's like reading a restaurant review that starts out with the writer talking about how much they hate snooty French chefs. The rest of the article reads the same way.
I'm not trying to single out the OP; as you can see there are 30+ pages of this, and, frankly, I think this is the result of a population that has long outstayed itself in a particular medium.
i really like your deep analysis and agree to most of it, thank you for your work. I have to say that i disagree on some points though. I dont think that kerrigan's breakdown in the early phase is out of character, because essentially kerrigan is currently lost. Raynor was her anchor and she lost him, so she is clueless of what to do and desperate, in addition to the fact that controlling the zerg cant be a pleasant ability for her, because even though she lost her memory, she must have heard of what she did as the qob. That is also why Raynor doesnt question her in the beginning.
I agree and am pretty mad about the fact that they drop so much potential by never letting kerrigan have a moment of thinking things through and by loosing her memories, her character had lots of unused potential. On the other hand most of the game is happening in cutscenes, which are a bad medium for a monologue. The result are lots of scenes where the player might think that she is sad (like the moment after she frees raynor and the zergs are asking because she closed her connection to them), but it never really becomes clear. Her story is full of desperation and struggle and while they try to present that in the first two or three cutscenes, her reacton on raynor's escape is really underwhelming.
I think the gun in the prison scene is a gun she brings from outside. She puts it into his hand.
Imo the deciding fact in the raynor-kerrigan relationship in the later part is that kerrigan is not the qob anymore, but kerrigan with qob-powers. Her character didnt change at all after her transformation on Zerus, which is showcased e.g. when valerion bids for more time, which is the deciding factor for raynor swinging back again.
I also agree on the fact that the ending is disappointing. The explosion scene is unsatisfying, as is her artificial weakness in front of the artifact (which doesnt make sence considering that she is a primal zerg now and is just there to redeem her for her upcoming murder).
I think the overall result that can be seen at hots is what we see in lots of games: the fact that a flashy presentation nowadays is more important (for developpers and sells) than the story itself.
It's pretty clear that the intent is that she does put the gun into his hand (even though they don't exactly directly show this) as that is a device to non-vebally show her intent within the scene, but it still begs the question as to where the gun came from? If you look closely it is Raynor's gun (the etchings on the barrel and cylinder), not some random firearm from a dead marine. If you look real closely though you can see what looks like its outline in his holster when he stands up in the cell, though this isn't really clear enough (also where would Kerrigan have the gun on her, telekenetically floating behind her?)
To be honest, I agree with the general point you are making about HotS. I too was disappointed by the story, especially since I had just replayed the whole SC1 and BW campaign (SC2BW yay!) before release.
But I have one gripe with your work: You talk a lot about Kerrigan's and Raynor's psychological reasons for what they're doing and most of the time you keep to the material at hand and interpret it your way (which is absolutely fine). At some point you start psychologizing the characters beyond what we ever see or hear in any of the campaign (specifically Raynor's guilt) - points which are alluded to but never actually put in the open. Since these characters are fictional and the writers behind them/their story have most probably not lived through what their characters have, this psychological component is highly speculative and can lead to all the wrong conclusions. Personally I agree with your interpretation(s), but the first thing I learnt about literary theory is that it is a terrible mistake to psychologize.
All in all, just a little detail that caught my eye. Overall I found your comments on the campaign to be mostly spot on and was very sad to read that you won't write up another one for LotV.
I would agree that my thoughts on what Raynor feels or his own personal motivations are my own gleaning from his character portrayal (it an be a slippery slope when a character isn't as fleshed out early on). While there is a certain amount of leeway in how to approach this, I spent some time thinking about and trying to get into the head of Jim Raynor to understand the 'why'. I eventually landed on this because of a number of subtle clues strewn around the world already (as well as the execution from the actor), but also in that this direction seemed to play into or greatly enhance some of the character developments that would come later on down the road (in that they set up additional ironies or perspectives beyond the most obvious ones presented).
Shitting on everything that's popular is fashionable, I get it.
There were several moments in the game where I actually cared about the characters (namely Kerrigan), something that didn't really happen in WoL, BW or 99% of the games I play.
Frankly, the biggest thing I picked up from this review is you. You start off by telling us how disappointed you were in some other Blizzard games. That should have sent out huge red flags. That's like reading a restaurant review that starts out with the writer talking about how much they hate snooty French chefs. The rest of the article reads the same way.
I'm not trying to single out the OP; as you can see there are 30+ pages of this, and, frankly, I think this is the result of a population that has long outstayed itself in a particular medium.
Really? There's a rather large difference between 'shitting' on something for the sake of being negative (discrediting for the sake of that), which I would agree, does happen often... and a carefully thought out or well reasoned analysis of a less than great product or idea. Additionally, the irony of your first sentence does not escape me.
i really like your deep analysis and agree to most of it, thank you for your work. I have to say that i disagree on some points though. I dont think that kerrigan's breakdown in the early phase is out of character, because essentially kerrigan is currently lost. Raynor was her anchor and she lost him, so she is clueless of what to do and desperate, in addition to the fact that controlling the zerg cant be a pleasant ability for her, because even though she lost her memory, she must have heard of what she did as the qob. That is also why Raynor doesnt question her in the beginning.
I agree and am pretty mad about the fact that they drop so much potential by never letting kerrigan have a moment of thinking things through and by loosing her memories, her character had lots of unused potential. On the other hand most of the game is happening in cutscenes, which are a bad medium for a monologue. The result are lots of scenes where the player might think that she is sad (like the moment after she frees raynor and the zergs are asking because she closed her connection to them), but it never really becomes clear. Her story is full of desperation and struggle and while they try to present that in the first two or three cutscenes, her reacton on raynor's escape is really underwhelming.
I think the gun in the prison scene is a gun she brings from outside. She puts it into his hand.
Imo the deciding fact in the raynor-kerrigan relationship in the later part is that kerrigan is not the qob anymore, but kerrigan with qob-powers. Her character didnt change at all after her transformation on Zerus, which is showcased e.g. when valerion bids for more time, which is the deciding factor for raynor swinging back again.
I also agree on the fact that the ending is disappointing. The explosion scene is unsatisfying, as is her artificial weakness in front of the artifact (which doesnt make sence considering that she is a primal zerg now and is just there to redeem her for her upcoming murder).
I think the overall result that can be seen at hots is what we see in lots of games: the fact that a flashy presentation nowadays is more important (for developpers and sells) than the story itself.
It's pretty clear that the intent is that she does put the gun into his hand (even though they don't exactly directly show this) as that is a device to non-vebally show her intent within the scene, but it still begs the question as to where the gun came from? If you look closely it is Raynor's gun (the etchings on the barrel and cylinder), not some random firearm from a dead marine. If you look real closely though you can see what looks like its outline in his holster when he stands up in the cell, though this isn't really clear enough (also where would Kerrigan have the gun on her, telekenetically floating behind her?)
To be honest, I agree with the general point you are making about HotS. I too was disappointed by the story, especially since I had just replayed the whole SC1 and BW campaign (SC2BW yay!) before release.
But I have one gripe with your work: You talk a lot about Kerrigan's and Raynor's psychological reasons for what they're doing and most of the time you keep to the material at hand and interpret it your way (which is absolutely fine). At some point you start psychologizing the characters beyond what we ever see or hear in any of the campaign (specifically Raynor's guilt) - points which are alluded to but never actually put in the open. Since these characters are fictional and the writers behind them/their story have most probably not lived through what their characters have, this psychological component is highly speculative and can lead to all the wrong conclusions. Personally I agree with your interpretation(s), but the first thing I learnt about literary theory is that it is a terrible mistake to psychologize.
All in all, just a little detail that caught my eye. Overall I found your comments on the campaign to be mostly spot on and was very sad to read that you won't write up another one for LotV.
I would agree that my thoughts on what Raynor feels or his own personal motivations are my own gleaning from his character portrayal (it an be a slippery slope when a character isn't as fleshed out early on). While there is a certain amount of leeway in how to approach this, I spent some time thinking about and trying to get into the head of Jim Raynor to understand the 'why'. I eventually landed on this because of a number of subtle clues strewn around the world already (as well as the execution from the actor), but also in that this direction seemed to play into or greatly enhance some of the character developments that would come later on down the road (in that they set up additional ironies or perspectives beyond the most obvious ones presented).
Shitting on everything that's popular is fashionable, I get it.
There were several moments in the game where I actually cared about the characters (namely Kerrigan), something that didn't really happen in WoL, BW or 99% of the games I play.
Frankly, the biggest thing I picked up from this review is you. You start off by telling us how disappointed you were in some other Blizzard games. That should have sent out huge red flags. That's like reading a restaurant review that starts out with the writer talking about how much they hate snooty French chefs. The rest of the article reads the same way.
I'm not trying to single out the OP; as you can see there are 30+ pages of this, and, frankly, I think this is the result of a population that has long outstayed itself in a particular medium.
Really? There's a rather large difference between 'shitting' on something for the sake of being negative (discrediting for the sake of that), which I would agree, does happen often... and a carefully thought out or well reasoned analysis of a less than great product or idea. Additionally, the irony of your first sentence does not escape me.
Not that I disagree with his conclusion--but just because the OP is long doesn't mean it's a well reasoned analysis of a product...
He specifically wants to ignore canonical works because it disagrees with what his arguments and conclusions are. He points out how "easy" the game is and how overly powerful and untouchable Kerrigan feels without pointing out how much easier and less complex the campaign was in BW where the enemy almost never attacks, and when it does it attacks with about 1-3 units tops. He points out to all these supposed plot points in BW that took 50-60 missions to say compared to the 30ish missions in HotS
He brings up the weirdness of magic artifacts but ignores the magic crystals of the BW He brings up how we ignore the "macro story" of the starcraft universe when that's exactly what we do in the Protoss campaign in BW AND half of the zerg campaign in SC1
I could go on but he makes a LOT of analytical mistakes in his efforts to whine about a product he dislikes. And I'm not saying I disagree with his conclusions--but calling it well fleshed out is pretty damn silly.
Where do I begin with this... First of all I hope you realize that you just responded to the person who originally wrote this piece, and I shouldn't need to mention how that reflects on your reading comprehension (not to mention the topics or things that you stated that I originally covered in the OP... but didn't). Secondly, if I am making such massive mistakes in my original analytical efforts, then why haven't you shown us what the conceptual problem is and why? Please, either take the time to explain how and where I've gone wrong in my analysis (which you haven't), or just don't respond.
Regarding the canon works, and I suspect you initial problem with this position. If you are referring to canonical works as being novels, or books, I would love to see a convincing reason as to why the use of or reference to this material is acceptable and a good idea in telling a convincing story. The problem is, not one person in these 34 pages has come up with a convincing argument to explain why referencing these other materials and their potential benefits outweigh the problems that relying on these things create (in fact, if Blizzard is trying to reach as wide an audience as possible using this canon material actually undermines this very principle by forcibly excluding a certain demographic of people). You can disagree with this just fine, but until you tell us why you disagree, your statement doesn't mean anything.
Additionally, If you are going to refute someone's argument or position you need to actually refute that position through evidence, and not through attempts at misdirection. What I mean by this is that many people who have disagreed with whomever in this thread have simply brought up or asked subsequent questions to try to seed doubt into the original argument, but this doesn't refute anything at all until you yourself have convincingly answered this question (all aspects of this question, which regarding your quip on the khaydarin crystals you have as of yet not done), and then presented your ideas. It's like saying "ooo, shiny object!" while conspicuously not answering or refuting the position originally stated. It's a lazy attempt at misdirection, it's entirely vapid, a less than subtle ad hominem, and quite honestly needs to stop.
Edit: I should add that you are not the only person who does this as the internet is full of this behavior, but regardless it still doesn't add anything substantive to a discussion and is precisely why I asked in the OP to specifically not do this.
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
Or, you know, fly to him....
She wasn't the Queen then.
If she can lift valerian, she can lift herself.
I could probably lift you, but there is no way I could ever lift myself.
You're not a crazy telekenetic and your logic is flawed. You can't 'lift' yourself because you're obviously not psychic. Kerrigan is, she didn't physically lift Valerian. If she can use her mind to lift Valerian, she can use her mind to lift herself. Which she, in fact, does at the end of the game. So there's no reason why she could not either lift Raynor across the bridge, or go to him herself.
Personally I think the HOTS story was good, but simply not at the level of maturity that most of use expected.
BW was a very mature story, but it really did not go into any deep character development. On the other hand SC2 did develop some characters (unfortunately only Raynor and Kerrigan), but the story lacked that dark tone we enjoyed from SC1.
I also think that rather then introducing tons of new characters, they should have developed older ones, rather then dropping random classic SC1 charecters into the story(Stukov and Duran a.k.a. Narud).
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
Or, you know, fly to him....
She wasn't the Queen then.
If she can lift valerian, she can lift herself.
I could probably lift you, but there is no way I could ever lift myself.
You're not a crazy telekenetic and your logic is flawed. You can't 'lift' yourself because you're obviously not psychic. Kerrigan is, she didn't physically lift Valerian. If she can use her mind to lift Valerian, she can use her mind to lift herself. Which she, in fact, does at the end of the game. So there's no reason why she could not either lift Raynor across the bridge, or go to him herself.
Well if i remember both lifts happened after she got zerged again. Her powers are limited back when she was part human like during the first mission.
My primary concern after reading your review is an impression that you don't understand that sometimes a person can feel more than one way about a situation or another person.
My second concern is that some of your problems can be solved by having a complete view of what has happened in the universe, i.e. reading Flashpoint.
I do agree with your main point that Brood War was a more mature story, but not having all of your facts correct when you're arguing about how badly presented a story is hurts your argument when you voluntarily use incomplete information.
On April 06 2013 06:15 Hellfury wrote: Beautiful writeup, but I can't believe there was no mention of the fact that Sarah "can lift and crush dozens of units simultaneously using kinetic powers" Kerrigan can't lift Jim Raynor 10 feet across a chasm when a bridge collapses.
Or, you know, fly to him....
She wasn't the Queen then.
If she can lift valerian, she can lift herself.
I could probably lift you, but there is no way I could ever lift myself.
You're not a crazy telekenetic and your logic is flawed. You can't 'lift' yourself because you're obviously not psychic. Kerrigan is, she didn't physically lift Valerian. If she can use her mind to lift Valerian, she can use her mind to lift herself. Which she, in fact, does at the end of the game. So there's no reason why she could not either lift Raynor across the bridge, or go to him herself.
Well if i remember both lifts happened after she got zerged again. Her powers are limited back when she was part human like during the first mission.
She lifts Valerian, and then 2 fully armored Marines at the same time in the cutscene immediately after they leave Raynor behind. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's more than capable of lifting either herself or Raynor.
On April 16 2013 14:35 Jerubaal wrote: Shitting on everything that's popular is fashionable, I get it.
There were several moments in the game where I actually cared about the characters (namely Kerrigan), something that didn't really happen in WoL, BW or 99% of the games I play.
Frankly, the biggest thing I picked up from this review is you. You start off by telling us how disappointed you were in some other Blizzard games. That should have sent out huge red flags. That's like reading a restaurant review that starts out with the writer talking about how much they hate snooty French chefs. The rest of the article reads the same way.
I'm not trying to single out the OP; as you can see there are 30+ pages of this, and, frankly, I think this is the result of a population that has long outstayed itself in a particular medium.
Are you saying that Starcraft's core group of fans are too old and wise to still be playing games? Pretty sure that's what you're saying. Whats wrong with people playing games at older ages. There are tons of movies that are advanced enough to engage not-kids, whats wrong with gamers expecting their entertainment choice to also evolve to that level.
For the record I rather enjoyed the HoTS campaign. The story was pretty predictable but that didn't bother me so much because the mission's themselves were a ton of fun on their own.
On April 17 2013 08:58 wo1fwood wrote: Where do I begin with this... First of all I hope you realize that you just responded to the person who originally wrote this piece, and I shouldn't need to mention how that reflects on your reading comprehension (not to mention the topics or things that you stated that I originally covered in the OP... but didn't). Secondly, if I am making such massive mistakes in my original analytical efforts, then why haven't you shown us what the conceptual problem is and why? Please, either take the time to explain how and where I've gone wrong in my analysis (which you haven't), or just don't respond.
Regarding the canon works, and I suspect you initial problem with this position. If you are referring to canonical works as being novels, or books, I would love to see a convincing reason as to why the use of or reference to this material is acceptable and a good idea in telling a convincing story. The problem is, not one person in these 34 pages has come up with a convincing argument to explain why referencing these other materials and their potential benefits outweigh the problems that relying on these things create (in fact, if Blizzard is trying to reach as wide an audience as possible using this canon material actually undermines this very principle by forcibly excluding a certain demographic of people). You can disagree with this just fine, but until you tell us why you disagree, your statement doesn't mean anything.
Additionally, If you are going to refute someone's argument or position you need to actually refute that position through evidence, and not through attempts at misdirection. What I mean by this is that many people who have disagreed with whomever in this thread have simply brought up or asked subsequent questions to try to seed doubt into the original argument, but this doesn't refute anything at all until you yourself have convincingly answered this question (all aspects of this question, which regarding your quip on the khaydarin crystals you have as of yet not done), and then presented your ideas. It's like saying "ooo, shiny object!" while conspicuously not answering or refuting the position originally stated. It's a lazy attempt at misdirection, it's entirely vapid, a less than subtle ad hominem, and quite honestly needs to stop.
Edit: I should add that you are not the only person who does this as the internet is full of this behavior, but regardless it still doesn't add anything substantive to a discussion and is precisely why I asked in the OP to specifically not do this.
When an owner of content creates new content and calls it canon-it is canon by definition. You not liking it does not make it non-canon. Blizzard owns the IP of Starcraft, they create content they consider canon--it is now canon. Its the same way in Starwars, its the same way in Lord of the Rings with the posthumous release of Simirilian, and its the same in Starcraft. Its how canon has always worked and its how canon will always work.
You failing to show that a lot of your problems with the plot twists and choices in SC2 also happened in SC1 also shows either a poor understanding of SC1, or is an attempt to slander SC2 by choosing to ignore the same faults present in SC1. I would like to believe that you're not malicious and simply didn't get SC1 all that much, if I'm wrong and you're a malicious bastard choosing to slander SC2 then by all means tell me.
Canon is determined by the owners of a product--which negates most of your post. You not reading the books is not blizzard's fault, its yours. You not wanting to include blizzard's works is not blizzard's fault, it's yours. You obviously were not the type of fan who actually was madly in love with the story and read all the books and content that Blizz has released through the years. You simply played the videogame and enjoyed it--once again, that is not blizzard's fault that you choose to ignore content, that's yours.
Most of the silly and arbitrary things that happened in SC2 also happened in SC1, and you're either too blind to see it or you're choosing to ignore it--which invalidates a good chunk of your post as well.
The only part I agreed with was your conclusion that the execution of SC2 is obviously aimed for a younger generation and that you and I disagree with that--but just because its aimed at a younger crowed does not make it a failure, it just means we are not the demographic. You disagreeing with that is once again not Blizzard's fault, but yours.
Does it not make sense for Blizzard to cater the campaign for younger people anyways? The campaign for Starcraft has always been sort of like a tutorial for the multiplayer. Everything about it is designed to get new players prepared for the multiplayer, which is a good thing. For this game to survive as an esport it needs new blood, and I'm pretty sure everyone above the age of 20 that wanted to try it out already has.
On April 18 2013 01:00 AnomalySC2 wrote: Does it not make sense for Blizzard to cater the campaign for younger people anyways? The campaign for Starcraft has always been sort of like a tutorial for the multiplayer. Everything about it is designed to get new players prepared for the multiplayer, which is a good thing. For this game to survive as an esport it needs new blood, and I'm pretty sure everyone above the age of 20 that wanted to try it out already has.
I dislike that Blizzard is making a kid-centric campaign as much as I dislike that McDonald's makes bad tasting burgers--but its their product, and I'm willing to respect that.
I can't call McDonalds a failure just because I wanted a T-Bone steak and all they have is quarterpounder with fries.
I also can't get upset that HotS is catered towards more casual gamers + Show Spoiler +
(mostly because it never gives you a chance to "figure out" a puzzle and keeps telling you every piece of information you needed to know. Where to move, when attacks are coming, etc... if they simply removed those aspects of the game and simply made players have to learn when timing attacks came and what tiny animations bosses made before striking instead of a giant red lane of light telling you "BAD! DON'T STAND HERE!")
where even though attacks were so tiny and minuscule, since you didn't know when they came you had to always be alert.
Because the truth is that the actual missions in HotS and WoL were 10x better than the missions in SC1 and BW. And if they didn't tell you exactly when everything was coming and what direction they were coming, it would be 10x more difficult that any mission SC1 or BW had. + Show Spoiler +
For example, the train missions in WoL. Imagine if they didn't tell you which train was coming? And they don't even tell you that two at a time are coming? And the only way to know is to constantly scout 5-6 different parts of the map and see when a train is coming. And then have the AI send out patrols before the trains move out to snipe off 2-4 of your scouts to make it even more hectic. You won't know where to position your army, how to intercept the trains, and moving out to collect defiler bones suddenly becomes a huge risk because what if while you're out on bone hunts the train moves by you without you noticing and without warning you autolose the mission.
but the story was executed poorly and it covers up a LOT of the good game designs they put together for each mission.
Magpie, you continually show us with your posting that you have entirely missed secondary inferences or primary pieces of import to your understanding of this topic, and due to your posting and your incredibly derisive behavior I will not respond to you in this thread again. You and I disagree on some things, perhaps a lot of things, but I have at least taken the time to fully examine my position while you have still not grasped some of the finer points that are staring you in the face. Please stop posting in this thread until you can do so in a more cordial and less irreverently accusatory manner.
On April 18 2013 03:43 wo1fwood wrote: Magpie, you continually show us with your posting that you have entirely missed secondary inferences or primary pieces of import to your understanding of this topic, and due to your posting and your incredibly derisive behavior I will not respond to you in this thread again. You and I disagree on some things, perhaps a lot of things, but I have at least taken the time to fully examine my position while you have still not grasped some of the finer points that are staring you in the face. Please stop posting in this thread until you can do so in a more cordial and less irreverently accusatory manner.
I pointed out exactly what is wrong with the original post of this thread, why it is insufficient and is dependent on ignoring aspects of the product that you personally dislike. You're wanting to pretend that canonical works aren't canon, you're desire to accidentally forget the plot points and narrative arcs in the SC1/BW campaigns that were exactly like the same plot points in the WoL/HotS campaigns that you hate. I pointed out exactly what is wrong with the OP--but much like your "analysis" you still maintain the practice of ignoring things points that you disagree with.
I agree with your conclusion--I've said that many times in this thread. I agree that the product is childish and I wish it was better. That fact that you used bad argumentation to state it does not mean I disagree with your conclusion. I know you put a lot of work into this OP, I can tell because its really long, and you must feel proud of it. It even has pictures, I get that, pictures are hard to paste right, I know its a labor of love. But don't ignore the frame of logic the creator of a product used to piece together and create the product. WoL and HotS is based off canon--you ignoring canon and then saying WoL and HotS doesn't make sense is a ludicrous stepping point.
If you want, I could even go on a step by step breakdown of things you did wrong--such as suggesting its misogynistic for Kerrigan to cry when someone she loved dies. There is absolutely NOTHING misogynistic about that. Feminism isn't creating the female into a superhuman without flaws--feminism is showcasing a female character in its full form both in their strengths, and their weaknesses. If you had shown that she cries whenever she's under pressure and keeps crying non-stop throughout the story, then you'd have a point, (+ Show Spoiler +
mostly because it would suggest that *because* she's female she cries and hence they make her cry even at completely inopportune times simply because they believe that females cry a lot
) but to show that she cries when the one person on her side dies? That's what you think is misogynistic? You think it's problematic to show someone can be powerful, strong, and sensitive all at once? Your first impression of a crying woman is that they made her cry *simply* because she's a woman and not within the context of the rest of the scene? That chapter of your post only revealed to me how much you don't understand what misogyny and feminism is.
But did I bring that up in my earlier post? No--why? Because I thought it'd be nicer to say that your post has a lot of flaws and ignores a lot of points for the sake of reinforcing a conclusion you already came to instead of actually analyzing the work. I could go on--you make a lot of mistakes in your post and it would take a lot of time to piece it together, but I could. Why don't I? Because it would be a pointlessly long post that could be summed with "you miss and ignore a lot of points in your post."
Once again, I'm sorry to point those things out to you, I know that if a post is long we're not supposed to talk about mistakes it makes, I know that you dislike the concept of having spent so much time on something that's wrong, and I know its annoying to have someone who agrees with your conclusion to dislike your methodology and analysis. But if you want to play the high ground card on someone--do it to someone who is attacking you and not attacking your post. Your OP has a lot of problems with it from a purely academic standpoint. Between cherry picking information, misinformed close readings and outright ignoring of similarities to past products--it's a mess.
Now you can ignore this post and pretend it didn't happen, if you could do it to Flashpoint you can do it to this post, but don't accuse me of ad-hominem when all I'm talking about is your post.
On April 18 2013 01:00 AnomalySC2 wrote: Does it not make sense for Blizzard to cater the campaign for younger people anyways? The campaign for Starcraft has always been sort of like a tutorial for the multiplayer. Everything about it is designed to get new players prepared for the multiplayer, which is a good thing. For this game to survive as an esport it needs new blood, and I'm pretty sure everyone above the age of 20 that wanted to try it out already has.
No, SC2 had no intention of being a tutorial for multiplayer at all. I'm pretty sure Blizz said so themselves (although I can't remember for sure). Anyway, it's quite obvious that the campaign was not meant to be a tutorial. The campaign does not AT ALL play like how the multiplayer does, and there was no access to playing as Terran or Protoss in the campaign.
Great articulation on a narrative that was so shallow it didn't deserve this type of cross-examination. After WoL, I really did not expect much as far as a coherent or interesting story.
I can't call McDonalds a failure just because I wanted a T-Bone steak and all they have is quarterpounder with fries.
I don't think this comparison is relevant, because McDonalds never had T-Bone steak. A better analogy would be coming back to a grill when you ate well, only to find the only meal they have now is a low-quality burger. It may be true that it is not any worse than what you have in plenty of other places, but this sort-of-okay-ish is not what I expected when I came there.
You're wanting to pretend that canonical works aren't canon, you're desire to accidentally forget the plot points and narrative arcs in the SC1/BW campaigns that were exactly like the same plot points in the WoL/HotS campaigns that you hate.
I really can't agree with that. There is no part in SC1 or BW where the hero rescues the mass murderer he loves and carriers her towards the sunset. Nor is there a point where someone is known to have a killing device in his suit and everyone forgets it until the inevitable betrayal. There is no prophecy or plot to magically revive a long dead god too-powerful-to-be-defeated-until-it-happens-anyway. The real similarity I see is the artefact vs Uraj and Khalis, which were one of the most criticized part of Brood War in their time.
Of course Brood War had flaws, but not the same as SC2 and not on the same scale. Plus, how are the imperfections in Brood War relevant to the discussion? I love the SC1 story because of its strong points, not because I thought it was perfect. I've read a fair amount of valid criticism about the Brood War storyline, and it didn't change my opinion much because everything I liked remained true. It doesn't make SC2 any better either.
I can't call McDonalds a failure just because I wanted a T-Bone steak and all they have is quarterpounder with fries.
I don't think this comparison is relevant, because McDonalds never had T-Bone steak. A better analogy would be coming back to a grill when you ate well, only to find the only meal they have now is a low-quality burger. It may be true that it is not any worse than what you have in plenty of other places, but this sort-of-okay-ish is not what I expected when I came there.
You're wanting to pretend that canonical works aren't canon, you're desire to accidentally forget the plot points and narrative arcs in the SC1/BW campaigns that were exactly like the same plot points in the WoL/HotS campaigns that you hate.
I really can't agree with that. There is no part in SC1 or BW where the hero rescues the mass murderer he loves and carriers her towards the sunset. Nor is there a point where someone is known to have a killing device in his suit and everyone forgets it until the inevitable betrayal. There is no prophecy or plot to magically revive a long dead god too-powerful-to-be-defeated-until-it-happens-anyway. The real similarity I see is the artefact vs Uraj and Khalis, which were one of the most criticized part of Brood War in their time.
Of course Brood War had flaws, but not the same as SC2 and not on the same scale. Plus, how are the imperfections in Brood War relevant to the discussion? I love the SC1 story because of its strong points, not because I thought it was perfect. I've read a fair amount of valid criticism about the Brood War storyline, and it didn't change my opinion much because everything I liked remained true. It doesn't make SC2 any better either.
BW brought us:
Hybrids Resurrected Overminds Magic Psion Towers that mind controlled Zerg Earth humans instead of expanding on Terran narratives Hybrids Psychic humans Unkillable ultralisks Unkillable brain slugs Religious zealots Money missions Earth having the *exact* same tech as The terrans Etc...
Heck, as Duran said, the hybrid plans have been around since the stars were whatever. So yeah, "mystical prophecy" actually started in BW
Not to say that BW is bad--I loved it and I agree that I like the product better. But the OP did not illucidate *why* BW is better. A lot of the flack he gives the HotS and WoL narrative *is* fixed by simply reading up the canon. A lot of the plot points that are ridiculous either started from OR were copies of BW plot points.
The real problem with WoL and HotS is execution. Let me put it this way, if you replay the BW missions, you know what happens mission wise? Nothing. No real instructions, no warnings, nothing but black. So you hide and turtle and scout never knowing what's out there. You become completely immersed in the mission. So even though the ai only attacks you 1-3 times, and with such a tiny force it's laughable, you were immersed in the mood and feel of danger and suspense. And as you go through the missions you only get tiny tidbits here and there, never enough to see the whole picture. I'm playing through the missions right now, and plot wise NOTHING happens in SC1. Pretty much missions 7-9 are the only relevant missions if you want to learn more about arching plots in the Starcraft story. Missions 1-6 merely sets you up for 3 missions of story and the last mission is just a "get the hell out of here mission." The Zerg campaign is not faring better. The first three missions are sitting on an egg, the next few missions is Kerrigan figuring out her powers, it's not till the later missions where we actually find out overarching plots of things happening in the Starcraft universe.
What made BW good was that plot points were set up both thematically and structurally before being presented. Missions were explorations of the map and learning to problem solve on your feet--not a step by step guide dance dance revolution style of how to beat the mission. As I've been saying it has been the execution of the story and not the literal story itself. Magic crystals and puppet Overminds is 2/3 of the plot in BW, but you don't remember that because the plot was hidden by good world immersion. When Duran showed up all infested--did we get 5-10 minutes of dialogue explaining what happened? No, he said "my queen" and we just ran with it despite how random it was. BW was not going to bog down its story with explanations of why the plot is moving--BW expected you to project your own explanations. No monologue of "I tricked the humans!" No monologue of "and that was how I avoided detection" no monologue of "the Zerg now has 2 ghosts infested and here's why Kerrigan is different!" None of those stupid never ending monologues that fill the brim of WoL and HotS. No constant "and this is the plot of the story" moments. BW did not have a lot of plot, and it didn't explain its plot, like a good book it simply spent its time immersing you into a world of violence and death and only in rare moments does it reward you with story. Most other times you sat there in your base as a 12 year old boy wondering "what's out there in the darkness" and only when you had 200 supply did you move out. You spent your time building impregnable walls because you never knew what was coming. WoL and HotS illucidate to much. They explain too much, they guide too much. You spend 90% of the game listening to instructions instead of being able to immerse yourself in the narrative.
WoL and HotS illucidate to much. They explain too much, they guide too much. You spend 90% of the game listening to instructions instead of being able to immerse yourself in the narrative.
^ This. I think the biggest issues with the story of SC2 can be broken down to --
"They use a lot of words but don't really say anything" which breaks me out of my engagement with the story since I'm CONSTANTLY being reminded that this is just a game by how the characters act. I would rather have all the characters,
"Say a whole lot with very few words" -- Like that introspective scene where Kerrigan gets the gun for the first time. Nice moment. Then I'm thinking eehhhhh when she outright kisses JIM (never mind her childishly flexing her muscular control of the swarm with convenient amnesia that never gets touched or developed again in the story...) Naturally my favorite character is Abathur+ Show Spoiler +
... do we have a pole on who's the favorite character on TL or BNet yet?
. He doesn't say much, but what he DOES say always leaves me wanting to hear more of what he's saying, except for the evolution missions where he turns into the blizzard derp machine simply giving you instructions on how to A move...
SC2 I can turn the voices off and still retain most of my enjoyment. BW the characters talked a LOT more than in SC2 (Pre mission breifings,) but the characters felt alive, dynamic, more than just the single-minded personality of rage we see kerrigan, and more relate-able than the love-me , love-me-not Jim Raynor.
Really, it feels like Blizz made the campaign first, and THEN added the story at the end to fit the budget for the gameplay, using the bare minimum rubric for character / world building to pass a casual inspection. + Show Spoiler +
If I was 2-3 years younger, I probably wouldn't have had nearly as much problems with it as I do now
Maybe it was because budgets were smaller and less expensive back during BW that they could afford to really dedicate time to making strong characters. Or its as OP said and Blizz is doing it on purpose (I can see arguments for either way so I'm really not sure here...)