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Hey everyone, after reading and watching the leaked supposed ending of HotS I remembered the WoL camapign. It felt kinda cheesy to me, and a friend linked me to a review of SC2 by some dude.
It really shocked me just how much of it was crap and how poorly it was produced. It's as if Metzen didn't know anything about BW and went with the flow without actually doing any BW research prior to starting writing WoL's campaign.
Here are the links to the vids of the review I'm talking about:
+ Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E95k-Gajk1E&feature=related
As a SC story fan I kinda feel mad for shitting on the lore this much. I was getting all wiggly and jiggery(DAMN YOU ARTOSIS) when I though about Raynor's words after Kerrigan killed Fenix ("It may not be today darlin', it may not be tomorrow or with an army behind my back, but I promise you, I'm going to be the man that kills you someday for this"). I wanted the continuation of THAT, not a generic copy/paste damsel in distress love story god damnit.
Soooo I want to hear your opinions on this. Do you feel the same way as the author of those vids or do you think WoL was good?
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I think after a decade, the story has almost taken on a life of it's own, and we forget it's Blizzard's story, and they can tweak it as much as they want. You just have to look at the SC2 campaign being what Jar-Jar Binx was to the original Star Wars series (assuming you saw it, if not, I apologize for that analogy!), which had it's share of goofy characters in it's own right.
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Spoiler tags? I quit reading instantly when you mentioned the HotS leak, because I'm trying to avoid any reference to that in case it's real. Not sure how much you're actually talking about it, but putting that out there.
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I enjoyed the campaign and felt the story was adequate, but it did lack some of the BW spark and I can see why others disliked it.
Luckily they have another two shots to impress us. Let's hope the leaked ending was scrapped because that was just terrible.
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Agree 100%. idont get how they could fuck up the story like this.
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On December 10 2010 03:57 Macavenger wrote:
Spoiler tags? I quit reading instantly when you mentioned the HotS leak, because I'm trying to avoid any reference to that in case it's real. Not sure how much you're actually talking about it, but putting that out there.
There are absolutely 0 HotS references in here. There is only 1 link provided, to the thread on TL. This is 99.9% about WoL campaign. The other 0.1% is the link to the "leaked HotS video" thread here on TL, not the actual video itself, just the thread.
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I posted this in the HotS thread, but I'll repost it here
SC1/BW storylines were about epic struggles for power and survival
SC1 Terran ending: Arcturus takes control of the Terran Dominion
SC1 Zerg ending: Overmind establishes itself on the Protoss home planet, Aiur
SC1 Protoss ending: Tassadar kamikaze pilots a Carrier into the Overmind and destroys it
BW Protoss ending: Zeratul and Artanis activate a Xel'Naga temple to wipe all Zerg off of Shakuras
BW Terran ending: the United Earth Directorate takes control of the Overmind and thus, any Zerg under the Overmind's control
BW Zerg ending: Kerrigan gains control of the Swarm and defeats the invading Dominion, UED, and protoss (Artanis's) fleet on Char
SC2 storylines have become too character focused
WoL ending: Raynor saves a back to human transformed Kerrigan
it is so disappointing that Blizzard went from epics struggles for power/survival to love story. I fully expect Heart of the Swarm to go High School Musical on us with lots of singing, dancing, and melodramatic teenage drama.
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was the guy in those videos doing a satire of a kid complaining about a video game?
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Meh, I loved WOL single player campaign despite people calling it cheesy, but then again I'm not that attached to SC1 lore and can barely even recall it.
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On December 10 2010 04:25 udgnim wrote:
I posted this in the HotS thread, but I'll repost it here
SC1/BW storylines were about epic struggles for power and survival
SC1 Terran ending: Arcturus takes control of the Terran Dominion
SC1 Zerg ending: Overmind establishes itself on the Protoss home planet, Aiur
SC1 Protoss ending: Tassadar kamikaze pilots a Carrier into the Overmind and destroys it
BW Protoss ending: Zeratul and Artanis activate a Xel'Naga temple to wipe all Zerg off of Shakuras
BW Terran ending: the United Earth Directorate takes control of the Overmind and thus, any Zerg under the Overmind's control
BW Zerg ending: Kerrigan gains control of the Swarm and defeats the invading Dominion, UED, and protoss (Artanis's) fleet on Char
SC2 storylines have become too character focused
WoL ending: Raynor saves a back to human transformed Kerrigan
it is so disappointing that Blizzard went from epics struggles for power/survival to love story. I fully expect Heart of the Swarm to go High School Musical on us with lots of singing, dancing, and melodramatic teenage drama.
I agree with your conclusion that SC2 has become too character driven.
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On December 10 2010 04:25 udgnim wrote:
I posted this in the HotS thread, but I'll repost it here
SC1/BW storylines were about epic struggles for power and survival
SC1 Terran ending: Arcturus takes control of the Terran Dominion
SC1 Zerg ending: Overmind establishes itself on the Protoss home planet, Aiur
SC1 Protoss ending: Tassadar kamikaze pilots a Carrier into the Overmind and destroys it
BW Protoss ending: Zeratul and Artanis activate a Xel'Naga temple to wipe all Zerg off of Shakuras
BW Terran ending: the United Earth Directorate takes control of the Overmind and thus, any Zerg under the Overmind's control
BW Zerg ending: Kerrigan gains control of the Swarm and defeats the invading Dominion, UED, and protoss (Artanis's) fleet on Char
SC2 storylines have become too character focused
WoL ending: Raynor saves a back to human transformed Kerrigan
it is so disappointing that Blizzard went from epics struggles for power/survival to love story. I fully expect Heart of the Swarm to go High School Musical on us with lots of singing, dancing, and melodramatic teenage drama.
Hahaha agree
I bought sc2 just for single player and I am disappointed 
WoL is like a horrible cheesy action movie.
Edit: A lot of it also contradicts with the story in BW.
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As a SC story fan I kinda feel mad for shitting on the lore this much. I was getting all wiggly and jiggery(DAMN YOU ARTOSIS) when I though about Raynor's words after Kerrigan killed Fenix ("It may not be today darlin', it may not be tomorrow or with an army behind my back, but I promise you, I'm going to be the man that kills you someday for this"). I wanted the continuation of THAT, not a generic copy/paste damsel in distress love story god damnit.
Seriously.
The BW Zerg campaign was amazing because of moments like these.
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Yeah, they really fucked up the story, including minor characters that no one really cares about. (were you really upset that Tosh died? Did it matter when he died? Nothing changed, you just got a unit you probably never even built) SC:BW story and story telling had flaws as well but there were heros you could actually cheer for. There was even the cool guy (zeratul) that every 8 yr old wanted to be, now it's just a cast of forgettable and washed out, stereotyped personalities.
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I thought SC2 had a good storyline. Then I played BW. It doesn't compare at all. BW's story is just so much more interesting (all the backstabs and alliances). WoL is more along the lines of "my long lost love (which I said I would kill a while back in an epic speech, who has also killed like 8 billion people) is back! I have to put together an artifact to save her!"
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I loved the sc1 story and have replayed it at least once a year since it was released. WoL was awful though. There were no new interesting characters and most of the old ones were not included. Pretty much none of the questions I had at the end of BW were answered. The fact that this is turning into Wrath of the xelnaga king featuring kerrigan as jaina and raynor as thrall disgusts me.
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
(Edit: watching the videos now; glad someone did this)
The WoL campaign is horribly. I've actually considered producing a super-long review proving just how bad it is. (e.g. like RedLetterMedia's 1-hour long Star Wars prequel reviews)
Not only is the plot horrendous, but almost none of the missions make any sense. Consider the one where you evacuate the colonists from Agria colony.
- Despite the colonists only numbering in hundreds they have a star port larger than the entire colony. This makes no sense. Why would they build a star port? Why not just a landing pad?
- Raynor has drop ships capable of evacuating the entire colony. We know this for a fact because #1 You see them in the first mission #2 Raynor landstroops to save Agria colony, so he must have shuttles. #3 In the 3rd mission where the Hyperion dramatically arrives to save everyone, they must have had some way to lift the artifact and evacuate their troops onboard the Hyperion with the Zerg just seconds away from killing everyone. So why don't they use these shuttles? (I know the answer...)
- You'd expect there to be some reason why the evacuation shuttle cannot just lift off, land right beside the colony and have everyone march in. Maybe it's like an airplane; maybe it needs a runway. Then at the end of the mission it makes a vertical lift off; in the zombie mission (which you may play immediately afterward), the exact same shuttle performs a vertical landing on normal terrain to deploy your troops,
The only conclusion is that the only reason why the civilians need to risk their lives busing to the star port is because it's convenient for the game-play.
I could go on about almost every mission. However, after the third one, there's one giant flaw in all of them; one unanswered question:
WHERE IS THE HYPERION?
So why doesn't the Hyperion come down and help evacuate the colony? Why doesn't the Hyperion come and kill off all the zombies? Is the Hyperion crew just chilling out in orbit? We know the Hyperion must be close-by because Raynor and Findlay make comments in almost every mission. The only answer I can think of: We don`t see the Hyperion because its presence would trivialize most missions. Couldn't the game designers come up with some plausible explanation why the Hyperion cannot participate in the missions?
I get the feeling that there was a huge disconnect, lack of organization or apathy between the level designers, cinematic designers, plot writers and the people responsible for writing the dialog and stuff you do can do in-between stages as Raynor on the Hyperion (I'll refer to this as the Hyperion Adventure Mode). I think that the Hyperion doesn't intervene in the missions because the level writers didn't know or care about the Hyperion Adventure Mode.
![[image loading]](http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100717012438/starcraft/images/d/d9/Hyperion_SC2_DevRend1.jpg)
Hyperion Adventure Mode
I think the HAM deserves it's own attention. I don't mind adventure modes in between missions - some games have done it incredibly well: Notably the Wing Commander series pulled it off quite nicely. However, the HAM plays like it was slapped together at the last minute as an afterthought. The Hyperion is a massive Battle Cruiser. From this screen-shot I count 14 decks - that's a lot.
Yet the HAM makes it feel like it's some tiny yacht - maybe it's actually like a Battle Yacht. Where's the crew? I mean where are all the senior officers who should be on the bridge like doing stuff? Matt Horner is a captain, how does he do everything himself? Why isn't there a first officer, helmsmen, communication officer or CAG; moreover, if these officers exist, why doesn't Raynor talk to them? Maybe they could provide some useful insight? What really bothers me is the disproportionate amount of none-crew personnel involved in the decision making process. On the Hyperion you can talk to the following people:
- Tychus Findley
- The Woman Scientist
- The Nerd
- Matt Horner
- The Specter
- The Engineer
Only half of these actually belong to your crew; the rest are just tagging along.
The catina makes no sense. Hoes does such a small cantina service such a large Battle Cruiser? There must be other bars on the ship; because I don't see most of the crew there. I mean there should be hundreds of crew members on the Hyperion; are they not allowed in this cantina? What about the drop ship pilots where do they go? Why can't I talk to them? Why can't I talk to the bar-tender; I'm sure he hears a lot of interesting things you know being in the bar all day serving the crew.
Staring contests When you're not talking to them, the crew members seem to be engaged in prolonged staring contests. They might just stare away at each other, or the console, or the wall. They don't seem to be doing anything. Why aren't they tapping away at consoles, or moving their mouths chatting with each-other? Moreover, why can't Raynor talk to them and see what's going on?
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It's very obvious to everybody who's played SC:BW and then SC2:WoL that the sequel, storyline wise, did not in any way come even remotely close to living up to it's predecessor. It's very disappointing. I used to be a starcraft lore fan. Not anymore.
But instead of focusing on Blizzard's drastic failure, I think the stuff they actually put all their effort in to turned out really well. The missions themselves, for instance, are much less linear and way more dynamic than any of the missions in SC or BW. They're just more fun to play. Of course, that would be true of Jim Raynor didn't exist and all of the dialogue was taken out of the game entirely, but that's besides the point. It was a fun 30-something hours of playing.
Furthermore, it's quite obvious that they focused a lot of their attention on e-sports. Which is awesome. That's what should have been the number one priority, and I'm glad that it was. A fun, accessible, watchable game with an extremely high skill ceiling? That's just great.
But that's not what this thread is about. It's about the horrible, obvious failure by the writers to come even remotely close to the legendary, epic status of the BW story. At this point I'm not expecting much more from the expansions, but as long as they're fun to play and don't break the game on a competitive level, I'll happily play the game for years to come. Maybe that's why they didn't focus on the story 
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Going into Starcraft II I was honestly more excited for the Story (because I loved the first one's story so much) then I was for the multiplayer. Once I reached the end of SCII campaign I could only help but feel that even though the Campaign was better (in terms of level design, features, re playability, ect); they failed on the most important aspect of the entire thing: the story.
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EPT
