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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kqBF61s.jpg) A Eulogy for StarCraft Lore
I finished the Heart of the Swarm campaign last night and woke up today feeling absolutely miserable. I couldn't understand why until just now and decided I needed to write about it. I am feeling terrible because I am mourning, yes mourning, for the StarCraft lore I grew up with from SC1 and Brood War is finally dead. It's actually beyond dead, it's dead/burried and has been decaying for the last 2 and a half years since WoL came out. Although WoL was bad in its own rights, it still left me with hope that Kerrigan will be spectacular and save the series with HotS. What happened instead was the total butcher of one of the most beloved/hated characters of all time. So...as part of my mourning process, I am writing this blog as a eulogy for Sarah Kerrigan/the Queen of Blades/StarCraft Lore and what could have/should have been.
Who is Sarah Kerrigan
Sarah Kerrigan from SC1/BW was an extremely complex and compelling character, especially for a video game. We know that she was taken as a child for the ghost program due to her psionic abilities. What they did to her and her family was tragic, to say the least, all part of turning a child into a weapon. Her whole life, Kerrigan has been used, manipulated and experimented on by various factions: the Confederacy/Arturus Mengsk/The Overmind, each wanting to use her for their own gain.
She was a tragic character with much pent up over the years: pain, sorrow, misery, mistrust... So it wasn't surprising that when the Overmind died, Sarah Kerrigan took the opportunity to seize power and ruled with swarm with absolute rage and utter ruthlessness. For the first time, she was in charge of her own destiny and she was going to exact her vengeance on the galaxy, itself. This is one of the first thing that HotS got wrong about Kerrigan's character. It wasn't Mengsk or the Overmind that made her into a monster. It was a lifetime of abuse, torment and being used by virtually everybody she knew that has made her a monster.
Here's another fact, Sarah Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades were the same person. There is no distinction between the two. Sarah Kerrigan was the "Queen Bitch of the Universe," and my god did she enjoy it! It's similar to classics such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or the more modern story of the Incredible Hulk in which the characters enjoyed their alternative destructive selves, it was a release, pure primal urges fulfilled in the most unadulterated way. Kerrigan's transformation, however, was much more severe. She enjoyed the killing, she relished in her atrocities and took pleasure in the suffering of others. In short, Sarah Kerrigan was a monster, a product of the vile world that made her, yes, but an abomination, none-the-less. Her cruelty surpasses even that of the Overmind that spawned her. What shred of humanity she once held on to had long been lost. She was a creature that only lived to serve its own self-interest and was absolutely, positively, beyond redemption. The only two outcomes for such a beast as Kerrigan was either for it to consume the galaxy or be destroyed.
THAT was the Kerrigan from SC1/BroodWar. The Kerrigan fron SC2/HotS is something else entirely. Here are some things which I don't understand:
1. Since when was Kerrigan so lovey/dovey with Raynor.
2. Why would she put Raynor's interest before her own or that of the Swarm's?
3. Why would vengeance against Mengsk even matter? When you are one of the most powerful creatures in the known Galaxy, are you really going to care so much about 1 motal man?
All these things seem so trivial to Kerrigan, who is basically a god in her own rights.
So...at the risk of turning myself into a fan fic writer, I'll just briefly described what would have been a better portrayal of Kerrigan in HotS while sticking to the core storyline as much as possible. Remember, this is my grieving process, so please excuse me while I write this and be done with Blizzard's SC2's story forever.
What should have been
As I said, Kerrigan is beyond redemption. What I was expecting to happen, had this character been the SC1/BW Kerrigan was that she allowed Raynor to turn her back to Human for 3 things: Becoming more powerful as a Primal Queen, Negate the influences of Amon in her previous Queen of Blades DNA and get close to Raynor to persuade him into doing her bidding.
It should have a ploy all along as Kerrigan is known to be a cunning villain. She acts lovey/dovey to Raynor to get him to Fight Mengsk while she travels off to Zerus to gain power. When she becomes Primal Queen, Kerrigan issues orders to wipe out various worlds for the Zerg Swarm as in the campaign. As news of her atrocities are made known to Raynor, he becomes enraged and sets a course to go confront Kerrigan in person.
When he finally meets her, Kerrigan reveals with glee that not only has she been using him all along to hold off the Dominion while she was still weak in her human form, but that she knows Raynor won't kill her because she is the only thing standing between Amon and the total destruction of the galaxy. Kerrigan even has the balls to tell Raynor to now help her invade Korhal because she needs the XelNaga Artifact as a weapon to battle Amon. Raynor puts a gun to Kerrigan's head but does not pull the trigger because he is thinking of the greater good of the galaxy. He then utters, "When this is over, Darling, You and I are going to settle this...the old fashion way," to which, Kerrigan agrees.
They make their way to Korhal, invades the palace and kill Mengsk. Kerrigan makes off with the artifact. She takes one final jab at Raynor as she is flown offworld by a pack of mutalisks: "How does it feel to know that you're nothing but a tool in my quest for power, Raynor?" Jim Raynor screams to the skies in despair, knowing that he has just helped the galaxy's most reviled villain massacre another 6 billion lives. Kerrigan then orders the total destruction of Korhal and all nearby Terran worlds linked with the Dominion. She looks to the stars and proclaims herself now as the "Eternal Queen of Blades."
  
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your Country52798 Posts
The problem with your story is that everyone should have expected approximately that, so if blizzard made it there would be nothing unexpected, although it would be better from what I've heard...
And think about the poor terran players! Sheesh!
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It's well established that Blizzard completely fucked up the lore with WoL. There is no consistency in any of the characters at all, the writing was incredibly poor, and the script was cheesy and just terrible overall. HotS has improved it somewhat, but it's still a pretty dismal story. The same thing is true of D3. Blizzard is just terrible at writing stories now, unfortunately.
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Confirmed, Blizzard = Square-Enix of the West.
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I'm going to be very surprised if SC2 doesn't end with them beating the Dark Voice.
I think that's the most predictable ending, so it's going to be interesting to see how Blizzard goes about NOT doing that.
Because if they don't beat him, it'll be a sad, despair ending and that's just too cool XD
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I'm so sorry for your loss.
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10387 Posts
i would actually buy hots to play that campaign lol
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
No drg blog, no care
Just kidding <3 I do agree mostly with what you're saying, but I'm still holding on to the sliver of hope that Blizzard has something planned for LotV that required this specific ending and not the frankly, much better, ending you're proposing. It's unlikely, but possible.
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On March 15 2013 10:59 AztecTemplar wrote:
I'm going to be very surprised if SC2 doesn't end with them beating the Dark Voice.
I think that's the most predictable ending, so it's going to be interesting to see how Blizzard goes about NOT doing that.
Because if they don't beat him, it'll be a sad, despair ending and that's just too cool XD
Either they beat the Dark Voice or its a cliff hanger for 'more to come'... sc3 lols
Edit: For what its worth OP, your version is 100x better. Bitch Queen was such a great character.
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I watched the cut scenes from HotS, and all of them were absolutely appalling. The whole thing is appalling. I'm appalled right now.
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That certainly sounds more like Kerrigan. But I still don't like Raynor's role. They messed with Raynor in WoL already though (He said he'd kill Kerrigan, and it didn't sound like something he'd take back or postpone for the sake of anything), so it wasn't something that could be fixed in HotS anyways...
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Before I express my critique on your blog post I want to point out that a) I really liked your perspective and found it insightful and b) that I'm the last person to be a Blizzard/Metzen apologist, in fact I find a lot in the HotS campaign to my disliking, although I enjoyed it gameplaywise.
Right at the beginning you rightfully find Kerrigan to be a complex character. Now why would a complex human, given great powers, immediately turn into a comicbook super villain? Even if we accept your claim that the mind of the being that was the Queen of Blades was not mostly the work of the Overmind and still very much the human being Sarah Kerrigan, why would she completely forsake the possibility of salvation, the hope of ever experiencing affection or love again? If she always was the psychotic being you make her out to be she wouldn't have been able to experience a connection with Jim - and even the loyalty and devotion to Mengsk, who pretty much was a father figure for her.
Now I understand the fascination with the brood war character, she certainly was a badass villain, but what I'm trying to say is that Blizzard is not far off the road here, that this is not the work of "evil new bliz" but very much attached to the sc1 storywork already. The salvation comes of course in the unlucky form of a deus ex machina plot device, yet Kerrigans transformation is absolutely believable. There she is again, the young woman that experienced deep distress on Antiga prime, facing the ethical conflict between sacrificing millions of lives and the command of her savior who (apparently) always knows whats best and cares deeply about her. That is not the reaction of a cold blooded killer.
And this young woman clearly was in love with Raynor pretty much from the beginning. While it is not untrue to say that it was always only implied, it was still completely obvious. Even the Queen of Blades saved his life multiple times or at least spared him, unlike the case of Mengsk as an act of sadism, but one of affection. In these acts the thirst for vengeance against Mengsk was also cleary visibile, which strengthens the assumption that we're dealing with a complex being, not a suddenly-turned-god with no mundane feelings/interests altogether. Why would this being, presented a chance at living something like a normal life instead of a hunted, lonely one, instantly start plotting again, and to what end?
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While I agree that the HotS Story is not the best, I still like it's general direction.
Your variant is actually very superficial and does not consider the complex character of Sarah Kerrigan.
Kerrigan before Mengsk Betrayal was an idealist, despite being a killer, despite being having been abused, she fought to make sure nobody would suffer her fate.
And I agree that the romance came a bit sudden, but I think there actually was at least a feeling of warmth between them in SC1 as well. And it actually makes sense for her to fall in love with Raynor, because he is all that she wishes for: a good heart, trustworthy and fighting for his ideals. Something sweet for her sore heart.
So then she is betrayed and basically enslaved by the overmind. She basically has no choice but to act the way she did.
That does not make her evil. And while she did lots of cruel things, it never seemed to me that she enjoyed them.
It's much more this sense of making the universe pay, which is not the same her enjoying it.
Now consider this: Jim Raynor risked his Life to save her after all that she did, after betraying him, after killing his friends.
And she is human again to a certain degree. What does that do to a character like her?
For the first time in her Life somebody was true to her, somebody she trusted came through despite here betraying him.
A chance at salvation for a pained soul. But of course she is distrustful and probably has some part of her that misses the power of the queen of blades.
All these things were well done in HotS and described a bit more in the Flashpoint novel.
What's missing though is more dialogue and storytelling about Sarah being human again and working on her Queen of Blades experiences.
I think it was a really bad decision to let Sarah go zerg again almost instantly. There were some great storytelling opportunities with the whole SArah being human again, trying to cope with it and then finally failing and going back to zerg.
Jims capture and faked death were much too sudden and superficial, but the idea was good. Sarah as a character is still great we just needed some more explaining, some more scenes of Kerrigan as human.
Also Zerus was crap storywise...
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"Sarah Kerrigan was a monster (...) an abomination"
Mengsk... You are alive after all...
With that said, I disagree with you.
I'm not saying the story doesn't have plotholes, it is not perfect, as nothing is.
But it certainly is engaging in some way.
The romance is only natural to occur, since love is one of the strongest powers, and ultimately, it's what's standing between Kerrigan the Human and Kerrigan the Queen of Blades.
Since she was made into a human again and she realized what Raynor did for her, it's only natural that her human core kept strong love feelings for him.
You can say that the story in Starcraft 2 lost it's Sci-Fi genuinity, but, for sure you agree it has gained something too.
Now everyone can relate to the story, which is, in the the end of the day, what Blizzard wants.
While I respect your view, I prefer that Starcraft is a story that everyone can appreciate and a game that everyone wants to play, than have a puristic and cult game loved by few and underappreciated by the majority of people.
Of course Blizzard does it for the money, but they do it well.
Many other companies do the same, but horribily.
I think the campaign is quite nice, could be a little harder but for it to be, thousands of units would have to be on screen at the same time, or too few and because the swarm HAS to be huge, our computers wouldn't be able to cope with that.
All in all I think they did a good job.
30€ well spent imo
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i agree to my foreposters. although i have to say that i didnt play bw through, i did so with sc1 and i wouldnt say that kerrigan is to far off.
As a human ghost she was an idealist (just think of how much she opposed the idea of zerging the main-planet of humanity) that was misused by mengsk, which similar to raynor lead to a reaction of hatred towards mengsk. She by no means was the bitter self-centered being you portrait her as, at least not when she was still a human. She changed drastically after becoming the qob. Still she spared raynors life, which is the only sign of her humanity she ever showed, showcasing that she definitely felt strong enough for him to influence her after her transformation. It's possible that the way she acted after becoming the queen of blades is a reaction to mengks betrayal (by furiously destroying everything), but based on the facts she suddenly became quite cunning (not furios at all) and that her character changed so much after her transformation, i would assume that the real reason for her change is her transformation itself and not her frustration. The original kerrigan was very childlike in many ways and the queen of blades just is not. The difference is just to big.
I think the way she acts now is understandable under that assumption. I dont know how she turned out to be in bw, but hots kerrigan is definitely a realistic continuation of sc1 kerrigan. The more interesting question is why she remains relatively human after her transformation this time.
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