@Hautamaki: wrong. It's (not only) the lack of character development or meaningful events that has grieved and despaired us about the sequel's plot, but the fact that what does take place is all crap at best and insulting at worst.
Namely, and for example:
1.- The whole idea of Kerrigan being magically deinfested, "redeemed" and carried away into the sunset. 2.- The characters becoming caricatures of their former selves (Arcturus -> loud, predictable fool, Zeratul -> senile, wispy old man, Kerrigan -> emo chick with empty taunts and even emptier dialog). 3.- The introduction of new key plot elements that suck and are extremely lame, such as the prophecy, and the overmind/zerg being probably "good". 3.- The whole b-movie feel, instead of the gritty and serious (in a good way) theme of the original. 4.- The happy/cartoony theme to it, in which the heroes can't fail, have "main character powers" (Hyperion boarding Valerian's ship anyone?) and everything works out in the end.
With all this, there's no hope for the expansions to have a good plot. You just can't work around all the crap plot elements they introduced in WoL. Blizzard's lost its marbles and right now we're all in denial about it, but the sooner we accept it the better.
For example, wouldn't you tell your past self to save some money and avoid Star Wars Ep. 1/2/3 if you could? Yeah, few franchises have been ruined so hard as SW was, but Starcraft comes damn close.
Blizzard's lost its marbles and right now we're all in denial about it, but the sooner we accept it the better. For example, wouldn't you tell your past self to save some money and avoid Star Wars Ep. 1/2/3 if you could? Yeah, few franchises have been ruined so hard as SW, but Starcraft comes damn close.
This would be true, except most of us won't buy HotS for it's singleplayer . Its just a bonus really.
On October 03 2010 05:46 Craixs wrote: even if I just compare the plots from the 10 terrans BW mission there is more to the history than there was in these 29 mission in sc2
No... just, no. There really wasn't.
Hardly anything happened in BW compared to WoL.
There were about 2 or maybe 3 missions in BW which might be relevent to SCII.
Protoss escape to Shakuras Fenix dies
Most of the remainder of the campaign was all about the UED who come from nowhere, and then get utterly annhilated with the captains last words to earth amounting to something like "We're doomed, we can't win, and we should just stop trying". Are we sure that the message even got back to Earth?
BW ends with a pointless new overmind dying, and Kerrigan taking it's place. But we already knew this from the SCI epilogue so it doesn't count. Our heroes undo all of the damage which the UED have done to the dominion. BW didn't do much to develop any of the characters that lived. Zeratul and Artanis both acted really dumb, because the writers couldn't think of a way to make Kerrigan look clever. Jim gets pissed off at Kerrigan over Fenix. That's about the only serious BW development which WoL had failed to address.
In WoL Jim helps Valarian to succeed his father. We're introduced to several new supporting characters, and surprisingly most of them survived to fight another day. Something happens to Kerrigan. We're not positive on what exactly, but it is probably important to the story, and it is clearly a very important part of Jim and his development as a character. Hansen is probably done with SCII Not expecting much from Tosh, but he, like Hansen are both still open cases so it's not impossible for them to feature in the expansions.
Now that I think about it, the decision to cast some top-model/actress (Trica Helfer) as Kerrigan instead of good ol' Glynnis Talken (the excellent previous voice actor) most likely involved someone getting laid at Blizzard in exchange for the job favor (Metzen). Just a conjecture, though.
On October 03 2010 03:44 ghostunit wrote: @Hautamaki: wrong. It's (not only) the lack of character development or meaningful events that has grieved and despaired us about the sequel's plot, but the fact that what does take place is all crap at best and insulting at worst.
Namely, and for example:
1.- The whole idea of Kerrigan being magically deinfested, "redeemed" and carried away into the sunset. 2.- The characters becoming caricatures of their former selves (Arcturus -> loud, predictable fool, Zeratul -> senile, wispy old man, Kerrigan -> emo chick with empty taunts and even emptier dialog). 3.- The introduction of new key plot elements that suck and are extremely lame, such as the prophecy, and the overmind/zerg being probably "good". 3.- The whole b-movie feel, instead of the gritty and serious (in a good way) theme of the original. 4.- The happy/cartoony theme to it, in which the heroes can't fail, have "main character powers" (Hyperion boarding Valerian's ship anyone?) and everything works out in the end.
With all this, there's no hope for the expansions to have a good plot. You just can't work around all the crap plot elements they introduced in WoL. Blizzard's lost its marbles and right now we're all in denial about it, but the sooner we accept it the better.
For example, wouldn't you tell your past self to save some money and avoid Star Wars Ep. 1/2/3 if you could? Yeah, few franchises have been ruined so hard as SW was, but Starcraft comes damn close.
1. I don't have a problem with Kerrigan being deinfested. It's a retribution storyline along the lines of Star Wars with Vader and I expect we'll see plenty of cool things going down with her in HOTS. It makes perfect sense that she's being positioned as a potential good guy leading into the zerg campaign.
2. I don't agree with that characterization at all, and furthermore you have to consider that this entire game was basically told in the first person from Jim Raynor's perspective. You see the characters how he sees them.
3. I'm not sure where you got this amazing gritty and serious feel from the first games; the style/sense of humor was basically the same, the only difference is that Blizzard had way more tools at their disposal in the second game. Maybe that meant you were able to fill in more blanks with your imagination and basically create your own experience with SC1 more, but honestly I greatly appreciated all the little touches Blizzard put in to draw the player in to their world.
4. I don't have a problem with hero characters being heroic either.
I saw this entire game as mainly a character study of Jim Raynor, and of how, with a little help from an old friend and a lot of impetus from coming events, he picks himself up, dusts himself off, and goes back to his true calling, which is fucking up the evil plots of bad guys. Meanwhile, a greater force/new enemy is being introduced (obviously extremely similar to the Warcraft 3 storyline) and it turns out that unpleasant decisions will have to be made to fight this new enemy.
Bottom line is that I had a blast playing through the campaign, the storyline was perfectly solid, and the way it was told was basically incomparable to SC1 which had nothing more than wall of text mission briefings and a few in-game lines of speech.
I saw this entire game as mainly a character study of Jim Raynor, and of how, with a little help from an old friend and a lot of impetus from coming events, he picks himself up, dusts himself off, and goes back to his true calling, which is fucking up the evil plots of bad guys.
Raynor does absolutely nothing through the entire game but drinks in a bar being all emo about Kerrigan. When the deus ex machina of getting her back appears, he jumps on it and kills one of his best friends for her.
Character study? Study of what? Only character from WoL worth mentioning is Tychus, and that's only if you play through the game again knowing what his deal with Arcturus is. Only then you can appreciate how he struggles between "old times" and striking "a deal with the devil".
Bottom line is that I had a blast playing through the campaign, the storyline was perfectly solid, and the way it was told was basically incomparable to SC1 which had nothing more than wall of text mission briefings and a few in-game lines of speech.
Blizzard's lost its marbles and right now we're all in denial about it, but the sooner we accept it the better. For example, wouldn't you tell your past self to save some money and avoid Star Wars Ep. 1/2/3 if you could? Yeah, few franchises have been ruined so hard as SW, but Starcraft comes damn close.
This would be true, except most of us won't buy HotS for it's singleplayer . Its just not a bonus really.
Honestly SC2 story is atrociously bad. I really don't care about deinfestation, It's a concept I'm able to swallow just as infestation itself.
SC2 characters behave unnaturally. Where in SC1/BW the evil character were cunning and commited bad things - the way evil should do things. In SC2 both Kerrigan, Tychus are hollywood like stupid/no brain characters. They could not commit evil even if their had supervilian abilities. SC2 must have the worst dialogs ever. They wanted every sentence to sound super cool, but ended up sounding super lame. The news character who is pro-mengsk goes mental breakdown in the end... give me a break, and kate give me a bj k? The doctor who is somewhat attracted to Raynor gives him a lame cheek kiss for goodbye. Wtf man? Is the target audiance really 10 year old boys&girls?
SC2 characters behave unnaturally. Where in SC1/BW the evil character were cunning and commited bad things - the way evil should do things. In SC2 both Kerrigan, Tychus are hollywood like stupid/no brain characters. They could not commit evil even if their had supervilian abilities.
Please elaborate. I can only assume that you're complaining about Mengsks reaction to the Korhal broadcast and Kerrigans lack of manipulation, seeing how people love to whine about these two "flaws" in particular.
Arcturus was as intelligent in WoL as he has always been, but he had character flaws. He was cold, calculating and manipulative, but he has a very short temper. Consider the little sample which you find on the adjuctant, the infamous "I will rule this sector or see it burn to ashes around me". And later, his reaction to Raynor in the briefing room after Jim told Arcturus to fuck off. Does that remind you of the WoL Arcturus? It should. Here is Arcturus, complacent in his power, master of the universe and then some guy who he has been hunting has the unmitigated audacity to attack HIM on his own throne world?! Not only that, but he gets a proverbial kick in the balls from the message which Raynor uploaded. To top it off, one of his reporters bitch slaps him across the face with said infamous quote. He may be smart and cold, but he has his limits. At least he didn't act surprised when the Queen bitch of the Universe broke her promise of a truce in Brood War, so he can't possibly be as dumb as the SCII haters make him out to be.
As for Kerrigan, people are basically accusing her of not been cunning enough. I don't know what possible use that Kerrigan could have for a rag tag band of cretins on a battlecruiser who happen to be in direct competition for her artifacts. No way in hell that Arcturus is dumb enough to be manipulated by her again, and besides, he already has everything he wants, so Kerrigan has no leverage on him. She did discover the location of the data cores, at least half of the artifacts, and ambushed Zeratul on the prophecy planet. Is that not enough cunning for an arch villain with so little screen time? To be fair, a lot of Kerrigans cunning in BW came from her protagonist powers of weakening her enemies mental faculties (See the paragraph on Arcturus), which was more a result of poor writing than a character trait. Also, Duran.
As for Tychus, well I think he was meant to be the dumb, reluctant traitor the whole time.
In BW Kerrigan manipulated the dark templar in order to get control over the swarm and get rid of the new overmind. Sure you could call this a stupid idea, but they were desperate and later on Kerrigan corrupted/kidnapped Rashagal which literally brought zeratul to his knees(a chapter from Sun Tzu's Art of War : you should seize what your enemy holds most dear). Yeah Zeratul sound a bit gay in SC2, his voice in SC1 was definitelly better. Also he acts more like an older person(compared to SC1). However he could have changed after the Rashagal incident.
If Tychus was super demetial, then Raynor should have known better - this whole event does not make him smart eigher. Although his feeling of "paying the debt to an old friend" could cloud his judgement. However if someone tries to kill you in rage - throwing ship stuff at you, this kind of behavior can't be made up after a good night sleep and deserves further consquences.
I really don't have a big problem with Arcturus, he may be just getting old or he drinks too much.. whatever his character developement is not the problem. The only problem is the NEWS. The NEWS sound like anti Mengsk propaganda - because Kate - smart&beautiful is trying to present the truth, the other one looks like a pedophile. Well if Mengsk was any good as an emperor, he would have get rid of Kate right away. And this could have been in the story if the wanted to, so in one mission you could save her(probably only by accident though).
On August 01 2010 05:54 socal50 wrote: to be fair, sc1+bw had a story that touched on all three races. here in sc2 so far, youve only got a third of the story
to be even fairer, playing just the terran campaign for broodwar beats wol by itself
On October 04 2010 01:46 LastWish wrote: In BW Kerrigan manipulated the dark templar in order to get control over the swarm and get rid of the new overmind. Sure you could call this a stupid idea, but they were desperate and later on Kerrigan corrupted/kidnapped Rashagal which literally brought zeratul to his knees(a chapter from Sun Tzu's Art of War : you should seize what your enemy holds most dear). Yeah Zeratul sound a bit gay in SC2, his voice in SC1 was definitelly better. Also he acts more like an older person(compared to SC1). However he could have changed after the Rashagal incident.
I don't think Kerrigan did any manipulating of the Dark Templar. She aided them a bit, but it is clear that the Dark Templar were already planning on killing cerebrates and fetching plot devices to activate the tower which was to be forgotten for plot conveinience after the first time it was used at the protoss campaign end. It seems like she used her ghost skills to get close enough to Razagal to do whatever it is she did to enslave her mind, but that plan would have failed if Aldaris hadn't been an idiot (for plot convienience) and warned Zeratul while he had a chance.
I know Kerrigan is supposed to be clever, but the execution of the whole plot was simply bad. And not only because of the Templar chapter.
I'm going on a bit of an unrelated tangent here, but It was a variety of things which made Broodwar such a terrible sequel for me. Main ones been the UED in general, and how so very much of the BW events felt like filler in the great scheme of things. Hardly any character development occurs, and the plot development simply goes in a full circle rather than change any of the factions in a meaningful way. Except for the UED who only seemed to exist as nothing but a disposable obstacle or a random RPG encounter. And we could just skip BW and be unsurprised to find Kerrigan leading the Zerg charge since the SCI epilogue has already told us.
I think BW would have been a good stand alone game, and I've tried really hard to convince myself that it is a good sequel. But the bottom line is that BW is and will always be the worst part of the SC series for me. Unless they do something really horrible with the SCII campaigns.
Why do people hate the idea of Tassadar returning when they don't even know what it means? Going into hypotheticals here, but wouldn't it be a pretty good plot twist if Tassadar and the Overmind somehow managed to merge into one form? They are opposites of a whole and Tassadar is one of the few Protoss who could wield both energies.
EPT
. Its just a bonus really.
