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I think the major problem here is what im calling the Blizzard Writing Formula.
Flash back to WC3. All the races are fighting against one another or amongst themselves, everyone has a motive. its all very interesting and political.
Then what happens? The legion shows up. This external force thats a threat to everybody. Now everyone is running scared, they all have to deal with this external force and band together to fight it.
None of the races are evil! heavens no. Even the undead arent evil, as we can see from the forsaken. They were just being controlled by the legion.
Flash back even further to sc1. All the races are fighting against one another. Everyone has a motive. Most of the races are fighting amongst themselves as well. Its all INCREDIBLY interesting.
Enter SC2.
A new challenger aproaches! Hybridddsss! o noes...
Now we all have to band together to fight the + Show Spoiler + hybrids.
No ones evil, not even the overmind was evil. The overmind and its zerg were just being controlled by the hybrids...
Sound familiar???
Now admittedly, the expansion is always the best part, because that threat has been destroyed and now its time to fight eachother some more (TFT, BW)... but now since its all three storylines in three expansions, i dont see that kind of thing happening.
Another thing is that the protoss dont even care about the zerg invasion anymore which is a bit uncharacteristic considering sc1 and bw.
And lastly, Kerrigan. O god.... what have they done. As said before kerrigan wasnt all powerful, she had depth and thoughts that made her dangerous like Loki... deadly because shes cunning.
Why was kerrigan gone for that long, how come she never talked at all... give her actual dialog please!!!
A huge plot hole is that kerrigan keeps yelling at zeratul during the protoss campaign that were all going to die and its useless to continue. That we might as well get consumed by oblivion. It almost seems like she has resigned to her fate. (once again, disgustingly out of character). So how come shes still out and doing stuff when she knows that shes going to die anyway. Why does she need the xel naga artifacts if shes knows its useless.... what was her aim in obtaining them in the first place???
Furthermore, how come her years of evolution and biding her time left her weak enough to be killed by half a dominion fleet and a good tactician??? even with most her air forces or nydus forces gone. seems pretty retarded. The only thing i could come up with is that she overextended herself in the invasion of the terran worlds and didnt leave enough defense... (it says in a news report that the zerg are retreating back towards char right after you start the invasion).
But that still makes little sense, because Kerrigan is one of the most cunning characters in all of sc. she should get this stuff... Why didnt she get some allies like in BW? She always had somenoe influenced into fighting for her. I dont understand why she never did that here.
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i agree that it would be extremely dissappointing if they band together. I think that's what underlined SC1, that pure evilness of zerg.
I do think however that it's too soon to panic, it would be a nice twist if in HOTS kerrigan turns back to her evil ways after a while. Somehow. That's what i'm hoping for.
And you guys are completely misunderstanding the ending, the dominion fleet was defeated, Raynor picked up the survivors in Mission 1, sabotaged zerg in R2 and then they barely held out for half an hour with a help of super powerful artifact(which you wipe zerg waves with every 4 minutes).
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
i was pretty disappointed with how the story panned out. there were so many niggling things that griped on me as i played through the campaign. kerrigan's character was poorly written at best and introducing hybrids and 'the prophecy' just seemed like a huge swing to the fantasy genre in the warcraft mould. however i did expect the plot of SC2 to fall short of SC1 since it had so much to live up to so im not terribly distraught. lets hope they get back to form with the first expansion whenever that may come out.
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I didn't really get the "Zerg is evil" impression in SC/SC:BW, more like "The zerg are mindless drones bred for one purpose". Not their fault, so to speak.
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On August 01 2010 17:06 Telcontar wrote:
i was pretty disappointed with how the story panned out. there were so many niggling things that griped on me as i played through the campaign. kerrigan's character was poorly written at best and introducing hybrids and 'the prophecy' just seemed like a huge swing to the fantasy genre in the warcraft mould. however i did expect the plot of SC2 to fall short of SC1 since it had so much to live up to so im not terribly distraught. lets hope they get back to form with the first expansion whenever that may come out.
The Xel'Naga, hybrids, and what was upcoming (never explicitly in prophecy form but close enough) were all introduced earlier but it was always in the vein of "things to come," so really I think its more of a tonal shift than a plot invention.
As for Kerrigan, honestly, I'm kind of glad she went the way she did. Don't get me wrong I love BW Kerrigan for being generally awesome, but I'm not really sure how interesting a ruthless, conniving bitch could continue to be. Felt like that river had run a bit dry -- she kinda burned a few bridges too. In BW people were still naive enough to do things like, you know, trust her. Also, I think it makes sense for her to have evolved like she has. In SC1/BW she was human in the not too distant past. She's spent 4 years now alone in a Hive hearing what essentially amounts to voices in her head -- I expect some detachment and being generally aloof, and that's what we got. I'm also pretty confident that it was done explicitly to show contrast with how she'll be in HotS. I don't know what that is, but I'm confident we're going to see more emotion out of future Kerrigan so it shows an evolution in Kerrigan's character and really opens up the plot for the later expansion. If betrays-Duke-and-Fenix-Queen-Bitch-of-the-Universe Kerrigan had been turned human again I'm pretty sure Jimmy would've put a bullet in her head like he promised at the time. Something had to give.
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On August 01 2010 17:04 Sfydjklm wrote:
i agree that it would be extremely dissappointing if they band together. I think that's what underlined SC1, that pure evilness of zerg.
I do think however that it's too soon to panic, it would be a nice twist if in HOTS kerrigan turns back to her evil ways after a while. Somehow. That's what i'm hoping for.
The Zerg were never "pure evilness".
Changing Kerrigan back after a while would be stupid. We've already played this in BW and it would just make the whole WoL feel disappointing. They changed her back and they better roll with it.
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Yeah I have to agree with the above poster. The Zerg are not evil. The Zerg, are simply the zerg. They where designed to consume,spread, and control. That's not really evil, at least not in the sense of "MUWHAAHA TAKE OF THE WORLD!" kind of evil. It's just what the Zerg have been built to do and they just so happen to do it really, really well. That's really no evil then a disease or virus, it's not doing it because of some grand scheme of evil, it's just doing it because that's what it does.
I agree about the evil enemy being too close to the Legion. During the last toss mission yeah I was chuckling to myself saying "IS THAT YOU SARGERAS?!" But in all seriousness you can not say it hasn't been coming, I mean the whole Duran secret mission thing has been a point of knowledge for ages.
I don't quite understand all of this sudden Kerrigan hate, do you really expect people to keep falling for being betrayed every few missions? She's the queen of blades, after the 3rd time I really don't think anyone is falling for it. She doesn't need to be Loki when she has the entire swarm at her back, the only reason she played these power games in the first place was to get control of said swarm. It's not DUNE, you don't need plans within plans when you control untold legions of alien bugs created,bred and designed to kill anything in it's path.
In the end I agree with what was said on the DVD the ending wasn't about+ Show Spoiler + the war, the zerg, or even the coming end of the sector, it was about a boy and a girl and romantic happyish ending. I am a sap, I enjoyed it *shrug*
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There are some other similarities that warcraft and starcraft share. Kerrigan and Arthas being good and then becoming infested/corrupted and taking control of that which corrupted them. Jim Raynor and Jaina Proudmoure working together with Kerrigan and Arthas in the beginning of the story and eventually falling in love with them while working with them. They both then ally up with another race that they were fighting previously (protoss/orcs) to take down the zerg/undead.
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On August 01 2010 17:30 sashkata wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2010 17:04 Sfydjklm wrote:
i agree that it would be extremely dissappointing if they band together. I think that's what underlined SC1, that pure evilness of zerg.
I do think however that it's too soon to panic, it would be a nice twist if in HOTS kerrigan turns back to her evil ways after a while. Somehow. That's what i'm hoping for.
The Zerg were never "pure evilness". that depends on what you mean by pure evilness. For me a mindless swarm running over planets destroying everything is pretty evil.
Changing Kerrigan back after a while would be stupid. We've already played this in BW and it would just make the whole WoL feel disappointing. They changed her back and they better roll with it.
Well, i'm not saying get infested again but rather realize that queen of blades is who she is, infested or not.
She goes after mengsk, who is very much still in power according to the post-campaign screen and after shes done with him she realizes that she is empty apart from the all consuming desire to destroy 
I want my queen back, thas all  
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Her brain rotted in those four years, that's the only explanation I can think of to Blizzard's bad writing
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Blizzard seems to have a huge massive problem with just letting the races fight it out, even in WoW they dont actually really let Humans fight the Orcs, instead the Orcs (players) fight the different "evil" versions of Humans like Defias.
The Humans (players) fight the different "evil" versions of Orcs like Blackrock etc.
War3 started this trend and its just been going on since, introduce a super bad guy and afterall Demons are pretty bad right? So they couldnt use that in SC2 instead its these Hybrids who have cool voices (just like the Burning Legion Demons) and are as one dimensional as possible, they want to destroy everything and everyone.
Yawn
I dont understand why they cant just have the Protoss and Terran fight it out for some planet, ressource or whatever in a few missions, why is that such a issue? Present this war from both sides point of view so that nobody is good or evil.
Orcs were presented as "evil" in War and War2, the Zerg i never felt were presented as evil, the Overmind seemed to have a grand plan for Zerg, the character was a cool and calm leader that wanted to expand its influence in the galaxy these races populate.
The first problem was when they turned Orcs "good", which added nothing to the game and made them look weak. This is what i fear will happen to Zerg, they wil retcon some stuff, allow the now "good" Kerrigan to control some Zerg in the HotS campaign and suddenly we are controlling a goody good race against the ultimate evil Hybrids, its just boring.
The original game used the weakness of each race to paint them a gray color, the terrans were loud mouthed and greedy, easily manipulated by the promise of money and power. The Protoss weakness was that they were too stubborn and proud, and their political system was plagued with this that it hindered them too much in war. The Zerg problem was that technologically wise they couldnt (in lore) keep up with the other 2, they strenght was in invading planets and inhabiting them, not so much space combat.
Add old and new characters and there is so much potential to tell a good story
Furthermore, how come her years of evolution and biding her time left her weak enough to be killed by half a dominion fleet and a good tactician??
This made me scratch my head, in BW, Dominion with Mengsk, Protoss with Raynor and the UED couldnt take on the Zerg. And now, 4 years later, after Mengsk was revealed as a scumbag on national TV, Raynor and a few Dominion troops go to freaking Char of all places, defeat the Zerg by themselves and kill a good number of Zerg aswell.
I simply do not understand this, i and many others, thought the Zerg were in pole position after Brood War and 4 years is enough time to build up some forces up for all races.
I hope, for the love of god i hope, that the Protoss will want to kill Kerrigan now for all the bad things she has done to their people while the Terrans want to defend her, and we some sort of war between them over this, that would actually be interesting to see them in full scale war and Raynor and Zeratul caught in between them.
But who am i kidding that would actually be interesting instead they will band together and kill the Hybrids, the end, thanks for playing.
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Well most of the parallels to the Warcraft Universe are pretty obvious, even the Xel'naga and Titans show a lot of similarity. Both are world-creating, god like creatures from outer space, but what do you expect. The WoL storyline is written in a style Blizzard got accustomed to and, first of all, is GOOD at. The presentation of the story went as good as it did because the story itself made it possible. It has a very personal touch, focusing on Raynor and through him on the hope for Kerrigan as a human being. It becomes clear that Raynor differentiates between Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades.
"Which part? Where she was left behind, or where she killed eight billion people?"
The ending is one of the logical follow ups for this setup throughout the whole campaign.
The only thing I have to criticise is the unnecessary amount of cliffhangers in the WoL story. Nothing is answered, to the point where it's just too much to bear. They try really hard to make us all buy the next episodes, at least thats what I felt like while playing the campaign. My guess is that a lot of the reasons for the happenings in WoL will become clear in the later episodes.
For the story as a whole, I think we have to wait for HotS and the Zeratul RPG (ehehehe) to fully understand and be able to judge it.
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What I think alot of us are missing here is that we dont have the next 2 Campaigns ready for us to truly grasp the story. Imagine it is 1999 and they only released the Terran Campaign in SC1?
Now obviously the original SC had a very interesting and indepth story line, but how can you expect it to be as good? As someone has said, do you really expect a betrayal every few missions?
The storyline here was mainly focused on Raynor, not on the overall picture of the story. I think we should give BW a chance, though the OP does make great points regarding WC3.
I hope, for the love of god i hope, that the Protoss will want to kill Kerrigan now for all the bad things she has done to their people while the Terrans want to defend her, and we some sort of war between them over this, that would actually be interesting to see them in full scale war and Raynor and Zeratul caught in between them.
I think this would be very interesting AND they would kill the hybrids at the end. If they did this, maybe this would mean, Heart of the Swarm? Maybe the "Swarm" isnt really the zerg, but rather the Protoss and Terran combined, since they are acting "Swarm" like and just wanting to kill Kerrigen and not really thinking it through.
Like I said, it is really hard to speculate what will be coming up, but I for one am glad that the Terran Campaign got wrapped up. In case you guys havent played Half-Life 2, the game would end with a cliff hanger, then you would have to wait. I think HL2 fans are currently waiting for the 3rd part, aka the end. Would you want to wait a couple of years on a cliff hanger, or just be happy that we got to know the end of a story? Personally, I go with the 2nd.
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On August 01 2010 18:10 Raevin wrote:
The first problem was when they turned Orcs "good", which added nothing to the game and made them look weak.
Yeah, cause making them more nuanced and adding to their story was a bad move? It would be more interesting for the storyline if the orcs were the model 1A Bad Guys™ and never changed?
The entire super-awesome Grom Hellscream storyline in Warcraft 3 would never have happened if it was not for that... I still think the Mannoroth cutscene is Blizzards finest to date.
I agree to a lot of what you said otherwise, though, and Blizzards writing, especially across games, has become very samey. While I don't think they sync the writing of the different storylines to mix it up, having killed Arthas I don't think they wanted to have the killing of Kerrigan as a plot point, and instead chose something else (what, we don't know yet, she's hardly redeemed just for turning 90% human).
I, too, would have preferred if the whole xel'naga business remained a lot more toned down. Ancient half-god creators work a lot better in a fantasy universe - note how in WoW you never meet the Titans, you meet their creations? That would have been a better use for the xel'naga, or hell, not their creations but just their ruins. The whole artifact thing in WoL was just such a big ass deus ex machina I wanted to throw up. There's enough interesting conflict in the Starcraft universe to not have to bring in the DARK VOICE (old gods in WoW anyone?) and his HYBRIDS that WE ALL HAVE TO UNITE to stop or some shit...
Blizzard sometimes makes interesting writing decisions, but together, they tend to end up a bit shitty, especially when they retcon or use Story Magic™ to change old, well established facts.
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10387 Posts
On August 01 2010 19:18 omfghi2u2 wrote:
Now obviously the original SC had a very interesting and indepth story line, but how can you expect it to be as good? As someone has said, do you really expect a betrayal every few missions?
Of course you should expect SC2 to have just as good as a storyline as SC1.. I'm playing through the original campaign again, and while the missions aren't super fuckin fun to play like it is in SC2, nearly every aspect of the story telling blows SC2 out of the water. SC2's story is basically Raynor collects artifacts and then BAM he's on Char defeating a Kerrigan w/ down syndrome. Blizzard should seriously hire a new (better) writer (preferably the one who actually wrote the original story) and salvage what's left of the story..
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^ditto my thoughts.
I think the storyline is the weakest part of SC2. I still can't believe how generic and predictable it is, especially compared to the multi-factional fighting and complexity of sc1. The Zeratul campaign was a nice touch but the main Terran campaign was more simplistic than a 1950 Disney film. For people saying wait for the expansions... yes, we can hope it improves a lot, but you cannot say you can't judge Harry Potter book 1 if you haven't read all 7 books.
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Retconning lore is probably the worst thing any company can do. I think that's why so many of us are disappointed at the WoL's story; it retcons pretty much everything with respect to the Zerg.
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Retconning would be changing past events to fit the current plot. That didn´t happen, the events of Broodwar remain unchanged. They did however supply a bit of background to why Kerrigan was infested. That didn´t make sense back in SC and BW.
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They should hire/learn from the people who wrote Mass Effect 1 and 2. They know how to make a fairly generic plot (save the universe from x super bad guy) very interesting.
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Id like to nip this perception that this game is the equivilant of the terran campaign in SC in the bud.
Thats just plain wrong. If you look at it that way, you are ignoring all of BW...
Unless you are assuming there will be an expansion trilogy to the trilogy of expansion packs were getting, then i dont see why you would see it that way.
In reality, this should be two SC campaigns= one SC2 campaign.
Furthermore, while the game admittedly focused on a few more characters to make up for a lack of some... events....
It really didnt seem like the characters in sc2 were all that memorable. I think Tychus
+ Show Spoiler +who dies in the end anyway
Raynor delivers the same old lines over and over again. I dont understand how they made the one honest man become Woody from Toy Story... (note the pull string on his back)
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