EPTThe Trident of Doom, three spiky problems:
Plot, Storytelling, Writing
Allow me to begin by stating simply what I mean by these three terms. The plot is what happens, if asked to tell someone what happens in the Starcraft: Wings of Liberty then you'd sum up the major plot points for them. The storytelling is the way in which these major plot points are used and structured; it's all about pace and tension. Good storytelling can certainly make a standard 'cliché' plot good. The writing I'm talking about here are the actual lines which are spoken by the characters the writing has an affect on both the plot and the storytelling and the three tend to work in synergy with one another. That is to say you can start off with a fairly typical basic plot but with good writing and good storytelling elevate that into something far beyond the basic archetype from which it originated. Unfortunately likewise they can bring one another down too.
I definitely agree with the general sentiment that I've read in this forum. The plot, the storytelling and the writing were all horrible. Which is really terrible because the actual levels were really good (compared with the original SC and BW where the levels were mostly really generic but the writing and storytelling were both top notch). It's really sad that in terms of gameplay Blizzard have produced a really top notch entertaining game with loads of really fun levels and such and then given it this script, this plot and told it in this way.
It's the same old tired story that Blizzard's been rolling out for years. I don't mind an unoriginal plot. Loads of great movies, books and indeed games too have started out with some really unoriginal plot, unfortunately what mate them great was their storytelling and writing. Unfortunately problem one for Blizzard really starts here, the writing here inflicts terrible, terrible damage! on to my psyche. It's really just horribly cringe-worthy most of the time. On occasion it does stray into the "so bad it's good" zone but I doubt that's intentional. Almost every single line sounds like it's from some horrible made-for-tv movie. There are signs that Blizzard do employ one or two decent writers who were actually trying and a few scenes did engage me and really shine out amidst the cringeyness, but mostly I was either laughing or wincing at the absurdity of it. I'm pretty sure that when they have Jimmy saying these supposed-to-be-stirring lines they want people to be moved and going "Oh hell yeah!" not giggling because ohmygod that was so awful.
Spoiler warning ahead if you didn't realise there would be spoilers then here's the warning, turn back now or face spoilers:
In Utter Darkness for me was the really only major thing that really engaged me in any real way, which is kind sad because it was also the mission that annoyed me the most in terms of writing. I'm a real sucker for last desperate stands. The bad guy there is just awful on levels that transcend the 10 and even 11 point scales, I mean incredibly terrible, un-original, garbage and I will get to him later, but all the protoss heroes getting ready for a last stand, ready to go down screaming defiance to the last and all that stuff really does it for me. The storytelling her at the start is good, we get the camera panning accross as Zeratul gives his "we're all going to die, but lets give them a fight" speech, and you get to see all the Zealots waving their hands in the air. You can practically hear them screaming "Entaro Tassadar" along with him - that's what I'm talking about! No need for any cheesy inspirational bullshit there, oh hell no. Here someone realised that you don't need any of that. that you can show instead of tell, we get to be there in the battle with the protoss fighting to the last man and ultimately losing. We actually get to be there, commanding the troops, trying not to die, trying to kill as many enemies as possible but finally falling as each of our heroes die. This is good, this is engaging, this puts you right there in the action, in the moment. But then the horrible writers show up again, launch into masses of pointless exposition as we have the bad guy spending the whole time going "muhahaha if only you could look into the future and see me telling you that you shouldn't kill Kerrigan, then I'd be really screwed, but it's lucky you can't so let me taunt you by telling you all this" along with several of the Protoss heroes death speeches being "Oh if only we knew" which gets kinda tired after the first one, this especially all the evil speeches increased the difficulty factor for this mission for me because I spent half my time with my head in my hands double face palming at the awfulness of it.
Most of all I hate this bad guy if you can even call him that frankly it doesn't even qualify to be called a character: they have scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with a being even less compelling than Sauron, who yes wants to DESTROY THE UNIVERSE. Omnicidal, formless, motivationless, and entirely unengaging in every single way possible. This being can't even function in any way as a character, lacking even enough qualities to be considered two-dimensional (which most of the rest of the cast is, sad considering that they could all have been really well rounded three dimensional characters with good writing 'cause the voice actors were clearly trying their best to work with what they were given). All this 'dark voice' is is a one dimensional plot device. He's wearing a black hat, he's painted black, he sits in darkness with his glowy evil red eyes. His opening line may as well be "hello everyone I'm objectively evil, since you're all far more realistic shades of grey, even though you hate each other, you also kinda like this universe because this is where you keep all your stuff so feel free to unite against me". And let's face it now that is what will happen.
The 'bad' protoss were almost as bad. They were arbitrarily flagged as 'crazy zealots, not like those normal protoss who we're friends with' to make it ok to fight them, so we could have some missions vs toss. They have no real anything to characterise them other then "in the way of our missions" and "we hate you Jim Raynor, we will keep getting in your way and even step into some side missions because previously there was no real reason to fight the protoss at all in any but one level of this game and we need a decent number of vs toss missions".
A very long tangent in which I predict what will happen in future games, kinda only a little related to the main thread of this topic but yea:
+ Show Spoiler +
Here are a few predictions of what will happen, based on my knowledge of Blizzard's default plot and how they like to tell it as well as the things we've seen in Wings of Liberty. I think these things are pretty predictable, a couple are longish shots but I'd certainly bet on at least a few of the more obvious ones being dead certs to occur. Some of them will happen because Blizzard will be attempting a "Crowning moment of Awesome" which can and if they don't whip their writers into shape will be just as cringe-worthy as their attempts at it in this game. Others will happen because they think this sort of stuff is cool or because this is the sort of thing Blizzard put into all their plots. In no particular order:
-Everyone will have to band together to stop the I SPEAK IN CAPSLOCK BIG BAD DESTROYER THE OF UNIVERSE(tm). Blizzard love this. And it's been clearly telegraphed way ahead of time that we will end up fighting with all three races to save the world tree from the burning legion... I mean universe from the Hybrids.
-Acturus will probably backstab because it's in his nature. They will want to make out like it's a totally incredible plot twist, but it'll probably also be glaringly obvious to everyone playing the game and indeed to any character inside the game with a brain-stem except the characters involved will have absolutely no idea it's coming for some reason. Also it'll be extra obvious (and we'll be told later on several times just to hammer home the point in case we fell asleep or skipped all the cut-scenes) that he's being manipulated by the bad guy to do his backstab.
-Kerrigan will die a hero. She has to die, or possibly ascend to some higher plane of existence or whatever. Either way she doesn't end up with Jimmy 'cause Blizzard are going to want to attempt to make a crowning moment of awesome, or at least something really cool and heroic that they can use to tug heart strings. Also because they will be trying to make the ending seem bittersweet, inject some emotion and all that by denying the happy ending. I don't thin it's possible to go too wrong with this ending if they have anyone half-way decent on their writing staff and let that person script and write this bit.
-Raynor will go drink himself under a table after, with Kerrigan dead and the dominion still in the hands of a Mensk (probably Valerian who will have his daddy killed at some point, since he seems like a sterling young lad). Raynor has to finish Starcraft 2 exactly where he begins it. Drinking himself into a stupor in some scummy little bar. It's another decent ending that I think wouldn't be too easy to screw up the emotional impact of. Valerian usurping his dad also seems like a no-brainer. If they decide to continue along the vein of Valerian being a good guy then Matt will probably get his happy ending and Jimmy gets offered a position in his military or cabinet or whatever but turns it down to go be drunk and depressed.
-Finally, the BIG BAD DESTROYER OF THE UNIVERSE(tm) will be "[defeated but not destroyed, dum dum dum because Bliz can't do any better than a faceless, formless, omnicidal maniac to drive a plot these days and if they keep him around they can bring him back later.
-And at the end if we score 100% and complete the game in under 6 hours blizzard will show us naked Selendis because by then the only thing they'll have left to keep people interested will be a blatant fanservice. And us nerds love naked aliens right? Or maybe Kerrigan, Selendis and Nova Can-Can dancing or something similarly ridiculous. Who knows but whatever it is it'll be uncanny-valley disturbing taken to the next level.
Also there will be a secret level. You will control Duran and go around doing something random while your master exposits about how this is only a set back and leading into a still greater plan so don't worry, we can still end the universe next time and charge another few hundred bucks for Starcraft 3:Quadrilogy :bored:
These events will also take place over four games rather than three as we've been told so far. This story will take four games to tell, in my opinion for a few reasons. I certainly wouldn't at this point insinuate at all that Blizzard are trying to make the games any longer deliberately, but like many series in the epic fantasy genre these 'epic' stories tend to grow ever longer than planned. There has been a lot of filler and not a lot of story telling so far. Major plot advancement sections have mostly been crammed into 3-5 missions and a cutscene or two; mostly a few of the Zeratul missions and their cutscenes really. Aside from the massive amounts of exposition in these missions and cutscenes there really isn't much plot advancement. Then there's the last mission and that's about it. Blizzard still have huge amounts of ground to cover before whatever epic final showdown they want to do with the big bad, along with hopefully some politics and infighting. That's a lot of ground to cover given how much filler is apparently needed to pack out the few plot heavy missions in Wings of Liberty.
By the time they get to Legacy of the Void they will realise they have "too much content for one game" and split it into a full length (eg a few important missions +filler as with WoL) Protoss campaign for LotV and another game for the endgame kinda thing.
-Everyone will have to band together to stop the I SPEAK IN CAPSLOCK BIG BAD DESTROYER THE OF UNIVERSE(tm). Blizzard love this. And it's been clearly telegraphed way ahead of time that we will end up fighting with all three races to save the world tree from the burning legion... I mean universe from the Hybrids.
-Acturus will probably backstab because it's in his nature. They will want to make out like it's a totally incredible plot twist, but it'll probably also be glaringly obvious to everyone playing the game and indeed to any character inside the game with a brain-stem except the characters involved will have absolutely no idea it's coming for some reason. Also it'll be extra obvious (and we'll be told later on several times just to hammer home the point in case we fell asleep or skipped all the cut-scenes) that he's being manipulated by the bad guy to do his backstab.
-Kerrigan will die a hero. She has to die, or possibly ascend to some higher plane of existence or whatever. Either way she doesn't end up with Jimmy 'cause Blizzard are going to want to attempt to make a crowning moment of awesome, or at least something really cool and heroic that they can use to tug heart strings. Also because they will be trying to make the ending seem bittersweet, inject some emotion and all that by denying the happy ending. I don't thin it's possible to go too wrong with this ending if they have anyone half-way decent on their writing staff and let that person script and write this bit.
-Raynor will go drink himself under a table after, with Kerrigan dead and the dominion still in the hands of a Mensk (probably Valerian who will have his daddy killed at some point, since he seems like a sterling young lad). Raynor has to finish Starcraft 2 exactly where he begins it. Drinking himself into a stupor in some scummy little bar. It's another decent ending that I think wouldn't be too easy to screw up the emotional impact of. Valerian usurping his dad also seems like a no-brainer. If they decide to continue along the vein of Valerian being a good guy then Matt will probably get his happy ending and Jimmy gets offered a position in his military or cabinet or whatever but turns it down to go be drunk and depressed.
-Finally, the BIG BAD DESTROYER OF THE UNIVERSE(tm) will be "[defeated but not destroyed, dum dum dum because Bliz can't do any better than a faceless, formless, omnicidal maniac to drive a plot these days and if they keep him around they can bring him back later.
-And at the end if we score 100% and complete the game in under 6 hours blizzard will show us naked Selendis because by then the only thing they'll have left to keep people interested will be a blatant fanservice. And us nerds love naked aliens right? Or maybe Kerrigan, Selendis and Nova Can-Can dancing or something similarly ridiculous. Who knows but whatever it is it'll be uncanny-valley disturbing taken to the next level.
Also there will be a secret level. You will control Duran and go around doing something random while your master exposits about how this is only a set back and leading into a still greater plan so don't worry, we can still end the universe next time and charge another few hundred bucks for Starcraft 3:Quadrilogy :bored:
These events will also take place over four games rather than three as we've been told so far. This story will take four games to tell, in my opinion for a few reasons. I certainly wouldn't at this point insinuate at all that Blizzard are trying to make the games any longer deliberately, but like many series in the epic fantasy genre these 'epic' stories tend to grow ever longer than planned. There has been a lot of filler and not a lot of story telling so far. Major plot advancement sections have mostly been crammed into 3-5 missions and a cutscene or two; mostly a few of the Zeratul missions and their cutscenes really. Aside from the massive amounts of exposition in these missions and cutscenes there really isn't much plot advancement. Then there's the last mission and that's about it. Blizzard still have huge amounts of ground to cover before whatever epic final showdown they want to do with the big bad, along with hopefully some politics and infighting. That's a lot of ground to cover given how much filler is apparently needed to pack out the few plot heavy missions in Wings of Liberty.
By the time they get to Legacy of the Void they will realise they have "too much content for one game" and split it into a full length (eg a few important missions +filler as with WoL) Protoss campaign for LotV and another game for the endgame kinda thing.
Storytelling
This is really what this thread is about. The easiest thing to change is the storytelling because well, I may be critical of the script-writers but I don't claim to have the time or talent to go through and re-write the game's entire script. Nor do I want to re-write the plot. It's a bit meh, a bit cheesy, the bad guy is totally uncompelling. All complaints that I have made and I believe to be justified.
So instead of re-writing the whole thing I'm going to just tighten the game's storytelling up. I think the main reason that the storytelling is so weak is because the "give people a choice" gimmick is used very badly and because of it everything else suffers immensely. Because they didn't want to have multiple endings or any of that, in all the cut-scenes people act like none of the side missions took place. And unfortunately that is all they really are. Instead of compelling choices that create a real effect on your gameplay they are unnecessary side-quests that are ignored in the scheme of things.
The whole Zeratul quest-line (which is where most of the backstory exposition is crammed into and is so the most important series of levels and cutscenes from a plot perspective) is totally ignored in the 'main game', as people have mentioned you have Matt in one cutscene (who Jim tells everything about Zeratul's prophecy to) arguing against Jim's decision to go to Char to free her when he knows that you need to to save the universe. In fact the whole tension there feels super contrived. The events of Piercing the Shroud are never really mentioned if you did it. Media Blitz seems to have had no effect on Mensk at all when you read the post-game completed text that appears on battle.net and in the cut scene during the Char invasion.
Furthermore the whole thing where you can pick what to do at any time totally diffuses any tension. Storytelling is all about managing tension and this totally ruins any chance of there being any. Worse still none of the choices you make have any real terms effects on anything. If they want to do the choices thing then they need to do it ALOT better. Choices have to matter and they need to pin down their storyline a bit. Some missions need to be not just mandatory (eg. you need to do all Tychus' missions) but mandatory NOW injecting some actual urgency. Same for side missions. These things have to engage with the plot and make a difference; you don't need multiple endings necessarily, but multiple ways to get to that end. In WoL it doesn't matter what you do, any mission that isn't for Tychus is just random filler till the next one and has no impact whatsoever. If you don't chose to to rescue Ariel right away then her planet should be overrun with the zerg and that could maybe open up another mission chain instead, ditto if you don't help Tosh soon enough maybe Nova catches up with him, whacks him and then that leads into something else, or maybe just doesn't.
Allow me to give an example. Here's a picture of the mission flow from the SC2 game guide which was graciously posted on Starcraft.incgamers by Kuangtu:
+ Show Spoiler +
Original:
![[image loading]](http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv199/kuangtuscw/sc2%20limited%20guide/014.jpg)
As you can see you can pretty much do anything at any time and no side lines ever link back into your main missions. This is boring. You get to do everything and that's nice but nothing flows together, it all feels like random missions. You can bounce from mission to mission totally out of sequence or in any real order. It's just really loose and really slack. There's absolutely no dramatic tension and no urgency with anything. Nothing really builds up to anything else.
What I'm gonna do is take the exact same missions but shuffle them a bit and mess around with the order and options slightly. The missions and dialogue will be mostly the same, the plot will be mostly the same. All I'm really doing is telling the story in a different way so that everything flows better and kinda makes more sense too to be honest (some missions are really nonsensical if you do them really out of order or super late or whatever). I also aim to generate and use some dramatic tension and generally just make the whole thing feel less like an assortment of random missions and more like a campaign that is actually building up to something:
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww250/The-Poobah/SCWOLMissionFlow2.jpg?t=1280774585)
I did do about 1/3 of this in excel and then realised that I was getting overly obsessive about the presentation and formating of it and that it had taken me 2 hours to do something I could have drawn in about 10 minutes. So I found a pencil and drew it. But the excel version was looking incredibly awesome. Maybe I'll finish it if I have another few hours to wrestle with that program.
As you can see I divided the game into phases. Phase 1 is the default Mar Sara phase. Any big horizontal lines indicate a no going back phase-change point. The circled missions are available any time in the phase that they are present in (and in the case of piercing the shroud and the final Tosh/Nova mission in either phase 3 or 4). You need to complete the main missions down the centre line + one side in order to progress and you can only pick one side eg. you pick Matt's missions to dig up some dirt on Arcturus Mengsk and follow that through, or you do Ariel's missions helping her colonists.
I felt this was a compelling choice and a good dichotomy too: either you're the good guy who goes to help people in need or you're throwing them away to up dirt on Arcturus Mengsk for your vengeance to help bring down his dominion. Both are time limited - only one time window to hit the trains and you need to rescue Ariel's colony before it's overrun. I kinda felt Tosh's missions were the least involved with the rest so I kinda put them to one side, although with a stipulation that you have to to his first mission in Phase Two if you want access to him and the rest of his missions or he'll decide you aren't interested and bugger off. I did this really just to kinda keep things more structured. I don't really want a whole brand new sub-plot being started by the player, say, right before they go to Char. That'd really ruin everything I'd been trying to do with this re-structuring.
Phase 2 is the "Looting Artifacts amidst the Zerg Invasion" phase and ends when the zerg hit the planet on which Mobius is based. Which will be when you've completed 2 branches (you have the option to do Tosh's first mission at any time in this phase, up to the point where you complete "The Möbius Factor").
And yes I'm aware that on that piece of paper I misspelled Mobius.
Phase 3 is where the plot starts to roll. Zeratul shows up and you begin to find out more backstory behind the invasion. At the same time you finish off whichever branch you picked and zero in on kicking the revolution up a notch by revealing that Arcturus is a scumbag
I moved Zeratul to showing up after The Mobius factor instead of after The Dig, and made his missions mandatory - my thoughts have changed a little since I drew that picture. Now I'd have the first two in phase 3, allow you to complete the second Tosh mission in Phase 4 if you want, and have Supernova be forced on you as soon as you've completed 2 zeratul missions and Media Blitz (at which point you would learn a) that an important artifact has been discovered on Typhon and b) that Typhon's sun is going to go supernova very soon, so you gotta go get it. Since the Zeratul missions are now compulsory you could acknowledge that they actually happened in the main mission flow, cinematics, etc.
I also moved Media Blitz into the middle, because I felt that a)the Matt side had more missions than the Ariel side and b)causing unrest against Arcturus by showing him for what he really is is a key part of the story and Raynor's Rebellion. This would mean minor alterations to The Evacuation and Outbreak in which you find some evidence that good ol' Arcturus directly ordered the millions of people in the outer worlds to be left to the zerg and to infestation.
This would also mean changing Media Blitz a bit which would be the only major change to either dialogue or missions in the game.
Media Blitz would be the same if you came from Matt's side but if you came from Ariel's side you would have something different depending on which way you went with that, if you saved them you get a load of colonists attacking and inciting rioting etc. as your diversion and causing chaos (which would function as the same as the time period in which you control the Odin in the other version eg. Dominion bases not attacking you directly unless you attack them like when you control the Odin) in this version you'd control a massive amount of angry colonists with molotovs and guns (basically toned down reapers without jetpacks and a different skin) for the same period of time as you'd get to run amok with the Odin, which would be present and hostile, and be deployed against your massive mob of colonists. Your colonists and it would wipe each other out in a brutal televised massacre in a lil' cutscene as you transition from the surprise attack bit of the mission to the control your base take over the towers mission. If you decided to wipe the infested colonists out then you get Selendis' Protoss fleet helping you for the limited time, they'd wipe the floor with the Odin and then be controllable by you for the same period as you would get the Odin/Colonist mob, and then fly off making rude hand gestures at the Dominion Fleet which has shown up to chase them off, either that or she's all "I'm sorry Jim, but I've got Artanis on the phone acting like an old woman and demanding to know why the hell I'm on Korhal, gotta bug out".
You would only get access to the Thor if you went along the Matt story side (for balance sake really, since then there is one decent unit per side (Viking vs Thor)). Not sure what you would get for doing Media Blitz from the other side of the tree. Will have a think about it.
For pursuing Tosh's missions you would get the opportunity to buy the schematics from him through the Black Market for the stuff that you would miss getting access to via the missions that are unavailable due to your choices. This would mean that for a price you could still get Firebats/Vikings/Hellions if you didn't do the Evacuation or Diamondbacks/Vultures/Thors if you didn't do The Great Train Robbery. For the sake of balance Nova would offer you a contact she knows in the Dominion who will offer you the same services if you pick her.
I think this would leave the game content largely unchanged but present that content in a much more focused and dynamic way. It would also empower the whole choice aspect of the game and make it actually meaningful and tie in to the plot in a simple way that doesn't change anything of the overarching storyline yet at the same time form part of the dramatic build up for that plot.
I hope this has demonstrated that just by tightening up one of the three things that I've taken issue with the game could have been much better than it is (and it is already a fairly decent game), or at the very least provided some food for thought.
Thanks
