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If you ignore the story of BroodWar and re-evaluate the characters based upon what you see then I think you come away from the SC2 campaign with a good feeling.
I have friends from TF2 who never player BroodWar and they absolutely loved the story.
However, like me they found a lot of the missions in the middle a grind. Only the ending really lived up to the epicness we were expecting.
My thought on the matter is the problem is the non-linear story.
When events follow a set pattern there is a momentum and drive to the plot. It's something that's hard to describe, but just consider what it was like doing the last few missions of SC2 compared with the ones in the middle.
In the middle you essentially had a mass of "filler" missions. There was no real incentive to do them. Peripheral characters that you can ignore are just that... characters that you can ignore. You know they won't have any real impact on the plot and for that reason the missions become boring and repetitive. Blizzard's good attempt at making the scenarios unique didn't do enough to stop them being boring because of their non-essential nature.
The downside is that you can get stuck on a mission that's particularly hard. However, since you are able to adjust the difficulty this shouldn't really be a problem.
Their is still scope for choice and selection during the missions. A lot of the characters are pretty interchangeable. For instance it wouldn't be hard to simply exchange spectres and ghosts depending upon a choice in a mission.
Whether you side with the Protoss or the Doctor could also be put into the same mission. Giving you options without taking away from the plot too much.
But maybe you disagree?
Should the next expansion focus more on essential plot driven missions and less on optional and ultimately unnecesary choice missions?
Poll: More essential plot driven missions?Yes (177) 89% No (21) 11% 198 total votes Your vote: More essential plot driven missions? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
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Agree with what you said, i voted yes
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I voted yes. I felt like not a lot happened in Wings of Liberty's story, because so many of the missions were side-quests. On top of that, it felt like your side-quest completion had little to no effect on the overall direction the game went. + Show Spoiler +Threatening the rule of Arcturus and thus his son's chances of becoming Emperor didn't seem to bother him that much, for example.
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Yes.
I would prefer a strong linear story to a dull non-linear campaign.
I want the next expansion to start off strong with tough missions and keep that up for the entire campaign. While i did enjoy collecting units, looking back it just arbitrarily slowed down the game. I would have preferred 29 missions with full armies instead of majority of the missions having a specific unit spotlight.
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10387 Posts
Non-linearity is overrated. Unless you can take multiple different mission paths that are still strongly story driven, I'd rather just play a linear set of missions with a great story.
I feel as if it's really obvious that SC2 was meant to have a campaign w/ a Terran/Zerg/Protoss episode.. And then someone in the upper executive levels decided to make the Terran campaign the first game, so then the game designers ended up throwing in a bunch of filler instead of expanding on their original draft of the story. Hopefully they don't make the same mistake in the subsequent expansions w/ filler missions.
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I agree, non-linearity is great to an extent, and so is the choice-based last mission, but a lot of the missions are kind of boring in that they're not really adding to the plot. That's not to say playing the mission is not fun or challenging, it's just feels like xp grinding on RPGs (gaining units and credits in this case), rather than producing plot elements.
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I felt the non-linearity suited the idea that Raynor's Raiders were a ramshackle mercenary group, they have to do irrelevant missions to make ends meet and keep the Hyperion in the air/void or whatever.
The story missions were my favourites still, however.
If Raynor were to just constantly fight Mengsk with no reliable source of income then he'd be dead in the water within a week.
I doubt Heart of the Swarm will be as non-linear, maybe some extra planets sprinkled in for extra evolution points (upgrading Kerrigan's abilities and whatnot) but all in all I imagine it should be more story driven.
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I was never bored during the missions, even if they were non-story related they were usually very creative and fun to play.
Plus the main story was so cheesy and boring that it didnt make much of a difference to me.
So I'd say, just make a good story next time, if that story itself has more missions, I'd welcome that alot as well of course. But if the main story sucks I dont care much and will just play for the gameplay.
Oh and please, more rendered cinematics next time, seemed like 60% of what we saw had already been seen in the trailers  ((
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couldn't agree more, the missions I liked the best were the Protoss ones (with the exception of the hybrid hero one which was just retarded on brutal) and they feelt the most linear to me.
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I loved the Zeratul side missions! Everything else was still good but not as great.
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yeah the option to do the missions in any order does kinda dilute the story. you're probably better off playing them mostly in order (colonist, covert, rebellion etc etc) in terms of the story. don't think it makes the missions boring though just cos they're so well designed. i'll take these over the 200/200 A-move of BW pretty much any day.
also i thought the choices were actually pretty interesting and tough. obviously they couldn't affect the plot TOO much but if youre at all immersed in the fictional world then they're not simple decisions.
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On August 06 2010 02:42 JunZ wrote:
I loved the Zeratul side missions! Everything else was still good but not as great.
Yeah, they were interesting in that they were almost a plot in and of themselves. Sadly the rewards they gave were pretty lame, and I kept trying to Chrono Boost out colossi.
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I disagree a bit. While the side missions were inconsequential to the main story line, they did a very good job at fleshing out the story, and the characters that followed you on the Hyperion had a lot of interesting things to say between missions. I guess you kinda need to be a "lore nut" to appreciate that the story stretches far beyond the scope of the game. The Rebellion missions lacked a feeling of actual "impact" on the story imo, but the secret mission made up for it.
As for incentives to do them, additional reasearch and credits was enough for me 
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there's nothing wrong with non-linear storylines, but i agree, they didn't do it that well here. the idea fits, with raynor's raiders taking opportunistic jobs to stay afloat, but the missions i truly enjoyed the most were the toss missions and the ending on char - both had a distinct story to the missions, which made in utter darkness and all-in truly epic in the story.
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Filler:
Tosh/Nova
Ariel/Selendis
Zeratul (should be protoss)
Acturus crap (debatable)
Not filler:
Mar Sara (debateable), 4 missions
Artifact stuff: 4 missions?
Char: 3 missions
Total: 10-11, right on the money for a starcraft or starcraft BW terran campaign.
Sounds like ol' Bobby is working hard!
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I think the way the missions are set up would potentially make for more interesting gameplay. Unfortunately I think that Blizz kinda dropped the ball on that one (how many maps make drops a good idea, for example? Pretty much only the one where you get medivacs. I feel like this is done because you might not have medivacs for the other missions. That's the most obvious thing, but honestly I feel like the missions play out pretty much the same regardless of the order you do them in).
I couldn't care less about video game story stuff, so I won't comment on that.
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On August 06 2010 02:03 Opinion wrote:
Yes.
I would prefer a strong linear story to a dull non-linear campaign.
I want the next expansion to start off strong with tough missions and keep that up for the entire campaign. While i did enjoy collecting units, looking back it just arbitrarily slowed down the game. I would have preferred 29 missions with full armies instead of majority of the missions having a specific unit spotlight.
The SP campaign is designed as a sidepiece to the multiplayer battles (in other words, MP is the main course, not the side dish, as is typical in an RTS). The very reason for the specific-unit focus in each mission is that each unit (even the mercenary units) fits into the overall structure like pieces in a puzzle. Also, there are certain tradeoffs by choosing specific research/upgrade paths (for example, I specifically *avoided* the research path that would lead to the Orbital Command upgrade, and did it on purpose). The impact of those choices (against relatively safe computer opposition) is the entire point behind the single-player campaign (as there is little or no emphasis on traditional *skirmish*)
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I think it was neat how you had to pick what you wanted to do and how it was impossible to get everything (all the upgrades / research). But some of the choices were just plain stupid since 1 was clearly superior over the other. For example, stuff like buildings repairing themselves, extra banshee / ghost energy or drop pods vs. new reactors. Some of the choices were just silly. The decisions that were really well done were the ones that affected later mission like choosing between taking out nydus or taking out air for the last mission.
I would have liked some missions to punish you more based on your choices. For example, giving us a very gas-intensive mission involving lots of geysers and fewer minerals. That would make picking between sci vessels and ravens, and picking between the refineries auto-mining vs free depot construction stand out more.
It just seems like Blizzard did a real slop-shed job, the campaign had a lot of potential.
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On August 06 2010 04:13 PGHammer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 02:03 Opinion wrote:
Yes.
I would prefer a strong linear story to a dull non-linear campaign.
I want the next expansion to start off strong with tough missions and keep that up for the entire campaign. While i did enjoy collecting units, looking back it just arbitrarily slowed down the game. I would have preferred 29 missions with full armies instead of majority of the missions having a specific unit spotlight.
The SP campaign is designed as a sidepiece to the multiplayer battles (in other words, MP is the main course, not the side dish, as is typical in an RTS). The very reason for the specific-unit focus in each mission is that each unit (even the mercenary units) fits into the overall structure like pieces in a puzzle. Also, there are certain tradeoffs by choosing specific research/upgrade paths (for example, I specifically *avoided* the research path that would lead to the Orbital Command upgrade, and did it on purpose). The impact of those choices (against relatively safe computer opposition) is the entire point behind the single-player campaign (as there is little or no emphasis on traditional *skirmish*)
I would disagree. I remember reading somewhere that 2/3 of SC1 keys never logged onto Battle.net (sorry, I can't find a source). A lot of people don't want to invest time into getting good at online play and simply enjoy the game for its story and campaign.
My complaint is that your choices can either make things very easy or completely screw you over but have very little impact on the story itself. For example, would it be really that difficult to have + Show Spoiler +Hanson come back and try to screw you over/help you later in the campaign (depending on your choice) rather than get killed immediately
Now, the individual missions were awesome and I enjoyed every one of them. However, most of the time, I never felt I was really working towards some final goal and I had trouble seeing how what I was doing fit into the big picture, leaving me quite unsatisfied. Even the Zeratul missions I thought were pretty bland and uninspiring. I still have the last 3 missions left. I hope these will leave something to remember.
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
This is exactly my complaint on western-style story driven games. I.e. mass effect, dragon age, even oblivion. All these games have at most maybe ~35% of total missions that cater to the main story. the remaining 65% of missions is fluff. Why the hell do western games focus so much on side missions?
When I see games advertise "OVER 500 SIDE MISSIONS" I just facepalm. Instead of having a main storyline that takes <10 hours and have 20 hours of side missions, wouldn't a 30 hour main mission have a much more capability to produce epic stories?
Compare that with the excellent Final Fantasy series. FF4/5/6 all had an overwhelming majority of their quests devoted to the main story. Thus we can literally have five different versions of the main map, before and after apocalypse, etc etc - instead of getting distracted by side missions. We can also understand much more in terms of character development and how they relate to the main story. This is how it should be done.
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