Dubious morals of the Raynor/Tal'darim affair - Page 2

On October 09 2010 04:04 ghostunit wrote:
Which is bullshit, because if someone's not directly attacking you, you have no reason to open fire on them just because you don't like them.

On October 09 2010 06:53 Asx32 wrote:
1. Raynor isn't saint.He's not considered to be a "good guy" because he doesn't do anything bad. If it was so, he would be some kind of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi or something like that. He wouldn't fight against anyone (forget about Zerg - what about all the Dominion troops he killed?) - instead he would spread word of love, peace and equality...

2. It's not that he's stealing the artifacts "just for money". Let me remind you that there was a zerg invasion going on - an unspeakable thread. Almost a certain annihilation.
To have at least a bit of chance of surviving it (and we talk about survival of the mankind) he had to build up a decent military force. And to do it he needed money! It doesn't turn stealing into something moral, but what choice did he get?

I think this makes Raynor sort of a murderer after all.

On October 10 2010 05:57 dukethegold wrote:
I don't even understand the EXISTENCE of Tal'darim.

They are Protoss fanatics and outcasts. OK.

Now explain to me why they have dark templar, colossus and mothership.

On October 10 2010 05:57 dukethegold wrote:
I don't even understand the EXISTENCE of Tal'darim.

They are Protoss fanatics and outcasts. OK.

Now explain to me why they have dark templar, colossus and mothership.

On October 10 2010 06:48 xinxy wrote:


I never saw them having any Dark Templar. In fact the only Dark Templar they had were their prisoners in Maw of the Void.

Mothership and Colossus make perfect sense. Read more about the Tal'darim. Why would it not make sense for them to posses those units?

On October 10 2010 04:29 Lea wrote:

I find the idea flawed that Jaynor would not be represented as a good guy. He is. He is trying to oppose the Dominion, that are, throughout the campaign, represented as inherently evil. This is noticed in many of their actions, often leaving refugees behind to be killed off by the zerg, or through the raised opinions of civilians, often stating that Raynor "helped" or "saved" them from the Dominion's oppression. Instead of giving Raynor a more reflected character, he is more or less molded to be one-sided: as the good guy.

Furthermore, saint =/= good guy. Let's see... how many orcs are being killed in Lord of the Rings in total? My problem does not necessarily lie so much in Raynor's character, but Blizzard's poor storywriting. They moved the story from being at least somewhat dimensional into becoming less so. This caused a disconnect in how characters and the different races are represented. There is also a huge issue in WoL's narration, because the narration occurs through Raynor's interaction with others, but we never get to know what he thinks of things himself, except through his dialogue with others. This makes it impossible for us to know what he truly thinks, and it's just a poor choice of narration, since we are basically Raynor. It's thus told from a first person perspective, except there's no first person to talk about. Think of shows like Dexter, except we never get to know anything of what Dexter thinks when he is not talking.

I am not a huge fan of the campaign in terms of lore, because I find that it a) simplifies the war against the zerg a lot more than it should, b) somehow managed to make Raynor's interaction with Kerrigan completely uninteresting and her appearances are rather cheesy and gimicky, trying to make her fit into some kind of antagonistic role although we never quite understand why.

It is possible to raise a lot of valid questions about the zerg that does not necessarily paint them as evil. I don't see how the next expansion is going to pull this off at all, since the races have become increasingly archetype'd, with terran generally being the good guys, protoss neutral and zerg evil. Even the background music itself fits this, so the terran theme is called Heaven's Devils, which kind of neatly describes Jim Raynor in two words. Not quite anti-heroic (he sure ain't no Spawn, Lestat or Spike), but still the hero, whereas the zerg music itself is called The Hive, meant to represent the zerg's single-minded character. k

And maybe I'm just tired of science fiction and fantasy failing over and over again of not falling into the good vs evil dichotomy, but it's boring and poor storywriting, and to me, this has lead to some serious detrimental character flaws of Raynor and Kerrigan, making both less believable. I find it seriously wrong when a side-character like Tychus feels more realistic than Raynor. Tychus may not be the brightest person around, and he his motives can often be questioned, but at least he is consistent.

Imagine now for example, regarding the particular issue the OP is raising, that we'd get to hear a voice-over narration from Raynor describing his feelings to us regarding the Tal'darim and the missions revolving them. This would make it a lot easier for the players to understand and sympathize with Raynor's actions, but for some reason Blizzard did not do this, and such major narration flaws really killed the lore in the campaign for me. I just can't care less anymore.

/rant

On October 10 2010 09:01 dukethegold wrote:


You do realize that Stalkers are piloted by dark templars, correct?

Colossus and Mothership are reactivated technology that the Protoss left behind and recently reactivated. How does it make sense that "fanatics" who are "not associated" with the main Protoss faction have those things?

On October 09 2010 04:14 Toxigen wrote:
Here's why I don't have a problem with it:

1. Raynor isn't a saint. He's murdered before to get what he wants. He's part of a terrorist organization whose main goal (outside of the storyline of WoL) is to depose of the current, legitimate ruler of the Dominion.

2. The Tal'darim aren't completely innocent, either. If I remember correctly, they're a splinter group from the Aiur Protoss who don't want unification with the Dark Templar. Since Raynor was (and perhaps still is, due to his friendship with Zeratul) a friend to the Dark Templar and the Aiur refugees, it's natural that he'd have been the enemy of the Tal-darim simply by his past associations without "stealing" from them.

3. At the end of the day, why should the rules of ownership and etiquette apply to an alien race? What if the planet had been held by the Zerg? What if the Zerg decided they "owned" the planet and didn't want to let the Terrans take the terrazine? Would you have expected Raynor to negotiate with them? How come you're not up in arms about Raynor stealing minerals for Tosh from areas clearly "owned" by the Zerg on Redstone?