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On January 24 2011 21:24 Tyree wrote:
In BW (spoilers), the Protoss+Dark Templar, Dominion and the UED attacked and tried to bring Sarah down, in that last mission Kerrigan was successfull and chased them all away.
In WoL we are supposed to believe that Raynor+his crew+ his arcade machine and some Dominion troops came to Char, and not only blasted their way through a lava infested planet but also caught Kerrigan alive!!??!?
I mean, if the UED can blast through the lava infested planet to capture the Overmind alive, why can't Raynor and half the Dominion fleet blast through that same planet with a XelNaga weapon no one else had and wait until it activated? It would've been a much more unthinkable accomplishment to straight up kill Kerrigan.
I think people underestimate the depth of Raynor's character in WoL. Just because he "saves his girlfriend" doesn't mean he did so without internal conflict. You have to remember who this guy is; he is not the Horner type, and goes so far as to say so. Just like he was in SC and BW, Raynor is an impulsive guy with some good intentions--he flips out when Kerrigan is betrayed and vows to get back at Arcturus, he flips out when Fenix is betrayed and vows to get back at Kerrigan. However, these are in the moment things, and thus when confronted with an opportunity to change Kerrigan back, he impulsively takes it. Hell, he doesn't know how the artifact works, it could kill her for all he knows. And, I doubt that he even made a decision before going in that he would save her.
Just because the conflict isn't outright stated, doesn't mean that it didn't exist. He's continuously at the bottom of the beer mug, tormented by what has occurred. He's driven by revenge against Mengsk, who he sees as the instigator of all that went wrong, not by some sense of justice. Sure, he hated Kerrigan for what she had done to the universe, but that's not what he's thinking in the cantina all the time. He's thinking what could've been if he had seen the betrayal coming. So the blame, in his mind, drifts away from Kerrigan.
As for the prophecy, it is a little shallow. But, look at it from Blizzard's point of view. It's a plot driver that can be connected easily to SC1. You can't really argue against the prophecy's content itself--from the end of BW, we know that Kerrigan is going to play a big role in defeating the hybrids and whatever else is out there and thus can't be disposed of.
Tassadar returning is a shout-out to the original fans (albeit it seems that not many of them enjoyed it). It's not like he is reincarnated, he's speaking through the Void to Zeratul. Yes, it is a deus ex machina, but those are used everywhere. Telling us that Kerrigan must not be killed not only follows the plot from BW but also ties in with the ending of WoL. Zeratul was so dead set on killing Kerrigan that he needed someone that powerful to convince him otherwise. Again, deus ex machina, but a needed one for those who want Zeratul to team up with her again against the hybrid.
As for the Overmind having good intentions, that might have been an overstepping on Bllizzard's part. I don't remember exactly what was said, but it is quite understandable that the Overmind was controlled by the XelNaga. Whether or not it wanted dominance on its own is something that shouldn't be and didn't need to be revealed.
Overall, I thought it was a story on the same level as SC and BW, especially considering it was only the first part. Things happened much more slowly in WoL, but that's not necessarily bad.
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On January 23 2011 19:52 tomatriedes wrote:
None of this changes the fact that the dialog was nauseatingly, insultingly cheesy- that was the main problem for me.
Yeah. This is where I'm coming from. As others have said, the desire to gain a broader audience does not have to translate into a wealth of cliches. Sure, the campaign is fun to play, but I got to the point of skipping the video intercuts because it sounds like a pastiche of various Hollywood one-liners.
I have a background in creative writing and I always critique story. Blizzard had an opportunity here to push the boundaries of contemporary entertainment: video games are a great medium for storytelling. However, so long as the dialogue remains cliched, stunted, and full of Hollywood-isms, the full potential of video game storytelling will be left unrealized.
Blizzard doesn't owe me good writing. I love playing this game. But wow...what if they could have actually written decent dialogue? I can think of five people I know who could have approached the dialogue with more tact than Blizzard. Story inconsistencies bother me much less than a lack of creativity in approaching the nuts and bolts of the scenes and fleshing out the characters so they don't sound like robots.
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On January 24 2011 15:40 Fumi wrote:
I don't really see any ambiguity regarding it in sc1. I only see a few witty comments from a guy who thinks his old partner is hot. Could that have developed into a relationship? Maybe, after the whole plot is resolved and Kerrigan is back to normal, helping Raynor throughout the other expansions or something. But WoL pretty much comes and says "Oh remember these two? Yeah, they were like really in love with each other since forever ago, just letting you know.". Another thing that makes this romance incredibly annoying is the fact that the whole fight against Kerrigan's swarm felt like it had the sole purpose of getting the two "back" together.
see, this is my confusion, cuz what we have is raynor expresses physical attraction you just mentioned and then enough loyalty towards her later that he abandonned arcturus after her death (not because he used psi-emitters or anything like that, kerrigan's death is very expressly the tipping point). he also goes to great lengths from that moment onwards to avoid direct conflict with her after finding out she's infected (hence his relatively infrequent appearances in bw), that conversation is tinged with heavy respect bordering on perhaps something more (note he goes to meet her personally while mensk just sent duke). also his threats towards her after the death of fenix further bolster his strong feelings. now he hates her. considering the (small) number of people i actually hate in my own life, i don't think it's possible to hate someone that much without there having been or maybe still having loved that person. or as Chris Rock said "if you've never contemplated murder, you've never been in love." if anything at this moment the break up finally hits home for Jim here after a long period of denial which sends him spiralling into the alcoholism and depression where we find him in sc2 (hair transplant aside). did he make that threat? yes. but i think he regrets it, and i always felt that he wasn't included as one of the factions kerrigan battles against in the final mission of bw (and unlike zeratul isn't given a reason as to why he doesn't show up) as proof that he doesn't want to kill her.
meanwhile kerrigan has expressed slightly less attraction to raynor. on the one hand she does refer to him by his first name plus a nickname ('jimmy') at that a true rarity among all terran characters, espescially in sc/bw. we do however see her reach out to jimmy both as she's getting overrun despite the implication that he's too far away to assist and while in the chrysalis she speciffically calls for "jimmy" (while her reaching out to mengsk is only implied). she then condescends him once infected but refers to him in heroic tropes both before and after her infestation implying she sees attractive qualities within him. she also has much more mercy on him than any other character once infested. and when enlisting him as an ally despite his harsh words she never fears he'll actually act on them suggesting she thinks he's putting on an act (which i do too). though i don't think her attraction to him is as strong as his to her, her character, especially pre-infestation and in sc2, is notably less developed, giving us less insight on her feelings and making her feelings matter less (as truthfully most of sc1, bw, and sc2 works if it's just raynor attracted to her).
now, admittedly i'm always somewhat of a shipper, and this argument brings back memories for me of the amusing debate between shippers and non-shippers over mulder and scully during the height of x-files popularity. and yes, mulder and scully don't get together until the writers were desperate for ideas and the shows quality started to suffer, but i don't think it was the wrong choice, and there was enough evidence before the show started to suck to support this shift in relationship. i think the ambiguity over the status of raynor/kerrigan's relationship is very prevalent in sc1/bw, so i don't think sc2 necessarily does anything wrong here by defining it. it's not like they pulled a red dwarf and two characters that are cited as only sharing 147 words between each other are then cited as having previously dated, or that raynor has two appendixes (though i actually kinda love red dwarf's lack of respect for its own continuity). i still feel horner is being sarcastic and exaggerating when he calls kerrigan "girlfriend," which is accurate as despite having these feelings i don't think raynor ever said anything nor do i think he was even aware the extent of how fully he felt that way until fenix's death. but kerrigan's smart enough to figure out those feelings and had been manipulating those feelings for quite some time since becoming infested and possibly before the infestation.
so again, execution-wise, yeah, it's very complex and the game isn't, forcing me to infer things (which yikes, i used infer you can get all on my case about it, but this was why i said kerrigan and raynor's relationship was ambiguous, which you said it wasn't, i think the fact i can infer things that at least kinda work give strong support to the theory that it is in fact ambiguous, which is all i'm saying, the rest of this could be totally wrong, meh) but i do think blizzard intended all this although they didn't do a great job characterizing (i blame this largely on how weak a character horner is). it's hardly the worst story element of the game however, and wouldn't be the first thing i point to. or say it was done to appeal to teenagers. i think the intent is to give a strong emotional throughline which sc1/bw created by giving that throughline to every character (most of the villains are bent on some form of revenge (arcturus, kerrigan (to a certain extent, she and duran are a little more complicated), the overmind (yeah, yeah, he's a major problem in sc2, but i he's barely in it, so i'd rather reserve judgment til the other expansions), or return to a somewhat corrupt order (aldaris, the ued, daggoth, duke (and to an extent arcturus)) while most of the heroes are caught between what they feel is right and following orders/respecting their leaders (tassadar, raynor, zeratul (in bw regarding raszagul), stukov) while sc2 features only one character with an emotional throughline and a bunch of others that are either wooden (stetman, swann, horner, tosh, arguably zeratul, to some extent hanson (though i appreciate the intention to include her as someone to play up raynor's loyalty/devotion to kerrigan by offering him a love interest he rejects, i just don't feel it worked as well as it should have)) or don't make any sense (tychus, the mengsks, pretty much everyone zeratul interacts with, kerrigan (though i think this was more vague and intentionally so)). i think it was somewhat limiting but so was the zerg campaign of sc1. overall i don't think the ideas behind the raynor plotline are bad, just some of the execution could have possibly been better. to me, i didn't find it a real dealbreaker on the plot, and was good enough to distract me from the gaping holes in everything involving arcturus. if you disagree i guess you're welcome to your opinion, but i don't think there are any major continuity problems in terms of the emotional threads established by the previous games, just a couple logic and creating dramatic interest problems within the self contained sc2: wol game.
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It just doesn't make any sense any more. Both Tassadar and the Overmind were destroyed in a giant explosion, now both reappeared in sc2. Raynor swore to kill Kerrigan, now he doesn't. Even the dead can talk to anyone.
Another contradiction is that the Overmind did have a free will in the original manual. It is implied by the stories, which tell the reader about the overthrowing of the Xel'Naga.
The whole story is based around visions and prophecies, which come out of nowhere.
The plot is then only solved by a so-called deus ex machina. My personal threshold of suspension of disbelief is already crossed. And this won't work out any more.
Like I'm done with Star Trek, too. Either the authors stick to simple rules, to make the whole thing comfortable, or I won't buy it.
They really need a story-telling agenda to keep things interesting and meaningful.
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There are a lot of English students here...
My opinion is... WHO CARES? You all seem to forget that the zerg, protoss and hybrids are SO COOL! At least better designed than most alien designs from other sci-fis...
I have the logic that if you watch too many movies, you will end up hating most of them, even if they are still good. Many people here i think spend too much time criticising the stories of good video games and ignoring their main purpose... to play it and have fun. Is that too much to ask?
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yeah, raynor swore to kill kerrigan yet of the 5 factions gunning for her he's one of two that don't show up in the final zerg mission in bw and the only one of those two whose absense isn't explained. i think the fact that it was an empty threat works, and with slightly better writing could have held up as an explanation in sc2 (but this was one of many minor arguments i made in that tl;dr post above).
meanwhile the overmind/tassadar thing was barely touched on in sc2. the overmind is still very dead, and the extent of its free will is always debateable (though probably their biggest retcon). meanwhile tassadar's spirit only seemed to show up and protoss have always been funky about resurrection. don't see any violation of rules there, nor on the prophesy stuff as we didn't really get into the protoss civilization's history that much beyond the expulsion of the dark templar, just its in fighting.
though yeah, artifact=huge deus ex machina, it makes its first appearance in the second mission though, and really this story's act one, so hopefully in the long run it's not a huge deal.
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Life is not to be squandered with just playing and having fun. The approach to it needs to be systematic, or else we'll encounter too many failures.
That also applies to entertainment.
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Of you take starcraft so seriously then what do you do to have fun?
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On January 27 2011 04:57 skatbone wrote:
Blizzard doesn't owe me good writing. I love playing this game. But wow...what if they could have actually written decent dialogue? I can think of five people I know who could have approached the dialogue with more tact than Blizzard. Story inconsistencies bother me much less than a lack of creativity in approaching the nuts and bolts of the scenes and fleshing out the characters so they don't sound like robots. That is how you envision it.
WoL looks like a western story in space, so they decided that they don't need too much meaningful dialog, but instead they can have those one-liners.
Not everything is spilled out. Tychus made fun of Jimmy because he did not show interest in Hanson. If they wanted to have the "cool" dirty western hero, Jimmy would shag her, then dump her. They hinted that the faithful Jimmy has his true love. He is that much in love that he don't even see Ariel as an ... opportunity.
While Raynor drinks too much and shows erratic behaviour, he is an honest guy. I think, the has character.
So does Mat Horner. I would say that he actually uses Raynor as a revolution icon. While he looks so stiff that you probably cannot have a beer with him after work, he has a colourful past as gambler but is now a sworn enemy of Mensk. Horner pulles the strings in the background, organizing a lot of stuff.
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On January 27 2011 04:23 allecto wrote:
Overall, I thought it was a story on the same level as SC and BW, especially considering it was only the first part. Things happened much more slowly in WoL, but that's not necessarily bad. Yes. There are some plot holes but I consider them to be just untold parts of the story. For example: How could Mensk communicate with Tychus on Char, while Tychus obviously speaks freely on the Hyperion, without fear of being overheard by Mensk? Metzen explained it with a voice channel which is not always open to reduce the risk of beeing detected by the Raiders. Looking this way, it is perfectly plausible.
Using this approach, one can fill almost any plot hole by oneself.
I also like the slower pace of the WoL campaign. This enables me to get a better connection to the story.
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I have to throw my lot in with the "great campaign, awful, unsatisfying story" crowd.
The single player aspect of SCII, which I was honestly not even intending to play through, was a great surprise. The variety of missions and replayability are easily the best of any RTS I've ever played (and I've been playing RTS since Warcraft: Orcs and Humans).
That being said, yes, the story is predictable and bland. Was I hoping for more? Sure. Was I expecting more? Not really. The original SC and BW stories were very peripheral to the gameplay which was the best I'd ever seen in an RTS game.
TLDR: Want well developed characters, fleshed out storylines, and alien races not stolen wholesale from Starship Troopers? Avoid RTS.
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The campaign was boring imo. The mulitplayer is the real meat of the game, and the lore is sort of secondary.
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On January 23 2011 16:22 Jibba wrote:
Since when was Raynor in love with Kerrigan? He had the hots for her, but Blizzard went the easy (and lame) route by making it a love story.
There was a lot of stupid shit in SC1 as well, but the Prophecy just falls out of place in a SC series. It plays more into fantasy than science fiction.
yup, blizzard already used up the "OMG PROPHECY WE ALL GOTTA WORK TOGETHER" lore in WC3, which some people tend to conveniently forget.
theyre just being lazy, kinda like how prison break s2 was kinda lazy in using scofield's tattoos as a major plot device after the breakout
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On January 23 2011 21:49 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 09:15 Newbistic wrote:
I'd argue that if the campaign had better storytelling and stronger writing it would attract even more people to the game. Bottom line is that SC2's story is the worst of all recent Blizzard games. It just cuts against the grain of Blizzard's usual standard for quality. This is the first Blizzard game with a somewhat non-linear campaign. They need to learn how to use it best. I was disappointed to not getting the old SC1 feeling in the campaign. But considering SC2 just a game, the story was good enough for me. In my personal experience, people who are not familiar with SC1 are generally like the SC2 campaign. They may be complain about the silly running gag of Kate Lockwell who is interrupted by Donnie Vermillion, but they consider the story to be fun and having depth. We, the old generation, don't only know SC1, we also followed Blizzard lore panels and used other resources. We also had two games (SC1, BW) while WoL is just one game so far. Most of us also know some of the SC1 inspirations like Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40k, the Alien movie series and other franchises. We have very narrow expectations and are just afraid of change, because it could turn out that our version of the universe is not canon.
'we, the old generation' in general have a better and higher standard for storytelling than the people younger than us. just look at the crap that most tv series and movies are today. best example of this: compare the original star wars trilogy with the recently made one.
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On January 30 2011 16:28 dNo_O wrote:
'we, the old generation' in general have a better and higher standard for storytelling than the people younger than us. just look at the crap that most tv series and movies are today. best example of this: compare the original star wars trilogy with the recently made one.
Sorry but this is a horrible example of what you want to talk about as the story for the new Star Wars Trilogy is actually old, you probably know this but have forgotten or something...back in the days people told George Lucas that the first part of his story was horrible so they only used 4-6.
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On January 31 2011 02:03 Igaryu85 wrote:
back in the days people told George Lucas that the first part of his story was horrible so they only used 4-6.
he usually says episode iv was the least expensive to produce and why he went with it. really it's just an editted version of his original screenplay you can easily find online. the original screenplay's kind of amazing as pieces of all films can be found throughout it, but pretty terrible. still the original screenplay is much closer to episode iv than any other star wars film.
in general, star wars production history is murky, and always has been as lucas constantly contradicts himself. episode iv was not in the opening scroll of anh during its original release it was added in rereleases and home video releases after the film became successful. star wars was not intended as a trilogy, it was a stand-alone film that became successful, so they then planned for two sequels and arbitrarily decided it would be episode 4 of a then 9 part saga (lucas even made statements to the effect he'd want to have the franchise go on forever with new different directors (he now vehemently denies he ever said this, and frankly his opinion has very clearly changed)). the series was then truncated to 6 episodes due to a variety of factors that are mostly unpublicized the most likely largest two contributing factors being the deterioration of lucas' marriage as well as his relationship to gary kurtz also there was a fear over the difficulty of retaining their cast (not just monetarily, as within their personal lives hamill had already had a scare with a car accident and fisher's drug addiction was rapidly escalating).
kurtz claims that had star wars expanded to the nine episodes, luke and leia would not have been related becoming love interests after han's death in episode six, the empire would not appear in episode six and most of the action would revolve around a failed rescue of han, lando would have stepped into the han solo role and the emperor would not appear until episode nine (meh, may have worked).
considering the significant differences between lucas' statements throughout production of the original trilogy and what actually happened as well as his more recent statements, i think it's safe to say the prequel trilogy was not particularly well defined until it actually went into pre-production (despite lucas' claims to the contrary). so the comparison of new star wars to old star wars i think is somewhat relevant, as both new starcraft and new star wars sacrificed great story telling for cashing in on name brand recognition. better examples could be made, but i think there's some validity in the claim that movie studios (and to a certain extent video game developers) have sacrificed storytelling in favor of stringing together action sequences (or in sc2 or other video games' cases, levels).
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Honestly I couldn't care less about the Starcraft story. I bought the game for multiplayer
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On January 23 2011 16:22 Jibba wrote:
Since when was Raynor in love with Kerrigan? He had the hots for her, but Blizzard went the easy (and lame) route by making it a love story.
There was a lot of stupid shit in SC1 as well, but the Prophecy just falls out of place in a SC series. It plays more into fantasy than science fiction.
I could excuse blizz for throwing in the love plot(kind of saw it coming from the beginning) the dialogue was bad but the bearable, the story telling was decent but my main problem with the plot was the prophecy. I hate when prophecies get thrown in almost just to force something to happen(in this case kerrigan not dying). Where did it come from and why did zeratul magically know where to find it(might've been answered but haven't played the campaign in about a month and too lazy to go back and check), it felt forced and unnecessary.
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On January 30 2011 16:28 dNo_O wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 21:49 [F_]aths wrote:On January 23 2011 09:15 Newbistic wrote:
I'd argue that if the campaign had better storytelling and stronger writing it would attract even more people to the game. Bottom line is that SC2's story is the worst of all recent Blizzard games. It just cuts against the grain of Blizzard's usual standard for quality. This is the first Blizzard game with a somewhat non-linear campaign. They need to learn how to use it best. I was disappointed to not getting the old SC1 feeling in the campaign. But considering SC2 just a game, the story was good enough for me. In my personal experience, people who are not familiar with SC1 are generally like the SC2 campaign. They may be complain about the silly running gag of Kate Lockwell who is interrupted by Donnie Vermillion, but they consider the story to be fun and having depth. We, the old generation, don't only know SC1, we also followed Blizzard lore panels and used other resources. We also had two games (SC1, BW) while WoL is just one game so far. Most of us also know some of the SC1 inspirations like Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40k, the Alien movie series and other franchises. We have very narrow expectations and are just afraid of change, because it could turn out that our version of the universe is not canon. 'we, the old generation' in general have a better and higher standard for storytelling than the people younger than us. just look at the crap that most tv series and movies are today. best example of this: compare the original star wars trilogy with the recently made one. We, the old generation, are accustomed to the old style. Star Wars is a good example: George Lucas is aweful at writing dialogue. In both series, most of the dialogue is just silly. But we were amazed by the movies nonetheless, since we were younger and easier to impress.
In this way, we do have a higher standard of story telling since we already know all the tricks. But in the case of WoL I have the feeling that many fans consider Starcraft their franchise in which they decide what is canon and what isn't. We already know that in real life a romance does not work out like in movies, so we don't want the romantic relationship between Raynor und Kerrigan. We want a story for grown-ups. But since the original Starcraft aimed for somewhat younger people*, WoL has any right to do so, too.
* At least young enough to not know yet any franchise from which they "borrowed" inspiration.
If someone criticizes the WoL story, he should not praise the SC1/BW story. Both are full of clichés, of I-already-knew-it-revelations but also contain some weird surprises which do not feel completely right.
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On January 31 2011 12:52 Moriarity wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 16:22 Jibba wrote:
Since when was Raynor in love with Kerrigan? He had the hots for her, but Blizzard went the easy (and lame) route by making it a love story.
There was a lot of stupid shit in SC1 as well, but the Prophecy just falls out of place in a SC series. It plays more into fantasy than science fiction. I could excuse blizz for throwing in the love plot(kind of saw it coming from the beginning) the dialogue was bad but the bearable, the story telling was decent but my main problem with the plot was the prophecy. I hate when prophecies get thrown in almost just to force something to happen(in this case kerrigan not dying). Where did it come from and why did zeratul magically know where to find it(might've been answered but haven't played the campaign in about a month and too lazy to go back and check), it felt forced and unnecessary. You can try to see the prophecy as a device.
As Zeratul mentioned a prophecy, I thought "oh my gawd. Now a prophecy. Yeah, sure, Zeratul is superstitious and actually believes in prophecies, surerightok." But it was a device to get four nicely different missions into the campaign. Less gritty metal, more mystery. I can skip those missions and the prophecy entirely if it would kill my immersion into the Starcraft universe. So I have a choice here.
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EPT
