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I read the long, multi-posting contribution of a user in the Battlenet forums. I read many postings on TL which criticize Blizzard for a poorly written story. Blizzard must be proud of having fans who pay so much attention. But some fans forget to consider some important things.
1) The story serves as a hub to get into the missions. Not the other way round. SC2 is still an RTS game, not a Warhammer 40000 RPG. Blizzard intentionally allowed some logical inconsistencies like the mechanics of the mission archive.
2) Often, some official books are quoted to proof that some figure in the game acted wrong. But the games speak for them self and can be understood without reading any novel or even the short stories on the official SC2 page. Many franchises have a much deeper and complex story in their expanded universe.
3) If someone cite a quote of a character of a previous game, they assume that the character spoke the truth. But the character could have been misinformed, or he could try to deceive you. May be the character forgot some things he said a long time ago. Cut him some slack, please!
4) There will always be some small errors and some greater plot holes. This is true for almost any franchise. To be honest, I am really annoyed about many contradictions in the Star Trek universe, because I will never know what “truly” happened. But it is still an inspiring franchise.
5) SC2 fails to explain why the Taldarim, a protoss tribe of a traditional faith, imprison Dark Templars, but use Dark Dragoons (aka Stalkers.) SC1 fails to explain why every terran faction has access to the same array of unit types. Some things are dictated by the demand of the gameplay and limits in the budget. Yes, Blizzard should have payed some more attention to those things. But one have to compare what they made wrong with the things they did right.
The mission design is excellent. Not only "Find exit of dungeon, hero must survive", "Survive XX minutes" or "build base, raze the enemy". The campaign also offers replay value. If the missions are too easy for you, try to play with additional limitations. The overall production value of the campaign is outstanding: Explanation and even videos of unit upgrades, many optional character interaction, clickable items around you. With very few exceptions, anything is rendered with excellent graphical quality. Yes, the manual is quite thin, but you could buy the Collector’s Edition with the art book (which I did, the art book really worth the money.) The WoL webpages offer detailled biographs even of small characters plus background story and a lot of data for many planets in the SC universe.
Now I want to get a bit into the beginning of the story. We learn that Raynor is still in love with Sarah, even though four years ago he promised to kill her. I must ask, do you do anything which you promised even just four months ago? Isn’t love illogical in the first place? Why does he love Sarah even though she became such a monstrosity? Well, he can, because he is human after all. Do not forget he is very often drunk. Raynor’s behaviour is erratically, at best. This is well illustrated by most of the first missions. Here he fights some Protoss fanatics, there he saves some colonists. If you like a more linear story, you can play the mission of each branch one after another.
The story does include many cliches and many cheesy dialog. Why would Chris Metzen and his team dare to not ask us how exactly the story should develop? Oh wait … it’s their franchise. Aimed for a 2010 audience. Instead of giving some die-hard SC1 fans exactly what they want, they dare to go into mainstream to attract new fans to the franchise. Imagine – noobs playing Starcraft! This is the end of the world, because it belongs to us! We liked it like it was. We want back the talking heads. We want back the weird Broodwar mission. And we want back the “original” story of a rebellion leader who turned out to be a dictator himself and betrayed his friend.
We have so fond memories of this stuff because we played it a long time ago. Not because it was actually so good. We just got used to it.
RETCON. Retroactive continuity belittles the story of the previous games. The appearance of Tassadar disappointed me more than it surprised me for good. But the prophecy in general was needed for two things: First, we learn that Kerrigan must not die; while we already reckon that Tychus will attempt to kill her. Second, we get Zeratul into the game, which allowed the Protoss mini campaign. Since LotV will be the last expansion, Protoss fans get at least a few missions to play right now.
The prophecy branch also brings some fantasy / mystery / Warcraft feeling in the story. A good change from the all-metal environment on the Hyperion. If you don’t like it, just ignore it. Zeratul missions can be completely skipped. Blizzard gave you the mission freedom by a reason: Within some borders, you can create your own WoL story line. You also don’t have to decide to team with or kill Ariel or Gabriel. (Both have name of Angels … a coincidence?)
Finally, about how the story resolves. The WoL story does not resolve. It is the first part of a three-campaign story. No, Jimmy and Sarah will not live happy ever after. They are together just for this moment. The cruel fate will separate them again.
And no, the zerg are not a misunderstood race. Zerg are still a vile and mean and thirsty for blood. Just because they were used does not mean they are in fact a noble race.
Of course, everyone is free to dislike the story anyway. But accept that the WoL story is canon now. Cut it some slack and enjoy as much as you can instead of looking into the old manual if you can find another contradiction to the WoL campaign.
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general summary of my thoughts surrounding all types of story criticism, WoL or otherwise
well said
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Your argument seems to be that a cliched story with crappy writing attracts more new people to play SC2. I don't think this is a very good argument. The purpose of a story is to compel people to continue playing the campaign instead of just skipping to multi-player. For SC2, the story did the exact opposite for me. The missions are fun, but I had to grit my teeth through all the shitty dialogue. The story seriously hurt an otherwise excellent campaign.
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.
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Sorry, I cant give such a cliched story with plot holes a free pass.
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On January 23 2011 09:31 Serpico wrote:
Sorry, I cant give such a cliched story with plot holes a free pass.
Free pass for what?
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On January 23 2011 07:45 [F_]aths wrote:
3) If someone cite a quote of a character of a previous game, they assume that the character spoke the truth. But the character could have been misinformed, or he could try to deceive you. May be the character forgot some things he said a long time ago. Cut him some slack, please!
This just sounds like a weak excuse for an inconsistent plot/story. Everything in the past is then questionable, nothing is concrete. Maybe Character A's memory is sketchy, maybe he was being mind controlled, maybe he was joking, maybe he was lying, maybe he's plain stupid.
The story does include many cliches and many cheesy dialog. Why would Chris Metzen and his team dare to not ask us how exactly the story should develop? Oh wait … it’s their franchise. Aimed for a 2010 audience. Instead of giving some die-hard SC1 fans exactly what they want, they dare to go into mainstream to attract new fans to the franchise. Imagine – noobs playing Starcraft! This is the end of the world, because it belongs to us! We liked it like it was. We want back the talking heads. We want back the weird Broodwar mission. And we want back the “original” story of a rebellion leader who turned out to be a dictator himself and betrayed his friend.
There's nothing daring about dumbing down your franchise in order to make more money. There's nothing daring in being unoriginal.
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well put indeed. i'll direct friend to here instead of explaining in length.
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1) You're telling us the story sucks for a reason, and then you go on to say that the story isn't so bad after all. And lol@intentionally allowing logical inconsistencies. IT WAS ALL PART OF THE PLAN GUIZE
2) Without the novels or short stories, characters like Matt Horner, Nova, and Tosh are plastic dummies.
3) A deep underlying purpose that's recited in WoL's little manual is not something a character is likely to forget.
4) You're making the "everyone makes mistakes" argument while simultaneously claiming the mistakes aren't mistakes at all.
5) Rights do not excuse wrongs.
I'm not even mad, broskibro junior.
On January 23 2011 14:09 machine wrote:
well put indeed. i'll direct friend to here instead of explaining in length.
Thanks for the input, one-post possible sockpuppet. Now you don't have to think about anything yourself; you can just answer any complainers right to this thread.
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really great post. i also agree that people are being much too harsh. i loved sc2s story and your right about the "The story serves as a hub to get into the missions," part. although i still feel any game thats not straight up half cutscenes/reading dialogue will have a less grand story than say a movie or a book.
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well said, well created 
Blizzard did so a good job with this. I was a bit disappointed that the story didn't seem as "deep", but I mean it's only the first expansion. Either way, yes I see what you mean, the missions themselves were the focus (or so it seems). The story is a bit less memorable, but this way the missions have a lot of replayability :D And by the 3rd expansion, may be the story will even satisfy the old SC1 story style fans while having even better missions.
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United States22883 Posts
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.
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Good storytellers do not off the most interesting and charismatic character at the end of the first act.
The demise of Tychus is fail.
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None of this changes the fact that the dialog was nauseatingly, insultingly cheesy- that was the main problem for me.
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And no, the zerg are not a misunderstood race. Zerg are still a vile and mean and thirsty for blood. Just because they were used does not mean they are in fact a noble race.
sigh.... did you play the protoss campaign portion? Zeratul makes contact with the overmind and suggests that the thing is a sensitive creature with actual feelings, PUH-LEEZE!
But yeah, the campaign was great game play wise but why do people revere FF7 so much? Because of it's game play? Because the story is so memorable. Will people remember SC2's campaign down to the last detail? Doubtful but then again maybe so because of how shallow and surprisingly dull it was. Yea I get that this is part 1, but SC1 had 3 parts as well and none of the endings of each campaign were THIS bad. It even continued into BW flawlessly, I have doubts that HoTS will really match that level of genius. Sure this is an RTS game, I get it, but why even have a campaign at all then if that's all this is? There is no reason to have a campaign at all if the story is this bad, might as well give an option to have zero dialogue and just play each mission in a row. I mean, why do I need to know what I'm fighting the zerg/protoss for anyways if it's merely an RTS game?
SC2 is a great game, but it's shame that SC1 was so great because now we have to live in it's shadow and forever talk about how it's infinitely better than SC2's story.
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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.
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On January 23 2011 14:03 BasilPesto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 07:45 [F_]aths wrote:
3) If someone cite a quote of a character of a previous game, they assume that the character spoke the truth. But the character could have been misinformed, or he could try to deceive you. May be the character forgot some things he said a long time ago. Cut him some slack, please! This just sounds like a weak excuse for an inconsistent plot/story. Everything in the past is then questionable, nothing is concrete. Maybe Character A's memory is sketchy, maybe he was being mind controlled, maybe he was joking, maybe he was lying, maybe he's plain stupid. Of course, a franchise should be reasonable. In most cases, a character should not undergo an implausible change. But we cannot take every single word some character said as the irrevocable truth. Even though if we feel that the writers retconned it, we need to give it some leeway or we will never be happy anyway.
Show nested quote +The story does include many cliches and many cheesy dialog. Why would Chris Metzen and his team dare to not ask us how exactly the story should develop? Oh wait … it’s their franchise. Aimed for a 2010 audience. Instead of giving some die-hard SC1 fans exactly what they want, they dare to go into mainstream to attract new fans to the franchise. Imagine – noobs playing Starcraft! This is the end of the world, because it belongs to us! We liked it like it was. We want back the talking heads. We want back the weird Broodwar mission. And we want back the “original” story of a rebellion leader who turned out to be a dictator himself and betrayed his friend. There's nothing daring about dumbing down your franchise in order to make more money. There's nothing daring in being unoriginal.
- First, the campaign required me to join Arcturus Mensk in the first place. But I intended to obey every order from my original superiours. I did not want to be a rebell then. Sooo easy how Blizzard tried to give us the feeling that, since we are with Jimmy, we are special -- because we are choosen to join a rebellion.
- Then, the betrayal. Now it turned out, everything was in vain. In fact, everything we did, made it even worse because we helped Mensk. I played the campaign with no satisfaction. Later, the Bitch of Blades killed several of our friends. How original is such writing?
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WoL was by no means great but it was standard vanilla that should appeal to 13-14 year old kids. What i felt most was that it was a rewind ... very little of sc1 and sc2 events are refferenced or indeed relevant - and it makes sense since they wanted to appeal to a new audience as well and hitting them over the head with 12 year old lore would have been scary.
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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. It worked for me. During the SC1 campaign I always felt that she is his girl. In the light of the events (his girl got infested and so on) of course his feelings did not had highest priority.
As the infested Kerrigan spared Jim's life, I knew that there is something more between those two than the campaign revealed.
On January 23 2011 16:22 Jibba wrote:
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. You can skip it. In my first playthrough, I did skip it because I considered it (and still considers it) just a fan service. As I played it in my second, third, and fifth playthrough (the fourth was for the Hurry it's Raid Night achievement) I actually liked the change from a rebel's life.
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I found the story to be excellent, I loved every minute of it.
Of course everyone's gunnna have different opinions and all but I'd rate the story pretty damn high in terms of video game stories.
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I did not enjoy the story, felt way too standard and cliché. Of course people will expect the characters to behave as in SC1 since they are supposed to be the same characters, same names and everything. Raynor, Mengsk and Kerrigan were all multi-dimensional and interesting in SC1, but completely predictable and boring in SC2.
I have no problems with the mission archive etc, and it was an interesting idea to try to make it non-linear as you can choose your own path or whatever, so of course it is understandable that ther are some logical inaccuracies. However, it seems to me as if the whole single player campaign was designed with gameplay in mind, and not story. Resulting in a pretty good gameplay but horrendeous storyline. And to be honest, if I want to enjoy the gameplay, I will be playing multiplayer, not single player...
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Beside all critique towards WoL, this game got me back to PC gaming. This alone is an outstandig feat. (Booting a compuer? Change an ergonomic controller for a keyboard, just to play a game?)
As I recently went back to Fallout 1, I saw that the game is still as good as I remembered. Some part in me hopes that I will once be unemployed so I have the time to play it once again. And then Fallout 2. And then Planescape Tourment.
As I also went back to Broodwar, I was surprised how clunky it all felt. The mission design in quite standard. The terran story is weird. First we help Mensk who betrays us, then in BW the UED appears. Often I was just "wtf? Why would he ... I not even ..."
I really think that beside all achievements of the original game, the story is not one of them. Nor is it one in the today's installment call WoL. But it still serves it purpose.
Raynor was quite bald in SC1, like Mensk, now but have full hair. How is that possible? Why is a battle cruiser so tiny compared to a marine in both games? Why must I endure the action-movie like dialogs in WoL? Because it's just a game.
I still remember how I rushed my first playthrough because I was so eager to know the end of this campaign's story. There were some things I did not like (and still I don't like them.) But overall, Blizzard did a good job with the campaign even though some retcon irritated me.
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compared to us tv series from the last time i am quiet happy about the sc2 story.
I always liked blizzards storys for games. A sweet to read "Why did this happened" story ... briefing filling from Mission to Mission. Next part ... what has happened so far story. Really liked the where is the clerik and why is there now a paladin story. from war1 to war2.
They made awesome storys with just such an simple concept, and their background storys where always really nice and deep for a game.
Probably with growing employees you need the "good writers" that make tv serie stories and all. Because the Pen and Paper nerds can't put up good fantasy and scifi stories *G*.
PS: not knowing what the characters would do next in sc1 is ... guess most people knew after 1 or 2 briefings that mengsk is just a politician who wants more power and that at some point raynor will have enough of him.
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Not particularly fond of the particular arguments in the OP, but
(a) lots of people like to bash blizzard as if blizzard owes them anything rather than the other way around
(b) reducing the quality of the campaign to a single "sucks" or "rocks" is extremely one-dimensional; especially the many haters seem to be oblivious to the parts of the campaign that are in fact exceptionally well done (mission design, voice acting, upgrades/research, user interface, character animation, gently introducing gameplay and background story to new players, ...).
(c) About the story: sure there are plot holes, but many people who complain have not the faintest clue as to storytelling in a production like this. Everyone is entitled to say "I don't like X", but if you are clueless, it is very poor style to say "Here we go again, blizzard messed X up so bad" or something like that (edit: next post is a good example)
So I agree with the general tone of the OP although some arguments seem a bit forced.
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You have failed to convince me otherwise. Looking the levels indiviually, yes i can agree they were pretty fun and overall well designed. However, i cannot ignore the retcon issues and evident plotholes that are apparent in the overall story. Blizzard has gotten very lazy and sloppy by choosing to go with cliche plot routes instead of sticking true to lore. Yes i know its their fuckin game, but that doesn't mean whatever they do with it, is right. How often have you read a manga (or anime) where the story is awesome but the author completely fucked up the ending? Do ppl just accept it and move on? No. They go write fanfiction and express their opinions. I've honestly read some fanfiction that's better than the actual cannon. Is this option available to us? Not so much, as it is a game, which due to its interactive nature, is hard to merely duplicate. Let's see what blizzard comes up with in the next two expansions.
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The first campaign is (in many ways) a western story. Western stories live from beeing full of clichees.
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First of all, you should know by now that the battle.net forums are a total mess. I wouldn't really take anything posted by the trolling masses there seriously.
Now I enjoyed the campaign missions, but honestly I feel it's a totally valid complaint to say that the characters in WoL are seriously lacking. Arcturus is supposed to be a brilliant manipulative villain, offering each character something they want, or tricking them into thinking what they want. The books flesh this out further; He's a criminal mastermind. In WoL he's your stereotype "stupid oppressive dictator".
Kerrigan also, is manipulative, brilliant, headstrong, etc. Tricking her enemies into working together to destroy her foes, backstabbing them at the perfect times. She put it well, she's queen bitch of the universe. Personally leads the assault on (what she believes to be) Tassadar's base. In SC2 she's... kinda dumb?
"Grrrrr Jimmy you tricked me!" etc. Trolling through random buildings while Raynor's base is a mere few miles away. So silly.
And then the whole Xel Naga thing, the threat of the hybrids, etc. I think I've played this game before in Wc3 and Mass Effect. Commander Sheppard, sry, Raynor, needs to unite the Humans, Night Elves, and Orcs sorry, I mean the Races of the counsel, fuck, sorry, I mean the Terran, Toss, and Zerg, to stop the Burning Legion, wait jk, the Reapers, wait, no, the Hybrids! Yes, that was is.
And the zerg being a bunch of misunderstood animals, manipulated into being evil? Whhhatttttt.... really? It bothered me enough in the warcraft universe that the Orcs were really all noble and honorable and shit, just corrupted, but whatever. The wc universe isn't supposed to be serious, so I was alright with it. But please don't make the zergs a bunch of good guys. Ravenous cruel all-consuming space bugs please.
Kerrigan being human again? Wow you killed your most interesting character to give the story a sappy happy love-story ending. Cool beans.
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the story was "ok" not amazing, but what really really bothered me was
in sc1 raynor always got dealt a terrible hand, he even was bald and had a unibrow, but he handled his business and came out best as possible with a great attitude that made you think "awesome"
in sc2 i did not get that attitude from him at all, instead i feel as if they should have made raynor obese and then his physical appearance would have supplemented his depressing drunk mannerisms completely.
the only good character from the campaign was Tychus and then they killed him off (of course he'll probably come back as the zerg king because lolblizzardtwist)
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The story was made for 13 year old kids. Playing the campaign was like watching The Vampire Diaries.
Love story = check
Bad guys became good guys = check
Fighting against a common enemy = check
Plot deciding prophecy = check
If you have 10 years to make a 5 hour story. Can you at least make it consistent with the novels?
Towards OP: You made a very well constructed post, and I salute you for that. But the core of the story should have filled the hearts of the old players with joy. While the gameplay should attract the young "noobs".
But the story was made to sell copies, and the gameplay was made to sell copies. Brutal does not mean roflcopterstomping through it when you play the game for 2 weeks.
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i'm not sure i follow most of this argument.
is the raynor-kerrigan relationship being defined seriously that big a problem for people? personally i always thought the ambiguity surrounding it in sc1/bw to be pretty stupid, and defining it as love to be a smart move as otherwise raynor's odd loyalty towards her even after infestation seems completely non-sensical.
i liked the story overall, but i did find the majority of the new characters to be extremely boring, and the mengsk plot to be absolutely ridiculous (he's using tychus to spy yet lets tychus completely ruin his reputation?), but everything involving characters without the surname mengsk generally worked for me, if not being somewhat boring at times (in particular i wish there were greater narrative consequences to siding with tosh/nova and hansen/selendis).
could they have done better? absolutely. but it's hardly as big a trainwreck as the star wars prequels.
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Thank you for taking the time to address so many things in your OP but your arguments don't change the fact that the campaign advanced little to no actual events in the Starcraft universe. I am less concerned with holes -because many of the concerns you pointed out will inevitably lead to holes in the plot - and more concerned with how awful the actual content of themain story was when you reduce it to actual, meaningful events.
In SC1, only considering the Terran campaign, there was a ton of stuff going on. You took Raynor from being a nobody Sheriff, to allying with an interstellar terrorist against a tyrannical government, to manipulating a global population of Zerg invaders, to the downfall of the Terran confederacy. The characters were great, the dialogue and voice acting was believable, and the events were catastrophic for the universe you were so quickly engrossed in. Keep in mind I didn't even include any content from the last 20 missions of the game. All of that was completed in ten missions.
In SC2, the campaign made me feel like some type of interstellar antique collector... a mercenary team engaging in lame and uneventful jobs that had no place in the greater fate of the Koprulu sector. That is, when it wasn't confusing me with new, unestablished relationships and/or characters. The dialogue was unemotional and silly. Tychus Findlay was a badass character, but I can only take him saying stuff like, "Yeah, I'll fry em like back in the day Jimmy," a couple times before it gets old and ridiculous; OK, we understand that you guys used to work together and that you're a badass or w/e, we don't need that reinforced over dozens of lines of mindless, poorly written dialogue.
I will admit that some of the cinematic content was well-done and very emotional. I remember two exact instances of this: 1) when Kerrigan was being overrun by the Zerg armies at New Gettysburg. Sadly enough, this was a scene from the first game, and most of its emotional involvement stemmed from SC1's superior character attachments. 2) The final scene when Jim Raynor walks out of the Hive with Kerrigan in his hands. I think this was very well-done cinematically, but distinctly remember thinking, "Wow what a great scene... I just wish the ending hadn't sucked so hard."
In conclusion, the campaign just didn't do anything. I don't feel like I accomplished anything by playing it. At the end, I felt like I had reunited two people whose love for each other was unfounded and sort of made-up, whereas by the end of the SC1 campaign, I felt like I had just been witness to several catastrophic upheavals in the Koprulu Sector, and to the galaxy as a whole.
Thanks for reading. Back to my econ homework haha.
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My goodness, a thread about the WoL campaign that is NOT titled along the lines of, '5 reasons why the campaign story sucks'?
On January 23 2011 22:57 Phenny wrote:
I found the story to be excellent, I loved every minute of it.
This. The story from Starcraft was pretty good and the story from Brood Wars was pretty bad, but WoL's story and particularly its execution and attitude were immensely enjoyable to me. On hindsight, the characters are probably a bit too predictable and flat, but the WoL campaign ranks as one of the most fun gaming experiences I've ever had.
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I really can't say that WoL was a very good story, although the missions themselves were entertaining. SC1 may have outdated technology, but they did an excellent job with what they had, and I find myself having much more powerful attachments to SC1 characters than anyone in WoL.
My criticisms are mostly the same as what many other people mentioned. Mengsk never comes off as a convincing villain in SC2, doing nothing more but having silly propaganda shows and somehow being outmaneuvered by Raynor despite having Tychus in on the whole thing. Kerrigan does very little of note in the campaign, and is more of a plot device than an actual character since her importance basically revolves around her place in the whole prophecy crap. Zeratul also does nothing but get railroaded on the silly prophecy plot, and every other minor character is basically just a cardboard cut-out of fiction archetypes. Swann is never anything more than the tech guy. Stettman is never anything more than the science nerd guy. Even Tosh and Hanson do little despite having 1/3 the campaign dedicated to them. I always love how Tosh goes on about how Nova won't join Raynor, yet he himself does absolutely nothing when the major Save-Kerrigan plot point kicks into gear.
WoL may have been 30 missions long, but I can honestly say that more happened in the 10-mission long SC1 terran campaign than this. The only thing important that happens in WoL is saving Kerrigan, everything else is a minor side-plot at best. Even the whole overthrow Arcturus side plot gets shelved away once Valerian comes in, and the campaign epilogue even states that Arcturus still stays "securely in his throne" despite the whole leaked recording incident. SC2 may have great production values, but I personally find it to have a far weaker story than SC1/WC3. Even BW, with all of its flaws, was much better because it still had some of the most memorable moments in gaming (Brood War intro cinematic, Brood War ending cinematic, Fenix's death).
P.S. And the saddest part is that even game reviewers, who normally suck up to Blizzard, have to admit that the story sucks. Check this link here for all the things reviewers have had to say about it: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/374721415?page=76#1512
This one too: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1568011928?page=1
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On January 24 2011 11:02 Feb wrote:
i'm not sure i follow most of this argument.
is the raynor-kerrigan relationship being defined seriously that big a problem for people? personally i always thought the ambiguity surrounding it in sc1/bw to be pretty stupid, and defining it as love to be a smart move as otherwise raynor's odd loyalty towards her even after infestation seems completely non-sensical.
i liked the story overall, but i did find the majority of the new characters to be extremely boring, and the mengsk plot to be absolutely ridiculous (he's using tychus to spy yet lets tychus completely ruin his reputation?), but everything involving characters without the surname mengsk generally worked for me, if not being somewhat boring at times (in particular i wish there were greater narrative consequences to siding with tosh/nova and hansen/selendis).
could they have done better? absolutely. but it's hardly as big a trainwreck as the star wars prequels.
The forced relationship (plus character changes, they kinda go together) is probably the thing that bothers me the most about the whole story. I didn't like most other things for reasons people posted in this thread repeatedly, but I didn't really mind them either. But when it comes to the two most important characters in this campaign, it gets hard to ignore.
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.
What Koshi said is kind of what I think as well. The way the love story was handled, the changes on Raynor's looks and personality, his actions, everything seems pretty much geared towards teenagers to create a badass hero. The new looks and attitude, I mean, come on. That scene where he beats up Tychus is the perfect example. And of course, a badass hero needs to be a chick magnet (I'm surprised they didn't make Nova fall in love with him too), and he's got to go in an epic journey to rescue the one he likes.
About the characters being boring, I agree. I didn't mind it much since they're pretty harmless, and we got to play Zeratul for a few missions, but nice side characters would help ignoring the problems I listed above (by the way, I'm surprised I still didn't see someone getting offended at Tosh's character archetype, I'll take that as a good thing).
The missions themselves were a lot of fun. Would be kinda cool to see Raynor as a vulture in the vulture mission, but can't have everything.
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On January 23 2011 23:38 DennizR wrote:
I did not enjoy the story, felt way too standard and cliché. Of course people will expect the characters to behave as in SC1 since they are supposed to be the same characters, same names and everything. Raynor, Mengsk and Kerrigan were all multi-dimensional and interesting in SC1, but completely predictable and boring in SC2.
I have no problems with the mission archive etc, and it was an interesting idea to try to make it non-linear as you can choose your own path or whatever, so of course it is understandable that ther are some logical inaccuracies. However, it seems to me as if the whole single player campaign was designed with gameplay in mind, and not story. Resulting in a pretty good gameplay but horrendeous storyline. And to be honest, if I want to enjoy the gameplay, I will be playing multiplayer, not single player...
If you want to enjoy game play, then play a game... like sc2 single player for instance. If you want to enjoy a story then go read something don't play a game and complain that the story wasn't good enough.
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On January 24 2011 16:01 Cathasaigh wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 23:38 DennizR wrote:
I did not enjoy the story, felt way too standard and cliché. Of course people will expect the characters to behave as in SC1 since they are supposed to be the same characters, same names and everything. Raynor, Mengsk and Kerrigan were all multi-dimensional and interesting in SC1, but completely predictable and boring in SC2.
I have no problems with the mission archive etc, and it was an interesting idea to try to make it non-linear as you can choose your own path or whatever, so of course it is understandable that ther are some logical inaccuracies. However, it seems to me as if the whole single player campaign was designed with gameplay in mind, and not story. Resulting in a pretty good gameplay but horrendeous storyline. And to be honest, if I want to enjoy the gameplay, I will be playing multiplayer, not single player... If you want to enjoy game play, then play a game... like sc2 single player for instance. If you want to enjoy a story then go read something don't play a game and complain that the story wasn't good enough.
I don't get this. So a game with a single player campaign can't have its story criticized because it's a game? What, do you think games aren't a valid form of storytelling? There are games out there with bad story or no story at all, mostly because they're centered on the multiplayer, and you could argue SC2 falls into that category as well, but I disagree. Most of us here are fans of the original game, and while its story isn't the deepest thing ever, it still had a very solid story and well constructed characters, which we remembered for many years. It is fair to expect Blizzard to live up to that, at least a little bit.
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On January 24 2011 03:59 Haemonculus wrote:
First of all, you should know by now that the battle.net forums are a total mess. I wouldn't really take anything posted by the trolling masses there seriously.
Now I enjoyed the campaign missions, but honestly I feel it's a totally valid complaint to say that the characters in WoL are seriously lacking. Arcturus is supposed to be a brilliant manipulative villain, offering each character something they want, or tricking them into thinking what they want. The books flesh this out further; He's a criminal mastermind. In WoL he's your stereotype "stupid oppressive dictator". May be he still is this kind of man, but he don't needs to trick anyone we're with in the campaign. We now have Valerian for that.
About the race team effort to fight the Dark Voice or the misunderstood zerg or the deinfested Kerrigan: I really think you jump to conclusions here.
Some alternatives: Only some guys (the "good" guys) of each race are supposed to fight the evil. The zerg, even though they are manipulated, are by no means a race which seeks to establish a dialog between them an other races. Kerrigan is supposed to be the leader of the swarm in HotS, either fully infested or not, she still can fulfil her role as the leader of the swarm.
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On January 24 2011 11:26 Beirut wrote:
In SC1, only considering the Terran campaign, there was a ton of stuff going on. You took Raynor from being a nobody Sheriff, to allying with an interstellar terrorist against a tyrannical government, to manipulating a global population of Zerg invaders, to the downfall of the Terran confederacy. [...] All of that was completed in ten missions. The SC1 campaign progressed through the mission intro and some dialog during the mission. The actual missions had little to do with the story: Build a random base on a random planet, raze a random enemy base. SC2 does a much better job to get you a feeling "I am actually here. My presence means something. Also I can decide what I do next." Those decision are of course limited, but since we also have armory upgrade / laboratory / mercenary options and because of the mission order influences the units we have access to, it feels meaningful (while it is in fact not really for the SC2 story.)
I found the SC1 story itself not very appealing even though 12 years ago I was much easier to impress than today.
On January 24 2011 11:26 Beirut wrote:
In SC2, the campaign made me feel like some type of interstellar antique collector... a mercenary team engaging in lame and uneventful jobs that had no place in the greater fate of the Koprulu sector. That is, when it wasn't confusing me with new, unestablished relationships and/or characters. The dialogue was unemotional and silly. I consider some dialogue emotional. Some other lines were outright silly, yes.
On January 24 2011 11:26 Beirut wrote:
I will admit that some of the cinematic content was well-done and very emotional. I remember two exact instances of this: 1) when Kerrigan was being overrun by the Zerg armies at New Gettysburg. Sadly enough, this was a scene from the first game, and most of its emotional involvement stemmed from SC1's superior character attachments. 2) The final scene when Jim Raynor walks out of the Hive with Kerrigan in his hands. I think this was very well-done cinematically, but distinctly remember thinking, "Wow what a great scene... I just wish the ending hadn't sucked so hard." I was somewhat disappointed that I was not able to bring Mensk down. But on the other hand, Blizzard at least surprised me. I so expected to bring that guy to justice ... but then I hold Sarah in my arms (or Jimmy did, at least.)
On January 24 2011 11:26 Beirut wrote:
In conclusion, the campaign just didn't do anything. We invaded Char and assembled an artifact which did the unthinkable. We still don't know the true purpose of the artifact. We also don't know (but we guess) who supplied Mensk with Hybrid technology. Kerrigan did not buy the "Dr. Narud charade", so didn't we ... or did we?
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You didnt adress the actual problems most SC players have with the story.
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!!??!?
All this says, is that Blizzard wants a pretty, hot, woman on the cover of HotS, thus they need to turn Kerrigan "face" (meaning GOOD), so that they have a character in the Zerg campaign that the players can stare at her ass (look up Miranda in ME2).
A Zerg campaign with Zerg Cerebrates and possibly a new Overmind would be cool but dosent sell as much as a hot piece of ass on the box cover.
That is 1 complaint out of 1000 i have, and trust me, NONE of them are about the dialog or the missions. I found the actual gameplay and mission variety to be superb and even better than SC and BW.
The story however has alot of issues, like how they are reclying the tired "races band together to fight off the big evil" (see Warcraft 3).
Blizzard in general has a huge problem it seems with playable races fighting in their games, they made their Orcs stale and basically made almost every race in WoW "good", just like the Zerg are being nutered now to be a good race that is just missunderstood or misguided.
When Raynor fought the Toss in the campaign in WoL, it had to be some crazy Toss faction that is clearly "evil". This is Blizzard 101, cant have the Orcs and Humans fight, it has to be Orcs vs Evil Human faction, or Human vs Evil Orc faction.
Again i need to stop myself because i can go on and on about this, but from a pure gameplay view SC2 is a excellent game and missions are very varied and fun to do, moreso than any RTS game ever made, and trust me, ive played them all since Dune.
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[qoute]5) SC2 fails to explain why the Taldarim, a protoss tribe of a traditional faith, imprison Dark Templars, but use Dark Dragoons (aka Stalkers.) SC1 fails to explain why every terran faction has access to the same array of unit types. Some things are dictated by the demand of the gameplay and limits in the budget. Yes, Blizzard should have payed some more attention to those things. But one have to compare what they made wrong with the things they did right.[/qoute]
They could use the dragoon model from SC1 instead of stalker and with same characteristics, or use a lighter model. Or the Tal'Darim are hypocrites. For me it's irrelevant, the story is great.
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On January 23 2011 14:03 BasilPesto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 07:45 [F_]aths wrote:
3) If someone cite a quote of a character of a previous game, they assume that the character spoke the truth. But the character could have been misinformed, or he could try to deceive you. May be the character forgot some things he said a long time ago. Cut him some slack, please! This just sounds like a weak excuse for an inconsistent plot/story. Everything in the past is then questionable, nothing is concrete. Maybe Character A's memory is sketchy, maybe he was being mind controlled, maybe he was joking, maybe he was lying, maybe he's plain stupid. Show nested quote +The story does include many cliches and many cheesy dialog. Why would Chris Metzen and his team dare to not ask us how exactly the story should develop? Oh wait … it’s their franchise. Aimed for a 2010 audience. Instead of giving some die-hard SC1 fans exactly what they want, they dare to go into mainstream to attract new fans to the franchise. Imagine – noobs playing Starcraft! This is the end of the world, because it belongs to us! We liked it like it was. We want back the talking heads. We want back the weird Broodwar mission. And we want back the “original” story of a rebellion leader who turned out to be a dictator himself and betrayed his friend. There's nothing daring about dumbing down your franchise in order to make more money. There's nothing daring in being unoriginal.
SC1's story is not original
read "Animal Farm" from George Orwell
There is the same theme there:
Someone fights along his friends to take down a dictator, and the person who did most of the work gets the down end of all things. The one who didn't do any of the work becomes the new dictator, power corrupts, etc ...............
Light Protoss and Dark Protoss, who have had divergences over the years/millenia, now have to unite and work together in the thread of a common enemy, .....etc
And the list can continue. Nothing in SC1's story is original. You can say SC1's story is a cliche. StarCraft did not go where it is today because of it's story, but because of it's gameplay.
People got on Youtube and Gomtv to see BoXeR's MM micro, JaeDong's muta play controlling multiple groups, Bisu's reaver/shuttle micro, Flash's excellent macro, etc. Gameplay is what SC1 is all about.
Don't worry abt people who criticise WoL's story. They are flaw finders. The fact is Starcraft2 is the best thing that happened to the RTS scene since the release of SC1. Some say it's better, some say it's not, but Blizzard's RTS are better than any RTS games out there.
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On January 24 2011 21:24 Tyree wrote:
All this says, is that Blizzard wants a pretty, hot, woman on the cover of HotS, thus they need to turn Kerrigan "face" (meaning GOOD), so that they have a character in the Zerg campaign that the players can stare at her ass (look up Miranda in ME2). Kerrigan could still be heel. It's fun to play an evil role (like Arthas as Death Knight in WC3.)
On January 24 2011 21:24 Tyree wrote:
The story however has alot of issues, like how they are reclying the tired "races band together to fight off the big evil" (see Warcraft 3). This is nothing but an assumption. Just because a prophecy foretold a greater evil, it does not mean that all races team up.
On January 24 2011 21:24 Tyree wrote:
Again i need to stop myself because i can go on and on about this, but from a pure gameplay view SC2 is a excellent game and missions are very varied and fun to do, moreso than any RTS game ever made, and trust me, ive played them all since Dune. After I played Dune 1 and 2, I read the book. I can recommend it to anyone.
I really think that if SC1 would have told the story of SC2 and now we would have the SC1 story in WoL, everyone would complain about lack of originality and damn the poor writing and how out-of-character all characters act and so on.
Is the SC2 story exceptionally good? I don't think so. But neither was the SC1 story. Again: You join a rebel leader who turns out to be even a greater evil than the regime he overthrew, and then the UED comes into play (deus ex machina, anyone?)
While Raynor's story in WoL is a western story full of clichees, at least Blizzard gave us a proper soundtrack. *Humming* Shotgun ... zerg ... and You ... *humming*
Should the story improve in HotS and LotV? Yes, definitively. Blizzard has a chance to tie some loose ends together, fill some holes and give us a deeper, yet more consistent story.
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On January 23 2011 22:11 [F_]aths 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. It worked for me. During the SC1 campaign I always felt that she is his girl. In the light of the events (his girl got infested and so on) of course his feelings did not had highest priority. As the infested Kerrigan spared Jim's life, I knew that there is something more between those two than the campaign revealed.
This means you completely failed to understand the story mode in the first game, not that you "got" the vanilla/BW story and others didn't.
I guess you could chalk it up to a matter of opinion. With the extensive politicking, alliances, and betrayals in space sounding more like an Asimov novel and the cliched love story in space resembling something Knaack wrote.
I mean if you like Knaack, more power to you.
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It's true. A lot of people just miss how enjoyable the campaign is, even if the story is a little... tired.
A cheesy story is effective, in much the same way as a cheesy strat. But hey, if that doesn't rope everyone in, then you can always just throw in some achievement points and that'll make everyone play it.
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On January 24 2011 23:20 Offhand wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 22:11 [F_]aths wrote: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. It worked for me. During the SC1 campaign I always felt that she is his girl. In the light of the events (his girl got infested and so on) of course his feelings did not had highest priority. As the infested Kerrigan spared Jim's life, I knew that there is something more between those two than the campaign revealed. This means you completely failed to understand the story mode in the first game, not that you "got" the vanilla/BW story and others didn't. How can you tell if someone got the (real) story and others don't?
I noticed that in american movie culture, love on first sight is used as hint that someone found his true love. So I assumed that "Here is Jimmy" found his true love at he looked as Sarah the first time. (Yes, so much cliché here. But this is Sparta Starcraft.) As the infested Kerrigan spared Raynor's life later in the campaign, even though she already was depictured as a ruthless monster, I assumed that she has real feeling for him, too.
Now you probably say "Gosh, you got it all wrong. Starcraft is not the story of Jimmy ♥ Sarah." But I see the relationship as a driving force in the Starcraft story. That makes no SF story of course, so we need the aliens. Bring the aliens on!
edit: As I read my posting again, I see it is more sarcastic than intended. Still, Blizzard totally sold me with this love story in WoL.
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btw guys Dr Narud is Duran spelled backwards. Just throwin that out there.
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Let's be honest, if you come to a computer game expecting an engrossing, well-written story, you're barking up the wrong tree. Some games have good stories that are poorly written, some games have well-written stories that are boring, but only very rarely to they meet in the middle (unless it's poorly-written boring stories, i guess  ).
The best you can really hope for is something like WoW, where the background story and the setting is pretty compelling and if you want to read the novels (which i have) you'll just have to lower your expectations. It's kinda like anime, except less paedophillia.
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On January 25 2011 00:26 [F_]aths wrote:
How can you tell if someone got the (real) story and others don't?
Because at no point in 60 some mission of the first game was it implied that Raynor and Kerrigan were in love. Saying Kerrigan spared Raynor once is proof otherwise is grasping at straws. Raynor even vows to kill her.
You clearly didn't understand the story of the first game, this is largely O.K. because SC2's story may as well be set in a separate universe.
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On January 25 2011 03:42 Offhand wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2011 00:26 [F_]aths wrote:
How can you tell if someone got the (real) story and others don't?
Because at no point in 60 some mission of the first game was it implied that Raynor and Kerrigan were in love. Saying Kerrigan spared Raynor once is proof otherwise is grasping at straws. Raynor even vows to kill her. You clearly didn't understand the story of the first game, this is largely O.K. because SC2's story may as well be set in a separate universe.
Pot, kettle.
Go back and play the Terran mission where Mensk abandons Kerrigan to the Zerg in the vanilla SC Terran campaign. There's clearly something developing between Raynor and Kerrigan in their dialogue exchange prior/during the mission. She was one of the main reasons Raynor broke from Mensk.
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On January 24 2011 22:16 MindRush wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 14:03 BasilPesto wrote:On January 23 2011 07:45 [F_]aths wrote:
3) If someone cite a quote of a character of a previous game, they assume that the character spoke the truth. But the character could have been misinformed, or he could try to deceive you. May be the character forgot some things he said a long time ago. Cut him some slack, please! This just sounds like a weak excuse for an inconsistent plot/story. Everything in the past is then questionable, nothing is concrete. Maybe Character A's memory is sketchy, maybe he was being mind controlled, maybe he was joking, maybe he was lying, maybe he's plain stupid. The story does include many cliches and many cheesy dialog. Why would Chris Metzen and his team dare to not ask us how exactly the story should develop? Oh wait … it’s their franchise. Aimed for a 2010 audience. Instead of giving some die-hard SC1 fans exactly what they want, they dare to go into mainstream to attract new fans to the franchise. Imagine – noobs playing Starcraft! This is the end of the world, because it belongs to us! We liked it like it was. We want back the talking heads. We want back the weird Broodwar mission. And we want back the “original” story of a rebellion leader who turned out to be a dictator himself and betrayed his friend. There's nothing daring about dumbing down your franchise in order to make more money. There's nothing daring in being unoriginal. SC1's story is not original read "Animal Farm" from George OrwellThere is the same theme there: Someone fights along his friends to take down a dictator, and the person who did most of the work gets the down end of all things. The one who didn't do any of the work becomes the new dictator, power corrupts, etc ............... Light Protoss and Dark Protoss, who have had divergences over the years/millenia, now have to unite and work together in the thread of a common enemy, .....etc And the list can continue. Nothing in SC1's story is original. You can say SC1's story is a cliche. StarCraft did not go where it is today because of it's story, but because of it's gameplay. People got on Youtube and Gomtv to see BoXeR's MM micro, JaeDong's muta play controlling multiple groups, Bisu's reaver/shuttle micro, Flash's excellent macro, etc. Gameplay is what SC1 is all about. Don't worry abt people who criticise WoL's story. They are flaw finders. The fact is Starcraft2 is the best thing that happened to the RTS scene since the release of SC1. Some say it's better, some say it's not, but Blizzard's RTS are better than any RTS games out there.
SC1 copies from Animal Farm? Fine with me. I'd much prefer a story copying from a decent work of literature than a story that copies from cheap sci-fi B action movies and previous games made by the same company.
If SC1 is mildly unoriginal, then SC2 is blatantly and shamelessly unoriginal. It doesn't even bother hiding the fact that it's basically cutting and pasting the plot of WC3 (unite against the Burning Legion, evil race was actually corrupted, etc.). I fail to see how pointing out obvious flaws in the story makes me a nitpicker.
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On January 25 2011 03:42 Offhand wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2011 00:26 [F_]aths wrote:
How can you tell if someone got the (real) story and others don't?
Because at no point in 60 some mission of the first game was it implied that Raynor and Kerrigan were in love. Saying Kerrigan spared Raynor once is proof otherwise is grasping at straws. Raynor even vows to kill her.Do you actually mean anything you say? Did you made anything you ever said? Raynor was angry, so angry that he said that he would kill her. (By some strange twist, this still could be true, that Raynor at one time actually kills Kerrigan.)
That doesn't mean that he has no feelings for her.
On January 25 2011 03:42 Offhand wrote:You clearly didn't understand the story of the first game, this is largely O.K. because SC2's story may as well be set in a separate universe. I explained two or three times in thread why I assumed a love in my original SC playthrough.
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On January 25 2011 03:55 Newbistic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2011 03:42 Offhand wrote:On January 25 2011 00:26 [F_]aths wrote:
How can you tell if someone got the (real) story and others don't?
Because at no point in 60 some mission of the first game was it implied that Raynor and Kerrigan were in love. Saying Kerrigan spared Raynor once is proof otherwise is grasping at straws. Raynor even vows to kill her. You clearly didn't understand the story of the first game, this is largely O.K. because SC2's story may as well be set in a separate universe. Pot, kettle. Go back and play the Terran mission where Mensk abandons Kerrigan to the Zerg in the vanilla SC Terran campaign. There's clearly something developing between Raynor and Kerrigan in their dialogue exchange prior/during the mission. She was one of the main reasons Raynor broke from Mensk.
Really I've seen more logical arguments presented on fanfiction.net...
EDIT: I mean, come on, is this ever hinted at in any of the novels? It wasn't in Liberty's Crusade, which is probably the most relevant in terms a character associations. Or do you mean to tell me that all the pulp writers forgot and left that one out?
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On January 25 2011 04:20 Spawkuring wrote:
If SC1 is mildly unoriginal, then SC2 is blatantly and shamelessly unoriginal. It doesn't even bother hiding the fact that it's basically cutting and pasting the plot of WC3 (unite against the Burning Legion, evil race was actually corrupted, etc.). I fail to see how pointing out obvious flaws in the story makes me a nitpicker. SC1 is already very unoriginal. The races are just copied from inspired by Warhammer 40000. They added some from the "Alien" series "inspired" own design.
Read some reviews written at the release of Starcraft. Rarely someone praised the story.
The zerg are not a noble race like the Orcs.
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Sorry everyone, but I think it's time to embrace the fact that SC2 barely raises to the level of a fanfic, nothing more.
SC2 was a crushingly bland butter sandwich to SC1's glorious meatball footlong.
So ok, you've given them your money and time already, so now you think you have to justify your investment, but really... SC2's story was total crap. Just accept that SC lore's dead and move on.
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By all that is right and Zerg-y in the universe, I hope this is the case:
And no, the zerg are not a misunderstood race. Zerg are still a vile and mean and thirsty for blood. Just because they were used does not mean they are in fact a noble race...
I have no problem with the Dark Voice (Burning Legion) using the Zerg (Orcs) for his own nefarious schemes as long as the Zerg come out the other end as still a race bent on consuming the universe.
I mean... the whole drive for perfection by assimilating other races doesn't seem like it'll mesh well with a peaceful coexistence philosophy.
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On January 25 2011 05:26 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2011 04:20 Spawkuring wrote:
If SC1 is mildly unoriginal, then SC2 is blatantly and shamelessly unoriginal. It doesn't even bother hiding the fact that it's basically cutting and pasting the plot of WC3 (unite against the Burning Legion, evil race was actually corrupted, etc.). I fail to see how pointing out obvious flaws in the story makes me a nitpicker. SC1 is already very unoriginal. The races are just copied from inspired by Warhammer 40000. They added some from the "Alien" series "inspired" own design. Read some reviews written at the release of Starcraft. Rarely someone praised the story. The zerg are not a noble race like the Orcs.
Reviewers didn't praise SC's story, but they didn't bash it either. At the very least, it served its purpose and made for an entertaining experience. Compare that to SC2, where the story quality was low enough that reviewers specifically made segments just to slam it. Remember that reviewers are notorious for ass-kissing big name companies like Blizzard, yet even they had to voice their dislike of it.
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You can find SC2 reviews which criticize the story. You can find other reviews which praise the story. Most reviews do mention some action movie silliness, but that does not mean that they condemn the story as a whole.
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Who the hell cares about why Taldarim use stalkers.
The disgrace that they committed to all the important characters is what actually pisses me off. All the characters just didn't have character. At all.
Was there even a story in WoL? Well, yes, there were a few "things that happened"... but not a whole lot that the characters actually did.
Kerrigan was a pussy that got pwnt without doing anything.
Tychus was a pussy that never got relevant.
Mengsk was a pussy that got Tychus in the game, and that's "not doing anything" taken to the level of a fine art.
Zerathul was a superstitious pussy that just came to whine to Raynor.
Raynor was a pussy that got used, and the character for which I am most pissed.
He should have wanted to either save or kill Kerrigan with all his heart, not be focused on the irrelevant Mengsk. He should have actively sought a way for that, not just be given it on a plate by Valerian and tricked/forced to use it.
The new addition, Valerian, ended up to be the only character with a character in WoL, the only one that wasn't a pussy. Too bad he visually looks like one 
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I didn't know Jimmy loved Kerrigan. I thought he carried her away at the end of the game because she was semi-conscious and couldn't really walk. It's the delusional who romanticize their relationship. He just wanted to bang her and never got to because she got captured by the zerg and transformed into a power-hungry maniac.
Either way, I have no complaints about the story. Tychus' betrayal was predictable, and Dr. Hanson's infection was a pleasant surprise. I guess when you compare the books to the game, like when you compare books to movies, some things are left out and some things don't appease the story whores. I guess it's too bad. Maybe they should get an important job at blizzard so they can call the shots...
At the end of the day, I still love playing this game online and enjoyed the story. Easily the best RTS available at the moment. QQ about story line is QQ.
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Your argument is a pretty flimsy argument. You are basically saying, "Yea, there are problems. Just ignore them."
That's not even a flimsy argument - that's a terrible argument. It's perfectly possible to write a story without contractions or plot holes. Hell, that wasn't even the main problem with WoL - the main problem is that the actual execution of telling the story was absolutely horrific. We've all seen cliche stories before - almost everything is a cliche. The thing that sets stories apart from one another is how they're told, and WoL completely and utterly failed when compared to its predecessor or anything else.
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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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So your argument is: SC2 story is cliche, inconsistent, cheesy, stupid, etc, etc...but this is how people in year 2010 like it? That is the worst argument I have ever heard and it borders to the level of just plain crazy!
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the plot of the first terran episode in sc1 is a blatant rip-off of aliens. heck even the drop ship unit only has one line that isn't said by the drop ship pilot in aliens. so originality really shouldn't have been the issue. the complaints about execution i find fair though.
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Very good read.
Nice work! :D
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When an FPS/TPS game slaps on a multiplayer that feels like an after thought compared to the single player, everyone can tell. It's the same with StarcraftII and it's single player feeling a bit lacking. i honestly feel like the sequel could've been released w/o a single player all together (just an exaggeration but hopefully you get the idea)
The character development is weak and like the others have said, the most interesting characters are basically "ousted" in an instant. There could have been so much more but before i knew it, the campaign was over and i was left with a feeling not unlike when you order a 50 dollar steak that tastes like playdo. Is important the lore is and all, it's usually the characters that drive a story and the fact is is that blizzard didn't make the story as interesting as it could be.
my best example of this would be Halo 3. the master chief and arbiter pairing could've easily turned into some sort of kane and lynch bad boys toting guns story, but instead there's more character development. Blizzard instead just made raynor into a drunk has-been revenge story. It could've worked, but it's a shame that most of the story is filled with corny one-liners.
tl;dr version: even a cliche story can seem awesome if the right characters have good three dimensionality, it'sjust sad that Blizzard failed to do so.
but that being said, it's not like the campaign SUCKS, it just felt like it could've been more.
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As a writer and aspiring film maker, I will be the first to tell you the dialogue and plot of the game was simply mish-mash and ridiculous. I've never found myself cringing so much when characters were talking, and the cliches became so numerous I found myself predicting which crap-filled line was about to come out next.
Not to mention the horrible number of plot holes, questionable motivation, role reversals and weak character development.
LOL WE'RE OUTNUMBERED, LET'S GO BOARD THEM. SURELY THEY WON'T YAMATO OUR ASSES!
Grrr I'm the new Kerrigan. I have no motivation for coming back than simply to be evil.
Hey, I'm Jim Raynor. I'm a snarky alcoholic. At the end of this story I'm... still a snarky alcoholic. But at least I got the girl.
This thread's title is incredibly pretentious too. Everyone is wrong and you're right, huh?
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On February 01 2011 08:00 Grimjim wrote:
As a writer and aspiring film maker, I will be the first to tell you the dialogue and plot of the game was simply mish-mash and ridiculous. I've never found myself cringing so much when characters were talking, and the cliches became so numerous I found myself predicting which crap-filled line was about to come out next.
Not to mention the horrible number of plot holes, questionable motivation, role reversals and weak character development.
LOL WE'RE OUTNUMBERED, LET'S GO BOARD THEM. SURELY THEY WON'T YAMATO OUR ASSES!
Grrr I'm the new Kerrigan. I have no motivation for coming back than simply to be evil.
Hey, I'm Jim Raynor. I'm a snarky alcoholic. At the end of this story I'm... still a snarky alcoholic. But at least I got the girl.
This thread's title is incredibly pretentious too. Everyone is wrong and you're right, huh?
Plot holes and cliches? Yeah, of course, it's a video game and more importantly an RTS; they all have plot holes.
The main problem I have with the criticism is that people refer to SC and BW as having much better plots and writing. As was pointed out, they were just as cliche.
The major "retcon" of the Overmind (even though I don't consider it to be that implausible) doesn't really bother me too much. I mean, in BW it was just a puppet for the UED and nothing more.
Oh, and an appeal to authority? Kind of pretentious, right?
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yeah, if you boiled them down to their stories, sc1/bw and sc2 are about equal it's just sc1/bw did a much better job with characters and pulling you into the world.
@grimjim, don't introduce yourself as a writer and aspiring filmmaker as if this gives you greater authority on this as anyone else.
the dialogue in this game isn't half as cringe worthy as star wars: episode 2
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Arguing that a story being told doesn't need to be solid is a somewhat ridiculous argument, in my view.
If you want to argue, primarily, that it doesn't matter (b/c sc2 is a fun game who cares about the story), that's a valid point. But if Blizzard (or anybody else) is going to put themselves out there to tell a story, they better do a good job of it, or else expect people to respond as some people have. And frankly, coming in saying that we should ignore the holes in the story because the game mechanics are awesome is like saying you should love all politicians because they are handsome. Lots of people do, doesn't make it right.
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Hello all,
Not that one extra opinion matters but heres my pinch of salt:
1) Re orcs/Zerg being good: HAving a 'they are the goodies and those ugly ones are the baddies' is not only speciesist but even more cliche than the idea that there are sone bad guys of one race and some of the other. Plus the zerg arent even morally aware (unless Im much mistaken... ok apart from KErrigan and the Overmind) they are just animals, so its completely conceivable that should the 'controller' of the zerg is good then the zerg will follow. Having such a black and white approach to morality is really childish and oversimplified (dnd-afied maybe?). We'll just have to wait on where Blizzard go with this.
2) Re Love Story: Neither in SC/BW or in SC2 did I think it was a straight forward love story. My interpretation that the main emotion guiding Raynors actions were anger at Mengsk in SC1 for leaving Kerrigan behind to die, which then turns into guilt as has he has failed to stop Mengsk he only has himself to blame. You can read what you want into how you perceive their relationship which to me is a strength not a weakness in the plot.There was also a big distinction between Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades (hence Raynor's different feelings for both). Again, we'll have to wait and see where they go with this.
3) The dialogue was cheesy. As a matter of taste though I found that fine, as a european I still find the whole american western swagger kinda cool. And Raynor was always just a cowboy in space (Marshall, vulture=horse etc...) not Hamlet nor a character from George Orwell
4) THe prophecy thing was a little dry and stale, but the end of the universe mission redeemed it in my eyes and I totally bought into it.
5) Re: Target audience, there are three target audiences I would say. Hardcore SC1 fans, Noobs, and people who played SC1, enjoyed it but moved on to many other games. I fall into the last category and I found the storyline and campaign in general hugely satisfying. HArdcore fans (with regards to Lore) are probably the smallest proportion of its target audience, and they are also the most difficult to satisfy, they would have had to make such a complex and intricate storyline so that it would be quasi-impenetrable for the other two types of gamer without having to go through the original games. In this I believe Blizzard decided to compromise and they arent the first. If you look at the Elder Scrolls series though Oblivion had much better gameplay Morrowind had infinitely better/darker storyline. (I still loved Oblivion btw dont get me wrong).
Again, this is mostly opnion (like everything else on this thread) and therefore neither more nor less valuable than the OP or anything that followed.
EDIT: apologies for grammar/spelling, its 5.30 am here
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I think the STORY as a continuation of SC1 was fine, would have liked it to focus abit more on Mengsk etc.
Although I was satisfied with the story im not surprised that others werent. Its been like that for every game, you cant please everyone.
- The story doesnt state that the zerg are "good" only that they were used by a greater evil.
- The prophecy, I had an easy time buying it, the protoss are a very spiritual race and I see no reason why they wouldnt believe something like this. And that raynor trusts zeratul doesnt seem that far out either.
- The dialogues are very cheesy indeed. And I did too facepalm during some of them but they arent really part of the STORY.
The missions were awesome, the story was fine, everything with the cantina/bridge/armory etc was very good and although the dialogues were cheesy all in all the campaign was a good experience
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On February 01 2011 14:33 froggynoddy wrote:
Hello all,
Not that one extra opinion matters but heres my pinch of salt:
1) Re orcs/Zerg being good: HAving a 'they are the goodies and those ugly ones are the baddies' is not only speciesist but even more cliche than the idea that there are sone bad guys of one race and some of the other. Plus the zerg arent even morally aware (unless Im much mistaken... ok apart from KErrigan and the Overmind) they are just animals, so its completely conceivable that should the 'controller' of the zerg is good then the zerg will follow. Having such a black and white approach to morality is really childish and oversimplified (dnd-afied maybe?). We'll just have to wait on where Blizzard go with this.
2) Re Love Story: Neither in SC/BW or in SC2 did I think it was a straight forward love story. My interpretation that the main emotion guiding Raynors actions were anger at Mengsk in SC1 for leaving Kerrigan behind to die, which then turns into guilt as has he has failed to stop Mengsk he only has himself to blame. You can read what you want into how you perceive their relationship which to me is a strength not a weakness in the plot.There was also a big distinction between Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades (hence Raynor's different feelings for both). Again, we'll have to wait and see where they go with this.
3) The dialogue was cheesy. As a matter of taste though I found that fine, as a european I still find the whole american western swagger kinda cool. And Raynor was always just a cowboy in space (Marshall, vulture=horse etc...) not Hamlet nor a character from George Orwell
4) THe prophecy thing was a little dry and stale, but the end of the universe mission redeemed it in my eyes and I totally bought into it.
5) Re: Target audience, there are three target audiences I would say. Hardcore SC1 fans, Noobs, and people who played SC1, enjoyed it but moved on to many other games. I fall into the last category and I found the storyline and campaign in general hugely satisfying. HArdcore fans (with regards to Lore) are probably the smallest proportion of its target audience, and they are also the most difficult to satisfy, they would have had to make such a complex and intricate storyline so that it would be quasi-impenetrable for the other two types of gamer without having to go through the original games. In this I believe Blizzard decided to compromise and they arent the first. If you look at the Elder Scrolls series though Oblivion had much better gameplay Morrowind had infinitely better/darker storyline. (I still loved Oblivion btw dont get me wrong).
Again, this is mostly opnion (like everything else on this thread) and therefore neither more nor less valuable than the OP or anything that followed.
EDIT: apologies for grammar/spelling, its 5.30 am here
1. When it's humans (or even hominids) we're talking about, that is correct. However, the Zerg aren't a species. They are a biological WEAPON. Your point is invalid.
2. There was definitely something going on between Raynor and Kerrigan in SC1. Replay the vanilla Terran campaign, vanilla Zerg campaign, and BW Zerg campaign if you doubt me, and watch the interactions between the two. However, on Raynor's side, it mostly died out after she became infested and completely died out once she killed Fenix. Again, replay BW Zerg.
3. You can have space cowboy lines that aren't cheesy. Once again, replay SC1.
4. That entire thing could have been played out differently. It could have been nothing more than Zeratul telling a story and his (non-mystical) predictions of the future. I miss the old hard-ass Zeratul.
5. You can give a bad target audience a good story and get a good result. All it would have taken was a few prologue missions of recap, or maybe a little opening cutscene.
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On February 01 2011 08:00 Grimjim wrote:
Not to mention the horrible number of plot holes, questionable motivation, role reversals and weak character development. This is the backside of a non-linear campaign. Most plot holes can be filled with assuming some untold parts of the story. If you want to have a deep story, you can Planescape Torment, a story-driven RPG. WoL is a mission-driven RTS. Considering this, I consider the story ok. The somewhat lose story elements with lack of continuity even help to let you experience the uncertain fate of the revolution.
One can try to experience the campaign in a fun way. One can also try to compare it with novels and cringe at any cheesy one-liner. Since it is a game and no homework, I think I should have fun.
On February 01 2011 08:00 Grimjim wrote:
Hey, I'm Jim Raynor. I'm a snarky alcoholic. At the end of this story I'm... still a snarky alcoholic. But at least I got the girl. What did you expect? Another UED involvement?
On February 01 2011 08:00 Grimjim wrote:
This thread's title is incredibly pretentious too. Everyone is wrong and you're right, huh? I wanted to get attention and I also feel I have good arguments. tl;dr Don't compare the WoL story with novels, consider it an excuse to explain the next mission you play.
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On February 01 2011 09:52 SCbiff wrote:
Arguing that a story being told doesn't need to be solid is a somewhat ridiculous argument, in my view.
If you want to argue, primarily, that it doesn't matter (b/c sc2 is a fun game who cares about the story), that's a valid point. But if Blizzard (or anybody else) is going to put themselves out there to tell a story, they better do a good job of it, or else expect people to respond as some people have. And frankly, coming in saying that we should ignore the holes in the story because the game mechanics are awesome is like saying you should love all politicians because they are handsome. Lots of people do, doesn't make it right. I don't mean to say that we should just ignore blatant plot holes. But most of them can be explained if we just assume that there are other things we don't know (yet.) I also don't think that the WoL story is worse compared to SC1/BW. But I think we cannot expect to have a deep, dense story of a Starcraft novel in a computer game. WoL is made to sell millions of copies. How many Starcraft book copies are sold?
Blizzard also sacrificed consistency in favour of the gameplay mechanics. For example you see all possible lab upgrades before you have the appropriate samples or artifacts. But this allowes you to plan if you pick a mission which offers zerg or which offers protoss research. Mutas flap their wings in space, in which - oddly enough - we also can hear sound (while there is no air.)
Also, Kerrigan can read your mind. Who is still expecting a fully realistic explanation of everything going on?
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On February 01 2011 19:03 johlar wrote:
The missions were awesome, the story was fine, everything with the cantina/bridge/armory etc was very good and although the dialogues were cheesy all in all the campaign was a good experience Blizzard could easily animate how Raynor actually went through the ship instead of just cutting to the next screen if you click it. Blizzard even removed some stuff which was already included in the Alpha version (big Star Map with verbose information and pictures of each planet, a zoom out of the hyperion bridge closer to the planet which you are currently on.) They obviously did not want distract the player from the missions. But what is left in the game, is enough for me. I am much closer to characters, I can play my own story version; and once I fly to Char I get even a different mission hub setting (on the Warfield forward base.) I think these things are way more important than an Asimov-esque story. (If I want a good SF story, I prefer Stanisław Lem anyway.)
So, yes, the story serves its purpose.
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On February 01 2011 01:27 thehitman wrote:
So your argument is: SC2 story is cliche, inconsistent, cheesy, stupid, etc, etc...but this is how people in year 2010 like it? That is the worst argument I have ever heard and it borders to the level of just plain crazy! The good mission gameplay is of course no excuse for an outright poorly written story. But most guys which are no hardcore-fans of SC1/BW are obviously sold. Just because the story cannot fulfill the expectations of any die-hard fan does not mean it is bad.
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the story is devoid of any originality or charm, there was simply not that much thought put into it and it is evident. that's my problem with it. i don't mind so much (I do, just not that much) that it basically threw everything from sc1 in the trash, it's just that it's so bland.
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[F_]aths - you've obviously dug yourself a hole and decided fuck it, I'll just keep digging. Your replies to every single post in this thread are just getting desperate. Basically your position is - the story is 100% perfect and anyone who points out 1% of its crappiness must be rebutted until the storyline is viewed at 100% again.
The story is shit. When the cutscenes were leaked on YouTube I struggled to sit through them without getting so bored that I had half my attention diverted to other windows that were open. You could watch the Warcraft III cutscenes and not want to be doing anything else. They were fucking epic. SCII was just gayass Western cowboy cliche. And the side missions... Just makes you think - siiigh when can I get this part over and done with. SCII story sucks.
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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.
Even in fantasy, prophecy are 99% a bad idea which sucks ass and is obviously designed to make the scenario building process easier.
Worst prophecy in history is still Star Wars new trilogy's prophecy about the "one who will restablish balance in the force". That was so bad it made me laugh out loud.
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1) The story serves as a hub to get into the missions. Not the other way round. SC2 is still an RTS game, not a Warhammer 40000 RPG. Blizzard intentionally allowed some logical inconsistencies like the mechanics of the mission archive
but without the story what drives the missions? The sc2 rts game is set in the star craft universe, this star craft universe was made around the time starcraft was made. If they do not abide by the laws of said universe then that is the equalent of a fanfic author buying the franchise only so he can have his fanfic named cannon.
2) Often, some official books are quoted to proof that some figure in the game acted wrong. But the games speak for them self and can be understood without reading any novel or even the short stories on the official SC2 page. Many franchises have a much deeper and complex story in their expanded universe. Yes, many franchises have a much deeper and complex story in their written universe, does that mean the games are allowed to disregard the books if they want a compelling story?
4) There will always be some small errors and some greater plot holes. This is true for almost any franchise. To be honest, I am really annoyed about many contradictions in the Star Trek universe, because I will never know what “truly” happened. But it is still an inspiring franchise.
Do you want to know why some (not all) of these plot holes exist? Because the authors try to give the audience a piece of something from the characters that they have grown attached to that isnt really possible by obeying the laws of their own universe.
We have so fond memories of this stuff because we played it a long time ago. Not because it was actually so good. We just got used to it.
tell that to the people who watched that new indiana jones movie and at the end of the day you come to a forum complaining about the complainers and telling them to accept that the WoL story is canon now.
We already know that, but we liked the franchise so we will tell blizzard just what exactly we expected and what we got instead.
You are calling people out for complaining about the wasted potential that is sc2 telling them to enjoy what they can. Who the fuck nitpicks at the sc1 bw lore to find inconsistensies? We dont need to do that to dislike the story. Infact if i didnt have a sc bw background i would never have looked twice at sc2. why? because the story on its own sucked.
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On February 02 2011 00:59 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2011 19:03 johlar wrote:
The missions were awesome, the story was fine, everything with the cantina/bridge/armory etc was very good and although the dialogues were cheesy all in all the campaign was a good experience Blizzard could easily animate how Raynor actually went through the ship instead of just cutting to the next screen if you click it. Blizzard even removed some stuff which was already included in the Alpha version (big Star Map with verbose information and pictures of each planet, a zoom out of the hyperion bridge closer to the planet which you are currently on.) They obviously did not want distract the player from the missions. But what is left in the game, is enough for me. I am much closer to characters, I can play my own story version; and once I fly to Char I get even a different mission hub setting (on the Warfield forward base.) I think these things are way more important than an Asimov-esque story. (If I want a good SF story, I prefer Stanisław Lem anyway.) So, yes, the story serves its purpose.
No one is asking for a ridiculously deep story. SC was never supposed to be a huge explainable universe like Warcraft is, and I'm pretty sure everyone here knows it. From what I can understand, your point is basically "SC is supposed to be focused on the missions, so who cares about the story", and if that's the case, I'm sorry. Even a minor story used to give the player random missions can be charming and make sense. And as you can see here, a lot of us didn't like the silly story and that's going to be disappointing for us. And even with such a simple plot, a lot of us grew attached to certain icon characters, and waiting 12 years to see their personality and design being butchered, as well as ruining some of their deeds (Tassadar comes to mind) is simply not acceptable.
I'm not gonna accept any stuff they throw at me just because story isn't the focus. In our opinion, they didn't put enough effort into the story. We gave our reasons why, you just don't seem to accept them. You should really just stop camping this thread as we're never gonna agree with each other.
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while playing it for the first time i had a sense of deja vu the whole time, i still can't put my finger on it but wasn't the warcraft 3 story very similar to this? isn't the last protoss mission identical to something else out there? i'm guessing war3 but i don't really remember much about warcraft3 i didn't like it so much.
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United States22154 Posts
On February 03 2011 15:23 latan wrote:
while playing it for the first time i had a sense of deja vu the whole time, i still can't put my finger on it but wasn't the warcraft 3 story very similar to this? isn't the last protoss mission identical to something else out there? i'm guessing war3 but i don't really remember much about warcraft3 i didn't like it so much.
Blizzard loves last stand missions so its not surprising that the protoss last stand reminds you of mount Hyjal in WC3, they are very similar (even in the ascending map design). What I have major issues with is that this is looking more and more like WC3 minus arthas or the undead, if they do to zerg what they did to undead in TFT Im going to be majorly upset. I want my marines to be able to mow down the faceless hordes of evil that is zerg without worrying about weather or not that hydralisk had feelings or a family. Also for the record, prophecies are a halmark of poor storytelling I can see the blizard developers sitting there thinking "oh we dont know how to talk about the threat of the xelnaga or give any expositon on it, so lets just have a prophecy in there, that can explain everything"
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On February 02 2011 00:43 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2011 08:00 Grimjim wrote:
Not to mention the horrible number of plot holes, questionable motivation, role reversals and weak character development. This is the backside of a non-linear campaign. Most plot holes can be filled with assuming some untold parts of the story. If you want to have a deep story, you can Planescape Torment, a story-driven RPG. WoL is a mission-driven RTS. Considering this, I consider the story ok. The somewhat lose story elements with lack of continuity even help to let you experience the uncertain fate of the revolution.
If RTS plotline isn't supposed to be fun, interesting, engaging or anything, why does it have to be everywhere? Part of why SC1 plotline worked because it didn't treat itself like some biggest thing ever that needs attention at every turn.
I thought Serious Sam had a good plot in a way. The main objective of it is to take you into interesting arenas with crazy fights and all that. It doesn't try to be anything else. It ends up being a loose set of texts I actually enjoyed reading because they were voluntary, occassionally funny and suited the overall theme and all that. Not once the story screamed "LOOK AT ME, ZOOM IN AT ME".
Meanwhile SC2 storyline acts like a attention addicted teenage celeb. So much noise and fuzz, so little content or value.
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The story is still pure shit compared to SC1, the characters are bland (except Tychus and Protoss charas), the "romance" is godamned redundant, the story is broken up, there are so many faults in logic that it is plain obvious blizzard was rushed to present the campaign at a specific time.
What was it, they promised 60 campaign maps in the original release? We got a story that (even has an achievement for it) can be played in less than 8 hours. And this is a strategy game.
The gameplay is the best I've ever seen. But the story is a huge fucking subpar in comparisson to what Blizzard CAN do: We all know this, stop defending them they don't need defending because they're probably 100% aware they're selling out to appeal to a bigger audience. They're being capitalists and smart albiet soulless.
Story gets a 2/10 from me
Gameplay 9.5/10
TLDR: Why was SC2 advertised as a huge interstaller war, but all we did was be Space Pirates with a fucking Emo as captain whining about a woman. A universe at stake and he can't stop being a fucking crybaby.
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On February 03 2011 06:11 Tony Campolo wrote:
[F_]aths - you've obviously dug yourself a hole and decided fuck it, I'll just keep digging. Your replies to every single post in this thread are just getting desperate. Basically your position is - the story is 100% perfect and anyone who points out 1% of its crappiness must be rebutted until the storyline is viewed at 100% again. It is not my intention to mark the story as perfect or even nearly perfect. But I think it serves its purpose well.
On February 03 2011 06:11 Tony Campolo wrote:
The story is shit. When the cutscenes were leaked on YouTube I struggled to sit through them without getting so bored that I had half my attention diverted to other windows that were open. You could watch the Warcraft III cutscenes and not want to be doing anything else. They were fucking epic. SCII was just gayass Western cowboy cliche. And the side missions... Just makes you think - siiigh when can I get this part over and done with. SCII story sucks. The WC3 cinematics are great, yes. They are may be even greater than the WoL cutscenes. But the cutscenes in WoL (both rendered and pre-rendered) create a very good atmosphere. At least it worked for me – and still works.
I can wander around the ship and talk with Ariel if I keep her (procrastinate the Haven mission) and get some new info bits about this or that. Yes, I also see the sometimes inconsistent storyline because I have chosen a weird mission path. For example the mission where I transmit the broadcast to compromize Mensk was the last mission before I went to char – how can the story explain that Warfield was then a puppet of Arcturus Mensk and now works for his son and sides with me? But this is the price to pay for a flexible path through the mission tree.
I can live with that and still enjoy the story.
On February 04 2011 01:54 Krehlmar wrote:
TLDR: Why was SC2 advertised as a huge interstaller war, but all we did was be Space Pirates with a fucking Emo as captain whining about a woman. A universe at stake and he can't stop being a fucking crybaby. In my first playthrough I rushed through the last missions to get to the finale. As Jim Raynor carried Sarah in his arms, I had tears in my eyes. (At this moment I did not care about the fate of the universe, I only wanted them to kiss.)
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On February 03 2011 09:01 Fumi wrote:
No one is asking for a ridiculously deep story. SC was never supposed to be a huge explainable universe like Warcraft is, and I'm pretty sure everyone here knows it. From what I can understand, your point is basically "SC is supposed to be focused on the missions, so who cares about the story", and if that's the case, I'm sorry. If I play Starcraft (any installment of it) I always need much energy to maintain the suspension of disbelieve. There is much stuff which is physically impossible. On the top of that we get some weird plot developments. But I still consider the plot not to be worse than the SC1 or BW story even if it deviates from some things established in the previous games.
I dare to say this is the sacrifice we have to accept so that Starcraft can get into mainstream. I also hope that Blizzard uses the first SC2 episode as a vehicle to get more guys into the franchise and offer us more real story with the expansions.
I also take into account that this is the first Blizzard RTS with a non-linear campaign. They need to get accustomed to it. One cannot compare it with a novel or insisting that anything in the old manual is literally true. It could be the lore to commonly believed true at that time while it now turned out it is not exactly so.
On February 03 2011 09:01 Fumi wrote:
Even a minor story used to give the player random missions can be charming and make sense. And as you can see here, a lot of us didn't like the silly story and that's going to be disappointing for us. And even with such a simple plot, a lot of us grew attached to certain icon characters, and waiting 12 years to see their personality and design being butchered, as well as ruining some of their deeds (Tassadar comes to mind) is simply not acceptable. Yes, I also think that it was no smart move by Blizzard to revive Tassadar. I still hope that they somehow explain it without having Tassadar survived.
On February 03 2011 09:01 Fumi wrote:I'm not gonna accept any stuff they throw at me just because story isn't the focus. In our opinion, they didn't put enough effort into the story. We gave our reasons why, you just don't seem to accept them. You should really just stop camping this thread as we're never gonna agree with each other. I am convinced that they actually put alot of effort into the story (as I followed the Blizzcon story panels) but they did so without consulting the fanbase.
I had, no I still have a hard time to accept the WoL story to be canon in SC. My complaints mostly evolve about Tychus. For me, he does not feel right. The Tychus story line feels so forced for me.
But on the other hand, I also never liked "here is Jimmy" in SC1. Oh yeah this 'cool' guy. Now we are cool, too? And yeees, we are nonconformists, we mutiny! And ... oops, it turned out that the rebel leader is an asshole, too.
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whenever a story needs to be rationalized to be liked it usually means it's not being told properly.
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SC1 had an okay story, WoL had an okay story.
BW was awful. Every character except Kerrigan spent their time bashing their heads off a wall between SC1 and BW so they could be dumb enough for Kerrigan to 'manipulate'. The crystals in the Protoss campaign were nothing but another Artifact, but apparently that's okay because it's SC1. As soon as Duran talked you knew he was going to be a traitor, no suspense or anything. The UED steamrolls the Dominion in a few missions, and suddenly they enslave the Overmind (wait, where'd it come from? Oh, a sentence explanation explaining why. Cool) with.. medics. The Zerg campaign is just Kerrigan going, "You have to help me and my army of mutated monstrosities who wish to end all life in this sector stop the.. human organization from taking over!' "okay" "lol i trick u, wanna team up again" "lol k" "LOL TRICK U AGAIN" "KERRIGAN Y U DO THAT". At least TFT didn't have to force the "it's an RTS expansion, bad guys win" thing Blizzard loves.
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On January 23 2011 07:45 [F_]aths wrote:
I read the long, multi-posting contribution of a user in the Battlenet forums. I read many postings on TL which criticize Blizzard for a poorly written story. Blizzard must be proud of having fans who pay so much attention. But some fans forget to consider some important things.
You underestimate the intelligence level of us critics.
1) The story serves as a hub to get into the missions. Not the other way round. SC2 is still an RTS game, not a Warhammer 40000 RPG. Blizzard intentionally allowed some logical inconsistencies like the mechanics of the mission archive.
True Blizzard allowed those logical inconsistencies to happen but that's because the writing team has lost their way. The story elements in SC and Broodwar played a great deal into enhancing the gameplay experience. Warcraft's Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal were very much the same way. (I haven't played WC3)
A portion of that team that did Starcraft back then are doing the story now which is why I'm saying they lost their touch instead of saying this team is terrible. Companies like Bioware, and Bethesda have shown writing teams can handle making storylines that account for the random order in which hub style missions can be played.
2) Often, some official books are quoted to proof that some figure in the game acted wrong. But the games speak for them self and can be understood without reading any novel or even the short stories on the official SC2 page. Many franchises have a much deeper and complex story in their expanded universe.
Yes the games speak for themselves and the current game spits on the higher quality of its predecessor. Blizzard in 10 missions was able to weave a better storyline for the Terran faction twice than when they had around 30 missions available for them in SC2. Not only was the quality was higher SC2 greatly contradicts the sentiments of the main protagonist as exhibited at the conclusion of Brood War.
3) If someone cite a quote of a character of a previous game, they assume that the character spoke the truth. But the character could have been misinformed, or he could try to deceive you. May be the character forgot some things he said a long time ago. Cut him some slack, please!
For me It's more about setting standards about what the story is about. If you want to make a story about fate and prophecy then do so from the start. Don't shoe horn it in the sequel to a story that wasn't about anything but logical consequences of deliberate actions. Characters can lie but there exists too much substantive evidence to say they weren't or even couldn't such as the protagonist I just mentioned.
4) There will always be some small errors and some greater plot holes. This is true for almost any franchise. To be honest, I am really annoyed about many contradictions in the Star Trek universe, because I will never know what “truly” happened. But it is still an inspiring franchise.
True and everyone has their limits to how much their willing to ignore errors. Blizzard's writing team hasn't just made small errors. They rewrote thematic points and character motivations. They made artistic changes viewed as unnecessary or obnoxious. They've written their story in an apparently lazy fashion. The issue isn't small mistakes but Blizzard's writing team becoming hacks.
5) SC2 fails to explain why the Taldarim, a protoss tribe of a traditional faith, imprison Dark Templars, but use Dark Dragoons (aka Stalkers.) SC1 fails to explain why every terran faction has access to the same array of unit types. Some things are dictated by the demand of the gameplay and limits in the budget. Yes, Blizzard should have payed some more attention to those things. But one have to compare what they made wrong with the things they did right.
The number of things they did right storywise is very very small.
The mission design is excellent. <blah blah blah>
Blah blah blah. Very few are criticizing the missions themselves. We are smart enough to remove our displeasure with the story with our enjoyment of the campaign.
We have so fond memories of this stuff because we played it a long time ago. Not because it was actually so good. We just got used to it.
Actually it was good. Play the game again if you haven't done so in the last decade to five years you played it.
The prophecy branch also brings some fantasy / mystery / Warcraft feeling in the story. A good change from the all-metal environment on the Hyperion. If you don’t like it, just ignore it. Zeratul missions can be completely skipped. Blizzard gave you the mission freedom by a reason: Within some borders, you can create your own WoL story line. You also don’t have to decide to team with or kill Ariel or Gabriel. (Both have name of Angels … a coincidence?)
You really don't get what it means for a storyline to be ignorable.
I brought SC2 because of BW and I brought BW because of SC.
Because of SC2 WoL I have a good idea where HoTS is going and I won't purchase the game because of it. If my theory is confirmed by youtube (and it has been preemptively been confirmed by the leak that the writing team is borrowing too much from their experience in making the Warcraft storyline instead of trying to make distinct products) I won't by LoV either.
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I think Raynor had a change of heart in regards to Kerrigan (compared to his view at the end of BW) due to the prophecy missions. Remember that the whole prophecy timeline is what would happen should Raynor follow through with his emotions at the end of BW and kill Kerrigan (or allow her to be killed by Tychus). So now he's torn. The person he seemed to of fallen for in SC, then completely hated due to her actions in BW, now can potentially be saved AND that person is somehow the savior of the universe.
While I don't think WoL was the best of storytelling (too many cheesy 1-liners among other things. A few 1-liners is alright, but they were over-used imo) Raynor's actions seem plausible given the storyline.
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I loved WoL and had a lot of fun playing it.
I'm guessing a lot of people who waited 10 years for the sequel hyped it up in their minds and expected it to be some sort of divine fruit from the heavens, got a bit disappointed when they finally got their hands on it. It was one of, if not the best, game of 2010. Expecting no less from HotS.
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Regarding point number 3 -
I doubt Raynor just forgot that he swore an oath to kill Kerrigan after witnessing her betray and murder Fenix. I know I haven't. To me that was the defining moment of the whole story of Brood War - that Kerrigan was truly beyond all redemption no matter how much we wanted to believe she could still have a shred of good left in her.
The sad thing is this personal conflict would have led in so well to the over-arcing WoL plot that Raynor has to prevent her death to save the galaxy. The interaction of that plot mechanic with the state of their relationship at the end of Brood War would have been such a rich and complex story but instead they redirected Raynor's oath of vengeance toward Mengst to create a clear villain and gutted all of Kerrigan's character development from Brood War to get back to the love interest angle that was already resolved between the two characters when Raynor realized she had been manipulating them all along.
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Not sure why everyone is so up-in-arms about the story, I found it to be enjoyable if taken with a grain of salt. Then again, I bought the game for the online multi-player, so I didn't get too hung up on the story-line (though I thought Tychus was really fun to watch).
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On February 06 2011 23:21 Retrogamer wrote:
Not sure why everyone is so up-in-arms about the story, I found it to be enjoyable if taken with a grain of salt. Then again, I bought the game for the online multi-player, so I didn't get too hung up on the story-line (though I thought Tychus was really fun to watch).
That's the point. We all have different purchasing decisions.
My primary motivations was the storyline and the modscene. Getting something you enjoy from the modscene requires patience and isn't the direct responsiblity of Blizzard so they get a pass on most of the stuff they can't control there.
The story otoh was trash and made the game into an inferior product. Bnet 2.0 at launch up until two weeks ago was another kick in crotch because it was and in many ways still is inferior to bnet 1.0 but at least signs of improvement are showing.
OTOH signs of the storyline are that it is getting worse than even WoL and becoming a poorer rehash of World of Warcraft themes and plot points.
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On February 06 2011 18:38 Aknazer wrote:
I think Raynor had a change of heart in regards to Kerrigan (compared to his view at the end of BW) due to the prophecy missions. Remember that the whole prophecy timeline is what would happen should Raynor follow through with his emotions at the end of BW and kill Kerrigan (or allow her to be killed by Tychus). So now he's torn. The person he seemed to of fallen for in SC, then completely hated due to her actions in BW, now can potentially be saved AND that person is somehow the savior of the universe.
While I don't think WoL was the best of storytelling (too many cheesy 1-liners among other things. A few 1-liners is alright, but they were over-used imo) Raynor's actions seem plausible given the storyline.
Raynor has a picture of Kerrigan in the beginning of the story, making some lame remark when you press on it. Way before the whole prophecy story-arc.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On February 06 2011 21:34 Mulletarian wrote:
I loved WoL and had a lot of fun playing it.
I'm guessing a lot of people who waited 10 years for the sequel hyped it up in their minds and expected it to be some sort of divine fruit from the heavens, got a bit disappointed when they finally got their hands on it. It was one of, if not the best, game of 2010. Expecting no less from HotS.
Not really that hyped, tho yes I did expect it to be A LOT better than what we got... Not just better, I expected it to be a bit .... I m really struggling for words here, because I dont want to just write "a bit less terrible", but thats how I feel =/
I just felt like it occupied that terrible middleground where its taking itself seriously enough to not be something you go "oh, haha, sci/fi cliche making fun of itself", but also not good enough to actually do that... Blah.
I think a lot of it was the way you could choose mission order, but also how they choose to treat so many of the SC1 loose ends, that I was really looking forward to... But instead of getting something kinda dark/sci-fi:i everything felt like playing the WC3 campaign. And you know what? I loved the WC3 campaign, but its a fantasy setting, it just does not fit SC.
The #1 thing that bothers me tho, is when grown men in important positions act like retarded teenagers. Which was pretty much prevalent throughout the entire game -_- Also, the fight scene between Raynor and Tychus... It was embarassing man :/ That, and how they discover he has a fucking bomb strapped to him and then dont mention it again and just let him continue going on missions - man that was ridiculous.
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On February 06 2011 21:56 imJealous wrote:
Regarding point number 3 -
I doubt Raynor just forgot that he swore an oath to kill Kerrigan after witnessing her betray and murder Fenix. I know I haven't. To me that was the defining moment of the whole story of Brood War - that Kerrigan was truly beyond all redemption no matter how much we wanted to believe she could still have a shred of good left in her.
The sad thing is this personal conflict would have led in so well to the over-arcing WoL plot that Raynor has to prevent her death to save the galaxy. The interaction of that plot mechanic with the state of their relationship at the end of Brood War would have been such a rich and complex story but instead they redirected Raynor's oath of vengeance toward Mengst to create a clear villain and gutted all of Kerrigan's character development from Brood War to get back to the love interest angle that was already resolved between the two characters when Raynor realized she had been manipulating them all along.
This!
Also, the very end confused me big time (apart from the cheesy walk into the sunset thing):
As far as I understood the story, Sarah was important to the zerg as she gave them a free will, thus killing her would throw them back being simple tools of destruction as the Xel Naga had planned for them to be.
How is turning her back into a human being any better than killing her (apart from Raynor having a girl friend that way)?!
I'm really afraid that the next part ends with her being transformed back (poor Raynor has to let her go for the greater good) and then in the final chapter T,P&Z can fight (happily) united against the Xel Naga...
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WoW Jinro^^
Anyway,i wholeheartedly agree with the attitude of the OP,if not with his perspective.Its so annoying to read post after post of "I'm smarter,than the story" opinions,by people who missed half the character development of WoL and keep making assumptions about things the game just hints at.
Regardless,without antagonizing anyone(I've been in plenty of discussions on B-net over the plot and you cant convince anyone of anything,no more then you can change their very experience),i'll just present my own impressions.
After waiting half my adult life for the sequel,overall is was slightly disappointed.I mean after 12 years,you cant help,but to have different expectations,from what the final product presented.
1)I wanted the Breakout of the second interstellar galactic war,basically world war 3.And i wanted to experience that with all 3 sides and their respective protagonists.I do believe,that was the highlight of the original game,not the predictable and sometimes unbelievable story(of BW in particular),that however did make for some very dramatic if far-fetched moments.
The experiences of viewing events through the eyes of races,no beings,that couldn't be more different form one another,in every aspect of they existence.Their racial leaders had motives,in some cases so alien from those of ordinary humans.
That racial dynamic,that was complemented very well with the gameplay,over the fate of the known galaxy is what WOL unfortunately lacked significantly in.
2)And that led to my next disappointment.WOL was to much about the people and not about the races.Now,i normally dont mind character driven narrative,but thats not what i was expecting after 12 years.The original starcraft use characters as a platform,to explore each race.They were vessels,motivators for the interracial conflict.But the plot never stayed with any single character for to long.Instead it switched between different perspectives,in order to best illustrate the driving force behind each race.
In WoL were stuck behind the eyes of Raynor.And while he and Tychus do get a respectable character development,major Figures like Arcturus and Kerrigan are reduced to just passing,bland villains,that never get center stage.
Arcturus could have been doing a 1000 things in Wol,for all i know,but we were always stuck on the Hyperion.
3)Naturally the SCALE also suffers from this.The original encompassed the fates of trillions of beings across dozens of worlds.From the beginning,the player was placed in control of massive fleets and armies.From the Sons of Korhal(witch at the time was an interplanetary rebellion,with considerable resources),to the entirety of the Zerg Swarm,to Executor of the Protoss Fleet,to the massive Directorate Expeditionary force.
Outside of the Char assault,witch was half the Dominion fleet,constructed over the past 4 years,skirmishes in SC felt very tame,covert,basically insignificant.Even the conflict on Haven,was against a small protoss fleet and more a test of will,then a war.People keep saying they were pleased with the missions,is something that just cant help but to disagree with.They were to short and kept emphasizing the insignificant scale of the conflict.(plus i didnt find the gameplay that original anyway)
In the end,i was disappointed at the plot direction,although i honestly enjoyed the story itself.(for what it is,its good)
Its just,well,after so long,you want more of the same,just presented in top of the line graphics and CGI.I would have nothing against the character-driven story,if it came out 3 years after its predecessor.Thats why i liked ME2,i guess.It wasnt just more ME1.
One doesnt wait 12 years for a one sided personal perspective.I knew SC2 would be lacking the day they announced the racial split.75% of the experience is missing -no protoss,no zerg,not even the view point of rest of the Terran race.Sad thing is,you will never get that perspective back,for events will always be one-sided.Unless the have retroactive explanation in the sequels.
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Outside of that.Kudos Blizzard!!The online gameplay is fantastic.I was afraid,they were just going to keep old favorites,with the new units and tactics feeling tacked on and lame.Boy was i wrong.
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Though I felt the WoL story wasnt as good as SC 1, I still thoroughly enjoyed the campaign and its story.
That said, a lot of the arguments made in its defense remind me of the arguments made for the Star Wars prequels IE. he's trying to attract a new audience, they only seem bad cause you're older now etc etc.
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On February 07 2011 00:49 DennizR wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2011 18:38 Aknazer wrote:
I think Raynor had a change of heart in regards to Kerrigan (compared to his view at the end of BW) due to the prophecy missions. Remember that the whole prophecy timeline is what would happen should Raynor follow through with his emotions at the end of BW and kill Kerrigan (or allow her to be killed by Tychus). So now he's torn. The person he seemed to of fallen for in SC, then completely hated due to her actions in BW, now can potentially be saved AND that person is somehow the savior of the universe.
While I don't think WoL was the best of storytelling (too many cheesy 1-liners among other things. A few 1-liners is alright, but they were over-used imo) Raynor's actions seem plausible given the storyline. Raynor has a picture of Kerrigan in the beginning of the story, making some lame remark when you press on it. Way before the whole prophecy story-arc.
True, but also the prophecy arc is about what happens should he let her die. He could still have feelings for the old her (who he obviously had feelings for and had "shacked up with" in the words of Tychus) while hating and wanting to kill the current her. What I took away from the whole prophecy thing is that while he has conflicting emotions, ultimately he was going to let her die (either he would have killed her or let Tychus do it), and that the prophecy is what would happen should he follow through on that vow from the end of BW.
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Plot holes don't matter as long as they're minor. But: "damn, Jimmy, for the most wanted man in the sector, you ain't that hard to find," "tychus Findley, they let you out early for good behavior?" is retarded
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SC2 gave us Donny Vermillion and Kate Lockwell. I forgive everything. I loved those two. In fact, I was more excited to watch the next newscast than playing the next mission lol.
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The campaign isn't AS bad as people try to make it out to be. Sure it has many flaws, and yeah it did feel a bit rushed but it's sure as hell the best RTS campaign that I have ever played. I just hope that they make the missions feel like you are actually doing something in HoS. Do that and add some bad ass cut scenes and I'll be a happy camper.
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On February 09 2011 10:09 KevinIX wrote:
SC2 gave us Donny Vermillion and Kate Lockwell. I forgive everything. I loved those two. In fact, I was more excited to watch the next newscast than playing the next mission lol.
for me:
first time was funny, second time was alright, from then on it was all facepalm.
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i've been thinking too that in sc1 and bw, they make you feel part of it because they always address and talk to you as if you were another character that's part of it all (a commander, a cerebrate...). maybe that's another reason why the story is a little bit more immersive and a lot more charming. in WoL when the story unfolds you don't really exist.
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1) The story serves as a hub to get into the missions. Not the other way round. SC2 is still an RTS game, not a Warhammer 40000 RPG. Blizzard intentionally allowed some logical inconsistencies like the mechanics of the mission archive.
You're telling me Blizzard devoted an entire fucking department, the cinematic department, the size of in any other company would be an entire fucking studio, as a "Hub to do the missions"?
The Fuck. No, the Story in Unreal Tournament 2003 was a "Hub to make you play the deathmatches".
The Story in SC2 is meant not only as a hub, but as a motivator, to make you care about playing the missions, because you care about watching the plot development, and it failed at that unimaginably.
The rest of your points are basically strawmans because nobodies core criticism is some random inconsistency. Nobodies asking for a masterpiece here, but the plot of SC2 isn't even coherent.
So many design decisions make zero sense. If the plot is emotional centered around Kerrigan, then why does she only interact with Raynor in two missions prior? Shouldn't she be a core antagonist in the story? And because she wasn't, the ending was entirely meaningless because the story wasn't moving towards this conflict.
If you notice, every single mission in the Original SC moves the plot forward, so it creates a desire for the play to know more. Half the missions in SC2 are entirely tangential to the core plot. Random Mining missions? Or how about the fact that the core plot mover missions, the artifact missions, had absolutely zero plot value besides "We got another one", and there isn't even clearly established motive why your spending so much time pursueing them. The enemy you fight the most are Tal-Darim protoss, yet the game elaborates absolutely nothing about them, and then pretends the antagonist is someone else despite almost zero prior conflict with them. I literally know more about say, the Kel-Morian combine, from a single mission in SC1, then the Tal-darim, which I fought seven times.
I'm not even kidding, a six year old could write a better plot. The best written part of the entire SC2 campaign was the Zeratul missions, not because they were well written, but because they at least made logical and emotional sense.
The main problem I have with the criticism is that people refer to SC and BW as having much better plots and writing. As was pointed out, they were just as cliche.
It did. Look, the Video game genre isn't developed enough where titles like cliche are even relavent. As far as literature is concerned, everything in it is lowbrow. The point is that SC1 and BW and Wc3, had incredibly cliche plots that fulfilled there purpose as game design. The produced highly defined characters with memorable moments and motivated us to keep playing. The plot was at least coherent, we're not even talking about good by literary standards, just coherent as in everything makes some tangential level of sense.
I mean, after playing SC2, are there any memorable quotes? Any memorable characters (Maybe Tychus...maybe). Yet somehow I can still quote random characters from Wc3 despite having played that campaign once seven years ago.
I think its easy to dismiss SC2 plot criticism as being RPGtards who are expecting something they shouldn't even be expecting from games. It really isn't that. We're talking about a plot structure that simply doesn't even function as a working plot.
You know the Archetypal Summer Blockbuster? The one wrought with cliches, shallowness, and overuse of tropes and archetypes? That's Wc3 and Sc1. And thats fine. I'm not expecting philophical enlightenment from my strategy games, I'm expecting a working and "fun" plot that drives the story forward. SC2 is Trolls.
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On February 06 2011 13:34 mutantmagnet wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 07:45 [F_]aths wrote:
I read the long, multi-posting contribution of a user in the Battlenet forums. I read many postings on TL which criticize Blizzard for a poorly written story. Blizzard must be proud of having fans who pay so much attention. But some fans forget to consider some important things. You underestimate the intelligence level of us critics. I hope that I don't. The arguments from the critics are not false. But there are other arguments of at least same importance which require some compromise for an overall better game.
On February 06 2011 13:34 mutantmagnet wrote:
True Blizzard allowed those logical inconsistencies to happen but that's because the writing team has lost their way. The story elements in SC and Broodwar played a great deal into enhancing the gameplay experience. At that time it was great. Looking on it today I think it feels dated and not so great. The talking heads drive the story while the actual mission does little. We have some dialogue in the missions, but it still feels like another random mission (either a dungeon, a base raze or "hold 20 minutes".) The story itself is also not too interesting, at least this is my impression.
On February 06 2011 13:34 mutantmagnet wrote:
A portion of that team that did Starcraft back then are doing the story now which is why I'm saying they lost their touch instead of saying this team is terrible. Companies like Bioware, and Bethesda have shown writing teams can handle making storylines that account for the random order in which hub style missions can be played. An RTS works different than an RPG story. In WoL you play the missions, not the story. The story is an excuse for the next mission. The game you play is the upgrade or achievement metagame. In WoL the story still worked for me so that I was eager to see how it develops.
On February 06 2011 13:34 mutantmagnet wrote:The number of things they did right storywise is very very small. Haters gonna hate.
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On February 09 2011 10:09 KevinIX wrote:
SC2 gave us Donny Vermillion and Kate Lockwell. I forgive everything. I loved those two. In fact, I was more excited to watch the next newscast than playing the next mission lol. This particular news duo was especially hard for me too accept. How got Kate the job if she values freedom of speech that much? The Vermillion Live show is obviously a parody on Fox, I got this; it still feels out of place for me. They could have done so much more with the newscast: Instead of just commentating Raynor's last actions, they could have give us a glimpse of the surrounding world.
But the newscast is optional. With exception of the first one (where Raynor shoots the tv set) I can skip it entirely. However as I played the game, I missed no single news cast. They could have done this better but it was not that bad.
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On February 10 2011 11:37 Half wrote:Show nested quote +1) The story serves as a hub to get into the missions. Not the other way round. SC2 is still an RTS game, not a Warhammer 40000 RPG. Blizzard intentionally allowed some logical inconsistencies like the mechanics of the mission archive. You're telling me Blizzard devoted an entire fucking department, the cinematic department, the size of in any other company would be an entire fucking studio, as a "Hub to do the missions"? The Fuck. As a matter of fuck, I do.
Yes, the story also acts as a motivator. It worked for me. In SC1, I did not want to join Mensk in the first place. In WoL, I actually wanted to earn credits. And I wanted get back to Kerrigan. Blizzard did a good job with the "Ghosts of the past" trailer. They remembered me that I abandoned Kerrigan and that I am somehow responsible for her fate. They motivated me to bring Mensk down (ok, he is a tyrant, but he also seperated me from my gf!) and to save my red-haired princess.
For the most parts of the story I struggly to earn credits to upgrade my goliaths and other hardware. Then the entire revolution thing becomes irrelevant as we can side with the son of our arch enemy and use an unknown but powerful artifact to de-infest Kerrigan. This is weird, yes.
On February 10 2011 11:37 Half wrote:
If you notice, every single mission in the Original SC moves the plot forward, so it creates a desire for the play to know more. Half the missions in SC2 are entirely tangential to the core plot. Random Mining missions? Or how about the fact that the core plot mover missions, the artifact missions, had absolutely zero plot value besides "We got another one", and there isn't even clearly established motive why your spending so much time pursueing them. The enemy you fight the most are Tal-Darim protoss, yet the game elaborates absolutely nothing about them, and then pretends the antagonist is someone else despite almost zero prior conflict with them. I literally know more about say, the Kel-Morian combine, from a single mission in SC1, then the Tal-darim, which I fought seven times. Yes, this critique is legit. It does not rely on quoting SC1 manuals or novels but it spotlights some weaknesses of the WoL story.
I agree with the entire paragraph. Blizzard could have done this better.
The point is that SC1 and BW and Wc3, had incredibly cliche plots that fulfilled there purpose as game design. The produced highly defined characters with memorable moments and motivated us to keep playing. The plot was at least coherent, we're not even talking about good by literary standards, just coherent as in everything makes some tangential level of sense.
This is true for SC1 and WC3 without their expansion. In both BW and TFT I have the strong feeling that Blizzard already used up the entire story and quickly made something up.
In WoL I have the feeling that they endlessly changed the story to improve it, but due to lack of experience with the non-linear design they messed some things up.
On February 10 2011 11:37 Half wrote:
I think its easy to dismiss SC2 plot criticism as being RPGtards who are expecting something they shouldn't even be expecting from games. It really isn't that. We're talking about a plot structure that simply doesn't even function as a working plot.
You know the Archetypal Summer Blockbuster? The one wrought with cliches, shallowness, and overuse of tropes and archetypes? That's Wc3 and Sc1. And thats fine. I'm not expecting philophical enlightenment from my strategy games, I'm expecting a working and "fun" plot that drives the story forward. SC2 is Trolls. I would not go that far. WoL changed the tone of the story, from the gritty, dark SF to a western-in-space-story. I watched Clint Eastwood movies with an even sillier plot, but it worked.
May be - I haven't thought this out yet - it is because both some Clint Eastwood movies as well as the WoL story work more on an emotional level than on a reason.
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I could see that you might think WoL took it up a notch, but the SC1 terran campaign was already "western in space". In every video the humans talk/act like hicks. Zergling road kill, marines drinking booze with a nuclear cooler, etc. Then when you meet raynor it's "I'm Jim Raynor, marshall of these parts..." Then you're fighting the confederates will all sorts of civil war references.
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When compared to the quality of stories in other Blizzard games, the one in WoL falls firmly short of our expectations. It is far from the worst story ever written as many people here are suggesting, however, it certainly was FAR below the standard of quality we've come to expect from Blizzard. I sincerely hope that Heart of the Swarm can redeem Blizzard in that regard. Thankfully unlike most other developers, the game play in both SP and MP is awesome - personally I'd rather have a lackluster story and perfect game play then bad game play but an award-winning story.
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I feel the story is weaker with this 'fantasy' approach as it loses some of the true grit feeling the original held.
Just my .02c
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I thought WoL was good cheesy fun and I enjoyed it. However, I was left wanting more from the story, and I thought the ending was just lame. Maybe HoS and LoV will take the story farther and be less cheesy while retaining the good fun (and I don't really see how it could be any other way: playing as Zerg, we're not going to get the same sort of humour from playing with humans. It's gotta be darker, so maybe that sci-fi feel will be better). WoL was a disappointment, but not so much a disappointment that I regret playing it or buying the game
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On February 12 2011 03:17 SichuanPanda wrote:
When compared to the quality of stories in other Blizzard games, the one in WoL falls firmly short of our expectations. It is far from the worst story ever written as many people here are suggesting, however, it certainly was FAR below the standard of quality we've come to expect from Blizzard. I sincerely hope that Heart of the Swarm can redeem Blizzard in that regard. Thankfully unlike most other developers, the game play in both SP and MP is awesome - personally I'd rather have a lackluster story and perfect game play then bad game play but an award-winning story.
Not sure you you can say SC1/BW, the Dialblo games, or the Warcraft games have a higher standard. They all seem pretty average to me.
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i actually don't mind the inconsistencies and poor explanations in WoL, probably because the actual gaming experience is so fun. but also if you think about it, all the weak explanations raynor gets for why things are taking place throughout the story kinda make sense when you consider that the other characters driving the story (arcturus, valarian, tychus primarily) have more complicated motives than raynor. raynor is just an idealist that's starting to get worn out and tired, and his main drives are to set things right one way or the other. but the search for the artifacts - which from your perspective as raynor are a kind of a lazy, convenient plot device - is driven by the more complex motives of valarian, mengsk and tychus, all for different reasons. tychus lied to raynor the entire game, and valarian just used raynor. mengsk was using tychus to get close to raynor and ultimately kerrigan as well, and even though he wasn't in charge of the events that led to kerrigan being rescued (valarian was obviously), he had no qualms with taking advantage of the situation to try and have her assassinated.
combine all that with the secret mission which reveals some connection between mengsk and the hybrids which has yet to be explained, and basically you get this - WoL is setting up a lot of plot seeds which will be addressed in the next two expansions. raynor is a pretty simple guy with pretty simple goals. he's just in the middle of a lot of more overarching story elements which haven't been tied up yet. even though i liked following his personal struggle and the more character-based kind of story of WoL, i think the much more interesting plots will be followed up on in the next two campaigns. The hybrids, mengsk's involvement in them, what happens to kerrigan and the zerg, etc etc all still need to be addressed.
tl;dr version: basically i'm kind of a fanboy so i'm gonna like whatever they do more or less, but i honestly do think WoL was meant to set the trilogy up more than anything.
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Great post imo. I myself found the story way above average in games. And the campaign gameplay was just spectacular . Very impressive for an RTS.People seem to forget that this isnt a signle player RPG..
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On February 09 2011 10:09 KevinIX wrote:
SC2 gave us Donny Vermillion and Kate Lockwell. I forgive everything. I loved those two. In fact, I was more excited to watch the next newscast than playing the next mission lol.
yeah they were worth looking forward to so much more than how the main story continues for me as well
and thats a bad thing
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On February 12 2011 09:52 Cyber_Cheese wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2011 10:09 KevinIX wrote:
SC2 gave us Donny Vermillion and Kate Lockwell. I forgive everything. I loved those two. In fact, I was more excited to watch the next newscast than playing the next mission lol. yeah they were worth looking forward to so much more than how the main story continues for me as well and thats a bad thing
They needed a SCII version of Glenn Beck.
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I still don't know what happened to Duran.
No, Narud does not count.
The story was too cliche for my liking. Raynor starts with vengeance, then has a moment of epiphany, then rescues Kerrigan, his love. Ugh.
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It was a decent story, people who hate it need to do something other than watch TV and movies all day. That doesn't even make sense, but whatever
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If the leaked video from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=175349 is any indication the WoL story was drastically altered at least once.
Looks like the terran part of the trilogy was just to set the stage for the zerg and protoss parts, since almost nothing is resolved and has quite a bit of filler in it. But at least the missions were fun and varied and not just cycling between destroy base/defend base/get to the end of the dungeon with character X alive.
The only real gripe i have with the WoL story is that the ending of the tosh and colonist mini-arc endings had alternative endings. The ending where Ariel is infested and Raynor kills her makes perfect sense. While the one where Raynor defends the colony from the protoss(the actually good ones not the Tal'Darim),destroys several nexuses and a mothership with no hard feelings from the protoss and then we don't even hear anything from Ariel after that is just absurd.
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On February 12 2011 14:09 101toss wrote:
I still don't know what happened to Duran.
No, Narud does not count.
The story was too cliche for my liking. Raynor starts with vengeance, then has a moment of epiphany, then rescues Kerrigan, his love. Ugh.
Carebear land ftw! What? You don't like disney endings and prefer good stories like the dark one from the original starcraft with deception and betrayal? Gtfo!
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On February 12 2011 03:58 Lomak wrote:
I feel the story is weaker with this 'fantasy' approach as it loses some of the true grit feeling the original held.
Just my .02c The WoL story feels different, yes. As I saw the loading screen with the Mar Sara bar, I was happy to expect the same old stuff but with prettier graphics. But very soon it all was different. Too much cheap action movie dialogue. The story itself surely don't mark the pinnacle at story writing but was ok, I think.
But! In SC1 I never had much connection to the story during the mission. SC2 does a much better job here. In SC1 it is "Here is some text, even with voice over, now play the next mission". In SC2 I can chose how deep I want to get into the story. I can order many missions as I like. The trade-off is less consistency in the story, of course. I still prefer this over a fixed mission path.
On February 13 2011 00:10 Bhaalgorn wrote:
The only real gripe i have with the WoL story is that the ending of the tosh and colonist mini-arc endings had alternative endings. The ending where Ariel is infested and Raynor kills her makes perfect sense. While the one where Raynor defends the colony from the protoss(the actually good ones not the Tal'Darim),destroys several nexuses and a mothership with no hard feelings from the protoss and then we don't even hear anything from Ariel after that is just absurd. I find the Tosh ending where you side with Nova way more weird. Why would Raynor side with Dominion pet Nova? That entire cutscene felt like a bad joke. Sure, Tosh is somewhat mysterious, but then why letting him on the ship in the first place?
Not only that Raynor is ok with murdering Tosh, he does so with help from the Dominion?? And on the top of that, we get the voodoo puppet joke. Does voodoo magic works in the Starcraft universe or not? Mat Horner looks like Tosh lost his mind, an indication that voodoo is of course not working. But then it works on Tychus. It would have been funny if it "worked" just once, leaving the possibility that it was just a coincidence. But it appears to actually work.
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i was under the assumpton that immortals, not stalkers, were dragoons...
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On February 15 2011 09:08 Darkling5499 wrote:
i was under the assumpton that immortals, not stalkers, were dragoons...
well not really.. immortals were based on the dragoon exoskeleton
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On February 15 2011 11:32 Herper wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 09:08 Darkling5499 wrote:
i was under the assumpton that immortals, not stalkers, were dragoons... well not really.. immortals were based on the dragoon exoskeleton
The remaining Dragoons were upgraded to Immortals.
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Im pretty sure most of us bought SC2 for the multiplayer, not the single player.
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On February 16 2011 06:15 harDmug wrote:
Im pretty sure most of us bought SC2 for the multiplayer, not the single player.
I agree i mean most people like like to go to multiplayer instead of doing wol campaign(need spelling check!) mostl likely all the progamers in sc2 when sc2 was released.
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On February 16 2011 06:15 harDmug wrote:
Im pretty sure most of us bought SC2 for the multiplayer, not the single player.
Such a compelling argument in the Single Player thread. Give this man a prize!
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So basically you want us to not expect perfection from a game should be?
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On February 16 2011 15:55 strongwind wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 06:15 harDmug wrote:
Im pretty sure most of us bought SC2 for the multiplayer, not the single player. Such a compelling argument in the Single Player thread. Give this man a prize! #
Pedantic moron. I was replying to the fact people are saying "why would people buy this game when it has such a shit story"
-____-
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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.
Apparently you haven't read any of the Starcraft books...
As for the OP... The story kinda sucked. But, I expected it too. The idea was to get people on track of what happened in SC1 without going into a huge epilogue opening for the new people.
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moral of the story: If you're like the red shirt guy and quote lore, you're a geek.
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I very much enjoyed the single player campaign; the biggest criticism I can ascribe to it is that in their zeal to make Wings of Liberty a Big Deal, it wound up playing out like an epic.
In my memory, SC Vanilla and Brood War's story was enacted by a cast of characters who each had their own—mostly selfish—reasons for doing what they did. If a character joined a cause or faction, it was usually because it would benefit them, or because they had little choice. And it was the interactions of those characters and factions—sometimes acting in concert, more often butting heads—that made the story. I don't doubt that my memory is colored by nostalgia, but WoL seems to be trying a lot harder to be of epic scope. The characters have all settled comfortably into old archetypes, there's a damn prophesy now, and even a Big Bad that they'll have to eventually deal with.
I've read more epic fantasy novels than perhaps is healthy, and I don't have anything against the form in principle, but what I enjoy most are character-centric stories. I'll continue to enjoy the Starcraft II storyline with HotS and LotV, but I can't help but feel like Blizzard missed an opportunity.
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yeah, a big bad named "The Dark Voice"... real creative there Blizzard
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On February 17 2011 02:35 harDmug wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 15:55 strongwind wrote:On February 16 2011 06:15 harDmug wrote:
Im pretty sure most of us bought SC2 for the multiplayer, not the single player. Such a compelling argument in the Single Player thread. Give this man a prize! # Pedantic moron. I was replying to the fact people are saying "why would people buy this game when it has such a shit story" -____-
Actually, you weren't replying to anything! Just a single line thrown out into the thread without any reason or justification. I'm glad I could make you come back to clarify though!
And by the way, your use of the word "pedantic" in your reply is just so very ironic
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Personally speaking I just hate the use of prophecy as a storytelling device in anything, not just Starcraft. Using a 'Prophecy' raises a large number of questions for me:
Who made the Prophecy?
What gave them any credibility?
How were they able to foresee the future?
And a plethora of other questions that never get answered in rarely any storyline. Whenever I see a prophecy it reeks of bad storytelling, and when I saw: "The Zerg race came... as was foretold" I immediately became suspicious.
This isn't to say that a Prophecy can be used properly, but you need to take in account something seriously important. If you assume that someone is capable of seeing the future, you must also assume that this is common knowledge, enough so to be accepted by the general public. Therefore, you must question the fact that despite having been warned about the Zerg, the Protoss were still caught COMPLETELY off-guard by the attack, with the majority of the population having no idea what was happening. Instead of having listened to the prophecy from the very beginning and gathering their entire army, the Protoss were in the middle of a political power struggle and a modern-day witch hunt when the Zerg Swarm appeared.
My point is: Fuck prophecies as a storytelling device, they cause more problems than they solve.
Edit: Though I did have fun with the actual missions, I thought they did a great job. Especially loved that one where you have to Purge the Infestation.
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I'm completely ready to vindicate Blizzard for all the rest of the pitfalls in WoL's storyline if there's only a revelation that the prophesy was a false one, and one of the Big Bad's manipulations.
All of the crude, uninspired one-liners; all of the two-dimensional archetypes; even the introduction of a Grand Overarching Evil, all forgiven if they'd just nix the prophetic, Chosen-One-Against-Dark'n'Swirly-Evil vibe.
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On February 19 2011 01:23 HollowLord wrote:
Personally speaking I just hate the use of prophecy as a storytelling device in anything, not just Starcraft. Using a 'Prophecy' raises a large number of questions for me:
Who made the Prophecy?
What gave them any credibility?
How were they able to foresee the future?
And a plethora of other questions that never get answered in rarely any storyline. Whenever I see a prophecy it reeks of bad storytelling, and when I saw: "The Zerg race came... as was foretold" I immediately became suspicious.
This isn't to say that a Prophecy can be used properly, but you need to take in account something seriously important. If you assume that someone is capable of seeing the future, you must also assume that this is common knowledge, enough so to be accepted by the general public. Therefore, you must question the fact that despite having been warned about the Zerg, the Protoss were still caught COMPLETELY off-guard by the attack, with the majority of the population having no idea what was happening. Instead of having listened to the prophecy from the very beginning and gathering their entire army, the Protoss were in the middle of a political power struggle and a modern-day witch hunt when the Zerg Swarm appeared.
My point is: Fuck prophecies as a storytelling device, they cause more problems than they solve.
Edit: Though I did have fun with the actual missions, I thought they did a great job. Especially loved that one where you have to Purge the Infestation.
Ever consider that the Dark Voice, or whoever he is, planted the so-called "Prophecy" with the idea that some naive Protoss would find and adhere to it?
I agree that the Prophecy feels a tad out of place; however it fits in better with Protoss than any other race. There are still two more chapters to this incomplete story that can further elaborate on this prophecy.
Additionally, the argument with Tassadar not being dead and it retconning the events in SC1 is irrelevant. Tassadar himself never said in SC2 why he returned. Instead he changed the subject. This could also be a trick by the Dark Voice. Although I'm not betting any money that I'm right, it's still a good possibility. Consider what Tassadar was trying to say: the Zerg are not really the enemy and that they were being manipulated the whole time; saving Kerrigan is the key to the Protoss' and the universe's salvation based upon a questionable vision of the future by the Overmind. What...we're suddenly supposed to believe in a vision of the future by the Overmind?
Isn't the Protoss-Zerg hybrid created by melding a Protoss and a Zerg...? Didn't Tassadar slay the Overmind by channeling his light and dark templar energies (Protoss energies) in an attempt to neutralize and destroy the Overmind's (Zerg) energies? Could there be a possibility that the wills and bodies of the Overmind and Tassadar merged in the explosion creating some sort of super Hybrid? Who and what exactly is the Dark Voice? A fallen Xel'naga? A more intelligent hybrid? Are hybrids actually Xel'Naga?
We don't know because the story is not finished. We'll have to wait for two more expansions until we can finally rightly judge the story.
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I registered for the sole purpose of addressing this thread (though I might participate in the community in the future). I feel I should address some points made in this thread.
The prophecy.
The protoss as a race in starcraft have always been mysterious, the storytellers do a good job of explaining the least possible about them and their technology, skipping any unnecessary techno-babble. This is very effective for a race with such advanced technology as trying to explain it from a perspective a human would understand would only diminish it and cause outcries of "herp derp this isn't scientifically plausible". I see the prophecy as no different, it is no more fantasy than any other protoss abilities (mind reading by any psionic, psi storm and feedback are essentially more spells than science, etc). Infact, the prophecy is not even the doing of the protoss themselves, but an even more advanced civilization the Xel'Naga. They are as often pointed out of pretty much god-like power, and I see no reason for time to function the same way as it does to mortals and therefore no reason for the prophecy to not be accurate. I hope all these people saying how they're so knowledgable about sci-fi know what a universal civilization (the Xel'Naga are often described as transcending what we consider the universe) is capable of.
Tassadar:
As pointed out above, I am sincerely hoping though Tassadar isn't dead, he is not alive either, rather becoming something else caused by the massive energies he unleashed when he killed the overmind.
Tosh's Voodoo doll:
As a psionic I see no reason for this to be considered magic. He is merely using the doll to channel his abilities more effectively, and it is likely more of a gimmick (and a funny one, haters gonna hate).
The love story:
I found it rather cheesy as well, though it is but a part of Raynor's motives. I have no doubt that if he wasn't faced with an opportunity to save Kerrigan he would destroy her (though maybe not personally). What I do find as pretty bad is Raynor impulsively killing Tychus when he attempts to do the same to Kerrigan, his old friend as is reiterated time and time again. Bros before hoes? Was there really no room for talk?
All in all, the story is what I expected it to be. It should be compared to a movie not a book, and obviously a highly american one (as the terrans are depicted in such a way throughout the franchise). I don't even mind Arcturus not being overthrown, I never thought raynor would be capable of such a feat by himself (I predict he might be able to help valerian usurp the throne later on, though what would this really accomplish).
That being said, there are many many little things that they did wrong, the deus ex machinas and phlebotinums are everywhere. Protoss not being mad when you side with Ariel? Do motherships grow on trees? Also omniscient characters - Zeratul: "The great hungerer? Might it be refering to the Overmind?" (fucking leap of logic right there).
I expect the future 2 expansions will change the tone of the narrative to fit the other races and give a more complete feeling to the story, as I find WoL fits the terran theme but not that of the whole starcraft lore. As for comparing it to original SC story, you guys are just being irrational. It was good, but you are comparing the whole game to just one part of SCII trilogy (and knowing blizzard it won't stop there either, they'll milk it forever) and saying not enough things get done.
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On February 19 2011 01:23 HollowLord wrote:
Personally speaking I just hate the use of prophecy as a storytelling device in anything, not just Starcraft. Using a 'Prophecy' raises a large number of questions for me:
Well to me, prophecies suck simply because they are a convenient and boring way to railroad a story in a particular direction.
A lot of flavor from well-written characters comes from the fact that the story is driven by their own decisions and interactions. It's almost always more interesting to have a major event happen because of a personal decision rather than "because the prophecy said so". Raynor for example would have had much more development if his decision to save Kerrigan was decided by his own will rather than the fact that he had to do it because of a prophecy. We would have seen more of Raynor's inner conflict. We might have seen Raynor think back to when he promised to kill Kerrigan. Hell, we might have actually had Fenix be mentioned for once.
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To further address the Prophecy qualm, do not forget what Duran said at the end of the secret mission in BW:
Zeratul: "Have you any conception of what you've created here? Do you have any idea what this... this Hybrid is capable of?"
Duran: "Of course I do. This creature is the completion of a cycle. Its role in the cosmic order was preordained when the stars were young. Behold the culmination of your history."
This is the first hint of a prophecy, and it wasn't introduced in SC2.
It might also be interesting to note what Duran said just moments before this:
Duran: "No. Young Kerrigan could not have engineered this grand experiment. Although her rebirth into the Zerg Swarm has sped up my progress, I can assure you that this endeavor is quite beyond her narrow understanding."
So this implies one of two things:
-Blizzard slightly retconned this by instead making Kerrigan a wrench in the Dark Voice's plans (rather as an unforeseen, but beneficial situation).
-What I mentioned in an earlier post is correct in that the Overmind is again manipulating everyone to serve its own purpose.
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Final mission "All In"--"You'll pay for this treachery!" Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades.
What treachery? It's a copy and pasted villain line, but treachery actually means betrayal. I'm pretty sure coming to Char to kill Zerg wasn't a betrayal, it's simply TvZ in the Koprulu sector. It wasn't even Mengsk, who did betray Kerrigan, whom had since betrayed him anyway, but Raynor. The line was bad and doesn't make sense.
OP has some good points about people going to extremes to nit pick, but the story had some bad parts to it.
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Yeah, when Kerrigan said that I just realized that the whole mission I hadn't been listening to dialog written by a human, but instead random lines copy-pasted from the "Cliche Angry Villain Lines 101, first edition". How more lazy can one get than that?
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On February 26 2011 04:14 HungShark wrote:To further address the Prophecy qualm, do not forget what Duran said at the end of the secret mission in BW: Show nested quote +Zeratul: "Have you any conception of what you've created here? Do you have any idea what this... this Hybrid is capable of?"
Duran: "Of course I do. This creature is the completion of a cycle. Its role in the cosmic order was preordained when the stars were young. Behold the culmination of your history." This is the first hint of a prophecy, and it wasn't introduced in SC2.
It's embarrassing that this actually makes me feel slightly better about the prophesy. Downright shameful. :p
@HungShark and HarbingeR-2.0-: There is room in the canon for Tassadar's reappearance—I think it was Adun himself who first vanished mysteriously after channeling the khala- and void-energies at the same time, although why he hasn't popped up to deliver cryptic advice is anyone's guess.
I think what we're upset about—even if we don't identify it—is that the original Starcraft played out like a sci-fi story. It wasn't perfect by any means, but now Starcraft II is incorporating so many archetypes(many clichéd now) from traditional fantasy storytelling, and we're struggling with difficulties we never expected to have with a science fiction story.
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I don't think that actually makes the prophecy any better. It just sucks, period.
Besides, saying that something was "preordained" doesn't imply prophecy in the mystical sense of it. For example, one could be the leader of a large organization, and upon nearing the conclusion of a decades-long project say that the results had been "preordained" long ago, and it's often the case. That's the way Duran said it.
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Really, is the story that important?
What was so FAR WORSE in SC2 than in any other previous blizzard games, was the staging and how the characters acted.
Characters: One dimensional/flat. Cliche. Pretended coolness on the niveau of six year old childs.
Staging: Unsurprising, Hollywood type. Extremely predictable and embarassing to watch for adults imo. Trying to squeeze out a cool or epic feeling whenever possible, but remaining 100% transparent in the effort trying to act like that, thus it's just bad.
The story just becomes unimportant facing such deficiencies in presentation. While it's also just boring and normal and cliche, apart from all feelings how friggin far-fetched all of this is. ("Oh sure, there is a random artifact which existed since far before our times cleaning up this unique mutation" YEAH MAKES PERFECT SENSE -.-)
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On February 27 2011 03:40 teekesselchen wrote:
... apart from all feelings how friggin far-fetched all of this is. ("Oh sure, there is a random artifact which existed since far before our times cleaning up this unique mutation" YEAH MAKES PERFECT SENSE -.-)
Hmm, I just thought about it. At first I would've refuted you saying both the artifact and the Zerg were made by the Xel'naga, but now I remember its stated everytime that it's a Protoss artifact (though it looks Xel'nag-ish so it may just be terrans being ignorant). Still, these fragments were in the possesion of the tal'darim the whole time and not once did they try to use it, meaning they're either dumb and didn't know what it does (REALLY dumb since terrans could figure it out) or don't care about the zerg destroying most of their civilization and pretty much everything else.
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On January 23 2011 17:24 NSGrendel wrote:
Good storytellers do not off the most interesting and charismatic character at the end of the first act.
The demise of Tychus is fail.
You don't actually know if Tychus is dead. Raynor could have shot a very well placed shot into his transmitter w/ Mengsk? (*hoping)
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On March 01 2011 08:53 Temporarykid wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 17:24 NSGrendel wrote:
Good storytellers do not off the most interesting and charismatic character at the end of the first act.
The demise of Tychus is fail. You don't actually know if Tychus is dead. Raynor could have shot a very well placed shot into his transmitter w/ Mengsk? (*hoping)
Blizzard has specifically said that Tychus is dead. Hell, look at the single player screen after you beat the campaign.
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it's not that the Wings of Liberty of storytelling is bad. In fact, it's kinda good, and there have been far worse story telling from a lot more other RPGs.
It's just that for a game as great a caliber as SCII, i expected it to be better, like, maybe Battlestar Galactica-better.
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Even if the "Dark Voice" planted the prophecy and was posing as Tassadar who turns out is really dead... the whole thing still sucks. Just as bad.
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One thing about the "SC2's main focus is multiplayer so why do you care about the story" argument is actually valid: SC and BW were not really expected to be the biggest e-sport ever, if the word "e-sport" even existed or was commonly known among gamers back then. In other words, back then the story was more important because people were still playing most games offline. I hope HotS proves that wrong.
That's not to say Blizzard didn't make a lot of stuff on release of SC and BW that helped multiplayer (like LAN...), but to paraphrase their "humble" responses to some of their games' reception, the multiplayer "far exceeded their hopes and expectations."
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On February 26 2011 02:21 HarbingeR-2.0- wrote:
I registered for the sole purpose of addressing this thread Welcome to the TL community
On February 26 2011 02:21 HarbingeR-2.0- wrote:
I expect the future 2 expansions will change the tone of the narrative to fit the other races and give a more complete feeling to the story, as I find WoL fits the terran theme but not that of the whole starcraft lore. As for comparing it to original SC story, you guys are just being irrational. It was good, but you are comparing the whole game to just one part of SCII trilogy (and knowing blizzard it won't stop there either, they'll milk it forever) and saying not enough things get done. Yes, I also think that WoL suits the terran faction. While I not agree with many of Blizzards decisions about the story, the overall campaign experience – including the story – was good. May be not as über-great we have expected, but I don't feel ripped off.
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On February 26 2011 06:45 Ansinjunger wrote:
OP has some good points about people going to extremes to nit pick, but the story had some bad parts to it. Yes, there is no denying that the story has some weird parts which could have done better.
I think it is ok to be picky about retconning, plotholes and other issues. But the story knowledge the nitpickers possess is not as clear and defined as they think. They make a lot of assumptions to connect the dots and reason from there.
I am still waiting for a fan-made campaign which not only impresses by the mission design and effort they put it, but actually has a story which is widely considered well-written. If the SC1 story is that good, fans could remake the SC1 campaign. I wonder if the audience would conclude that those remade SC1 story would be overall better than the actual WoL campaign.
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arguing purpose of crappy writing is different from arguing that there is quality of writing. you've only managed to do the first. crappy writing is still crappy. regardless of purpose.
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Hate to disappoint you dude but that was drawn in 1997, so was most of his other stuff. Metzen worked on BW too you know.
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For SC1 single player, Metzen was much more involved than he was for SC2 single player.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.sonsofthestorm.com/images/metzen/StarCraft_Metzen003b.jpg)
