EPTWords of the Worlds – What Starcraft Lore Means To Me
by Zarepath
+ Show Spoiler +
Professionals probably balk at mainstream coverage of Starcraft wherein journalists describe a game where “there are three different alien armies that fight each other, and you are one of their commanders.” My imagined refrain is always along these lines: “This isn't effing Dungeons and Dragons, lady. Don't rope is in with that ilk. Starcraft is a game of intense strategy and tactics, much like chess!!!!11onez” But frankly, if that were the only important aspect of Starcraft, then we would all just play chess.
The fantasy element of Starcraft, its universe, worlds, cultures; its fiction, its story – in a word, its lore – is what brought us all to the game's strategy. While it's not nearly the intellectual exercise of Starcraft's actual game, it's the white rabbit that we chased down into that wild, twisting hole. Starcraft's story has brought us all somewhere—whether perfecting openings on ICCup, or late nights at a friend's trying to beat the last level of Brood War without cheats, or embarrassingly long games of Big Game Hunters, or so on.
This is about where Starcraft's story took me.
When I was growing up, my mother would read aloud to me and my older sister each night. We took turns reading pieces of The Hobbit. Because I was still learning to read, we'd skip my turns for the majority of the story. But by the time Bilbo was creeping cautiously into Smaug's den, I was launching those words from the page into the air like fireworks.
My parents nurtured and raised me with books: the Prydain Chronicles, the Giver, Ender's Game, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Chosen, the Foundation series, Dune, Sphere, countless more. But I never cared as much about these foundational stories as I cared about the Starcraft universe.
Needless to say, if I'm posting this at a Team Liquid forum, then I was fairly anti-social growing up. I read my books, and I also spent a considerable amount of time with church activities and doing intense algebra problems as part of a math program called Kumon. I was an odd, excited kid who was prone to bouts of randomness, who was slowly becoming more and more reserved in the face of a teenage peer group. I wonder how important an adventure Starcraft was for me at that time.
Every few years, I go back and replay those campaigns--not necessarily because they're fun or challenging, but because I want to feel thirteen again. I want to gasp at Kerrigan's treachery and gape at Fenix's death(s), to feel the weight of desperation as I try to kill the Overmind. Most of all, I want to remember feeling as if I were in another universe, where epic struggles occur and I am (in two senses) a player. Surely, there would be more to this universe?
Let me introduce you to a community whose memory I'll treasure for years to come: the Starcraft campaign community.
I wanted more story, and the first thing I found was a third-party sequel to the Brood War levels, something called War of the Tribes. The levels were hard, for me, but most importantly the story was ambitious. Artanis and Zeratul struggled with the disintegration of their race and other conflicts equal to those of Brood War, and more complex. I found that all kinds of people were experiencing what I was: a desire for more of this persistent scifi universe. Creative, ambitious people took to the task of creation, people like Desler and Auspex, whose stories sidle right up next to the Brood War canon in my mind.
The campaigns were, by and large, the standard fare of campy scifi: clones, infested reincarnations of protagonists, conniving rogue cerebrates (you could almost see the top hats), resurrected dragoon heroes, Fenix coming back from the dead (again), clumsy attempts at explaining the Xel'Naga, and the obligatory ghost hero. One campaign rose above these, though, and that was The Antioch Chronicles.
The Antioch Chronicles were the most professional levels created outside of Irvine. Others could never quite emulate Auspex's quality of sound editing and voice acting, and as it went into its second episode, the ambitious writing and plotting of ZeusLegion. If people as talented as they found it worthy to dedicate hours of their lives to extend the Starcraft universe, maybe it made sense that me and many others found it worthwhile to populate the Antioch Chronicles forum and eagerly speculate as we awaited the third installment. We theorized, played games together, had our own IRC channel, and even collaborated on our own forum stories. Yes, that's correct: we wrote fan fiction about fan fiction.
Those familiar with TAC know that Auspex gave up on Thoughts in Chaos after nearly 4 years of “production updates” and audio clips. He'd gone to college, got a girlfriend, and started a fairly involving progressive rock band called Paradigm Blue. In the end, ZeusLegion announced that episode III would never be, and posted its entire script, a wonderfully written piece that, if paired with the engine of Starcraft itself, would've been amazing.
But, it was never paired. As a forum, we remained for over ten years, and still do despite the lack of our mother content, mostly acting as a postmodern, cynical crew of 80's offspring. But as we waited for Thoughts in Chaos, we engaged in our own projects. A Canadian named Codebreaker and I spearheaded the story writing for our own campaign, Armageddon's Call. We had rebellions, treacheries, weaponized plagues, insane cerebrates, cliffhangers, and a female firebat hero. Brainstorming that campaign with Codebreaker was one of the coolest experiences that Starcraft's ever given me.
Needless to say, our team never finished the darn thing. And while there's still bitterness about how Auspex never finished TAC, it's easy to understand. It's easy to understand how the inception of an idea, of a story can capture your imagination as easily as the description of Smaug's lair did me, and how something so fantastic just can't be fully realized. It's easy to understand how, really, everything I just detailed is nothing but interactive fan fiction; and once you're in college, you have to study, you have to have a real life and a girlfriend and a progressive rock band.
I went to college and majored in English, reading literature and learning how to write short stories. I wrote some fairly hoity-toity papers about Keats and Coleridge, learned why Titus Andronicus is actually awesome, and said crap like “narrative” and “hegemony” on a daily basis. I studied Hemingway and O'Connor's stuff—y'know, real stories.
Then Starcraft 2 was announced.
All of the sudden, there was a burst of activity at the Antioch forum, a place which is usually a mix between a morgue and a bad comedy club. We'd all popped in every now and then, but we all remembered what really brought us together, what chained us together as complete and utter nerds: the story of Starcraft.
And so when Auspex comes around and says he's thinking about doing an Antioch Chronicles for Starcraft 2, we all roll our eyes and say “So does this count as Production Update #5?” And yet, we're still intrigued, us 20-40 year-old men, returning from a real, sprawling life experience to the magically preserved science fantasy of Starcraft.
My mother eats libraries for snacks, which is a cooler way of saying that she reads a lot. She's read almost every piece of great English literature, but her favorite book is still and always the Lord of the Rings. She first read it when she was a young teenager, trying to figure herself out, the things she wanted to do, who she was going to be. The struggle of good against evil resounded so strongly and emotionally for her, that she has read it every three years since. It's a story that, at this point, not only reminds her of the importance of doing right things and facing dark times with courage, but also of herself, and the journey she's taken in this life.
Every now and then I go back and replay those Starcraft missions, including the Antioch Chronicles, and not because they're fun or challenging, but because I want to remember the story. I want to remember myself from the formative years of my life, and how I cared so much about something I loved.
Starcraft 2 won't energize the Antioch Forum nearly as much as the first stories did; those were the stories that raised us, inspired us and kicked us out of the nest. But it reminds us of something precious that we once had, and still carry with us, in a way. While my English degree lets me know how very derivative and awful a lot of Starcraft's story actually is, it doesn't really matter to me at all. All my English major got me was a higher brow, while Starcraft gave me a love for story.
The Starcraft universe is a part of my life, the same way that certain stories are parts of other people's lives. The slow-rolling dialogue, the crisp voice acting—those are the words that not only shaped the fictional worlds of Koprulu, but worlds of imagination in a young nerd in Oregon.
So when you're debating the merits of a 2 gate opening or a 14 hatch, remember that there's a Starcraft universe, that Day[9] used to name his marines, that all of us at one point were giddy kids who saw an alien with glowing blades attached to its wrists and went, “Cool!”
Hopefully, Starcraft 2 doesn't just shove a retcon samurai sword through our faces. Hopefully, when Starcraft 2 comes out on Tuesday, its universe, its worlds will be alive and well, and that for some teenager out there, it'll make fireworks.
The fantasy element of Starcraft, its universe, worlds, cultures; its fiction, its story – in a word, its lore – is what brought us all to the game's strategy. While it's not nearly the intellectual exercise of Starcraft's actual game, it's the white rabbit that we chased down into that wild, twisting hole. Starcraft's story has brought us all somewhere—whether perfecting openings on ICCup, or late nights at a friend's trying to beat the last level of Brood War without cheats, or embarrassingly long games of Big Game Hunters, or so on.
This is about where Starcraft's story took me.
When I was growing up, my mother would read aloud to me and my older sister each night. We took turns reading pieces of The Hobbit. Because I was still learning to read, we'd skip my turns for the majority of the story. But by the time Bilbo was creeping cautiously into Smaug's den, I was launching those words from the page into the air like fireworks.
My parents nurtured and raised me with books: the Prydain Chronicles, the Giver, Ender's Game, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Chosen, the Foundation series, Dune, Sphere, countless more. But I never cared as much about these foundational stories as I cared about the Starcraft universe.
Needless to say, if I'm posting this at a Team Liquid forum, then I was fairly anti-social growing up. I read my books, and I also spent a considerable amount of time with church activities and doing intense algebra problems as part of a math program called Kumon. I was an odd, excited kid who was prone to bouts of randomness, who was slowly becoming more and more reserved in the face of a teenage peer group. I wonder how important an adventure Starcraft was for me at that time.
Every few years, I go back and replay those campaigns--not necessarily because they're fun or challenging, but because I want to feel thirteen again. I want to gasp at Kerrigan's treachery and gape at Fenix's death(s), to feel the weight of desperation as I try to kill the Overmind. Most of all, I want to remember feeling as if I were in another universe, where epic struggles occur and I am (in two senses) a player. Surely, there would be more to this universe?
Let me introduce you to a community whose memory I'll treasure for years to come: the Starcraft campaign community.
I wanted more story, and the first thing I found was a third-party sequel to the Brood War levels, something called War of the Tribes. The levels were hard, for me, but most importantly the story was ambitious. Artanis and Zeratul struggled with the disintegration of their race and other conflicts equal to those of Brood War, and more complex. I found that all kinds of people were experiencing what I was: a desire for more of this persistent scifi universe. Creative, ambitious people took to the task of creation, people like Desler and Auspex, whose stories sidle right up next to the Brood War canon in my mind.
The campaigns were, by and large, the standard fare of campy scifi: clones, infested reincarnations of protagonists, conniving rogue cerebrates (you could almost see the top hats), resurrected dragoon heroes, Fenix coming back from the dead (again), clumsy attempts at explaining the Xel'Naga, and the obligatory ghost hero. One campaign rose above these, though, and that was The Antioch Chronicles.
The Antioch Chronicles were the most professional levels created outside of Irvine. Others could never quite emulate Auspex's quality of sound editing and voice acting, and as it went into its second episode, the ambitious writing and plotting of ZeusLegion. If people as talented as they found it worthy to dedicate hours of their lives to extend the Starcraft universe, maybe it made sense that me and many others found it worthwhile to populate the Antioch Chronicles forum and eagerly speculate as we awaited the third installment. We theorized, played games together, had our own IRC channel, and even collaborated on our own forum stories. Yes, that's correct: we wrote fan fiction about fan fiction.
Those familiar with TAC know that Auspex gave up on Thoughts in Chaos after nearly 4 years of “production updates” and audio clips. He'd gone to college, got a girlfriend, and started a fairly involving progressive rock band called Paradigm Blue. In the end, ZeusLegion announced that episode III would never be, and posted its entire script, a wonderfully written piece that, if paired with the engine of Starcraft itself, would've been amazing.
But, it was never paired. As a forum, we remained for over ten years, and still do despite the lack of our mother content, mostly acting as a postmodern, cynical crew of 80's offspring. But as we waited for Thoughts in Chaos, we engaged in our own projects. A Canadian named Codebreaker and I spearheaded the story writing for our own campaign, Armageddon's Call. We had rebellions, treacheries, weaponized plagues, insane cerebrates, cliffhangers, and a female firebat hero. Brainstorming that campaign with Codebreaker was one of the coolest experiences that Starcraft's ever given me.
Needless to say, our team never finished the darn thing. And while there's still bitterness about how Auspex never finished TAC, it's easy to understand. It's easy to understand how the inception of an idea, of a story can capture your imagination as easily as the description of Smaug's lair did me, and how something so fantastic just can't be fully realized. It's easy to understand how, really, everything I just detailed is nothing but interactive fan fiction; and once you're in college, you have to study, you have to have a real life and a girlfriend and a progressive rock band.
I went to college and majored in English, reading literature and learning how to write short stories. I wrote some fairly hoity-toity papers about Keats and Coleridge, learned why Titus Andronicus is actually awesome, and said crap like “narrative” and “hegemony” on a daily basis. I studied Hemingway and O'Connor's stuff—y'know, real stories.
Then Starcraft 2 was announced.
All of the sudden, there was a burst of activity at the Antioch forum, a place which is usually a mix between a morgue and a bad comedy club. We'd all popped in every now and then, but we all remembered what really brought us together, what chained us together as complete and utter nerds: the story of Starcraft.
And so when Auspex comes around and says he's thinking about doing an Antioch Chronicles for Starcraft 2, we all roll our eyes and say “So does this count as Production Update #5?” And yet, we're still intrigued, us 20-40 year-old men, returning from a real, sprawling life experience to the magically preserved science fantasy of Starcraft.
My mother eats libraries for snacks, which is a cooler way of saying that she reads a lot. She's read almost every piece of great English literature, but her favorite book is still and always the Lord of the Rings. She first read it when she was a young teenager, trying to figure herself out, the things she wanted to do, who she was going to be. The struggle of good against evil resounded so strongly and emotionally for her, that she has read it every three years since. It's a story that, at this point, not only reminds her of the importance of doing right things and facing dark times with courage, but also of herself, and the journey she's taken in this life.
Every now and then I go back and replay those Starcraft missions, including the Antioch Chronicles, and not because they're fun or challenging, but because I want to remember the story. I want to remember myself from the formative years of my life, and how I cared so much about something I loved.
Starcraft 2 won't energize the Antioch Forum nearly as much as the first stories did; those were the stories that raised us, inspired us and kicked us out of the nest. But it reminds us of something precious that we once had, and still carry with us, in a way. While my English degree lets me know how very derivative and awful a lot of Starcraft's story actually is, it doesn't really matter to me at all. All my English major got me was a higher brow, while Starcraft gave me a love for story.
The Starcraft universe is a part of my life, the same way that certain stories are parts of other people's lives. The slow-rolling dialogue, the crisp voice acting—those are the words that not only shaped the fictional worlds of Koprulu, but worlds of imagination in a young nerd in Oregon.
So when you're debating the merits of a 2 gate opening or a 14 hatch, remember that there's a Starcraft universe, that Day[9] used to name his marines, that all of us at one point were giddy kids who saw an alien with glowing blades attached to its wrists and went, “Cool!”
Hopefully, Starcraft 2 doesn't just shove a retcon samurai sword through our faces. Hopefully, when Starcraft 2 comes out on Tuesday, its universe, its worlds will be alive and well, and that for some teenager out there, it'll make fireworks.
