Hello guys, patch 2.0.4 is coming soon and Blizzard are updated profile pages, where we can see new portraits, achievements, rewards and other things. Now we got 50+ new portraits and tons of new story achievements, which are very interesting to read if you're not afraid of spoilering story. Here are all new and some old portraits from Collector's Editions, leveling and campaign.
Leveling portraits
Collector's Edition and Blizzcon portraits
Campaign portraits.
Here is my small fanart. This is recreated portrait of Emil Narud, using small 100x100 pixels portrait and basic Narud portrait from Wings of Liberty. I've decided to design it similar to Kerrigan's purple artifacts on the face, or Illusive Man's blue artifacts from Mass Effect 3.
What we know from Starcraft: Flashpoint is that Emil Narud have Xel'Naga artifact which dezergified Queen of Blades back to Sarah Kerrigan. This artifact also can kill any Zerg and Protoss DNA and can be massive weapon against those two races. How it will go - we will see, but I hope, it will be really great or just epic story.
Click to see bigger version.
Here is other part of datamine materials under following spoiler
All new unit skins. As you can see, Protoss got only two skins because of no Collector's Edition skin from Legacy of the Void. Also Overlords will have antennas, zerglings - bigger wings, Marines - Mercenary attachments, Zealot will have dark zealot skin, Pylon and Supply Depot will have something new too.
All new dances you will recieve when reaching different levels:
Marauder (available by default)
Ghost
MULE
Viking
Queen (available by default)
Roach
Overlord
Infestor
Immortal (available by default)
Stalker
Oracle
Colossus
All new decals that you will recieve when leveling, purchasing Collector's Edition, or other achievements like Blizzcon or something like that.
Remember. Some of that information can be a bit uncorrect and outdated.
Infested Stukov is back and will lead Infested Swarm in one of the Swarm missions.
We will have 20 missions: beginning on Umoja and ending on Korhal:
Umoja - 3 missions
Char - 3 missions
Kaldir - 3 missions
Zerus - 3 missions
Skygeirr platform - 3 missions
Space missions - 2
Korhal - 3 missions
In Umoja missions we will fight against Dominion. We also will try to escape Umoja Labs. What we've seen in trailer with Nova invasion is the campaign beginning. In Rendezvous mission we must destroy Dominion structures before Naktul Brood arrives. Valerian portrait is the reward for completing these missions.
On Char we will fight against Za'Gara, second mission - against Terrans on Char and special Gorgon Battlecruiser. Third mission is against Warfield himself on Char too. Za'Gara portrait is the reward for Char missions.
On Kaldir we will play mission with freezing structures and units (you saw in preview), next mission - Shoot the Messenger (we will try to kill all escaping Protoss ships), and third mission will allow us to control Giant Ursadon. Reward for Kaldir missions - Lasarra portrait (woman Protoss which infested by larva in trailer)
On Zerus we will fight against Primal Zergs. First mission will be around killing Primal Hives. Second one - Kerrigan's cocoon defending and fight against Tyrannozor, and in third mission - fullscale invasion with achievement "Kill 500 units". Reward for Zerus missions - Dehak portrait.
Skygeirr Platform - these three missions with Infested Stukov portrait as reward, will tell us about leading Infested Swarm. In second and third missions in this category we will fight against Hybrids.
Space missions will be with hyperion Battlecruiser. First mission is about collecting minerals and avoiding mines. Second mission - I don't understand what it will be, but one of achievements is don't lose more than 50% of Kerrigan's health.
And last portion of 3 missions will be on Korhal. In first mission we must destroy Augustgrad gates, in second mission we will control Dehak monster, third mission achievements are about saving Hyperion from death (achievement called "Swarm Guardain") and killing Odin before Mengsk sends it to Raynor's forces.
Complete the Umoja Missions in the Heart of the Swarm campaign - Valerian Mengsk portrait http://i.imgur.com/TqW01tN.jpg
All other achievements are from WOL
Here are icons of all HOTS story achievements. Click to enlarge
Here are screenshots of all HOTS Story achievements
The most complete datamine with all media (soundtrack, loading screens, textures, videos, icons, achievements, etc) around Heart of the Swarm you can find in this thread
korhal... all the mission objectives ._. and why are there those stupid missions like collecting minerals? i mean they only have 20 missions and such a waste...
^my grandmother could create a better scenario
@Plexa ikr let us all drawn in our tears *hug*
i'm afraid. but still, back on 27th of july 2010, i knew the WoL ending before playing "liberation day" the first day lawl.
i thought about a fullscale invasion of korhal but that was kinda the 1st and 2nd mission. also we can control this werid looking thing you said. accessoir from zerus?
On February 20 2013 04:15 Denda Reloaded wrote: + Show Spoiler +
i thought about a fullscale invasion of korhal but that was kinda the 1st and 2nd mission. also we can control this werid looking thing you said. accessoir from zerus?
i know. the point is that tyranazor is at least "known" (i thought the big thing was zurvan) and yeah. dehak is the really weird looking thing. do you know anything more about it? also your information about the missions is really vague.that's good, as it could only be side-objectives
btw i can assure that the first achievement i will unlock is "fashion statement". showcasing that heels, yeaaaahaaaa!!!1
On February 20 2013 04:28 Denda Reloaded wrote: + Show Spoiler +
i know. the point is that tyranazor is at least "known" (i thought the big thing was zurvan) and yeah. dehak is the really weird looking thing. do you know anything more about it? also your information about the missions is really vague.that's good, as it could only be side-objectives
btw i can assure that the first achievement i will unlock is "fashion statement". showcasing that heels, yeaaaahaaaa!!!1
yeah surely the art department was on crack while they have been designing this. but yeah, that is the thing i meant.
also, the gameplay trailer back then (january) showed a cgi cutscene of a dropship landing (which was ingame-graphics back then at blizzcon) can it be the umoja storyline? the planet looks nothing like the ones listed for the missions. probably a flashback? tarsonis again (when kerrigan gets down to the planet)???
@Existor from trailers and tilesets: we have this huge platform over Augustgrad. do you know in which of the missions it will be? the first one is on the surface i guess.
On February 20 2013 05:06 Denda Reloaded wrote: @Existor from trailers and tilesets: we have this huge platform over Augustgrad. do you know in which of the missions it will be? the first one is on the surface i guess.
I think, there will be more than one platform type.
wtf.. I hope the lings don't actually get a new skin with wings on them. That's going to be really confusing to know when zerglings get speed when they aren't moving.
Potentially super disappointed. Argh. I think this 3 game arc makes for a weaker storyline than the sheer epic scope of SC and BW's campaigns. SC2 is a much much better campaign but the story is so much worse
On February 20 2013 05:13 Denda Reloaded wrote: the fast-flying one that is in the yellowish atmosphere was supposed to be skygeirr? correct me if i'm wrong. but you kinda didn't get my point.
That fast-flying probably will be escape on the ship from Umoja. Skygeirr platform can be those yellow platforms over yellow fog areas, who knows. Really I don't know. Maybe we haven't seen them
first of the korhal missions is the destruction of the gates, which is on the surface of korhal, not the platform. thus i asked you if you know when the mission (if there is any) will take place
basically: which mission will be set on this platform? afaik it really is korhal, but if it is it makes no sense, logically
There will be 3 missions on Korhal. One of them definely will take place "in space" over Korhal. Remember moment from trailer with Mutalisks and Battlecruisers over Korhal cities?
but wouldn't it be more logical firstly attacking the platform, as there they are a defence and you can't dodge them if you want on the surface, and then the city on the ground itself? not the other way around, landing on a planet and then going back to orbit. that was my point.
high hopes for final mission :OO btw i thought these screens are kinda multiplayer, not from a mission.
also, from the blizzcon trailer, we see kerrigan standing on some desert-like tileset and it's raining drop pods. is this the rendevouz mission? also, how did she make contact with the zerg?
it shows how many missions are where but it doesn't show on what locations it takes place. you only can guess. i mean the achievements help nowhere. okay i think you got me wrong or i got you wrong. sorry
On February 20 2013 06:09 Denda Reloaded wrote: it shows how many missions are where but it doesn't show on what locations it takes place. you only can guess. i mean the achievements help nowhere. okay i think you got me wrong or i got you wrong. sorry
Just look at buttons at left side. They all are featuring which locations every mission takes place. Aka Char missions, Umoja missions, etc
the problme is that not all kaldir missions take place on kaldir etc. one is one a spaceship, while 2 are on kaldir. for korhal we have the city and wastes + platform. for char we have the acid marshes and warfields fortress. do you understand?
for char we have the acid marshes and warfields fortress. do you understand?
I understand and a bit tired at discussing where those missions will be, because I've already ruined some fun from campaign and don't want to do that more.
So right now it is no matter where we will be, I know it will be interesting and fun to play, so I don't care, where it will be.
i ruined everything but still i need to burn the last walls to the ground. but sorry
If you can extract something more from achievements, post it here. Right now it's what we have about campaign. HOTS resources are encrypted inside MPQE files, so it's not possible to open or view them.
@existor i can't datamine as you do, but if i find some connections/logic and a conclusion concerning the story or new elements, i will post it.
edit: btw what i found out: from the blizzcon trailer, the planet in the background in the fighting scene of the battle-cruisers is identical to the one where the dropship is flying to. the fleets engaged in orbit of umoja, didn't they? so the dropship lands there too (the new updated cutscene is not a flashback). from the blizzcon 2011 technology panel, they "showcased" a scene (for camera tutorials) where kerrigan is on that planet in a leviathan. basically the fleets will engage, and kerrigan will land again there on the surface of umoja, but already recalling a brood. (theory, not thaaaaat sure bout the brood thing)
On February 20 2013 06:36 Denda Reloaded wrote: @existor i can't datamine as you do, but if i find some connections/logic and a conclusion concerning the story or new elements, i will post it.
Really there was no datamine this time. Nothing came from game resources. Everything is from game site and profile webpage from achievement descriptions
At the end of the new Starcraft Universe trailer we see some kind of rendered cinematic of the Void Seeker flying through space. Since i know that the creator of the mod worked together with Blizzard i want to ask you wether you think it's another sneak peak for things that are going to happen in HotS or not (just self-made scene). Especially regarding the new facts we know after this Dataextraction. --> spoiler in spoiler:+ Show Spoiler +
Achievement-> campaign-> for clicking on all the things one can see from leviathan window. One of them is the Voidseeker-> implies new encounter with Zeratul during the space missions. Achievement-> campaign -> find out where Zeratul is headed; Sorry that i don't provide the real names of the achievement but Sea-Bnet is currently down
Wait, why does Kerrigan need to use and defend the hyperion, does she ally Raynor/Valerian or something? The trailer didn't suggest that....am i missing something? Also, so far the plot looks good.....but the mission objectives themselves look a little bit uninteresting, but I'll have to wait until the actual missions to pass judgement on that. Finally, Narud looks definitely confirmed as Duran with this new portrait.......
In the new book flashpoint which talks about the time between WoL and HotS Kerrigan flees with Raynor and Valerian from Arcturus. Valerian turns out to be a "nice guy" (at least so far a better man than his father) as earlier books (I Mengsk and Dark Templar Trilogy) indicated. Narud meanwhile reveals himself as a villain... not the millenia old alien kind but at least on the side of Arcturus/the Dominion (allthough he is certainly playing his own game ;-) ) So at least for the beginning of the campaign (and maybe inbetween) we will see those 3 be "travelling" together
OFMG this is so painful, i click the spoiler and then the other spoiler shows so i have to rethink if i really want to see it, and while i do want to see it really badly I also don't want to spoil, such an hard decision :/
Will you still be able to get WoL portraits? I have been really wanting to get the 250 win Terran ghost portrait for a while, and I do like it a bit more than this new ghost, will I still be able to get it?
On February 20 2013 10:00 Kezzer wrote: Will you still be able to get WoL portraits? I have been really wanting to get the 250 win Terran ghost portrait for a while, and I do like it a bit more than this new ghost, will I still be able to get it?
The portraits are actually separate. You get the old WoL ones by having X amount of wins while the new HotS ones comes with leveling a certain race.
Yeah, agreed. I'd rather Stukov remain normal considering Blizzard did have those extra missions that came with a patch (and first in SC64 I think, lol) where you uninfest Stukov. He was one of the few cool Terran guys remaining IMO (though WoL did introduce a decent number).
that Stukov is in it, which is pretty weird. I won't make any judgements about that now. I didn't read the text in the spoilers, I just wanted to look at the pretty picture. The fact that Duran is around and doing weird shit isn't much of a spoiler cos we all saw that coming.
On February 20 2013 15:49 Doc Daneeka wrote: There's a lot of images in the spoilers that I could try to guess about, but most of it doesn't say much about the story, except
that Stukov is in it, which is pretty weird. I won't make any judgements about that now. I didn't read the text in the spoilers, I just wanted to look at the pretty picture. The fact that Duran is around and doing weird shit isn't much of a spoiler cos we all saw that coming.
They removed Swarm campaign achievements, but it was possible to read their descriptions, where it says about not losing infested terrans during one of Skygeirr platform missions. Other achivement is about saving Infested Stukov from death (not letting him die). Seems like commando or semi-commando mission
On February 20 2013 14:19 rustypipe wrote: I'm taking it Kerrigan turns back into the queen of blades since there there is a missions with Kerrigan's cocoon?
Look at the box or the opening cinematic. Obviously, Kerrigan turns back into the Queen of Blades.
On February 20 2013 14:19 rustypipe wrote: I'm taking it Kerrigan turns back into the queen of blades since there there is a missions with Kerrigan's cocoon?
Look at the box or the opening cinematic. Obviously, Kerrigan turns back into the Queen of Blades.
She will not turn into Queen of Blades. It will be completely new zergified character.
You should understand, that Queen of Blades =/= Sarah Kerrigan =/= current Kerrigan
On February 20 2013 14:19 rustypipe wrote: I'm taking it Kerrigan turns back into the queen of blades since there there is a missions with Kerrigan's cocoon?
Look at the box or the opening cinematic. Obviously, Kerrigan turns back into the Queen of Blades.
If you actually look at the whole opening cinematic, she's still human..
I'd be surprised if she turned into the queen of blades again. It'd be pretty lame to have the whole WoL campaing focused on saving kerrigan only to have her infested again in the next expansion..
I'd be surprised if she turned into the queen of blades again. It'd be pretty lame to have the whole WoL campaing focused on saving kerrigan only to have her infested again in the next expansion..
Queen of Blades =/= newly infested Sarah Kerrigan are different characters.
On February 20 2013 14:19 rustypipe wrote: I'm taking it Kerrigan turns back into the queen of blades since there there is a missions with Kerrigan's cocoon?
Look at the box or the opening cinematic. Obviously, Kerrigan turns back into the Queen of Blades.
She will not turn into Queen of Blades. It will be completely new zergified character.
You should understand, that Queen of Blades =/= Sarah Kerrigan =/= current Kerrigan
Yeah, right. They're gonna introduce Kerrigan's long lost evil twin in HotS.
On February 20 2013 18:00 paralleluniverse wrote: I've been saying for a while now that the leaked ending is real. So, so disappointing.
I know it doen't probably mean a lot to you but as Existor stated the Queen of Blades and Sarah Kerrigan are different. + Show Spoiler +
The Queen of Blades is an entity that possesed Sarah Kerrigan (kind of the zergish manifestation of the Zergvirus in her head). It was the bloodthursty totally zergish Queen of Blades that had some kind of human free will but was a lot more Zerg or comparable to the Overmind himself than Sarah (I'd like to call her red eye mad Kerrigan) Srah though might transform into something that looks like the Queen of Blades but this time i guess only her body will be infested and her mind won't be occupied (violette eyes) Since i haven't played the game yet :-P I can't say if her mind is really "not at all" occupied by the Zergvirus or a behavior changing Zergentity. So this and also ending of the leaked trailer implies that she is more human and "milder" (if that's fair to say that after killing at least a couple more million people/creatures in HotS as well). But i think the most important part is that the things we know now from the Datamine imply as well that she might be a better/stronger version of the Queen of Blades. She goes back to Zerus and encounters the Primal Zerg. We don't know it yet but those big guys (Dehaka etc.) might be more like her or her broodmothers or the zerebrates. Or since Zerus is far far away from the koprulu sector those Zerg might have been without a leading entity since the Overmind died or even since he left. Don't know for sure but i assume, that the Queen of Blades maybe never knew of/took back control over the Zerg of Zerus after the overminds' death. The Final achievement (don't remember wether it was for campaign or leveling up Kerrigan to lvl70) was called 'Primal Queen' so she becomes something more than the Queen of Blades was. She regains control over the whole swarm and reunites it and probably learns a lot of new cool things since the Zerg on Zerus probably kept evolving seperatly as well.
So yes, she looks the same but she isn't the Queen of Blades anymore. She becomes the (probably stronger and human minded) Primal Queen.
On February 20 2013 18:00 paralleluniverse wrote: I've been saying for a while now that the leaked ending is real. So, so disappointing.
I know it doen't probably mean a lot to you but as Existor stated the Queen of Blades and Sarah Kerrigan are different. + Show Spoiler +
The Queen of Blades is an entity that possesed Sarah Kerrigan (kind of the zergish manifestation of the Zergvirus in her head). It was the bloodthursty totally zergish Queen of Blades that had some kind of human free will but was a lot more Zerg or comparable to the Overmind himself than Sarah (I'd like to call her red eye mad Kerrigan) Srah though might transform into something that looks like the Queen of Blades but this time i guess only her body will be infested and her mind won't be occupied (violette eyes) Since i haven't played the game yet :-P I can't say if her mind is really "not at all" occupied by the Zergvirus or a behavior changing Zergentity. So this and also ending of the leaked trailer implies that she is more human and "milder" (if that's fair to say that after killing at least a couple more million people/creatures in HotS as well). But i think the most important part is that the things we know now from the Datamine imply as well that she might be a better/stronger version of the Queen of Blades. She goes back to Zerus and encounters the Primal Zerg. We don't know it yet but those big guys (Dehaka etc.) might be more like her or her broodmothers or the zerebrates. Or since Zerus is far far away from the koprulu sector those Zerg might have been without a leading entity since the Overmind died or even since he left. Don't know for sure but i assume, that the Queen of Blades maybe never knew of/took back control over the Zerg of Zerus after the overminds' death. The Final achievement (don't remember wether it was for campaign or leveling up Kerrigan to lvl70) was called 'Primal Queen' so she becomes something more than the Queen of Blades was. She regains control over the whole swarm and reunites it and probably learns a lot of new cool things since the Zerg on Zerus probably kept evolving seperatly as well.
So yes, she looks the same but she isn't the Queen of Blades anymore. She becomes the (probably stronger and human minded) Primal Queen.
Kerrigan turns into the Queen of Blades, but retains her human personality.
To say that Kerrigan doesn't turn back into the Queen of Blades, while having the Queen of Blades on the box cover, in the opening cinematic and in the game, would imply that there physically exists another Zerg known as the Queen of Blades, who is not Kerrigan. While it's revealed (retconed) in WoL that the Queen of Blades is a separate personality in Kerrigan's mind, to suggest that the Queen of Blades will physically exist outside of Kerrigan's mind, as if the Zerg cloned her, is absurd.
that second spoiler alert, so awesome, really like it but still i clicked all them, and now just wonder how they wont make same childish story as it was in WoL.. or they just gave up and again, overall plot will be fine only for my 8-years old brother =(((
paralleluniverse wrote: while having the Queen of Blades on the box cover, in the opening cinematic and in the game, would imply that there physically exists another Zerg known as the Queen of Blades
As i said Kerrigan becomes the Primal Queen (violette eyes) and that is what you see on every cover/loading screen and in the vision of herself Sarah had in her dream in the new cinematic. But besides that the leaked ending also showed us that there indeed might be a (human) clone of Sarah that Arcturus uses to control the Primal Queen because she might still have a psionic link to her or whatever (campaign will show).
paralleluniverse wrote: while having the Queen of Blades on the box cover, in the opening cinematic and in the game, would imply that there physically exists another Zerg known as the Queen of Blades
As i said Kerrigan becomes the Primal Queen (violette eyes) and that is what you see on every cover/loading screen and in the vision of herself Sarah had in her dream in the new cinematic. But besides that the leaked ending also showed us that there indeed might be a (human) clone of Sarah that Arcturus uses to control the Primal Queen because she might still have a psionic link to her or whatever (campaign will show).
On February 20 2013 14:19 rustypipe wrote: I'm taking it Kerrigan turns back into the queen of blades since there there is a missions with Kerrigan's cocoon?
Look at the box or the opening cinematic. Obviously, Kerrigan turns back into the Queen of Blades.
If you actually look at the whole opening cinematic, she's still human..
I'd be surprised if she turned into the queen of blades again. It'd be pretty lame to have the whole WoL campaing focused on saving kerrigan only to have her infested again in the next expansion..
The campaign will seemingly focus on having her re-infested so she can control the zerg against Duran's forces, but she won't be the Queen of Blades. The QoB, as others have mentioned, was a separate entity inside Kerrigan's mind with green skin and glowing orange eyes. Re-infested Kerrigan is still, mentally, Sarah Kerrigan.
Side note, but the immortal level-up portrait is gorgeous.
The term Primal Queen came from the achievement list site/ where Existor extracted some more campaign knowledge (http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/508240/1/pebriniel/achievements/category/3211287) and the one Blizzard got rid of during maintanance :-( One of the last portraits where Kerrigan was shown in "purple QoB" form said Primal Queen. And one of the Zerus achievements said something about Primal Hatches so she obviously will become the Primal Queen at some point after going back to Zerus
On February 20 2013 20:15 ShiQuRas wrote: @paralleluniverse + Show Spoiler +
The term Primal Queen came from the achievement list site/ where Existor extracted some more campaign knowledge (http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/508240/1/pebriniel/achievements/category/3211287) and the one Blizzard got rid of during maintanance :-( One of the last portraits where Kerrigan was shown in "purple QoB" form said Primal Queen. And one of the Zerus achievements said something about Primal Hatches so she obviously will become the Primal Queen at some point after going back to Zerus
Here is my small fanart. This is recreated portrait of Emil Narud, using small 100x100 pixels portrait and basic Narud portrait from Wings of Liberty. I've decided to design it similar to Kerrigan's purple artifacts on the face, or Illusive Man's blue artifacts from Mass Effect 3.
What we know from Starcraft: Flashpoint is that Emil Narud have Xel'Naga artifact which dezergified Queen of Blades back to Sarah Kerrigan. This artifact also can kill any Zerg and Protoss DNA and can be massive weapon against those two races. How it will go - we will see, but I hope, it will be really great or just epic story.
On February 21 2013 03:44 Existor wrote: Xel'Naga artifact which dezergified Queen of Blades back to Sarah Kerrigan. This artifact also can kill any Zerg and Protoss DNA and can be massive weapon against those two races.
humm... shall i continue with spoiler tags? ok let's put it into spoiler tags
We know from the WoL campaign that the artefact is capable of destroying Zergbiomass which hence dezergified Kerrigan for the most part. And Stetman in the campaign found out that it can drain Protoss energy and basically drain their psychic abilities/energies so they would die from it. But what if it doesn't destroy them. As i wrote above at least for Protoss it has clearly been stated, that it drains their energies so it might save them in some battery-ish manner. That reminded me of the known Xel'Naga temple we encountered on Bekar Rho and various other planets. Where the temple emerged out of nothing, attracted Protoss and Zerg and kind of absorbed their energy and (for Zerg) DNA. When it was "fully loaded" a firebird/phoenix-like creature emerged from the temple and flew into space. In the DT trilogy Zeratul followed one of them. It met in outer space with others of its kind and created a wormhole that brought zeratul somewhere. We still don't know where (Blizzard pls!!!! o.O).
My theory so far was that this is kind of either an emergency plan of the Xel'Naga in order to melt the races by gathering their material and fuse it together to rebirth the new Xel'Naga race OR it was set up by the Dark Voice so he can gather the material for his abomination-xel'naga. Either way... I can't stop imagining the artefact to be like a portable temple. You know... like the explosion on Char might have gathered some Zerg material already and now this "weapon" needs some Protoss energy as well. Maybe it's a more advanced version (since it's smaller/portable) compared to the temples but will there be another energy-phoenix when it's done with whatever it does? Gathering the Material might explain why Narud became leader of Moebius in order to find the pieces and why he fought to get it back in Flashpoint. And since there was a hots-achievement "find out the true meaning of the artifact" i would die to know the answer right now ;-) and i bet it's got something to do with this.
While writing this and thinking about it all over again I wonder why the artefact was split into pieces and scattered all over the sector. Dark Voice is apparently a Xel'Naga but they refer to him as the Fallen One. They distinguish between the cyle (normal way of Xel'Naga rebirth) and the unnatural hybrids (technologically fused Zerg and Protoss that serve as Dark Voices army). So what if the artifact is a weapon/device made by the Dark Voice in order to create his own kind (that would explain it being more advanced since it was created later then the temples but does the same thing...) . The other Xel'Naga found out about it, said it was unnatural, kicked him out for his bad attitude ( ;-) ) and dismantled the artifact and hid its pieces so it can "never" be found again? Any opinions on that?
Flashpoint is already released and everyone can read it. So new Narud and stolen artifact and against what it can be used - we already know from that book.
Flashpoint is already released and everyone can read it. So new Narud and stolen artifact and against what it can be used - we already know from that book.
Sorry dude misunderstanding in my first post. I knew u could misread it like that so i've rephrased that sentence already. Didn't want to upset you. :-D
the launch trailer is always the worst trailer iof it comes to spoilers. but i bet that all those crazy chicks with the CEs wil upload the cinematics anyway.
On February 21 2013 14:51 MutnamPororo wrote: Are they really bringing back Stukov??
Sure as hell looks like him.
The nanite serum was probably a temporary measure or put the infestation in remission, as otherwise the toss would've figured out a way to bring people back from the dead.
what i hate is that the final missions (or at least the ones form the middle) can be completed in 10 minutes or so, as the achievements state. i mean they can't really say that all the fans get annoyed that the missions are too long. what kind of fanbase do they think/state they have!? so yeah shortened campaign + shortened missions. great.
On February 26 2013 04:32 Denda Reloaded wrote: what i hate is that the final missions (or at least the ones form the middle) can be completed in 10 minutes or so, as the achievements state. i mean they can't really say that all the fans get annoyed that the missions are too long. what kind of fanbase do they think/state they have!? so yeah shortened campaign + shortened missions. great.
thx, blizzard LVU <333
Or the achievement could just be difficult.
Try doing Breakout on hard in under 10 minutes, for instance.
Well, i gotta say that i take my time at missions - it is more fun. i nearly made breakout in under 15 minutes for the achievement (was it 15? i guess not 10). if i play it regulary it takes me like 20 minutes i guess, not a deal.
but still. well, for example the first kaldir missions is based on a countdown (afaik 15 min) so the mission can't go longer than that, else you would loose. i have the feeling that the missions/campaign will be helluva short shit, but hey, chilling in the lounge of the leviathan will be fun c:
yeah, existor posted this also. and following all the achievements, it seems legit. even if we all now know the basic storyline, still there will be a chance that the plot will be executed well in dialogue/cinematics etc.
I for one am excited about playing through the campaign and tackling its achievement challenges. With WoL, I ran through it in Normal to experience the story and tech features, then on Hard to get the specific 'hard' achievements, and finally worked by way through Brutal once I had a better understanding of how each level works and what was required to beat it. This time around, I may do the opposite and go right through it on Brutal and then drop down to Hard for the Mastery achievements, and then Normal for any other Story achievements. I figure that once you go through Brutal, everything else will seem like a piece of cake though working up to Brutal does definitely have its advantages of a better learning curve for each level's objectives and surprises.
Are there any other Campaign/Achievement lovers out there? How will you be tackling the campaign?
Mined Craft (aka Minecraft) Staying Alive (Stay Alive from Portal) Deep Space (aka Dead Space) Fully Operational (reference to Battlecruiser) Terran Up the Sky (name of one Terran country-songs from WoL campaign) Swarm Guardian (Hyperian will be a Swarm Guardian) So Many Banelings! (reference to Baneling song maybe?) Zerg Save the Queen (reference to StarCraft Propaganda posters with "Save the Queen" titles) Red Alert (name says itself) Conquer & Command (switch those two words) Nuclear Launch Rejected (aka reverse to "Nuclear launch detected") Biomass effect (bolded text names itself) A Game of Drones - the most epic reference to Game of Thrones
paralleluniverse wrote: while having the Queen of Blades on the box cover, in the opening cinematic and in the game, would imply that there physically exists another Zerg known as the Queen of Blades
As i said Kerrigan becomes the Primal Queen (violette eyes) and that is what you see on every cover/loading screen and in the vision of herself Sarah had in her dream in the new cinematic. But besides that the leaked ending also showed us that there indeed might be a (human) clone of Sarah that Arcturus uses to control the Primal Queen because she might still have a psionic link to her or whatever (campaign will show).
So I'm going to go on a limb here and say Raynor probably never gets his chance to re-kindle his relationship with Kerrigan :p Seeing as she is again some form of the Queen of blades. The Clone idea to control her is a new idea, guess we'll have to see where the story goes in a few weeks
yeah, that is what i said. i'm afraid that kerrigan will sacrifice herself at the end. "i did what i had to do"... something like that. anyway, i now wanna try to see which scene is cgi and what is not. the one with zeratul looked cgi. and blizzard only makes important things in cgi, lorewise
how that? maybe it was changed... but kk we have the evidence.
in that zeratul scene: check out that fancy terran console kerri placed in the leviathan <3<3 at least now it makes sense how she skypes with all her enemies
I'm still curious as to how the ending was leaked. I know a workprint copy of the 2009 wolverine movie was leaked and the guy who leaked it was sentenced to 1 year in federal prison. Wonder if we know who leaked it and if any legal action was taken against him.
My clone theory got kind of confirmed by that new trailer. I do now think Mengsk might even have more than one. This one from Trailer (Red hair Sarah) is in an open fight with QoB Sarah and uses psy-blades <--- how awesome is that!!!! NERDCHILLS. The other one from leaked trailer was held in a water container. Maybe it's still the same one since ending cinematic obviously will take place after the fight of the two so there is a chance that they recovered her body and are trying to patch her up or something
Yeah seems even more confirmed now, but there was this one scene where a whole balcony explodes and i was wondering if this might be part of a new ending??? Maybe they changed it a little... maybe not at all and that is an attampted murder on Mengsk earlier... we will see :-D
Maybe just a shape-shifter? there are plenty of those in starcraft! in fact, kerri made the whole balcony explode in the leaked ending, you see just a white flash and hear glass breaking. they just added a few effects maybe OR that explosion wasn't triggered by kerrigan ... it looked like a bomb, not psionic
this warp will happen on zerus as it is triggered by the cocoon/kerrigan (after she was reborn on zerus) and notice that in the explosion scene of the launch trailer there are no zerg in the background behind the palace. in the last frame with kerrigan, there is a giant mutalisk swarm. it isn't the same scene. i can only agree with the first row. the second one seems to take place on different locations. and the last one seems legit
Kerrigan's words about Narud being psionically familiar definitely confirms a definitive link between him and Duran. And as we know from the secret mission in BW Duran is neither human nor Zerg. Dr. Narud's very precise explanation of what the Artifact is after only a brief description of what it did only to Kerrigan and nearby Zerg heavily suggests he knows more than could reasonably be expected of a "human" genius scientist. Also, Narud having his own custom Hybrid is pretty hard proof he is Duran as Duran is responsible for the Hybrid in the first place.
Kerrigan's words about Narud being psionically familiar definitely confirms a definitive link between him and Duran. And as we know from the secret mission in BW Duran is neither human nor Zerg. Dr. Narud's very precise explanation of what the Artifact is after only a brief description of what it did only to Kerrigan and nearby Zerg heavily suggests he knows more than could reasonably be expected of a "human" genius scientist. Also, Narud having his own custom Hybrid is pretty hard proof he is Duran as Duran is responsible for the Hybrid in the first place.
Umoja: home world of the Umojan Protectorate; which opposes the Dominion, wishes to learn from the Protoss, and Raynor was selling them the Xel'naga artefacts in Wings of Liberty (specifically selling them to Dr Narud). I suspect that Raynor takes Kerrigan here to help her but the Dominion (Nova) invade so Kerrigan has to escape.
Char: the last 3 missions of Wings of Liberty were set here. Kerrigan possibly has to kill Zagara to regain control of the remaining Zerg (1 mission), then has to fight the Dominion forces (2 missions). I expect General Warfield will be killed in a cutscene.
Kaldir: ice world/moon featured in all the trailers. Kerrigan will fight against the yeti and Protoss. I expect Lasarra will be infested in the same way and for the same reasons that the Lich King infested Sylvana Windrunner (who needs originality).
Zerus: original home world of the Zerg, so this is why Primal Zerg live here. I expect Kerrigan will say she needs to go here to form a cocoon to become the Queen of Blades / Primal Queen.
Skygeirr: new area where you have to infest the Dominion Terrans' working there and kill the hybrids. Stukov helps you (he probably needs rescuing) and I expect Narud/Duran will show up as well.
Space: As Raynor's ship is the Hyperion Kerrigan is obviously going to ally with him before attacking Mensk. Probably because of what she saw on Skygeirr.
Last: attack Korhal, kill Mengsk, free Zerg. You've all seen the leaked ending.
I can't help but feel this campaign will be more linear than WoL.
Umoja: home world of the Umojan Protectorate; which opposes the Dominion, wishes to learn from the Protoss, and Raynor was selling them the Xel'naga artefacts in Wings of Liberty (specifically selling them to Dr Narud). I suspect that Raynor takes Kerrigan here to help her but the Dominion (Nova) invade so Kerrigan has to escape.
Char: the last 3 missions of Wings of Liberty were set here. Kerrigan possibly has to kill Zagara to regain control of the remaining Zerg
- Raynor was not selling the Xel'Naga artefacts to Umoja but to Moebius Foundation which was an organisation paid by Valerian Mengsk (although it might have had some umojan scientists on the team) - The Artefact at the end of WoL was still in Rainors hands. practically he was selling them to Valerian NOT Narud - with the events of Flashpoint though we know that + Show Spoiler +
- Narud could accomplish to steel the artifact from Rainor so he is now in its possesion - and it is also already stated in Flashpoint that Rainor took Kerrigan with Valerian to Umoja after fighting Mengsk a couple of times, so no room for speculation --> it's already a fact
- Finally: Zagara is not getting killed (at least not during the 1st Char mission) and we know that since March (or was it may ???) 2012 where the whole mission was part of a SP presentation. Zagara even stays as an advisor of Kerrigan --> also a fact
Yeah, Umoja had nothing to do with Raynors business in WoL. Za'Gara will be there all the time. You can speak to her before the final mission, as the achievement says, so she won't die. And wtf Protoss can't be infested, dude. Lassara was implanted with a parasite, a BroodMother-Larva, which then made a brood on the escaping protoss space station and killed it all, after the Protoss accidently warped Lassara with the larva back on board.
I thought the Umoja and Moebius Foundation were linked, not sure why. I think I misremembered a cut scene where Raynor and Horner realise that Tychus' suit will kill him and they're speculating on who is threatening Tychus.
I confused the addition Protoss/Zerg research with the artefacts. If you go to the science area on the Hyperion and click on the Protoss/Zerg research machine a note tells you that the Mobius Foundation will buy additional Protoss/Zerg research. This note is signed by Dr Narud so he's probably in possession of some Protoss/Zerg research.
Didn't know that Flashpoint even existed, so I couldn't include it in my reasoning.
Tried searching for Zagara but nothing came up so I assumed they were a minor character. It seems on the Stracraft Wiki you need the correct spelling of Za'Gara to get anything.
It seems I misunderstood what someone meant when they said Lassara had a parasite inside her. Also given the existence of hybrids it was entirely possible that infested Protoss could exist.
The Umoja is linked with the Moebius Foundation, but Umoja didn't appear in WoL and we knew nothing about the installation. Raynor sold it to Narud, the head of Moebius, but he didn't know anything about the Umoja thing, or about a top-secret facility. A hybrid is not an infested Protoss. Even Blizzard made that clear, as they are not corrupted or infested, but genetically fused.
Za'Gara was the Broodmother that only considers someone worthy if he kicks ass. So did Kerrigan and Za'Gara pledged for mercy, being shocked about the power of Kerrikerr. There were many Broodmothers, but it seems like Za'Gara will be the only relevant one, as she will be with Kerri all the time and also bitch around if she has another point of view. Na'Fash was already dead, but her brood was regained after the Kaldir missions. A new one is Niadra, the one that grows from the larva Kerri implanted into Lassara. She was loyal to Kerri after she lost contact and continued her objective, not rebelling against Kerri or whatever.
A new one is Niadra, the one that grows from the larva Kerri implanted into Lassara. She was loyal to Kerri after she lost contact and continued her objective, not rebelling against Kerri or whatever.
So now we have two mystery things which we don't know how will go later in StarCraft story.
First one is Doctor Emil Narud with Xel'naga artifact which dezergified Kerrigan and kill any Protoss and Zerg DNA.
And second thing is that Niadra Broodmother. Anything can happen with her, from madness to alliance with Hybrids.
Basically we have an infested Protoss space station that floats around with no course with tons of Zerg on it. If Protoss pick it up they have some serious shit to fight with. I think that has much potential... omg the "Aliens" vibe <3<3<3<3<3
I really stopped caring about the ending. What makes the story more interesting are those little details. It really shocked me when Kerrigan exploited Lassara and it was really interesting when she was feeling bad for 2 dying Zerglings. Even the whole Kaldir storyline, that is completely irrelevant btw, had nice details as of now. The Moros-thing has a big potential i guess.
But still, all seems logical, Breaking out of Umoja, reclaiming Char with it's Broods, going to Zerus/Korhal etc. But Korhal was just a side story. Why was it there? We already have few missions, but even this side-story seems interesting.
Compared to Agira/Redstone etc, Kaldir seems more interesting (it's both at the same time, first third of the campaign). Compared to WoL, in Hots there's more stuff going on than in WoL and less placeholders + more solid story.
On March 03 2013 06:07 Existor wrote: I must agree, that no matter what ending we will have and is it leaked or not, I think HOTS campaign will be more epic and fun than WOL.
Come to think of it, I'm kinda sad that Narud is Duran. He gave me a ton of cash for the extra Zerg and Protoss samples in the campaign, even ones that I farmed from replaying missions. That's a true bro.
I hope Duran comes back in his old form. That voice, that enigmatic voice was so damn chilling to listen to. And how he addressed Zeratul as if the dark templar was a youngling.
Duran must have the same mysterious aura he had in BW~
On March 04 2013 11:11 Andr3 wrote: I hope Duran comes back in his old form. That voice, that enigmatic voice was so damn chilling to listen to. And how he addressed Zeratul as if the dark templar was a youngling.
Duran must have the same mysterious aura he had in BW~
Duran was easily the most intriguing character during broodwar imo, blizzard needs to do a good job revealing more info about him. Please dont make him another generic villain .
I swear to God if Blizzard actually kept that piece of shit leaked ending I'm going to spontaneously explode and the energy released by my rage will insta-gib everyone on the Blizzard writing staff.
On March 06 2013 14:43 Stratos_speAr wrote: I swear to God if Blizzard actually kept that piece of shit leaked ending I'm going to spontaneously explode and the energy released by my rage will insta-gib everyone on the Blizzard writing staff.
Yeah i was wondering about that as well. As far as i know it was not yet mentioned, that she is able to do that. Actually not even Protoss are able to do that without a special device that channels their psionic energies in order to form the psi-blade. The only Protoss that ever fromed psi-blades without a channeling device was Tassadar after his Training with Zeratul on Char (Book: Queen of Blades).
I mean i can imagine, that Kerrigan now is comparable to Tassadar in that regard that she is one of the strongest psionic beings out there. So she might be able to form psi-blades by herself now. Or the terrans looked into that kind of protoss technology and were able to imitate it. But until now we did not know that she was able to do this. Just HotS-campaign might tell us. (only 5 days and couple of hours left woooop wooop :-D )
I was thinking it would be kinda cool if we'd have missions where you have an ally helping you.(kinda like WC3:RoC final mission), or you controlling two races at once(like in BW when you have raynor+tassadar).
Just one of those standard missions which every RTS had.
Also, I wonder if those mastery achievements are on top of the old ones or just a replacement? Would be nice to see some achievements requiring brutal difficulty.
Yea, rather than have 1 'Hard Difficulty' achievement listed for each mission like in WoL, they compiled them all into a 'Mastery' series, which is neat and easier to track if you go through the campaign on Normal the first time and complete all of the objectives for it.
On March 06 2013 20:26 Andr3 wrote: Also, I wonder if those mastery achievements are on top of the old ones or just a replacement? Would be nice to see some achievements requiring brutal difficulty.
They are part of the list on the OP but I guess they were missed. They are a list of the 'Hard Difficulty' Achievements (aside from Hard 5/10/15/20, assuming those are the numbers). The only 'Brutal Difficulty' achievements are the 5/10/15/20 (again, assuming those are the numbers) missions on Brutal ones. I like this implementation. You can get all of the 'mission' achievements on Normal and then move on to the Mastery list for Hard ones. The toughest will probably be defeating all missions on Brutal, unless some of the Mastery speed runs are really tough (no floating buildings this time around).
Just FYI, all of the HoTS Campaign achievements are now visible on the WoL client. Don't click on it if you don't want to be spoiled. Existor can also use this to update the OP for nicer and more consistently formatted screenshots if he'd like.
On March 06 2013 19:36 ShiQuRas wrote: Yeah i was wondering about that as well. As far as i know it was not yet mentioned, that she is able to do that. Actually not even Protoss are able to do that without a special device that channels their psionic energies in order to form the psi-blade. The only Protoss that ever fromed psi-blades without a channeling device was Tassadar after his Training with Zeratul on Char (Book: Queen of Blades).
I mean i can imagine, that Kerrigan now is comparable to Tassadar in that regard that she is one of the strongest psionic beings out there. So she might be able to form psi-blades by herself now. Or the terrans looked into that kind of protoss technology and were able to imitate it. But until now we did not know that she was able to do this. Just HotS-campaign might tell us. (only 5 days and couple of hours left woooop wooop :-D )
I don't think she can be compared to Tassadar. I agree she is one of the strongest psionic beings out there. But Tassadar united both Khala and Void energies. He destroyed the overmind. Kerrigan couldn't ever. He kept needing help and such. (Sorry, huge Tassadar fan) XD Also, aside from Flashpoint, I've read every single book and comic of SC and never does it state that Kerrigan can wield psi-blades.
On March 07 2013 03:16 Disengaged wrote: I still want that Merc Marine portrait that they had in the WoL beta. No idea why they removed it cuz it was soooooo badass
OMG I want the Observer one sooo bad!! But they never got it out for WoL! Gah! It's my dream portrait after getting the High Templar.
On March 09 2013 02:43 ShiQuRas wrote: @ Existor: well i know it's only 3 days and a couple of hours now... but spoiler tags on the last pictures would have been better i guess
Missing the Skull decals terran had in earlier HOTS beta, they we're pretty damn cool. Prefer them to the ''army signs'' we got now Skull>Star ^^. No biggie just curious why the removed them, they we're sweet.
Campaign ending on Korhal makes the 'leaked' ending more plausible .... oh god
omg that leaked endingX_X
totatly forgot about that one
Yeah!! Me too until I saw the trailer ahahaha. I watched it back in 2010 when it first came out and then kind of forgot about it. But oh well. Personally hoping that the evens leading up to it will be amazing
I've checked the achievments and... There's something that really troubles me.
Go to HotS campaign achievements and open one called "For The Swarm!". The description says:
"Mutate each Zerg unit in the Evolution Pit"
If you click on it, you'll see a list... of only 7 units (Zergling, Baneling, Mutalisk, Hydralisk, Ultralisk, Roach, Swarm Host), Now... I wonder - are these the only units we can mutate in the Evolution Pit? If so, I'm disappointed.
I expected, at least, to have mutations for all the standard units from the multiplayer and the list doesn't contain Queen, Corruptor, Brood Lord, Viper and Infestor. So, assuming we can evolve only 7 units, that means almost 1/2 of the normal, attacking zerg units are not available in this system.
I can totally live without any mutations for the Drones, Overlords and Overseers. I can't really see them mutating or changing into anything cool, though it'd be awesome if Blizz came up with some nice upgrades.
The same goes for Brood War units, mostly the Lurker...
What do you think? Are there only 7 units that can mutate/evolve?
The zerg were born to be free! The overmind was just misunderstood, abducted Kerrigan to be the savior of zerg because it knew the hybrids would enslave them all at some point in time... /barf
On March 09 2013 23:18 Holybouseman wrote: I've checked the achievments and... There's something that really troubles me.
Go to HotS campaign achievements and open one called "For The Swarm!". The description says:
"Mutate each Zerg unit in the Evolution Pit"
If you click on it, you'll see a list... of only 7 units (Zergling, Baneling, Mutalisk, Hydralisk, Ultralisk, Roach, Swarm Host), Now... I wonder - are these the only units we can mutate in the Evolution Pit? If so, I'm disappointed.
I expected, at least, to have mutations for all the standard units from the multiplayer and the list doesn't contain Queen, Corruptor, Brood Lord, Viper and Infestor. So, assuming we can evolve only 7 units, that means almost 1/2 of the normal, attacking zerg units are not available in this system.
I can totally live without any mutations for the Drones, Overlords and Overseers. I can't really see them mutating or changing into anything cool, though it'd be awesome if Blizz came up with some nice upgrades.
The same goes for Brood War units, mostly the Lurker...
What do you think? Are there only 7 units that can mutate/evolve?
That's EXACTLY what I thought, and I too will be very disappointed if that's the case. There's enough missions to cater for all of the zerg units evolving, why have just 7? I really hope this is not the case...
On March 09 2013 05:29 Zorgaz wrote: Missing the Skull decals terran had in earlier HOTS beta, they we're pretty damn cool. Prefer them to the ''army signs'' we got now Skull>Star ^^. No biggie just curious why the removed them, they we're sweet.
Well, the skull decals were still there until the beta ended its just that the "Locked Decals" looked like army decals. Who knows? Maybe it'll still be the skulls
Existor - WoL Armory had almost all Terran units (except Raven, Science Vessel, Predator, Hercules) available in the campaign and all (except Raven) units from the multiplayer. Plus - it had upgrades for many campaign-exlusive units like the Diamondback or Spectre and BW legacy units like the Firebat or Wraith.
I've seen some people doing data-mining and finding out that there were files for more than 7 evolutions. I hope that this achievment lists only the basic units and that Blizzard didn't cut any of the mutations/evolutions just to keep stuff less confusing or avoid too many units on Evolution Pit screen.
The video is definitely legit. I only watched like 5 seconds of the first campaign cutscene before shutting it off. I usually like spoiling plots for myself before playing games, but not this time.
Oh Arcturus, this isn't #vengeance, this is justice #lol
Oh god.
Now that we know the leaked ending is real, we have absolute proof that Blizzard writers are amateurs. As you've pointed out, the ending cinematic contains some of the the cheesiest dialogue ever written. It's just awful. High school students could do better.
Oh Arcturus, this isn't #vengeance, this is justice #lol
Oh god.
Now that we know the leaked ending is real, we have absolute proof that Blizzard writers are amateurs. As you've pointed out, the ending cinematic contains some of the the cheesiest dialogue ever written. It's just awful. High school students could do better.
Would not surprise me if Christ Metzen is laughing with his friends about the fact that he still is getting paid.
Does anyone know what that portrait is on the Collectors Ed and BlizzCon Portraits the third row the 2nd one in? The HOTS ones are the last three and prior to those are from WoW i think. But its someone in some kind of marine suit. What is that from and how do you get it?
Honestly, this whole "raped the lore" is bullshit.
Kerrigan was far more compelling than she was in Brood War. Given that Jim was the only person who ever believed in her, and viewed her as a person rather than as a weapon, it's only natural that she care for him a great deal. And even though she was in vengeance mode she still showed a higher degree of honor and integrity (after Warfield points out that Raynor would be disgusted with her now, she kills him, but still realizes that he's right, and therefore spares the soldiers trying to evacuate).
The confrontation on the Prison ship was also a good scene for several reasons
1.) It actually acknowledged Fenix's death, as well as her other crimes, and Raynor's vow to kill her. 2.) Raynor's reasons for being angry are legitimate; he went through hell to deinfest Kerrigan, and now she's done it willingly. As far as he knows, she's willingly rebecome the monster that has caused so much grief. The scene where Kerrigan lets Raynor hold a gun to her head was a far better way of showing that "raynor will have his life in her hands". If she died in the alternate timeline because of Raynor it makes for a real tragedy. Their parting (raynor telling her we're done) wasn't too cheesy.
The resolution is also pretty good. Kerrigan is the Queen of Blades, but she's not a bloodthirsty psychopath like she was in Brood War. And while she and Jim will never be able to have a future together they still part under fairly amicable terms (certainly better than the last time they parted on korhal). I also loved that she has come to terms with her situation and accepted it. She's finally come to terms with her life and found some measure of peace after years of suffering. There's also hope for a new beginning now that Mengsk is defeated
Kerrigan was far more compelling than she was in Brood War. Given that Jim was the only person who ever believed in her, and viewed her as a person rather than as a weapon, it's only natural that she care for him a great deal. And even though she was in vengeance mode she still showed a higher degree of honor and integrity (after Warfield points out that Raynor would be disgusted with her now, she kills him, but still realizes that he's right, and therefore spares the soldiers trying to evacuate).
In Brood War we had Queen of Blades, not Sarah Kerrigan
I think one of the Q&A's confirmed that the Queen of Blades essentially was Kerrigan, only with all morality stripped away and a fuckton of power to get back at those who wronged her. The artifact shattered the conditioning enough for her humanity to resurface (choosing to be reinfested helped deal with a lot of the anger she felt, since in brood war she was lashing out to deal with her pain and rage, and no restraints meant she could go hog wild.) And it doesn't end on a purely happy note. Kerrigan may have come to terms with her life, but she's had to sacrifice most of the things she's held dear in order to do so.
In any case, it's shaping up to be a showdown between her and Amon.
For the cinematics, that was a capital C in corny. Somehow, I liked most of it. Although the + Show Spoiler +
Duran/Narud fight disappointed me a metric ton...all talk and no bite. What a lame way for "the greatest intellegent/manipulative shape-shifter" to go.
And even though she was in vengeance mode she still showed a higher degree of honor and integrity (after Warfield points out that Raynor would be disgusted with her now, she kills him, but still realizes that he's right, and therefore spares the soldiers trying to evacuate).
Uh that's so BS it's not even funny. Let's forget all of Kerrigan's past crimes against both the Terrans and the Protoss. In this expansion's storyline, she takes over Dominion world after Dominion world - we're talking about entire planets here. This was what she was doing in WoL before she was "saved", and now she's doing it again? What a joke. Taking over entire planets means hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people dying. Sparing three dropships of troops does not even come close to excusing her crimes. Not to mention her killing Warfield, the general who helped unite her with Raynor in the first place, and also the only Terran known to have punched a hydralisk in the face and succeeded.
1.) It actually acknowledged Fenix's death, as well as her other crimes, and Raynor's vow to kill her.
I feel like they only threw that in to address the gaping plot hole of Raynor going from vowing to be the man to kill Kerrigan in BW to suddenly being the "only one who never gave up on" her in WoL. And it didn't even address the plot hole very well. Raynor acknowledged the fact that she killed his best friend as well as millions of people, but then he lets it go and walks away. What a joke.
The storyline of the original SC and BW was compelling because its theme: "the only allies are enemies". The only real "good guy" was Raynor, who's supposed to be the everyman, and his small group of misfits, trying to survive day to day in a galaxy full of superpowers - Earth, Korhal, the Swarm, even the Protoss, all with their own interests, and none of whom could be trusted. SC:BW was all about the power struggle between these great factions (and within individual factions themselves) and the role that an average joe backwater marshal could play in such an epic struggle.
Suddenly, WoL comes around 4 years after the events of SC:BW, Raynor suddenly has a gigantic army / starfleet, he's forgotten about his hatred of Kerrigan and redirected it against Mengsk despite the fact that the last time they encountered each other, they were on the same side when they both got double crossed by Kerrigan. Kerrigan decides to go on the war path against the Dominion, which is fine because it's consistent with the BW ending in which she said she would give Mengsk a little break before going after him, but then somehow she loses the battle on Char to half the Dominion starfleet when, just four years ago, when the entire Dominion starfleet, as well as another starfleet from Earth and the Protoss fleet couldn't even make it through the atmosphere of Char before they were destroyed. What?
So Kerrigan gets "saved" (while Tychus gets shot, I don't want to digress too much but this was so wrong, considering how much Tychus had done for Raynor in the past), allowing her to..... pretty much just go back to doing what she did before. Yeah, I get that this is supposed to be one of the plot points of HotS, this internal struggle between good and evil, but it's a crappy plot point. How many times can someone turn to the dark side before we stop caring?
Oh, and did she ever figure out that Narud was the same Duran that betrayed her four years ago? That would be a plot point I would like to see addressed, perhaps in the next expansion.
I think one of the Q&A's confirmed that the Queen of Blades essentially was Kerrigan, only with all morality stripped away
That's rubbish, she was completely conscious of what she was doing while she was Queen of Blades 1.0. She even took that assumption (that she was being influenced by her Zerginess and not being her true self) to lure Raynor and the others to do her bidding, blaming it on the Overmind. They fall for it, hook line and sinker, to the extent that Zeratul fights a civil war against his own Protoss brethren on her behalf (there seems to be this constant pattern of bros betraying bros for her), after which she pretty much just goes "haha thanks for getting rid of my rivals for me, tools" and takes off.
Oh Arcturus, this isn't #vengeance, this is justice #lol
Oh god.
Now that we know the leaked ending is real, we have absolute proof that Blizzard writers are amateurs. As you've pointed out, the ending cinematic contains some of the the cheesiest dialogue ever written. It's just awful. High school students could do better.
Would not surprise me if Christ Metzen is laughing with his friends about the fact that he still is getting paid.
Kerrigan was completely consious in brood war; she wasn't wholly herself though (morality was stripped away making it easy to embrace her darker nature. Also, not only were mengsk's fleet and the protoss and ued badly damaged, but most of kerrigan's forces weren't even on char. they were out plundering. And in any case, she still showed more virtues than she ever did in brood war.
I went ahead and spoiled myself with the cutscenes since I wasn't planning on buying Heart of the Swarm after the butchering of Starcraft's story in Wings of Liberty, and I am glad I made that decision. The dialogue is cringe-worthy, and I have no doubt in my mind now that Blizzard no longer has any competent writers. The stories of Wings of Liberty, Diablo 3, and now Heart of the Swarm have been ruined by writing directed toward prepubescent teens.
Wow that was uninteresting. Waited 2 years essentially to say that Kerrigan regained control and killed Mengsk. Almost nothing on the overarching storyline w/ hybrids and XelNaga was advanced.
Legacy of the Void has potential with all the story it has to fill, have no confidence that it will be done well though.
Geeze, what a bunch of whiners here. I'm playing the campaign itself now, without having spoiled myself with the story and it's really great so far. I find Kerrigan particulary amusing at times. Sure, if you just go off by the cutscenes then perhaps but there's a lot of ingame stuff goin as well which puts more context to the cutscenes. It's way better then WoL (so far)
Maybe I am the only one, but I thought the ending was pretty good. They changed the ending a little bit from what it was, but it was essentially the same. Yes, the story is a bit cheesy and corny, but that's Blizzard, any recent projects from them have been like that. I don't mind the cheesiness of it, to be honest.
Having just finished the campaign (on brutal)... + Show Spoiler +
HotS is so much easier compared to WoL. Last level is a joke. Story is hit and miss. I thought Blizz may have done something really cool after the first few missions.. then things got dumb. They should have killed Jim or at least Nova. Lots of cute tie ins to what you did in WoL Narud = Duran completely and utterly confirmed lol but he dies. Stukov coming back wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be. Zeratul felt extremely out of place. The story itself is pretty shitty, its basically going to be the WC3 story again - all the races banding against a demigod to kill him. Yawn. Give me a real twist please Blizzard.
I'd give it a 5/10. And for the record, I would have given WoL a 7 - at least I could see some potential in future story lines and the missions were interesting on the first play through. Almost every HotS mission was a recycled WoL mission - barring the fact that there are boss fights now lol....
On March 12 2013 07:49 Salv wrote: Maybe I am the only one, but I thought the ending was pretty good. They changed the ending a little bit from what it was, but it was essentially the same. Yes, the story is a bit cheesy and corny, but that's Blizzard, any recent projects from them have been like that. I don't mind the cheesiness of it, to be honest.
I felt that the ending was really weak. There was next to no hype around killing Mengsk, the whole game was GARHH IM ANGRY AT MENSK LETS KILL HIM RWARRR. The missions leading up to it were pathetically weak storywise. The summary is: herp derp we're going to crush through Korhal with the entire might of the Zerg. Yup you can't stop us. As I watched the ending cutscene I was just overwhelmed with a feeling of 'meh'. Unlike WoL, which at least had a semi-epic climax.
I felt that the ending was really weak. There was next to no hype around killing Mengsk, the whole game was GARHH IM ANGRY AT MENSK LETS KILL HIM RWARRR. The missions leading up to it were pathetically weak storywise. The summary is: herp derp we're going to crush through Korhal with the entire might of the Zerg. Yup you can't stop us. As I watched the ending cutscene I was just overwhelmed with a feeling of 'meh'. Unlike WoL, which at least had a semi-epic climax.
I disagree. I felt that this expansion was meant to set the stage for Legacy of the Void - most media in between a beginning and an end have this same style to them, you want to further the story but you need to leave enough things unfinished and left hanging for the final game to wrap up.
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite. It was a bit predictable, but I didn't mind it so much. I liked the contrast between Sarah being somewhat ruthless as the Queen of Blades, but still maintaining some of her human compassion - I thought that was well done.
Mengsk was a bit underwhelming, the last few missions are quite easy, I agree with you that Wings of Liberty was more difficult, but I like that they changed the ending. I think a poor ending would have been if they just had Jim come back, confess he was wrong to say he was done with Sarah, and then they kiss as the credits roll. I give them some credit for taking a less predictable route and have Kerrigan prepare the swarm for the battle with the Xel'Naga fella at the cost of what she personally wants (Jim).
Maybe your expectations were a lot higher than mine, but I actually enjoyed the story. I thought the feral zerg bit was neat, I thought Stukov was well done - in fact the only bit I thought was poorly done was the Duran/Narud bit - he's supposed to be a very powerful mysterious entity and they pretty much just kill him off with further explanation to him - that's a wasted character in my opinion. I'd give the story an 8/10 - I would have given WOL a 7/10.
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She unlike Jim turns her back on her humanity and turns to the zerg to save Jim (although in this case she is depicted as transcending and becoming the "good" queen). Jim is very visibly upset and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
That was pathetically poor writing. The optimistic side of me was hoping that due to the leaked ending, they would go a different, non-terrible direction. I won't be buying this, and I'm glad I waited to see the ending instead of pre-ordering
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She again turns to "evil" to save Jim. Jim is very visibly upsets and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
She didn't become evil. She just reinfested herself, she's the "good" queen of blades now, because her mind is cleared of blind hate after she was saved by Jim, and further cemented her alliance to the Jim and Zeratul after she killed mengsk.
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She again turns to "evil" to save Jim. Jim is very visibly upsets and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
She didn't become evil. She just reinfested herself, she's the "good" queen of blades now, because her mind is cleared of blind hate after she was saved by Jim, and further cemented her alliance to the Jim and Zeratul after she killed mengsk.
Sorry I just edited that after thinking about it and updated it. Zerg aren't really "evil" per se. I was alluding to the contrast between what happened with BW zerg.
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She unlike Jim turns her back on her humanity and turns to the zerg to save Jim (although in this case she is depicted as transcending and becoming the "good" queen). Jim is very visibly upset and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
The most disappointing thing for me is the lack of protoss influence in the storyline in both WoL and HoTS. Sure, you do fight protoss but do they have any significant role in the main storyline? NO. The only exception is Zeratul, but he doesn't appear much either. WoL is "TvZ" and HoTS is "ZvT", I'm pretty fed up already.
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She unlike Jim turns her back on her humanity and turns to the zerg to save Jim (although in this case she is depicted as transcending and becoming the "good" queen). Jim is very visibly upset and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
I don't know what kind of story people wanted. Is this a better story: Jim rescues Kerrigan and turns her back into a human, but he doesn't want anything to do with her. Both Kerrigan and Jim spend zero time together on the Hyperion and Kerrigan goes to seek more power so she can kill Mengsk. Kerrigan becomes reinfested and Jim doesn't care. Kerrigan kills Mengsk, Jim is happy Mengsk is dead, but doesn't really care. Kerrigan prepares the swarm for the Xel'Naga God.
Of course there was going to be a love story between the two of them, I would have been upset if there wasn't. What kind of love story would have been better? I think love stories are almost always going to be cheesy and corny, it's more or less inherent to that type of story.
Brood War was a different scenario because it dealt with material that I feel was rather easy to craft. I think creating a love/redemption story in Starcraft II is far more difficult than creating a betrayal/revenge story - so I don't really compare the two in that way.
Yes, that was my 8/10, I enjoyed it.
I ask anyone who is upset with the story/ending - what do YOU think would have been better? Give an example.
Let's be fair here. Starcraft, Brood War, Starcraft 2 and Heart of the Swarm were never particularly well written in the first place. However I'm pleased enough with what I've seen. I can't imagine what planet you must be on if you thought Kerrigan's comedy "I saw this coming a mile away" face-heel-turn in BW was particularly good writing.
One thing I will say about Heart of the Swarm - they've changed the story at least twice. There are clear discontinuities in the writing, + Show Spoiler +
particularly around that protoss, the "prophecy" and the Primal Zerg
. However, what is there is engaging enough that I've played it for most of today due to being sick.
LOTV has far too much content to cover for it to be even decent. Either they rush through all the plot threads sloppily or pick one thing and go with it. ignoring the rest. There isn't enough room in twenty missions for enough exposition/development/progress or whatever to make things feel paced appropriately with how much is left on the table unfinished. I feel like SC 3 is there for the rest. I wish I didn't have to say I'm glad I didn't buy it, but I am.
LOTV has far too much content to cover for it to be even decent. Either they rush through all the plot threads sloppily or pick one thing and go with it. ignoring the rest. There isn't enough room in twenty missions for enough exposition/development/progress or whatever to make things feel paced appropriately with how much is left on the table unfinished. I feel like SC 3 is there for the rest. I wish I didn't have to say I'm glad I didn't buy it, but I am.
I don't think they'll leave a lot of loose ends for SC III - of course they won't end the story completely, I think Starcraft is a very popular franchise and it's in their best interest to leave a way for them to revisit it, but I would be surprised if they didn't wrap up 90% of the existing story in LOTV.
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She unlike Jim turns her back on her humanity and turns to the zerg to save Jim (although in this case she is depicted as transcending and becoming the "good" queen). Jim is very visibly upset and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
I don't know what kind of story people wanted. Is this a better story: Jim rescues Kerrigan and turns her back into a human, but he doesn't want anything to do with her. Both Kerrigan and Jim spend zero time together on the Hyperion and Kerrigan goes to seek more power so she can kill Mengsk. Kerrigan becomes reinfested and Jim doesn't care. Kerrigan kills Mengsk, Jim is happy Mengsk is dead, but doesn't really care. Kerrigan prepares the swarm for the Xel'Naga God.
Of course there was going to be a love story between the two of them, I would have been upset if there wasn't. What kind of love story would have been better? I think love stories are almost always going to be cheesy and corny, it's more or less inherent to that type of story.
Brood War was a different scenario because it dealt with material that I feel was rather easy to craft. I think creating a love/redemption story in Starcraft II is far more difficult than creating a betrayal/revenge story - so I don't really compare the two in that way.
Yes, that was my 8/10, I enjoyed it.
I ask anyone who is upset with the story/ending - what do YOU think would have been better? Give an example.
I haven't played HoTS yet, but from the sound of things you'd have to change most of WoL's story line in order to make this story better. That's kind of the problem, they went for a cheesy love plot from the very start. WoL really only left a few places for HoTS to go, unless they focused more on the Protoss/Duran, and it sounds like they didn't.
Again, I haven't played yet, but from hearing about the story so far, is there any situation where the Protoss (Artanis/Selendis) try to destroy Kerrigan and Raynor has to save her? That would lead to some really interesting character development. Raynor has to betray the people he was friends with in order to avoid fulfilling the prophecy. It'd also reveal that Zeratul trusts Raynor more than his own people with the prophecy. It'd also further develop Artanis or Selendis or whoever. (This is going with the framework they provided in WoL)
I'm just coming up with this off the top of my head. If they don't present situations like this where it gives characters for all 3 races to develop they're going to have real trouble in LotV then, cause Protoss got barely any love in WoL (basically just a faceless enemy in the way of objectives).
I felt like they did a good job advancing the story between Jim and Sarah, they had a bit of fan service in the beginning by having them begin to hook up, Sarah kissing him etc, only to separate them and have them reunite.
That's exactly why I want to grind my face in granite. Jezus thats the kind of relational/emotional complexity I was involved in when I was in the 4th grade.
I have read every single Harry Potter book. I enjoyed them when I was young and stuck with them. But even I recognized how immature and underdeveloped they were as I grew up. My enjoyment didn't blind me from seeing that. Does that mean they were bad books? No, but I knew I was dealing with unsophisticated material.
In contrast BW gave us some relief from binaries and nuance in the motivations of characters. This on the other hand....especially with cutscenes using setups to trigger cheap emotional responses a la Hollywood and terrible lines to boot?
Common, Jim already did everything he could to get Kerrigan back and didn't give up his humanity to do so but she ended up ripping apart his world (BW). He vowed not to trust her. Okay fine, he has amnesia in SC2. Blizz sets it up that Kerrigan can return the favor, what does she do? + Show Spoiler +
She unlike Jim turns her back on her humanity and turns to the zerg to save Jim (although in this case she is depicted as transcending and becoming the "good" queen). Jim is very visibly upset and he shoots some rounds into the wall. But what does he do again? He comes and saves her at the end. That's what I'm to buy in? I'm supposed to cheer that? That's your 8/10?
I don't know what kind of story people wanted. Is this a better story: Jim rescues Kerrigan and turns her back into a human, but he doesn't want anything to do with her. Both Kerrigan and Jim spend zero time together on the Hyperion and Kerrigan goes to seek more power so she can kill Mengsk. Kerrigan becomes reinfested and Jim doesn't care. Kerrigan kills Mengsk, Jim is happy Mengsk is dead, but doesn't really care. Kerrigan prepares the swarm for the Xel'Naga God.
Of course there was going to be a love story between the two of them, I would have been upset if there wasn't. What kind of love story would have been better? I think love stories are almost always going to be cheesy and corny, it's more or less inherent to that type of story.
Brood War was a different scenario because it dealt with material that I feel was rather easy to craft. I think creating a love/redemption story in Starcraft II is far more difficult than creating a betrayal/revenge story - so I don't really compare the two in that way.
Yes, that was my 8/10, I enjoyed it.
I ask anyone who is upset with the story/ending - what do YOU think would have been better? Give an example.
I haven't played HoTS yet, but from the sound of things you'd have to change most of WoL's story line in order to make this story better. That's kind of the problem, they went for a cheesy love plot from the very start. WoL really only left a few places for HoTS to go, unless they focused more on the Protoss/Duran, and it sounds like they didn't.
Again, I haven't played yet, but from hearing about the story so far, is there any situation where the Protoss (Artanis/Selendis) try to destroy Kerrigan and Raynor has to save her? That would lead to some really interesting character development. Raynor has to betray the people he was friends with in order to avoid fulfilling the prophecy. It'd also reveal that Zeratul trusts Raynor more than his own people with the prophecy. It'd also further develop Artanis or Selendis or whoever. (This is going with the framework they provided in WoL)
I'm just coming up with this off the top of my head. If they don't present situations like this where it gives characters for all 3 races to develop they're going to have real trouble in LotV then, cause Protoss got barely any love in WoL (basically just a faceless enemy in the way of objectives).
TLDR: We need more protoss.
Seriously. The lack of protoss is beyond stupid and disappointing
was the ending "sampled" from star wars? electricity torturing our main hero, then I swear the line mengsk says is the exact same as Darth Sidious: something something something... "and now, you will die" about to electricute her more, then raynor (vader) comes and saves her (luke) from the emperor (the emperor)
I just beat it... I don't think it's completely surprising that Blizzard has gone downhill in terms of story telling but at the same time it's only worth bringing how atrocious HOTS is in delving into a mediocre sci-fi space love affair between Jim and Kerrigan because the original Starcraft and Brood War had a sense of a vision.
Perhaps the most baffling thing is that Chris had the blueprint in creating a half decent story lay out in front of him. Yeah, you can say that the original Starcraft wasn't original either but it was at the very least memorable. Kerrigan as a character and character relationships turning sour, to the point where Infested Kerrigan plotted against the Celebrate was all done well, especially for a video game story. In fact Kerrigan as a whole throughout Brood War was portrayed as "being the biggest bitch in the universe" and the story nailed her character to being a hallmark of a great villian in videogames.
HOTS goes about as opposite of a direction in how Kerrigan develops as possible and trying to force you to feel sympathetic for her cause. Hello Blizzard? Remember that JIMMY SWORE ON HIS NAME THAT HE WOULD BE THE ONE TO KILL KERRIGAN AFTER MURDERING FENIX? It's here that Metzen had a realization to completely TARNISH and betray the notion of Kerrigan as a character when she makes out with Jim Raynor in HOTS. This character ISN'T supposed to be a noble heroin with a sense of self sacrifice. Even the story justification at the end of WoL, using voodoo magic to restore her urghh.
I'm in rage, I'll finish this when i calm down. I just finished the game and I'm angry.
was the ending "sampled" from star wars? electricity torturing our main hero, then I swear the line mengsk says is the exact same as Darth Sidious: something something something... "and now, you will die" about to electricute her more, then raynor (vader) comes and saves her (luke) from the emperor (the emperor)
its similar, but it wasnt stolen from there. its just the leaked ending with other device, this case the xel'naga artifact, and to convey its power they showed the most usual device in stories, lightning. There are similarities between the 2 scenes, but i think it wasnt intentional at all.
Some parts of Mengsk dialog in the ending make no sense at all. when he talks about the insurance policy... when the fuck did he make her close to him? the way he says it it seems to indicate that kerrigan was close to him, and that the artifact was an insurance policy to be used if she rebelled. this makes no sense because the artifact is the artifact from the end of WOL (i guess). the dialog actually works with the leaked ending, where other device was implanted in her while she was a ghost, before SC1, device which mengsk triggers in the ending of HOTS.
1. Reboots the whole franchise in a more serious vein... 2. Lacks a singleplayer component completely.
It's a sad thing, but at the end of an SC2 campaign I feel sick to my stomach because of a horrid mix of shitty writing combined with some somewhat great moments that leaves me dissatisfied...
In the beginning of the campaign, I was actually beginning to believe that Tricia Helfer was a somewhat competent voice actress.
As far as LOTV goes, I'm just waiting for all the multiplayer changes.
LOTV has far too much content to cover for it to be even decent. Either they rush through all the plot threads sloppily or pick one thing and go with it. ignoring the rest. There isn't enough room in twenty missions for enough exposition/development/progress or whatever to make things feel paced appropriately with how much is left on the table unfinished. I feel like SC 3 is there for the rest. I wish I didn't have to say I'm glad I didn't buy it, but I am.
I'm pretty sure Stukov was there to give them a nice tie in for SC3 - notice how he was so hung up on Earth and Kerrigan tells him that "Earth will be back". That's sequel setup in my eyes. And tbh, I would welcome Earth coming back - at least its not a xelnaga god rofl
Early on when Raynor is caught by Nova in mine she said "I might have let you go but for that whole Tosh thing" If I instead sided with Nova does it change this? Or is it predecided in HotS that you helped Tosh?
brood war sucked donkey balls in terms of storytelling. Kerrigan was one dimensional and needlessly sadistic, the heroes were idiots, and there were far more plot holes than in wings of liberty (the pyramid in the protoss campaign was pretty much identical to the WOL artifact, only it had even less foreshadowing and milage and didn't violate chekov's gun, Kerrigan's attack in mission 7 wouldn't have been needed if she hadn't stabbed fenix in the back, Zeratul coming with only one ship when Kerrigan kidnapped Raszegal.....)
If anything, Wol had character development (raynor facing the ghosts of his past, Zeratul learning how much was at stake)
If anything, Heart of the Swarm is SUPERIOR to brood war. The stakes are higher, Kerrigan is actually three dimensional rather than snively whiplash, the losses occur other than for being grim dark for the sake of it, and a faction that has at least some buildup rather than nowhere.
For those whinning about the oath......Grow up you fucking crybabies.
Early on when Raynor is caught by Nova in mine she said "I might have let you go but for that whole Tosh thing" If I instead sided with Nova does it change this? Or is it predecided in HotS that you helped Tosh?
IIRC in one of the panels they said the "choices" with tosh and ariel would be retconned so that you always sided with tosh/ariel. But as I sided with tosh I don't know if they kept true to that.
As I have no interest in picking up HotS, I'll just ask it here:
I saw some HotS achievement named "True purpose of Xel'naga artifact" or something to that effect.
Since I was deeply dissapointed in the WoL campaign since most of it amounted to a quest hunt for this macguffin that could conveniently cure our main badgirl of her evil ways, I am somewhat interested in what this "true purpose" could be.
On March 12 2013 21:12 Masemium wrote: As I have no interest in picking up HotS, I'll just ask it here:
I saw some HotS achievement named "True purpose of Xel'naga artifact" or something to that effect.
Since I was deeply dissapointed in the WoL campaign since most of it amounted to a quest hunt for this macguffin that could conveniently cure our main badgirl of her evil ways, I am somewhat interested in what this "true purpose" could be.
I am incredibly disappointed in the story with HoTS and SC2 in general. They really went out of their way to force Kerrigan into a "good guy" role. Yeah she was probably the most popular character in SC and BW, but you know what got her there? She was a badass villain and a bitch, which was pretty unique for a female video game character back then.
Somewhere along the lines they decided that people only liked her because of her ass and then threw in a very cheesy romance plot. The worst part was that they destroyed Raynor's character as well just to get romance into the game. Were they that afraid that no one wants to play the villain in a 3 faction game? Did they not notice how popular Kerrigan got while she was the cruel villain? Did they really have to do all that to the story just to force this cheesy romance plot on us? At the end of the day it's their story, but wow did they drop the ball on it.
I must be one of the few that prefers sc2 than sc1 story telling. I thought the characters were way too one dimensional in sc1 the way they presented them
I think the hots was overall not bad, it was really interesting to see so many sides of the zerg. some parts felt too short but overall not bad and not enough toss in it
Campaign was fun, but what I dislike the most was... + Show Spoiler +
... that very little important stuff happened. Summarize of Hots: - Kerrigan becomes human, but keeps Zerg power. Dominium attack secret Umojan Lab, where She is; - Jim dissapears, probably dead; - Kerrigan goes to Char to regain power; - Kerrigan goes to Zerus (Zerg Homeworld) to regain true power; - Kerrigan learns truth about Xel'Naga on Skygeir Platform - Kerrigan invades Korhal and kill Mengs (Raynor alive!)
Thats everything that happened worth mentioning. Try to summarize BW in six points. BW had so much more story development that it makes me said
I like shiny shit as much as the next guy, probably more. I'll be 100%'ing these achievements just like WoL (except for the 800 FFA's. Fuck. That. Shit.)
Oh Arcturus, this isn't #vengeance, this is justice #lol
Oh god.
Now that we know the leaked ending is real, we have absolute proof that Blizzard writers are amateurs. As you've pointed out, the ending cinematic contains some of the the cheesiest dialogue ever written. It's just awful. High school students could do better.
Oh, thank god they remove the "THIS IS JUSTICE!" line.
The leaked cinematic is one of the worse and cheesiest endings I've ever seen. Even in the context of playing the entire campaign, had that ending been put into the game it would have destroyed whatever creditability Blizzard's story department had left.
But, I'm so glad that it got leaked because that seems to have motivated them to change some of the worse parts of the cinematic. The "THIS IS JUSTICE" line is gone. And they removed the Disneyesque speech at the end where the zerg are now the good guys, replacing it with a brooding preview about what's to come in LotV -- a showdown with the Dark Voice, Amon. Also, Mengsk's switch being connected to the Artifact (last seen in the possession of Nurad in the book) instead of some unknown girl in a water tank makes a lot more sense.
I prepared for the most poorly executed ending ever, but with the changes they've made I was thoroughly surprised and very satisfied with the ending. It was a well made ending.
LOTV has far too much content to cover for it to be even decent. Either they rush through all the plot threads sloppily or pick one thing and go with it. ignoring the rest. There isn't enough room in twenty missions for enough exposition/development/progress or whatever to make things feel paced appropriately with how much is left on the table unfinished. I feel like SC 3 is there for the rest. I wish I didn't have to say I'm glad I didn't buy it, but I am.
I'm pretty sure Stukov was there to give them a nice tie in for SC3 - notice how he was so hung up on Earth and Kerrigan tells him that "Earth will be back". That's sequel setup in my eyes. And tbh, I would welcome Earth coming back - at least its not a xelnaga god rofl
If the UED does return, all the campaign missions in SC3 will be XvT, and I'm not sure how many people will be happy with that. But at least they aren't just having the UED storyline finish without a road to follow.
From watching people stream the campaign, the story does seem pretty interesting, albeit typical in some ways. I liked how it expanded on the history of the Zerg greatly, and expanded on the Xel'Naga storyline greatly, and actually gave a real idea of who the villain is. The ending was decent actually, better than the original one they tried to attempt. I guess having it leaked gave Blizzard the opportunity to receive criticism and work around the mistakes.
If the UED does return, all the campaign missions in SC3 will be XvT, and I'm not sure how many people will be happy with that. But at least they aren't just having the UED storyline finish without a road to follow.
UED can be highlighted as completely new campaign faction with their buildings and units. Like Naga in WC3.
It was so obvious he wasn't dead. Blizzard isn't killing off a major character on the side like that. If Mengsk actually killed him he would've shown it to the public.
I don't really have a problem with the Raynor/Kerrigan romance line, but I did have a problem with a few thigns
1. Inconsistency with with Kerrigans character. They show her at times feeling remorse and sometimes just sparing innocents. Yet during some missions she needlessly kills innocents without feeling anything (i.e. the evolve missions where they just slaughter random protoss)
2. How stupid are bad guys seriously? Mengsk and Warhound both said like "U're gonna die (basically)" probably 20x throughout the entire campaign, even when Kerrigan was breaking down their front door. Also their strategies just sucked, I mean I know Kerrigan has to win at the end but an 8 year old playing risk make better battlefield commanders than those guys
3. The script. "We what do we now my queen?" "We kill them all" ... *facepalm*
On March 13 2013 09:13 BigAsia wrote: I don't really have a problem with the Raynor/Kerrigan romance line, but I did have a problem with a few thigns
1. Inconsistency with with Kerrigans character. They show her at times feeling remorse and sometimes just sparing innocents. Yet during some missions she needlessly kills innocents without feeling anything (i.e. the evolve missions where they just slaughter random protoss)
2. How stupid are bad guys seriously? Mengsk and Warhound both said like "U're gonna die (basically)" probably 20x throughout the entire campaign, even when Kerrigan was breaking down their front door. Also their strategies just sucked, I mean I know Kerrigan has to win at the end but an 8 year old playing risk make better battlefield commanders than those guys
3. The script. "We what do we now my queen?" "We kill them all" ... *facepalm*
The worst part for me was the Prison Break mission. I'm supposed to break people out of a prison , and the game tells me to do so i should to infest other prisoners ? WTF ? I was like fuck no and just made it without using it because it just didn't fit at all. + Show Spoiler +
especially when Valarian and Horner just kinda nodded .
It was so obvious he wasn't dead. Blizzard isn't killing off a major character on the side like that. If Mengsk actually killed him he would've shown it to the public.
On March 12 2013 23:06 PureLuckz wrote: I am incredibly disappointed in the story with HoTS and SC2 in general. They really went out of their way to force Kerrigan into a "good guy" role. Yeah she was probably the most popular character in SC and BW, but you know what got her there? She was a badass villain and a bitch, which was pretty unique for a female video game character back then.
Somewhere along the lines they decided that people only liked her because of her ass and then threw in a very cheesy romance plot. The worst part was that they destroyed Raynor's character as well just to get romance into the game. Were they that afraid that no one wants to play the villain in a 3 faction game? Did they not notice how popular Kerrigan got while she was the cruel villain? Did they really have to do all that to the story just to force this cheesy romance plot on us? At the end of the day it's their story, but wow did they drop the ball on it.
She really isn't placed into a good guy role. She is more taken out of her pure villain role and placed more towards neutrality. Won't do bad shit for shits and giggles but still will do them when they are necessary to her goals. She is more powerful then her original form but she has more....humanity? I guess. They did say that the whole swarm was purified of the Amon taint so maybe that had to do something with it as even her minions weren't quite as blood thirsty and were more inclined to learn as they gained greater cognitive power.
It will be interesting to see what they do with the third installment since its "the Protoss expansion" but obviously the Zerg will be huge part of it (Terran are kinda in disarray atm but Raynor sure as hell will do something). Is this the last expansion or will there be another "all races v Big Bad Evil God" type?
On March 13 2013 12:21 ticklishmusic wrote: jim and sarah too cute
5ever plz
I think they have laid some setup to where its possible for this ending if they want to heh. I mean they already have had several interactions between Kerrigan and Zagara about her wanting to lead. All she needs is to learn more (and Kerrigan made them all smarter) so who is to say some good Xel Naga guys come right at the end after the baddie is destroyed and says "Oh Hai guys thanks for killing Amon, dude was a dick. Btw you want us to remove the Zerg part of yourself so you can be human again? Its the least we could do since we didn't help out in the final battle LOL"
On March 12 2013 23:06 PureLuckz wrote: I am incredibly disappointed in the story with HoTS and SC2 in general. They really went out of their way to force Kerrigan into a "good guy" role. Yeah she was probably the most popular character in SC and BW, but you know what got her there? She was a badass villain and a bitch, which was pretty unique for a female video game character back then.
Somewhere along the lines they decided that people only liked her because of her ass and then threw in a very cheesy romance plot. The worst part was that they destroyed Raynor's character as well just to get romance into the game. Were they that afraid that no one wants to play the villain in a 3 faction game? Did they not notice how popular Kerrigan got while she was the cruel villain? Did they really have to do all that to the story just to force this cheesy romance plot on us? At the end of the day it's their story, but wow did they drop the ball on it.
She really isn't placed into a good guy role. She is more taken out of her pure villain role and placed more towards neutrality. Won't do bad shit for shits and giggles but still will do them when they are necessary to her goals. She is more powerful then her original form but she has more....humanity? I guess. They did say that the whole swarm was purified of the Amon taint so maybe that had to do something with it as even her minions weren't quite as blood thirsty and were more inclined to learn as they gained greater cognitive power.
It will be interesting to see what they do with the third installment since its "the Protoss expansion" but obviously the Zerg will be huge part of it (Terran are kinda in disarray atm but Raynor sure as hell will do something). Is this the last expansion or will there be another "all races v Big Bad Evil God" type?
It would be so funny if Amon was actually Archimonde and if the final battle of LotV also included WC3 races.
On March 13 2013 13:08 xDaunt wrote: The HOTS story is like a palatable B-movie until you remember from SC/BW that the Zerg and Kerrigan are supposed to be the ultimate bad guys.
Eh she was bitter and fighting a bitter free for all type battle. Once she was rehumanized (that is the worst part of it imo so thats all on WoL) the HotS progression of her character isn't that unrealistic/bad.
On March 13 2013 13:08 xDaunt wrote: The HOTS story is like a palatable B-movie until you remember from SC/BW that the Zerg and Kerrigan are supposed to be the ultimate bad guys.
Eh she was bitter and fighting a bitter free for all type battle. Once she was rehumanized (that is the worst part of it imo so thats all on WoL) the HotS progression of her character isn't that unrealistic/bad.
The progression in HOTS is fine given what happened in WOL. The problem is what happened in WOL.
Is it just me that WANTS Kerrigan to end up as the good guy and with Jim? Or does everyone else want her surfing Mutalisks through space tearing up planets by coughing in that direction?
On March 12 2013 23:06 PureLuckz wrote: I am incredibly disappointed in the story with HoTS and SC2 in general. They really went out of their way to force Kerrigan into a "good guy" role. Yeah she was probably the most popular character in SC and BW, but you know what got her there? She was a badass villain and a bitch, which was pretty unique for a female video game character back then.
Somewhere along the lines they decided that people only liked her because of her ass and then threw in a very cheesy romance plot. The worst part was that they destroyed Raynor's character as well just to get romance into the game. Were they that afraid that no one wants to play the villain in a 3 faction game? Did they not notice how popular Kerrigan got while she was the cruel villain? Did they really have to do all that to the story just to force this cheesy romance plot on us? At the end of the day it's their story, but wow did they drop the ball on it.
She really isn't placed into a good guy role. She is more taken out of her pure villain role and placed more towards neutrality. Won't do bad shit for shits and giggles but still will do them when they are necessary to her goals. She is more powerful then her original form but she has more....humanity? I guess. They did say that the whole swarm was purified of the Amon taint so maybe that had to do something with it as even her minions weren't quite as blood thirsty and were more inclined to learn as they gained greater cognitive power.
It will be interesting to see what they do with the third installment since its "the Protoss expansion" but obviously the Zerg will be huge part of it (Terran are kinda in disarray atm but Raynor sure as hell will do something). Is this the last expansion or will there be another "all races v Big Bad Evil God" type?
On March 13 2013 12:21 ticklishmusic wrote: jim and sarah too cute
5ever plz
I think they have laid some setup to where its possible for this ending if they want to heh. I mean they already have had several interactions between Kerrigan and Zagara about her wanting to lead. All she needs is to learn more (and Kerrigan made them all smarter) so who is to say some good Xel Naga guys come right at the end after the baddie is destroyed and says "Oh Hai guys thanks for killing Amon, dude was a dick. Btw you want us to remove the Zerg part of yourself so you can be human again? Its the least we could do since we didn't help out in the final battle LOL"
Or we get to the end of LotV, there is some huge ass epic battle like you said, then the screen fades out to Kerrigan about to be surrounded on Tarsonis.
She gets eaten by a Zergling. Jim crashes his ship into Mengsk. Everyone dies. The end.
On March 13 2013 13:45 LOLItsRyann wrote: Is it just me that WANTS Kerrigan to end up as the good guy and with Jim? Or does everyone else want her surfing Mutalisks through space tearing up planets by coughing in that direction?
Na I want the same :D My edited post on the previous page has some speculation about it.
A lot of these posts seem very focused on "good" vs. "bad" which obviously makes sense in terms of storytelling. That being said, one of the interesting things to me about SC/BW was there was often the sense that nobody was just good and nobody was just bad. The characters frequently do what's best for their survival or their race's survival - and oftentimes this means taking actions that are wrong or appear evil. In the meantime you have Duran slinking around in the background manipulating the various factions to some unidentified end goal. Alliances frequently change - Raynor/Mengsk, the Dark Templar and Tassadar, Kerrigan/Zeratul, etc.
I think this is part of why people are dissatisfied with SC2 storylines - the focus isn't on the faction/race, it's on very specific characters. WoL isn't the "Terran Campaign" it's the Raynor Campaign. Likewise HoTS is the Kerrigan Campaign instead of the Zerg Campaign. SC2 tells the story of what happens to 3 specific characters from the first game (with some Mengsk/Duran/etc, but not much).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - it's simply a different way to tell a story. I do think a lot of people miss the unique way SC/BW was told though. It played out like a historical document to some extent - and you got to watch each move a variety of political players made, and see how each move played out through your actions in controlling each various faction.
On March 13 2013 15:05 Swords wrote: A lot of these posts seem very focused on "good" vs. "bad" which obviously makes sense in terms of storytelling. That being said, one of the interesting things to me about SC/BW was there was often the sense that nobody was just good and nobody was just bad. The characters frequently do what's best for their survival or their race's survival - and oftentimes this means taking actions that are wrong or appear evil. In the meantime you have Duran slinking around in the background manipulating the various factions to some unidentified end goal. Alliances frequently change - Raynor/Mengsk, the Dark Templar and Tassadar, Kerrigan/Zeratul, etc.
I think this is part of why people are dissatisfied with SC2 storylines - the focus isn't on the faction/race, it's on very specific characters. WoL isn't the "Terran Campaign" it's the Raynor Campaign. Likewise HoTS is the Kerrigan Campaign instead of the Zerg Campaign. SC2 tells the story of what happens to 3 specific characters from the first game (with some Mengsk/Duran/etc, but not much).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - it's simply a different way to tell a story. I do think a lot of people miss the unique way SC/BW was told though. It played out like a historical document to some extent - and you got to watch each move a variety of political players made, and see how each move played out through your actions in controlling each various faction.
Raynor has always been the good guy. Even as a former criminal, SC1 always made it a point to try to play it off as some playful wild west shenanigan where he did some sort of robin hood crime. Hes always been played out as the likeable character and the only one who retains his humanity.
The blurring of morality for the races as a whole made for interesting story telling. It was basically a prototype game of thrones, a story about a bunch of really shitty people who shouldn't be in control of the universe but are. Jimmy is like Jon Snow, the guy everyone likes and actually should be in charge of the show but never will.
Unfortunately Chris Metzen is an actual being, who loves the M Night Shamelon twist of "wait the bad guys ARE the good guys!". Thus we get Kerrigan the savior of the universe from kooky zel naga hermit who lives in a black hole.
Jim's character was salvageable from WoL, he had fallen back to the naivety that had allowed Kerrigan to be betrayed and sacrificed everything at the chance to save her and right his wrongs in supporting mengsk. Him showing up at the end firmly ruined his character as a whole. Why?
Lets remember Jim's first mission ever in SC, he risks life and limb to save of a bunch of civies that everyone else has written off because they are so meaningless in the eyes of the power hungry tyrants running the show. In fact he aligns with Mengsk because he naively thinks that the man can make a difference and cares for the people. Mengsk turns out to be just a shitty of a person as the last ruler and betrays him and kerry sending jim into a spiral. From a story telling perspective, SC:BW is the low point, the great adversity that weighs heavily on the hero in an epic. He makes some bad calls and has to take some bad short term alliances and eventually fully cements himself in his role, its his job to put down his former lover kerrigan.
I mean fuck this is a really sad god damn story. Dude fights for the good of people, gets betrayed by the man he puts his faith in and has to watch his lover be corrupted and turned into a monster as a result of his good success in helping megnsk. In the end she even continues to betray him and he watches the rest of his friends die for it.
Then SC2 happens and we get told theres a space baddy who live in black hole who is now really the bad guy. Jim gets to save kerry but then she has to transform back and keep killing innocents by the tens of millions, or do we just have to assume that every marine is a card carrying SS member and all the planets and major capitals she torches were evacced the week before. Now Jim who chastises her about her butcherings shows up at the end to help commit a giant atrocitiy to get to one man, keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars. Then he gives her basically the thumbs off as she reveals that she can actually fly (THEN WHY FIGHT THROUGH THE GOD DAMN ELEVATOR) and smiles as she continues her complete lust of power and murder.
I'd been happier if we had ditched this Amon zel naga space jesus story and continued this as a tragedy where raynor's misplaced trust leaves him as a broken man who eventually has to own up and put down the monsters he put into power/create. Thats an interesting story to me.
does anyone has a real (no joke) idea - why AAA title have this awful childish plot? Im really interested, what happened with metzen? or (im not sarcasic) maybe they said in an interview that sc2 singleplayer will be for 10 year old kids?
On March 13 2013 16:43 Fen1kz wrote: does anyone has a real (no joke) idea - why AAA title have this awful childish plot? Im really interested, what happened with metzen? or (im not sarcasic) maybe they said in an interview that sc2 singleplayer will be for 10 year old kids?
Sadly blizzard is taking a leaf from movie companies for story lines. Rehash and cliche everything. Generic "twists" and most overused one liners ever. Its like blizzard just took a bunch of movies and cut and pasted one liners.
So I agree. Blizzard should have had a warning that this story would go from awesome scbw to lol story... whats that?
And anyone else annoyed that you don't have queens to inject?
Loved the campaign, missions were fun and the zerg evolution choices were so crazy it makes dicking around in the campaign in the future so easy. Only 2 things I didn't enjoy: Clicking on Izsha. I wanted to get through every single bit of story that I could, but I really just hated having to click on her. It feels like she's a useless character to me, and something about her just bugged me. Dehaka. lol. This guy shows up, and my first impression is that he really doesn't belong. He has no interest in Kerrigan, or the Swarm, he's just kinda there and Kerrigan lets him stay. By some miracle he turns out to be the key to Kerrigan's victory later in 1 mission. It just feels a bit silly.
On March 13 2013 17:33 dudeman001 wrote: Clicking on Izsha. I wanted to get through every single bit of story that I could, but I really just hated having to click on her. It feels like she's a useless character to me, and something about her just bugged me.
She kinda bugged me too, I listened to everything she said, but even still she just kinda...Idunno. I didn't like her.
I feel like the cinematics were really well done, but it's incredibly disappointing to see the campaign be a series of "get used to this one unit" maps yet again. Something feels really lacking there, and the fact that you're able to switch upgrades on your units at will makes your unit customization seem... well, unimportant. Normally you'd think about your choices a little bit so you don't make the wrong call, but that sort of gravity is totally lacking now.
I'm also not really sure that Kerrigan's motives for going back to the Zerg really make sense in the context of what's happened in the storyline; presumably she does it to rescue Raynor from prison, but we've already had a ton of missions where squads of troops have been able to sneak onto supposedly-secure Dominion stations/ships, so it seems really weird that one former ghost, let alone the (former) Queen of Blades, couldn't figure out a way to do this covertly.
I mean, not that it even makes sense to raise a huge army to track down one guy, but that's another thing altogether.
EDIT: Oh wait, Kerrigan initially goes back to the Zerg to track down Raynor and help him escape; at this point she didn't know he was in a prison ship. Her actions make even less sense then, since large swarms of Zerg aren't going to be terribly effective at gathering intel from Terrans.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
I was thinking the exact same thing, to be honest. I guess it helps that I'm not a super lore nerd, but I thought the story in HotS was amazing.
On March 13 2013 15:05 Swords wrote: A lot of these posts seem very focused on "good" vs. "bad" which obviously makes sense in terms of storytelling. That being said, one of the interesting things to me about SC/BW was there was often the sense that nobody was just good and nobody was just bad. The characters frequently do what's best for their survival or their race's survival - and oftentimes this means taking actions that are wrong or appear evil. In the meantime you have Duran slinking around in the background manipulating the various factions to some unidentified end goal. Alliances frequently change - Raynor/Mengsk, the Dark Templar and Tassadar, Kerrigan/Zeratul, etc.
I think this is part of why people are dissatisfied with SC2 storylines - the focus isn't on the faction/race, it's on very specific characters. WoL isn't the "Terran Campaign" it's the Raynor Campaign. Likewise HoTS is the Kerrigan Campaign instead of the Zerg Campaign. SC2 tells the story of what happens to 3 specific characters from the first game (with some Mengsk/Duran/etc, but not much).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - it's simply a different way to tell a story. I do think a lot of people miss the unique way SC/BW was told though. It played out like a historical document to some extent - and you got to watch each move a variety of political players made, and see how each move played out through your actions in controlling each various faction.
Raynor has always been the good guy. Even as a former criminal, SC1 always made it a point to try to play it off as some playful wild west shenanigan where he did some sort of robin hood crime. Hes always been played out as the likeable character and the only one who retains his humanity.
The blurring of morality for the races as a whole made for interesting story telling. It was basically a prototype game of thrones, a story about a bunch of really shitty people who shouldn't be in control of the universe but are. Jimmy is like Jon Snow, the guy everyone likes and actually should be in charge of the show but never will.
Unfortunately Chris Metzen is an actual being, who loves the M Night Shamelon twist of "wait the bad guys ARE the good guys!". Thus we get Kerrigan the savior of the universe from kooky zel naga hermit who lives in a black hole.
Jim's character was salvageable from WoL, he had fallen back to the naivety that had allowed Kerrigan to be betrayed and sacrificed everything at the chance to save her and right his wrongs in supporting mengsk. Him showing up at the end firmly ruined his character as a whole. Why?
Lets remember Jim's first mission ever in SC, he risks life and limb to save of a bunch of civies that everyone else has written off because they are so meaningless in the eyes of the power hungry tyrants running the show. In fact he aligns with Mengsk because he naively thinks that the man can make a difference and cares for the people. Mengsk turns out to be just a shitty of a person as the last ruler and betrays him and kerry sending jim into a spiral. From a story telling perspective, SC:BW is the low point, the great adversity that weighs heavily on the hero in an epic. He makes some bad calls and has to take some bad short term alliances and eventually fully cements himself in his role, its his job to put down his former lover kerrigan.
I mean fuck this is a really sad god damn story. Dude fights for the good of people, gets betrayed by the man he puts his faith in and has to watch his lover be corrupted and turned into a monster as a result of his good success in helping megnsk. In the end she even continues to betray him and he watches the rest of his friends die for it.
Then SC2 happens and we get told theres a space baddy who live in black hole who is now really the bad guy. Jim gets to save kerry but then she has to transform back and keep killing innocents by the tens of millions, or do we just have to assume that every marine is a card carrying SS member and all the planets and major capitals she torches were evacced the week before. Now Jim who chastises her about her butcherings shows up at the end to help commit a giant atrocitiy to get to one man, keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars. Then he gives her basically the thumbs off as she reveals that she can actually fly (THEN WHY FIGHT THROUGH THE GOD DAMN ELEVATOR) and smiles as she continues her complete lust of power and murder.
I'd been happier if we had ditched this Amon zel naga space jesus story and continued this as a tragedy where raynor's misplaced trust leaves him as a broken man who eventually has to own up and put down the monsters he put into power/create. Thats an interesting story to me.
This. This, so much. You've said everything in my head and more.
Also the Stutkov cameo seemed pretty gratuitous to me. He really could've been replaced by generic infested Terran X and nothing in the storyline would've changed.
Not that this is such a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, I was just looking forward to some callbacks to BW and didn't really get anything substantial. Kind of a letdown.
The campaign was fun for me and i really liked it. But as a lot of other people already said, the story could be better... i was waiting from the moment that stukov showed up for the moment that he was going to betry kerrigan. it just didnt happen.. oh and a huge part of the plot was so easy to know in advance, the fact that raynor isnt dead, mengsk little weapon against kerrigan in the end and the fact that that giant beast that you had to feed that one mission was going to attack you..
well overall im happy with HotS, story could be a lot better but it was still fun. hopefully they are going to make a really good ending for LotV but i guess its just going to be kerrigan sacrifises her power to kill the bad dude, turns human cus she lost all power and then shes going to do some 18+ movie with raynor
hopefully they are going to make a really good ending for LotV but i guess its just going to be kerrigan sacrifises her power to kill the bad dude, turns human cus she lost all power and then shes going to do some 18+ movie with raynor
On March 13 2013 17:50 shaldengeki wrote: Also the Stutkov cameo seemed pretty gratuitous to me. He really could've been replaced by generic infested Terran X and nothing in the storyline would've changed.
Not that this is such a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, I was just looking forward to some callbacks to BW and didn't really get anything substantial. Kind of a letdown.
hey no one complained about nova man.
anything to give the hardcore external canon fans a pat on the head.
Compared to the really shitty ending to WoL, I was pretty happy with the ending for HOTS. It was emotionally satisfying because it gave the campaign's focus on Kerrigan's ascension with the Zerg and the second loss of her humanity meaning. Unlike Jim Raynor fighting the dominion for 90% of the campaign, only to turn around and go to Char, fight the zerg, kill his best friend after a long forgotten plot point, and carry Kerrigan into the sunset.
On March 13 2013 15:05 Swords wrote: A lot of these posts seem very focused on "good" vs. "bad" which obviously makes sense in terms of storytelling. That being said, one of the interesting things to me about SC/BW was there was often the sense that nobody was just good and nobody was just bad. The characters frequently do what's best for their survival or their race's survival - and oftentimes this means taking actions that are wrong or appear evil. In the meantime you have Duran slinking around in the background manipulating the various factions to some unidentified end goal. Alliances frequently change - Raynor/Mengsk, the Dark Templar and Tassadar, Kerrigan/Zeratul, etc.
I think this is part of why people are dissatisfied with SC2 storylines - the focus isn't on the faction/race, it's on very specific characters. WoL isn't the "Terran Campaign" it's the Raynor Campaign. Likewise HoTS is the Kerrigan Campaign instead of the Zerg Campaign. SC2 tells the story of what happens to 3 specific characters from the first game (with some Mengsk/Duran/etc, but not much).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - it's simply a different way to tell a story. I do think a lot of people miss the unique way SC/BW was told though. It played out like a historical document to some extent - and you got to watch each move a variety of political players made, and see how each move played out through your actions in controlling each various faction.
Raynor has always been the good guy. Even as a former criminal, SC1 always made it a point to try to play it off as some playful wild west shenanigan where he did some sort of robin hood crime. Hes always been played out as the likeable character and the only one who retains his humanity.
The blurring of morality for the races as a whole made for interesting story telling. It was basically a prototype game of thrones, a story about a bunch of really shitty people who shouldn't be in control of the universe but are. Jimmy is like Jon Snow, the guy everyone likes and actually should be in charge of the show but never will.
Unfortunately Chris Metzen is an actual being, who loves the M Night Shamelon twist of "wait the bad guys ARE the good guys!". Thus we get Kerrigan the savior of the universe from kooky zel naga hermit who lives in a black hole.
Jim's character was salvageable from WoL, he had fallen back to the naivety that had allowed Kerrigan to be betrayed and sacrificed everything at the chance to save her and right his wrongs in supporting mengsk. Him showing up at the end firmly ruined his character as a whole. Why?
Lets remember Jim's first mission ever in SC, he risks life and limb to save of a bunch of civies that everyone else has written off because they are so meaningless in the eyes of the power hungry tyrants running the show. In fact he aligns with Mengsk because he naively thinks that the man can make a difference and cares for the people. Mengsk turns out to be just a shitty of a person as the last ruler and betrays him and kerry sending jim into a spiral. From a story telling perspective, SC:BW is the low point, the great adversity that weighs heavily on the hero in an epic. He makes some bad calls and has to take some bad short term alliances and eventually fully cements himself in his role, its his job to put down his former lover kerrigan.
I mean fuck this is a really sad god damn story. Dude fights for the good of people, gets betrayed by the man he puts his faith in and has to watch his lover be corrupted and turned into a monster as a result of his good success in helping megnsk. In the end she even continues to betray him and he watches the rest of his friends die for it.
Then SC2 happens and we get told theres a space baddy who live in black hole who is now really the bad guy. Jim gets to save kerry but then she has to transform back and keep killing innocents by the tens of millions, or do we just have to assume that every marine is a card carrying SS member and all the planets and major capitals she torches were evacced the week before. Now Jim who chastises her about her butcherings shows up at the end to help commit a giant atrocitiy to get to one man, keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars. Then he gives her basically the thumbs off as she reveals that she can actually fly (THEN WHY FIGHT THROUGH THE GOD DAMN ELEVATOR) and smiles as she continues her complete lust of power and murder.
I'd been happier if we had ditched this Amon zel naga space jesus story and continued this as a tragedy where raynor's misplaced trust leaves him as a broken man who eventually has to own up and put down the monsters he put into power/create. Thats an interesting story to me.
This. This, so much. You've said everything in my head and more.
On March 13 2013 15:05 Swords wrote: A lot of these posts seem very focused on "good" vs. "bad" which obviously makes sense in terms of storytelling. That being said, one of the interesting things to me about SC/BW was there was often the sense that nobody was just good and nobody was just bad. The characters frequently do what's best for their survival or their race's survival - and oftentimes this means taking actions that are wrong or appear evil. In the meantime you have Duran slinking around in the background manipulating the various factions to some unidentified end goal. Alliances frequently change - Raynor/Mengsk, the Dark Templar and Tassadar, Kerrigan/Zeratul, etc.
I think this is part of why people are dissatisfied with SC2 storylines - the focus isn't on the faction/race, it's on very specific characters. WoL isn't the "Terran Campaign" it's the Raynor Campaign. Likewise HoTS is the Kerrigan Campaign instead of the Zerg Campaign. SC2 tells the story of what happens to 3 specific characters from the first game (with some Mengsk/Duran/etc, but not much).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - it's simply a different way to tell a story. I do think a lot of people miss the unique way SC/BW was told though. It played out like a historical document to some extent - and you got to watch each move a variety of political players made, and see how each move played out through your actions in controlling each various faction.
Raynor has always been the good guy. Even as a former criminal, SC1 always made it a point to try to play it off as some playful wild west shenanigan where he did some sort of robin hood crime. Hes always been played out as the likeable character and the only one who retains his humanity.
The blurring of morality for the races as a whole made for interesting story telling. It was basically a prototype game of thrones, a story about a bunch of really shitty people who shouldn't be in control of the universe but are. Jimmy is like Jon Snow, the guy everyone likes and actually should be in charge of the show but never will.
Unfortunately Chris Metzen is an actual being, who loves the M Night Shamelon twist of "wait the bad guys ARE the good guys!". Thus we get Kerrigan the savior of the universe from kooky zel naga hermit who lives in a black hole.
Jim's character was salvageable from WoL, he had fallen back to the naivety that had allowed Kerrigan to be betrayed and sacrificed everything at the chance to save her and right his wrongs in supporting mengsk. Him showing up at the end firmly ruined his character as a whole. Why?
Lets remember Jim's first mission ever in SC, he risks life and limb to save of a bunch of civies that everyone else has written off because they are so meaningless in the eyes of the power hungry tyrants running the show. In fact he aligns with Mengsk because he naively thinks that the man can make a difference and cares for the people. Mengsk turns out to be just a shitty of a person as the last ruler and betrays him and kerry sending jim into a spiral. From a story telling perspective, SC:BW is the low point, the great adversity that weighs heavily on the hero in an epic. He makes some bad calls and has to take some bad short term alliances and eventually fully cements himself in his role, its his job to put down his former lover kerrigan.
I mean fuck this is a really sad god damn story. Dude fights for the good of people, gets betrayed by the man he puts his faith in and has to watch his lover be corrupted and turned into a monster as a result of his good success in helping megnsk. In the end she even continues to betray him and he watches the rest of his friends die for it.
Then SC2 happens and we get told theres a space baddy who live in black hole who is now really the bad guy. Jim gets to save kerry but then she has to transform back and keep killing innocents by the tens of millions, or do we just have to assume that every marine is a card carrying SS member and all the planets and major capitals she torches were evacced the week before. Now Jim who chastises her about her butcherings shows up at the end to help commit a giant atrocitiy to get to one man, keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars. Then he gives her basically the thumbs off as she reveals that she can actually fly (THEN WHY FIGHT THROUGH THE GOD DAMN ELEVATOR) and smiles as she continues her complete lust of power and murder.
I'd been happier if we had ditched this Amon zel naga space jesus story and continued this as a tragedy where raynor's misplaced trust leaves him as a broken man who eventually has to own up and put down the monsters he put into power/create. Thats an interesting story to me.
This. This, so much. You've said everything in my head and more.
Yeah, gonna second this opinion.
Seconded aswell... You guys hit the NAIL on the head there... it's exactly why the SC/BW storyline felt alot more engaging and vibrant..
It's like... The scope of the SC2, is MUCH much bigger than SC and BW ever was... alot of more things and scenery are introduced.. but it never really takes off in a big and engaging way. The scope is bigger, but the focus is still very narrow, and it leaves you feeling kinda ackward and alot of pieces of the puzzle missing.
Would have loved to see more engagement of all three races with eachother, instead of just the main characters.. Yea SC/BW was about the main characters too.. but it was also about the races themselves, about xel nega and Duran. The politics, tribulations and just general thought on life in space and the korprulu sector....
Who doesn't remember Arcturus Mengsk' speech at the end of the Terran SC campaign? Doesn't hardly ever get more epic than that... What about Kerrigans ascension speech at the end of BW, and DuGalles memoir to Helena... it was just so different than what the story is now..
I think the story would have benefitted from having a larger vibrant part going on in the background... It feels rushed.. and over much too quick..
I remember the campaigns from SC/BW.. they felt long, and each mission was important....
HOTS + WOL is... Gather biomass/money.. then go get stronger, and then kill some guys.... its.... I don't know man.. it just doesnt feel right...
With Mengsk already dead and Kerrigan become good. Look like Starcraft don't have any bad guys left.
I think LotV is all about how Zeratul travel across the galaxy to gathering protoss force together. And fight that Amon with Rainor+Kerrigan. ( I hope not because it will be very predictable and boring )
On March 13 2013 17:41 shaldengeki wrote: I feel like the cinematics were really well done, but it's incredibly disappointing to see the campaign be a series of "get used to this one unit" maps yet again. Something feels really lacking there, and the fact that you're able to switch upgrades on your units at will makes your unit customization seem... well, unimportant. Normally you'd think about your choices a little bit so you don't make the wrong call, but that sort of gravity is totally lacking now.
I'm also not really sure that Kerrigan's motives for going back to the Zerg really make sense in the context of what's happened in the storyline; presumably she does it to rescue Raynor from prison, but we've already had a ton of missions where squads of troops have been able to sneak onto supposedly-secure Dominion stations/ships, so it seems really weird that one former ghost, let alone the (former) Queen of Blades, couldn't figure out a way to do this covertly.
I mean, not that it even makes sense to raise a huge army to track down one guy, but that's another thing altogether.
EDIT: Oh wait, Kerrigan initially goes back to the Zerg to track down Raynor and help him escape; at this point she didn't know he was in a prison ship. Her actions make even less sense then, since large swarms of Zerg aren't going to be terribly effective at gathering intel from Terrans.
Kerrigan didn't get infested to find Raynor. She thought Raynor was dead.
She got infested to attack Korhal and kill Mengsk.
stukov popped out from nowhere or i miss something?
did Narud admit hes samir duran?
any speculation on Zeratul's action for not going against Kerrigan's plan?
It's obvious that Narud is Duran (shapeshifter, created hybrid, works for some ancient power, Duran spelt backwards). Zeratul says he wants Kerrigan to get her powers back to help defeat Amon.
HOTS plot is the worst of all the SC games. The plot is simply-> Gather your swarms back, get primal zergs, attack and kill Mengsk, the end. It completely lacks the dark storylines and plot twists that SC1 campaigns had. Hell, even WoL had more plot twists such as Zeratul's prophecy's, and Tychus' betrayal etc...
Also, HOTS should've given Mengsk a more surprising / meaningful death than Kerrigan just invading Korhal like that, that fucker was cunning and managed to outlive all the other villains from Vanilla SC1 up until HOTS.
Blizzard developers really should focus more on plot writing than designing fancy shit such as reviving ultras that allow players to cruise the campaign under Brutal difficulty.
On March 14 2013 01:24 ppshchik wrote: HOTS plot is the worst of all the SC games. The plot is simply-> Gather your swarms back, get primal zergs, attack and kill Mengsk, the end. It completely lacks the dark storylines and plot twists that SC1 campaigns had. Hell, even WoL had more plot twists such as Zeratul's prophecy's, and Tychus' betrayal etc...
Also, HOTS should've given Mengsk a more surprising / meaningful death than Kerrigan just invading Korhal like that, that fucker was cunning and managed to outlive all the other villains from Vanilla SC1 up until HOTS.
Blizzard developers really should focus more on plot writing than designing fancy shit such as reviving ultras that allow players to cruise the campaign under Brutal difficulty.
Seems to be a matter of taste. I replayed SC and BW campaigns just before HoTS and I found them rather dull in comparison.
I actually liked WoL's storyline for the most part, unlike most people in this thread. The final protoss mission was probably the best bit of storytelling in play I've ever seen in an RTS. I loved SC1's story back in the day (the gameplay is dated but the dialogue is great) but honestly I hated playing BW's and just couldn't get over how they just killed so many characters off and just hated Kerrigan (I suppose that was a success at least but I hated the campaign for it).
That said I think HotS is a step down from WoL story-wise. The plot isn't as interesting, the characters don't produce good conversations, the primal zerg/zerus make no sense + Show Spoiler +
Weren't they just parasitic worms until the Xel'naga got to them? If *all* life was more or less eradicated from Zerus at any point why does it look like a lush jungle? What the crap IS the "first spawning pool" or "the power of Zerus" anyway? Basically Blizzard makes up a bunch of stuff about zerg on Zerus and only ties it to the first lore origins of the zerg with a "we survived anyway" hand wave and a "Mannaroth corrupted you" (oh wait that's Amon)
. The whole zerus thing just seems to be filled with plot holes that lack any satisfying explanation... I'm sure the lore crew at Blizzard thinks they have everything tidy and neat in a backroom somewhere but that doesn't help HotS itself.
Dialogue in HotS wasn't a disaster, merely forgettable, but outside of evolution-man and zeratul they rarely developed any narrative. Kerrigan's relationships with the characters were pretty zero-dimensional. In SC1 as zerg you really felt like you were in and part of the swarm, the swarm had a unique character, while in HotS it felt more like I was standing around a bunch of stupid people for Kerrigan to order around and give cheesy lines. The zerg/human morality tension was there but kinda glossed over as Kerrigan just tells them to shut up and nothing ever happens. Aside from that the dialogue didn't help the Raynor/Kerrigan dynamics either. I liked the Raynor/Kerrigan reunion theme from WoL but in HotS with all the one-liners going nowhere the zerg/human tension was there but lacked any underlying depth.
Perhaps I'm just spouting a bunch of opinionated nonsense but, well, I believe in my opinionated nonsense more than I believe in anyone else's. Overmind 2016 plz
This was my mail to blizzard regarding the HotS story: (I still like blizzard, but I felt the need to write something about HotS)
Dear Blizzard Entertainment,
it is not within my intentions to ciriticize you or any of your products. In my time volunteering at a kindergarten I notice that beeing nice and calm is the best way to encourage people to do better.
Thats why I always try to stay positive and one of my basic rules is: "Before you criticise someone, first try to make it better yourself." And here I am offering myself to make it better.
I am talking about your story-writing department. I could write the story and script for your next starcraft product. You wouldn't even have to pay for it. Writing a story based on this great franchise would be an honor for me. I am not kidding.
I even have some experience in writing. I wrote an article for the local newspaper once and I can do limmerics:
There once was a ghost with a gun who decided to fight not to run alot of zergs came your story was lame I cant believe my money is gone
On March 13 2013 15:05 Swords wrote: A lot of these posts seem very focused on "good" vs. "bad" which obviously makes sense in terms of storytelling. That being said, one of the interesting things to me about SC/BW was there was often the sense that nobody was just good and nobody was just bad. The characters frequently do what's best for their survival or their race's survival - and oftentimes this means taking actions that are wrong or appear evil. In the meantime you have Duran slinking around in the background manipulating the various factions to some unidentified end goal. Alliances frequently change - Raynor/Mengsk, the Dark Templar and Tassadar, Kerrigan/Zeratul, etc.
I think this is part of why people are dissatisfied with SC2 storylines - the focus isn't on the faction/race, it's on very specific characters. WoL isn't the "Terran Campaign" it's the Raynor Campaign. Likewise HoTS is the Kerrigan Campaign instead of the Zerg Campaign. SC2 tells the story of what happens to 3 specific characters from the first game (with some Mengsk/Duran/etc, but not much).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - it's simply a different way to tell a story. I do think a lot of people miss the unique way SC/BW was told though. It played out like a historical document to some extent - and you got to watch each move a variety of political players made, and see how each move played out through your actions in controlling each various faction.
Raynor has always been the good guy. Even as a former criminal, SC1 always made it a point to try to play it off as some playful wild west shenanigan where he did some sort of robin hood crime. Hes always been played out as the likeable character and the only one who retains his humanity.
The blurring of morality for the races as a whole made for interesting story telling. It was basically a prototype game of thrones, a story about a bunch of really shitty people who shouldn't be in control of the universe but are. Jimmy is like Jon Snow, the guy everyone likes and actually should be in charge of the show but never will.
Unfortunately Chris Metzen is an actual being, who loves the M Night Shamelon twist of "wait the bad guys ARE the good guys!". Thus we get Kerrigan the savior of the universe from kooky zel naga hermit who lives in a black hole.
Jim's character was salvageable from WoL, he had fallen back to the naivety that had allowed Kerrigan to be betrayed and sacrificed everything at the chance to save her and right his wrongs in supporting mengsk. Him showing up at the end firmly ruined his character as a whole. Why?
Lets remember Jim's first mission ever in SC, he risks life and limb to save of a bunch of civies that everyone else has written off because they are so meaningless in the eyes of the power hungry tyrants running the show. In fact he aligns with Mengsk because he naively thinks that the man can make a difference and cares for the people. Mengsk turns out to be just a shitty of a person as the last ruler and betrays him and kerry sending jim into a spiral. From a story telling perspective, SC:BW is the low point, the great adversity that weighs heavily on the hero in an epic. He makes some bad calls and has to take some bad short term alliances and eventually fully cements himself in his role, its his job to put down his former lover kerrigan.
I mean fuck this is a really sad god damn story. Dude fights for the good of people, gets betrayed by the man he puts his faith in and has to watch his lover be corrupted and turned into a monster as a result of his good success in helping megnsk. In the end she even continues to betray him and he watches the rest of his friends die for it.
Then SC2 happens and we get told theres a space baddy who live in black hole who is now really the bad guy. Jim gets to save kerry but then she has to transform back and keep killing innocents by the tens of millions, or do we just have to assume that every marine is a card carrying SS member and all the planets and major capitals she torches were evacced the week before. Now Jim who chastises her about her butcherings shows up at the end to help commit a giant atrocitiy to get to one man, keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars. Then he gives her basically the thumbs off as she reveals that she can actually fly (THEN WHY FIGHT THROUGH THE GOD DAMN ELEVATOR) and smiles as she continues her complete lust of power and murder.
I'd been happier if we had ditched this Amon zel naga space jesus story and continued this as a tragedy where raynor's misplaced trust leaves him as a broken man who eventually has to own up and put down the monsters he put into power/create. Thats an interesting story to me.
I disagree with it. If downer endings were the only ones we got it would be boring and unbelievable, not to mention stagnant. If everyone is an asshole and only bad things happen where even the best victory is hollow, why should I care (game of thrones has this problem as well even though I love that series)? Having Raynor continue to have bad shit happen to him (having kerrigan turn evil despite the artifact) gets tiresome and stupid. He deserves to at least find some degree of hapiness, and not be such a broken man at the end of the game (having him get more broken is really tires). WOL was natural because it forced the broken man to go in a believable direction; facing his past and finally atoning for his failures (each sub plot involves one of Raynor's demons). In Heart of the swarm he's in a believable place. He doesn't get to ride into the sunset, but they've both made peace with it, and he's finally managed to do something without it blowing him up.
2.) Kerrigan: Kerrigan does not have a lust for power and murder in heart of the swarm. The game also flat out ackowledges that she isn't a hero either. Kerrigan herself admits that her actions are ruthless, even if she doesn't enjoy it.
a.) When Kerrigan killed Lessara she didn't take any pleasure in it. b.) After realizing that Warfield was right she spared the injured soldiers (which she would have killed earlier) c.) Doesn't stab the Terrans in the back even though Za'gara tells her "the other brood mothers think that we should do this". d.) just prior to the final battle, she and Valerian have a conversation wherein Valerian asks her to try avoid hitting civillian centres. At first Kerrigan says no, but after Valerian points out that millions will die, she agrees to make an effort to do so even though she can't guarentee it. In essence, it isn't necissarily some giant atrocity. It's nasty, but is far less destructive than tarsonis and most other zerg rampages. She gets her hands dirty, but isn't an indiscriminate butcher. e.) Blizzard confirmed that Kerrigan wasn't wholly herself in Brood war. Part of it was the massive power to get revenge on those who wronged her, part of it was Amon's taint, and part of it was her morality being surpressed by the infestation. f.) the whole "just kerrigan and she was being herself in brood war all along" never made sense. She tried to call for help even when being put in the Chrysalis, and even though she had every reason to hate the confederacy and be a heartless sociopath as a terran she still had morals and still opposed using the psi emitters. As such, the artifact restoring her humanity and thereby turning her into a good guy is entirely plausible.
The Overmind was still amoral, and Amon can be reconciled. In essence, I felt that this progression was far more organic and natural
On March 14 2013 02:11 phyvo wrote: I actually liked WoL's storyline for the most part, unlike most people in this thread. The final protoss mission was probably the best bit of storytelling in play I've ever seen in an RTS. I loved SC1's story back in the day (the gameplay is dated but the dialogue is great) but honestly I hated playing BW's and just couldn't get over how they just killed so many characters off and just hated Kerrigan (I suppose that was a success at least but I hated the campaign for it).
That said I think HotS is a step down from WoL story-wise. The plot isn't as interesting, the characters don't produce good conversations, the primal zerg/zerus make no sense + Show Spoiler +
Weren't they just parasitic worms until the Xel'naga got to them? If *all* life was more or less eradicated from Zerus at any point why does it look like a lush jungle? What the crap IS the "first spawning pool" or "the power of Zerus" anyway? Basically Blizzard makes up a bunch of stuff about zerg on Zerus and only ties it to the first lore origins of the zerg with a "we survived anyway" hand wave and a "Mannaroth corrupted you" (oh wait that's Amon)
. The whole zerus thing just seems to be filled with plot holes that lack any satisfying explanation... I'm sure the lore crew at Blizzard thinks they have everything tidy and neat in a backroom somewhere but that doesn't help HotS itself.
Dialogue in HotS wasn't a disaster, merely forgettable, but outside of evolution-man and zeratul they rarely developed any narrative. Kerrigan's relationships with the characters were pretty zero-dimensional. In SC1 as zerg you really felt like you were in and part of the swarm, the swarm had a unique character, while in HotS it felt more like I was standing around a bunch of stupid people for Kerrigan to order around and give cheesy lines. The zerg/human morality tension was there but kinda glossed over as Kerrigan just tells them to shut up and nothing ever happens. Aside from that the dialogue didn't help the Raynor/Kerrigan dynamics either. I liked the Raynor/Kerrigan reunion theme from WoL but in HotS with all the one-liners going nowhere the zerg/human tension was there but lacked any underlying depth.
Perhaps I'm just spouting a bunch of opinionated nonsense but, well, I believe in my opinionated nonsense more than I believe in anyone else's. Overmind 2016 plz
actually the overmind was created after the Xel'naga evolved the Zerg. The primal zerg are probably the zerg that are hyperevolved, but existed before the Overmind was made. Zurvan might have not known the xel'naga got involved. The "primal power" was probably the xel'naga's influence WITHOUT Amon's taint (everything overmind on). I felt Kerrigan and Raynor had a good dynamic and the conversations were good.
Hehehe. Reading all this. Agree and Disagree. Here's what I want say:
Did anyone else feel like Kerrigan was some pirate queen on board a giant pirate space ship filled with a wacky pirate crew? After I got Stukov on board, suddenly, I just felt like everyone on board the Leviathan was wearing pirate hats, saying random things and then going out to get more booty (essence, biomass, whatever).
On March 14 2013 03:26 willoc wrote: Hehehe. Reading all this. Agree and Disagree. Here's what I want say:
Did anyone else feel like Kerrigan was some pirate queen on board a giant pirate space ship filled with a wacky pirate crew? After I got Stukov on board, suddenly, I just felt like everyone on board the Leviathan was wearing pirate hats, saying random things and then going out to get more booty (essence, biomass, whatever).
I never got this vibe at all, but now I don't think I will be able to picture anything else on my second playthrough.
Wow, so now that I'm done with the campaign, I can conclude that the story was just as bad, or maybe even just a tad worse than I had expected. I mean it's almost worse than D3, and that's a fucking accomplishment in itself. I don't even know why I am disappointed; I mean after WOL and D3 everybody knows how terrible the writers of Blizzard are, but WOW this was baaaaad.
On March 14 2013 03:26 willoc wrote: Hehehe. Reading all this. Agree and Disagree. Here's what I want say:
Did anyone else feel like Kerrigan was some pirate queen on board a giant pirate space ship filled with a wacky pirate crew? After I got Stukov on board, suddenly, I just felt like everyone on board the Leviathan was wearing pirate hats, saying random things and then going out to get more booty (essence, biomass, whatever).
I never got this vibe at all, but now I don't think I will be able to picture anything else on my second playthrough.
I found the campaign pretty enjoyable but I felt it was a little too easy. There were only a couple of places where I struggled with Brutal and that was usually just because it was the first time I was playing the mission so I didn't know the twists.
I was tremendously annoyed that they basically spoiled Jim not actually being dead in the trailers - he says "Sarah, what have you done?" in one of them, and doesn't say that before he "dies."
The story is just a copy paste of their previous ones, Zerg/Orcs was once a noble race but tainted by Amon/Kil'jaeden. Zeratul has taken the role of Medivh to warn about the true evil returning. Sylvanas/Kerrigan, after having stopped their nemesis can now be the faction leader Zerg deserves in World of Starcraft. I guess they couldn't solve playing a non humanoid race in a mmo, but now you can be human and zerg at the same time! Also Azmodan from Diablo3 makes a guest appearance as Mengsk! And again he is totally useless yet can not shut up.
I also like that you play Kerrigan and kick ass throughout the whole game yet she is totally powerless in the final cutscene and had to rely on manly Jim to finish her own game.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
So essentially this entire campaign storyline is about a woman who got turned into a monster and after that, even after she is turned 'mostly human' again, is hellbent on murdering billions of people just to kill 1 man. Wow, woman scorned, much?
We get very little into the whole Kerrigan/Raynor backstory (of which I'm interested in, I'm a sucker for love). I understand Kerrigan forsakes her humanity after she hears that Raynor is dead, but then after she shows her new form to Raynor, he basically says 'fuck you' and blames her for having killed Fenix even though she's still technically the same mostly-human-personality he was in love with just before he got captured, wtf?
Then the ending is cut short, Kerrigan kills Mengst and immediately flies away without talking to Raynor, without explaining anything about her new responsibilities to chase after the Xel-Naga guy. There's no talk ever seeing each other again, no 'sorry but I've got to do this, I met zeratul etc etc,' it's simply 'k thx bye'. And Raynor just smiles and watches her leave.
I miss BW..... I mean seriously. Kerrigan AFTER the overmind was killed - so she's her own person again (which she flat out acknowledges in an effort to get Jim Raynor, Zeratul, Fenix, Arcturus (WHO SHE FORGIVES? IGNORES? in order to help him become emperor of Korhal) and Duke on her side), betrays all 5 (Fenix, Duke and Rashagal die), and takes on everybody (UED, Dominion and Protoss) and then we get WoL and HotS where that's all retconned and armwaved away..... WHY?!?!?
Why not just come up with the SC2 campaign as it should have been ourselves? Those of us who feel letdown and such, why don't we rectify Blizzard's failings and develop the SC2 Campaign.
Obligatory: The Queen Bitch of the Universe is dead. Long live Kerrigan, Long live the Queen of Blades. (Why do we have a sappy damsel in distress in her place?!?) T_T
On March 14 2013 05:03 Tjubatjubs wrote: I also like that you play Kerrigan and kick ass throughout the whole game yet she is totally powerless in the final cutscene and had to rely on manly Jim to finish her own game.
But I guess its just projection from my part.
No you're completely correct about this part. Could she technically fly through the window outside and kill him instantly? Yes. Could she direct her entire swarm to bring him to her, thus removing any danger? Yes. But no, she has to become a damsel in distress again, and rely on big strong man Jim to save the day.
If I could change one thing, it would be Raynor not coming back to help her.
I didn't mind the whole Zerus bit, I actually liked it. Stukov coming back was also fine, but the ghost death animation in SCBW didn't really help, the corpse exploding made it look like he died for realz. The ship characters were OK, didn't bother me, the zerg history telling has always been limited (cerebrate X).
It just felt very limited by the number of missions (20), with 5ish more you could have raynor/UED strike back at Sarah while she hunted down Amon.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
I don't think you can make such assumptions about him because he has a different point of a view on pretty much a purely subjective matter (plot being enjoyable or not).
I don't know why people are so up in arms about Jims transition of feelings for Kerrigan between SC:BW and SC2. He was pretty much TOLD straight up "Kerrigan lives or everyone and everything dies" This of course just gives him an excuse to let go of his anger (that and its been 4 years) and he has always carried love for her. Its not surprising at all.
Plus why the hell does every characters actions have to be 100% logical/in line with previous depictions? Real people make a combination of weird/bad/good/stupid decisions all the time and they change over time so why are people married to this ONE depiction of Raynor when he was in full rage mode (at the end of BW) to 4 years later?
On March 14 2013 05:45 Zozo wrote: If I could change one thing, it would be Raynor not coming back to help her.
I didn't mind the whole Zerus bit, I actually liked it. Stukov coming back was also fine, but the ghost death animation in SCBW didn't really help, the corpse exploding made it look like he died for realz. The ship characters were OK, didn't bother me, the zerg history telling has always been limited (cerebrate X).
It just felt very limited by the number of missions (20), with 5ish more you could have raynor/UED strike back at Sarah while she hunted down Amon.
There is a secret mission where Stukov is found to be alive and infested. In the mission you "rescue" him in one of those control a few units + heros type missions and you use some type of synthesized zerg cure to uninfest him. It appears he was captured by the Dominion and reinfested tho lol.
On March 14 2013 05:38 Serpest wrote: I miss BW..... I mean seriously. Kerrigan AFTER the overmind was killed - so she's her own person again (which she flat out acknowledges in an effort to get Jim Raynor, Zeratul, Fenix, Arcturus (WHO SHE FORGIVES? IGNORES? in order to help him become emperor of Korhal) and Duke on her side), betrays all 5 (Fenix, Duke and Rashagal die), and takes on everybody (UED, Dominion and Protoss) and then we get WoL and HotS where that's all retconned and armwaved away..... WHY?!?!?
Why not just come up with the SC2 campaign as it should have been ourselves? Those of us who feel letdown and such, why don't we rectify Blizzard's failings and develop the SC2 Campaign.
Obligatory: The Queen Bitch of the Universe is dead. Long live Kerrigan, Long live the Queen of Blades. (Why do we have a sappy damsel in distress in her place?!?) T_T
Because given that even when she was in the chrysalis she called for help, given that she was a relatively moral individual prior to infestation the idea of it being entirely her own choice was always stupid. Brood war had some things to like, but overall the story was pretty damn stupid. WOL had flaws (the nonlinear storytelling) but those who say it "rapes the lore" are being silly
On March 14 2013 05:03 Tjubatjubs wrote: I also like that you play Kerrigan and kick ass throughout the whole game yet she is totally powerless in the final cutscene and had to rely on manly Jim to finish her own game.
But I guess its just projection from my part.
No you're completely correct about this part. Could she technically fly through the window outside and kill him instantly? Yes. Could she direct her entire swarm to bring him to her, thus removing any danger? Yes. But no, she has to become a damsel in distress again, and rely on big strong man Jim to save the day.
No he's not. He caught her off guard with something that had already defeated her, and the pain took out those others.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
First of all it's not discustingly incongruent. Raynor's broken by years of failure, and while he has fond memories of Kerrigan prior to the QoB he hates the new one and views killing her as much an act of euthanasia as vengeance. Kerrigan's evil is revealed to be in part because the infestation and amon's taint surpressed her morality, hence when the artifact dezergified her she regained morality. Raynor faces his past over each mission and finally makes peace. Again, completely relatable. He climbs back from being broken and regains his fire. The dialogue was fine, and given that Metzen is the guy who WROTE the original starcraft and most games, firing him aint going to happen. Kerrigan in brood war was snively whiplash. Here she has (gasp) REAL CHARACTER DEPTH AND PERSONALITY BESIDES BEING SADISTIC. It didn't go the way you want, but that doesn't make it bad.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
I don't think you can make such assumptions about him because he has a different point of a view on pretty much a purely subjective matter (plot being enjoyable or not).
I don't know why people are so up in arms about Jims transition of feelings for Kerrigan between SC:BW and SC2. He was pretty much TOLD straight up "Kerrigan lives or everyone and everything dies" This of course just gives him an excuse to let go of his anger (that and its been 4 years) and he has always carried love for her. Its not surprising at all.
Plus why the hell does every characters actions have to be 100% logical/in line with previous depictions? Real people make a combination of weird/bad/good/stupid decisions all the time and they change over time so why are people married to this ONE depiction of Raynor when he was in full rage mode (at the end of BW) to 4 years later?
Because they either grew up on it, or feel that dark and grim is automatically good storytelling.
Episode 2- attack of the clones.... hots.... zzzzz. I love you. But we are tragic lovers.
Seriously can no one write a decent love story anymore? Can no one remember lore where jim was going to kill kerrigan if he ever got the chance. Can no one do anything other than a cheesy rip of romeo and juliet? Is that all any big budget movie/game is going to come up with for the rest of eternity? Why the hell can't they hire some decent writers?????? Is it because stephanie meyer proved you don't have to be a good writer to sell millions?
I want to play the final chapter but I fear how cliched and pathetic it will be. So far hots has surpassed my fears for its ability to fail me more than wol. And I fear lotv will be worse again.
overall the story felt pretty meh to me, I like that at least kerrigan was still more of an anti hero than turning into a generic hero like raynor. however, the overmind did all those things because it was corrupted didnt really fit with the overmind did all those things to ensure zerg's survival.
there are also a few things that didnt make sense to me.
1. Why did kerrigan kill warfield without saying anything or hesitating? he was one of the people that helped her getting her humanity back
2. Why did she charge zeratul and just started whacking him? what did he even do to her?
3. If she wasnt willing to kill civilians for her goal, or was willing to spare warfields army when asked, why would she be willing to infest a bunch of prisoners for her goal?
It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
All of the new Zerg characters sucked. I had to talk to them all between missions because I'm a lore/achievements junkie, but every time I clicked to talk to Izsha, the primal Zerg dude, or Abathur, I wanted them to just die. Especially Iszha, who. talks. in. this. stilted. way. that is totally annoying. Abathur came close to being a good character, with his little insecurities. I guess that's what counts as comic relief in a Blizzard game these days?
I count Stukov out of the above trio because I like Stukov. He's a solid, likeable character, but one also that I feel shouldn't be in this game. I didn't play Starcraft 64, but in my mind, Stukov is dead. He died in Brood War. What's next, Infested Tychus? Infested Mengsk? Anyway, I don't really care because Stukov being in this game made it a better game for me.
Remember the cerebrates in SC1? Those guys were cool! They had such distinct personalities that it didn't matter that they were giant mounds of jello. Instead, we have brood mothers, who all talk in that stupid queen voice and all have the same personality.
Where's Gabriel Tosh? In one cutscene on the Hyperion, I'm pretty sure I saw his back as he was looking out the window. Also, what happened to Nova? It was nice to see Orlan and Mira Han again, but Tosh was my favourite new character introduced in WoL, and we didn't get to see him. He is canonically alive, right?
What's happening with the Protoss? We've got our token 1 scene with Zeratul, but nothing about what's happening on Shakuras with Selendis, Artanis, etc.
Why didn't they explicitly say that Dr. Narud is Samir Duran from Brood War? I mean, they spell everything else out in this game, it would've been nice to see the characters acknowledge good ol' Duran, who was once an ally to both Stukov and Kerrigan.
Why was it never mentioned that Kerrigan killed Mengsk's parents? I've heard it said by lore nerds who know more than I that Kerrigan was the ghost that killed Mengsk's parents on Korhal, and that was partly the reason Mengsk left her to die on Tarsonis. I thought for sure in the final cutscene Mengsk would bring this up, but he didn't.
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
On March 14 2013 06:46 LingsAreBunnies wrote: overall the story felt pretty meh to me, I like that at least kerrigan was still more of an anti hero than turning into a generic hero like raynor. however, the overmind did all those things because it was corrupted didnt really fit with the overmind did all those things to ensure zerg's survival.
there are also a few things that didnt make sense to me.
1. Why did kerrigan kill warfield without saying anything or hesitating? he was one of the people that helped her getting her humanity back
2. Why did she charge zeratul and just started whacking him? what did he even do to her?
3. If she wasnt willing to kill civilians for her goal, or was willing to spare warfields army when asked, why would she be willing to infest a bunch of prisoners for her goal?
That's pretty simple.
1. There are many possible reasons. She wasn't entirely a saint and her anger got to her. Her anger caused her to do most of the dubious decisions and even in the beginning she wanted revenge. She was still part zerg anyway.
2. Oh, I don't know. Someone boards your vessel. His people are basically biggest enemies of zerg. Maybe she should have invited him for a cup of coffee.
3. She was willing to let civilians die to get what she wanted. She merely spared those, whose deaths wouldn't have helped her or could have been avoided.
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
Oh, that's one thing I forgot to mention, the DBZ-ness of the whole affair.
This series took a hard turn somewhere between Brood War and Wings of Liberty from science fiction to fantasy.
So much talk of "power levels" and how "powerful" so and so character is. What the fuck does that even mean? When we're talking about how "powerful" Kerrigan, Narud, Amon, the big lizard thingy, etc. are, what exactly are we talking about? I assume we're not talking about physical power (strength and speed), or metaphorical power (influence and charisma), but something else? Is Jim Raynor "powerful? Is Arcturus Mengsk "powerful?"
It seems the whole "psionic" element in this fictional universe really took on a whole lot of importance in SC2. I preferred how they handled it in SC1: some creatures, including some humans, are psionic, and have some psionic abilities. It was kind of in the background to the technology though. Now it's the end all be all and every character in the Starcraft universe is having a pissing contest to see who's got the most psi.
In LotV, we'll probably see the Protoss invent these little visor machines that can "scout" the power level of enemies. Seriously Blizzard, go all the way with it. Then when Artanis tries to read Kerrigan's power level he won't be able to because it'll be OVER 9000!!!
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
My original post was running too long to include all the dbz references. but they were definitely screaming in my head in nearly every fight cut scene, despite not having watched dbz in like 15 years.
Highlights included:
Beginning scenes, hey wait, did mengsk jr just put kerrigan in a hyperbolic time chamber to test her abilities?
When raynor gets her out of of the chamber after she just psiforce squishes everyone and the room blows up like a dbz character powering up and she has ghost suit lights flaring up like lightning i was laughing my ass of thinking, lulssj2 kerrigan.
I half expected Narud to yell what 9000, not to mention that Narud apparently learned to kamehameha between games. Luckily kerrigan apparently hit ssj3 with wicked hair problems and wings instead of a tail.
Zeratul/mengsk palace scene, yup more dbz fighting, but after a few seconds of wtf when she was floating up i realized this was a scene totally stolen from the end of dbz when goku's spirit reascends at the end of the series, Raynor had the exact same stupid look on his face gohan does.
On March 14 2013 06:46 LingsAreBunnies wrote: overall the story felt pretty meh to me, I like that at least kerrigan was still more of an anti hero than turning into a generic hero like raynor. however, the overmind did all those things because it was corrupted didnt really fit with the overmind did all those things to ensure zerg's survival.
there are also a few things that didnt make sense to me.
1. Why did kerrigan kill warfield without saying anything or hesitating? he was one of the people that helped her getting her humanity back
2. Why did she charge zeratul and just started whacking him? what did he even do to her?
3. If she wasnt willing to kill civilians for her goal, or was willing to spare warfields army when asked, why would she be willing to infest a bunch of prisoners for her goal?
That's pretty simple.
1. There are many possible reasons. She wasn't entirely a saint and her anger got to her. Her anger caused her to do most of the dubious decisions and even in the beginning she wanted revenge. She was still part zerg anyway.
2. Oh, I don't know. Someone boards your vessel. His people are basically biggest enemies of zerg. Maybe she should have invited him for a cup of coffee.
3. She was willing to let civilians die to get what she wanted. She merely spared those, whose deaths wouldn't have helped her or could have been avoided.
I dunno, kerrigan felt a bit too inconsistent for me from this, whereas in bw I felt that her personality was pretty consistent, making very few, if any questionable decisions.
1. anger for what, she attacked him without a warning or anything and he just retaliated. he was also one of the people that supported raynors decision to help kerrigan. 2. if he really wanted to fight/kill kerrigan, why would he walk into a zerg filled ship uncloaked? kerrigan should have known he didnt come to fight. even if she didnt know, why stop after a few punches, why not just kill him? 3. thats where it felt inconsistent, the value of those prisoners felt comparable to sparing those civilians at the end, if not less. infesting the prisoners to make her goal easier vs sparing the civilians to make her battle harder. so why one but not the other?
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
My original post was running too long to include all the dbz references. but they were definitely screaming in my head in nearly every fight cut scene, despite not having watched dbz in like 15 years.
Highlights included:
Beginning scenes, hey wait, did mengsk jr just put kerrigan in a hyperbolic time chamber to test her abilities?
When raynor gets her out of of the chamber after she just psiforce squishes everyone and the room blows up like a dbz character powering up and she has ghost suit lights flaring up like lightning i was laughing my ass of thinking, lulssj2 kerrigan.
I half expected Narud to yell what 9000, not to mention that Narud apparently learned to kamehameha between games. Luckily kerrigan apparently hit ssj3 with wicked hair problems and wings instead of a tail.
Zeratul/mengsk palace scene, yup more dbz fighting, but after a few seconds of wtf when she was floating up i realized this was a scene totally stolen from the end of dbz when goku's spirit reascends at the end of the series, Raynor had the exact same stupid look on his face gohan does.
Haha, that Narud level! I forgot about that. It was Goku's Kamehameha vs. Vegeta's Galit Gun all over again.
What i was wondering: Wasnt in some Campaing (WoL?) said that the Overmind made Kerrigan so noone else but she has control over the Zerg? I mean, basicly it was said that Amon was in control till he died. And he when did he die? I tried to puzzle it out myself but i just cant get together how all the Kerrigan-Overmind-Amon stuff worked out, was Kerrigan in Control in WoL or was she doing all those stuff cause Amon controlled her? Then he would have died somewhere between WoL and HotS right?
On March 14 2013 07:59 BlackCompany wrote: What i was wondering: Wasnt in some Campaing (WoL?) said that the Overmind made Kerrigan so noone else but she has control over the Zerg? I mean, basicly it was said that Amon was in control till he died. And he when did he die? I tried to puzzle it out myself but i just cant get together how all the Kerrigan-Overmind-Amon stuff worked out, was Kerrigan in Control in WoL or was she doing all those stuff cause Amon controlled her? Then he would have died somewhere between WoL and HotS right?
SC:BW basically put forth the idea that in the vacuum left by overmind death was that the zerg were left open for control by kerrigan/cerebrates who her next in line on the psychic food chain. The cerebrates and kerrigan have a little power contest and several cerebrates merge together to make overmind mk2. With its death kerrigan assume full control basically having no one else left to fight over zerg control. As a character shes drunk with power and consumed by hate from being basically everyone's plaything and she decided to just wipe everyone out. Remember, that the overmind was actually supposedly targeting human because they were early into the evolutionary chain so that they could better assimilate the dna to evolve to take on the protoss next, kerrigan was his trophy and the first step towards realizing that goal.
Sc2 the metzen era, we're introduced to the new plan that overmind knew he had been corrupted and programmed by Amon to do naughty things to people. He was apparently on a mission to free his zergy children(boy those pictures must have been awkward to show at the water cooler) He decided to touch kerrigan in all the bad places because he knew he was going to get killed off (which brings up the bigger question of if you can see into the future then how do you let yourself play a game of chicken with a protoss carrier). Whatever, he decides that kerrigan can then lead the zerg and be free of amon's genetic programming, even though blizzard has no idea how dna works. Anyways, she runs around mad because I guess the overmind plan wasn't foolproof or maybe he was trying to instill too much will on to her as well. Raynor frees her of that with artifact but now her retransforming on her own terms leaves her free to be the good girl of the story, make cuddly zerg kittens, and fight space hermit guy on her terms.
On March 14 2013 07:59 BlackCompany wrote: What i was wondering: Wasnt in some Campaing (WoL?) said that the Overmind made Kerrigan so noone else but she has control over the Zerg? I mean, basicly it was said that Amon was in control till he died. And he when did he die? I tried to puzzle it out myself but i just cant get together how all the Kerrigan-Overmind-Amon stuff worked out, was Kerrigan in Control in WoL or was she doing all those stuff cause Amon controlled her? Then he would have died somewhere between WoL and HotS right?
SC:BW basically put forth the idea that in the vacuum left by overmind death was that the zerg were left open for control by kerrigan/cerebrates who her next in line on the psychic food chain. The cerebrates and kerrigan have a little power contest and several cerebrates merge together to make overmind mk2. With its death kerrigan assume full control basically having no one else left to fight over zerg control. As a character shes drunk with power and consumed by hate from being basically everyone's plaything and she decided to just wipe everyone out. Remember, that the overmind was actually supposedly targeting human because they were early into the evolutionary chain so that they could better assimilate the dna to evolve to take on the protoss next, kerrigan was his trophy and the first step towards realizing that goal.
Sc2 the metzen era, we're introduced to the new plan that overmind knew he had been corrupted and programmed by Amon to do naughty things to people. He was apparently on a mission to free his zergy children(boy those pictures must have been awkward to show at the water cooler) He decided to touch kerrigan in all the bad places because he knew he was going to get killed off (which brings up the bigger question of if you can see into the future then how do you let yourself play a game of chicken with a protoss carrier). Whatever, he decides that kerrigan can then lead the zerg and be free of amon's genetic programming, even though blizzard has no idea how dna works. Anyways, she runs around mad because I guess the overmind plan wasn't foolproof or maybe he was trying to instill too much will on to her as well. Raynor frees her of that with artifact but now her retransforming on her own terms leaves her free to be the good girl of the story, make cuddly zerg kittens, and fight space hermit guy on her terms.
Its convoluted now to say the least.
Thanks for the summary! It feels like blizzard forgot what plot they made in BW and they were like "fuck, no what can we do to fix this?" Its really weird oO. The part of the dark voice sitting somewhere in the space is so.. dissapointing. I really hope they are going to make a nice ending to the mess of a storyline they made. The HotS campaing itself was fun, but whn you review the story of wol and hots... you wish you didnt want to review it at all <.<
Its like D3, they were both fun as hell to play through, I might not have had a lot of respect for the story but I'd definitely play through again like I would with d3, ill just ignore the story when i do so.
Whats amusing to me is that its completely opposite to SC and SCBW, most of the time I felt they that the campaigns in those games were dry, but it was t he fascinating cutscenes and story that made me slough through the actual missions.
Much better than the WoL campaign and it actually makes the WoL campaign not look so bad from a story perspective in the context of both campaigns. WoL still worse than all the SCBW campaigns but HotS might actually be on par or better than my least favorite SCBW campaign.
My only seriously complaint where I thought "no, that's wrong" is when Kerrigan said it was going to be her hardest battle ever. BW Zerg final mission was definitely a harder battle for her to win, granted she might not remember it.
A minor complaint is how Kerrigan acted like a little girl too much. Bunch of other little complaints here and there but it was really enjoyable as a whole.
edit: Oh yea, my actual biggest complaint is that we didn't get to see Duran in Duran form =O
They shoulda worked that in somehow...
Overall, SCBW campaigns are all pretty much A+/A's
Another thing I don't like about Starcraft 2 so far is that the story is on a much smaller scale and moves much slower.
Someone in this thread said that playing the SC1/Brood War campaigns, you felt like you were advancing the agendas of the race you were playing as a whole. The Protoss campaign felt like THE Protoss Campaign, etc. Contrast that to SC2 where the Wings of Liberty campaign felt like the Jim Raynor campaign, and HotS is the Sarah Kerrigan campaign.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a conscience choice the gamemaker's made, but I think it hurts the story. What doesn't help is the fact that things happen so much slower in SC2. Think about all that's happened in SC2 so far, and compare that to what happened in SC1/Brood War. I say this with no exaggeration, more happened in 1 race's campaign in either SC1 or Brood War, than in both WoL and HotS combined. (possible exception are the 2 Protoss campaigns, which I vaguely remember as being comparitively dull plot wise compared to the Zerg/Terran ones)
Again, that shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. One might argue that SINCE the campaigns are personal stories, the plot should matter less, and it should be more about character development. But then there's the fact that the character development sucks in HotS as has been discussed thoroughly in this thread. Also, there's actually not much of it, there are just a lot of filler missions where nothing really happens plot OR character wise. SC1/BW had its share of filler missions, but they were bookended with plot heavy missions. But that doesn't exist in SC2. It's all filler no killer.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
Ahahaha, don't be offended - it's just unlikely that people who have read a lot of scifi and/or played a variety of games are going to find the campaign satisfying - it lacks any form of depth.
Growing up is part of the problem - maybe we have, but StarCraft, following the steps of Benjamin Button, has done the opposite.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
It's just as fair to write someone like you off for being so quick to judge as incompetent and simpleminded.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
It's just as fair to write someone like you off for being so quick to judge as incompetent and simpleminded.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
Who's talking about aesthetics? I bet you're one of those "Taste is 100% subjective" guys, which is wrong. But please don't tell me you're one of those "Opinions can't be wrong because they're opinions" guys, because that is just stupid wrong.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
The thing with me is, I'm not sure if I actually like or dislike the story or not. I am, and always will be excited for new chapters of the story, because I want to find out what happens. Like, so there's this new guy Amon. I want to find out who he is and what Kerri does to him.
When LotV comes out, I will get it instantly, and once I've played it, I will enjoy it purely because I found out what I wanted to find out. If you get me? So I'm finding it hard to judge if I think the HotS story line was any good because I'm just satisfied that I know what happened.
Also like, I get the vibe that majority of people want Kerri to be the bad guy. For me It's the opposite. Ever since SC1 where she turned infested, I was like: "Nooooooo!!", "Kerri, what are you doing! Kerri! Stahp!". I really liked her character in SC1 Terran campaign where she was a Terran Ghost. I was pleased that she got turned human again, cause I wanted to see that side. Like the beginning of HotS before she gets infested again, I loved seeing her as herself, and not this mindless killer. I liked that she had feelings.
I also like the relationship between her and Jim. Like someone else said earlier, I'm a sucker for those kinda things. I'd much prefer her dezergified battling alongside Jim to defeat something evil, rather than Kerri leaving Jim all over again, going separate ways and doing more bad things. I liked her being the good guy :/.
Also that kiss in the beginning was cute haha ^^. Like an "I'm back" kinda thing. Was nice since I liked her so much before she was infested
It's sad HotS campaign sucks so much. I'll point some things out:
1. If you thought WoL was slow-paced and didn't move a plot forward, guess what? HotS completely revert this little bit of progress! After all this effort to humanize Sarah she is Queen of Blades again. Great.
2. Whole plot in 2 words: "Kill Mengsk". So what do we do? Kill Megsk. Without any little twist.
3. Why SC2 has to resurrect another character from BW? Tassadar sacrificed himself to defeat Overmind - oh wait, he didn't die, he's not so noble after all. Stukov died trying to do good stuff, but he died as a traitor. Wait, no, he's still here. Let them die ffs!
4. Zerus sucked so much. Talking monkeys, worms, I was waiting for talking banana. It didn't feel like Zerg at all. More like Flintstones.
5. I disliked most of the characters. Ok, Abathur was quite awesome fellow, but Dehaka guy? Weird appearance, horrible manner of speaking, boring dialogues... Worst character ever.
6. First and second Zerus mission was totally copied from the WoL. Only instead of hunting terrazine we are feeding giant maw in the ground for no logical reason.
Well, other than that, gameplay wasn't that bad. I really loved first 2-3 hours of playing. And then Zerus came and destroyed my happiness. Wtf happened during development?
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
It's just as fair to write someone like you off for being so quick to judge as incompetent and simpleminded.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
Who's talking about aesthetics? I bet you're one of those "Taste is 100% subjective" guys, which is wrong. But please don't tell me you're one of those "Opinions can't be wrong because they're opinions" guys, because that is just stupid wrong.
You are literally talking about aesthetics right now, this entire thread is about aesthetic judgments regarding the story. You're defending making an intelligence judgment that someone is an idiot for enjoying a particular story. Read your own post.
Taste is 100% subjective. It isn't 100% relative though, which you're probably confusing as synonymous with subjective. I won't argue opinions can't be wrong either so another miss.
Please stop going off topic and trying to tell me what I believe or not because it's just making you look silly (although quite justifying your being someone who is quick to judge).
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
It's just as fair to write someone like you off for being so quick to judge as incompetent and simpleminded.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
Who's talking about aesthetics? I bet you're one of those "Taste is 100% subjective" guys, which is wrong. But please don't tell me you're one of those "Opinions can't be wrong because they're opinions" guys, because that is just stupid wrong.
You are literally talking about aesthetics right now, this entire thread is about aesthetic judgments regarding the story. You're defending making an intelligence judgment that someone is an idiot for enjoying the story. Read your own post.
Taste is 100% subjective and that isn't wrong. It isn't 100% relative though. Opinions can be wrong too. Please stop going off topic and trying to tell me what I believe or not because it's just making you look silly.
Sorry, I was unclear as to what the word "aesthetics" means. When I use the word, I relate it to the study of beauty, and not necessarily with taste.
But while we're splitting hairs, let's make a point to differentiate "liking" or "enjoying" something, and to respecting something's intelligence and integrity. The two are often closely linked, but there's a difference between someone telling me they "liked" the HotS campaign and telling me that the HotS campaign was "good". I can't tell someone that "no, you did not enjoy the campaign!", but I can say "no, the campaign was bad!"
So to use your broader definiton of aesthetics, yes, I can and do make intelligence judgements on people's aesthetic preferences.
1. The HotS campaign was dumb. 2. If you think the HotS campaign was not dumb, then you are dumb.
Is that faulty reasoning?
P.S. What does "Taste is 100% subjective but not 100% relative" mean?
P.P.S.
On March 14 2013 10:17 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Please stop going off topic and trying to tell me what I believe or not because it's just making you look silly (although quite justifying your being someone who is quick to judge).
It's making me look silly even when I'm right? I said you're probably a person who thinks a certain way, and you confirmed that to be true. Also, what's off topic? You're not even the person I was originally talking to. And it was that other person, not me, who brought up the idea of personal intelligence being related to enjoyment of this campaign.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
I don't think there's a need to derail the thread into personal attacks. >_>
On topic: After playing through the HotS campaign, I feel that, like people have said previously, the story is entirely focused on several characters and their individual campaigns rather than, well, an actual campaign of the entire race. This different kind of storytelling is a mixed bag of feelings, since it's hard to write it off as a good story for newer audiences coming into the Starcraft storyline. It's also difficult to please the people who have played Brood War and were attracted to the storyline and atmosphere that it created, then having to turn into this. I feel this is going from broad strokes that was Brood War to minute details in SC2 makes storytelling kind of weird and unfamiliar (at least for me).
My guess on this is that back then, they story was probably as important to the game (Brood War, or any game back then actually) as the gameplay itself, so you saw a bigger emphasis on how a story was written instead of having any kind of rushed storyline (Diablo III comes to mind, I hated how they picked up that storyline off from Diablo II). This changed, as we step into present time, and what was on everyone's mind for Heart of the Swarm? Multiplayer.
This wasn't the case back in Brood War, as you saw the game being pretty much a pretty sub-par RTS at best when it first came out (but later got balanced and changed as time went by and you see Brood War in its current state after several years of balance). I'm confident to say pretty much everyone that was waiting for HotS was looking at 1) New Multiplayer units for each race as well as balance and 2) Battle.net improvements. From the way things are looking, I'd say both of those did a pretty good job. We got pretty big strides in terms of multiplayer changes. We got a (in my opinion) better Battle.net interface, better usability, easier access to friends and communities, and so on.
So forgive my tangent, but what does this all mean? Since Blizzard is a business, there's only so many resources they can allocate into each aspect of the game. This meant that, I'd wager, most of their resources into improving the user interface for Battle.net and balancing the multiplayer of the game. Sure, I know this isn't an excuse for not putting enough emphasis on the storyline of the game, but I'd imagine that's the case. Hey, Blizzard is only working on what the community tells them to work on, which is at the moment the betterment of e-sports.
Storyline wise (wow what a big tangent I went through that wasn't really related to the story of HotS), I really wished they put more backstory to Duran, who was a pretty important character in Brood War campaign (God I still remember that mission where you control him as Zerg and have to set charges on the Pylons to kill the Protoss, that one was so hard back then >_<). Wish they had some Protoss gameplay as well like in WoL where you played a race other than Terran. Other than that, yeah, pretty much everything has already been said about the HotS campaign, both good and bad.
On March 14 2013 10:15 Indolent wrote:
4. Zerus sucked so much. Talking monkeys, worms, I was waiting for talking banana. It didn't feel like Zerg at all. More like Flintstones.
When you said that it kinda reminded me of this: Skyrim Pokemon If you're too lazy to watch it, kickboxing banana.
Aesthetics 1. the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments. 2. the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
It's just as fair to write someone like you off for being so quick to judge as incompetent and simpleminded.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
Who's talking about aesthetics? I bet you're one of those "Taste is 100% subjective" guys, which is wrong. But please don't tell me you're one of those "Opinions can't be wrong because they're opinions" guys, because that is just stupid wrong.
You are literally talking about aesthetics right now, this entire thread is about aesthetic judgments regarding the story. You're defending making an intelligence judgment that someone is an idiot for enjoying the story. Read your own post.
Taste is 100% subjective and that isn't wrong. It isn't 100% relative though. Opinions can be wrong too. Please stop going off topic and trying to tell me what I believe or not because it's just making you look silly.
But while we're splitting hairs, let's make a point to differentiate "liking" or "enjoying" something, and to respecting something's intelligence and integrity. The two are often closely linked, but there's a difference between someone telling me they "liked" the HotS campaign and telling me that the HotS campaign was "good". I can't tell someone that "no, you did not enjoy the campaign!", but I can say "no, the campaign was bad!"
So to use your broader definiton of aesthetics, yes, I can and do make intelligence judgements on people's aesthetic preferences.
1. The HotS campaign was dumb. 2. If you think the HotS campaign was not dumb, then you are dumb.
Is that faulty reasoning?
P.S. What does "Taste is 100% subjective but not 100% relative" mean?
You said "let's make a point to differentiate 'liking' and 'enjoying'", but you never make the point. What is the difference between liking and enjoying? You seem to equate enjoyment with something being objectively good in your example but that seems absurd to me.
Yes, I think it is definitely faulty reasoning because you're assuming that statement 1 is objectively true. On a another level, it's equally faulty because you assume that if someone is wrong about something, it makes them dumb.
The difference between subjectivity and relativity is fairly subtle and so I might do a poor job of explaining it here but relativity tends to assume that any viewpoint is just as valid as another viewpoint whereas subjectivity merely admits our existential condition. If the two were put in a Venn Diagram, the middle area would be extremely large but not all-encompassing.
I liked the campaign itself, but the story was a bit lackluster. I was kind of hoping that Mengsk was actually ruthlessly sacrificing almost all of his army to trap kerrigan so that he could truly bring Amon back to life, or if he was actually Amon.
On March 14 2013 10:51 TheRabidDeer wrote: I liked the campaign itself, but the story was a bit lackluster. I was kind of hoping that Mengsk was actually ruthlessly sacrificing almost all of his army to trap kerrigan so that he could truly bring Amon back to life, or if he was actually Amon.
That would actually be a really cool twist, if Mengsk was actually Amon, or a character we've known for a long time.
Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
It's just as fair to write someone like you off for being so quick to judge as incompetent and simpleminded.
How can you honestly make an intelligence judgment about someone based on what they aesthetically enjoy? Sure there might be statistical correlations about some things, but that's entirely different.
Who's talking about aesthetics? I bet you're one of those "Taste is 100% subjective" guys, which is wrong. But please don't tell me you're one of those "Opinions can't be wrong because they're opinions" guys, because that is just stupid wrong.
You are literally talking about aesthetics right now, this entire thread is about aesthetic judgments regarding the story. You're defending making an intelligence judgment that someone is an idiot for enjoying the story. Read your own post.
Taste is 100% subjective and that isn't wrong. It isn't 100% relative though. Opinions can be wrong too. Please stop going off topic and trying to tell me what I believe or not because it's just making you look silly.
But while we're splitting hairs, let's make a point to differentiate "liking" or "enjoying" something, and to respecting something's intelligence and integrity. The two are often closely linked, but there's a difference between someone telling me they "liked" the HotS campaign and telling me that the HotS campaign was "good". I can't tell someone that "no, you did not enjoy the campaign!", but I can say "no, the campaign was bad!"
So to use your broader definiton of aesthetics, yes, I can and do make intelligence judgements on people's aesthetic preferences.
1. The HotS campaign was dumb. 2. If you think the HotS campaign was not dumb, then you are dumb.
Is that faulty reasoning?
P.S. What does "Taste is 100% subjective but not 100% relative" mean?
You said "let's make a point to differentiate 'liking' and 'enjoying'", but you never make the point. What is the difference between liking and enjoying? You seem to equate enjoyment with something being objectively good in your example but that seems absurd to me.
Yes, I think it is definitely faulty reasoning because you're assuming that statement 1 is objectively true. On a another level, it's equally faulty because you assume that if someone is wrong about something, it makes them dumb.
The difference between subjectivity and relativity is fairly subtle and so I might do a poor job of explaining it here but relativity tends to assume that any viewpoint is just as valid as another viewpoint whereas subjectivity merely admits our existential condition. If the two were put in a Venn Diagram, the middle area would be extremely large but not all-encompassing.
Uh you misread that sentence, liking/enjoying is one thing, respecting/acknowledging good quality is another.
I know that not every time someone is wrong about something, they are dumb. But how much leeway can you give people? How many times can you give them the benefit of the doubt? Every time someone starts spewing totally bogus shit, am I supposed to say "oh, well he's just misinformed and hasn't done enough thinking on the topic", or "he's just misunderstanding the situation this once", or "it's his parents' fault for teaching him that and not his", or "well he's probably just having a bad day and usually his brain isn't so stupid." I'm just not that kind of person, what I usually say is "wow this guy is an idiot."
Obviously, some things are more subjective than others. I like oranges more than apples, that doesn't mean every time someone tells me the opposite that I think they're a complete retard and never speak to them again.
But there are some things, like I mentioned gay marriage, christianity, that are so black and white in my mind, to have one opinion over the other instantly equates to stupidity. The HotS storyline comes pretty darn close to one of things things, I just think it was that bad.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
Story - Just like SC2 it went in a cheesy direction, further discrediting villains and main characters to some PG chick flick. Multiple times I burst out saying REALLY? then explaining to people on skype that no I wasn't in a 1v1 match getting cheesed, I was showing my disappointment with the story.
Difficulty- Brutal was a joke of a difficulty. For me it really took away from the achievement of beating anything.
Objectives - Creative missions that were pretty different from each other. Kept the game fresh.
Customization - I actually liked the customization with units and Kerigan
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
My original post was running too long to include all the dbz references. but they were definitely screaming in my head in nearly every fight cut scene, despite not having watched dbz in like 15 years.
Highlights included:
Beginning scenes, hey wait, did mengsk jr just put kerrigan in a hyperbolic time chamber to test her abilities?
When raynor gets her out of of the chamber after she just psiforce squishes everyone and the room blows up like a dbz character powering up and she has ghost suit lights flaring up like lightning i was laughing my ass of thinking, lulssj2 kerrigan.
I half expected Narud to yell what 9000, not to mention that Narud apparently learned to kamehameha between games. Luckily kerrigan apparently hit ssj3 with wicked hair problems and wings instead of a tail.
Zeratul/mengsk palace scene, yup more dbz fighting, but after a few seconds of wtf when she was floating up i realized this was a scene totally stolen from the end of dbz when goku's spirit reascends at the end of the series, Raynor had the exact same stupid look on his face gohan does.
Its not Blizzards fault that DBZ used every science fiction concept in the damn book over the course of its production. I remember people saying the same think with the Yoda/Sith Lord scene in star wars. WHAT IS THIS DBZ!!!?? Ok now thanks to DBZ anytime two people shoot energy at each other in a sci fi they must be ripping off toonami. The Starcraft gaming community is the most whiny, arrogant, sarcastic bastards ive ever seen, your all a bunch of geeks trying to look cool by mocking something you spend a great deal of your time on, i dont care if i get banned for this post it needed to be said.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
It's true, video game writing is and has always been bad. The problem is, up until WoW/D3/SC2, Blizzard was one of those few gaming companies that made good stories and had good writing.
Here are some games with good writing/stories: Most Valve games (HL 1 and 2, Portal) Most Bioware games (but not ME3, good god) Bioshock 1 (not 2) Silent Hill 2 Indigo Prophecy Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Some of the Fire Emblem games Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Braid (even with all its pretentiousness)
I haven't played these, but have heard good things: Planescape: Torment Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem Grim Fandango Xenogears Deus Ex Beyond Good and Evil
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
My original post was running too long to include all the dbz references. but they were definitely screaming in my head in nearly every fight cut scene, despite not having watched dbz in like 15 years.
Highlights included:
Beginning scenes, hey wait, did mengsk jr just put kerrigan in a hyperbolic time chamber to test her abilities?
When raynor gets her out of of the chamber after she just psiforce squishes everyone and the room blows up like a dbz character powering up and she has ghost suit lights flaring up like lightning i was laughing my ass of thinking, lulssj2 kerrigan.
I half expected Narud to yell what 9000, not to mention that Narud apparently learned to kamehameha between games. Luckily kerrigan apparently hit ssj3 with wicked hair problems and wings instead of a tail.
Zeratul/mengsk palace scene, yup more dbz fighting, but after a few seconds of wtf when she was floating up i realized this was a scene totally stolen from the end of dbz when goku's spirit reascends at the end of the series, Raynor had the exact same stupid look on his face gohan does.
Its not Blizzards fault that DBZ used every science fiction concept in the damn book over the course of its production. I remember people saying the same think with the Yoda/Sith Lord scene in star wars. WHAT IS THIS DBZ!!!?? Ok now thanks to DBZ anytime two people shoot energy at each other in a sci fi they must be ripping off toonami. The Starcraft gaming community is the most whiny, arrogant, sarcastic bastards ive ever seen, your all a bunch of geeks trying to look cool by mocking something you spend a great deal of your time on, i dont care if i get banned for this post it needed to be said.
First thing i thought of in the mission with Kerrigan vs Narud was DBZ, so it kind of has to be said but i enjoyed the campaign, final mission was a bit too easy when you get the hang of it. Also if we are talking about borrowing concepts Kerrigan has force choke xD. Some of the story seemed a bit odd where stukov arrives out of nowhere, Narud wasn't confirmed as Duran, warfield survived WoL and then appeared in hots to die and not much protoss in the campaign .
You said "let's make a point to differentiate 'liking' and 'enjoying'", but you never make the point. What is the difference between liking and enjoying? You seem to equate enjoyment with something being objectively good in your example but that seems absurd to me.
You can like killing but not enjoy it, or you can enjoy killing but not like that you do. Or am I missing something?
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
Because nothing happens to be better does not it make it good. The story is linear and thus not a "video game story" but simply a story (It could easily work as a novella). So it gets the same judgment standards. One could think that one of the richest and successful publisher/game development studio could actually get a competent novelist to write the story.
Broodwars story was better. It is said that its the same writer so don't know what happened.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
Brood War.
LOL dont let this bum fool you, there was just as many complaints going on about broodwar back in its day as there is about SC2 now, that includes balance in multiplayer as well as the storyline and missions. Just like history is kind to former Presidents gamers are kind to the prequels of games once they have something new to bash all day. All the people talking about how much harder WOL was than HOTS are the same people saying WOL was a joke cause every mission besides Maw of the Void can be done with mass medic marine and nothing else. Team liquid has a lot pros who are judging the game as if everyone who buys this game is part of the elite 5% top players of starcraft. Short sight and juvenile.
As for me, personally, I greatly enjoyed the campaign. It had a lot of interesting things to do (like evolution missions) and most of the characters are awesome (<3 Abathur). The story was predictable (as has been just about every story I've ever taken in) but was good nonetheless.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
Brood War.
LOL dont let this bum fool you, there was just as many complaints going on about broodwar back in its day as there is about SC2 now, that includes balance in multiplayer as well as the storyline and missions. Just like history is kind to former Presidents gamers are kind to the prequels of games once they have something new to bash all day. All the people talking about how much harder WOL was than HOTS are the same people saying WOL was a joke cause every mission besides Maw of the Void can be done with mass medic marine and nothing else. Team liquid has a lot pros who are judging the game as if everyone who buys this game is part of the elite 5% top players of starcraft. Short sight and juvenile.
You are on Teamliquid.net; where Broodwar is greater than everything.
The difficulty of WoL and HotS was about the same (the last Protoss mission in WoL was a cakewalk... Just mass Void Rays).
On March 14 2013 11:17 Robotix wrote: And people say the Battle.net forums are bad...
As for me, personally, I greatly enjoyed the campaign. It had a lot of interesting things to do (like evolution missions) and most of the characters are awesome (<3 Abathur). The story was predictable (as has been just about every story I've ever taken in) but was good nonetheless.
I give it a 9/10.
You should review video games professionally, you'd fit right in.
On March 14 2013 06:51 Gatesleeper wrote: It's insane to see some people in the thread defend the plot for Heart of the Swarm and pretend that it's good writing or makes any sense at all.
The big points have already been covered in this thread by Warlock40 (page 11) and abominare (Page 15). The people who disagree with these guys are using shitty plot points introduced in SC2 (The Prophecy, Amon is the new big baddy, Xel'Naga artifact as all purpose character development fixer) to defend shitty character development.
The stupidity of the whole campaign, and perhaps the whole sequel so far, culminates in the final mission of HotS. Stop for a minute and look at what's happening here. Our human hero, Jim Raynor, is helping an army of Zerg kill an army of Terran. Imagine the HotS opening cinematic where the Zerg are killing Terrans on Korhal, that version of the attack is just a vision/dream Kerrigan has, but then it actually happens. Now imagine that Jim Raynor and his own army of Raiders are on the side of the Zerg in that cinematic and are helping them kill the Dominion.
Jim Raynor, our perennial good guy, comes to the aid of Kerrigan, essentially forgiving her for all her past and present crimes (remember, she is still killing humans throughout the whole HotS campaign). In cutscene we see her telepathically commanding her brood mothers to attack and infest entire Terran planets. Do we assume that Raynor never found out about those planets? Or, as abominare said "do we just have to assume that every [Dominion] marine is a card carrying SS member".
Remember in the beginning of Wings of Liberty when Kerrigan begins attacking Terran worlds, a news report in the game says "billions of casualties". I always thought that number was ludicrously high, maybe it was an exaggeration on part of the newscaster? So in SC2, Kerrigan has killed at least millions, if not billions, of human beings, mostly in her quest to kill one man she doesn't like. Or does that not count because she was under the influence of Amon? That is so dumb. It is established in SC1 that after The Overmind dies, Kerrigan is 100% in control of her actions. She is responsible for everything she does. But wait, we gotta have a Zerg campaign for our second expansion pack, better retcon the shit out of Kerrigan and make her a good guy!
abominare reminds us to "keep in mind shes a god damn ghost who specialize in covert assassinations not involving giant wars". Not only was Kerrigan a ghost, she was the best, most gifted ghost in the history of the program. It would've made a lot more sense if Kerrigan chose to say as Terran and killed Mengsk using human means. Watching Kerrigan try to plan out a way to assassinate Mengsk as a ghost, that would've been fun. Holy shit I just made up the plot for Starcraft: Ghost 2.
Anyway, if you thought the final mission was stupid, you're not ready for the final cinematic. It was written by a 6 year old, and goes like this:
So Kerrigan is in the palace and all these marines and vikings are shooting at her but she's too fast and she jumps in the air and then lands and does her psionic thing and blows them all up. Next we see Mengsk sitting in his office and he's looking all smug and shit while he pulls out a cigar box. In it is a cigar and also this remote control thing, what is that, we don't know yet! Keep watching!
Kerrigan tears through his door with her wings and shit and walks up to him and is all like "I'mma kill you now." But then Mengsk turns around and says "nope I'mma kill you" and presses his remote and suddenly the Xel'Naga Artifact comes out of the floor and zaps Kerrigan! Oh no, Kerrigan is down and zapped and can't get up. Mengsk gloats over her saying "lol I'm killing you" for a minute and is about to zap her again but then Raynor comes out of nowhere and beats Mengsk up! He breaks the remote and now Mengsk is defenseless.
Kerrigan walks up to Mengsk and stabs him with her Wings, and says "okay I'm killing you now", then she puts psionic stuff into Mengsk's mouth and he blows up! Pa-chew! The whole office blows up. (We only see this from the outside because gore is gross, remember, this is written by a 6 year old, not a 12 year old).
Kerrigan and Raynor walk onto the newly made balcony and tell each other that they love each other 5ever. Then Kerrigan floats away smiling knowing that today was a good day where thousands of human beings died to sate the bloodlust of one woman. Raynor is okay with this because he didn't like Mengsk either.
Beautifully written. Amnesia effect. Romeo/juliet. Good vs evil. 3 things to avoid if you want to write a good story. 3 things blizzard just hamfisted together to make a sequel. Prophecy/artifact allowing retcon. Zzzzz.
Also anyone else notice the GIANT DBZ style fight scenes/levels. It's sickening. I love DBZ. But come on! That's terrible! Lack of imagination and cheesy fights/rts ruining concepts. HEROS ARE NOT RTS, REAL TIME STRATEGY. The campaign felt like an RPG. I thought I paid for an RTS. grumble grumble. LOTV = one man against armies. But he is immortal and godlike. Zeratul. You thought I meant the dark voice.... nah.
LOTV ending story/script. Zeratul goes on a bunch of unrelated quests for no real purpose and does a bunch of stuff that powers him up for no logical reason, much like kerrigan did and occasionally has a few units join him to "assist" his mission. End battle after he solos the bad guys army, is him and kerrigan and jim with a big gun vs bad guy. You get to use each with quick time events to defeat the boss. Sit back and press x when the big button comes up. Blizzard will hail it as revolutionary rts tactics. Boss battle will be 95% cutscene and 4% quicktime and then 1% deathscene. Calling it now.
And if you are lucky there will be a special level where you get to build a base.... but don't worry zeratul will hold off the waves of enemies solo so you can build 5 stalkers and 2 zealots to get the acheivement.
My original post was running too long to include all the dbz references. but they were definitely screaming in my head in nearly every fight cut scene, despite not having watched dbz in like 15 years.
Highlights included:
Beginning scenes, hey wait, did mengsk jr just put kerrigan in a hyperbolic time chamber to test her abilities?
When raynor gets her out of of the chamber after she just psiforce squishes everyone and the room blows up like a dbz character powering up and she has ghost suit lights flaring up like lightning i was laughing my ass of thinking, lulssj2 kerrigan.
I half expected Narud to yell what 9000, not to mention that Narud apparently learned to kamehameha between games. Luckily kerrigan apparently hit ssj3 with wicked hair problems and wings instead of a tail.
Zeratul/mengsk palace scene, yup more dbz fighting, but after a few seconds of wtf when she was floating up i realized this was a scene totally stolen from the end of dbz when goku's spirit reascends at the end of the series, Raynor had the exact same stupid look on his face gohan does.
Its not Blizzards fault that DBZ used every science fiction concept in the damn book over the course of its production. I remember people saying the same think with the Yoda/Sith Lord scene in star wars. WHAT IS THIS DBZ!!!?? Ok now thanks to DBZ anytime two people shoot energy at each other in a sci fi they must be ripping off toonami. The Starcraft gaming community is the most whiny, arrogant, sarcastic bastards ive ever seen, your all a bunch of geeks trying to look cool by mocking something you spend a great deal of your time on, i dont care if i get banned for this post it needed to be said.
First thing i thought of in the mission with Kerrigan vs Narud was DBZ, so it kind of has to be said but i enjoyed the campaign, final mission was a bit too easy when you get the hang of it. Also if we are talking about borrowing concepts Kerrigan has force choke xD. Some of the story seemed a bit odd where stukov arrives out of nowhere, Narud wasn't confirmed as Duran, warfield survived WoL and then appeared in hots to die and not much protoss in the campaign .
Yeah stukovs arrival was odd but he was such a great character that i didnt mind, he was a great character in BW as well. Not sure why Narud didnt reveal as Duran, maybe too obvious since we all figured it out anyway. The wasnt large amounts of protoss in BW Terran campaign either, you cant play a zerg campaign expecting it to be half about the protoss when the zergs primary enemy for this expansion is the terran dominion.
On March 14 2013 11:17 Robotix wrote: And people say the Battle.net forums are bad...
As for me, personally, I greatly enjoyed the campaign. It had a lot of interesting things to do (like evolution missions) and most of the characters are awesome (<3 Abathur). The story was predictable (as has been just about every story I've ever taken in) but was good nonetheless.
I give it a 9/10.
You should review video games professionally, you'd fit right in.
On March 14 2013 11:17 Robotix wrote: And people say the Battle.net forums are bad...
As for me, personally, I greatly enjoyed the campaign. It had a lot of interesting things to do (like evolution missions) and most of the characters are awesome (<3 Abathur). The story was predictable (as has been just about every story I've ever taken in) but was good nonetheless.
I give it a 9/10.
I loved Abathur too, the primal zerg was annoying with his "essence" lol but he revealed the mindset of the zerg and how they view progress for their race.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
It's true, video game writing is and has always been bad. The problem is, up until WoW/D3/SC2, Blizzard was one of those few gaming companies that made good stories and had good writing.
Here are some games with good writing/stories: Most Valve games (HL 1 and 2, Portal) Most Bioware games (but not ME3, good god) Bioshock 1 (not 2) Silent Hill 2 Indigo Prophecy Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Some of the Fire Emblem games Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Braid (even with all its pretentiousness)
I haven't played these, but have heard good things: Planescape: Torment Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem Grim Fandango Xenogears Deus Ex Beyond Good and Evil
For the games on this list that I know, each still had 1000000x people bitching about the writing/storytelling.
I actually looked forward to the conversations with the characters, especially Abathur. Even Izsha in her child-like simple mindedness and naivety, was a good contrast to Zagara who was the same way but more ruthless. Stukov and the other guy were just ok seemed like fan service and filler respectively. But overall I enjoyed the game a lot (storywise) gameplay, well I am not an RTS guy as much anymore but the "noob" friendly features were nice. I really wish this game had come out at the same age that SC/BW came out heh.
I'll hoping that at one point...somewhere in LoTV the UED shows up. because the UED was pretty awesome, especially DuGalle. Considering Tassadar and Stukov was brought back. I wouldnt be surprised to see Infested DuGalle or DuGalle in an immortal suit as he is of "honor and pride"
The HoTS had some pretty cool cinematics but the overall was too simple. I'm not trying to be an brood war elitist in any means..but what exactly are the plot twists in the game? Kerrigan turns back to into the Queen of Blades? Jim Raynor after his whole "liberate the terrans lives from the wrath of Mengsk" suddenly decides its okay for Kerrigan to kill people on Korhal because it's tactically viable? That there are cool boss of feral zergs? Seriously..it lacks just overall creativity.
With Brood war, there were so many twists and turns you never knew what was going to happen in the end...that was the beauty of it all. In SC2 it's pretty much Point A to Point B, and it's all pre-determined by the first 4-5 missions in the game what the plot is going to be.
Well I personally though WoL was already pretty cheesy and not very interesting, but the presentation was great and it definetely had more content and at least a few really tough missions.
HotS does not have a single really difficult mission, even on brutal. Plus 70% of the missions you can win with Kerrigan alone with a few support units now and then. But again the presentation is great and to me is a bit more compelling than WoL, but that might just be because Kerrigan is simply a more interesting character (forced to be a ghost then a renegade, then betrayed and an enslaved zerg then zerg queen etc...).
In the End you barely see anything of her character development and she does not even hesitate to transform herself again.
OF course that'S another bad point: you finish WoL to save Kerrigan, and a few missions into HoTS she becomes the queen of blades again... And why exactly does she look the same as before? That was seriously kind of lame. I think it would have been awesome if Kerrigan had lead the swarm in human Form. The whole Amon thing also seemed kind of cheesy to me. What about the Xel'nage? Are they just one Guy? What about the prophecy? Most of it was pretty superficial. But I still have to say that I greatly enjoyed most of it. The mission were mostly very good, the cutscenes extremely well done.
"Enemy withing" was awesome and the fight against the supreme primal zerg, felt like diablo but in a good way. And saying that WoL was better would be a Lie IMO. In the end brood war was much better but it told the story of three races and three perspectives, that alone made it so much better.
Oh and on another Note: I feel that the single player is much better than the multiplayer part, which really fell behind my expectations: Widowmines make zvt totally boring, pvz seems really a bit imba right now. Terrans still do mostly bio, drops were already hard before, now they're impossible to hold. Swarmhost is just weird. Tempest superboring. Mutas dominate and again we have a stupid hero unit for protoss, while gateway units still suck and forcefields are still imba vs zerg....
I actually liked HotS a lot more than WoL. While the story is pretty simple overall, I really liked the way it was told. I felt a lot more invested in the story and felt kind of sad at the end.
That said, I am still kind of confused about Narud. Did mensk actually know what he was doing/who he was? Did Valerian (he claimed to own the Mobius foundation and knew of the artifact)? Was Narud nova as well?
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
It's true, video game writing is and has always been bad. The problem is, up until WoW/D3/SC2, Blizzard was one of those few gaming companies that made good stories and had good writing.
Here are some games with good writing/stories: Most Valve games (HL 1 and 2, Portal) Most Bioware games (but not ME3, good god) Bioshock 1 (not 2) Silent Hill 2 Indigo Prophecy Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Some of the Fire Emblem games Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Braid (even with all its pretentiousness)
I haven't played these, but have heard good things: Planescape: Torment Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem Grim Fandango Xenogears Deus Ex Beyond Good and Evil
For the games on this list that I know, each still had 1000000x people bitching about the writing/storytelling.
Man I take my time to give you a list of good stories in video games and you brush them all off with a line like this.
Why do people use arguments like this? Is it even an argument? What are you saying here?
Which games are you talking about? Because I can guarantee you that none of these games had over a million people complain about its story, because many of these games not more than a million people played, ever.
But anyway, what you're saying is that no matter how good something is, there will always be detractors and naysayers. That's granted, and obvious. What's your point though? What are you trying to say about SC2? That it had a good story despite all the people in here that say otherwise? What do you want me to say? That HotS had a better plot than Call of Duty or Gears of War or whatever? Fine, it did. Heart of the Swarm, however bad, still had a better story than a lot of mainstream video games.
But that doesn't mean we should give it a pat on the back and call it a day. I'm holding Starcraft to a higher standard, one set by SC1 and Blizzard's other games in the past. By those standards, HotS is drivel, and just because it's more or less on par for video game plotlines, doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to say that. Just because other games are trash doesn't make HotS good, and just because better games have had detractors doesn't mean HotS is as good as them.
As someone who does not delve deep into the story lines. As someone who has seen movies like Twilight and other chick flicks, I would hardly compare Hots to it. I mean it was somewhat corny and romantic but masses of people love that stuff. It was predictable but overall I enjoyed the characters and the development of Sarah. It did leave me wanting more and I believe that was their intention with LotV on the way. I don't know, I mean for people to rip it apart, I guess it could have been darker. But after going to see Jack the Giant with my son earlier today, the ending of Hots was pretty much what I hoped for. I thoroughly enjoyed the campaign in its entirety. Except for no choice of an upgrade for my Infestor. What the hell man, Blizzard must really hate em.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
If you were trying to make the assumption that I don't read outside of games/movies, you're very wrong o.O(I don't watch many movies, for one, and I read far more books than I have time for, for two.)
It's subjective. Simply saying "I THINK IT WAS BAD AND SO SINCE YOU LIKED IT YOU'RE DUMB IN THIS AREA" doesn't work...
A lot of the 'baffling decisions' that 'makes him totally unrelatable' for example? I consider them more realistic than always doing the same thing every time. People change over time, and when people have time to think things over repeatedly they *gasp* change their mind!
Kerrigan wasn't made into a hero. They made it clear that she was still killing anything in her path to vengence, she was just more human and had a bit more morals about it(Not killing injured soldiers, trying to avoid civilians).
"Like riding a bike" sounds like a cheesy thing that would ACTUALLY be said. Especially considering the two...
I liked the story. Very much enjoyed it, and I felt the character development was well done.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
Brood War.
Baldur's Gate series. Planescape Torment.
And one extra note (which I know was mentioned earlier in this thread): Remember, Kerrigan killed Mengsk's parents. When she was a ghost. It was stated as one of the reasons why Mengsk left Kerrigan back on Tarsonis. So I don't see why Kerrigan should be mad Mengsk tried to kill her. Especially after she defeated him at the end of Brood War (after betraying their tenuous alliance by having samir duran and the player kill Fenix and Duke.) It just boggles my mind how we could get hots and wol after sc and scbw.
On March 14 2013 14:53 Serpest wrote: And one extra note (which I know was mentioned earlier in this thread): Remember, Kerrigan killed Mengsk's parents. When she was a ghost. It was stated as one of the reasons why Mengsk left Kerrigan back on Tarsonis. So I don't see why Kerrigan should be mad Mengsk tried to kill her. Especially after she defeated him at the end of Brood War (after betraying their tenuous alliance by having samir duran and the player kill Fenix and Duke.) It just boggles my mind how we could get hots and wol after sc and scbw.
Yup, like I said, I was hoping this plot point would be brought up. A logical way would be for Mengsk to tell Kerrigan this at their final showdown, to try to guilt her into letting her guard down.
One thing I noticed over the course of SC2 is that Mengsk doesn't seem nearly as bad a guy as Raynor and Kerrigan make him out to be. Consider all the things Mengsk says to Kerrigan throughout HotS. Since we're playing as Kerrigan, and Mengsk is the appointed "bad guy" of the story, everything he says should sound evil or bad or manipulative, no? But every time Mengsk said something to Kerrigan I thought "yup, he's got a point." When Mengsk is gesticulating at Kerrigan over the course of the last few missions and cut scene, he should be sounding like the desperate tyrant the game makes him out to be. He constantly harps on the fact that Kerrigan is the leader of the Zerg, and therefore a threat to all humanity.
Where is the mistake in this? Isn't Mengsk 100% right? As long as Kerrigan is alive and leading the Swarm, humanity is in danger. We've seen time and time again that Kerrigan kills humans without remorse. Her sparing 3 dropships on Char or deciding not to go through civilian sectors in Augustgrad doesn't pardon her for her crimes. Or are we to believe now that Mengsk is dead, Kerrigan is gonna be a total chill dude and not kill any more humans ever.
I know Mengsk is a power hungry, self serving dictator, but I fail to see where he becomes the abhorent tyrant the game has us believe him to be. Will the Terrans be better off with Valerian as their leader instead of Mengsk? Undoubtedly. But was it worth killing billions of human lives to achieve that end? I don't think so.
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
If you were trying to make the assumption that I don't read outside of games/movies, you're very wrong o.O(I don't watch many movies, for one, and I read far more books than I have time for, for two.)
It's subjective. Simply saying "I THINK IT WAS BAD AND SO SINCE YOU LIKED IT YOU'RE DUMB IN THIS AREA" doesn't work...
A lot of the 'baffling decisions' that 'makes him totally unrelatable' for example? I consider them more realistic than always doing the same thing every time. People change over time, and when people have time to think things over repeatedly they *gasp* change their mind!
Kerrigan wasn't made into a hero. They made it clear that she was still killing anything in her path to vengence, she was just more human and had a bit more morals about it(Not killing injured soldiers, trying to avoid civilians).
"Like riding a bike" sounds like a cheesy thing that would ACTUALLY be said. Especially considering the two...
I liked the story. Very much enjoyed it, and I felt the character development was well done.
I'm just curious, what kind of books do you read and enjoy? What are some of your favourite novels?
On March 13 2013 17:31 Seam wrote: So uhm. Just finished and was wanting to say how I actually really really enjoyed the story telling and character development...
But I guess I'm alone there...
If you're being completely honest, then i must inform you that your standards of quality story telling and character development are very, very low. For a lot of gamers however, this is not uncommon, given that they're unlikely to do lots of reading outside of the gaming industry. (There simply isn't enough quality story-telling among triple A titles nowadays to make gaming a substitute for literature.)
Other people in this thread have already expressed my reasons for despising the SC2 story arc so much and why the character development is so disgustingly incongruent to SC:BW. (Raynor's baffling decision making that makes him totally unrelatable to his personality & performance in SC1, Big bad Amon turns out to be the real villian and Kerrigan is somehow now the hero . . . oh and my personal gripe being Zeratul's abysmal voice acting, but that's just me comparing his voice to the outstanding original actor. Seriously, try comparing the two and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.) I can just imagine Metzen picking up a harlequin novel and thinking how brilliant it would be to structure Jim & Kerrigan's relationship around it in HOTS, along with the cliched and uninspired dialogue. ("Like riding a bike!" O___O Honestly, how could've ANYONE at Blizzard read their fucking script and thought to themselves, "brilliant! We're gonna set a new standard for story telling in gaming, an original cliff hanger for LotV!")
This doesn't leave much hope for LotV sadly, which makes me even more worried about Blizzard's say in how the Warcraft movie script is written, but I digress. I feel our only hope is if Blizzard fires Metzen now before he douses the maybe-salvagable train wreck that is SC2's storyline in gasoline and lights a match . . . .
If you were trying to make the assumption that I don't read outside of games/movies, you're very wrong o.O(I don't watch many movies, for one, and I read far more books than I have time for, for two.)
It's subjective. Simply saying "I THINK IT WAS BAD AND SO SINCE YOU LIKED IT YOU'RE DUMB IN THIS AREA" doesn't work...
A lot of the 'baffling decisions' that 'makes him totally unrelatable' for example? I consider them more realistic than always doing the same thing every time. People change over time, and when people have time to think things over repeatedly they *gasp* change their mind!
Kerrigan wasn't made into a hero. They made it clear that she was still killing anything in her path to vengence, she was just more human and had a bit more morals about it(Not killing injured soldiers, trying to avoid civilians).
"Like riding a bike" sounds like a cheesy thing that would ACTUALLY be said. Especially considering the two...
I liked the story. Very much enjoyed it, and I felt the character development was well done.
I'm just curious, what kind of books do you read and enjoy? What are some of your favourite novels?
Generally fantasyish I suppose? I'm not good on genre names... Sometimes realistic fiction, sometimes horror, romance, sci-fi, etc... I pretty much pick up a book and go with it if it seems interesting.
As for favorites? Uhm... not sure? Off the top of my head I really enjoyed some of the early books in Anne Rice's Vampire series thing. Stephen King's Dark Tower series holds a place in my heart despite despising the ending...
What i liked about bw was that it told the story of the 3 seperate races. Sure there were heroes/leaders on all sides we would feel for, but that was merely part of the story. BW revolved around the races and their struggles. You saw the pride of the protoss blind and destroy them. You saw how divided the terren were. You saw how united and fierce the zerg were. While during this you may have had smaller plots (kerrigan + raynors feelings, tassadar vs infested kerrigan, aldaris vs the dt + tass, etc) they weren't the underlying story elements. They were part of the story, albeit a small part, just like everyone has their own story, yet our lives and deeds are only a small part of history. Additionally, the story itself had a plot that made sense without resorting to the whole "doom of the universe" bs that WoL and HotS unfortunately were degraded to.
We all knew jim had feelings for kerrigan and visa versa, but the story didn't revolve around it. We literally spent 30 missions in WoL having raynor get sarah her vag back so she could proceed to cock block him in HotS by shoving a chastity belt called zerg carapace back onto that shit. Like wtf kind of story is that? Oh but she loves him so it's okay.
It's kind of silly that blizz resorted to the end of the universe plot line with a badly written love story thrown in. It still has some great moments in it just because of how good starcraft is in general, but in the end it could have been so much better if they kept it away from hollywood-esque stories.
On March 14 2013 16:11 BlackPaladin wrote: We all knew jim had feelings for kerrigan and visa versa, but the story didn't revolve around it. We literally spent 30 missions in WoL having raynor get sarah her vag back so she could proceed to cock block him in HotS by shoving a chastity belt called zerg carapace back onto that shit. Like wtf kind of story is that? Oh but she loves him so it's okay.
I enjoyed it. Ya the dialogue was cheesy as hell at times, and the characters were under developed and shallow, and the plot didn't develop nearly enough back story to make people really invested in the love crusade, but shit, I had fun. The missions could have been more difficult, particularly the last mission, that was a bit disappointing. The whole evolution bit was fun, and decking out your swarm with each unique ability/strain.
One part I liked was that Kerrigan actually kept some of her humanity after becoming primal Queen. Kept it more personal and understandable with the whole revenge plot, as the BW kerrigan really didn't give much of a shit about the atrocities that befell her at the hands of mensk. I enjoyed partaking in her rise to power and journey of vengeance. It was rewarding on some level.
I didn't mind the story nearly as much as I minded the easy game play and overuse of the Kerrigan hero in nearly every mission. Roach/hydra with the right mutations/evolution completely dominate in this game and there wasn't nearly enough base building.
Why does every mission with a base always come set up and usually has some timers involved? Why not throw in a few old fashion RTS campaign missions where you have to build a base from scratch against an AI opponent that's already developed and entrenched. Was getting sick of all those WC3 style missions, where you just control a hero and a few units and jump over gaps etc. Some are okay.. but this was like every other mission.
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
Brood War.
Baldur's Gate series. Planescape Torment.
And one extra note (which I know was mentioned earlier in this thread): Remember, Kerrigan killed Mengsk's parents. When she was a ghost. It was stated as one of the reasons why Mengsk left Kerrigan back on Tarsonis. So I don't see why Kerrigan should be mad Mengsk tried to kill her. Especially after she defeated him at the end of Brood War (after betraying their tenuous alliance by having samir duran and the player kill Fenix and Duke.) It just boggles my mind how we could get hots and wol after sc and scbw.
I had a sudden crave for the goodness of some good zerg stories and i found this old video. That scbw's kerrigan was my love:
I almost don't remember how amazing the story of scbw because how WoL changed the story completely. The rare times that i agree with many comments from a youtube video.
On March 14 2013 18:02 Strut wrote: I didn't mind the story nearly as much as I minded the easy game play and overuse of the Kerrigan hero in nearly every mission. Roach/hydra with the right mutations/evolution completely dominate in this game and there wasn't nearly enough base building.
Why does every mission with a base always come set up and usually has some timers involved? Why not throw in a few old fashion RTS campaign missions where you have to build a base from scratch against an AI opponent that's already developed and entrenched. Was getting sick of all those WC3 style missions, where you just control a hero and a few units and jump over gaps etc. Some are okay.. but this was like every other mission.
There was a base in almost every mission. 15 out of 20.
On March 14 2013 18:02 Strut wrote: I didn't mind the story nearly as much as I minded the easy game play and overuse of the Kerrigan hero in nearly every mission. Roach/hydra with the right mutations/evolution completely dominate in this game and there wasn't nearly enough base building.
Why does every mission with a base always come set up and usually has some timers involved? Why not throw in a few old fashion RTS campaign missions where you have to build a base from scratch against an AI opponent that's already developed and entrenched. Was getting sick of all those WC3 style missions, where you just control a hero and a few units and jump over gaps etc. Some are okay.. but this was like every other mission.
There was a base in almost every mission. 15 out of 20.
He's complaining that the bases you get in missions are already set up, as opposed to multiplayer where you start with 1 hatch, 1 overlord, 6 drones, and that's it.
Not really something to complain about though, the majority of missions start you off with 1 hatchery, some drones, maybe a spine and a spore and a spawning pool, plus the tech building relevant to that mission. I think the last mission you start with 2 hatcheries, but other than that, nothing crazy...
On March 14 2013 08:41 DarthYAM wrote: Jesus. So anyone who likes the campaign is an idiot? Grow up
If you thought the story/plot/characters/themes in Heart of the Swarm were good, that it was well written and thought out, enjoyable, and believable, then yes, I would wager that you are an idiot.
If someone tells me that God created the earth in 7 days, or that gay marriage is wrong and should be illegal, or that they think the Star Wars prequel trilogy was better than the original, then I immediately write them off as stupid and leave it at that. That's how strongly I believe that the HotS story is rubbish.
You can try to tell me that I'm wrong, that the HotS campaign was actually really deep and meaningful, but for me, that's like trying to tell me that the world is flat.
User was warned for this post
This is some of the worst logic I have ever read on a forum. So you're basically comparing whether someone finds a story good with someone who genuinely believes in flying spaghetti monsters?
One of those is the belief of supernatural beings without any tangible evidence, while the other is valuing different parameters in what constitutes "good". You may find that a good story requires plot twists, lots of deep meaningful conversations, while others prefer simpleness, a predictable story with stereotypical characters. But does that make it any less good simply because they have a different opinion and taste?
If you really judge people negatively merely because their opinion of enjoyment is vastly different than yours, I feel sorry for you and those around you.
I am ladder grinder who started the wol campaign yesterday morning at 8 (with 4 missions already done since earlier) and finished the hots campaign today at 01:37 after midnight.
Damn the story took quite some time.
So, what annoyed me the most in hots was how much I fought zerg. I know that it was some kind of different zerg (primal) but I was always like... the terran is our main opponent but 70% of the missions are fighting zerg? And being a protoss on the ladder I was disappointed to see how little they were involved in the campaign. It felt like a big zvz with a tvz ending.
One of the thing I enjoyed the most in WoL was the ability to choose how to do a mission. There weren't many and they didn't affect the story THAT much but I loved that I could either take Nova's side and destroy the spectres or go with Tosh and rescue them (I went with Tosh) and also that I got to choose whether I wanted to take out the air zerg or the nydus worms for the final mission. That was awesome and when I started hots campaign and got to choose between using gas and using zerglings to clear the first mission I was like "Oh man, THIS is going to be awesome with a lot of choices!" but there were like none... And it was almost always linear. I got to choose mission very rarely, felt like they held my hand from the beginning to the end.
But well, I played it for 11 hours so if I hadn't enjoyed I wouldn't have played it. Despite these things I wanted to know what was going to happen! Also, I played on Hard which was a little bit easy. I had to do the boss primal zergs like 2 times each but other than that I barely restarted any mission (except for that damn Sukov mission where I had 2 seconds left on shutting down the final temple when he died and my base was wept clean by some damn void rays...)
I also found the campaign 'enjoyable enough' but very very easy. Should have just removed kerri from missions, having her made them too easy imo. Story was just like I expected it to be so I was not disappointed. Not to say it was a great story or anything, just that RTS stories are rarely very deep and I can also enjoy a cheesy predictable story if it's told well, and I believe this was. Would have been awesome if players could have different choices during missions that could 'push' kerrigan more towards either QoB or human side and have a couple of different ending depending on these with different LotV implications but let's face it, we were never gonna get something like that :D
I really enjoyed the campaign compared to WoL. The cheesy stuff was much, much less than in WoL, I think they also nailed Kerrigan's character. Overall it felt good playing as the Zerg.
I almost don't remember how amazing the story of scbw because how WoL changed the story completely. The rare times that i agree with many comments from a youtube video.
Ehh... the times when Zeratul was a badass protoss warrior.. I think my greatest complain about sc2 is the whole prophecy stuff and how they downgraded Zeratul into shit tier.
I always wondered, how do you become a game story writer? 90% of current AAA titles' plots seem downright retarded. I do get that most of the time, unfortunately, the story isn't much of a focus and is just a vessel through which gameplay mechanics are incorporated into the game, perhaps something that loosely ties said mechanics together and propels the player to continue. The thing is, you don't really need additional resources to make the plot better, just solid writing will suffice the vast majority of the time. Especially in the case of SC, when you're writing fiction based on an already established world, this seems to be a fairly easy job to do. So what the fuck?
Do you need any educational background? Writing experience? Do you just pitch an idea to a developer hoping they'll get onboard? Why do companies keep reusing the same hackneyed concepts for key elements of the plot? Blizzard seems to like unions and final battles, Bioware can't get enough of party assembling, every company out there wants to push a love story down our throats these days (which they badly fail at and that is the problem). Again, what the fuck?
On March 14 2013 21:37 True_Spike wrote: I always wondered, how do you become a game story writer? 90% of current AAA titles' plots seem downright retarded. I do get that most of the time, unfortunately, the story isn't much of a focus and is just a vessel through which gameplay mechanics are incorporated into the game, perhaps something that loosely ties said mechanics together and propels the player to continue. The thing is, you don't really need additional resources to make the plot better, just solid writing will suffice the vast majority of the time. Especially in the case of SC, when you're writing fiction based on an already established world, this seems to be a fairly easy job to do. So what the fuck?
Do you need any educational background? Writing experience? Do you just pitch an idea to a developer hoping they'll get onboard? Why do companies keep reusing the same hackneyed concepts for key elements of the plot? Blizzard seems to like unions and final battles, Bioware can't get enough of party assembling, every company out there wants to push a love story down our throats these days (which they badly fail at and that is the problem). Again, what the fuck?
AAA companies need to sell much; they sell less if they have "interesting" or "intelligent" plots and characters. Sad fact. The average customer is not like us SCfetischists on TL, and they will ALWAYS prioritize the average customer. Unless they happened to have balls, which blizz clearly do not.
On March 14 2013 21:37 True_Spike wrote: I always wondered, how do you become a game story writer? 90% of current AAA titles' plots seem downright retarded. I do get that most of the time, unfortunately, the story isn't much of a focus and is just a vessel through which gameplay mechanics are incorporated into the game, perhaps something that loosely ties said mechanics together and propels the player to continue. The thing is, you don't really need additional resources to make the plot better, just solid writing will suffice the vast majority of the time. Especially in the case of SC, when you're writing fiction based on an already established world, this seems to be a fairly easy job to do. So what the fuck?
Do you need any educational background? Writing experience? Do you just pitch an idea to a developer hoping they'll get onboard? Why do companies keep reusing the same hackneyed concepts for key elements of the plot? Blizzard seems to like unions and final battles, Bioware can't get enough of party assembling, every company out there wants to push a love story down our throats these days (which they badly fail at and that is the problem). Again, what the fuck?
AAA companies need to sell much; they sell less if they have "interesting" or "intelligent" plots and characters. Sad fact. The average customer is not like us SCfetischists on TL, and they will ALWAYS prioritize the average customer. Unless they happened to have balls, which blizz clearly do not.
People keep saying that, but I just don't believe that to be true. Games fail, because they're bad and the gameplay is lacking or they don't work as intended. Are there any examples of games with a great plot that failed specifically because they had a great plot? No. Like I said, the plot doesn't have to be a priority in order for it to be at least decent. And having a game with a nice plot is a great thing, because it's something that competition (other AAA titles in a given genre) most likely won't have. I'm not saying "screw gameplay, give me a coherent plot". I'm saying "concentrate on gameplay, but don't forget the plot".
Look at the first Mass Effect. Plot-wise, it was very good. It established a rich, interesting world, a cryptic enemy. The dialogue was decent, for the most part, and it had some plot twists and hard choices. It was paced ok, too. Couple that with good gameplat design (for the most part) and you have a success. And then came ME2, which didn't make any sense and didn't change a thing and a (mostly) strong ME3 that destroyed everything the games have been building up to in a matter of minutes.
On March 14 2013 21:37 True_Spike wrote: I always wondered, how do you become a game story writer? 90% of current AAA titles' plots seem downright retarded. I do get that most of the time, unfortunately, the story isn't much of a focus and is just a vessel through which gameplay mechanics are incorporated into the game, perhaps something that loosely ties said mechanics together and propels the player to continue. The thing is, you don't really need additional resources to make the plot better, just solid writing will suffice the vast majority of the time. Especially in the case of SC, when you're writing fiction based on an already established world, this seems to be a fairly easy job to do. So what the fuck?
Do you need any educational background? Writing experience? Do you just pitch an idea to a developer hoping they'll get onboard? Why do companies keep reusing the same hackneyed concepts for key elements of the plot? Blizzard seems to like unions and final battles, Bioware can't get enough of party assembling, every company out there wants to push a love story down our throats these days (which they badly fail at and that is the problem). Again, what the fuck?
AAA companies need to sell much; they sell less if they have "interesting" or "intelligent" plots and characters. Sad fact. The average customer is not like us SCfetischists on TL, and they will ALWAYS prioritize the average customer. Unless they happened to have balls, which blizz clearly do not.
People keep saying that, but I just don't believe that to be true. Games fail, because they're bad and the gameplay is lacking or they don't work as intended. Are there any examples of games with a great plot that failed specifically because they had a great plot? No. Like I said, the plot doesn't have to be a priority in order for it to be at least decent. And having a game with a nice plot is a great thing, because it's something that competition (other AAA titles in a given genre) most likely won't have. I'm not saying "screw gameplay, give me a coherent plot". I'm saying "concentrate on gameplay, but don't forget the plot".
Look at the first Mass Effect. Plot-wise, it was very good. It established a rich, interesting world, a cryptic enemy. The dialogue was decent, for the most part, and it had some plot twists and hard choices. It was paced ok, too. Couple that with good gameplat design (for the most part) and you have a success. And then came ME2, which didn't make any sense and didn't change a thing and a (mostly) strong ME3 that destroyed everything the games have been building up to in a matter of minutes.
Well. The companies make probing tests where they specifically elect small midwestern cities and average joes to rate their plots and characters. I don't work in the business but i'm a student and we have the guys from all the large companies in sweden over quite often; this is directly from their mouths. Average Joe relates better to a simpler, more recognizable, story; as soon as a title reaches a certain magnitude they will have to put the main focus on average joe. This isn't really any kind of conspiracy, but sad facts of the money hungry AAA-model.
(yes, european companies make their tests in the US; eu customers have too high tolerance for non-conformity in comparison. Also directly from the AAA-dudes)
This is stolen from b.net forums.. from a guy who calls himself Zoomacroom:
If you're actually anywhere past middle school and this story doesn't make you embarrassed for everyone involved, you should be ashamed of yourself.
OP is right. If ever there could be said to be an objectively terrible story, this is it. I was honestly completely unable to enjoy an otherwise decent campaign because the writing was so insufferable.
Who are all of these ridiculous Zerg characters coming out of the woodwork and why should I care about them? Is this Chris Metzen's idea of characterization? Why is Stukov back from the dead? We literally saw him explode into a pool of blood in BW with a tragic death scene, and he does nothing of significance here. Did someone in the office just suggest that it would be cool and then everyone realized they hadn't retconned a dead character in this game yet? How could Duran be resolved so terribly? I just run into him randomly in a space station, he tells me that I suck and can never win, and then I have to blow up temples so Kerrigan can win in a battle of psychic hadokens? And then we get fantasy scene #9001 where a shapeshifter turns into the form of someone important to you and you fall for it even though you know they're a shapeshifter, twice in the same scene? what the !@#$ is this %^-*
How freaking cowardly is it to retcon the Tal'Darim to be servants of the Dark Voice once everyone points out that Jim Raynor was basically an imperialist supervillain in WoL? Like, "Oh by the way, you shouldn't feel bad about invading their world and violently robbing them of the objects of their faith because surprise, they were possessed by Satan! the whole time!" And for that matter, how does it make any sense at all that the Tal'Darim were working for Narud if Narud repeatedly commissioned Raynor to steal Xel'Naga artifacts *from* the Tal'Darim in WoL?
Why does Kerrigan need so much power to kill Mengsk? He is JUST A GUY. She got the better of him several times in BW with her regular "power level." Everything we see in both the story and game mechanics suggests she could just take her brood, attack Korhal, and kill him. She was able to kill billions within a few hours in her initial invasion in WoL. Why does killing Mengsk demand that she reinfest herself, undoing the only thing of significance that happened in WoL? Why are they so insistent on pushing this theme that she'll do anything for power that she doesn't appear to need to accomplish her goals?
Why do the game's antagonists have no speaking lines that say anything other than "you suck and you'll never beat me?"
Why are Jim and Kerrigan so hot for each other all of a sudden in SC2? I don't think we ever got anything more than a debatable implication that they were an item in the BW story. But they're exchanging sloppy makeouts within the first twenty minutes of this story. Is it just like, there is an attractive man and an attractive woman on screen, of course they have to be all over each other?
Why do the writers have such an elementary school command of prose? what am i reading?
god, this is barely even scratching the surface. the story is childish, trite and doesn't make any sense. characters are introduced for no reason whatsoever. It doesn't succeed on the conventional level, on a deliberately broad-strokes sci-fi epic level, on a B movie level, on a "so bad it's good" level. It just completely, unequivocally sucks.
Oh, and could we ditch the name "Queen of Blades" already? It sounds freaking idiotic and doesn't signify anything about the character except that hurr durr blades are pretty cool and so is Kerrigan I guess.
On March 14 2013 22:06 True_Spike wrote: People keep saying that, but I just don't believe that to be true. Games fail, because they're bad and the gameplay is lacking or they don't work as intended. Are there any examples of games with a great plot that failed specifically because they had a great plot? No. Like I said, the plot doesn't have to be a priority in order for it to be at least decent. And having a game with a nice plot is a great thing, because it's something that competition (other AAA titles in a given genre) most likely won't have. I'm not saying "screw gameplay, give me a coherent plot". I'm saying "concentrate on gameplay, but don't forget the plot".
Umm..Planescape Torment? This game was a colossal failure (commercially), because most people didn't get the story, which was the main reason for playing the game (which is not to say it would have done well with a simpler story, although it likely would have done better, without the story there was no game).
On March 14 2013 22:06 True_Spike wrote: People keep saying that, but I just don't believe that to be true. Games fail, because they're bad and the gameplay is lacking or they don't work as intended. Are there any examples of games with a great plot that failed specifically because they had a great plot? No. Like I said, the plot doesn't have to be a priority in order for it to be at least decent. And having a game with a nice plot is a great thing, because it's something that competition (other AAA titles in a given genre) most likely won't have. I'm not saying "screw gameplay, give me a coherent plot". I'm saying "concentrate on gameplay, but don't forget the plot".
Umm..Planescape Torment? This game was a colossal failure (commercially), because most people didn't get the story, which was the main reason for playing the game (which is not to say it would have done well with a simpler story, although it likely would have done better, without the story there was no game).
Read what I wrote. Planescape: Torment failed, because it was lacking in the area of gameplay. Story-wise it was fantastic and overall it is one of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life, but as a *game* (not simply a form of media to convey the story) it blew. Besides, it was not a failure, because it did make a profit, albeit a small one.
As much as I truly enjoyed the campaign for HOTS, Planescape: Torment, with its unnerving mechanics and old graphics, has some of the best video game writing around.
If you want to argue generalities then gameplay is infinite more important than the story and has been for a long time. Heck, for a long time games barely had much story at all during the 80's and 90's. Naturally no one wants a bad story, but when I go back to some of my favorite games ever and actually take some time into thinking about the plot, most of them are full of contradictions and weird twists and turns (if you compare it to something like a critically acclaimed book), usually hiding it with awesome gameplay mechanics and just an enjoyable experience. Of course there's exceptions with story driven games, rpgs and other cinematic driven games but I'd say that's the general rule. That doesn't mean devs should get a free pass in this regard but if the choice is between story and gameplay I take gameplay any day of the week.
On March 15 2013 00:10 nihlon wrote: if the choice is between story and gameplay I take gameplay any day of the week.
There is no such choice; It's not like you make your programmers/designers finish the mechanical part of the game as fast as possible and then turn them into storywriters; There are different teams, and sadly, Blizzard's storytelling team is failing.
On March 14 2013 22:06 True_Spike wrote: People keep saying that, but I just don't believe that to be true. Games fail, because they're bad and the gameplay is lacking or they don't work as intended. Are there any examples of games with a great plot that failed specifically because they had a great plot? No. Like I said, the plot doesn't have to be a priority in order for it to be at least decent. And having a game with a nice plot is a great thing, because it's something that competition (other AAA titles in a given genre) most likely won't have. I'm not saying "screw gameplay, give me a coherent plot". I'm saying "concentrate on gameplay, but don't forget the plot".
Umm..Planescape Torment? This game was a colossal failure (commercially), because most people didn't get the story, which was the main reason for playing the game (which is not to say it would have done well with a simpler story, although it likely would have done better, without the story there was no game).
No it wasn't a failure because people didn't get the story. It was a failure because of the gameplay, it's super shit and I love PS:T.
There were also a lot of bugs at the release, story had nothing to do with its failure.
On March 14 2013 23:01 BurgerFreak wrote: This is stolen from b.net forums.. from a guy who calls himself Zoomacroom:
If you're actually anywhere past middle school and this story doesn't make you embarrassed for everyone involved, you should be ashamed of yourself.
OP is right. If ever there could be said to be an objectively terrible story, this is it. I was honestly completely unable to enjoy an otherwise decent campaign because the writing was so insufferable.
Who are all of these ridiculous Zerg characters coming out of the woodwork and why should I care about them? Is this Chris Metzen's idea of characterization? Why is Stukov back from the dead? We literally saw him explode into a pool of blood in BW with a tragic death scene, and he does nothing of significance here. Did someone in the office just suggest that it would be cool and then everyone realized they hadn't retconned a dead character in this game yet? How could Duran be resolved so terribly? I just run into him randomly in a space station, he tells me that I suck and can never win, and then I have to blow up temples so Kerrigan can win in a battle of psychic hadokens? And then we get fantasy scene #9001 where a shapeshifter turns into the form of someone important to you and you fall for it even though you know they're a shapeshifter, twice in the same scene? what the !@#$ is this %^-*
How freaking cowardly is it to retcon the Tal'Darim to be servants of the Dark Voice once everyone points out that Jim Raynor was basically an imperialist supervillain in WoL? Like, "Oh by the way, you shouldn't feel bad about invading their world and violently robbing them of the objects of their faith because surprise, they were possessed by Satan! the whole time!" And for that matter, how does it make any sense at all that the Tal'Darim were working for Narud if Narud repeatedly commissioned Raynor to steal Xel'Naga artifacts *from* the Tal'Darim in WoL?
Why does Kerrigan need so much power to kill Mengsk? He is JUST A GUY. She got the better of him several times in BW with her regular "power level." Everything we see in both the story and game mechanics suggests she could just take her brood, attack Korhal, and kill him. She was able to kill billions within a few hours in her initial invasion in WoL. Why does killing Mengsk demand that she reinfest herself, undoing the only thing of significance that happened in WoL? Why are they so insistent on pushing this theme that she'll do anything for power that she doesn't appear to need to accomplish her goals?
Why do the game's antagonists have no speaking lines that say anything other than "you suck and you'll never beat me?"
Why are Jim and Kerrigan so hot for each other all of a sudden in SC2? I don't think we ever got anything more than a debatable implication that they were an item in the BW story. But they're exchanging sloppy makeouts within the first twenty minutes of this story. Is it just like, there is an attractive man and an attractive woman on screen, of course they have to be all over each other?
Why do the writers have such an elementary school command of prose? what am i reading?
god, this is barely even scratching the surface. the story is childish, trite and doesn't make any sense. characters are introduced for no reason whatsoever. It doesn't succeed on the conventional level, on a deliberately broad-strokes sci-fi epic level, on a B movie level, on a "so bad it's good" level. It just completely, unequivocally sucks.
Oh, and could we ditch the name "Queen of Blades" already? It sounds freaking idiotic and doesn't signify anything about the character except that hurr durr blades are pretty cool and so is Kerrigan I guess.
He hits the nail on the head
That's pretty harsh, but yeah, that kinda hits the nail on the head. Which doesn't mean the campaign wasn't enjoyable.
For my part, I felt the story was told in a much MUCH better way than WoL - not 100% linear but you are compelled to go on ; everything is not a filler.
Story wise this is a disaster of course.
In your list, you didn't mention one thing that bugs me: why the hell does Jim help Kerrigan in the last mission ? No, this is not heroic at all. In fact, he decides instead of the population that thousands and thousands will die (let's be honest: it will be the case even if Kerrigan will try to "care") in exchange of removing the dictator. A choice that basically nobody made in the the whole earth history because they don't care about abstract concepts and the "games of thrones" - they riot for economical reason and want to live in peace and in maximum wealth possible. But that's another subject anyway. My point is that he helps the public ennemy N°1 to butcher the population to get a personnal revenge.
Guess what ? If I were the next leader of Korhal (why would it be Valerian anyway ? Did he do anything in the last battle ? Why the son of the ex-dictator ?), you can be sure that I would make sure Raynor ends in trial and is prosecuted to the full extent of the law... I am quite sick of this Hollywood-style where the hero shoots everyone and never faces the consequences of his acts because he is the good guy by essence.
Pedestrian story from a conservative, market-centered developer.
I work in film and tv project development, and am very experienced with the many reasons a writing team can go sour. If only the Freedom of Information Act applied to their internal e-mails exchanging story notes, perhaps we'd know the culprit.
I had a fetish for SC story, but I stopped caring when WoL turned out bum...
According to Metzen, "darker" story meant the lead's dialogue is threatening and aggressive rather than hickish and elementary.
And why the hell does Zeratul let Kerrigan kick the shit outta him? I really hope LotV redeems Zeratul to his status of the most badass character in the franchise...
I really don't want to be Blizzard (or even worse - Chris Metzen) apologist but... there's one thing folks are kinda disregarding when it comes to the storyline.
First... the Starcraft story was pretty much a tie-in to the gameplay and theme from day one. Starcraft borrowed heavily from both Warhammer and Alien franchise and the story was there mostly to state "hey guys, this is not Warcraft In Space, and it most definitely is not Warhammer or Aliens". Also, and even more importantly, the story's purpose was to tie all the campaign missions together, and gameplay directed that you needed to play through all three races and during that playthrough each race needs to be constantly switching the race it fights - especially paramount since content-wise all the missions were basically variations of "kill the enemy base". So by necessity the story needed to rationalize why the hell is everyone fighting everyone, and let's face it, it does so rather clumsily. Kerrigan herself was initially a throw-away character whose role only expanded after subsequent rewrites.
But the jist is - SC and SC:BW's story wasn't necessarily complex and overarching because the creators were intent on making a good story - but rather because it needed to be because the format of the gameplay required it to.
So it's now a decade later. Starcraft 2 is in the works. Ask yourself what the creative devs have to deal with. The nostalgia factor. The lore nuts. The novels. The completely unpredictable and heterogenous fanbase (with business dictating that the most profits lie in catering to the 12-25 crowd). And... perhaps the most importantly - the game format. Instead of a campaign which goes through all three races but offers a rather simplistic gameplay, you have a game which goes through just one race but needs to offer as much variety per mission as possible. Settings needs to be as varied as possible, goals have to be flashy and interesting, sense of progression needs to be integrated in the story itself but the missions all need to make a cohesive whole AND be story-driven... when you put everything down, you don't really get huge potential for a big, complex, overarching storyline.
My opinion is that in these circumstances the best, safest bet you can go with is.... try to get away with the most simplistic, cliche-ridden story you can think of. Why? Two reasons - it is safe, and it works. Masses like simplistic stories if they are wrapped in nice packages (Avatar anyone?). And as I said - relying on simplistic tropes is easy and safe. Prince goes out to save a damsel in distress. There's a mysterious McGuffin which is Very Important and everyone wants to get it. A character is wronged, and wants to exact revenge. There's a reason why Hollywood does this stuff all the time!
So bottom line - yes, Starcraft 2 story is crap. It's pulpy trite of the worst kind. But taking the big picture into account, you cannot really blame Metzen and the rest of the creative gang THAT much. They most probably didn't do it out of spite, or cause they don't care. They did it out of necessity.
On March 15 2013 00:10 nihlon wrote: If you want to argue generalities then gameplay is infinite more important than the story and has been for a long time. Heck, for a long time games barely had much story at all during the 80's and 90's. Naturally no one wants a bad story, but when I go back to some of my favorite games ever and actually take some time into thinking about the plot, most of them are full of contradictions and weird twists and turns (if you compare it to something like a critically acclaimed book), usually hiding it with awesome gameplay mechanics and just an enjoyable experience. Of course there's exceptions with story driven games, rpgs and other cinematic driven games but I'd say that's the general rule. That doesn't mean devs should get a free pass in this regard but if the choice is between story and gameplay I take gameplay any day of the week.
Dude, you're not wrong, but this is also not the 80's anymore. AND on top of that, they had the responsibility of a huge franchise and they threw it all to shit.
You can't just add some random 2D/3D faces to a game and call it story&setting, not anymore.
But whatever, in the end, I'm stupid for buying it, not they for selling it.
@LingsAreBunnies 1. The extent to which she knew about him helping Jim is not disclosed. Her anger is pretty straight forward. Whenever something that hurt her in her past comes up, she gets angry. Inhumanly so, mind you. He mentioned Jim and her past and she squashed him.
2. He boarded her vessel and got to her. She didn't know about his presence until he was near her. She assumed the worst and defended herself. After she defeated him, she was sure he pose her no more threat at that point. That's when you don't kill them and you rather ask questions. She didn't even kill that random protoss they captured. Killing him at that point made no sense.
3. She pretty much caused the deaths of thousands of civilians at the end. The difference is she went out of her way to make her mission harder in order to spare millions. Doesn't seem inconsistent.
I was actually hoping that some crew members from the hyperion would betray raynor, could have been a nice cutscene or mission. I mean, how did raynor tell them that they would invade korhal? "K guys, look, we gonna join our greatest enemy and go kill your familys and millions ppl of our race so i can get my revenge and help this hot chick we saved some months ago. Oh btw she leads the zerg now". I think its not very well writen story wise why raynor helps kerrigan hut atleast i can understand it. But why the fuck has nobody on the entire ship a problem with destroying korhal??
On March 14 2013 10:56 Slaughter wrote: Honestly in the context of video game stories, it is pretty good. Please tell me of any truly "amazing" game stories. Because according to the standards that some of you are judging HotS you would think that every other game story was personally written by a famed novelist.
It's true, video game writing is and has always been bad. The problem is, up until WoW/D3/SC2, Blizzard was one of those few gaming companies that made good stories and had good writing.
Here are some games with good writing/stories: Most Valve games (HL 1 and 2, Portal) Most Bioware games (but not ME3, good god) Bioshock 1 (not 2) Silent Hill 2 Indigo Prophecy Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Some of the Fire Emblem games Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Braid (even with all its pretentiousness)
I haven't played these, but have heard good things: Planescape: Torment Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem Grim Fandango Xenogears Deus Ex Beyond Good and Evil
For the games on this list that I know, each still had 1000000x people bitching about the writing/storytelling.
Man I take my time to give you a list of good stories in video games and you brush them all off with a line like this.
Why do people use arguments like this? Is it even an argument? What are you saying here?
Which games are you talking about? Because I can guarantee you that none of these games had over a million people complain about its story, because many of these games not more than a million people played, ever.
But anyway, what you're saying is that no matter how good something is, there will always be detractors and naysayers. That's granted, and obvious. What's your point though? What are you trying to say about SC2? That it had a good story despite all the people in here that say otherwise? What do you want me to say? That HotS had a better plot than Call of Duty or Gears of War or whatever? Fine, it did. Heart of the Swarm, however bad, still had a better story than a lot of mainstream video games.
But that doesn't mean we should give it a pat on the back and call it a day. I'm holding Starcraft to a higher standard, one set by SC1 and Blizzard's other games in the past. By those standards, HotS is drivel, and just because it's more or less on par for video game plotlines, doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to say that. Just because other games are trash doesn't make HotS good, and just because better games have had detractors doesn't mean HotS is as good as them.
My point was that you seem to be arbitrarily hating on SC2's plot and holding it to a higher standard then any other game, even SC1 and BW. So many people for some reason see BW's story as close to as good as it gets in video game writing when it really wasn't much better then SC2s. All those "twists": and depth they pretty much slammed you with in the face before they happened. It wasn't good writing they just introduced the characters we all love in them and now people just don't like some of Blizzards choices in where they are taking those characters, which IS an subjective taste preference. Blizzards writing has been pretty consistent (maybe a bit more cliched out in SC2) but there isn't this massive drop off from SC/BW than everyone is saying. The only thing BW did better is that it had a lot more diversity of cooler characters, ones that they killed off and haven't really replaced in SC2.
My point was that you seem to be arbitrarily hating on SC2's plot and holding it to a higher standard then any other game, even SC1 and BW. So many people for some reason see BW's story as close to as good as it gets in video game writing when it really wasn't much better then SC2s. All those "twists": and depth they pretty much slammed you with in the face before they happened. It wasn't good writing they just introduced the characters we all love in them and now people just don't like some of Blizzards choices in where they are taking those characters, which IS an subjective taste preference. Blizzards writing has been pretty consistent (maybe a bit more cliched out in SC2) but there isn't this massive drop off from SC/BW than everyone is saying. The only thing BW did better is that it had a lot more diversity of cooler characters, ones that they killed off and haven't really replaced in SC2.
But there IS a massive drop off. Two of the biggest problems are Blizzard's inability to acknowledge previous plotlines and the level of vision and perspective given to the player.
First, think about the Dominion - You kick Mengsk's ass as the UED. Then you kick Mengsk's ass as Kerrigan, twice. Then you kick Mengsk's ass as Raynor. Then you finally kill Mengsk at long last at the end of HotS. It's like a character that keeps fighting with about 30 bullet holes in them it doesn't make any sense.
I also can't believe how much the HotS storyline walked all over the importance of WoL. They seriously undid WoL in the first 1/4 of HotS? When it takes that much storytelling to mold your character into the one you want maybe you should just introduce a new character.
For my comment about perspective I mean this. In SC/BW we as the player knew the general overall strengths of the factions and could see how our actions affected the power balance. In WoL the Dominion is a juggernaut, but Raynor defeats them consistently. Also in WoL Kerrigan seems able to kill the Terran at will, but is content to sit around Char doing nothing for the most part. I never got a good grasp of who was stronger, Kerrigan or the Dominion, but if I watch the closing cinematic of BW I know exactly what the deal is.
I don't think the story is godawful, but it does rub a lot of fans the wrong way because it seems like the SC2 developers never played or understood the wonderful and elegant story of BW.
I knew the starcraft story was pretty dead by the end of WoL, but it's officially so with HotS. It's best to consider SC1/BW and SC2 to be completely different from one another.
This thread is a great example of how good the story was because it has inspired us to come and share our feelings and opinions. Art should inspire these feelings and opinions and I say bravo to you, Blizzard! I would like to add three things to this discussion.
1. HotS - Main theme - I think many people assume that this is only a revenge story. To me, the main theme of this expansion is what the zerg have always been about: purity of essence. Some of us need a refresher on why/how the zerg were created, according to Starcraft 1 lore.
HotS is a journey of one character to refine and improve her essence (and consequently, her strength and power and the strength of the Zerg swarm). The writers are drawing interesting parallels to the new big baddie (we know that Amon wants to consume all essence, but to what end? Did Amon also start out like the Zerg, trying to consume more and more essence in order to reach perfection/purity?)
2. We should have seen Amon coming.
At the end of Broodwars, we learn via Zeratul/Duran that there is a greater danger to the universe out there. I drew the conclusion that it would involve the Xel'naga in SOME capacity. I think the writers had two approaches to re-introduce the Xel'naga: either villainize one of them, or all of them. By singling out one villain, we now have the chance to get to know a new character from an awesome universe. If the Xel'naga were geneticists, how did one of them become so powerful? I think Legacy of the Void will explore the Xel'naga a lot more than we have before.
If Blizzard had made the whole race of Xel'naga to be villains, then we would have a Halo 4 situation with humanity battling the Forerunners. I'm sure it would have been fine, but creating a villain out of the Xel'naga protects the identity of the Xel'naga as a benevolent race.
3. Jim helping Kerrigan take down Mengsk was VERY appropriate.
I've read a lot of discussion about how wrong it is for the Terrans to be killing each other. I don't agree with this view. Raynor has been a freedom fighter all along, resisting and killing other Terrans in every Starcraft game. Jim has just as much invested in the revenge plot as Kerrigan does, but Kerrigan has the army to pull it off. Remember, Mengsk hunted them both and tried to kill them both over and over. I also feel that the way Jim and Sarah parted at the end was appropriate, because they both knew that Sarah has bigger fish to fry before they can settle down together. I think we can still hope that they will get a happy ending.
Thanks for all the great discussion, and thank you to Existor! Long live the Swarm!
My point was that you seem to be arbitrarily hating on SC2's plot and holding it to a higher standard then any other game, even SC1 and BW. So many people for some reason see BW's story as close to as good as it gets in video game writing when it really wasn't much better then SC2s.
Blah blah blah... much of talking and no concrets. We (story haters) pointed many times what makes SC2 story horrible. Resurected Stukov and Tassadar's ghost alone makes SC2 much more riddiculus. I dont want even talk about forgetable (new-old and new) characters [yes, this one is actually subjective point of wiev], their inconsistent behavior and motives, "warcraftesque" zergs, ALL BACKGROUND BECOMING MORE AND MORE INSANE MESS, retcons from original, general lack of sense in events like "Tychus released by Mengsk and join RAYNOR to KILL KERRIGAN"... I dont even...
On March 15 2013 03:55 Xizore wrote: This thread is a great example of how good the story was because it has inspired us to come and share our feelings and opinions. Art should inspire these feelings and opinions and I say bravo to you, Blizzard!
Even Far Cry 3 story was more inspiring than this crap...at last it had some cool villains. I say whoever wrote story for SC2, is for me Uwe Boll of video games right now. I did read better fanworks than that.
On March 15 2013 01:16 BlackCompany wrote: I was actually hoping that some crew members from the hyperion would betray raynor, could have been a nice cutscene or mission. I mean, how did raynor tell them that they would invade korhal? "K guys, look, we gonna join our greatest enemy and go kill your familys and millions ppl of our race so i can get my revenge and help this hot chick we saved some months ago. Oh btw she leads the zerg now". I think its not very well writen story wise why raynor helps kerrigan hut atleast i can understand it. But why the fuck has nobody on the entire ship a problem with destroying korhal??
Remember, Raynor's raiders are a rebel group that exists to fight and resist the Dominion. They have ONE battlecruiser and not much of a plan on how to actually stop Mengsk. They basically end up running every time the Dominion shows up in force. In WoL, they had a temporary alliance with some Dominion soldiers because Jim had a chance to take down Kerrigan.
Finished the campaign, and while I didn't have any high expectations, it really was quite bad. Blizzard really needs to revamp their entire story department, it's embarrassing how childish blizzard games are, it's like their main target audience is 12 year olds or your grandma. Every single blizzard game is on thematurity level of pandaren.
On March 15 2013 01:16 BlackCompany wrote: I was actually hoping that some crew members from the hyperion would betray raynor, could have been a nice cutscene or mission. I mean, how did raynor tell them that they would invade korhal? "K guys, look, we gonna join our greatest enemy and go kill your familys and millions ppl of our race so i can get my revenge and help this hot chick we saved some months ago. Oh btw she leads the zerg now". I think its not very well writen story wise why raynor helps kerrigan hut atleast i can understand it. But why the fuck has nobody on the entire ship a problem with destroying korhal??
Remember, Raynor's raiders are a rebel group that exists to fight and resist the Dominion. They have ONE battlecruiser and not much of a plan on how to actually stop Mengsk. They basically end up running every time the Dominion shows up in force. In WoL, they had a temporary alliance with some Dominion soldiers because Jim had a chance to take down Kerrigan.
Yeah i know, but in my view raiding small outposts or such stuff is just an entire different thing to raiding the capitol city of tghe sector. And allying with the zerg, even fighting side by side is huuuuuge in my view.
^If you haven't noticed Blizzard likes to put mission mechanics before the story. You can see it in WoL and HotS, it's not necessarily bad but it makes up for some odd situations.
On March 15 2013 01:16 BlackCompany wrote: I was actually hoping that some crew members from the hyperion would betray raynor, could have been a nice cutscene or mission. I mean, how did raynor tell them that they would invade korhal? "K guys, look, we gonna join our greatest enemy and go kill your familys and millions ppl of our race so i can get my revenge and help this hot chick we saved some months ago. Oh btw she leads the zerg now". I think its not very well writen story wise why raynor helps kerrigan hut atleast i can understand it. But why the fuck has nobody on the entire ship a problem with destroying korhal??
Remember, Raynor's raiders are a rebel group that exists to fight and resist the Dominion. They have ONE battlecruiser and not much of a plan on how to actually stop Mengsk. They basically end up running every time the Dominion shows up in force. In WoL, they had a temporary alliance with some Dominion soldiers because Jim had a chance to take down Kerrigan.
Yeah i know, but in my view raiding small outposts or such stuff is just an entire different thing to raiding the capitol city of tghe sector. And allying with the zerg, even fighting side by side is huuuuuge in my view.
Whats with this idea that Raynors hands are clean and its Kerrigan doing all the killing? Go back and play the WOL campaign and tell me how many dominion soldiers you kill, as well as taldarim protoss warriors.
-I'm still not over the fact that raynor has so much hair again. -Ok I get that while kerrigan is zerg again, but (probably) due to the way of her transformation has a different character than the older queen of blades. Still the lovestory with Raynor doesn't really fit. From the way kerrigan behaved, I felt kerrigan had less of a conscience as human than as zerg?? -Smurf npc, created just to fill in that psi-shield-destroyer role? Come on, if one mission later raynor also joins kerrigan, couldn't raynor be the one to do this? -Every fifth word being "essence". -Why not bring back more of the older planets like Braxis, Tarsonis, Shakuras etc and instead so many "new" planets we will never see again? -So many obvious stuff stated several times, yet no mention of Duran=Narud? -Narud death kinda stupid. -Izsha mentioning kerrigan used her to safe her knowledge? I thought kerrigan might have had some visions before and this to be safe, comparable to the "prophecy" missions of zeratul in wol. Don't think it played any role afterwards however. -Overlords being treated as unwanted children. No mutation no upgrade no nothing? Not even even playing vs any cloaked units so overseers might have a moment? -Unnecessary/stupid Orlan/Han-cameo. I guess we'll have to endure them in lotv again. Tosh would have been so much better. -No possibility to put a ton of upgrades in a certain unit as it was possible in wol. Generally I felt that evolution stuff had almost zero impact on how the game played, whereas those choices made a lot of a difference in wol. -No scret mission (or so secret it's not yet discovered). -Some of the missions were copied way to obvious from wol: Collect 7 of x before enemy does. Or "there's that big shield that kills our main force, but we can send our immune allies to destroy the generators". -Final assault also kinda similar to wol. -Taldarim cameo. Worshippers of evil ancient xelnaga, living next to human laboratory. Seriously? -No betrayals no real twists? Unless you count narud as a twists, but surely everybody saw this coming...? -Many map layouts being rather linear, i.e your base on one side of the map, just one path to the enemy.
. But to be fair, there was also some stuff I enjoyed: + Show Spoiler +
-Zerus, discovering origins of zerg. -Stukov. -The missions on that protoss ice world. -Char. -Abathur.
On March 15 2013 00:10 nihlon wrote: if the choice is between story and gameplay I take gameplay any day of the week.
I don't get this at all. I thought the gameplay was horrible for the most part. Make 5 hatches and a-move ling-ultra until everything is dead. 90% of the missions. Things like swarm hosts were just simply bad units. In Wol i played tons of different strats and had to figure out the best/most fun strategy to play (like mass ghost for example), in Hots every mission was wayyyy too easy and the "fun" stuff were shit.
On March 19 2013 14:12 Existor wrote: Who copied this thread, when there is already continued thread about this with more than 20+ pages? Why not move here thread about Vengeance datamine?
The HotS forum where the first thread originated got closed and as the original thread was not moved, this thread was made. Now the original thread has been moved and is thus available again meaning there are now 2 threads.
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