EPT[Story spoilers!!] Heart of the HOTS continued - Page 12
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
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Lauriel
United States108 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:00 gedatsu wrote: Amon's taint was indeed a very minor part. Take out the taint and the story would still have been exactly the same, except less stupid. We wouldn't have needed a retcon for the Overmind's existence and motivations. We wouldn't have had to facepalm when Raynor, warned by a prophecy of the end of the universe that can only be stopped by Kerrigan, decided to attack her without knowing what the hell his new weapon did or in what capacity Kerrigan was needed in the future. We likewise wouldn't have had to facepalm when Duran, the guy supposedly working for Amon, tells Raynor of a weapon that he knows will remove a very powerful piece from Amon's army. But the actual actions in the plot would have been the same. Raynor would still deinfest Kerrigan, because he didn't do it for reasons that had to do with Amon. Kerrigan would still reinfest herself, because she did it to kill Mengsk. Overmind would still kick ass and infest Kerrigan, because we had a perfectly good explanation for why it did. Amon's taint wasn't minor at all. It explained why Kerrigan was so much more humanized after the blast, even when she returned to being the queen of blades. That's a major reason some people are so up in arms right now, and it was explained right there in the story. Also, it makes sense that Duran would want Raynor's help collecting the artifact because he was using the artifact to resurrect Amon. Kerrigan was important to Amon because he needed energy to be resurrected. | ||
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n0ise
3452 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:06 corumjhaelen wrote: @Noise : I think you misunderstood my post. I hate the pseudo post-modernist posture of everything is equal. Bad things should be called bad, and if one disagrees, h should argue why instead of brandishing his right to have an opnion. I realised I quoted someone else than originally intended, but was too lazy to edit :p | ||
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Account252508
3454 Posts
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Lauriel
United States108 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:13 monkybone wrote: The whole introduction of primal Zerg thing was a bit surprising to me actually. Didn't the zerg originally evolve as hive mind creatures, like ants or bees? The whole collecting-essence-to-improve-yourself was too big of a pill for me to swallow. I took that to mean that the swarm themselves evolved that way after being taken from Zerus from Amon. He then shaped their creation to his liking. Just my interpretation though. | ||
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NEEDZMOAR
Sweden1277 Posts
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. stopped reading right here.. I love the story! although I find 1 thing weird: When blizzard spokesmen talked about the campaign they mentioned that there were going to be multiple choices one would do as a player and that these choices would affect the campaign in some way (cutscenes or story?) but there were no choices as far as I know, the only thing I noticed that might be different is novas comment when shes capturing Raynor, because I sided with Tosh she said something like "You didnt choose me now I wont help you", but other than that, nothing whatsoever  I absolutely loved the campaignand I'd give everything a 5/5 except for the evolution missions, they were a bit too easy. | ||
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Jazzman88
Canada2228 Posts
I think a game like Starcraft is extremely hard-pressed to get a good story that the majority of people will think is 'artistic'. An RTS does not naturally lend itself to intimate moments of character development, because of the scale, and the voice-acting and in-game cinematic sequences are limited by the actions the player is capable of doing with the units, and their ability to do things differently than the designer intended. Take a game with a great story: I'll pick 'Portal' because I loved it so much. Why was that story great? - it had a villain that started out helping you which very gradually morphed from funny to a sadistic, psychopathic wackjob - there were many optional areas that were not necessary to success at the game that resulted in an addition to the backstory and atmosphere of the world - character development was 100% relegated to what was going on in your head: like Gordon Freeman, Chell is mute in the game, so the player is free to overwrite her actions with their own justifications and feel truly involved in the struggle against the villain The latter two of these things are difficult to execute in an RTS because of how the game is (although I should note that Easter eggs and dialogue references do this well, and Blizzard does feature some of those in HotS). In the case of the first, a good villain is definitely had here in the case of Mengsk (who has always fascinated me for his grasp of politics and labrynthine plots without ever actually acting himself). The 'epic story' they're trying to tell here (battle against a god ascendant for the fate of the universe?) is going to rub some people the wrong way, simply because of necessity. Unless you want the story to be about how they kill Kerrigan (which it could have been, but I think Blizzard correctly realized that the audience really enjoyed Kerrigan in the original and wanted the Queen of Blades to have victory in some fashion), you need an immense threat to actually pose a problem for the characters here. Kerrigan is the Queen of Blades, leader of the Zerg Swarm, not only immensely psionically powerful, but commanding billions of Zerg killing machines. Raynor is the weakest (strength and influence-wise) of the major characters, but someone like Arcturus Mengsk has the backing of most of the Terran Dominion, and Zeratul plus the Protoss possess the most devastating technology around and psionic abilities we still don't know the full extent of. Any villain to pose a threat here requires some serious badassery. So much for Amon. But what a lot of people seem to be upset about is either: A) just the dialogue, or B) dialogue plus the overall plot sequence. Gotta say, if you're looking for excellent dialogue in a video game, you're going to be searching very very hard, especially in an RTS. People have these rose-tinted glasses for SC1, but go back and actually listen to and break down the dialogue from those sequences: it's not much, if ANY, better than the overall dialogue in SC2. As for the plot, THAT is something that you will either like or not, JUST LIKE A NOVEL. Not everyone likes every novel, or every movie. The amount of 'You're an idiot!' that is being directed against people who either liked or were indifferent to the story is mind-blowing. So they don't agree with you that it was crap - that's fine, that doesn't mean they're defending it as high art. I didn't particularly care one way or the other for the story, and I stand by that opinion because it is MY OPINION. You can talk to however many amateur or professional writers you want to justify how 'awful' the story is, but in the end it is THEIR STORY. Like it or hate it, it's not going to change because you dislike it, and as already evidenced by their Q&A session, the writing team is at least committed to hearing objections. Please stop castigating people for not sharing your opinion. On March 15 2013 22:06 corumjhaelen wrote: @Noise : I think you misunderstood my post. I hate the pseudo post-modernist posture of everything is equal. Bad things should be called bad, and if one disagrees, h should argue why instead of brandishing his right to have an opnion. Agreed, bad things should be called bad, but 'bad' being a subjective term (unless you're talking about, like, a car that won't ever start or something) means that by default, you must allow someone to have an opinion. You're allowed to convince someone differently, but arguing for your side is very different from saying 'hey you, you're a dumbass for having the particular opinion you do. Here are all the reasons why you are stupid.' So few people are saying "the story was poorly executed by doing A, B, and C" and instead saying "the story was crap! If you think differently you have brain damage!" That's the problem, not the disagreement itself. | ||
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howLiN
Portugal1676 Posts
On March 15 2013 07:50 GreyKnight wrote: Justifiable or not, the story is horrible and if you think something is bad you spend your time to make sure nobody supports it so things change. Lol what? Who the hell spends his time doing that? Are you serious? | ||
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Lauriel
United States108 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:21 howLiN wrote: Lol what? Who the hell spends his time doing that? Are you serious? Unfortunately, yes. And a lot of people are like that. For reasons unbeknownst to...uh...pretty much everyone, if they hate something (which is frequently), EVERYONE HAS TO HATE IT TOO. | ||
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Account252508
3454 Posts
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Lauriel
United States108 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:26 monkybone wrote: I thought it was established that upon finding Zerg, the Xel-naga created the overmind for a single will behind the swarm to fully fulfill their function. But it was created with a twist, it was inforced with an overriding purpose of assimilating the Protoss (their other creation). That was probably the work of Amon. I don't think he did anything else, really. Note I haven't played through HotS yet. Ah. Well, if you're in this thread you probably don't care about spoilers, but the impression I got from the campaign was that the Swarm (Kerrigan/Overmind's Zerg) are much different than the primal zerg, and are looked at as corrupted by the primals. The primal zerg don't and never did serve the overmind, so my guess is that Amon created the Overmind to rule the Zerg he took and shaped. Again, just my interpretation. | ||
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
On March 15 2013 21:37 corumjhaelen wrote: @Roblin : so everything is equal because everyone is entitled to his opinion ? Wow that's some deep pilosophy right there ! I'm reading sarcasm out of this and will respond as such. everyone are entitled to his or her opinion, but that does not necessarily mean everything is equal. for X and Y to not be equal, there needs to be some metric in which they are not equal to each other. so to decide what is better, we first need to find some comparison function, what would this comparison function be? how much money it makes seems like a bad metric, for example, I dislike how picasso's art looks, I prefer a peaceful picture of a generic lake, but the picasso probably sell for way more money, thus money is not necessarily indicative of whether I like it or not. the ratio of approval : disapproval would be a better metric, it would be higher for things that more people like, and wouldn't be affected if one population happened to be smaller than the population voting for the opposing thing, but the approval : disapproval ratio is very hard to come by, making polls wouldn't work well since the polls would be biased based on what website hosted the poll, and what kind of people go there, it can also be very hard to distinguish in what way or how much it would be biased, since for example: if a TL-wide poll show that most people liked the HOTS campaign: it can be argued that TL members generally like starcraft and are more immersed than other people, so the poll would be biased towards liking the campaign. or if a TL-wide poll show that most people disliked the HOTS campaign: it can be argued that TL members are generally focused on the multiplayer side of things, and just play the campaign out of obligation more or less. which means they play the campaign without immersing themselves much and as a result enjoying it less, thus the poll would be biased towards disliking the campaign. so since actually measuring how good something is is more trouble than it is worth, I say: I like it, you don't, I'm sorry you don't like it, but I am not going to try to convince you to like something you don't. whichever one of us ends up having the majority backing our station will be the one catered to in future games, so we might find out which one of us was 'right' some day, but that is not today and probably not tomorrow. end of discussion. | ||
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zbedlam
Australia549 Posts
Broodwar solved this by making most the antagonists playable by the character at some point, so we understood their motives and had connection to them. It also painted a bleak universe, watching the characters evolve as events unfolded was very interesting. Raynor was one of the best IMO, started off as a typical white knight then as his gf murders everyone close to him watching him descend into a revenge driven warrior. Initially I thought WoL had the right idea as he seemed like a pirate hell bent on killing Kerrigan right on, then the writers do a complete 180 turn and turn him into a buff emo kid basically. I get broadening the audience to include 12 year olds, and I get not liking complex plots or anything but at least hire a fucking writer to do some characterization. | ||
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KanoCoke
Japan863 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:04 17Sphynx17 wrote: + Show Spoiler + Was HOTS really supposed to be a really deep storyline that some people expected more than what it is? Kerrigan was shown to be more "human/emphatic" here so it shows she has lost her full-on Zerg/monster persona. I think that at least counts for something. And the expression of that led to Jim helping here in the last mission. I don't think that is so wrong from a story standpoint. Personally, I have a few questions though that I wish were actually addressed. Is the leviathan really that gargantuan compared to a battlecruiser? That sense of scale just detracted from the overall concept I guess. If you go back to the HOTS opening cinematic, how big was the battle cruiser that crashed into the city? Then increase its volume exponentially by, I don't know, 8? It was just too extreme for me already. Too exaggerated. Why was the ancient one (zerg) so freaking huge while the rest of the primal zerg dwarfed in comparison? Aren't the primal zerg supposed to have originated from the primordial spawning pool which was also the origin of the primal zerg? Who did the ancient one eat then to get so freaking huge? And why was the battle a reskinning of D3's Act 2 boss. I mean why did they see it fit to reuse some of the assets? I liked the idea of the primal zerg though and that was actually a refreshing concept. I do wonder though if they could be an unlocked alternate race in a custom map maybe so that it adds a bit more variety to the custom games? They appear to have a different "focus" as they weren't re-engineered to be optimal anyway but simply adapt. So I am curious, but they don't seem to have a "hatchery/drone" only a spawning pool. Hehe! Correct me if I am wrong, but basically, wasn't it just Zeratul that managed to point Kerrigan towards a way to restoring/improving her QoB state? If not for Zeratul, Kerrigan would have simply just massed up Zerg and attacked Korhal right? I also didn't manage to completely follow how Jim ended up with the gun, I initially thought the gun flew into the cell when the doors were popped by Sarah, but it appears that wasn't the case. Other things that were wierd in my opinion: Some of the upgrades didn't make sense to me anymore. I mean, Skeleton King (Zombie) Ultralisk? Really? How is that an "evolutionary trait you are supposed to be able to copy/adapt to"? I feel like they are injecting too much Dota mechanics into some gameplay of the HOTS campaign which I personally didn't find appealing. Why wasn't the impaler a choice of evolution of the Hydralisk for multiplayer? Is it really that imbalanced to use that as a mechanic? I mean the unit needs to burrow to attack and it isn't a splash attack so why wasn't it an option they chose from to incorporate to the zerg multiplayer units? Is it because spine crawlers can also move? I was actually surpised the campaign didn't have the inject mechanic for larvae. I actually liked that. Personally, the inject mechanic made zerg too difficult for me. I was used to the SC and SC:BW mechanic of just waiting for larvae to spawn from multiple hatcheries that the inject larvae mechanic crippled me in unit production. I really would have preferred they try and see that as a multiplayer mechanic again, rather than inject. But that is just me. It seems to be the case. A battlecruiser most definitely would be around the size of a city, as they're supposed to be flagships that can carry interceptor fighter ships, have numerous weapons to kill the Zerg with, and have docking bays for numerous ships to park in, as well as probably a total number of around 2000 staff just maintaining the damn thing. By comparison, the Leviathan is the flagship of the whole Zerg swarm, so the other Zerg fleet's ships are probably smaller in comparison. Like comparing the Hyperion to the average battlecruiser. The Leviathan basically shoots anything and everything into the surface including ultralisks, hatcheries, spawning pools and so on. It should be around that size or it wouldn't be able to do all that. As for the primal zerg, I think he was one of, if not the first to be born off the Primordial spawning pool. It would make sense that millenia of constantly eating, evolving and surviving all those years would make it the ultimate primal zerg being in that planet. The primal zerg do in fact have hives. Those hives are humongous monsters that throw crap at you while you're trying to kill their bases. Sort of like the night elf buildings. Yes, it's all pretty much Zeratul. He gave hints to Raynor but Raynor was too busy and angsty to actually listen to and act according to his advice. But it all worked out in the end eitherway thanks to Zeratul leading Kerrigan herself into the right path. Kerrigan had the gun. She took it from one of the guards she killed to get there. It's the same studio working on the same games. If similarities occur, you can't really blame them. The theme for the Zerg for the whole campaign was necessary evolution in order to overcome their adversaries. The ultras were up against nukes. They were also up against biochemical experimentation. They had to adapt and evolve in order to survive their current plight. As for whether it's a useful evolution or not, Abathur's got his opinions. The impaler is simply a unit version of the spine crawler that does massive damage against armored units, has extremely high range, and is burrowed. Don't all these factors scream "imbalanced" to you? The campaign had quite a few things missing like the one you just mentioned, and corruptors. Turning mutalisks into Broodlords was a pretty funny idea. | ||
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fabiano
Brazil4644 Posts
Seriously people, take off your rose-tinted-glasses and leave blind fanboyism behind. | ||
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n0ise
3452 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:19 Jazzman88 wrote: Gotta say, if you're looking for excellent dialogue in a video game, you're going to be searching very very hard, especially in an RTS. People have these rose-tinted glasses for SC1, but go back and actually listen to and break down the dialogue from those sequences: it's not much, if ANY, better than the overall dialogue in SC2. As for the plot, THAT is something that you will either like or not, JUST LIKE A NOVEL. Not everyone likes every novel, or every movie. The amount of 'You're an idiot!' that is being directed against people who either liked or were indifferent to the story is mind-blowing. So they don't agree with you that it was crap - that's fine, that doesn't mean they're defending it as high art. How is this even an argument? So what if it's an RTS, use the little time you have reserved for dialogue to actually deliver something worth listening to. I recently installed Dead Space 3 and proceeded to bash my head against the wall because of the intro trailer to the storyline. My point is, I'm not asking for hours of dialogue - but some form of substance in it. What was Dahaka doing? Seriously. Time and time again, going on and on about essence. And? What about Zagara, or whatever, the Queen? They start off in a direction, and then? The characters kill some shit in the last mission and that's it. Nishja, your connection to the game lore - I was just never buying what she was selling. Because of the voice, voice acting and the actual words that were being spoken. They're all spending time between "I'm so powerful! You're even more powerful! He's the most powerful that I've ever met! Mengsk will be very powerful! Amon is beyond my powers!". So painful. No one is asking for a feature film or a Middle Earth level of depth here. But even if your main target is 15-16 y.o., make an effort for goodness' sake. | ||
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KanoCoke
Japan863 Posts
On March 15 2013 22:55 fabiano wrote: It was bad. I know that everyone has their opinion, but there must be a limit of what is acceptable and what is not. Having a story like this one in HotS with previously rich plot coming from SC and SC:BW is inexcusable. Seriously people, take off your rose-tinted-glasses and leave blind fanboyism behind. There's also people that don't take their rose-tinted-glasses off when it comes to Starcraft 1 and Broodwar. Like a previous poster said, players will always find the first game and expansion the best because of it being their first experience with the franchise, or because they were at the age where this whole thing was bright, shiny and new to them, as well as nostalgia. Now that the people actually grew older, have experienced a lot of things as they went about their life, and played a whole lot more games, they'll always find sequels disappointing or terrible. Especially when they have so much unrealistic expectations that arise from their line of thought being "This game I played as a kid was awesome and had everything I ever dreamed of in a game! The sequel HAS to be much better than this!". I am not of this kind, which is why I can appreciate the game for what it is, can rationalize bits and pieces of why the plot went there or why these characters are here, etc. and overall have fun with what I have. I played through the campaign of both Starcraft 1 (or Vanilla as most people call it) and Broodwar around 1999 and thought it was good even though I was a little young to understand the more 'concealed' parts of the story. I don't find it as the "ungodly awesome superior ultimate game" like a lot of the nostalgiabros are though. Around the time I was also playing games like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Red Alert, Dune 2000, and so on, actually enjoying them thoroughly as well. Also, I am now a Firebat. Awesome. | ||
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Dfgj
Singapore5922 Posts
On March 15 2013 23:14 KanoCoke wrote: There's also people that don't take their rose-tinted-glasses off when it comes to Starcraft 1 and Broodwar. Like a previous poster said, players will always find the first game and expansion the best because of it being their first experience with the franchise, or because they were at the age where this whole thing was bright, shiny and new to them, as well as nostalgia. Now that the people actually grew older, have experienced a lot of things as they went about their life, and played a whole lot more games, they'll always find sequels disappointing or terrible. Especially when they have so much unrealistic expectations that arise from their line of thought being "This game I played as a kid was awesome and had everything I ever dreamed of in a game! The sequel HAS to be much better than this!". I am not of this kind, which is why I can appreciate the game for what it is, can rationalize bits and pieces of why the plot went there or why these characters are here, etc. and overall have fun with what I have. I played through the campaign of both Starcraft 1 (or Vanilla as most people call it) and Broodwar around 1999 and thought it was good even though I was a little young to understand the more 'concealed' parts of the story. I don't find it as the "ungodly awesome superior ultimate game" like a lot of the nostalgiabros are though. Around the time I was also playing games like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Red Alert, Dune 2000, and so on, actually enjoying them thoroughly as well. Also, I am now a Firebat. Awesome. Nobody has used terms like that, and given that BW is still being played, assuming people played it once in 1999 and never again is hilariously misguided given you're on a site that existed to follow BW. I last replayed the campaigns in 2010, for reference. They aren't great stories, but they aren't abhorrent either. The same argument goes for D1/2 vs D3. | ||
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Mefano
Sweden190 Posts
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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
On March 15 2013 23:29 Mefano wrote: I never understood why she wanted revenge Mengsk left her to die, betraying both Jim and Her. | ||
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