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On March 16 2013 18:52 NEEDZMOAR wrote:
the storyline and the campaign are, imo, freaking awesome... too much nostalgia in this thread to be honest, I loved that they took the story to the next level rather than being "GOOD VERSUS EVIL". simple shit like that bores me.
You mean they took it to the level below. HOTS was basically "melodrama -> more power -> more power -> fillers -> more power -> kill narud -> kill mengsk -> happy ending"
The level of complexity of the story im afraid is close to zero if none. Everything about this game has problems from story writing to game design it's saddening.
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On March 16 2013 08:20 Lauriel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 05:39 Taidanii wrote:On March 16 2013 05:37 Taidanii wrote:On March 16 2013 05:31 dcemuser wrote:On March 16 2013 03:50 StarBrift wrote:On March 15 2013 08:12 bbfg wrote:
Uhm if you didn't get it from the games that they were a thing you certainly should have gotten it from the books. But really, you should have gotten it from the games, too. Actually no. There was no indication in sc1 vanilla or brood war that they were dating or romantically involved. Go replay the games and you'll see. THey were flirting constantly but the story of them being in love was introduced in WoL. Are you serious? The end of SC1's Terran campaign and the beginning of its Zerg campaign makes it absolutely clear that he is head over heels for her. He leads HUNDREDS of men to their deaths deep into Zerg space for a CHANCE to rescue her (and he fails anyway). If that isn't love, then Jim Raynor is mentally retarded. On March 16 2013 05:25 Taidanii wrote:On March 16 2013 05:21 SI2 wrote:
Well, I read a couple of pages to get where this thread is going. Some people are raging hard and some people are happy about the game.
The problem is, I feel that people who criticize would NEVER be happy no matter how the game comes out. Personnaly, I have been playing sc and bw since a child and waiting so long for SC2 it was a real treat to me see such an upgrade of the game with awesome graphics, awesome units and most of all awesome cinematics.
Because that you like the story or not, In my opinion the cinematics in the games are wonderful, they make you a lot into the story even if it's cheesy (for me anyways). Jim is an awesome character and Kerrigan is hot. The teen in me is very satisfied and I can't wait for part three....(Damn i'll be old when it comes out!) When you typed "I feel that people who criticize would NEVER be happy no matter how the game comes out" how did you feel? Was that a joke? I'm baffled that someone could actually formulate that thought. Of course the people that found it to be of poor quality would be happy if it was better quality. How ridiculous. No, that's false because quality is purely subjective. Certain personalities with certain opinions will always find a way to think that X or Y is terrible, even if it was the Lord of the Rings of RTS videogame storytelling. People in this thread are nitpicking aspects of HotS while ignoring the same (or worse) flaws in all three previous titles. Everyone that is negatively criticizing the expansion in this thread are consistently hitting the same points: Dialogue, the plot holes, and the resolution of Duran IE if these items were of better quality the people that have an issue with the game would be happier. Why is it that it seems to be the purpose of some individuals to try to convince everyone else that 2+2=5 when we all know the real arithmetic Because math isn't an opinion. How a story resonates with you is.
Story dresonates differently with people based on their intelligence level and their level of emotional maturity. If there is good dialogue and storytelling in a game that shines through for a vast majority of players. It's not about opinion, it's about the fact that some people set their standards very low. Maybe because they never experienced good storytelling before (with todays mainstream entertainment this is very possible) or they simply are to emotionally and socially immature to detect it.
The dialogue in HOTS was honestly horrendous. It was 90%+ kerrigan speaking to her zerg minions and trying to explain to them the upsides of her human side. This get very very tiring once its done 5 times in a row and it really doesn't add antyhing new to the story after the first time.
I just don't see why blizzard being once of the richest companies in game making couldn't just hire a real writer for the story and build the game around that instead of "look at all these cool units".
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Sweden33719 Posts
On March 16 2013 18:59 Gatesleeper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 16:06 Lauriel wrote:On March 16 2013 14:05 Gatesleeper wrote:Lauriel I've read every one of your posts, I just haven't directly replied to any of them because I think they're perhaps the most deluded and bogus rationalizations in this entire thread and not worth opinionating on. But let me just pick 1 solitary bone with you here. How can you in good conscience continue to argue that the whole idea of the "Primal Zerg" doesn't rewrite everything we've come to know about the history of the Zerg race, or that the "Amon's taint" plotline is a good explanation for Kerrigan's character progression and not a retcon. (And please, can we start calling it something else other than that terrible phrase? It makes it sound like we're talking about a certain area of Amon's genitals...) On March 16 2013 00:00 Lauriel wrote:
Nothing was retconned. Retcon: Wikipedia wrote:
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is the alteration of previously established facts in the continuity of a fictional work. tvtropes wrote:
Reframing past events to serve a current plot need. When the inserted events work with what was previously stated, it's a Revision; when they outright replace it, it's a Rewrite. The ideal retcon clarifies a question alluded to without adding excessive new questions. In its most basic form, this is any plot point that was not intended from the beginning. The most preferred use is where it contradicts nothing, even though it was changed later on. Wiktionary wrote:
A situation, in a soap opera or similar serial fiction, in which a new storyline explains or changes a previous event or attaches a new significance to it. Let's look at all the "not retcons" as told by Lauriel in HotS/SC2. On March 15 2013 22:07 Lauriel wrote:
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.
On March 15 2013 22:28 Lauriel wrote:
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. On March 16 2013 00:00 Lauriel wrote:
Nothing was retconned. Kerrigan pre-xel'naga artifact cleansing was NOT the same as post. The xel'naga artifact cleansed her of Amon's taint, which was corrupting her and her motivations. She didn't even remember what she did as the Queen of Blades, and had to be re-informed of what she was. When she allowed herself to become the queen of blades, she did so without being corrupted by Amon, and kept elements of her humanity.
I swear this has been posted several times before. If you just hate that aspect of the story, you're free to do so, but nothing was retconned as far as her motivations. On March 16 2013 00:02 Lauriel wrote:
The Overmind didn't make her without the taint. He made a being that was capable of being cleansed of it, as she was not fully zerg and not created by Amon, and cunning and powerful enough to one day rule the swarm. His relief (as described in WoL) over being killed was due to the fact that with her in control of the swarm, if she were to be cleaned, the swarm would be free. His plan was one step closer to being carried out. On March 16 2013 01:00 Lauriel wrote:
I think you misunderstood me. The Overmind wasn't prophetic in the sense that it knew Kerrigan would be cleansed. Rather, he realized that it was the only chance the Zerg had to ever be free. He took a long shot, and it paid off.
In other words, he realized that he had no chance to ever be freed, and that in order for the Zerg to ever be free, a leader would have to take power who could, potentially, be rid of Amon's influence. He never knew how (or if) it would happen, but he planted a seed and hoped that one day it would work, and it did. On March 16 2013 09:49 Lauriel wrote:
The backstory that was developed was that of the swarm, IE the zerg that Amon took and corrupted from Zerus. Not the primals. And my personal favourite hilarious 1-2 punch: On March 16 2013 10:34 Lauriel wrote:
I don't think so. Earth was a volcanic world too long ago. Look what happened over time. It evolved along with the life on it. Seems reasonable to think Zerus could be the same. On March 16 2013 11:00 Dfgj wrote:
The scope of time between the Xel'Naga upbringing of the Zerg is probably a bit less than billions of years. On March 16 2013 13:13 Lauriel wrote:
That's an assumption you can't make. All I'm saying is that there's precedent. Thing 1: It's pretty funny that you don't want to use the term "retcon" and then proceed to use it repeatedly, including in three separate definitions. Thing 2: For someone who doesn't find my opinions worth commenting on, you certainly spent a lot of time digging through my posts to find all the things I wrote you disagree with. I'm almost flattered. Thing 3: The actual question you had is confusing with all the disjointedness of your post, but I'll take a stab at it.
"How can you in good conscience continue to argue that the whole idea of the "Primal Zerg" doesn't rewrite everything we've come to know about the history of the Zerg race..."Because we lacked the full spectrum of the lore behind them to start with? I'm sorry, was there a Tolkien-esque, leather bound volume written about the complete history of the Zerg that I'm not aware of, or are you going off of the info we had from SC1/BW that basically amounts to a paragraph worth of description, and using that as the entire and complete origin of the race? If fleshing out a history of an aspect of a story is your description of the term "retcon" (which it really seems to be), then doing so would practically never be allowed in fiction. However, it happens all the time in the works of some excellent writers. (The Hobbit, anyone?). "...or that the "Amon's taint" plotline is a good explanation for Kerrigan's character progression and not a retcon."They were already going in this direction at the end of Brood War. Did you think they didn't have ideas for who Duran worked for? Did you think they didn't already know where they wanted to take the story? Did you not expect that there was going to be a bigger, badder villain out there for them to focus on in Starcraft 2? I know I did, and I was freaking 12 when I played the game, so I'd hope you picked up on that when you played it. People are screaming and yelling bloody murder about this in this thread, when in reality, I would bet that this is very much the story they wanted to tell from the end of Brood War. The setup was already there for it. Also, just out of curiosity, why do you care so much about what I think? I'm just a guy on the internet, just like you. Cheers. Edit: I just realized you're the person who re-started this thread, and now I'm not even sure why I'm bothering. The way you even started the discussion is so biased and condescending that it's clear the only reason you're even here is to try to flex your literary critic muscle on the internet. By the way, how'd the results of that poll turn out for you? Re:Thing 1: I don't even know what you're talking about here, I think you must have misread a sentence somewhere. Re:Thing 2: I read or skim every post in this thread, including yours. Like I said, I found you to be the worst and was just kinda hoping you would go away and stop posting, but you've been the most vocal proponent of the Pro-HotS camp so I had to comment. Not to convince you of anything, because obviously that's not gonna happen, but just in the service of general public discourse. There's a reason this discussion is happening on a forum instead of PMs. On the Primal Zerg: What I'm about to type out seems so self evident to me that I feel like I'm falling for a troll who's trying to waste my time. But, since I cant recall someone explaining fully why Zerus is a massive retcon, here is a very long post: You're right, there wasn't a ton of literature on the history of the Zerg before HotS. But what we had (the games, the chapters in the SC1 manual) was enough, it was a perfectly suitable body of knowledge that made complete sense within the context of the Starcraft universe. If I never heard another new word of the history of the Zerg, I would've been happy. There's really not much to it, because there's really not much to Zerg, they're mindless aliens with a simple history. If it was simple matter of "fleshing out" the history, then that would've been fine, I suppose. Unnecessary, but fine. But what we got instead was huge retcon of the Zerg's history on Zerus. The Zerg/Zerus thing comes pretty close to a total rewrite. Before HotS, we understood that the Zerg were a parasitic organism that the Xel'Naga enhanced to become the prototype of what we recognized as Zerg. Shortly after, they created the Overmind to control these Zerg. From there, the Overmind become sentient, tried to kill the Xel'Naga, and then started traveling through space assimilating "countless" species (I've always been dubious about this "countless" number of species, because in Starcraft 1 and 2 we've only seen a couple of dozen different type of Zerg units, but whatever, it's an RTS games, you can't have "countless" different units). What HotS tells us instead is that not all Zerg on Zerus were under the influence of The Overmind, which is a retcon, and something we've never heard before. Instead, we have these "primal" Zerg, who were created by the Xel'Naga, but not put under the influence of the Overmind when the Xel'Naga created it. This is a mere revision of Zerg history, where the rewriting happens is as follows. Before HotS, we understood that the Zerg we were familiar with was the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of evolution, of assimilated creatures from many different worlds. It was unclear as to whether any of the Zerg strains we saw originated from Zerus. But then, in HotS, when we go back there, they have Primal Zerglings, Banelings, Hydralisks, Roaches, Mutalisks, Guardians, and Ultralisks, did I miss any? Zerglings are assimilated dune runner creatures from Zz'gash. Mutalisks are assimilated mantis screamers from the Dinares Sector. Roaches are assimilated zantar slugs from Garxxax, and were only created in the year 2501, making it doubly impossible for them to be on Zerus. Hydralisks are assimilated sloth creatures, home world unspecified, but I don't think sloth creatures exist on volcanic ash planets, which is of course Zerus pre-retcon. This retcon, in my opinion, makes the history of the Zerg less meaningful because instead of a race that's been constantly evolving over a number of years, becoming better and better versions of themselves, the Zerg we have now in HotS don't seem all that impressive at all. Where did all that evolution go? We go back to Zerus, and these Primal Zerg, these directionless creatures that haven't even managed space travel, are just as strong as anything the Overmind/Kerrigan controlled Zerg managed to produce. They're literally just the same units with different skins. I guess they just threw out all those "countless" assimilated strains? The 5 or 6 strains native to Zerus were the ones the Zerg stuck with, huh? Re: Amon. This one's a lot simpler. When we heard of the "higher power" Duran was working for in Brood War, I, and everyone else, assumed he was talking about the Xel'Naga. And we were half right. What we were presented with in WoL/HotS wasn't the Xel'Naga per se, but a single entity known as Amon/The Dark Voice, a renegade Xel'Naga. It's a dumb idea, and I have no idea why they went in this direction. I guarantee that this particular plot point wasn't set in stone after Brood War, hell, even after Wings of Liberty, a mere three years ago, we never heard of this Amon character, I just assumed the Dark Voice spoke for all Xel'Naga. Anyway, the existence of Amon, and the fact that he supposedly corrupted the Overmind by himself without the consent of the rest of the Xel'Naga, is a retcon, and a poor one. For the game to tell us that the Infested Kerrigan we see in SC1/BW was always under the influence of this renegade Xel'Naga is another terrible retcon. Because SC1/BW already had an established storyline that went in the same vein: While the Overmind was alive, Kerrigan was under its influence. When the Overmind died, Kerrigan was 100% in control of her actions. This plot point made total sense, and explained why Kerrigan was so eager to stop the second Overmind from forming. To then overwrite that and say, "well actually, she was under the influence of a third party all this time too" is sloppy writing. The reason they did it was so they can excuse to Raynor, Zeratul, the audience, Kerrigan's terrible sins in the past. Now we get to say "Oh, all those terrible things she did in Brood War no longer count because she wasn't herself." Ugh, horrible stuff. I guess Blizzard really wanted to have Kerrigan as a protagonist and not a villain in SC2, so they had to whitewash her history. Which is weird, because she was firmly a villain for most of SC1/BW, and we the audience were fine with playing from her perspective. Show nested quote +Edit: I just realized you're the person who re-started this thread, and now I'm not even sure why I'm bothering. The way you even started the discussion is so biased and condescending that it's clear the only reason you're even here is to try to flex your literary critic muscle on the internet.
By the way, how'd the results of that poll turn out for you? Ah, another take on the "you're just trying to be cool" argument. I really don't get why this one keeps getting leveled at anyone who says they hated this game. Surely, "the reason I'm even here" isn't because I'm a Starcraft fan who wants to discuss its storyline with other fans, no, it must be because I'm trying to be "cool" or "flex my literary critic muscle on the internet." Right. As to the results of the poll, I'm not gonna hide my disappointment, I didn't expect so many people liked it. 60% of people had a favourable or very favourable response to the story, which is higher than I expected. On the other hand, 28% of people expressed a strong dislike to the story, and the rest were lukewarm. So, about 2/3 approval overall, which is good or bad depending on who you ask. What I was most surprised about was that a lot of people enjoyed the HotS story more than the WoL one, which I felt was slightly better written, introduced more interesting characters, and had less plot holes.
Dont think there's a word in here that I disagree with, except that I do think Hots was better than WoL.... for one simple reason: the retarded bar room brawl from WoL was not duplicated in HotS.
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On March 16 2013 18:59 Osmoses wrote:
I wonder why people automatically assume the bar for storytelling is set much lower in games. Why should this be acceptable? Games nowadays have every opportunity to be works of art. I can understand that storytelling might have to take a backseat to gameplay, especially if the main focus of the game is multiplayer. Compromises have to be made. But the fact that none of the characters or their actions made any sense was not a compromise, that was just someone being bad at their job.
This is easy to explain.
The "awesome storytelling in SC2" or the big stories mentioned LIMIT THE PLAYER as to what he can do and how he can act by pushing him into a certain direction. Sure, there was no option for Raynor to just ignore the Xel'Naga artifact in WoL, but there could have been with a less restrictive story.
If you really want a "work of art" you have to allow a certain degree of freedom ... like allowing people to finish a mission without killing anyone in a game OR murdering the whole town. This isnt the case in SC2 and it simply becomes a cheap "story" where we just get to do minor and insignificant decisions. Thinking that you can "have it all" is a delusion!
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The "I made you into a monster, KERRIGAN!"
"you made us all into monsters!"
CRINGED Worthy
Don't forget: "Thank you Jim, for everything."
My poor starcraft/BW heart dies a bit inside every time I watch that ending cinematic.
ugh
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Concerning the Primal Zerg, there is this from the SC1 manual:
The Xel’Naga were more successful with their second venture than they could have imagined. They laboured to advance the evolution of the most insignificant life form on Zerus, a race of miniature insectoids known as the Zerg. Through Xel’Naga protogenetic manipulations, the Zerg survived the torrential firestorms of their world and thrived. Although extremely small, wormlike, and possessing no ability to manipulate their physical surroundings, the Zerg adapted to survive. They developed the ability to burrow into the flesh of the less vulnerable species indigenous to Zerus. Feeding off the nutrients contained within the spinal fluids of their hosts, the Zerg learned to parasitically merge with their host creatures. Once they became capable of controlling the metabolic and anatomical processes of their hosts, the Zerg used their new bodies to manipulate their surroundings.
So the Zerg were being experimented on by the Xel'Naga back when they were just mindless parasites. Even if there are Zerg free of the Xel'Naga's influence, how would they even remember anything from that time since they had no intelligence? Plus this line "Through Xel’Naga protogenetic manipulations, the Zerg survived the torrential firestorms of their world and thrived" suggests that the Zerg were only able to survive due to Xel'Naga intervention so there shouldn't be any uncorrupted Zerg.
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On March 16 2013 20:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
The "I made you into a monster, KERRIGAN!"
"you made us all into monsters!"
CRINGED Worthy
Don't forget: "Thank you Jim, for everything."
My poor starcraft/BW heart dies a bit inside every time I watch that ending cinematic.
ugh
Just remember the end cinematics of SC1 and BW ... NO DIALOGUE NEEDED and very awesome. Compare this to the WoL / HotS endings and the dialogue ruins it all.
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On March 16 2013 18:59 Gatesleeper wrote:
Before HotS, we understood that the Zerg we were familiar with was the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of evolution, of assimilated creatures from many different worlds. It was unclear as to whether any of the Zerg strains we saw originated from Zerus. But then, in HotS, when we go back there, they have Primal Zerglings, Banelings, Hydralisks, Roaches, Mutalisks, Guardians, and Ultralisks, did I miss any?
Zerglings are assimilated dune runner creatures from Zz'gash.
Mutalisks are assimilated mantis screamers from the Dinares Sector.
Roaches are assimilated zantar slugs from Garxxax, and were only created in the year 2501, making it doubly impossible for them to be on Zerus.
Hydralisks are assimilated sloth creatures, home world unspecified, but I don't think sloth creatures exist on volcanic ash planets, which is of course Zerus pre-retcon.
This retcon, in my opinion, makes the history of the Zerg less meaningful because instead of a race that's been constantly evolving over a number of years, becoming better and better versions of themselves, the Zerg we have now in HotS don't seem all that impressive at all. Where did all that evolution go? We go back to Zerus, and these Primal Zerg, these directionless creatures that haven't even managed space travel, are just as strong as anything the Overmind/Kerrigan controlled Zerg managed to produce. They're literally just the same units with different skins. I guess they just threw out all those "countless" assimilated strains? The 5 or 6 strains native to Zerus were the ones the Zerg stuck with, huh?
When you talk to Abathur after the first Zerus mission he says that the primal zerg had already started evolving based on your swarm. So when you see a primal roach or hydralisk, they are just primal zerg lizards that ate one of your units and evolved to resemble it.
That's how I understood it anyway. You can consider it a lame excuse, but I don't think it retcons the whole idea of zergs assimilating creatures from different worlds.
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Zoomacroom summed it up pretty neatly. Nothing in the story made much sense, from the pointless characters to the unecessary retcons, to the sudden introduction of an ancient evil who wants to destroy the universe (wat is this i dont even), and suddenly there's that artifact again because why the hell not, and just... well...
Everything is downright bad, and wouldn't be acceptable anywhere if it wasn't made by one of the biggest and most beloved video game companies in one of their biggest and most beloved video game franchises.
I wont' bother argue for it, because anyone who understands and has a clue about what constitutes good characterizations, settings, plots, motivations and everything closely resembling good story telling already knows this.
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The story was horrible but at least not as horrible as WoL. The mission design and overall gameplay was good enough to avert my attention from the cheesy one liners and exasperating scenes like seeing infested Kerrigan say: "I love you" to Jim....." ./facedesk
I understand why most people defend this garbage story. They either haven't played sc1/bw ever or don't really remember it or never read any starcraft books to understand how much potential sc2 had and screwed it away.
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On March 16 2013 18:57 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 18:43 figq wrote:
The campaign is not meant to serve such high purposes - for those are the books. If I read a book, it certainly wont be a book about a damn video game. Either you tell a good overall story with your games or you don't. "Read the books" is just a cop out.
the story isnt about a video game the story is about the starcraft universe.
if you dont like fantasy, why are you giving a shit about the sc2 story anyway?
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On March 16 2013 18:59 Gatesleeper wrote:
Before HotS, we understood that the Zerg we were familiar with was the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of evolution, of assimilated creatures from many different worlds. It was unclear as to whether any of the Zerg strains we saw originated from Zerus. But then, in HotS, when we go back there, they have Primal Zerglings, Banelings, Hydralisks, Roaches, Mutalisks, Guardians, and Ultralisks, did I miss any?
This retcon, in my opinion, makes the history of the Zerg less meaningful because instead of a race that's been constantly evolving over a number of years, becoming better and better versions of themselves, the Zerg we have now in HotS don't seem all that impressive at all. Where did all that evolution go? We go back to Zerus, and these Primal Zerg, these directionless creatures that haven't even managed space travel, are just as strong as anything the Overmind/Kerrigan controlled Zerg managed to produce. They're literally just the same units with different skins. I guess they just threw out all those "countless" assimilated strains? The 5 or 6 strains native to Zerus were the ones the Zerg stuck with, huh?
The reason the primal zerg had those strains is because they assimilated the new essence the Swarm brought when they came to Zerus. This was explained by Abathur.
Re: Amon.
This one's a lot simpler. When we heard of the "higher power" Duran was working for in Brood War, I, and everyone else, assumed he was talking about the Xel'Naga. And we were half right. What we were presented with in WoL/HotS wasn't the Xel'Naga per se, but a single entity known as Amon/The Dark Voice, a renegade Xel'Naga. It's a dumb idea, and I have no idea why they went in this direction. I guarantee that this particular plot point wasn't set in stone after Brood War, hell, even after Wings of Liberty, a mere three years ago, we never heard of this Amon character, I just assumed the Dark Voice spoke for all Xel'Naga.
We actually did know of Amon in WoL as that was the file name of the Dark Voice. And I don't know why you would think he spoke for all Xel'Naga when he was clearly their enemy. I mean, did you even listen to his lines? Or do you remember the Xel'Naga cycle and why it would be counterproductive to destroy the Zerg and Protoss? And the cycle was the thing he was bent on stopping?
Anyway, the existence of Amon, and the fact that he supposedly corrupted the Overmind by himself without the consent of the rest of the Xel'Naga, is a retcon, and a poor one. For the game to tell us that the Infested Kerrigan we see in SC1/BW was always under the influence of this renegade Xel'Naga is another terrible retcon. Because SC1/BW already had an established storyline that went in the same vein: While the Overmind was alive, Kerrigan was under its influence. When the Overmind died, Kerrigan was 100% in control of her actions. This plot point made total sense, and explained why Kerrigan was so eager to stop the second Overmind from forming.
When it was said in WoL that the Overmind was corrupted it wasn't a retcon, it was an expansion of lore, however good or bad. But in HotS when it was said by Zurvan that the corruption of the zerg was the hive mind itself, that's very much a retcon if we're supposed to take his word for gospel. Need clarity on this.
To then overwrite that and say, "well actually, she was under the influence of a third party all this time too" is sloppy writing. The reason they did it was so they can excuse to Raynor, Zeratul, the audience, Kerrigan's terrible sins in the past. Now we get to say "Oh, all those terrible things she did in Brood War no longer count because she wasn't herself." Ugh, horrible stuff. I guess Blizzard really wanted to have Kerrigan as a protagonist and not a villain in SC2, so they had to whitewash her history. Which is weird, because she was firmly a villain for most of SC1/BW, and we the audience were fine with playing from her perspective.
I very much liked the Queen of Blades in SC1, but it obviously wasn't the same person she would have been without being infested. I don't need and never have needed an excuse for her actions, because it wasn't her actions. It doesn't matter if the Overmind was controlling her when her very being had been corrupted. If somehow I were taken over by aliens that warped my personality, once returning to normal don't expect me to feel remorse for anyone "I" may have killed.
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On March 16 2013 20:11 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 20:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
The "I made you into a monster, KERRIGAN!"
"you made us all into monsters!"
CRINGED Worthy
Don't forget: "Thank you Jim, for everything."
My poor starcraft/BW heart dies a bit inside every time I watch that ending cinematic.
ugh
Just remember the end cinematics of SC1 and BW ... NO DIALOGUE NEEDED and very awesome. Compare this to the WoL / HotS endings and the dialogue ruins it all.
The end cinematic of BW had dialogue. A lot of it.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On March 16 2013 20:42 Daniri wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 20:11 Rabiator wrote:On March 16 2013 20:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
The "I made you into a monster, KERRIGAN!"
"you made us all into monsters!"
CRINGED Worthy
Don't forget: "Thank you Jim, for everything."
My poor starcraft/BW heart dies a bit inside every time I watch that ending cinematic.
ugh
Just remember the end cinematics of SC1 and BW ... NO DIALOGUE NEEDED and very awesome. Compare this to the WoL / HotS endings and the dialogue ruins it all. The end cinematic of BW had dialogue. A lot of it.
So did the ending cinematic of the SC1 Terran campaign.
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On March 16 2013 18:59 Gatesleeper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 16:06 Lauriel wrote:On March 16 2013 14:05 Gatesleeper wrote:Lauriel I've read every one of your posts, I just haven't directly replied to any of them because I think they're perhaps the most deluded and bogus rationalizations in this entire thread and not worth opinionating on. But let me just pick 1 solitary bone with you here. How can you in good conscience continue to argue that the whole idea of the "Primal Zerg" doesn't rewrite everything we've come to know about the history of the Zerg race, or that the "Amon's taint" plotline is a good explanation for Kerrigan's character progression and not a retcon. (And please, can we start calling it something else other than that terrible phrase? It makes it sound like we're talking about a certain area of Amon's genitals...) On March 16 2013 00:00 Lauriel wrote:
Nothing was retconned. Retcon: Wikipedia wrote:
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is the alteration of previously established facts in the continuity of a fictional work. tvtropes wrote:
Reframing past events to serve a current plot need. When the inserted events work with what was previously stated, it's a Revision; when they outright replace it, it's a Rewrite. The ideal retcon clarifies a question alluded to without adding excessive new questions. In its most basic form, this is any plot point that was not intended from the beginning. The most preferred use is where it contradicts nothing, even though it was changed later on. Wiktionary wrote:
A situation, in a soap opera or similar serial fiction, in which a new storyline explains or changes a previous event or attaches a new significance to it. Let's look at all the "not retcons" as told by Lauriel in HotS/SC2. On March 15 2013 22:07 Lauriel wrote:
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.
On March 15 2013 22:28 Lauriel wrote:
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. On March 16 2013 00:00 Lauriel wrote:
Nothing was retconned. Kerrigan pre-xel'naga artifact cleansing was NOT the same as post. The xel'naga artifact cleansed her of Amon's taint, which was corrupting her and her motivations. She didn't even remember what she did as the Queen of Blades, and had to be re-informed of what she was. When she allowed herself to become the queen of blades, she did so without being corrupted by Amon, and kept elements of her humanity.
I swear this has been posted several times before. If you just hate that aspect of the story, you're free to do so, but nothing was retconned as far as her motivations. On March 16 2013 00:02 Lauriel wrote:
The Overmind didn't make her without the taint. He made a being that was capable of being cleansed of it, as she was not fully zerg and not created by Amon, and cunning and powerful enough to one day rule the swarm. His relief (as described in WoL) over being killed was due to the fact that with her in control of the swarm, if she were to be cleaned, the swarm would be free. His plan was one step closer to being carried out. On March 16 2013 01:00 Lauriel wrote:
I think you misunderstood me. The Overmind wasn't prophetic in the sense that it knew Kerrigan would be cleansed. Rather, he realized that it was the only chance the Zerg had to ever be free. He took a long shot, and it paid off.
In other words, he realized that he had no chance to ever be freed, and that in order for the Zerg to ever be free, a leader would have to take power who could, potentially, be rid of Amon's influence. He never knew how (or if) it would happen, but he planted a seed and hoped that one day it would work, and it did. On March 16 2013 09:49 Lauriel wrote:
The backstory that was developed was that of the swarm, IE the zerg that Amon took and corrupted from Zerus. Not the primals. And my personal favourite hilarious 1-2 punch: On March 16 2013 10:34 Lauriel wrote:
I don't think so. Earth was a volcanic world too long ago. Look what happened over time. It evolved along with the life on it. Seems reasonable to think Zerus could be the same. On March 16 2013 11:00 Dfgj wrote:
The scope of time between the Xel'Naga upbringing of the Zerg is probably a bit less than billions of years. On March 16 2013 13:13 Lauriel wrote:
That's an assumption you can't make. All I'm saying is that there's precedent. Thing 1: It's pretty funny that you don't want to use the term "retcon" and then proceed to use it repeatedly, including in three separate definitions. Thing 2: For someone who doesn't find my opinions worth commenting on, you certainly spent a lot of time digging through my posts to find all the things I wrote you disagree with. I'm almost flattered. Thing 3: The actual question you had is confusing with all the disjointedness of your post, but I'll take a stab at it.
"How can you in good conscience continue to argue that the whole idea of the "Primal Zerg" doesn't rewrite everything we've come to know about the history of the Zerg race..."Because we lacked the full spectrum of the lore behind them to start with? I'm sorry, was there a Tolkien-esque, leather bound volume written about the complete history of the Zerg that I'm not aware of, or are you going off of the info we had from SC1/BW that basically amounts to a paragraph worth of description, and using that as the entire and complete origin of the race? If fleshing out a history of an aspect of a story is your description of the term "retcon" (which it really seems to be), then doing so would practically never be allowed in fiction. However, it happens all the time in the works of some excellent writers. (The Hobbit, anyone?). "...or that the "Amon's taint" plotline is a good explanation for Kerrigan's character progression and not a retcon."They were already going in this direction at the end of Brood War. Did you think they didn't have ideas for who Duran worked for? Did you think they didn't already know where they wanted to take the story? Did you not expect that there was going to be a bigger, badder villain out there for them to focus on in Starcraft 2? I know I did, and I was freaking 12 when I played the game, so I'd hope you picked up on that when you played it. People are screaming and yelling bloody murder about this in this thread, when in reality, I would bet that this is very much the story they wanted to tell from the end of Brood War. The setup was already there for it. Also, just out of curiosity, why do you care so much about what I think? I'm just a guy on the internet, just like you. Cheers. Edit: I just realized you're the person who re-started this thread, and now I'm not even sure why I'm bothering. The way you even started the discussion is so biased and condescending that it's clear the only reason you're even here is to try to flex your literary critic muscle on the internet. By the way, how'd the results of that poll turn out for you? Re:Thing 1: I don't even know what you're talking about here, I think you must have misread a sentence somewhere. Re:Thing 2: I read or skim every post in this thread, including yours. Like I said, I found you to be the worst and was just kinda hoping you would go away and stop posting, but you've been the most vocal proponent of the Pro-HotS camp so I had to comment. Not to convince you of anything, because obviously that's not gonna happen, but just in the service of general public discourse. There's a reason this discussion is happening on a forum instead of PMs. On the Primal Zerg: What I'm about to type out seems so self evident to me that I feel like I'm falling for a troll who's trying to waste my time. But, since I cant recall someone explaining fully why Zerus is a massive retcon, here is a very long post: You're right, there wasn't a ton of literature on the history of the Zerg before HotS. But what we had (the games, the chapters in the SC1 manual) was enough, it was a perfectly suitable body of knowledge that made complete sense within the context of the Starcraft universe. If I never heard another new word of the history of the Zerg, I would've been happy. There's really not much to it, because there's really not much to Zerg, they're mindless aliens with a simple history. If it was simple matter of "fleshing out" the history, then that would've been fine, I suppose. Unnecessary, but fine. But what we got instead was huge retcon of the Zerg's history on Zerus. The Zerg/Zerus thing comes pretty close to a total rewrite. Before HotS, we understood that the Zerg were a parasitic organism that the Xel'Naga enhanced to become the prototype of what we recognized as Zerg. Shortly after, they created the Overmind to control these Zerg. From there, the Overmind become sentient, tried to kill the Xel'Naga, and then started traveling through space assimilating "countless" species (I've always been dubious about this "countless" number of species, because in Starcraft 1 and 2 we've only seen a couple of dozen different type of Zerg units, but whatever, it's an RTS games, you can't have "countless" different units). What HotS tells us instead is that not all Zerg on Zerus were under the influence of The Overmind, which is a retcon, and something we've never heard before. Instead, we have these "primal" Zerg, who were created by the Xel'Naga, but not put under the influence of the Overmind when the Xel'Naga created it. This is a mere revision of Zerg history, where the rewriting happens is as follows. Before HotS, we understood that the Zerg we were familiar with was the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of evolution, of assimilated creatures from many different worlds. It was unclear as to whether any of the Zerg strains we saw originated from Zerus. But then, in HotS, when we go back there, they have Primal Zerglings, Banelings, Hydralisks, Roaches, Mutalisks, Guardians, and Ultralisks, did I miss any? Zerglings are assimilated dune runner creatures from Zz'gash. Mutalisks are assimilated mantis screamers from the Dinares Sector. Roaches are assimilated zantar slugs from Garxxax, and were only created in the year 2501, making it doubly impossible for them to be on Zerus. Hydralisks are assimilated sloth creatures, home world unspecified, but I don't think sloth creatures exist on volcanic ash planets, which is of course Zerus pre-retcon. This retcon, in my opinion, makes the history of the Zerg less meaningful because instead of a race that's been constantly evolving over a number of years, becoming better and better versions of themselves, the Zerg we have now in HotS don't seem all that impressive at all. Where did all that evolution go? We go back to Zerus, and these Primal Zerg, these directionless creatures that haven't even managed space travel, are just as strong as anything the Overmind/Kerrigan controlled Zerg managed to produce. They're literally just the same units with different skins. I guess they just threw out all those "countless" assimilated strains? The 5 or 6 strains native to Zerus were the ones the Zerg stuck with, huh? Re: Amon. This one's a lot simpler. When we heard of the "higher power" Duran was working for in Brood War, I, and everyone else, assumed he was talking about the Xel'Naga. And we were half right. What we were presented with in WoL/HotS wasn't the Xel'Naga per se, but a single entity known as Amon/The Dark Voice, a renegade Xel'Naga. It's a dumb idea, and I have no idea why they went in this direction. I guarantee that this particular plot point wasn't set in stone after Brood War, hell, even after Wings of Liberty, a mere three years ago, we never heard of this Amon character, I just assumed the Dark Voice spoke for all Xel'Naga. Anyway, the existence of Amon, and the fact that he supposedly corrupted the Overmind by himself without the consent of the rest of the Xel'Naga, is a retcon, and a poor one. For the game to tell us that the Infested Kerrigan we see in SC1/BW was always under the influence of this renegade Xel'Naga is another terrible retcon. Because SC1/BW already had an established storyline that went in the same vein: While the Overmind was alive, Kerrigan was under its influence. When the Overmind died, Kerrigan was 100% in control of her actions. This plot point made total sense, and explained why Kerrigan was so eager to stop the second Overmind from forming. To then overwrite that and say, "well actually, she was under the influence of a third party all this time too" is sloppy writing. The reason they did it was so they can excuse to Raynor, Zeratul, the audience, Kerrigan's terrible sins in the past. Now we get to say "Oh, all those terrible things she did in Brood War no longer count because she wasn't herself." Ugh, horrible stuff. I guess Blizzard really wanted to have Kerrigan as a protagonist and not a villain in SC2, so they had to whitewash her history. Which is weird, because she was firmly a villain for most of SC1/BW, and we the audience were fine with playing from her perspective. Show nested quote +Edit: I just realized you're the person who re-started this thread, and now I'm not even sure why I'm bothering. The way you even started the discussion is so biased and condescending that it's clear the only reason you're even here is to try to flex your literary critic muscle on the internet.
By the way, how'd the results of that poll turn out for you? Ah, another take on the "you're just trying to be cool" argument. I really don't get why this one keeps getting leveled at anyone who says they hated this game. Surely, "the reason I'm even here" isn't because I'm a Starcraft fan who wants to discuss its storyline with other fans, no, it must be because I'm trying to be "cool" or "flex my literary critic muscle on the internet." Right. As to the results of the poll, I'm not gonna hide my disappointment, I didn't expect so many people liked it. 60% of people had a favourable or very favourable response to the story, which is higher than I expected. On the other hand, 28% of people expressed a strong dislike to the story, and the rest were lukewarm. So, about 2/3 approval overall, which is good or bad depending on who you ask. What I was most surprised about was that a lot of people enjoyed the HotS story more than the WoL one, which I felt was slightly better written, introduced more interesting characters, and had less plot holes.
Take heart, I seldom logged in by did so just to register my vote that the story is bad.
I also want to say that your options aren't really good to show a true positive/negative reaction. There is confusion between an objective good/bad assessment, and then there is the relative comaprison with WOL, and other Blizzard franchises. I think you should have picked either the objective or relative standards and stuck with that, as opposed to having two, and confusing people.
Further, there's a lot of bad argument in this thread. I'll just cover what appears to be the most common, which I like to call the "Shakespeare argument" and its derivatives. It goes along the lines of Don't expect this to be Shakespeare and video games always have sub-par stories.Why do people seem to think that the quality of a story is either shakespeare or bad. Why can't we aspire to a semi decent, while not shakespearean standard?
Now on my own personal thoughts, I don't really want to go into the details, since I think that's all better mentioned elsewhere. I think the failing of SC 2 (yes including WOL)'s plot is a lack of creative vision. This could arise as a result of various things (concentration on multiplayer, appealling to the widest audience etc.), which we can speculate on. But the thing is, Blizzard's story telling has, i feel, lost the creative focus that was present in the original SC (which while not perfect, showed a greater degree of focus).
What I mean is this. Let's take BW and where HOTS/WOL is going now. Generally speaking both involve an external threat (Amon, the UED) coming into an existing conflict, and the existing races responding to this external conflcit. BW in my view, kept true to the original creative vision of starcraft - three races trying to survive. This is pretty clear and consistent throughout both SC and BW. Everyone is out to protect themselves, and jsut try to survive in a hostile part of space.
So when the UED comes along, the races to work togethere, to an extent. In the end though, it is not JUST about repelling the external threat, but also ensuring that your particular race comes out on top. Which is what kerrigan did - she repelled the UED and manipulated everyone such that she could emerge triumphant. In fact, BW even subverted the "enemies banding together to defeat common enemy thing" because in the end the UED is the one that bands together with terran and protoss to take out kerrigan. Look at the nice way the alliances shift and merge. All this fits greatly into the original vision of a sector of space that is in constanct conflict.
Now lets see HOTS and WOL. First thing I want to know, is what is the creative direction. Is it a love story? Is it a story about races banding together to fight an external threat? Is this really jsut a revenge thing? redepmtion? Well it seems like a mix of everything. There's the raynor-sarah love thing, Amon, and revenge against mensk. And of course the redemption of sarah kerrigan.
So first the love story. We know that Raynor has vowed to kill Kerrigan. But now he has sort of soften up. That in itself is okay. I actually think that where WOL starts, and you seem him holding her photo, that's good story telling. It sets his character as someone who is weary of the war, misses the old sarah kerrigan, and so foreshadows a little that his resolve to kill her might not be there anymore. He's not a avatar of vengence, he's a tired dude who misses hot ghost ass. That's great.
But WOL lacks the creative vision to take that to its conclusion. Raynor should have been portrayed as grappling with his concience as to whether to kill the queen of blades or to save her. It also lacked the guts to keep kerrigan and the zerg to their original character - i.e. survivalists. What we got instead was "the zerg aren't really evil" and "the overmind was tainted all this while!" and worst of all "kerrigan needs to live to fulfill a prophecy." Prophecy if done well can be great, but what the prophecy did in WOL really just killed off a lot of dramatic tension. Raynor is simply given a complete reason to set aside his revenge and be the good guy.
What could have been done instead:
Raynor collects artefact pieces but no one really knows what the artefact is meant to do. At best, they know that it will stop kerrigan (but not de-zerg her). Zeratul's prophecy is not complete. While revealing a greater threat, it does not explicitly identify a saviour. All raynor knows is that this being is going to come along, use the zerg and wipe out everyone else. Maybe zeratul even sees kerrigan leading the zerg in his vision. Armed with this knowledge, raynor resolves to kill kerrigan (there can be a nice throw away scene where he casts away her picture). They go onto char, trigger the article. Thinking that kerrigan is dead, they enter the hive, see a de-infested kerrigan. At that point raynor realises he can't finish the job, and only there he reaches out and tries to save her.
This is still a bit cheesy i'd say, and I'm sure someone can do better with time (and even better, if the major plot points didn't have to be followed). But what this provides is more dramatic tension because a) the prophecy is less clear and b) Raynor has better character development in that he actually comes to terms with his desire for revenge on one hand, and his love for sarah. And this makes it more personal (in that SC2 is more personal about raynor, kerrigan and zeratul). It makes it clear that WOL is about raynor's journey in coming to terms with his past.
Now on to HOTS. What we got was kerrigan essentially going out to kill mengsk. Along the way she sees the primal zerg and gets reinfested. There were good parts I think. The relatiosnhip between raynor and her, the concern she shows when he dies, how she stays behind to try and find him, are good contrasts to her generally merciless attitude to everyone else. It also shows her redemption as an organic journey. In this regard, i think HOTS is superior to WOL because it suceeds in the creative vision of making it a personal story about Kerrigan.
What was bad on the other hand is that Kerrigan as a character is cheapened by the explanation of "curroption." If we really wanted a good remption cycle, kerrigan should come to terms to being a genodical dicator, and then trying to make amends. If you want to be cheesy about it, it should have been raynor's love for her that helps her regain her humanity, and not that she had her humanity all along but was corrupted by foces beyond her control. It cheapens the concept of redemption when kerrigan was never really responsible for everything anyway.
What was also bad is how kerrigan's reinfestation was done. Given that a major plot point in WOL was her deinfestation, her reinfestation should have been done for EXTREMELY compelling reasons. We know that she can already control zerg, flies around in a leviathan and so on, so why is there a need to be reinfested (I know that the plot provides a reason, but i'm saying it's not a compelling one).
I think a lot of problems arose because blizzard just didn't have the guts to keep Kerrigan as who we knew her to be - the queen of blades. She's someone that got abandoned and betrayed and so can't bring herself to trust anyone anymore.
What COULD have been done, if blzz had the courage to is:
Sarah and Jim reunite and grow close.
Jim apparently dies. His love, the only thing that was moving her towards redemption, makes her lose faith in humanity (the parallels between mengsk abandoning her and horner and crew abandoning jim should have been clearer. Make Sarah ask them to turn around the ship, and Horner can say "belay that order...").
Sarah sees this as a betrayal of Jim, and leaves the hyperion.
She plots her revenage against everyone. In the process she realizes that to have enough power to do so, she must reinfest herself. *again, throw away scene of her thinking about jimmy before steppign into the cocoon*
She then finds out that jimmy is alive and goes to rescue him.
Jimmy in turn feels extremely betrayed. And leaves, for real.
Now completely alone, kerrigan goes on a rampage and kills mengsk.
In the ruins of the city, she sits. The parallels to BW again are clear - she won, but she is now weary and tired.
Zeratul on the sidelines, despairs as he sees his vision of doom coming true. He brings the protoss to try and stop kerrigan (appearing in the final mission). but kerrigan defeats them all.
In LOTV, kerrigan pairs up with amon to wipe everyone out, thinking that she will eventually kill amon too and emerge victorious. But she soon realizes that it can't be done/amon is about to kill jim and she sacrifices herself to kill amon/save jim.
I think that would be a far better redemption tale, than what we got. It's still cheesy, still not shakespeare, and can be better though. But this took like 10 minutes to think up, and i'm sure blizzard has the creative talent to do better. It just comes down to finding your creative focus and sticking to it, and I think blizz failed to do either with HOTS.
/endrant
On a separate note, comparing the dialogue between BW and what we have now... I think it's quite clear that BW really wasn't afraid to set the bar high, and have the players follow that. This isn't the case anymore.
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On March 16 2013 20:42 Daniri wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 20:11 Rabiator wrote:On March 16 2013 20:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
The "I made you into a monster, KERRIGAN!"
"you made us all into monsters!"
CRINGED Worthy
Don't forget: "Thank you Jim, for everything."
My poor starcraft/BW heart dies a bit inside every time I watch that ending cinematic.
ugh
Just remember the end cinematics of SC1 and BW ... NO DIALOGUE NEEDED and very awesome. Compare this to the WoL / HotS endings and the dialogue ruins it all. The end cinematic of BW had dialogue. A lot of it.
there is a difference between monologue and dialogue my friend. A dialogue is spoken between 2 people 
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To mention, the story that the primal zergs give Kerrigan (and us) may not be the complete story, just the part that their ancients remember.
And yeah, primal roach/etc are newly adapted from the swarm in HotS, that makes sense. But wanna say - I dislike in general the tendency of Western sci-fi to depict "evolution" as something you do while you are alive. (A ridiculous concept taken from popular social Darwinism.) It's okay though, I admit it's a concept that looks cool, even though completely going against the real meaning of evolution. And it's late to complain anyway - the zerg have always had that "on the go" evolution concept with them.
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On March 16 2013 20:28 Overtime wrote:
The story was horrible but at least not as horrible as WoL. The mission design and overall gameplay was good enough to avert my attention from the cheesy one liners and exasperating scenes like seeing infested Kerrigan say: "I love you" to Jim....." ./facedesk
I understand why most people defend this garbage story. They either haven't played sc1/bw ever or don't really remember it or never read any starcraft books to understand how much potential sc2 had and screwed it away.
I only wanted one thing from HotS and that was for Kerrigan to fully embrace the Zerg and start actually caring about them. By the end that's what I got. I'm not gonna dwell on how much I hate Raynor and the hamfisted romance, or Kerrigan's ridiculous obsession with Mengsk, or how Mengsk himself was completely ruined as a character by being made to play the stereotypical-in-every-way evil dictator.
Speaking of the books, it was annoying how Flashpoint, the HotS tie-in novel, was ignored like four times throughout the game. The Mira Han mission was egregiously bad.
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On March 16 2013 20:48 TeeTS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2013 20:42 Daniri wrote:On March 16 2013 20:11 Rabiator wrote:On March 16 2013 20:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
The "I made you into a monster, KERRIGAN!"
"you made us all into monsters!"
CRINGED Worthy
Don't forget: "Thank you Jim, for everything."
My poor starcraft/BW heart dies a bit inside every time I watch that ending cinematic.
ugh
Just remember the end cinematics of SC1 and BW ... NO DIALOGUE NEEDED and very awesome. Compare this to the WoL / HotS endings and the dialogue ruins it all. The end cinematic of BW had dialogue. A lot of it. there is a difference between monologue and dialogue my friend. A dialogue is spoken between 2 people
Ah, right. If that's what he meant.
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EPT
