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Warcraft 1-2 / Starcraft 1: Independent factions fighting for dominance, with lots of infighting between them.
Warcraft 3 / Starcraft 2: Actually, one of the factions has been under the control of an evil god this whole time. Also, this evil god is about to invade, so everyone has to work together to stop him.
Frozen Throne / Protoss Prophecy: The ruler of the evil faction (Lich King / Overmind) actually just wants to be independent, but unfortunately has no free will, so he finds a human heir (Arthas / Kerrigan) who will have the free will to help defeat the evil god with his/her own brand of independent evil.
It's like Chris Metzen only has one story in him.
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On March 18 2013 15:25 Gatesleeper wrote:
This is way back from Zoomacroom's post in the last thread, but while we're on the topic of retcons I wanted to clear this one up. Someone replied to this saying that this is not a retcon because the Tal'Darim were always portrayed as servants of the Xel'Naga. But it was established in HotS that they are now servants of Amon, and apparently we all know now that Amon =/= Xel'Naga, and is in fact on the opposite "side" of the rest of the Xel'Naga. If they were true worshippers of the Xel'Naga, wouldn't they be fighting AGAINST Amon? Cue flimsy rationalization: "Narud probably tricked the Tal'Darim into following him by saying he was a servant of the Xel'Naga."
Plus, even if they are and always were servants of Amon and not merely worshippers of the Xel'Naga, that doesn't explain why "Narud repeatedly commissioned Raynor to steal Xel'Naga artifacts *from* the Tal'Darim in WoL".
What make's you think Amon isn't a Xel'Naga? They specifically state in the campaign he is (primal zerg missions I think). They also state he's a fallen Xel'Naga but I just interpreted that as it means he turned evil and broke away from the ways of his fellow Xel'naga.
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On March 18 2013 16:27 HarryMcdoogle wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 15:25 Gatesleeper wrote:
This is way back from Zoomacroom's post in the last thread, but while we're on the topic of retcons I wanted to clear this one up. Someone replied to this saying that this is not a retcon because the Tal'Darim were always portrayed as servants of the Xel'Naga. But it was established in HotS that they are now servants of Amon, and apparently we all know now that Amon =/= Xel'Naga, and is in fact on the opposite "side" of the rest of the Xel'Naga. If they were true worshippers of the Xel'Naga, wouldn't they be fighting AGAINST Amon? Cue flimsy rationalization: "Narud probably tricked the Tal'Darim into following him by saying he was a servant of the Xel'Naga."
Plus, even if they are and always were servants of Amon and not merely worshippers of the Xel'Naga, that doesn't explain why "Narud repeatedly commissioned Raynor to steal Xel'Naga artifacts *from* the Tal'Darim in WoL". What make's you think Amon isn't a Xel'Naga? They specifically state in the campaign he is (primal zerg missions I think). They also state he's a fallen Xel'Naga but I just interpreted that as it means he turned evil and broke away from the ways of his fellow Xel'naga.
I think what he meant was that Amon does not represent the Xel'Naga after his fall. If someone is said to be serving the Xel'Naga it does not make much sense for them to be serving the "fallen" Xel'Naga. It is quite explicitly said that Amon is a fallen Xel'Naga in the Zerus part of the campaign - no need for interpretation.
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On March 18 2013 16:33 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 16:27 HarryMcdoogle wrote:On March 18 2013 15:25 Gatesleeper wrote:
This is way back from Zoomacroom's post in the last thread, but while we're on the topic of retcons I wanted to clear this one up. Someone replied to this saying that this is not a retcon because the Tal'Darim were always portrayed as servants of the Xel'Naga. But it was established in HotS that they are now servants of Amon, and apparently we all know now that Amon =/= Xel'Naga, and is in fact on the opposite "side" of the rest of the Xel'Naga. If they were true worshippers of the Xel'Naga, wouldn't they be fighting AGAINST Amon? Cue flimsy rationalization: "Narud probably tricked the Tal'Darim into following him by saying he was a servant of the Xel'Naga."
Plus, even if they are and always were servants of Amon and not merely worshippers of the Xel'Naga, that doesn't explain why "Narud repeatedly commissioned Raynor to steal Xel'Naga artifacts *from* the Tal'Darim in WoL". What make's you think Amon isn't a Xel'Naga? They specifically state in the campaign he is (primal zerg missions I think). They also state he's a fallen Xel'Naga but I just interpreted that as it means he turned evil and broke away from the ways of his fellow Xel'naga. I think what he meant was that Amon does not represent the Xel'Naga after his fall. If someone is said to be serving the Xel'Naga it does not make much sense for them to be serving the "fallen" Xel'Naga. It is quite explicitly said that Amon is a fallen Xel'Naga in the Zerus part of the campaign - no need for interpretation.
Fallen or not.. he's still Xel'Naga. We really have no back story on the Xel'Naga except they played a part in creating the protoss/zerg and what little we know about Amon and his betrayal. Questioning why the Tal'Darim worship Amon because he's a fallen Xel'Naga could never be answered because we don't know the back story of the Xel'Naga yet.
The facts we know as of now are... Amon is Xel'Naga and that the Tal'Darim worship Xel'Naga. As of now everything fits. Unless I missed something?
If you are implying that because he's considered a "Fallen Xel'Naga" he is not Xel'Naga anymore. I don't agree with that. Xel'Naga is a race of ancient beings. He just happens to be an evil one.
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It was actually a decent story. You've got to be either a mad fanboy or a bandwagon idiot to believe that the story was flawed because it was "predictable" because Kerrigan got re-infested and killed Mengsk. The entire prophecy mission line in WoL bludgeoned you with enough hints. Think about games like Mass Effect, Brood War, and any of the Final Fantasy series. You're supposed to be able to understand the general plot. Unless it's written by M Night Shamaladingdong you're supposed to get a general idea which way the story is flowing,
What I really didn't like was the chronological events in the story.
First off, retaking Char should've been the penultimate task. You'd think that with the bulk of the broods left on Char, Kerrigan would've had enough men to push into Dominion space. Those Broods were beating half of the Dominion Armada in WoL. It felt a bit cheap that Kerrigan regained an incredible portion of her army near the beginning, and the Swarm's reunification was dealt with by broodmothers who contacted the weird tube girl thing in your spaceship and told her they wanted to sign back up.
The only "wut" moments I got during my playthrough were the "power" scenes. I really disliked when Kerrigan told Zuvan that she thought she could rip planets apart with her new powers, and Zuvan replied that he hoped she could, because Amon was able to do so. It also seems out of place for a sci-fi RTS game to have opponents like that- that is the purview of fantasy RPGs. It's very questionable that a Xel'Naga would be so powerful if the bulk of the Xel'Naga ships above Zerus were destroyed by the Overmind. The enemy already has an army of hybrids, what does it add to the story that he can rip worlds apart? It's just setting up Kerrigan using the magical spirit bomb to kill Voldemort.
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"Decent" story?
I don't know what made me laugh more - the smoochie-smoochie scenes at the beginning, the off-screen death of Raynor (ok admittedly this was more of a I-can't-believe-they're-using-THAT-tired-trope-facepalm moment, but puppyling made it funny, too), the "Kerrigan and minions" muppet show or the suddenly-Jurassic-Park shift where for some reason I was supposed to be running around the forest, killing quillboars and feeding a giant turtle, why the hell not.
I mean, I didn't seriously expect for them to return to Brood War dark-and-gritty, not after what they did with WoL but this storyline... I was half-expecting for Graham Chapman to appear anytime and stop the whole thing for being too silly.
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off-screen death of Raynor
Pretty sure it's that way for a reason.
As for Kerrigan & Raynor's kind of retconned romance, I'm pretty sure they wrote some books or something about it.
I'm not saying I didn't prefer the BW interactions, and I would've preferred if Raynor had a bit of a conflict forgiving Kerrigan instead of being the 100% moral hero, but they did put some sort of background in for the romance.
Feeding a giant turtle was game mechanics. There are tons of silly things in video games done to fit around a mechanic. Many video games have them. It's the same concept as the terrazine gas mission in WoL. Feeding the turtle meat when he's practically immortal and has thousands of years of DNA-copying high speed evolution going on is incredibly silly, but I like turtles so I'm going to let that one go.
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lol oh god I totally forgot having to feed the ancient zerg meat to awaken him xD. My god what were they thinking.
There's also the hilarious ending scene with Mengsk
Mengsk: "waahhahaha did you really think I didn't have something prepared for you Kerrigan! Nothing can stop me as long as I can press this button!"
*shock*
Kerrigan: "ughhhhAHHHHH >o<!"
Mengsk: "muhaha now di--"
*Jimmy grabs Mengsk*
Mengsk: "oh no one of the hundreds of thousands of troops that have invaded my stronghold! I didn't count on that, curses!"
What a shit end to a great villain -_-
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Could the artifact destroy all the Zerg in the city? Was he just saving it up to mock Kerrigan and then pop it, or did it run out of juice?
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On March 18 2013 16:51 HarryMcdoogle wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 16:33 Ghostcom wrote:On March 18 2013 16:27 HarryMcdoogle wrote:On March 18 2013 15:25 Gatesleeper wrote:
This is way back from Zoomacroom's post in the last thread, but while we're on the topic of retcons I wanted to clear this one up. Someone replied to this saying that this is not a retcon because the Tal'Darim were always portrayed as servants of the Xel'Naga. But it was established in HotS that they are now servants of Amon, and apparently we all know now that Amon =/= Xel'Naga, and is in fact on the opposite "side" of the rest of the Xel'Naga. If they were true worshippers of the Xel'Naga, wouldn't they be fighting AGAINST Amon? Cue flimsy rationalization: "Narud probably tricked the Tal'Darim into following him by saying he was a servant of the Xel'Naga."
Plus, even if they are and always were servants of Amon and not merely worshippers of the Xel'Naga, that doesn't explain why "Narud repeatedly commissioned Raynor to steal Xel'Naga artifacts *from* the Tal'Darim in WoL". What make's you think Amon isn't a Xel'Naga? They specifically state in the campaign he is (primal zerg missions I think). They also state he's a fallen Xel'Naga but I just interpreted that as it means he turned evil and broke away from the ways of his fellow Xel'naga. I think what he meant was that Amon does not represent the Xel'Naga after his fall. If someone is said to be serving the Xel'Naga it does not make much sense for them to be serving the "fallen" Xel'Naga. It is quite explicitly said that Amon is a fallen Xel'Naga in the Zerus part of the campaign - no need for interpretation. Fallen or not.. he's still Xel'Naga. We really have no back story on the Xel'Naga except they played a part in creating the protoss/zerg and what little we know about Amon and his betrayal. Questioning why the Tal'Darim worship Amon because he's a fallen Xel'Naga could never be answered because we don't know the back story of the Xel'Naga yet. The facts we know as of now are... Amon is Xel'Naga and that the Tal'Darim worship Xel'Naga. As of now everything fits. Unless I missed something? If you are implying that because he's considered a "Fallen Xel'Naga" he is not Xel'Naga anymore. I don't agree with that. Xel'Naga is a race of ancient beings. He just happens to be an evil one.
Sorry but that's like saying it makes sense for people who worship angels to worship Satan as well, because he is technically an angel.
It would make more sense to me if Amon was a representative of the Xel'Naga and not some renegade Satan figure, but I've been yelled at by multiple people in this thread that that is clearly not the case and Amon is definitely an entity whose objectives run counter to those of the Xel'Naga as a whole. The defenders of the story can't have this one both ways.
On March 18 2013 17:55 boxturtle wrote:
Could the artifact destroy all the Zerg in the city? Was he just saving it up to mock Kerrigan and then pop it, or did it run out of juice?
The Xel'Naga artifact is an all purpose plot hole insulator at this point. Kill Zerg, deinfestation, electro shock, it does whatever the plot needs it to do at any given moment.
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Feeding a giant turtle was game mechanics. There are tons of silly things in video games done to fit around a mechanic. Many video games have them. It's the same concept as the terrazine gas mission in WoL. Feeding the turtle meat when he's practically immortal and has thousands of years of DNA-copying high speed evolution going on is incredibly silly, but I like turtles so I'm going to let that one go.
I don't mind game mechanics interfering with the story. Ok, it's silly for blondie to ask for Kerrigan to basically create a Zerg base inside the spaceship, resources included, and it is silly for that general to send those giant battle cruisers one-by-one for them to be destroyed. You can let those things slide as a sort of a necessary compromise to make for fun missions. But when it comes to giant turtle, nope. No easy "well it's because of the gameplay" excuses allowed here.
The Zerg were originally an ancient Lovecraftian race. They were supposed to be a disturbing and decidedly un-human evil force set upon spreading and consuming the universe. Essentially a plague, a disease of galactic proportions. Which is what made them cool and in part what made Starcraft's original setting so dark and scary.
And now SC2 has turned them into talking dinosaurs. Peaceful talking dinosaurs who really just want to be let alone, graze foliage and occasionally bite each other to death. And they would be all just getting along, if not for that nasty mr. Amon coming down and stirring things up, shame on him.
So yes, it's all just a few steps away from a total parody. Which is the direction I would have actually preferred if they had taken. If you opted for silly, why stop half-way? 
What a shit end to a great villain -_-
Except he was never a "great villain". He was just a pragmatic leader who thought the end justifies the means. And he already got his comeuppance at the end of BW, when Kerrigan not only whooped his ass, but showed that she became just like Mengsk, the only difference being a) she was vastly more powerful and b) she was actually enjoying it. Only in WoL he suddenly became your average saturday-morning-cartoon villain.. and a pretty lousy one at that.
That was just one of the many things sadly missing from SC2 - the feeling that there are no clear protagonists and antagonists. Just a lot of factions fighting for their own motivations and beliefs.... As is kinda expected from an epic science-fiction story featuring an intergalactic war.
But noo... why not make it about a swimsuit model feeding a giant turtle! 
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I thought the story was all right, cheesy as hell but it had enough cool moments to keep me interested the whole time. This is mostly owed to the CG artists and voiceactors rather than the writers, though.
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Btw what happened to Nova?
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Dehaka: " I ____ essence. Me _____ essence _____ essence. ___ ______ collect essence____ read essence magazine! Essence does all except grow back right arms ._."
Ladies and gentlemen the most complex character of all time.
At least Abathur was cool. Felt like the only truly unique character in the campaign and even added a bit of Zerg backstory.
On March 18 2013 18:22 YyapSsap wrote:
Btw what happened to Nova?
Also this. Was disappointed we don't see her again outside of like the 2nd mission.
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Its like the writers forgot about nova. I thought there was going to be this nova vs kerrigan sort of relationship.. Actually just thinking about the SC2 story lines kills whats left of my BW memories.
Every mission was so enjoyable and epic like the assault on Augustrad and choosing to either shut down nuke silos or the battle cruiser fleet. Even the cut scenes in-game! Like that epic escape from Dugalle when the Hyperion makes the warp jump.
Sigh.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
retconning can be done well to enrich the universe. it's not well done in this case though. let's be real.
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Sorry this has probably been brought up a hundred times already, but it's hard to browse through all the lore stuff in this thread looking for the right answer.
What role did the Xel'Naga play in developing the zerg? The whole purity of form (protoss) vs purity of essence thing. How does that fit in with the Zerg pretty much evolving and coming into being on their own according to the tale of the primal zerg dude. The only influence the xel'naga had was when amon corrupted them?
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So what we've established so far is this:
1) The dialogue and storytelling of both HOTS and WoL suffers from poor writing and rushed sense of events and actions in the starcraft universe, and narrowly focuses too much on implicit character developments and too little on believeability and storytelling, explanations in the grand scheme of things.
2) HOTS story was worse than WoL, which wasn't too good to begin with.
3) Blizzard has decided to outsource most of the story into books and novels about the starcraft 2 story, instead of incorporating it into the game itself.. through some achieves or some sort of story portion inside the game itself.. we got little of that..
So if you haven't read most of the books throuroughly, you're missing out on the story, and the games themselves, won't make TOO much sense.
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The story was so good! One of the best stories of anything I Have seen so far
-All the interesting things we learn about the Zerg and all the new interesting zerg characters we get introduced to
-The way Kerrigan was stuck somewhere between being Sarah and being the Queen of Blades
-The development between Jim and Sarah
-How incredible the scenes looked!
I was so emotionally invested in this! They really made me care about the characters! When they claimed Jim to be dead I felt just like Sarah in that seen and for the first time actually did want Megnsk head on a platter! The scene with Warfield was brilliant too - her choice to kill Warfield before saving the soldiers was so interesting to me! The prison scene was just so heartfelt and I swear I had a tear coming down my cheek towards the ending of the game! The entire story was just so moving. Blizzard said they wanted us to understand how the Zergs are and why and that is exactly what I feel like I know now. The new characters did a great job each representing a part of what it means to be zerg. Evolution, obedience, and the connection to the swarm. Even the humans Valerian and Horner and great development in this. Also, every scene was a work of art! The music, the way it looked, the battles and the characters! It all blended together really well.
It's funny, I was actually considering making an appreciation thread for the campaign but of course the haters beat you to it. I can understand not liking a story but just keep it to yourself at least if you are gonna do it in a way this OP did – it’s just too obnoxious. The poll speaks for itself, despite the ridiculous bias in the OP, most people still enjoyed the story. All the people I know, who aren’t attempting to look cool on an internet page, were blown away by the story just like me.
I have a friend just like this, I went to see a movie with him one time, and I am never making that mistake again. Jesus Christ wannabe critics are so annoying. I wish the opening post would just be neutral because now it comes off as a hate thread when in actuality it’s nothing like that despite the OP’s attempts. Some might still jump the bandwagon unfortunately, but that doesn’t stop the rest of us to share our thoughts and feelings
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On March 18 2013 18:23 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:Dehaka: " I ____ essence. Me _____ essence _____ essence. ___ ______ collect essence____ read essence magazine! Essence does all except grow back right arms ._." Ladies and gentlemen the most complex character of all time. At least Abathur was cool. Felt like the only truly unique character in the campaign and even added a bit of Zerg backstory. Also this. Was disappointed we don't see her again outside of like the 2nd mission.
I found Dehaka obnoxious as fuck, and Abathur was like the coolest character.
Weird considering they're both voiced by the same guy :D
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EPT
