I’m agree with many points made in the op. And I applaud you for going into such depth.
If I may now add my own thoughts on the story. Of which there will probably be some overlap.
The Starcraft 2 storyline was just garbage in so many ways: Characters were not only inconsistent with what they were in Broodwar, but they (in particular, as mentioned in the op, Kerrigan) are inconsistent in simply this storyline.
Then you have the Xel’Naga artifacts that are all over the place. The Tal’Darim that have so little depth cardboard cutouts would have more character then them. (For reference the Tal’Darim do about two things in sc2. 1. They worship Xel’Naga. 2. They get mad at people and attack them. That is literally the character of the Tal’Darim in sc2, I cannot think of a single moment where they showed any depth. They were a walking excuse for Blizzard to say "You fought some Protoss as Terran.")
Massive retcons are one thing. Massive retcons to create huge, big chinned, english speaking, tribal aliens whose entire point in the story is to make Kerrigan more powerful and make-no-sense their way past a psi-disrupter, are quite another. (Which the op goes into very nice detail about. So I won’t repeat it here.)
And of course the characters, specifically Raynor, still throw around one liners like they’re candy. (“Change of plans!” is a notable offender. Though I think there were more in WoL) I can handle some cheesy/corny if it’s the right kind. So obviously there is room for personal taste in story, as there always is. But I really don’t know why they think this kind of dialogue could even resemble something good.
And then there are just massively weird things that make no sense. The characters of Raynor and Kerrigan don’t act like people, they act more like leaves drifting in whatever storyline the writers whims take them today. Raynor can apparently forget Kerrigan’s duplicity in BW and totally trust her, even while she murders millions more (if not billions) and goes on a mad quest for power and revenge. (Sound familiar?) Okay, I get it, he loved her. The op is right about his analysis of the whole thing. But let’s say I totally bought that he was in love with Kerrigan before she was abandoned.
However, if I was him, and I partially removed her Zerginess, it would take years for me to totally gain trust in her, even if she didn’t raid a facility at the beginning of the game with Zerglings, then as I mentioned, go on a quest for power and revenge, killing millions along the way. If that happened, and I had the events of BW in my mind, red lights would be flashing all over the place in my head. But he’s all like “Naw, it’s fine, let me help you kill Mengsk.”
I mean, yeah, Mengsk is bad. But is he really that bad? Raynor’s entire attitude towards Mengsk in sc2 is kind of weird. Especially when we consider that he went to some pretty extreme lengths in BW to save Mengsk. Yeah, he didn’t like he guy. In fact, he probably hated him. But killing him wasn’t at the top of his priority list. And somehow that changed after The Queen of Blades became the most powerful (known) force in the sector, and killed his best buddy? No sense, it makes no sense.
Once again, I bring up the line I just used in reference to Mengsk. “Is he really that bad?” It’s an important question for me. Because in my opinion, one bad man, does not justify taking over entire planets with the Zerg and killing Protoss because they might (rather justifiably) zap her into smithereens in the future. If it was just Kerrigan justifying herself this way, I might be fine. But it felt like Raynor was totally in on it too. Raynor! Probably the only good Terran in sc1, just decides that the ends justify the means? Maybe the planets Kerrigan took over were barren wastelands with no people on them, but I didn’t get that impression.
Rewinding the clock a bit, to WoL there was also the news. The news was occasionally amusing. But the overall question for that amusement was: “But at what cost!?” The cost in my humble opinion was making Mengsk appear less threatening. Some quotes, if it’s not too much trouble, from Blizzards own article on Mengsk, which can be found here.
“On top of simply trying to exterminate these rebels, Mengsk has also used propaganda to turn public opinion against them and paint their leader, Jim Raynor, as nothing more than a ruthless terrorist.”
“Through his oratorical mastery and firm control over the media, he has kept his past – and present – atrocities hidden from the public.”
Under what circumstances does letting a complete rogue reporter like Kate Lockwell run amok equal “firm control over the media”? Basically this is supposed to be one of Mengsk’s strongpoints, and he clearly has shaky control over the media at best. It severely diminishes how threatening he is. And as a result, he never felt like he was as powerful a villain as he should have been. In short, the funny news segments turned Mengsk into a joke.
P.s. Hopefully this post didn’t come across as too bitter, or mad. But as an aspiring writer I personally disapprove of the way blizzard has told their story. Yes it’s not a movie, yes it’s not a book. But you’d think they could at least piece together characters that made sense and were vaguely consistent. But it seems even that is beyond their writing ability. And even though a decent number of people say that BW story sucked, I’m not so sure. It’s certainly better than this pile of crap. I’ll tell you that much.
Also I apologize for the overuse of these babies () and italics. I just can’t help myself An extra apology if there were a large amount of typos/grammar mistakes.
Afterthoughts (Aka criticism that I’m not elaborating on, most likely due to laziness, and thus should probably be ignored). + Show Spoiler +
There were other problems, of course. Narud was a joke of an enemy, where Duran was never mentioned despite Stukov’s presence. (Which is another topic altogether. Luckily the op touches very nicely on this character.)
Then there’s the prophecy and the artifacts, which are taking the bad crystal collecting concept from BW (my least favorite story point in that game, btw) and making it even worse.
On March 21 2013 06:44 Splines wrote: An Excelent analysis! Well written.
There are however a lot of things I disagree with so let me post them here and see what you think. Like you, I've been a fan of Blizzard games for years. I never read any of the suplementary materials. I had my disallusion with WC3, then after careful analysis realized that the things I blamed that story for have always been present in Blizzard games but I was to young to understand.
Shouldn't Raynor be concerned about Kerrigan lapsing into old behavior of being the Queen of Blades, or at the very least concerned with all the Zerg in the facility now?
Maybe a little. But she send them back into the holding cells, makes it clear she purposly made sure there where no casualties and did it to mess with Valerian, something Raynor liked to do in WoL as well. No reason for him to freak out I'd say.
Honestly there is little to believe love was his motivator just like you said. However there is even less reason to believe guilt was his motivator. I'd go for the fact that Raynor is the 'knight in shining armor' type of guy and leave it at that. Although flying to a zerg infested planet partially occupied by dominion forces on the off-chance that his dream: 'The Dream' cutscene was actually a real vision is pretty damn extreme if not motivated by somthing as powerful as love.
Raynor's love for Kerrigan was not presented to the players very well in Brood War. This is a story problem that lies in BW not in SC2. Her feelings for him are presented a bit more clearly as she constantly leaves him alive and feels the need to justify her actions towards him which she does to nobody else. It is somewhat poor storytelling of BW.
I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
Woah, stop it right there! Tell me if you've hear this story before: protagonist lives happy with love interest. Villain kills/kidnaps love interest, protagonist goes have revenge. Love interest is only used as a motivator for the protagonist but serves no purpose other then a potential 'reward' for the protagonist. HotS is a gender-inversed version of a very typical somewhat sexist game story.
If Mario has a sexist story because he has to rescue a helpless woman, then a story were the woman rescues Mario can't also be sexist because she cannot live without the man. If you play it like that, you're always right.
Fact is, Kerrigan is a badass in the story and Raynor spends 90% of his time needing to get rescued (and this trend continues in the final mission). Kerrigan can solo almost every mission and never doubts her capability to defeat Mengsk while Raynor is quite wimpy in this campagin. I'm not seeing any disempowerment here at all.
The misconception about Kerrigans and Raynors characters in BW The 'kill you one day' quote been used a lot while critisising WoL and now HotS, however I feel this comes from a misunderstanding of Kerrigan and Raynors character.
Raynor We are introduced to Raynor as the 'hero' of the story. He does all the good guy things and is described as 'knight in shining armor'. As I mentioned before, he goes to Char, knowing it's dangers on the extremely unlikely chance he might be able to get Sarah back. This is a guy that will go to hell and back to rescue people, especially Sarah.
Kerrigan When we last see Sarah Kerrigan, the human, she is engaged with the Protoss. Why? "The Protoss are comming to destroy the entire planet not just the Zerg." She believes she is saving the people on Tarsonis. Even though the fall of Tarsonis would be victory for her side, she cannot accept that amount of collateral damage. But isn't the planet going to be wiped out by the Zerg lured by the Psi-Emitters? Yes, however Kerrigan believes: "Once we've dealt with the Protoss, we can do something about the Zerg. Arcturus will come around, I know he will".
Sarah 'dies' trying to protect her enemies because of her attempt to save innocent civilians.
Fast Foreward to her hatching from the crysalis. She slaughters Raynors men, her old companions, and leaves Raynor alive. This is THE pivitol moment in her characterisation. On the one hand she is shown to be completely different from the person I just described by casually murdering her old compatriots. On the other hand there is still some of her old personality left that makes her leave Raynor alive. From this moment on we, the players, are left wondering for each of her actions if it is her old personality, her zerg side, the overminds influence or possibly even her old personality but with more power. This makes her such an interesting character as we can never predict how she will act.
In Brood War she tries to convince everybody that she is back to her old self and it was all because of the will of the overmind. Remember this quote:
Let her go Zasz. The greatness of her spirit has been left to her; that the swarm might benefit from her fiery example. Fear not her designs for she is bound to me as intimately as any Cerebrate.
There is the implication that she still has free will although she is also bound to the Zerg. The notion that she only did what she did because of the Overmind forcing her, is one that we as players know to be false.
Raynor again Unlike Zeratul and Artanis (facepalm) Raynor doesn't buy it. He 'loves to believe she's on the level, but part of me just knows better'. Raynor has witnessed the slaughter of his men AND how she left him alive. He knows part of the Queen of Blades is still the Sarah he cared about and part of her is Zerg. He hopes that with the overmind gone, there is still enough Sarah left but is very suspicious. Then Kerrigan kills Fenix showing him that there is little of the woman he loved left, although her agitation at Raynors anger shows there is still some of it.
So what should we have expected from Raynor in WoL? From the above we should expect that Raynor no longer believes the Queen of Blades can find salvation and should be killed. What do we see him do in WoL?
He mourns Sarah as though she was dead and acts hostile towards the Queen of Blades. In short Raynor starts out acting exactly like we should expect based on his actions in Brood War. And because he is in no way capable of harming her, he goes after his other enemy, Acrturus instead.
Then the Artifact happens. This is were many people seem to misunderstand who Kerrigan was in BW. As I mentioned before, the genius of her character was that you never knew wether it was the 'real' Kerrigan or her Zerg part acting. Neither does Raynor. So when the option is presented to him that maybe, all the evil she did was only because of her Zerg influence and he can undo that influence, he can 'end' the Queen of Blades and get Sarah back. This is a maybe because it is also possible that the old Sarah 'was' in control and liked what she had become. She mentions this twice in SC1.
We don't know which and neither does Raynor. This is why the 'kill you one day' quote is so misunderstood. Raynor has proven to be the kind of guy that would go to Char headlong into the swarm on the small chance he might get Sarah back and he does this again. If he's right, the Queen of Blades will be 'dead' anyway, if he's wrong he dies. So Raynor goes all-in.
Raynor would never choose revenge on one entity over rescuing another.
Back to the OP
For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. He's a Dark Templar. They are assassins. She believes the Protoss are about to kill her and deny her her vengence on Mengsk. Zeratul is no pushover, she believes she's in for the fight of her life.
Zerg on Zerus. So Zerus went from vulcanic world to lush jungle world. Yup, that's a retcon. I believe the idea was that the Primals somehow got split up from the rest of the Zerg before the Overmind formed, thus being forgotten by the Overmind and never being part of the hive mind. Still, it's obvious they wanted a slighty different backstory for the Zerg and retconned a lot. You can think about this a lot, but ultimately it doesn't make sense and never will. Kind of like the backstory of the UED.
I also wondered why they in the cinematic had to show Mengsk and that he had acquired the artifact
Foreshadowing. Called a Genius Bonus on TV Tropes. I missed it the first time too. Guess I'm not a genius.
Stukov Let's not spend too much words on him. His infestation story was written by other writers. Blizzard didn't want him in the canon originally (or at least were not sure if to include him) but fans kept asking about him on lore panels so they included him as a bonus for those fans. Lazy and cheap or rewarding your most loyal lore fans? Can't please them all I guess. I was neutral about the whole affair.
The Hybrids are also finally revealed to have a purpose, in that they siphon off (and store?) the psionic powers of others in order to gather this energy to revive/awaken/free, do something for Amon (how is this transferred?). This is also the purpose of the artifact. It may have destroyed most of the Zerg infestation of the Queen of Blades (wait, most? see ahead), but its purpose in Wings was to take her psionic energy and apply it to Amons rebirth.
Zerg don't have psionic powers. They use the power of the void, like the Dark Templar. So the artifact is void-power-related I guess. Then again, that contradicts miss Hanson's assumption about the artifact. She DID pick up that the artifact was YOUNGER then the Xel'naga, implying somebody ELSE made it for a DIFFERENT PURPOSE. I admit I don't really care if the space-magic is lore-tight but there's more elements to this then in your post so I suggest more study is required should anybody care.
Rescuing Jim Raynor. I already explained how I disagree with your view on their relationship. In my view, this is the curcial moment. Raynor banked everything on the artifact removing all her Zerg tendancies. Seeing her back as Queen of Blades volentarily changes his hopes that the artifact could change everything and implies that killing Fenis WAS Sarah's own choice after all and not the Zerg influence. This breaks all his hopes. Kerrigans offer to let him kill her confuses him however, so he leaves not knowing what to think.
As Raynor tries to come to terms with what he's witnessed, Valerian negotiates with Kerrigan for the civilians and she agrees. The old Queen of Blades would never have agreed. Because of this, Raynor helps her out in the final mission. For Raynor and ourselves, Kerrigan's true personality is left ambigous. Again, Raynor is left wondering if THIS Queen of Blades can be trusted but her actions during the assault on Korhal speak in her favor.
Psi Destroyer More of the Primal-Zerg-Split-Before-Overmind stuff.
I thought it was cool it was included. Normally in stories you'd have a tool as powerful as the Psi-Disruptor that never get's mentioned again after it's used. Here it all comes back. This gives me hope that the Shakuras Temple is going to be mentioned again. For a videogame this is a lot more coherent world building then usual.
The Artifact I found it easy to believe Arcturus would wait with using the Artifact untill after he taunted Kerrigan personally. That and using it only when Kerrigan is right next to it would decrease the chance of her escaping. Remember he cares nothing for his men. If this gave him a slight advantage he would do it.
I also don't get why people say it does something different now. It shoots lightning. The lightning destroys Zerg or Zerg parts of people. Considering it burns the Zerg to a crips in All-In I'd expect it to hurt a lot when it changed Kerrigan back the last time and does so again now.
Has the quality of the story really changed since Brood War? Do you remember this mission?
In it, Raynor and Fenix agree to attack the neutral nation of Kel-Moria, steal their minerals and kill their security guards. Fenix even mocks them for being 'greedy' because they stay out of the war and focus on economy instead, all the while stealing their stuff. Worse still, Fenix shoots a hole in their command centers so queens can enter and invest the miners allowing them to be used as involentary suicide bombers in the next mission. Woah. That's some seriously dickish move right there!
If you can accept this as canon, without feeling that Fenix' and Raynors characters have been ruined forever, you can accept anything in SC2. This is the most character-breaking moment in the franchise by far. If this kind of disregard for storytelling was in SC2, the shitstorm would have been uncontrolable.
Conclusion On the one hand, I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about the story of Starcraft which fuel a lot of contempt for the story unnessarily.
On the other hand, I feel that people have very unrealistic expectations. A similar analysis of BW or even vanilla would reveal so many terrible story elements as I showed with just 1 mission.
On the third hand, the story isn't that great. Don't think I'm defending the story as a zealous fanboy. I even admit I hate the whole Amon plotline. It sounded cool in BW but in hindsight, I cannot imagine any way for it to play out that I would really like to see. I just don't like the black&white thinking that makes people put BW on a pedestal and SC2 in the garbage bin. SC1 certainly had some beautiful english lines that SC2 is sorely missing.
On the fourth hand, Blizzard has changed the way they write stories. From WC1 to HotS, Blizzard has slowly moved away from the 'nations at war / every mission is a region on the map to conquer' to a more personal story. It's very possible this style does not suit you and therefore newer Blizzard games will not be appealing to you. If you look at all their RTS games, you can see this trend slowly happening. That, I believe, should be a real discussion. Which do you like better?
Thank you for reading.
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Spot on Splines! I feel like the OP approached the story with a few incorrect assumptions about the original storyline, as well as rushed through Kerrigan's character development, resulting in the belief that she is "behaving out of character".
To expand on this a bit more.
If Kerrigan had been left in her Brood War state, being the Queen of Blades, she basically turns into a one dimensional character. She's evil, she's powerful and cunning, and she's out to take over the universe. Her arc throughout starcraft 1 has basically been about her becoming more powerful and cunning.
So instead of Blizzard telling a story of "Kerrigan kills A, B, C" they decided to create a character who's slightly more interesting than "Evil All-powerful Villain #257". By using the Xel Naga artifact arc, they bring back her humanity, and let her contemplate being the "Queen of Blades" (How silly would it be for the BW Kerrigan to say 'Hey, I don't like killing people anymore, lets stop, party's over guys send all the zerglings home')
So Kerrigan's first thought is "Kill Mengsk", followed by "Save Jim". Now these decisions are made by the "New Gettysburg" Kerrigan. She's angry that she's lost everything (Not to mention the people she tried to save) due to Mengsk's betrayal. Also, she tries to show how she's different from Mengsk, by saving Raynor.
I do agree, that this wasn't very clear, that Kerrigan wanted to show her difference from Mengsk, or why she instantly believes Mengsk and tries to save Raynor. It would've been much more interesting had there been more deception definitely. Or if Kerrigan had doubted whether Mengsk really had Raynor and wasn't trying to trick her.
I think the biggest issue for this game, is that it was too short for some players. Most of the missions could be beaten within 10-20 minutes, some taken like a minute to beat, which made the story move too fast, and harder to follow. However, the game was obviously designed for players to take maybe an hour or 2 for some of the later missions (including restarts) so it was paced accordingly. Basically the campaign was designed for Bronze/Silver players in mind, so higher level players moved at a much faster pace than Blizzard expected.
And of course, the writing is on the level of an original Sci Fi channel movie, or Creature Feature, where the plot is only there to distract you until you get to see your ultralisks rip marines apart. I hope this helps clear up peoples misconceptions, as well as their grand expectations for the game.
I haven't even bothered playing HOTS at all, but my feeling about WOL and of course D3 is similar to what you wrote there. Thank you for such a detailed analysis.
Great post OP and I agree with you. What bothers me mostly on SC2 is the inconsistency with SC1 and BW story and established cannons.
I loved the purity of essence of the zerg and know is just an instant darwanian evolution thru food. So much for Xel'Naga Inteligent Design.
I wanted to see again how it was to be a zerg, to work with one mind for one purpose like with the overmind. Instead this campaign focuses on humanizing the savage and single minded zerg... And the brand of Kerrigan humanizing is just 'do not eat everything, and plan for the future'.
They made zerg into savage tribes, I hope on legacy of the void they do not make the protoss into just snobby conservatives.
Characterization was beyond awful. All they need is Nova to be into Raynor and we would have Twilight in space with reversed genders.
The antagonists in this game, oh wait there weren't any antagonists it was just kerrigan butchering everybody in an emotional rage. Going infested drove her baby-crazy IMO.
It's a great post, carefully analyzed, well worded. I really liked it. But don't agree with it, don't think it was as contradicting as it is said to be. I feel people keep making the story as if it has only one outcome or one explanation, while it can have paths and open to a certain degree of interpretation. Oh they didn't tell us they were in love? OMG then it is not plausible or is wrong. Im missing info! Some gaps exists and they leave it open for people to interpret it. Also, there's some of the feelings between Kerrigan and Jim explained in Liberty's Crusade. That's very telling about the feelings they had for each other.
I just feel everyone is hard-set on not liking the approach Blizzard took. And that's fine, Blizz messed up afew things in the game. But people are hammering on the story abit too hard. Just be open minded and fill the gaps and everything is fine.
Time elapses between events, there's change both physically and emotionally within the characters and places. Things don't just stay the same. Some things arent revealed to us yet. Maybe they will later on.
People have to understand also that SC2 revolves around the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan. So it stands to reason that they'll show the humanistic and emotional responses of Kerrigan as she loses Raynor, then seeks revenge. That's the push she needed to become Zerg again, but free of Amon's presence now. It was needed, they sort of told us that in WoL.
I just hope LotV helps people see the light and stop being so critical of a story that's based on linear missions and a few words off an instruction manual.
I can't help but feel that Blizzard wanted the people who are after a deep, long lasting, affecting experience to play the multiplayer; and the people who want a quick hard blast through some crazy fun times to play the campaign. You got it the wrong way round, dude
I think for people that have followed Starcraft longer there seems to be a lot of distaste for the story in Heart of the Swarm. I've only been playing Starcraft since Wings of Liberty and so for me Heart of the Swarm seems and feels like a logical continuation. But given what I've read from this thread and others, it seems like if you followed the earlier versions then this story seems to feel wrong and off.
It really seems that no one in the Blizzard team cared to do a thorough official-lore check of the story. Which is really sad since there is actually very little, game manuals and ingame dialog of 2 games. They could have leaved the whole game almost the same but just with some alterations to address the facts already stablished. For example: -Jim and Kerrigan. Just a couple of dialog lines (even in game or just ones after clicking the units one too many times) that had those two remembering some date in Tarsonis, or a passionate night right before the betrayal of Mensk would do wonders to give backstory to this forced love story -Zerus description. Just make it an ash world, an ash forest even, just paint everything black. And for the primordial zerg, just make then insectlike instead of beast like. All this retcon into huge mammal like beasts is entirely unnecesary since zerg already look more insect with the multiple eyes and chitinous plates. Primordial Ultralisk should be like horned beetles, not some gorilla. And roaches are just exactly the same. -Kerrigan attacking zeratul. Have zeratul just before the cutscene, tell kerrigan of all the atrocities she did as the queen of blades, so she feels threatened and compeled to attack, instead she just attacks blindly an enemy that she is supposed to not even remember.
This are just some examples that make me think they just do not care about the story.
I also enjoyed the HotS campaign, I didn't play BW story as seriously, but I do remember most of the SC story. and I agree almost 100% with the OP.
There was no evidence of a love relationship. There are massive holes in the story, and I think that even compared to WoL story, HotS is bad. The fact that HotS's story is better than probably 90% of the games I am going to play this year doesnt mean that I am "OMGWTFOP!!!"
SC and SC: BW story's pulled you in. You didn't listen to the character dialogue because of an achievement, but because it actually added something.
I think that developers have kind of gone "well, since we can make them listen to it, with uninterruptible cut-scenes, or silly achievements, lets cut down on quality".
I must also admit that the HotS videos have had less of an effect of me than War 3's intro video. Even the opening cinematic for HotS was cool. But it wasn't as :O as a grunt and a knight going at it on a grassy battlefield, with that monologue and the story.
Since it was a dream state, I almost would have preferred a single zergling drawing in two marines into the mouth of a nydus worm, also with a monologue (use zeratul for something) and then have them be picked up by the queen of blades and watch countless zergs run past, and then queue the city scene with the vikings, etc.
That opening cinematic did less for the story of HotS than their previous games, imho
On March 21 2013 09:17 InsidiA wrote: Belial, Zurvan thing was so obvious
And the mission where you use drones to harvest biomass from dead animals while the primal zerg try to stop you is an exact copy of a Wings mission where you harvest some kind of gas with SCVs and the Tal'Darim try to stop you. All proves my point that they simply didn't make an effort and tried to get away with as little as possible.
The Overmind is (at the time) the most powerful and psionic being out there. Aiur is the homeworld of the Protoss, with billions of them there and an untold amount of defenses. Perhaps he needs some sort of anchor to this incredibly well-defended and psionic-inhabited planet to have a firm hold on the planet? It is entirely plausible and doesn't even require the mental back-flips that making SC2 consistent does to understand why it might be reasonable for it to be difficult for the Overmind to just auto-invade Aiur.
I mean yea, we could even grant you that it's a little convoluted or potentially unnecessary. But please explain how this is comparable to any of the absolutely ridiculous plot holes or terrible writing that we see from SC2.
I brought up the dt's because they were a real threat to the cerebrates so there might be others unknown to him lurking on Aiur (with an untold amount of defenses.) Why the fuck would I go willingly to the most dangerous place in the known universe for me if I had a safe backup plan: Sit there and let the cerebrates do the work? Let alone the fact that the protoss were not broken by the time the overmind entered their world. I will also not go with you into speculations as why he would need the crystal/temple. It is not told to me in the campaign and it's not my task to fill the holes the writers left there. As it stands both missions need further explanations or are highly unreasonable.
I choose this example because I thought it was a quite obvious example of bad storywriting but there are others. (the whole BW: Protoss campaign is basically a quest for crystals. to activate a temple. from the xel'naga. to kill zerg. which landed undetected. on the homeworld of the dts.)
I guess it comes down to personal preferences if you are more willing to forgive the SC/BW plot in comparison to the WoL/HotS plot. But to make a black and white statement like BW was the culmination of storytelling is clouded judgement.
I think you are missing the point. People are not saying that Brood War was perfect, they are saying that it was good. Of course Brood War had some weak plot points, such as the Overmind going to Aiur before the Protoss are defeated, Aldaris not telling anyone what he knew about Raszagal, or really most of the second Protoss campaign. But that really doesn't make Starcraft 2 any better, nor does it detract from the actual strong points of the Brood War storyline - indeed, people don't talk about Artanis and Zeratul turning crystals into a nuke when asked what they liked in Brood War.
Incidentally, I find quite telling that lots of people answer "Brood War is better" not by saying that SC2 is great, but that Brood War was bad.
It annoys me to no end, how people defend the SC2 script and dialogue...
Yes, SC/BW, might've had the same half-cheesey and simplistic STORY, but what it ALSO had was excellent dramatic elements, dialogue, presentation, excellent script with excellent exposition by its characters.
Why is this so important?
Because it means that you can take basically ANY fucking story, and make it great, make it believable, as long as the WAY in which the story is told, is solid, engaging, dramatic and intellectually challenging to the audience.
Why are tarentino's movies so good?
The stories of Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, True Romance... all movies with relatively basic stories right? Some drugdealers, some bad guys, some good, and it all goes wrong, and there's a few love making scenes and shit like that...
But what makes these movies so excellent, is the focus on the WAY in which the stories are told. Through dialogue, presentation, twists and turns, and deeper characterization and motives of their minds, makes it more believable, and FAR more engaging to the viewer.
Comparing movies with games is interesting, because both mediums try to tell stories, interactively. Why can't games borrow more narrative techniques from movies? Or hell, even form the fucking books.
On March 21 2013 16:58 AztecTemplar wrote: It's a great post, carefully analyzed, well worded. I really liked it. But don't agree with it, don't think it was as contradicting as it is said to be. I feel people keep making the story as if it has only one outcome or one explanation, while it can have paths and open to a certain degree of interpretation. Oh they didn't tell us they were in love? OMG then it is not plausible or is wrong. Im missing info! Some gaps exists and they leave it open for people to interpret it. Also, there's some of the feelings between Kerrigan and Jim explained in Liberty's Crusade. That's very telling about the feelings they had for each other.
I just feel everyone is hard-set on not liking the approach Blizzard took. And that's fine, Blizz messed up afew things in the game. But people are hammering on the story abit too hard. Just be open minded and fill the gaps and everything is fine.
Time elapses between events, there's change both physically and emotionally within the characters and places. Things don't just stay the same. Some things arent revealed to us yet. Maybe they will later on.
People have to understand also that SC2 revolves around the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan. So it stands to reason that they'll show the humanistic and emotional responses of Kerrigan as she loses Raynor, then seeks revenge. That's the push she needed to become Zerg again, but free of Amon's presence now. It was needed, they sort of told us that in WoL.
I just hope LotV helps people see the light and stop being so critical of a story that's based on linear missions and a few words off an instruction manual.
First of all
Also, there's some of the feelings between Kerrigan and Jim explained in Liberty's Crusade. That's very telling about the feelings they had for each other.
See the op’s argument about content outside the games. One of the critical parts of storytelling is that something should be able to stand on it’s own. (Obviously things like the individual books in trilogies don't technically stand on their own, but the trilogy itself should) And if you make a game that requires people to go read side books, you’ve already failed.
I mean, maybe it’s partly SC1's fault. SC1 wasn’t perfect as Splines pointed out. (Though in my opinion it was good despite it’s flaws, whereas SC2 has more bad stuff, and no redeeming qualities. But that’s another can of worms.)
People have to understand also that SC2 revolves around the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan.
There’s a writers podcast called Writing Excuses, done by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and Mary Robinette Kowal. In it they’ve often mentioned making "promises" to the reader, this is a very important concept as far as the transition from SC1 into SC2 goes.
Basically as you begin your story it makes an impression on the reader (or in this case the player). Unmentioned “promises” where the reader slowly infers from the tone (amongst many other things) at the start and onwards, and expects the story to move along the general path of this tone, perhaps with some deviations, maybe some well foreshadowed twists that aren’t too far off the path. It may seem complicated to pull off as a writer, but at the end of the day, all that’s required is consistency. And paying attention to what you’ve done previously in the story. (There's more to promises than just tone. But I would take forever to go over all it's aspects, and as such I'll hope this is enough.)
So basically to use an extreme, and rather strawman like example: Story starts out like really dark, blood, undead, torture devices, gray or outright evil characters. Then, suddenly, halfway through the story . . . rainbows, flowers, happy people in happy land! Everything in fiction makes promises. The Teletubbies aren’t going to pull out axes and start murdering each other, Gandalf isn’t going to start saying “fuck” and James Bond isn’t going to talk like he’s in a Shakespear play. Once again, I’m using very ridiculous and extreme examples. Hopefully I've gotten the point of "promises" across. But there it is. Back to SC2.
You kind of say part of it yourself. SC2 revolves the main characters and their choices. So far Raynor and Kerrigan. Now these aren’t just plain old main characters like they were in SC1. No, they’re viewpoint characters now. We see everything in WoL and HotS through their journey. In SC1 they’d fairly often disappear, only to reappear later in the story. Is this that big a deal? Does this ruin the story? No. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but already there’s a shifting of perspective. And already the promises of a more wide angle shot of the story like we had in BW are slowly draining away.
But in SC1, what was it about? What was the tone? (From my own impression of the game) It had a dark tone, it was about the Zerg consuming, treachery, ignorance, backstabbing and selfish motives, highlighted now and then by the heroic efforts of a few. It was about the races, the wars, the factions, the struggles. There was never even a mention of romance. At best, there's extremely vague hinting.
What is SC2 about? It’s about Jim Raynor, Sara Kerrigan and their relationship. And finally it’s about Amon. Yes, of course there are still the leftover elements from the first game, and I'm looking at the stories from a slightly different angle, but the focus has unquestionably shifted. The primary elements we remember from SC1/BW have vanished. The tone has changed it's tune.
Gaps and interpreting is all well and good. I’d have zero problems if Jim and Sara had shacked up and were totally in love before she turned into a Zerg. (And to clarify. SC1 is still exactly the same in this example. We wouldn’t know this happened for sure unless we play SC2 or read novels.) My problem is when it magically becomes the focus of the story. If you play BW and then SC2. It comes out of no where. And since you should be telling the story strictly through these two games, it simply doesn’t fly with me.
You can't make such a massive plot point hinge on something so foreign to the original game, while also seemingly discarding bucketloads of stuff from SC1, and having the characters seemingly act extremely out of character, while having serious forms of amnesia. (Of which only Kerrigan's was canon I think. But even in WoL and she was the QoB she didn't act like she did in BW.)
The Root of Things?
As far as our viewpoint characters go, the relationship is perhaps the single most important thing in the SC2 for them. This isn't the plot we were promised. We were promised Jimmy's revenge. That, I think, is the reason people constantly bring up the whole "I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan." moment in Broodwar. It was the climax of their relationship in Broodwar. (Bwahaha, sounds dirty. Whatever.) People had been waiting over ten years with the promise that Jim motherfucking Raynor was going to kill Kerrigan. Obviously there was other things going on in the story, like there always was with Starcraft. We were promised the Hybrids, as well as some other things. But the thing is. The Hybrids didn't capture us emotionally the same way Kerrigan's betrayal did. That kind of stung. And When Jim promised to hunt her down. We wanted to go with him. But nope, suddenly he's in love with a girl we never really knew he was in love with and there's a convenient artifact to cure her. And oh, what's this? She's the only one who can save the galaxy? You mean Raynor couldn't even kill her if he wanted to? The revenge we were promised for Kerrigan killing half the cast of Starcraft? Gone.
And yes, things don’t stay the same, they do change. But in order to make a good story, it’s your job as a writer to make sure it forms a satisfying cohesive whole. Something I personally believe Blizzard has completely failed to do. Partially because of BW/SC1? Perhaps. But if they knew their stuff they should have realized the problems they’d be facing. (they had like ten years to mull it over.)
And this is just another one of the many things I think is wrong with the story in this game.
I didn't mean for this post to be so long. And sorry if it seems like I'm directing hostility at you. I think your post is totally valid, even if I disagree, and I started talking to other comments in the thread, as well as, perhaps, myself. Apologies if my whole "promises" spiel was condescending or patronizing. It was not my intent. And I have a distinct possibility of being wrong. Not only on the definition of these "promises" but also in my conclusions on the story.
On March 21 2013 06:04 Emzeeshady wrote: I had no clue people cared so much about single player. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
I had no clue people didn't care. It's probably nostalgia of the superior theme & storytelling of SC1/BW that caused people like myself to facepalm repeatedly throughout the collage of cheesy moments based on trash script and random retcon events that comprised the HoTS campaign. Sad but not at all surprised to see ActivisionBlizzard rape the SC legacy and further alienate the core community by again lowering both target audience bar and standards of story quality to below that of 'Twilight'.
@OP Thank you for this read. Aligns somewhat with my non-verbalized grief during the new campaign playthrough. Luckily and above all there is multiplayer!
While the original Starcraft doesn't really show they are in love, it certainly doesn't show that they are not in love. Jim cares about Kerrigan, and we just don't know to what extent. Also kerrigan is a psychic so she doesn't really have to converse her feelings out loudly.
When Sarah finds out that Jim is dead she goes into a rage, but then immediately breaks down emotionally. This is supposed to be the turning point in the game, but there's something here that that Anita Sarkeesian is exploring in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games videos that I wanted to mention (I don't agree with everything she says, but there are a number of important things she talks about). I'm noting this because the emotional breakdown and lack of fortitude in the character development of Kerrigan at this moment seems to disempower her a lot, and subverts the idea that Kerrigan was one of the best ghosts in all of the Koprulu sector.
She's not been a ghost for quite a long time now. Jim was the only one who could still see her human side, pretty much everyone else wants to see her burned. Him getting taken away from her means she's all alone in the galaxy. That's a pretty good reason to be sad.
For no apparent reason, Kerrigan is pissed to see Zeratul and initiates a fight. Wait, why? Sarah Kerrigan as a human never met Zeratul, so why is she so angry at him and starts the fight? Wasn't it Kerrigan that was always manipulating Zeratul to do her dirty work in Brood War? Didn't she even force Zeratul kill his own Matriarch? Shouldn't this be reversed? Oh right, it's because it's an excuse for her and Zeratul to fight again (oooo pretty), except that in makes no sense. What makes even less sense is what happens next...
Zeratul is a master assassin, last time they met he chopped off one of her blades... Also she just destroyed all protoss on Khaldir so it is save for her to assume he is after her. Him randomly appearing on her ship just scared the shit out of her, so it was a fight or flight reaction and she obviously chose to fight.
-orignal manual zerg backstory- So in looking over this material and understanding, a number of questions and possible outcomes immediately become impossible, or directly contradictory to this source material. These include the separate evolution of the Zerg, and even how they take the essence of others (in fighting, which is not what a parasitic organism does), any of Amons alterations, plans, or side experiments, the ancient spawning pool and the narrative treatment of is as a primordial and naturally indigenous thing, Zerus being a lush Triassic-like world, Zerg having psionic abilities and Primal Zerg not having a psychic link, and a host of other smaller problems surrounding these more primary of issues.
The Xelnaga experiments happened ages ago. They altered a species of worms to make them adapt and assimilate other species. In the end the whole overmind structure with psionic links was made to prevent internal strife like what happened with their failed experiment, the protoss. The overmind called some space fairing creatures and eventually left the planet with his swarm. How is it not possible that some of the original genetically altered zerg worms survived, and evolved over thousands of years when the swarm was absent? These worms are not part of the overmind-zerg and therefore are not bound by this psionic link. And all the genetic experiments could have easily turned a lava world into a jungle world over a long time period, a jungle is the epitome of a biotope after all.
The love story never existed in Star 1
Meh, it was never denied either.
Kerrigan becomes the Queen Bitch of the Universe, and proceeds to kill billions of humans and turned countless worlds into smoldering piles of ash. Death and destruction includes the fall of Aiur and Protoss society, the death of Tassadar, Stukov, Raszagal, Fenix, Duke, DuGalle, and countless others. As Fenix and Raynor were close friends and comrades, and Fenix is now dead, Jim swears that the last thing he'll ever do is kill Kerrigan.
Fenix and Raynor being close friends has no backstory in SC1 either. They were respected allies, but if there was a really personal friendship? And in the end of WoL, he does kill the Queen of Blades, by de-infesting her with the artifact.
If, in the event that they did somehow fall in love on Antiga Prime or Tarsonis, all the murderous backstabbing and wanton destruction between then and now precludes Raynor having any kind of warm feelings for her now, or makes him at the very least apprehensive towards her.
This was the Queen of Blades, an altered being created by the (corrupted) overmind. It is different from Kerrigan in essence, as is shown in several talks with Abathur where he mentions the Queen of Blades as a seperate creature with a different structure.
The convoluted and contradictory nature of the artifact shows leanings towards (in a specific light) the idea that Kerrigan should have been killed on Char and not simply de-infested. Additionally however, understanding the psychic link of the Zerg, the artifact should never have de-infested Kerrigan to begin with (perhaps only severs her link to the Zerg).
Yeah mystic artifacts are pretty lame, but SC1 was full of them aswell. (khaydarin crystals etc)
The Primal Zerg not actually being Zerg also precludes the possibility that Kerrigan becomes again a Zerg (ignoring the lore and following this most recent retcon).
The new kerrigan isn't really Zerg in the traditional way, she is now 'pure'. Whatever that means is unknown, but it's a really powerful psionic creature different from the Queen of Blades from SC1, Abathur also states something like this.
In the end, you bring up a lot of things as if they were facts why the story is so bad, while in fact they are just a subjective and selective interpretation of the lore or backstory. Sure the story is cheesy and I didn't like it either that it focused so much on a few characters, and there are some stupid plotholes, but it certainly wasn't really bad. I enjoyed playing through it.
I feel like I should take a second to just say thanks to a number of people in this thread who have tried to be thoughtful about their discussing this review and the story in general, without resorting to ad hominem attacks. I may not agree with some of the analyses here because of my understanding and perspective, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.
EPT
An extra apology if there were a large amount of typos/grammar mistakes.
