EPTHeart of the Swarm: An Empire, or a Menace? - Page 18
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Novacute
Australia313 Posts
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magicallypuzzled
United States588 Posts
tldr I'll never get back the time you wasted I hope your proud of yourself User was warned for this post | ||
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EAGER-beaver
Canada2799 Posts
But again, I can excuse if there's a giant change and the story of sc vs sc2 gets completely retconned, so sc2 stands alone, but what I cannot forgive are the shallow caricatures the main characters have been turned into and the over used plot devices told to tell a dumbed down, and boring story. I'm going have to play through the original starcraft and BW campaigns again now just to get that nasty WOL and HOTS taste out of my mouth. EDIT: I'm pretty saddened to see that most of the responses to the OP are thinly veiled tldr; comments  I'm going to do a follow up post once I've played through the orignal sc and BW campaigns to see if sc2's brand of story telling really is that bad, or that I've simply matured in the intervening 10 year gap between sc1 and 2 so my expectations are unrealistically high, or maybe I'm just looking at sc1's campaign with rose tinted glasses. | ||
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Thingdo
United States186 Posts
A lot of games barely manage to make their plot coherent, let alone have things like understandable character motivations, and yet I really don't hear a lot of complaints about them. Modern Warfare 2 for example had plot elements that made almost no sense whatsoever, and yet I never hear anyone criticizing its story line. I've played several other games that had stories that were awful, but nobody seems to call them out. Whenever its a game by Blizzard though, everyone seems to freak out and talk about how terrible their writers are. I'd suppose I'd attribute this to 2 main things: 1. Hating on Blizzard has been "the cool" thing to do on the Internet since WoW became immensely popular. 2. The community on Team Liquid in particular is extremely negative about just about everything. I really don't come to this site that much anymore because almost every thread I visit is just people complaining about everything. If its a thread about story, people talk about how the story is the worst thing ever written. If its a thread about balance, people talk about how Blizzard is run by retards who don't understand balance at all. If its a thread about a tournament, people complain about how the tournament is run terribly. Doesn't much seem to matter what the topic is, this community will find reasons to hate it. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
Modern Warfare 2 had a crappy story, but so what? Does that mean that every game now can dismiss the possibility of having a good story? Also, if you think everything the community creates is inherently negative, then there's really nothing to do for you but hope you can overcome your own bias. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On March 23 2013 03:04 Thingdo wrote: I don't really understand why people seem to single Blizzard out for bad storytelling. The stories in the last few games haven't been masterpieces by a long shot, but go look at the stories for some other games that are out there. A lot of games barely manage to make their plot coherent, let alone have things like understandable character motivations, and yet I really don't hear a lot of complaints about them. Modern Warfare 2 for example had plot elements that made almost no sense whatsoever, and yet I never hear anyone criticizing its story line. I've played several other games that had stories that were awful, but nobody seems to call them out. Whenever its a game by Blizzard though, everyone seems to freak out and talk about how terrible their writers are. I'd suppose I'd attribute this to 2 main things: 1. Hating on Blizzard has been "the cool" thing to do on the Internet since WoW became immensely popular. 2. The community on Team Liquid in particular is extremely negative about just about everything. I really don't come to this site that much anymore because almost every thread I visit is just people complaining about everything. If its a thread about story, people talk about how the story is the worst thing ever written. If its a thread about balance, people talk about how Blizzard is run by retards who don't understand balance at all. If its a thread about a tournament, people complain about how the tournament is run terribly. Doesn't much seem to matter what the topic is, this community will find reasons to hate it. No, it's because their prior stories have been significantly better. Of course SC/BW, WC3, and D2 didn't have great stories by any means, but they were passable and had great atmosphere. SC2 and D3 have horrible writing that is completely inconsistent with the already established lore and terrible scripts that violently remove you from the immersion. | ||
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squanzo
68 Posts
If you're playing SC2 or D3 for the story then I don't want your opinion on anything. User was warned for this post | ||
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Whoranzone
Germany330 Posts
I bought the game just for a couple rounds of multiplayer. This is what Blizzard titles are. | ||
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tsuxiit
1305 Posts
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GoodSirTets
Canada200 Posts
Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story. | ||
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striderxxx
Canada443 Posts
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Damnight
Germany222 Posts
On March 20 2013 22:47 Crisium wrote: I completely agree with you on the Raynor - Kerrigan relationship. They merely flirted in StarCraft Episode 1, and in Episode 2 Kerrigan graciously let Raynor escape Char instead of killing him. As for Broodwar, in Episode 6 they grudgingly worked together but Jim was distrusting of her the entire time. And once her betrayal was revealed, he promised twice to kill her. That's the full extent of their relationship in StarCraft and Broodwar But now they are in love... The book "Queen of Blades" Expands on it alot. I went into WoL thinking they they were madly in love, but broken apart. Atleast that´s what I took away from that book.... Also if you don't read the shortstory or the books around the Lore it's actually really hard to grasp the importance of certain events. It feels like that a lot of people aren't actually fully informed. Most I feel only played the game, but did not read anything nor did they play through the campaign multiple times.... We can argue that that shouldn't be necessary, but oh well. | ||
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Eventine
United States307 Posts
On March 23 2013 03:58 GoodSirTets wrote: In broodwar the story was focused around the plot and the doings of the characters. Because of this focus, people could get past the cheesy dialogue. In wings and HoTS they made a huge mistake of having the emphasis and story complete revolve around the undeveloped, shallow, and stupidly inconsistent characters of Jim & Kerrigan. The story is pretty much non existant. Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story. Did you actually play through the campaign? There's a story about about a son rebelling against his father. There's a story about a man traveling the universe on a seemingly hopeless mission to return some sort of purpose to his life. There's a story about a looming threat that threatens to wipe out the races. There's a story about a woman struggling between her desire for vengeance and her morality. There's quirky side stories like Matt and Mira. There are plenty of story lines. If you dislike the main characters, well there's nothing that can be done to help you there. But if you fail to notice the many story lines that have happened in WoL and HotS, then you might want to consider replaying the campaigns. I don't understand why threads like these exist. It creates partisanship in the community. There isn't any purpose besides, this is what I think, agree with me. | ||
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251
United States1401 Posts
On March 23 2013 03:58 GoodSirTets wrote: In broodwar the story was focused around the plot and the doings of the characters. Because of this focus, people could get past the cheesy dialogue. In wings and HoTS they made a huge mistake of having the emphasis and story complete revolve around the undeveloped, shallow, and stupidly inconsistent characters of Jim & Kerrigan. The story is pretty much non existant. Wings: kerrigan is de infested. HoTS: Kerrigan infested, Mengsk dies. That is literally the only plot development. Compare this to the original campaign where they actually told a story. This guy gets it. At least in every mission in StarCraft and Brood War, you felt like you had something to play for, an epic development of the story in most missions. WoL and HotS missions are pseudo significant fetch quests or "kill these things in X amount of time" for little to no story gain. If you want to look at the story as just a supplemental to some fun and different missions, then that's fine and it works on that level. I enjoyed the HotS campaign on a 'gaming' level, as in I had fun playing the missions. But not in a 'oh shit what's going to happen next' 'it's on the line' feeling that I get from SC or BW. The new games just don't have that pacing or momentum. | ||
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LunarC
United States1186 Posts
However, your writing is convoluted to the point of absurdity. If you write short simple pieces it wouldn't be an issue. By all means, hack away. However, if you are going to write spotlighted posts with heavy analysis, I would suggest improving your prose. Even if you have good things to say it's hard to take someone who writes like you do very seriously. You can start by writing shorter sentences and getting rid of that faux-analytical tone. Happy editing! | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On March 23 2013 04:22 Eventine wrote: Did you actually play through the campaign? There's a story about about a son rebelling against his father. There's a story about a man traveling the universe on a seemingly hopeless mission to return some sort of purpose to his life. There's a story about a looming threat that threatens to wipe out the races. There's a story about a woman struggling between her desire for vengeance and her morality. There's quirky side stories like Matt and Mira. There are plenty of story lines. If you dislike the main characters, well there's nothing that can be done to help you there. But if you fail to notice the many story lines that have happened in WoL and HotS, then you might want to consider replaying the campaigns. I don't understand why threads like these exist. It creates partisanship in the community. There isn't any purpose besides, this is what I think, agree with me. You could say the same for Phantom Menace actually. There's lots of "stories" but nothing makes sense, the acting is lame and the script is wooden. Just lots of flashy action and graphics. | ||
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On_Slaught
United States12190 Posts
On top of that, gameplay wise SC2 feels more like DoTA/D3/LoL now. Why do we need a hero on EVERY SINGLE LEVEL (except the tutorial)? Why? We didn't have that in WoL. Tone wise, SC feels less and less like a sci-fi game and more like a fantasy game. Everything on Zerus screamed WC3/WoW. HoTS is a fucking joke. The only thing Blizzard can do atm is game good gameplay (only thing holding up Diablo/Starcraft at this point), but even that is getting worse imo. Edit: To respond to all the people saying we shouldn't expect anything from a game, I would generally agree. However this is Starcraft TWO. There were games before this and those had significantly better writing. Imagine if Transformers 2 was the same, but Transformers 1 was instead Pulp Fiction. | ||
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Scila
Canada1849 Posts
Technically, the HOTS campaign is great and has that Blizzard touch of quality, but I'm really getting tired of the crappy story. As soon as I started playing I knew I'd see Metzen's name in the ending credits and lo and behold it was there. They should reassign that guy already. | ||
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Slaughter
United States20255 Posts
I also think that there is some overanalysis or over thinking of portions of it and giving bw a bit more credit then it deserves. But its a great OP post (while biased) still is good enough to admit this and have an expanded discussion of multiple aspects of the plot/story. Really gives a lot better room to discuss multiple view points and interpretations. Way better then the other thread where the story is being discussed. | ||
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Osmoses
Sweden5302 Posts
I don't think a critique of the HOTS campaign needs to be any longer than "none of the characters or their actions make any sense". Maybe with a footnote about inconsistensies and outright disregard for established cannon, but really, it's just so obviously bad that an in-depth review is completely superfluous. If you liked it, you have no concept of good storytelling. That's not a diss, it's not an insult, it's stating and obvious fact while looking at very clear evidence. I will still buy LotV because unlike D3, in spite of the horrendous storytelling, the gameplay of SC2 is still fun. And if Blizzard doesn't need good writing to sell me their shit I guess I can understand why they don't make an effort :p | ||
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