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Well done wo1fwood (OP) I am 30 myself and I have a simmilar experience to you.
I think that in general (there are many good exceptions) focus their attention too much on the younger player and even then they dumb their content down.
It is my sincerest believe that even teenagers would enjoy and want more indepth story and not just *cool* features and terrible terrible damage*. I also think they are not even taking the younger players seriously when using dumbed down catch phrases.
I also agree that the quality of the game is good in a pure quality sense, but it lacks of depth in story telling and perhaps depth in other qualities aswell.
It is the same with Diablo 3 it lacked depth in story and most of all gameplay. And diablo 3 was a game that many of the older gamer generation were wairing for and Blizzard in my opinion was not aiming for them and thats why most people were dissapointed.
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What a great post you have made here, specially about a subject so hard to write convincingly about as what is a good story or not (Art being one of the most subjective matters around).
Despite there's a huge ammount of stuff you have spelled more coherently than what I could ever do, one thing stroke me heavier than most:
To a younger and inexperienced mind, many of these things can be great tools at portraying types of character motivations or the reasoning behind character actions. Look at children's programming or cartoons and you'll see these executions all over the place. They can clearly set up certain elements that can be easily parsed out by a young mind, they can even be humorous and fun while still retaining a measure of seriousness... and this works for this demographic. However, here is where I take serious umbrage with this mo.
When I played the campaign, I also felt disturbed by the whole "What? this game wasn't supposed to be about love", but I was also able to detect the subtlest of rejoicing in myself about it. "Why?" I forced myself to answer? The answer was simple: Because, in the bottom (and this is quite personal) when playing cs1/broodwards as a teenager I really wanted the love story to be there. I made it work into my head back then (succesfully, mainly because of the vast ammount of storytelling that was left to our imagination in sc1, where the story was barely told by the mission briefings/in mission dialog snippets). I think it's as simple as you stated it: For an expectator who is not wary about discerning what he likes to spectate (either by inexperience, like I was as a teenager, or by choice, like when you enjoy a horrible pop-corn flickr just for the sake of it) these kind of narratives work quite well. Not that it's wrong to avoid discerning, at the end, art (maybe not all of it but definitively videogames) are consumed for their entertainment value, so if the story was enjoyed, it depends entirely on the spectator perspective, thus it's value as an entertainment piece can be validated.
That is something that could be causing issues here with the different appreciations (and even maybe a certain sense of self-entitlement for the entertainment we just paid for). I for one, after realizing that it was my youth's voices the ones that were making me forgive and actually sort-of-enjoy the story, felt compelled to set myself on that "non discerning" state of mind to go an enjoy the whole ride, but then felt alienated by the fact that I was actively forcing me to enjoy this, instead of being taken there as some other better written pieces have done in the past.
Also, regarding HOTS value as a piece of entertainment, I think Sherlock-Canada nailed something:
I don't understand Mario's motivation. I don't appreciate Link's motivation. But sometimes, I find myself thinking their motivations are mine.
If for some reason a story (or lack thereof) can become a reflect of your own motivations, then it will be auto-validated as a piece of entertainment, since at the emotional level, this is extremely powerfull (and some great storytellings have succeded not by writing a compeling story, but by creating the perfect empty space were we can fill the blanks with whatever we like - like the muted Gordon Freeman). At least for me it didn't worked that way, but I can certainly see where Sherlock is comming from.
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I loved the HotS story, myself.
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Love the OP. The story had a ton of potential, yes, even after the mess that was WoL. In my opinion, Blizzard committed two major mistakes that trainwrecked the story for me.
1) Forcing the plot. Wtf was Raynor doing with a gun in that cell... oh, he was just setting up a "Hollywood Line" moment.
2) Not even bothering to come up with an alternative to magically depowering Kerrigan, causing obviously transplanted lines of dialogue. This one bites the hardest, it basically screams that Blizzard didn't give a fuck about the story. Trying and failing is part of creative risk, I can accept that shit happens. But when the lack of care is so blatant, I can't help but rage at the story that could have been.
Also. Prophecy. Fuck you, Blizzard. Even Homeworld 2 handled that with just a little more finesse and that's saying a lot. Prophecy is a plot device to facilitate the telling of a story, not the story itself.
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Eh. I found the story enjoyable. Nothing special, but the reviewer seems to intentionally pick the worst interpretation. This was abundantly clear of the treatment of the last scene.
I found it rather understandable that Raynor came to help Kerrigan, and also the bittersweet ending scene: Kerrigan has shown that the new Queen of Blades is NOT the same as the BW one. She shows she has not forsaken her human ties this time, by going to save Raynor (as opposed to murdering Duke and Fenix in cold blood) and additionally promises to spare civilians on two accounts. You can point to the ruthless extermination of the protoss colonists as a counterexample, but the scenes surrounding those missions give a good explanation of the difference between the two situations: the protoss were intent on destroying the swarm there (or at least calling in the fleet to do so) and there was no hope of live and let live, whereas the civilian terrans on Korhal had no such intentions and Valerian/Raynor could be trusted to not backstab Kerrigan.
Another point I disagree with the reviewer is that I found the whole bit about Zerus rather pleasant. The SC1 manual's description is not entirely inline, but the Spawining Pool could have been created by the Xel'Naga: it isn't mentioned as being natural, and how would be primal Zerg know anyway? The rest, about the fighting to consume essence I agree seems somewhat in conflict, but it is such a minor detail that it doesn't matter, and the missions on Zerus were fun. Boss fights have a limited number of mechanics and complaining about "dodge this" fights is ridiculous. If that's your qualm, then they are all ripoffs of the first Mario (and maybe even earlier).
Finally, I'm glad the reviewer is not one of those nitpickers about the Tal'Darim. I can absolutely imagine them occupying the Xel'Naga temple and Narud manipulating them into serving his/Amon's purposes. They worship anything Xel'Naga. Amon was a Xel'Naga and Narud is continuing his work. It is not a long stretch to see them as his servants.
Am I here to defend the story? No. It was not a story for the ages and will probably not instill awe in children the way Tassadar sacrificing himself to fly his Carrier into the Overmind instilled awe in me as a child. However, there was nothing really wrong about the story either... and it was quite a bit better than WoL.
The campaign was entertaining and fun, and the story supported it sufficiently.
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Halfway through I felt like I was playing an Rpg / warcraft 3 hero campaign. This is an rts and shouldnt be dumbed down so much by hero/gimmick mechanics. The diablo 3 fight was well done, but did NOT fit the game at all. We all bought your diablo 3 and thought it was terrible, dont make us play through it again on the merit of the HOTS campaign.
Well written criticsm and for all the nay-sayers, It is great you enjoyed the campaigns gameplay, so did we, but you cannot reject the storyline was an absolutely trainwreck even more so than the WOL one.
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On March 23 2013 05:35 Slaughter wrote:
Well the OP has a lot of points that I agree with and a lot I disagree with.
I also think that there is some overanalysis or over thinking of portions of it and giving be 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.
I'm finding other peoples perspectives on this topic pretty interesting at times. I think that's also why I've sort of bowed out of the conversation, as I've already said a lot and should leave room for others to freely voice their opinions (hopefully in a constructive way).
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who's actually going to read all this crap review
User was warned for this post
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Your words are my thoughts.
Blizzard's trend is disturbing.
They can't get worse, right?
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One thing I felt wo1fwood didn't mention was some of the problems with the antagonists in HotS. Here are the problems I had with how Blizzard represented them.
Warfield
Warfield barely appear in WoL and is equally scarce in HotS, despite being one of the Dominion's best generals. In the missions where he does appear he's either easy to beat, needs rescuing, or needs you to do something that doesn't involve him. As a result the player never learns much about him and has no reason to care when he dies.
Though Warfield is similar to Edmund Duke from the original SC (you even rescue him the same way) Duke provides useful information before the missions, moves the story along during the missions, and you even get to control a unit he's in. As a result the player is more connected to Duke, so his death has a much greater impact on the player.
Narud
Narud has a similar problem to Warfield as he gets almost no screen time in SC2, so the player has little reason to care about him. Seriously you're told who he is and what he's doing, then 2 missions later he's dead and doesn't matter anymore. He really should have been someone that Kerrigan was hunting for much of HotS because of his hybrids or the artefact, not the boss of a story arc that was suddenly introduced.
He was far better in BW where he directly played a major role in the Terran and Zerg campaigns.
Mengsk
Why is Mengks the enemy of both Raynor and Kerrigan? If Raynor doesn't like the Dominion he can go live with the Protoss, while Kerrigan can take the Swarm and go to another galaxy. Neither needs to kill/overthrow Mengsk, yet killing/overthrowing him is the goal of both WoL and HotS.
I suspect trying to overthrow Mengsk is the plot of WoL because Blizzard is trying to recycle the same plot from the original SC (Mengsk trying to overthrow the Confederacy). So they need Mengsk to be the villain, even though neither Mengsk nor Raynor have any real reason to fight each other.
In HotS they needed a reason why Kerrigan would want to become the Queen of Blades, even though part of the previous game was about turning her human again. So rather than have Amon be the main villain and require Kerrigan to control the Zerg to prevent them being used by Amon Blizzard decided to go with Kerrigan is very upset with Mengsk for killing Raynor, so she decided to kill him and millions of Dominion troops. Amon is pretty much ignored for most of HotS even though he's meant to be a major threat.
Amon / Dark Voice
He's meant to be this great evil but we know almost nothing about him or why he wants to stop the Xel'naga's plan (whatever this is). He's also meant to be a major threat even though his Dominion ally has been crushed, Kerrigan is preventing him controlling the swarm, and the Tal'Darim are only a small part of the Protoss armies. So unless he suddenly has access to a huge army of hybrid he won't be any threat in LoV.
In conclusion the antagonists were underused, so they had little impact on the player.
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I applaud the effort that's gone into the OP, but I honestly think you're undersimplifying 
If you wrote a synopsis of the HotS storyline, it would be perfectly fine. You could put it next to the synopsis of a really good novel and nobody would be able to say, purely by inspection, which summarised the better story. It's simply the case that whoever fleshed out that storyline - turned it into scenes and especially dialogue - just wasn't super good at it. Writers are perfectly capable of producing bad work without any help from a conspiracy to target a younger demographic, especially when obliged to drop heavy-handed gameplay hints amongst the angst. Kinetic Blast, anyone?
The notable exception is the dude in the evolution pit. He's a marvellous character and generally fed solid, believable lines - a feat, I suspect, aided greatly by his constrained manner of speech. At the other end of the scale are the unbearably chatty Primals.
That's pretty much it, really: weak dialogue that tends to the obvious, spoiling an otherwise perfectly sound storyline. It happens all the time. Anyone interested in experiencing the polar opposite - exquisite dialogue glossing over the most trivial of plots - should grab themselves the Jeeves books by P.G.Wodehouse. I'm not being a literary snob here; I was almost physically pushed into them nose-first by a friend and I immediately understood what she was talking about.
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I feel as though I'd have to agree. Blizzard has, for lack of a better term,"dumbed down" the contents of all their games. Why does this matter? It's simple: it offends me. I'm not stupid. Well, maybe I am for paying for these games. Seriously though, I spent money on these games and I should be afforded a similar amount of satisfaction and entertainment from some of the other great titles I've spent similar amounts of money on. A 12 hour campaign is embarrassingly short. It felt like they put vast amounts of more time into some of the cut scenes than the actual story. I'm with you man, it's unacceptable, WoL, Diablo 3, HotS, the campaign and execution, at least in my opinion, were poor at best.
Also, I thought it was funny you mentioned the fact that Blizzard keeps borrowing the same mechanics from game to game, the Belial fight, Time warp is a direct copy from Zoltan Kuule's time bubble as well. I've always felt that they kept recycling things as well, I do not know why it bothers me so much but it honestly frustrates the hell out of me. I just feel like someone could have sat down and come up with SOMETHING!
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lol i was about to write something like this when i finished the hots campaign, but you've done it 1000000x better than i could have. you have raised every single issue i have with SC2 story.
very very nice write up
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The campaign's story was in fact a terrible tragedy.
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I appreciate your efforts, and the amount of thought you've put into your review. However, from a purely story perspective, the story as told from SC1 through HotS is not logical. Logic plays very little into the hearts and minds of fictional characters, especially in fantasy science fiction. (Less so in "hard" science fiction.)
There may or may not have been a love interest between Raynor and Kerrigan at first, or even before she becomes Queen of Blades - but it is shown that Raynor does feel something, even if it is just the camaraderie and protectiveness of a fellow warrior for an ally. This feeling can be used to explain later development - Kerrigan is the first friend to fall as a part of Mengsk's betrayal, and because men are often times idiots about this, Raynor could see himself as responsible. Everything that follows is a consequence of his being unable to convince Kerrigan prior to New Gettysburg, and over time he builds up an image in his mind. One that means that saving Kerrigan could be his own salvation, and one that leads him to fall in love for Kerrigan while retaining his hatred of the Queen of Blades for all of the death she's caused. Raynor's Raiders fighting Mengsk is a sign of that - a way of redeeming his failure to protect Kerrigan from Mengsk's betrayal by stopping Mengsk from reaping the rewards of that act.
Is it logical? No, but human beings are not logical. There are a lot of things that thread through popular fiction that are illogical, and seem stupid, but which can carry through believably in the settings they take place. Quite a few years have passed to enable people to move on and change off-camera - not unlike the time period between Star Wars and Empire, which is often overlooked but which allows Skywalker and Solo to come in as a trusted part of the Rebellion rather than just some hick hayseed that got a lucky shot and a smuggling scumbag making a payday.
It's not perfect, but in the context it has been delivered in it's a believable story, and does its job of making the Queen of Blades someone understandable, from a human point of view. It's a good plotline that has carried countless movies, TV series, books, etc - why mess with it? It's entertainment, not high art.
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Enjoyed reading the review, and I agree on most parts.
Though, it's not the bad story elements that bothers me most, it's the fact that they had time to develop rag doll physics for an expansion (ooo shiny), but they couldn't find an hour to write a decent story line. Imagine if the story was anywhere near the graphics.
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Story wasn't too bad.
However characters are important in a character driven story, and they were all extremely shallow and I felt no empathy for any of them. The execution of the story was horrid.
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On March 23 2013 17:01 felisconcolori wrote:
It's not perfect, but in the context it has been delivered in it's a believable story, and does its job of making the Queen of Blades someone understandable, from a human point of view. It's a good plotline that has carried countless movies, TV series, books, etc - why mess with it? It's entertainment, not high art.
So in another words, since we are all bombarded with mediocre crap on daily basis, we should completely stop striving for something better. And if we still insist on at least some degree of quality or at least competence, then we suddenly want "high art".
With that attitude you really do not deserve anything better.
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I agree with all points - what makes it so painful is that blizzard have the resources to develop a truly amazing story by perhaps getting some good writers for a start
Problem is blizzard isn't subject to the same critical evaluation as other games because of the fan base. Whenever I have tried to make similar points regarding stories I have been rebuffed by blizz fans that "your standards are just too high" or other equally odd remarks.
Good to see an article of such high quality discussing this.
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On March 23 2013 17:01 felisconcolori wrote: It's a good plotline that has carried countless movies, TV series, books, etc - why mess with it? It's entertainment, not high art.
Because it can be both. There is no reason games can't be excellent story telling vehicles, on par with the best of novels, TV shows, and movies. And there is no reason such a big budget studio like Blizzard in particular should feel the need to settle for a passable but utterly uninteresting story, especially when they already had a set-up for something much more unique in place.
I get that "high art" in your claim is meant to refer to an extreme and niche level of storywriting enjoyable only by a select few, but even if that is the extreme, it's a false dichotomy to claim it's either entertainment or that. There are plenty of works out there in various other mediums that tell a more unique and complex story, but are still accessible and enjoyed by the masses (Game of Thrones is the perfect example). Why does gaming have to be any different?
As for the logical flow of the story, you are right that it can fit if you account for the setting and spacing of the titles, but that wasn't really why people are mad about the differences between BW and SC2. BW set us up to go in a certain direction and left us with an amazingly interesting bad-guy-winning cliffhanger for 12 years. From there, they could have gone a lot of ways, but they seem to have chosen a rather uninspiring path. Sure, it may make some sense (if you aren't too critical), but is that really the bar you want to set for storytelling in gaming, making sense?
It's a disservice to the entire medium to always settle for, or even argue in favor of simplified cookie-cutter storylines in games these days, especially when the average age of the gamer has risen so much. There is no reason a game like SC2 in particular has to be written like a Disney movie (with less character) when, with a little more nuance and risk, it could have satisfied both that niche and the masses at once.
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EPT
