EPTThanks for pointing out what really happened and making me feel like I'm not crazy!
Heart of the Swarm: An Empire, or a Menace? - Page 27
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Kitai
United States876 Posts
Thanks for pointing out what really happened and making me feel like I'm not crazy! | ||
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Leopoldshark
United States176 Posts
This also gave us a good chance to delve into the inner workings of the Zerg. We know that the Zerg have a hive mind mentality, but the Broodmothers as shown by Zagara do have ambition. Could this possibly lead to disobedience to the hive mind or betrayal? Abathur was also decently entertaining and provided a good example of the mentality of the Zerg compared to humans, which have the capability of feeling emotion. I would have preferred if a few things changed. I would have liked Kerrigan to show more hesitation when choosing to abandon her humanity. Would she really be able to rejoin humanity that easily? Even if she truly couldn't remember what she had done, every human being will remember the millions/billions (Starcraft numbers are so inconsistent) of people she killed as the Queen of Blades. Jim most likely would be the only person willing to accept her. Over the course of the campaign, she would gain a greater understanding of how the Zerg work and maybe even sympathize with them. Near the end, she would make the difficult decision to remain with the Zerg instead of staying as a human because even though Jim went to great lengths to purify her, things wouldn't have a fairy tale ending like he had hoped. With her newly acquired moral guidance (thanks to Jim's efforts), she could keep the Zerg under control so they would not mercilessly conquer worlds needlessly. Just like Kael'thas wanted to cure his people of the addiction to magic, Kerrigan might want to remove Amon's taint (still awkward saying) so the Zerg wouldn't be overwhelmed with the need to consume. It would be a bittersweet but somewhat happy ending, and would set the stage for the large battle with Amon. A tad cliche I suppose, but it would work. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On March 27 2013 03:00 Kitai wrote: Thanks for this review. I enjoyed the campaign as a whole, but that's because I only played through the campaigns of SC and BW a couple of times many, many years ago. I didn't remember the backstory as intimately as you did, and I guess that allowed me to suspend my disbelief in certain story elements that nagged at me. I felt that I was just mis-remembering things that happened in SC because I thought that they surely wouldn't retcon the backstory so drastically. Things like Kerrigan having deep feelings for Jim, Stukov being alive, and Kerrigan being enraged at the sight of Zeratul kind of shocked me out of my immersion to say, "wait, that's not right... is it?" Thanks for pointing out what really happened and making me feel like I'm not crazy! Its not "technically" ret-conning, exactly--it simply requires you to have used their other less popular products. I mean, it is problematic, and a lot of their execution sucked even when I sort of "knew" what they were going for. And thats speaking as someone who did not find the dialogue or plot to be the least bit cheesy. Okay, a tiny bit cheesy, but in a good way. I was more estranged by the lack of cohesion between many of the missions. It was the same problem I had with WoL. In WoL Raynor is supposedly doing his best to go save/kill Kerrigan. But you spent so many missions randomly robbing trains and killing Protoss that it never felt like you were on a clock. It's the same thing in HotS. Sure, she says that Mengsk is her priority--but she then spends forever playing king of the hill with a bunch of lizards. Because most of SC1/BW was more abstract, it painted in broad strokes only giving tiny glimpses of personal information. This made it so that the plot held together more easily. We knew what "The Terran" or "The Protoss" were doing and we knew what a few key players were doing within them. But in WoL/HotS the opposite happened. We only really follow the motivations of 2-3 people and the "overall narrative" of Terrans fighting Protoss and Zergs gets lost. Do you know what the Protoss are doing as a whole? I don't. How about the Terrans? No? You just know what one space ship is doing? Yeah, I got that feeling too. | ||
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dyDrawer
Canada438 Posts
Anyway, Blizzard's strength has always been the gameplay, the competitive element and the engine. Even WC3 (a game that I love and still play from time to time), to me it was always the multiplayer. | ||
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baba44713
83 Posts
When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package. Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS? I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category. | ||
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mprs
Canada2933 Posts
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment. When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package. Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS? I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category. I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards. | ||
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Yomi-no-Kuni
Germany333 Posts
I loved the Brood-war story and was looking forward to SC2, and as much as i tried enjoying the story, I actually told everyone i liked it after playing, I just cannot close my eyes and ignore the many faults in the storyline. Thank you for writing this, maybe it'll reach blizzard... but hey, i don't really think they care anymore. | ||
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sCCrooked
Korea (South)1306 Posts
On March 27 2013 21:00 mprs wrote: I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards. I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging". There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not. | ||
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dakalro
Romania525 Posts
Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you? | ||
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revy
United States1524 Posts
What really kills it for me is that at every turn they introduce story which doesn't fit with the existing SC universe. All I want is some consistency. | ||
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FrogOfWar
Germany1406 Posts
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal. Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you? I just love this line of argument: Yeah, it's bad, but bad is good enough! | ||
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AnomalySC2
United States2073 Posts
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal. Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you? I don't agree. I think sc2 with its huge focus on esports was meant to be something that keeps people interested for a multitude of years, much like BW managed to do. Similarly, I think the RMAH in d3 was meant to provide similar legs that would keep people playing the game and grinding it out for hours upon hours upon years for as long as possible. Instead, the game surrounding the concepts of esports or the RMAH simply weren't that good, and both fell short of providing Blizzard quality which has kept fans playing their previous games for many years without ever getting bored. Saying d3 and sc2 were MEANT to be light hearted weekend wasters does not change the fact that that is what they essentially are. I don't believe that was ever the goal, the games just weren't good enough to live up to expectations. | ||
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Lachrymose
Australia1928 Posts
On March 27 2013 22:21 dakalro wrote: I generally disagree with what you wrote. Both hots and d3 are what they were meant to be, fun weekend timewasters. The fact that some people expect more than they should, due to various romanticized memories doesn't mean that the creators are actually going to please the minority just because they are more vocal. Games nowadays are what they are, light and sound. Live with it, most of the buyers wouldn't even handle 30 minutes of storytelling, slow, methodical gameplay. Not to mention fitting music. You do realize a lot of people run with sound on for about a whole 5 minutes, then they turn it off and listen to whatever else they enjoy, don't you? Please explain the perfect score Bioshock: Infinite is getting everywhere on the back of its story and setting and writing. Please provide examples of websites publishing "The writing in Portal 1 and 2 was just a bit too good for our taste". Just because you're happy with 'bad' and think that is good enough doesn't actually make 'bad' better than 'good'. Even if you wouldn't enjoy it more with good writing, can you really say it would make the game worse? | ||
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baba44713
83 Posts
On March 27 2013 21:00 mprs wrote: I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards. Well... yes and no. I still think SC/BW have far more superior and effective cutscenes (even accounting how aged they look) and while the story may be convoluted and often quite a bore, it is never really "cringeworthy". As opposed to HotS, where quite a few scenes are really, really cringeworthy - I really cannot find anything in BW that comes even close to the embarassing exchanges between Sarah and Raynor. And I agree nostalgic bias is hard to turn off completely. But it's not impossible to try and account for that. For example, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun was one of my favorite games back in the days and I thought it had spectacular cutscenes and great story, but I can quite honestly state now that the game itself was rather pedestrian and that the cutscene are cheesy and laughable. Ditto for the Wing Commander series. But old Blizzard's hits, especially original Starcraft and Diablo.. they actually hold up pretty well. On March 27 2013 22:56 Lachrymose wrote: Just because you're happy with 'bad' and think that is good enough doesn't actually make 'bad' better than 'good'. Even if you wouldn't enjoy it more with good writing, can you really say it would make the game worse? Yep, there is a singificant amount of people who realize how bad the story is but see nothing wrong because it's just a game. Well, yes. It's just a game. It's the age of mediocrity, Twilight movies are constantly being given best movie of the year award, Justin Bieber is one of the most popular music performers... so why not be completely content with games that offer semi-polished gameplay, surprisingly mediocre story and hammy cutscenes? And that from a company previously known for highly polished gameplay, enjoyable stories and spectacular cutscenes? Because "it's a game". Right. It's not like in recent years you get to see games that manage to actually tell a decent story. Like Spec Ops:The Line. Portal 2. Mass Effect. Bioshock. Telltale's Walking Dead. Even bloody Tomb Raider for chrissakes. But nope, Starcraft should get a free pass. It's just a game. | ||
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On March 26 2013 12:29 TheLetterQ wrote: ... I will take the fun gameplay and crappy story of the two SC2 campaigns over the passable story and subpar gameplay of SC1/BW any day. When did this thread become about the gameplay? Don't be ridiculous. On March 27 2013 00:06 Gogo1 wrote: Or maybe they're trying not to completely alienate their old fans. There's a valid reason why you see so many redesigned units that try to carry similar tasks to their BW counterparts with added features. It's because the game design was flawed and missing certain things. We've had a lot of threads where we discussed such things. I suggest you look for them and give them a bump if you feel you have something new to add but judging from what you already said. I doubt that. Let's try to keep this thread on topic, shall we? ._. On March 27 2013 22:47 AnomalySC2 wrote: I don't agree. I think sc2 with its huge focus on esports was meant to be something that keeps people interested for a multitude of years, much like BW managed to do. Similarly, I think the RMAH in d3 was meant to provide similar legs that would keep people playing the game and grinding it out for hours upon hours upon years for as long as possible. Instead, the game surrounding the concepts of esports or the RMAH simply weren't that good, and both fell short of providing Blizzard quality which has kept fans playing their previous games for many years without ever getting bored. Saying d3 and sc2 were MEANT to be light hearted weekend wasters does not change the fact that that is what they essentially are. I don't believe that was ever the goal, the games just weren't good enough to live up to expectations. Releasing more expansion packs certainly helps generate an influx. I'd like to see more companies do more updates with the release of patches. Similarly to MMOs to keep people interested. There's all sorts of things you can introduce and what do you know Blizzard did work on the U.I. in such patches at the same time. | ||
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Reaper9
United States1724 Posts
On March 27 2013 22:56 Lachrymose wrote: Please explain the perfect score Bioshock: Infinite is getting everywhere on the back of its story and setting and writing. Please provide examples of websites publishing "The writing in Portal 1 and 2 was just a bit too good for our taste". Just because you're happy with 'bad' and think that is good enough doesn't actually make 'bad' better than 'good'. Even if you wouldn't enjoy it more with good writing, can you really say it would make the game worse? Pretty much. See, a good storyline is what I want Starcraft to be compared to. Even jokingly, when people say "better love story then twilight", I cringe inside. Why is it even referred to in the first place? Would you jokingly refer to Bioshock Infinite as - better then "Insert steamy pile of shit" here? Being a parody of hollywood, and done poorly at that does not amuse me. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On March 27 2013 21:00 mprs wrote: I don't think SC/BW escaped SC2's fate. Let's not be dishonest, we collectively have a huge nostalgic bias towards SC/BW. Some of that dialogue and plot was cringeworthy by today's standards. No. This has been explained time and time again. It isn't just rose-tinted glasses. If you're going to bring a point up, at least endeavor to check the thread to see if we haven't already addressed it 8 other times. | ||
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Torpedo.Vegas
United States1890 Posts
On March 27 2013 20:35 baba44713 wrote: I'll put my condescension hat for a moment. When you are young, like in your early or even late teens, your criteria is often pretty non-discriminating. It's extremely easy to be a fan of something and be completely oblivious of its flaws. Especially when the content you get is precisely catered to your age and wrapped up in a shiny, highly produced package. Then a decade goes by and you get a chance to look back to stuff you were once so enamored with. And you realize that all that stuff pretty much falls in two categories. The first one is something that actually WAS good - you can still see the quality in it, you can still enjoy it - if it's a book, it's still a fine read, if it's a movie it's still a joy to watch, and if it's a game you can still experience it and find it satisfying. Ok, maybe you now find it childish or simplistic or it just didn't age too well but at least you understand why you loved it so much back in the time. ...aaaand than there's the other category. Things that you revisit and which make you say ... oh my God what was I thinking - this is embarrassing! I was a fan of THIS? I can almost guarantee you that SC2 storyline will for many of you who now love it in a decade or so very neatly land square-center in the latter category. I don't like that if you dont absolutely hate it then you must be stupid and love it. I agree with most if not all of the OP yet I am not so blinded by rage that I need to attack or belittle anything and everything about SC2. To some people SC2 will forever be a glass half empty. Others who are perhaps less jaded or at least not so completely and utterly invested in a single game have the ability to enjoy SC2 for what it is, hope that errors get fixed and improvements made, but ultimately can fulfill their need for a deep and engrossing story elsewhere. In fact, I would be probably be much more openly critical of the games flaws and short comings if I didn't absolutely hate the kind venomous and destructive circle jerk that happens any time someone puts the time and energy in to making a critique like a OP's. The passion and relentlessness with which a group of posters preach hate for this game almost makes you think its their profession. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On March 27 2013 21:58 sCCrooked wrote: I'm pretty tired of seeing this outright lie being used as a response everywhere as if it were proving something. BW's writing is far superior. Words you might use to describe it are "cohesive", "encompassing" and "byzantine" whereas SC2's writing would be described with words such as "convoluted", "vague" and "estranging". There's no debate when the scripts are publicly available and you have to start putting adjectives to them just like any academic piece gets reviewed and scrutinized. Liking it is not the issue, its when people can't even understand the definitions of words and realize its not them that's being discussed but a script that possesses these qualities whether they want to admit those adjectives are their preferences or not. BW's story wasn't that good. It hurt the SC lore in some respects (UED never should have been involved) and the story telling was shallow and cliche. HOTS has its weak points as well (on Leviathan dialogue, some lore issues) but the main storyline was easily the best so far in terms of characterization and depth. | ||
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Deleted User 135096
3624 Posts
This is one of the reasons I'm still continually impressed with Brood War as the story is still good today, even if it is somewhat underdeveloped by today's standards. It's like, trying to evaluate a story or game that was made more than a decade ago in today's perspective. I actually recently did this with System Shock 2 having never played it till this year, and in all honesty, it's better than Bioshock from a storytelling perspective. I'm not saying that I disliked Bioshock because it is a good game, but System Shock 2 was a tighter experience overall, though I would imagine that its pretty difficult to get past the idiosyncrasies of The Dark Engine to see this. | ||
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