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On March 29 2013 05:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 03:29 jeeeeohn wrote:
A Breakdown of Players' Qualms With The Story:
Players expected Jim to kill Kerrigan.
Jim didn't kill Kerrigan.
Players expected SC2 to be well written, like BW.
SC2 wasn't well written.
Players expected characters to make sense.
Characters don't make sense.
Now, I fully agree with the above, but, overall, I enjoy the story. It's cheesy space opera, and that's all it will ever be, and all I appreciate it for. +1 its almost like the pro wrestling story lines they have to come up with when 1 of the main wrestler guys quits and leaves for Japan....they come up with a fake knee injury or sometimes... he just becomes an "unperson" and is never talked about. like the WWF tried to do with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall after they first left. as soon as they greatly modified the appearance of Raynor in SC2:WoL you knew they would come up with whatever dumb excuses they could to change the storyline to suit whoever the new writers were for the SC2 trilogy. i love the excuses/reasons they give for no more Vultures, or Firebats. All the Firebat suits are being used by Marauders now  lol.
In fairness, they're sticking very closely to canon--the problem being that their canon comes from books that most TL visitors don't read. The other problem being that SC is famous for being a videogame, not a book, so it doesn't matter that there was 100+ pages of Raynor/Kerrigan love years and years before SC2--our demographic didn't read it so we pretend it doesn't count.
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I think HoTS campaign was ok. IT wasn't hard or anything not even on brutal but the story is ok i guess.
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Northern Ireland23732 Posts
On March 29 2013 06:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 04:44 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 03:46 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 02:31 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 01:35 sCCrooked wrote:On March 29 2013 01:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2013 11:52 sCCrooked wrote:On March 28 2013 08:12 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2013 07:41 Grumbels wrote:
[quote]
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
[quote]
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win. Two things: First, The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot. uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes. They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe. Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm. When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet. And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm. Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass. Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification. It isn't justification, it's what we are presented. She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions. Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented. After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry. No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative. Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet. Boring =/= filler Boring = boring Filter = filter The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story. But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler. I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing. It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil. It technically does advance the story--for much the same reason "take over such and such planet faceless brood mother joining the swarm" advances the story. It is Kerrigan's reach spreading across the stars, it is the campaign showing us that kerrigan was not just hanging out at zerus, that she is constantly and continually attacking multiple planets constantly, it is showing us that SHE IS THE FUCKING SWARM. Literally, it is the manifestation of the her never ending phrase of I AM THE SWARM. The only thing it doesn't progress is the revenge narrative => which pretty much none of the other plot points really progress. And how can you say that its not referred to later? The physical and literal shape and composition of the swarm is determined by this. In essence, the pixels on your screen that are killing other pixels on your screen look and act only how the evolution missions dictates how they act. More so than any other mission their effects are felt and seen literally affecting the world as the narrative progresses. And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans. The problem with the design was there was no benefit or consequence for picking neither, for telling abather to shut his pie hole and stop killing innocents. So we as the player feel forced to kill marines and zealots because we're literally gimping ourselves if we don't. Kerrigan was strong enough to say "hey dude, no more okay" but we as players have no reason to follow suite. Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
I think the problem with the missions is that they were incredibly, incredibly easy. The format was fine in terms of the storytelling/Zerg lore kind of angle
1. Find some weird creature with some mutation
2. Kill it or something, assimilate it and test it out
The issue was that part 2 never really seemed at all challenging, it would have been cool if you got to play around a bit more and use your new toys in a less constrained 'Zergling B can jump up cliffs, jump some up some cliffs' kind of way
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The problem with the missions is not only they are easy it´s also that blizzard totally drift away from the old option of storytelling IN A MISSION.
Only rendered videos will tell you know the story while in BW story was a piece of mission design.
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On March 29 2013 06:48 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 06:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 04:44 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 03:46 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 02:31 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 01:35 sCCrooked wrote:On March 29 2013 01:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2013 11:52 sCCrooked wrote:On March 28 2013 08:12 Thieving Magpie wrote:
[quote]
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes. They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe. Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm. When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet. And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm. Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass. Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification. It isn't justification, it's what we are presented. She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions. Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented. After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry. No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative. Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet. Boring =/= filler Boring = boring Filter = filter The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story. But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler. I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing. It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil. It technically does advance the story--for much the same reason "take over such and such planet faceless brood mother joining the swarm" advances the story. It is Kerrigan's reach spreading across the stars, it is the campaign showing us that kerrigan was not just hanging out at zerus, that she is constantly and continually attacking multiple planets constantly, it is showing us that SHE IS THE FUCKING SWARM. Literally, it is the manifestation of the her never ending phrase of I AM THE SWARM. The only thing it doesn't progress is the revenge narrative => which pretty much none of the other plot points really progress. And how can you say that its not referred to later? The physical and literal shape and composition of the swarm is determined by this. In essence, the pixels on your screen that are killing other pixels on your screen look and act only how the evolution missions dictates how they act. More so than any other mission their effects are felt and seen literally affecting the world as the narrative progresses. And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans. The problem with the design was there was no benefit or consequence for picking neither, for telling abather to shut his pie hole and stop killing innocents. So we as the player feel forced to kill marines and zealots because we're literally gimping ourselves if we don't. Kerrigan was strong enough to say "hey dude, no more okay" but we as players have no reason to follow suite. Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution. I think the problem with the missions is that they were incredibly, incredibly easy. The format was fine in terms of the storytelling/Zerg lore kind of angle 1. Find some weird creature with some mutation 2. Kill it or something, assimilate it and test it out The issue was that part 2 never really seemed at all challenging, it would have been cool if you got to play around a bit more and use your new toys in a less constrained 'Zergling B can jump up cliffs, jump some up some cliffs' kind of way
I personally think that the evolution missions were an abomination and an insult on my intelligence. I was mostly just pointing out that there weren't just filler, that they actually do progress the story.
Now, I personally find this style of unit integration much more appealing than "oh, btw, here's unit ______ its so convenient that we finally have access to them just when we got to this part in the narrative when you need them "
Because that old SC1 style of introducing new units is just dumb and reeks of deus ex machina. But SC1 was so engaging that cheesy stuff like that didn't bother me. Telling me "hey, this planet has a bunch of jumpy stuff that are only able to navigate their planet because they're jumpy--lets steal that idea!" is a much better and more fluid transition into new units. That being followed through by "lets attack a terran base conveniently hiding up cliffs" is dumb.
Jumping banelings made sense because it was a known terran planet and so the baneling who adapted to the planet were better able to attack a terran base. Attacking a protoss zoo in order to get BroodRoaches was just non-sense.
So, no, I agree that these were bad missions. But its a great direction conceptually for an RTS to go towards assuming the execution can be fixed.
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On March 29 2013 06:51 Nachtwind wrote:
The problem with the missions is not only they are easy it´s also that blizzard totally drift away from the old option of storytelling IN A MISSION.
Only rendered videos will tell you know the story while in BW story was a piece of mission design.
Sort of...
Nothing happened plot wise for the first 3 missions of SC1's Rebel Yell campaign. Which also happened to be 33% of the campaign.
You then had two-three actual missions, followed by the downward spiral.
first 1/3 of the missions had no plot
2nd 1/3 of the missions was fake plot (mostly it was to lull you into thinking the narrative was going to be plain)
last 1/3 of the missions are the ones you actually care about
I'm not saying SC1 was bad--but it fucked up less because it really only had 4ish missions worth of story in it per race. the rest were broad stroke summaries of what the 3 races were up to "in general" and nothing too specific.
Campaign design wise, I much prefer the blander more broad stroke style of BW. But don't pretend like it was wall-to-wall narrative because it wasn't.
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On March 29 2013 06:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 04:44 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 03:46 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 02:31 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 01:35 sCCrooked wrote:On March 29 2013 01:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2013 11:52 sCCrooked wrote:On March 28 2013 08:12 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2013 07:41 Grumbels wrote:
[quote]
The evolution missions are filler, so it's tempting to see them as inconsequential to the main plot. I don't think any of these missions take place on recognizable worlds or are even referred to later on. Yet they very much happen and it constantly has Kerrigan telling her forces to kill a random group of terran or protoss that are off at some remote planet for the purposes of experimentation. I would say that Kerrigan is being evil in these cases. (I forgot if she ever attacks any protoss during the evolution missions, I didn't play all of them myself)
[quote]
The only race that is allowed to win is the player's race. At the same time, over the course of the trilogy, all three races have to be equally awesome and victorious, hence the need for the recycled Archimonde attacks the world tree plot that is inevitably going to happen. It will allow all races to win. Two things: First, The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot. uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes. They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe. Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm. When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet. And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm. Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass. Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification. It isn't justification, it's what we are presented. She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions. Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented. After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry. No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative. Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet. Boring =/= filler Boring = boring Filter = filter The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story. But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler. I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing. It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil. Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution.
I use the word filler in the context of episodic television shows, where an episode that doesn't advance the plot or tell us anything meaningful about the characters is called a filler episode. Note that there are degrees of an episode being filler (it could only be filler-ish), that people are allowed to disagree and that just because something is filler doesn't mean it's bad. The evolution missions have no role in the plot, they do tell us something about Kerrigan's character, but this goes unexamined, Blizzard doesn't expect us to remember and the events are never referred to again later on. The fact that you can use a unit later on doesn't mean it's not filler, just that it's not purely filler. By your definition there could be an episode of Lost which is just a character stubbing his toe and then when he is slightly limping the next episode you could point out: see that wasn't a filler episode, it's integral to the plot.
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On March 29 2013 07:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 06:51 Nachtwind wrote:
The problem with the missions is not only they are easy it´s also that blizzard totally drift away from the old option of storytelling IN A MISSION.
Only rendered videos will tell you know the story while in BW story was a piece of mission design.
Sort of... Nothing happened plot wise for the first 3 missions of SC1's Rebel Yell campaign. Which also happened to be 33% of the campaign. You then had two-three actual missions, followed by the downward spiral. first 1/3 of the missions had no plot 2nd 1/3 of the missions was fake plot (mostly it was to lull you into thinking the narrative was going to be plain) last 1/3 of the missions are the ones you actually care about I'm not saying SC1 was bad--but it fucked up less because it really only had 4ish missions worth of story in it per race. the rest were broad stroke summaries of what the 3 races were up to "in general" and nothing too specific. Campaign design wise, I much prefer the blander more broad stroke style of BW. But don't pretend like it was wall-to-wall narrative because it wasn't.
It´s a difference though if 0 of 27 has no story telling in the missions. Most argumentation of "how things work" in starcraft are based of the "last 1/3" you mentioned.
edit: And are also used when people are swinging the bw story > sc2 story bat
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On March 29 2013 07:02 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 06:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 04:44 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 03:46 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 02:31 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2013 01:35 sCCrooked wrote:On March 29 2013 01:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2013 11:52 sCCrooked wrote:On March 28 2013 08:12 Thieving Magpie wrote:
[quote]
Two things:
First,
The evolution missions are not filler. They're just not essential to the main plot.
uh... you just said its not filler and then went on to describe their purpose by pretty much giving the dictionary definition of what "filler" is. Just pointing that out in your thought processes. They're as much "filler" as Abathur is filler. Neither are needed but both are used to expand the feel of the universe. Kerrigan keeps talking about how she *is* the swarm and how she can *feel* and *command* the swarm. When Kerrigan gets new broods into the swarm she uses her mental powers to tell them to take over such and such planet. And as you get new evolutions she leads them as well because she doesn't just give orders, she commands the entirety of the swarm. Its all part of the whole "one with the swarm" deal. Its not relevant to the plot, but its there to enhance it. Its supposed to make you feel like Kerrigan doesn't have tunnel vision and is only attacking this one planet or achieving just one goal at a time. She's commanding everything. The invasion of multiple planets as well as skirmishes in random worlds where her troops are also at. She might be standing on Zerus, but she's micromanaging 5-8 different campaigns across 4-6 different planets all while going D3 on Belial. Its pretty bad-ass, badly executed, but bad-ass. Which of course makes no sense at all because she was able to do all that and much more in Brood War's storyline. Nice justification. It isn't justification, it's what we are presented. She commands queens in space ships, she commands queens in other planets, she commands everything zerg and she grows more powerful she commands more and more zerg. This is not my interpretation, this is literally what is happening as you play the game. It is not a stretch that she is also controlling other zerg units in other planets as they are attacking installations and fortifications. Her influence can be overly micro-managey like she did in the protoss ship, or it can be broad like when she tells brood mothers to attack planets, or it can be a bit in between where she tells a pack of ______ to attack a small base like she does in the missions. Its bland, and boring, and to unobservant kids it can be hard to see, but it's literally what is happening in front of you. Its not my justification if its the empirical data presented. After the nth evolution mission it became filler, sorry. No, after the nth evolution mission it became boring within the sense of the narrative. Much like it got boring after the 2nd and 3rd time you had Kerrigan touch her forehead to tell queens to invade a planet. Boring =/= filler Boring = boring Filter = filter The evolution missions fulfilled a better way to present variant units, and a unique way of showcasing Kerrigans ability to multitask. It was also narratively bland and it was hard to get pumped up by it. You can only kill so many storm troopers before you realized that killing redshirts doesn't actually progress the story. But it was not filler--it was a showcasing of Kerrigan's power and the breadth of her control of the swarm. Its as much filler as her spells are filler. I don't think you understand the definition of filler, and in any case your insistence on having this purely semantic debate doesn't help anyone. Outside of the first evolution mission, which demonstrates the workings of the zerg evolution process, the rest don't advance the story at all; they don't show us anything interesting, they aren't referred to later on. This makes these missions filler, just ways to pass the time and pad the campaign, they could have all been removed without anyone noticing. It's worse because the fact that she is sacrificing humans and protoss to experiment with her swarm should be relevant, because it makes her profoundly evil. Its bad design, its boring design, but to call it filler just means that you didn't understand its part of the narrative. This isn't damn semantics, you're literally not using the word correctly because you literally don't understand what is happening. And no, it's not your fault that you don't understand, that's blizzard fault for having such piss poor execution. I use the word filler in the context of episodic television shows, where an episode that doesn't advance the plot or tell us anything meaningful about the characters is called a filler episode. Note that there are degrees of an episode being filler (it could only be filler-ish) and that people are allowed to disagree. The evolution missions have no role in the plot, they do tell us something about Kerrigan's character, but this goes unexamined, Blizzard doesn't expect us to remember and the events are never referred to again later on. The fact that you can use a unit later on doesn't mean it's not filler, just that it's not purely filler. By your definition there could be an episode of Lost which is just a character stubbing his toe and then when he is slightly limping the next episode you could point out: see that wasn't a filler episode, it's integral to the plot.
The fact that they tells us about Kerrigan and tells us about what Zerg is doing in the grander scheme of things is the reason its not filler.
Its bad story telling, and its bad mission design, but its not "filler"
Having a character limping is not filler, but it is boring. Having these evolution missions was not filler, but they are boring.
Filler is Duran showing up for no reason other for older fans to go "hey look its Duran!"
Filler is having Duran tell us everything about Narud instead of us/Kerrigan figuring it out for ourselves. It's filler because it literally replaces character progression with a talking head to fill you in on what you're supposed to know. We actually know less about Kerrigan *because* we're spending time listening to Duran recite the answers to us instead of having Kerrigan learn about whatever she's facing.
Filler is having Raynor rob trains in the middle of his rebellion/saving the love of his life in that he literally stops going after the two things he cares about (Mengsk/Kerrigan) and spends a mission robbing trains.
Showing that Kerrigan can multitask almost as much as Bisu is the opposite of that because as she is becoming the swarm the game needs to show her being the swarm.
Blizzard simply threw the entire opportunity away! No conversations about it, no terrans going "I've never seen that before!" no Protoss going all "I thought Zerg only did ______!!!!" etc.... No conversations about planets missing, installations ravaged, etc... It was a perfect time for Kerrigan to do something like listen to the news and hearing about all the lives she was ending as she was become one with the swarm and then cutting off psionic connection from it while Zagara is all "what's wrong my queen?" and Kerrigan is all "it's nothing, stop asking stupid questions!"
But they didn't. And it makes all the evolution missions feel so impotent. Which is why you feel like they're filler. They're not--they're actually very important for the narrative. its just that they wasted it like they wasted a good chunk of the campaign....
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filler is a silly usage of word regardless of your discussion hence this is no anime and has nothing to do with drawing styles
and the discussion about what´s a filler it´s just useless usage of words and a derail of this thread
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And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans. Back in WoL, the only missions that had to be completed were the Mar Sara, artefact and Char missions. Technically, Raynor could refuse to follow Tosh to Redstone, yet HotS is based on the premise that every single mission happened, not just the three "central" arcs.
So even if you, as the player, choose not to play the evolution missions, they happened in-universe anyway. Optionnal stuff is always considered to have happened by the next episode in Blizzard games.
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On March 29 2013 07:20 Nachtwind wrote:
filler is a silly usage of word regardless of your discussion hence this is no anime and has nothing to do with drawing styles
and the discussion about what´s a filler it´s just useless usage of words and a derail of this thread
The anime community didn't invent the word filler and they have a different meaning for it anyway, it's not related to this discussion.
I guess it's a useless discussion though, you are right.
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On March 29 2013 07:21 Telenil wrote:Show nested quote +And it's not "evil" that she kills marines and protoss because NONE of the evolution missions are required. Abather literally walks up to you and offers you zerg evolution and you can either pick A, B, or None. Remember when she said "lets not do this to humans anymore" and Abather was like "sure, no prob" and then he walks up and is like "want to test these things, humans are around" and instead of saying no (like Kerrigan would have if you were roleplaying) the player says yes and kills humans. Back in WoL, the only missions that had to be completed were the Mar Sara, artefact and Char missions. Technically, Raynor could refuse to follow Tosh to Redstone, yet HotS is based on the premise that every single mission happened, not just the three "central" arcs. So even if you, as the player, choose not to play the evolution missions, they happened in-universe anyway. Optionnal stuff was always considered to have happened by the next episode in Blizzard games.
I agree, and its a big reason why the narratives of both WoL and HotS feels so terrible.
If you boiled it down the WoL campaign probably had at best 5-8 actual missions that mattered? Out of 30??
In HotS its much the same, you don't have the choice to leave random protoss settlements alone, you don't have a choice but to attack random terran outposts and then you're asked to believe that she feels bad for her actions? That she isn't a psychotic killer?
No way.
You're asked to believe that Raynor only cares about Mengsk and Kerrigan while he robs places for some random buyer?
No way.
In BW they literally forced you to kill Fenix with your own two hands. As planets were lost you had whole conversations talking about how bad people felt about stuff they did. The psi emitter being used to call in zerg, you finding out that your first protoss victory was made moot by the zerg retaking it and killing fenix in the process. etc....
As the story went you had wins and losses and the losses hurt you. The bad decisions haunted you. You made decisions that felt right, and then you're shown that you've been manipulated the whole time. Manipulated into doing things the characters regret. People were hurt and broken and all hope felt lost.
That is what people actually remember from BW. Not the story, not the characters, but the sense of hopelessness being overcome by camaraderie and brotherhood. It was Raynor and Tassaddar turned outcasts by their own people and having to find strength in each other--that was what people remember.
Decisions meant something in BW. Decisions mean nothing in SC2. The story assumes you said yes to all options and doesn't punish you at all for making any of your decisions.
The one thing they did that was interesting was leaving raynor behind and having her feel bad for doing it. That is what we needed more of.
Anyway... I'm ranting....
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Why you talking about forcing then decisions while you talking about the same game?
You have the feeling that decisions were made inside the story but you as player was never able to make those decisions. That´s a mix of story telling and nostalgia.
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On March 29 2013 07:43 Nachtwind wrote:
Why you talking about forcing then decisions while you talking about the same game?
You have the feeling that decisions were made inside the story but you as player was never able to make those decisions. That´s a mix of story telling and nostalgia.
Of course we as the player never made those decisions in BW, but not all the decisions in BW lead to good results.
Take the first three Protoss missions in SC1
Mission one, save a town from zerg. Sounds good.
Mission two, save a different town from zerg. Sounds good.
While you were gone the first town got overrun and your friend is dead.
Had you stayed, the town would have been safe and Fenix would have been alive. Instead by doing the right thing you lost two things.
You then eventually kill a cerebrate, which turns out resurrected.
You find our how to kill cerebrates, only to realize you won't get homeworld support if you do it.
Half the time when your character made the "right" choice it had bad consequences because of those choices. It made it engaging because you didn't feel like an unstoppable force. It felt like the Protoss were losing, despite you winning all the missions.
In WoL/HotS none of the decisions you make affect anything. You actually just always win, constantly. The times where you don't are the side plots that are not relevanat to the overall narrative of the raynor/mengsk/kerrigan trifecta. The doctor dying and you having to kill her, tychus turning on you at the last minute (which would have been much better if Mengsk wasn't involved and was simply him wanting to take vengeance on Kerrigan for what she did, mengks was a cop out)
imagine if it was kerrigan you killed instead of the doctor? imagine if horner was the traitor--instead of tychus? Imagine if saving the prisoners caused more mayhem and more reason for the people to trust mengsk? Imagine if bad decisions you made actually affected the narrative. Because bad decisions made in BW did affect the narrative.
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Something that hasn't exactly been mentioned yet is the perception of 'filler' or extraneous materials in entertainment, etc, and how this is somewhat misleading or misrepresented. Whatever you want to call it, this episodic stuff often disguises itself as unimportant material, nonsensical, or otherwise if looking at the main story arc (a very common tactic in Television) but end up being very important in the end. The reason for this is because the story needs the adequate amount of time to mature and set up the proper materials, and get the audience into the position that the writers want them to be in, so that once they move the main arc forward, you have a better sense of how the characters perceive the following cascade of events. This kind of expectation of character or events is something that is often played around with in entertainment (in that they can be fulfilled or thwarted by the writers depending on the underlying intent).
One really good (read obvious) example of this is the whole 'farm' sequence of episodes in season 2 of The Walking Dead. Many, many people felt that these episodes (and encompassing material) were extraneous, stupid, or only used to draw out the plot and had no purpose, but this isn't entirely true. The show actually had to sit you down and experience all of the surrounding materials of 'being' on the farm (social, psychological, location, etc...) in order to properly set up the sequence of events that would eventually occur later and get the main arc really moving again, or initiate actions that had consequences down the road. So in this instance, and I would imagine that most people who experienced this would say this, but these episodes and the material while they masqueraded themselves as unimportant, they were in fact incredibly important, but on an extraordinarily subtle level.
That being said, the execution of this series of episodes was most times on the scale of mediocre to atrocious, but that doesn't mean that this idea isn't valid because you see these kind of "setting up certain expectations into fulfilling or denying them" arcs all the time in Television.
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I don´t know what you want, really. You´re acting like all those things in sc1/bw were decisions up to the players choice.
The story was forced upon the player in sc while you could for the first time actually decide story elements in WoL. Now you´re acting this don´t ever happened in WoL. The missions in Haven for example.
What you´re name and shame her is the art of storytelling. This is a problem (in my eyes) the OP of this thread has mentioned because of "children".
Imagine the storytelling for example what was done in haven in a sc1/bw enviroment and you get what i think.
Then you want backstabing at your decisions. Well one of your best friends want to kill your lady. One of your other friends told you he is not trust worthy. You said everything is okay.
You helped Narud to escape from Kerrigan.
You played into the plans of Narud and Amon with the Xel Naga device.
See. You already made decisions but are too blind to see them.
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On March 29 2013 08:21 Nachtwind wrote:
I don´t know what you want, really. You´re acting like all those things in sc1/bw were decisions up to the players choice.
The story was forced upon the player in sc while you could for the first time actually decide story elements in WoL. Now you´re acting this don´t ever happened in WoL. The missions in Haven for example.
What you´re name and shame her is the art of storytelling. This is a problem (in my eyes) the OP of this thread has mentioned because of "children".
Imagine the storytelling for example what was done in haven in a sc1/bw enviroment and you get what i think.
Then you want backstabing at your decisions. Well one of your best friends want to kill your lady. One of your other friends told you he is not trust worthy. You said everything is okay.
You helped Narud to escape from Kerrigan.
You played into the plans of Narud and Amon with the Xel Naga device.
See. You already made decisions but are too blind to see them.
Before I get to your main point, I'd like to talk about Tychus and Narud.
I would have preferred the backstabbing friend to have been the friend instead of Mengsk telling your friend to do it. Much more painful if your friend was willing to end your friendship to save the universe--and then failing at it.
I mean, I like that they were playing it off as if Tychus was a mole the whole time. It would have been a great twist if he was not a mole and simply wanted to end Kerrigan's reign Raynor be damned. I wish it was painful, and personal, and not just another mengsk goon.
But I do like the points you bring up. I like that we help Narud, I had forgotten about that. I wish there was more of it. I wish Kerrigan was a bit bitter about Raynor having saved Narud in the first place upon finding out how bad he was. I wish Kerrigan was more conflicted.
What I mean about choice is not the physical act of choosing. In SC1/BW all the choices your character made all seemed like the right call at the time, which is easy to do in a linear story like SC1 and BW were.
The problem with multi-choice version is that it never felt like having a choice to take one path or the other, it felt like you were given the choice to skip content or not.
Here's what I mean by this.
You have a choice of two planets, but its not really a choice of two planets since choosing one does not prevent you from going back to the other. The assumption is that you have control of the order of events, but not the choice of events.
Going back to my previous example about the toss campaign in SC1.
You save the first town, Fenix thanks you. You hear that another town is in trouble, so you go save it also. Because your character made that decision, Fenix dies.
They did not have the option to do that in WoL. In WoL, it doesn't matter which planet is picked, you'll get through all of them eventually.
In SC1 you use the psi emitter to call in zerg to kill dominion forces allowing you to escape. Kerrigan, Jim, and you feel bad about doing that to your enemies even though it was the only way you guys could escape.
In HotS you wipe out a planet (personally) or fight the protoss as you stop them from wiping out a planet.
Does Horner treat you differently? Does the media treat you differently? [Raynor, Genocidal maniac wipes out planet _____ , no survivors] etc....
It doesn't. It doesn't matter which one you pick since the narrative after it has to play out in a bleh enough fashion so that it would fit no matter which decision you made. Because Blizzard gave us the choice we removed the ability for them to punish us for bad decisions.
Its easy to make bad decisions in linear games since you know (as a designer) how the information plays out. That is absent when you have choose your own adventure.
Imagine, for example, if choosing to do missions with Tychus allowed mengks and kerrigan to build up forces because you wasted time robbing trains. Suddenly you get to the last missions and there's almost double the number of troops waiting for you.
Then imagine skipping the tychus adventures and just charging at Char--except since you ignored Mengsk he's also in the map attacking you and kerrigan at the same time (not mengks hmself, but his men). Imagine if depending on which missions you chose to skip and not skip would change how many troops you faced, how much tech you had, and how much money you had available. Imagine if you simply charged towards Char in WoL skipping everything. You get to the last mission and you have no money and no tech and have to start a cc with the one scv you have. There's almost no zerg on the map, and Kerrigan attacks you half as much. But maybe the second playthrough you do ALL the missions and have ALL the tech. Suddenly the game starts with you already having a big base and zerg everywhere inside your base, outside your base, and you spend the first few minutes just saving supply depots and running scvs away from lings.
If they give you choices it has to have consequences. In BW, choices were made for you and they had their own consequences. That is what I'm talking about by choice.
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You´re looking with the eyes of a bw fan here. Imagine sc2 in 10+ years and da dude_of_the_first_hour talking about the story. He´ll call sc1/bw a nice introduction to THE SC2!! while bashing about sc3. It´s hyperbole though what i´m using but hope you get my point. =)
And yes you´re right that the "freedome" of decision in WoL is a mere illusion since they have no effect and/or you can skip missions.
The thing is, those options you mentioned would go beyond the scope of the production. The games WoL and HotS are a compromise between perfection and time.
edit: But interestingly the "feel" of guilt of decission is based on things that are happening inside the missions. That´s what i talked about at the start of this. Videos are the story tellers while the game degrades to mere kill X.
edit: Also one thing is most people just don´t want to see big things like the creature Abathur. People calling him a filler. If they would know how important this creature is to clear flaws in the zerg history since sc1. The ignorance on the canon here is stunning.
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I have no idea how long you spent typing such a long post just to nit-pick. You probably should have spent this time doing something else. It's frustrating how society currently spends far more time complaining and bitching about miniscule and unimportant details.
It was a great game, a lot of interesting quirks, no two levels felt the same, some of the mastery achievements were difficult.
After reading your post I can conclude that you are a hipster that was looking for any flaw you could find while playing the game, get over yourself it was great.
User was warned for this post
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EPT
