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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On March 21 2013 02:48 Aterons_toss wrote: Star wars story is the exact same thing and I don't see people giving to shits, nor are they about Aliens. I've seen many people shit on Star Wars. What are you talking about? Considering you brought up the topic of movies. I really wonder how they're going to treat Warcraft with Legendary pictures. It should be interesting. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On March 21 2013 02:16 [F_]aths wrote: All these expectation of the SC2 story are build upon personal experience with SC1. For example, you would probably not demand a believable story from C&C Red Alert. I am however discontent with many SC1 story decision as well. (The rebel leader turns out to be the new tyrant, the sacrificed Sarah survives the betrayal and is reborn as villain ... BW introduced the UED as new faction which I found extremely lame to introduce earthlings in the Koprulu sector. The mystery around Duran was a cheap way to create material for discussion.) Instead of saying Jimmy and Sarah never were close, I rather assume untold parts of the story. Still, seeing Kerrigan fly away like a princess with magic powers broke my suspension of disbelief. The thing is that games like Red Alert and even SC1 had SIMPLE STORIES which FIT AN RTS GAME. They have "acquire this resource" or "defend this position" kind of missions in there. But what does SC2 have? Those missions are bathed in this love story which totally blunts any urgency of a mission, because you dont ever have any "defend these civilians" kind of missions which really have an impact or could punish you if you fail / decide not to do them or so. It all gets sacrificed for a cheesy story which has no real place in an RTS game. Mistrust and hate and betrayal are all fine, but love doesnt fit! If HotS had stuck to the "Kerrigan goes after Mengsk" path they could have made a nice and interesting campaign where these two kinda play chess against each other with each of them taking a move, but everything is overshadowed by that love story and this is bad. Sure enough Raynor didnt play a big part during most of the campaign, but the end really is Hollywood style. There probably was a one-sided love relationship in SC1 with Raynor thinking Kerrigan quite hot and then going on a rampage to save her. She probably didnt really love him that much (she is a career girl with a job after all) but fell for him when he rescued her in WoL. Complex character developing love stories work for an RPG but not an RTS ... but then they want to sell books too and there they want to be cheesy as cheese can be for maximum sales. | ||
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Zetter
Germany629 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:22 sCCrooked wrote: The problem is that we were given a premise and that premise has been completely destroyed. Its been replaced with this new storyline that most if not all educated and analytical minds would find insulting at best. In the decade+ between BW and SC2's new arc, I at no point ever gave a flying f*ck about Raynor and Kerrigan's love interest. Nobody did because it plain old wasn't there. All this new crap is coming out of the woodwork and its annoying to see such a great story completely smashed because of a dumb, poorly-executed love story. This is EXACTLY what happened in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars and it made a lot of people very angry at the whole franchise. Most still consider "4,5,6 were the only real ones" and I feel that intelligent people will feel no differently about the new Starcraft story arc vs the old one. Are you trying to put as many insults into as few lines as possible? Fortunately I don't care if you deem me intelligent, but I liked the HotS singleplayer. Mostly because of the gameplay. However the story wasn't that bad by any means. Of course it was full of clichés and cringeworthy at some points, but overall it was just a simple, basic story. Personally, I love love stories, so Raynor loving Kerrigan, Kerrigan loving Raynor and Mengsk finally dying (I waited for that one since I was six years old) was okay for me. | ||
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Cyanocyst
2222 Posts
Also the fact that original Starcraft was released so long ago, means that a lot of people were kids and teens when the story first came out. Hence far less critical of trivial things. Really feel like the truth is somewhere between this over-hype of blizzards old storytelling, and bias against blizzards newer games. Personally i don't really care, I had fun with Hots campaign just as it had fun with BW's campaign, now its all about multiplayer. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:36 Aterons_toss wrote: Well, as long as you think the money went into the writing and the writing was supposed to be one of the pillars of the campaign than i agree with you, you should complain... even more, you should have not bought the fucking game at all after WOL. For all I care I felt like the campaign could have been expensive and was really good because it had those very cool, very different mission... which ,though i found relatively east as a high master player, most would have found challenging or at least fun to play trough. But yes, if they actually tried to make and Arthur Clark SF universe or a Leo Tolstoy novel plot... if they invested money toward it and had good writers writing it than i agree, they failed miserably. Indeed they failed so miserably I assumed they did not even try, thus I believe your point to be more than valid if that is the case and you have evidence, because i confess i did not follow HOTS development or read any interviews with the writers. That doesn't change the fact that I am more than happy with my 40$ purchase and the fact that if the main thing you are looking for in this game is story you should have likely stopped buying after WOL came out... because I don't really see how that got any better of a story. Just because we are incredibly disappointed with WoL's story doesn't mean that everyone who wasn't pleased with HotS's writing should give up and not express their discontent. This is how change and various opinions come about. Besides, many of us still enjoy our purchase; I enjoyed the gameplay of the campaign quite a bit (even if I HATED the writing), and the multiplayer is a huge improvement over WoL's and has made it much more fun. Doesn't mean we can't critique the single player story. Feel like a lot of people are just nostalgia whores for the most part. Not saying that Hots storytelling was perfect or that BW was bad. I just think that people have a bias in favor of the first thing to ever come out, and that nothing will ever live up to the image they have of it in their minds. Also the fact that original Starcraft was released so long ago, means that a lot of people were kids and teens when the story first came out. Hence far less critical of trivial things. Really feel like the truth is somewhere between this over-hype of blizzards old storytelling, and bias against blizzards newer games. Personally i don't really care, I had fun with Hots campaign just as it had fun with BW's campaign, now its all about multiplayer. I swear, these "nostalgia" responses pop up every 5 pages in single player story-related threads. You really need to read the actual threads, since every one of them has in-depth explanations and comparisons of why SC2 is 1) inconsistent with and 2) just plain worse than BW in terms of writing and storytelling. | ||
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FrogOfWar
Germany1406 Posts
The most important thing that you did repeatedly mention but could have emphasized more is that the love story wasn't established. It is important because it is supposed to explain the motive of the protagonist to make the most extreme decision anyone could ever think of; the decision to become a monster and a mass-murdering dictator. I didn't remember Brood War that well and when I played HotS, I assumed that Raynor and Kerrigan did fall in love back then. If that were the case, HotS would still suck because they do have some interactions in the beginning that do not show us that love; only a random kiss out of nowhere. This can't be emphasized enough; the whole character development of the protagonist and thus the whole story rests on a relationship dynamic that isn't there. The second biggie concerning Kerrigan's decision is that she makes it on the basis of news broadcast on a fucking propaganda channel that is known for exaggerating the regime's victories, or even inventing them. Gee, if Mengsk says it, it must be true! Kerrigan's character is thus hollow from the start. This continues in the inconsistency of her - we never know if she is really just heartbroken, desparate, has lost all hope and faith in humanity/the universe and can only think of revenge, or if she's just being pragmatic ("I need an army") or if she actually likes the zerg or if she's evil or what. This leads to another point that I think you did not mention. Towards the ending, they transmit the idea that this is a different, more benign Queen of blades. She delays her attack in order to spare civilians, and she cooperates on an almost friendly basis with Valerian and Horner, and she acknowledges Valerian for showing morals. This is supposed to explain why Raynor forgives her in the end. Hard to believe after her slaughtering Billions, but better than nothing, and maybe an interesting perspective. Could the whole zerg race develop morals through her influence? The problem is that we heard her yell "kill everyone" repeatedly, and we never really learn what is going on with her. This could be explained through an inner struggle. Maybe after her re-conversion she felt the old bloodlust and rage against Mengsk and the whole world, but after having fought a few battles, she felt remorse. But it isn't explained. There is no detectable sign of an inner struggle, nor of her reconsidering anything. The things she does are extreme, but her whole demeanor is almost indifferent and business-like. The character doesn't work at all. Talking about storytelling, the zerg characters on the Leviathan have to be mentioned. They are utterly boring, and saying they're two-dimensional would give them too much credit. They hang around in the mouth of the Leviathan all day doing nothing. They don't interact. We don't even know whether they are aware of each other. Everything they say is stereotypical and meaningless. The one guy is all about essence. Great, tell me the tenth time. The queen doesn't question Kerrigan's position because she wants to learn from her. The supposed rivalry between them is meaningless, and the learning/teaching process is meaningless. These are plot elements that could have been a story but are never developed to be one. This calls into question the whole between-missions portion of the story. It is pretentious. There's nothing there. 80 percent of the characters have absolutely nothing interesting about them, no real motives, no conflicts, no dynamics. I think this deserves a mention when criticizing storytelling. The game pretends to be a genre mix, extending beyond RTS. And while the RTS portions of the game have been cut back and are pretty thin, what has taken their place is a pretentious bubble of nothing. And I could be wrong, but I'm under a very strong impression that what we see in HotS isn't an "approach" to storytelling, except if you want to call not giving a fuck an "approach". It is extremely sloppy work, it is rushed, it reeks of not making an effort. Take the "evolution missions" which are a mockery, made worse by them actually being listed in the "missions" archives. I feel it is important to say this clearly. They did not attempt to make something notable, or even something solid. They made the minimum they felt they could get away with. My best guess would be simply that they focused their resources elsewhere; on multiplayer and battle.net, and, well, at least they did something we can enjoy. But it's definitely not the campaign. Side note about the catering for 12-year-olds thing: I think 12-year-olds aren't as dumb as many people apparently believe. | ||
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OkStyX
Canada1199 Posts
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OkStyX
Canada1199 Posts
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Cereb
Denmark3388 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
You need to defend in this mission, maybe you should build siege tanks and deploy them here and here. You need to find a safe place on this ship. Fortunately, it's in the next area (click here). World of Warcraft used to have open ended dungeons with a ton of different quests. At some point they switched to the dungeon on rails model, where you couldn't ever get lost and simply moved from one zone to the other. Later they added boss warnings into the game, so you never had to find out anything on your own and had large markers on the screen to tell you what to do and where to stand. They also made sure that tanking became more easy, with no need for advanced crowd control techniques, so you didn't need to even pause for a moment as a group to discuss tactics. Then they added the cross server dungeon finder which puts you in a group of strangers in a second. And generally speaking, dungeons became easier (stats etc.) The result of all of this was that people would just queue up, spam one or two skills without thought, not say a word and just rush through an instance. I get it, people are annoyed at having to search for groups for hours, at not being able to do an instance because This approach also exists in SC2. I want to have missions that don't explain everything to me, because I take joy in discovering new ways to solve something. This is a strategy game, yet Blizzard feeds you the steps of what to do, so what's the point of even playing? It also exists in the story telling of the campaign. Everything has to be telegraphed, there can be no depth to the story. Amon can't simply be the leader of a Xel'Naga faction with ambiguous goals and designs. No, he has to be a God, older than the universe, more powerful than anyone. Why? Not because it makes sense, since he's just a member of a race of similar beings, who are mostly just very good scientists. Rather, it has to be because Blizzard wants a comic book style of heroes and villains and 1v1 battles and super powers. Note that Amon is going to probably be a direct copy of Archimonde in WC3. | ||
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Callynn
Netherlands917 Posts
Ok, so she has amnesia so she kind of can get a pass on her behavior to a degree...Wait. It is pretty well established in Star 1 that the infestation and acquisition of power corrupts Kerrigan to the point where she enjoys the new Sarah, and this is reinforced when the 'new' Overmind is being coalesced and she makes a move to permanently seize absolute power over the Zerg by killing it. Now whether this corruption has more to do with the infestation process or from Kerrigan actually liking this acquisition of power is left somewhat ambiguous, but regardless, it is pretty clear that Kerrigan is fully reticent of what has happened to her through her transformation so it seems to preclude the amnesia angle entirely. You completely leave out the fact that it was Amon who had strong influence over the Zerg hivemind (he created the Overmind according to HotS, which is only half true if you read the prologue of starcraft 1, where all the Xel'Naga decide to tame the Zerg with the Overmind to be able to keep them at bay, but just one 'bad' xel'naga). Although long dead, Amon supposedly still has influence over the mechanic of infestation because it is how he designed the Swarm in the first place - to have a single purpose (create the hybrid by invading Aiur). This would include the infestion on Kerrigan, eventhough her infestation was the Overmind';s desperate attempt to free the Zerg of Amon's influence. With the Xel'Naga artifact purging most of the 'old' infestation process (read, corrupted by Amon), Kerrigan's rebirth on Zerus into the Primal Queen of Blades is clearly made to change how she is and how she acts - independant and more human. She has come to accept her role and pretends to be a cruel being as she was as the old queen of blades, while in truth she is now a 'truly free zerg'. This is a good concept, and you completely skip over it. That doesn't fix the Raynor character though, which I believe is the core mistake of the whole SC2 storyline. Raynor swore he'd kill Kerrigan after she killed Fenix. Now he has grown hair, become an alcoholic, seems to have forgotten campaign 2 and 3 of SC1, and campaign 1, 2 and 3 of SC2 and hops back into the single event in which Arcturus leaves Kerrigan behind. That is retarded, put in the most friendly way possible towards their narrative skills. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:41 Rabiator wrote: Just because you don't like to have love in this universe doesn't automatically not fitting.The thing is that games like Red Alert and even SC1 had SIMPLE STORIES which FIT AN RTS GAME. They have "acquire this resource" or "defend this position" kind of missions in there. But what does SC2 have? Those missions are bathed in this love story which totally blunts any urgency of a mission, because you dont ever have any "defend these civilians" kind of missions which really have an impact or could punish you if you fail / decide not to do them or so. It all gets sacrificed for a cheesy story which has no real place in an RTS game. Mistrust and hate and betrayal are all fine, but love doesnt fit! If HotS had stuck to the "Kerrigan goes after Mengsk" path they could have made a nice and interesting campaign where these two kinda play chess against each other with each of them taking a move, but everything is overshadowed by that love story and this is bad. Sure enough Raynor didnt play a big part during most of the campaign, but the end really is Hollywood style. There probably was a one-sided love relationship in SC1 with Raynor thinking Kerrigan quite hot and then going on a rampage to save her. She probably didnt really love him that much (she is a career girl with a job after all) but fell for him when he rescued her in WoL. Complex character developing love stories work for an RPG but not an RTS ... but then they want to sell books too and there they want to be cheesy as cheese can be for maximum sales. While the OP is very well written (which I admit even though I don't agree to some points) many postings in this thread are not. I see a lot of bitter nerds here, not able to stand a love cliche in the SC2 story line. On March 21 2013 03:50 Shakattak wrote: And as a side note, i did enjoy playing the campaign regardless. Me too, even though I had several facepalm moments. The OP still provide good points, though I consider the premise debatable (which seems to be the need to have a well-done story in the first place.) | ||
sCCrooked
Korea (South)1306 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:43 Zetter wrote: Are you trying to put as many insults into as few lines as possible? Fortunately I don't care if you deem me intelligent, but I liked the HotS singleplayer. Mostly because of the gameplay. However the story wasn't that bad by any means. Of course it was full of clichés and cringeworthy at some points, but overall it was just a simple, basic story. Personally, I love love stories, so Raynor loving Kerrigan, Kerrigan loving Raynor and Mengsk finally dying (I waited for that one since I was six years old) was okay for me. You are simply easily amused by a very low-grade basic storyline and that's perfectly fine. If the truth is insulting to you, perhaps a change is in order. However making a ridiculous statement like you waiting for Raynerrigan to happen since you were 6 is what makes the people defending this seem utterly uneducated. You can't possibly have waited for that because if you did, then you made something up in your head that wasn't even hinted at and at the age of 6 desired 2 arch-enemies at each others' throats who are the basis for the entire story arc to stop hating each other and suddenly fuck. That statement contradicts itself and is completely illogical. Liking the story is fine and so is liking the new arc they're adding, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the cold facts that this is not the Starcraft Universe we were presented and given a complete base of. Its some other weird arc that didn't exist, wasn't hinted at and it alienates everything that defined the first game and its expansion. These are not things that can be argued. | ||
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Hryul
Austria2609 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:34 Stratos_speAr wrote: Because he is the leader of the Swarm and his goal is to absorb the Protoss? And no, there weren't Dark Templar on Aiur. They were exiled and, at the time, hadn't returned. The Overmind is (at the time) the most powerful and psionic being out there. Aiur is the homeworld of the Protoss, with billions of them there and an untold amount of defenses. Perhaps he needs some sort of anchor to this incredibly well-defended and psionic-inhabited planet to have a firm hold on the planet? It is entirely plausible and doesn't even require the mental back-flips that making SC2 consistent does to understand why it might be reasonable for it to be difficult for the Overmind to just auto-invade Aiur. I mean yea, we could even grant you that it's a little convoluted or potentially unnecessary. But please explain how this is comparable to any of the absolutely ridiculous plot holes or terrible writing that we see from SC2. I brought up the dt's because they were a real threat to the cerebrates so there might be others unknown to him lurking on Aiur (with an untold amount of defenses.) Why the fuck would I go willingly to the most dangerous place in the known universe for me if I had a safe backup plan: Sit there and let the cerebrates do the work? Let alone the fact that the protoss were not broken by the time the overmind entered their world. I will also not go with you into speculations as why he would need the crystal/temple. It is not told to me in the campaign and it's not my task to fill the holes the writers left there. As it stands both missions need further explanations or are highly unreasonable. I choose this example because I thought it was a quite obvious example of bad storywriting but there are others. (the whole BW: Protoss campaign is basically a quest for crystals. to activate a temple. from the xel'naga. to kill zerg. which landed undetected. on the homeworld of the dts.) I guess it comes down to personal preferences if you are more willing to forgive the SC/BW plot in comparison to the WoL/HotS plot. But to make a black and white statement like BW was the culmination of storytelling is clouded judgement. | ||
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focusfight
4 Posts
That being said I thought the gameplay was very good. There was a nice mix of hero-type missions and macro-oriented style zerg missions. Kerrigan's skill tree felt balanced and proper skill selection for specific missions was often necessary (at least in brutal mode). The evolution mission feature is also really cool because it allows you to essentially make your own custom units. HotS is a good expansion, and if you had "been teetering over period of a few months in looking at pros/cons, personal opinions, and [you] only finally caved," then maybe you shouldn't have purchased the game in the first place. | ||
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Warpish
834 Posts
On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: [The other thing however is in talking about my interest in the possible psychological ramifications of being the Queen of Blades and PTSD, Blizzard didn't seem to deem this important to touch upon in the slightest. The only time you see this is from the opening cinematic, and never again. I can't help but feel this is a missed opportunity to explore something that games rarely ever do, the psychological ramifications of trauma . The PTSD was left for those brave souls who managed to play until the end of the campaign. On March 20 2013 21:58 wo1fwood wrote: This brings me to the Hybrids, Emil Narud, and the meaning of the artifact. The first thing I wanted to mention was that it is finally revealed to us that the Tal'Darim, that annoying Protoss faction from Wings that we have been fighting, actually worship the Xel'Naga Amon, which I actually felt works. It played into the Protoss Xel'Naga reverence ideas, but I felt that they could have done more to explain the sociological and historical position of the Tal'Darim as that has always seemed a little confusing in how they fit into Protoss society (the lore in the manual would lead me to believe that they were one of the factions that did not embrace the Khala). Cue yet another supplemental materials issue. What doesn't make any sense or is explained, is why did Dr. Narud hired Raynor to steal artifacts from the Tal'Darim (in WoL). In HotS we discover that the Tal'Darim work for Narud. Anyway, it's just another plot hole in the midst of so many others. Another point that I would have liked to see addressed is the fact that Kerrigan, the leader of an evolutionary race and the apogee of Zerg evolution, evolved high heels in her feet. I wonder what are the evolutionary advantages of high heels! Ridiculous. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:44 Stratos_speAr wrote: I swear, these "nostalgia" responses pop up every 5 pages in single player story-related threads. You really need to read the actual threads, since every one of them has in-depth explanations and comparisons of why SC2 is 1) inconsistent with and 2) just plain worse than BW in terms of writing and storytelling. I do agree that SC2 is inconsistent. But I don't see BW any better in storytelling. SC1 was groundbreaking then despite the many cliches. Having talking heads in the mission screen, who advance the story, was very good to immerse in the story. The story itself however was imo not as good and got even worse in BW. BW needed to have new plots, so we got the UED and other random stuff. I didn't see a fleshed out plan for the story which included BW. However I still regard SC1+BW as one of the few games which are true art. The impact this game including its expansion had are visible still today. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On March 21 2013 04:08 Warpish wrote: Another point that I would have liked to see addressed is the fact that Kerrigan, the leader of an evolutionary race and the apogee of Zerg evolution, evolved high heels in her feet. I wonder what are the evolutionary advantages of high heels! Ridiculous. I also thought about it, she had high heels in Wol already. A transparent trick to make her more sexy despite her zerg appearance. It still is one of the thing I can live with, even though it *is* ridiculous. As are the woman in every historical hollywood movie. The girl always fits the fashion of the time, she never looks like a contemporary woman. Absolute BS. But Starcraft design is over the top anyways, so I accepted natural high heels for the queen of blades even though they make absolutely no sense. | ||
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Rococo
United States331 Posts
On March 21 2013 04:03 focusfight wrote: I can appreciate the amount of thought and effort that the OP put into this topic, but at the end of the day Starcraft 2 is a video game - not a Tom Clancy novel. Any critique of the campaign that doesn't cover the story AND gameplay is ultimately a waste of everyone's time. This critique really misses the mark by failing to address any of the gameplay features other than the obvious Belial/Zerus boss fight comparison. That being said I thought the gameplay was very good. There was a nice mix of hero-type missions and macro-oriented style zerg missions. Kerrigan's skill tree felt balanced and proper skill selection for specific missions was often necessary (at least in brutal mode). The evolution mission feature is also really cool because it allows you to essentially make your own custom units. HotS is a good expansion, and if you had "been teetering over period of a few months in looking at pros/cons, personal opinions, and [you] only finally caved," then maybe you shouldn't have purchased the game in the first place. I found some of the missions pretty tiresome. There are a lot of gimmicks but most macro missions still follow the same structure of giving you 1 or 2 obvious expands and saturating the entire map with enemy units and static defenses, and then constantly throwing a small number of units at you. So you just build up a wrecking ball army and kind of mindlessly 1a through everything. Why not play to SC2's strengths and give the enemy an actual economy with workers to harass, and expansion timings on their end. And for me a preferable mix of hero missions would be basically zero but I realize I'm in the minority there. | ||
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Zetter
Germany629 Posts
On March 21 2013 04:01 sCCrooked wrote: You are simply easily amused by a very low-grade basic storyline and that's perfectly fine. If the truth is insulting to you, perhaps a change is in order. However making a ridiculous statement like you waiting for Raynerrigan to happen since you were 6 is what makes the people defending this seem utterly uneducated. You can't possibly have waited for that because if you did, then you made something up in your head that wasn't even hinted at and at the age of 6 desired 2 arch-enemies at each others' throats who are the basis for the entire story arc to stop hating each other and suddenly fuck. That statement contradicts itself and is completely illogical. Liking the story is fine and so is liking the new arc they're adding, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the cold facts that this is not the Starcraft Universe we were presented and given a complete base of. Its some other weird arc that didn't exist, wasn't hinted at and it alienates everything that defined the first game and its expansion. These are not things that can be argued. I put the brackets behind the word dying for a reason. Aside from that, it still seems pretty obvious to me that Raynor really loved Kerrigan. Maybe it's the german voice acting, but they just sound that way. | ||
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