Massive campaign poll - Page 2

Reflecting back on StarCraft 2’s first installment, Wings of Liberty, Metzen views it with a mix of pride and a healthy dose of writer’s self-loathing. To get ready for Legacy of the Void, he popped in Wings of Liberty just a few weeks ago to play the campaign again. The nostalgia trip came with a few bruises.

"I was like, oof, over and over again, oh my God, this sounded so good at the time," Metzen says. "Oh my God, it’s terrible."
Among those storylines that didn’t make the cut was a serious "down and out" drinking problem for Raynor. The missions Metzen wanted showed Raynor screwing up in some way, even after players successfully achieved their goal. People would end up hurt, but eventually, Raynor would overcome his personal demons and find redemption.

"At the time, the team was just like, ‘Why? It’s unnecessary,’" Metzen says. "‘I just wanna see things nuked! I want to feel badass right out of the gate.’ That’s perfectly valid. If I were writing a novel about it, it might have been great.

"But in developing these fictions for games, you gotta remember, people just want to feel powerful and effective. If the first X minutes of your gameplay, the first X missions in a narrative wave, if you just feel kinda cruddy and icky and low, you’re not gonna stick with it. You’re not gonna enjoy it or bring out this heroic thing that we were really chasing, for the most part, in the first place."

Despite whatever clumsiness remains, he says, he’s still happy for the work he put in. Writing for games isn’t easy, and working on your craft requires putting your heart out there again and again.

"It’s just writers, right," he says. "We’re always like, oh, God, why did that sound like such a good idea at the time? But at the same time, as crude as things can look in hindsight, I’m super proud of it too. ... It all started somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. It doesn’t have to be perfect. What is perfect? We want to build these things as best we can.

"You aren’t afforded the ability to be all that precious. You gotta push passionately."

Wings of Liberty is home to many themes and stories that Metzen felt passionately about when it was made. Sometimes that makes it harder to reflect on.

"Looking back at the writing stuff over time, there’s stuff that I’m super embarrassed by," Metzen says. "Whether it was just bad writing, or there were ideas that were really important to me at the time — but I look back and I feel exposed, chasing themes or story moments that meant a lot to me at the time. But for every one of those, I’m equally proud of having taken the step, taken a stand, clumsy as it all may have been. It was real. It was pure art at the time."

On November 24 2015 23:50 Clonester wrote:
I think WoL Missions have been the best. Year, also alot of search and destroy, but also trains, super nova, mine x amount of that, do X at Z before enemy does Y at Z, hold a base with freaking laser, hold a base with some artefacts, save that mad tychus in the odin, use that odin, kill everything, play this hero mission...
Really, WoL Missions had a much greater design then HotS and LotV. The two missions on HotS I liked have been the Hyperion Mission and the "infest that protoss ship"-mission.
In LotV it was top of the top, no mission was outstanding even these with a twist: Kill X amout of Y to unlock/destroy/whatever Z. Almost every time. The Alarak Mission was cool, the hero mission gave hero inflation feeling and some defending missions... WoL was much stronger in that regard.

Also I liked the Hyperion much more then Spear of Adun or the Zerg ship. Using merchs have been a great adition, the upgrades from the technology bay felt much more unique then anything from Zerg or Protoss Upgrades. And the buyable upgrades just made your core army feeling op. At least when you didnt play on brutal where the game was actually brutal and not play&chill like in hots. In LotV solar core felt really stupid, I only used orbital fire abilities in extreme emergancy and the passives. Not really a choice to make for me as most of the solar core was useless for me. The Upgrades from the upgrade girl were just straight boring: No hard choice to make, no really need to swap over. After I had Dark Archons, Voids and Zelots, I couldnt care less about them.

Even the WoL story felt better, dadada Tychus is back and oh fuck, Zergs are here too. Lets grab this what they want and collect that what they want and oh, what they want is oooold and magic and strong and Zeratul wants me to find Sarah, so lets use artefact with Sarah. And yeah fuck Mengsk by the way, lets show the world his true face and oh yeah, lets fight with his son, he seems nice.
Zerg Story: Dont play with Zerg, stupid Valarian, oh lets run, nooo Jim, I WANT REVENGE, UNITE THE SWARM!!!!!!, oh some Duran/Narud here, okay. Mengsk dead, maybe some Amon here somewhere? Stupid Zeratul never telling me everything.
LotV: Invasion failed, thx Amon, lets rally some Ex Machina robot protoss and some dirty Amon lovers around me. Xel Naga ded, lets use Artefact from Terrans to kill Amon, it worked, fine.

Seriously, the story became worse with every chapter. Amon is the worst enemy ever in a videogame... zero dimensional, loses all fights after the first battle for Aiur in LotV, talks permanently about circlejerking and breaking circlejerking, really, worst Enemy ever. Even Dr. Narud was a better enemy. And he was one dimensional of following leadership. Nothing in common with BW Duran.

Oh and I liked Mira and Matt, but they didnt have enough screen time to have some character.

On November 25 2015 11:38 paralleluniverse wrote:
LOL at the WoL nostalgia. WoL was a mess, it was like 25 missions long, yet mostly about nothing. Then suddenly they go to Char to deinfest Kerrigan.

Even Metzen admitted WoL was a mess:

On November 25 2015 12:06 cheekymonkey wrote:


If he is the one who conceived of the worst character in the whole story: Dehaka, then I don't see how his opinion could matter on this.