EPTRetconning this was the single worst decision the blizzard story writing teams have ever made. They had an incredible villain and a hero whose motivations matched our own. Then they decided to throw away the rivalry that defined the two most core characters to the franchise. They twisted the strongest emotional connections we had to the previous story on their head.
Plot holes and retcons - Page 2
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imJealous
United States1382 Posts
Retconning this was the single worst decision the blizzard story writing teams have ever made. They had an incredible villain and a hero whose motivations matched our own. Then they decided to throw away the rivalry that defined the two most core characters to the franchise. They twisted the strongest emotional connections we had to the previous story on their head. | ||
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Nazara
United Kingdom235 Posts
On December 16 2015 05:48 Alventenie wrote: Ok, that is a reason why Mengsk wouldn't want Raynor dead at precisely that point in time. However, why didn't he order assassination before Zerg started invading human sectors, like at the very start of WoL? Why not order it before events of WoL? Also, Mengsk controls the news - nobody would know that Raynor has been assassinated by Mengsk.I dont disagree with the mentality that Mengsk wants Raynor dead but these are at 2 different times. The part you described was in the middle of the zerg rampaging through the sector and if Mengsk kills Raynor then people will believe he isn't focusing on the right thing (protecting them and stopping the zerg). This would cause a lot of back fire imo. In the video where he proclaims he is dead, the zerg are dealt with for the most part already, and there is nothing for Mengsk to do otherwise. A much better political move now to do it than before. Also the Drakken laser drill seems very simple. Its a tool, not a weapon. You probably would have to have some serious power attached to it, so it will become hard for it to be very deployable in offensive situations. At best it would be defensive only (which was commented on in the last zerg missions). It also will probably take a lot to move it quickly from place to place, making it very ineffective in campaigns where you need to move a lot and have positional advantage over your enemy. A few others you mentioned that were commented on. The Odin was explained by Warfield in a News cast you could click on right after you steal it. Kate Lockwell asks him about how they lost communication, and Warfield said they did breifly, but they regained contact quickly and delivery was on time. Matt Horner also has comments that he pulled in a ton of favors to get the Odin on the ground and past clearance so they could pull this stunt off. If Mengsk wanted to, he could send a Ghost with a portable Nuke device, plant it near where Raynor is, blow it up, and say that Raynor Raiders wanted to use the Nuke against the people of Dominion, but their plan backfired. If Raynor becoming a martyr is the only reason why Mengsk didn't kill him, there are multiple ways of killing him without anyone knowing about it, or shifting the blame on Raynor anyway. This is a plot hole or just a bad piece of writing. The dialog between the two could look different, like: "- Sup, so why Mengsk just send some Ghosts to finish you off? - I can be very hard to find if I want to, Having loyal friends helps a lot, too, Tosh. Think about it in the future." This would in itself fix the plot hole, and establish a connection between Raynor and Tosh. How Nova found Raynor? It can be explained that she is the best in her trade. The All-In is purely a defensive mission, considering they are already waiting for the Artefact to charge up, there is no reason not to set up and `use the Laser Drill. Power consumption, difficulty in deploying it - don't get me wrong, those are good and valid reasons. But it is never explained, therefore, poor writing. There are easy ways of fixing it: - make it malfunction from overheating, and being an expensive and hard to get, we never use it again. - make Protoss overrun the position shortly after finishing the objective, preventing the Laser from being retrieved. - make it a Xel-Naga equipment. First, you escort Dr. Narud to the Drill, he tries to hack it, says that most likely the Temple door can be breached only with full charge. It fixes the problem of the lack of repeated use during the campaign(s) (it cannot be extracted from the planet's surface). It makes Narud appear in person (giving him a face) and establishing him as someone with a (source unknown to us at the time) knowledge of Xel-Naga tech. Later, after learning that Narud=Duran=Xel-Naga, we have a mind-blowing moment of "yes, that's how he know how to use it!". Odin: It still doesn't explain why nobody ever contacted Korhal when the facility was under attack. Or how is it possible that Matt Horner has so much influence in Dominion. Or why the loss of communication didn't raise any suspicion at all - it is a secret weapon development facility and no one is bothered by the loss of communication with it. The pilot should also be a subject to a rigorous security check, and Tychus is a well known criminal. People should be fired or executed for this, and Raynor should find out about it through a broadcast - to make the world more gray. Sure, you are trying to dispose of a dictator, but innocent people die regardless.That would deepen the story. It could be handled differently to make sense out of it - Odin is taken over while it is being transported to Korhal. And a pilot is some else then Tychus. A cover-ops mission, instead of the "Tychus jumps into Odin and wrecks the secret facility". | ||
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Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On December 17 2015 01:22 imJealous wrote: “I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan. For Fenix and all the others who got caught between you and your mad quest for power! It may not be tomorrow, darling. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day.” Retconning this was the single worst decision the blizzard story writing teams have ever made. They had an incredible villain and a hero whose motivations matched our own. Then they decided to throw away the rivalry that defined the two most core characters to the franchise. They twisted the strongest emotional connections we had to the previous story on their head. Its not mutually exclusive. He could have felt that then, and then transformed into loving Kerrigan now. And that's a beautiful arc to see--if it was shown to us. Having him just be drunk during a revolution missing kerrigan without the transformation is kind of meh. | ||
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mierin
United States4943 Posts
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c3rberUs
Japan11286 Posts
On December 17 2015 06:25 mierin wrote: I remember hearing that marine saying "looks like they caught us with our pants down" and using lurkers to exterminate Fenix with prejudice and actually feeling pride That was the opening sequence of that game. The lurkers killed some random terrans and protoss.  It's certainly not impossible for Raynor to do 180 on his view on Kerrigan but I find it highly improbable especially seeing how Kerrigan cold-bloodedly slaughtered his most trusted comrades- comrades that stood by him and bled with him in the most dire and desperate situations. Either Raynor has to have a kind of love-mental-disorder or be forced into 'loving' her for a 180 to make sense. | ||
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RoomOfMush
1296 Posts
On December 17 2015 12:27 c3rberUs wrote: That was the opening sequence of that game. The lurkers killed some random terrans and protoss. It's certainly not impossible for Raynor to do 180 on his view on Kerrigan but I find it highly improbable especially seeing how Kerrigan cold-bloodedly slaughtered his most trusted comrades- comrades that stood by him and bled with him in the most dire and desperate situations. Either Raynor has to have a kind of love-mental-disorder or be forced into 'loving' her for a 180 to make sense. Dont you see?! It all makes sense now! It was ANON WHO MADE RAYNOR LOVE KERRIGAN!CAPSLOCK! Isnt it obvious? Anon does EVERYTHING cause hes GOD! + Show Spoiler + [/sarcasm] <- just in case | ||
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hitthat
Poland2262 Posts
On December 16 2015 06:04 Naracs_Duc wrote: The story jump the shark in BW. Prophecy story? BW Nope, it was in Vanilla. In Zerg campaign Zeratul says to Kerrigan that "her coming was fortold". Granted - it was never treated as something more than gibberish of some deluded protoss mistic, but...well. Also, Duran's gloating about his evil plans cannot be ever seen as a prophecy, sorry. You are barking to the wrong tree. Overly convoluted protect the hero missions? BW Its not even a big sin of SC2, not from a story telling point of view. Randomly fighting each other without clear direction of overarching narrative? BW True. Random factions that somehow never existed before but now do for arbitrary reasons? BW The only "new" out-of-context faction is UED, all others were either mentioned in manual, seen in vanila or hinted in vanila protoss ending writings (like Kerrigan going to fight for her title) Everything SC2 did wrong it did so because it copied fucking BW. Shame it didnt copied its well writen dialogue lines...Also, the worst part - reviving of Stukov, was from stupid console port. All the best parts of SC1's story was in vanilla SC1. As you see, not all  Also, the best mission in SC1 was "True colors". | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
On December 18 2015 07:24 hitthat wrote: The only "new" out-of-context faction is UED, all others were either mentioned in manual, seen in vanila or hinted in vanila protoss ending writings (like Kerrigan going to fight for her title) I wouldn't even concede the point about UED being a random faction. BW being an expansion pack with three whole new chapters, I basically considered it to be a whole new separate story, and so it's completely forgivable, even expected, for them to introduce a new faction. And they do it right at the beginning. The opening BW cut scene is a conversation between Stukov and Dugalle. And it's not like they just washed over the Korpulu sector in two seconds. You get to play the entire chapter in which they slowly and steadily become a major power. And once they do, it takes the entire sector to team up against them and bring them down. I thought the UED was very well done, and probably my favourite faction introduced in the entire Starcraft series. I consider them to be the "overmind" of BW. They're this 'big bad' group that start ruthlessly invading planets, you play as them in the second chapter, and it takes multiple races teaming up to take them down. Not to mention that they actually have an overmind as their own pet. | ||
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My_Fake_Plastic_Luv
United States257 Posts
Okay, though, was that a beard or a horse's hoof, "Cala is Avatar-2", Arabian Toss Lady?, hybrids, Darth Vader Toss?, RoboCop Toss?, Tosses saying "Wait?" too many times, I save the end of the universe by killing a bunch of phone chargers (2/3 of missions)??? But really, over-dramatic to the point of being funny or just really dumb. Yeah, I think really dumb. | ||
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RoomOfMush
1296 Posts
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SixtusTheFifth
New Zealand170 Posts
On December 14 2015 10:50 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Most obnoxious retcon right here. I loved the old lab geek xel'naga... The thing that irritates me most is that from the geek lab Xel'Naga Blizzard could have told the same story without any stupid prophecies, retcons, Amon/TheDarkOneIsBoundInShayolGhul bollicks At the end of BW when Duran boasted he served a higher power I assumed the XelNaga had gone bad-ass. They made the Protoss, they got up themselves. They made the Overmind, he butchered them because he ran out of things to do. With a tiny tiny retcon of "actually some survived and call it PTSD but they are back and they ain't playing nice anymore and they are going to kill you all with your own children so WHO'S BAD NOW? Anyhoo, I've enjoyed reading this thread. I see I'm not the only one who got so fed up I started making my own story. | ||
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RoomOfMush
1296 Posts
On December 20 2015 19:06 SixtusTheFifth wrote:I see I'm not the only one who got so fed up I started making my own story. To be honest, I would really like to know what kind of people actually like the SC2 plot. Even if you have not played SC1 the plot of SC2 should be pretty bad. Its not just retcons all over the place, its just bad story telling in general. | ||
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hitthat
Poland2262 Posts
1. dramatic pausing. Ok, it started in BW outro, and it worked there, but in SC2 it gone rampart and is overused as hell. Dear Blizzard, doing dramatic pauses all the time doesnt makes dialogues good. 2. roaring monsters in cinematics and trailers. This shows up again and again since WarCraft 3. Dear Blizzard, it no longer impress anyone. Its not the 80's, when roaring alien in "The Thing" could scare the shit out of anyone. But right now the Hollywood is poluted with this shit. I really like that you limited this stuff in last 2 expantions (bravo), becouse I really like Zergs shown in "Battle of Amerigo", when they were behaving like Xenomorphs in "Aliens" instead of trolls in "Lord of the Rings". 3. Duels in cinematics are becoming more and more dumb. The culmination of this is, without a doubt, shonen Zeratul vs Artanis, but first glimpses were seen in WoL. All of this looks like that: bad guy introduction ->good guy baddass response -> clash ->evil gloating -> heroic responce -> decisive blow -> overly dramatic conclusion. Every next duel looks dumber than former. Please Blizzard, improve that to at last tolerable state or get rid of this if you are really unable to. | ||
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Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On December 21 2015 05:21 hitthat wrote: Now time for a list of some (subjectively) weak things in SC2 narration. I can understand that some of you could not agree with that: 1. dramatic pausing. Ok, it started in BW outro, and it worked there, but in SC2 it gone rampart and is overused as hell. Dear Blizzard, doing dramatic pauses all the time doesnt makes dialogues good. 2. roaring monsters in cinematics and trailers. This shows up again and again since WarCraft 3. Dear Blizzard, it no longer impress anyone. Its not the 80's, when roaring alien in "The Thing" could scare the shit out of anyone. But right now the Hollywood is poluted with this shit. I really like that you limited this stuff in last 2 expantions (bravo), becouse I really like Zergs shown in "Battle of Amerigo", when they were behaving like Xenomorphs in "Aliens" instead of trolls in "Lord of the Rings". 3. Duels in cinematics are becoming more and more dumb. The culmination of this is, without a doubt, shonen Zeratul vs Artanis, but first glimpses were seen in WoL. All of this looks like that: bad guy introduction ->good guy baddass response -> clash ->evil gloating -> heroic responce -> decisive blow -> overly dramatic conclusion. Every next duel looks dumber than former. Please Blizzard, improve that to at last tolerable state or get rid of this if you are really unable to. None of these are Blizzard issues--but is an overall trend of the entertainment space. Movies, TV, etc... Blizz is just reflecting society's normal. | ||
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hitthat
Poland2262 Posts
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Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On December 23 2015 03:51 hitthat wrote: Unfortunelly...you are right. It really saddens me that I am... | ||
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Ravianna26
United States44 Posts
On December 17 2015 01:22 imJealous wrote: “I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan. For Fenix and all the others who got caught between you and your mad quest for power! It may not be tomorrow, darling. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day.” Retconning this was the single worst decision the blizzard story writing teams have ever made. They had an incredible villain and a hero whose motivations matched our own. Then they decided to throw away the rivalry that defined the two most core characters to the franchise. They twisted the strongest emotional connections we had to the previous story on their head. Raynor hated Mengsk for betraying Kerrigan to the Zerg so making Raynor kill Kerrigan would have been the single worst decision the Blizzard story writing teams have ever made! | ||
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Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On December 23 2015 08:15 Ravianna26 wrote: Raynor hated Mengsk for betraying Kerrigan to the Zerg so making Raynor kill Kerrigan would have been the single worst decision the Blizzard story writing teams have ever made! You are not incorrect. But they could at least show us the transition between Raynor's anger at what Kerrigan had become, his sense of hopelessness at how much Mengst was being praised. It would have been great to see Raynor's rage just fuel an almost nihilistic passion to strike at something, anything, to make himself feel better. To strike at Kerrigan for killing his friends, to cleanse whole planets of Zerg and humans alike because its not like it would matter anyway. And only after he finally is pushed to exhaustion does he finally realize that it wasn't Kerrigan he was really angry about, but at what Mengst had done to make the world that was initially just hopeless--but has now become ugly. And even though he knew that he had no real chance at making it better--that he was going to do what he could to at least make it more honest. To ensure that Terrans died on their feet, instead of on their knees. | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
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Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On December 23 2015 09:42 The Bottle wrote: I find it really odd that people keep on blaming Mengsk for Kerrigan being a mass murdering zerg queen. Yes, it's true that his actions led to that, but that's just a matter of the butterfly effect. If you punch someone in the face, and they get so mad that they kill your wife, are you to blame for your wife being dead? No, you're just to blame for punching someone in the face, which is also wrong. When it comes to Kerrigan, Mengsk's crime was leaving a soldier behind. That's it. It deserves all the scrutiny and blame of any battle commander leaving a soldier behind. (He also let the zerg wipe out all humans on Tarsonis, which he 100% gets the blame for, but that's a different matter.) Everything else is circumstantial. There was no extra malice or bad intent beyond that of leaving a soldier behind. If Raynor wants to blame someone for the loss of human-Kerrigan, he can lay that at Mengsk's feet, because he left her behind. But if he wants to blame someone for the zerg attack on his Raiders, the death of Fenix, and all the other bad shit Kerrigan did, he can only lay that blame 100% on her. No disagreement there. But they could show us that. Instead what they showed was Raynor yelling how much he hates Kerrigan and then immediately into getting drunk missing his girlfriend. No matter which route they wanted to take the story--take us there. | ||
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