EPTBefore I get to the disappointed part I want to say that the game does have it's good sides
it is graphically pleasing, the missions are fun to play, Hyperion is awesome and the Zeratul bit is pure gold, the rest however...
Now as to the actual point of the thread I don't even know where to start.
I guess the first thing are the trailers. I watched them, and naturally got hyped up, and they were indeed awesome. But when I watched them I, and I suppose everyone else, thought "if the trailers are this awesome how awesome is the rest of the game. What we find out is that there, more or less, isn't anything outside those cinematic!!! And not to mention that I fucking knew that Valerian can reverse Kerrigan's condition as soon as he said "I can give you what you want most" in the trailer, they sold out their big finish, and everything else, before the start, come on!
Next, the Findlay fiasco. Before I move on to that let me digress a bit. Arcturus Mengsk is according to the books and all story on him prior to SCII a ambitious person, with IQ in the upper level of genius,with an amazing tactical and strategic sense, he is utterly ruthless but also very educated and layered (he is able to use this to fool psionics, like Kerrigan) , in short he is one heck of a opponent. But now in SCII he seems to have suddenly thrown his brain out the window. Why do I say this? First off the news broadcasts, they are a travesty seriously. How can someone for whom it is said that the media is his greatest weapon allow Kate Lockwell to spread what is basically Raynor propaganda without being killed,mind controlled by a Ghost replaced by a robot or something after the first broadcast?! Now why do I say all this about Mengsk in regards to Tychus? Well because he is the one who apparently is stupid enough to send Tychus to Raynor to be some sort of a mole. So it is very safe to assume he knew everything that was happening (based on his interaction in the end cinematic) and yet he let Raynors band of ragtags WTFPWN his dominion left and right, it is insane that he allowed them to pull of what they did in Media Blitz, he let them attack him on Korhal which is a blow to his credibility on it's own and allowed them to spread potentially catastrophic evidence against him (more on this later), he also allowed them to bust open the place where he placed his most dangerous opponents, and allowed them to trash his top secret lab, come on!!
As for Tychus himself. He escapes prison without a decent story on how he did it, and finds Raynor and wants to be best buddies again, suspicious? Sure, but let's give him the right of doubt on account of old ties. This part is not bad actually, but what is he seen doing next? Reading their intel, at that point he should be under 24/7 surveillance, in the least. And the killer. Mat finds out he has some killer mechanism on remote control in his suit at this point all possible red lights should have lit up in Raynor's head (in a mongoloid's head even). Even though Raynor feels somewhat safe in the fact that he probably (!) won't be assassinated because that would turn him into a martyr there is still a shitload of stuff Tychus could have done. He could have killed Mat Horrner, no one knows about him, he won't be any martyr but without him Raynor would probably quit or fail in some other way, even worse if Rory Swann got whacked they wouldn't be able to do jack squat, or just simply sabotage the Hyperion leaving Raynor's revolution dead in space, the list goes on... So at that point he should have faced off with Tychus and either helped him or killed him, he again dismissed this (!!!) and his reaction (Raynor's) in the final cinematic is just laughable. Not to mention that Tosh keeps telling him that there is someone on board working for the dominion, that Tychus is fighting inside over something he doesn't want to do, this is even simpler than putting 2 and 2 together it's like putting 1 and 1.
However the thing that is absurdly idiotic is that from what we gather from all of this, Mengsk planted Tychus on the Hyperion for a snowball's chance in hell of killing Kerrigan! This cost him so many things, most of which I already mentioned but let's throw in the destroyed Odin development facility in there too. This is so idiotic and far fetched that I can assuredly say that even the dumbest people I know would find this plan retarded.
Now before I move on to anything else let me say something about the incriminating evidence on Mengsk. It comes from the Tarsonis adjutant, and is an audio recording of Mengsk in which he is revealed as the killer of Tarsonis and a general power hungry ass.
This is portrayed as prime evidence. What? If I showed you a picture of me shaking hands with an alien you would all say its fake, that I photoshopped it or that it's CGI. Even today tech exists that can fake someones voice. Who the hell would believe that that recording is real 500 years in the future? Mengsk should have dismissed it in a relaxed/amused manner, the only thing that made it impact is that he lost it and got pissed, and again this points to the fact that he suddenly lost his brain. Not only him, it seems every character got wacked in the head before the events of WoL because almost all of them seem dumbed down.
Now those are just the glaring plot holes that poke you in the eye and simply can't be ignored and there is so much more.
Like the stupid filler missions in which we earn money. That would have been a nice idea if they had like 40 missions in total and were aiming in portraying Raynor's revolution in detail and had you spend 15 missions collecting funds and then 10 missions doing covert ops with Tosh or some other missions in which you don't produce troops (like the secret mission) all of those mixed up with about 15 plot advancing missions. Now that would be an epic campaign, but no. What happened is that too many missions feel like filler from the story perspective, and when we take out the filler missions we get about 10 important missions, exactly how many there were per race in SC1 when all races were in the same game.
And the character of Raynor is totally fractured. He seems lost half the time, appears to have weird mood swings and is generally acting stupid. Some of this can be accounted for by the freedom of choice in the game but not all. He hated Kerrigan for all the deaths she caused, including that of Fenix and vowed to kill her, it is understood that he can't due to Zeratul's warning and his hope that when uninfested she will become what she once was, but still they should have played on this dilemma of his, but there is none of that, no apparently Raynors only point is to seem badass and throw out oneliners. Because of this the whole campaign feels confusing.
WoL: Wings of Liberty, I guess we all expected it to be about the revolution against Mengsk and in the 90% of the campaign we are working towards that goal, but suddenly comes the prince and we are off to Char, screw Mengsk. Wait hold the phone! This maybe ain't a major issue but the campaign feels fractured at that moment, this sudden decision to go to Char. What they really should have done is both, going to Char and then finishing off Mengsk.
This brings me to the last thing I wanted to say and it concerns the ending of WoL. Besides not getting Mengsk we also are left with more or less no answers. We have no clue what is happening with the hybrids, what Mengsk is doing about the latest developments, what prince charming is about to do, we don't even really know what happened to Sarah, we don't have any sort of closure or a proper finish in WoL, it's a giant cliffhanger. That would all be fine and dandy if this was just one out of three episodes and we just jump on onto the next hungry to find out what happens next. But WHOOOOPS the next story installment is a year and a half away, sorry :-).
Conclusions: the games story is of poor quality, blizzard needs to achieve a miracle if they want to salvage the story in the next two games, and considering some of their latest moves I doubt it, this simply aren't the same company and it is sad, I can't thing of a single thing that separates blizzard from the throng of other game companies now,pretty buy hollow is SCII.
