What communication, if any, has there been with SC writers over the years?

[RussianSpy27]

Hi friends,

I've been absent from the site for 5 years and been therefore behind. My understanding is that all efforts by fans at various forums, such as by the fabled Andrew on battle.net years ago, were useles. HOtS and LotV both sucked, as is well known.

I did a search of some old battle net posts were people have tried to generate discussion about the story, but it seems like the biggest threads on topic no longer exist, including all "Andrew" ones. Even this relatively recent (2015) thread seems to have been shut down https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/18300017813?page=3#post-54 (see attached screenshot).

Obviously, Blizzard is no Bioware, and the writers don't seem to care. However, over the years, or maybe in recent times, has anyone (Gradius?) seen any type of discussion that the writers would have with fan sites such as this one, where criticism would be exchanged, at least in some form? Isn't there anyone at Blizzard who is passionate about this great franchise with literally a whole universe in space from which tv series and movies can be made?

But anyway, has there been, or at least is there any hope to get Blizzard to hear and acknowledge our concerns? Not for nothing but they will definitely try to produce more DLC missions and perhaps more SC games and everyone can benefit from at least some
sort of dialogue.

~RS

[Nissa]

There isn't any forum that I know of. However, I did get to meet SC2 writer Brian Kindregan at a gaming convention, so if you can find a con he's going to, he'll talk to you about it.

Well, he works at Epic Games now, but maybe there's other writers you could run into.

[Turalyon]

Someone really needs to track down James Phinney and get his thoughts on Sc2.

[TheEconomist]

Most definitely. Getting previous writers opinion on recent Blizzard games always starts some lulzy shit going. Someone ends up being fired.

[RussianSpy27]

Most definitely. Getting previous writers opinion on recent Blizzard games always starts some lulzy shit going. Someone ends up being fired.

By fired, do you mean this Brian Kendrigan dude who messed up WoL's and HotS stories under Metzen's oversight?

[TheEconomist]

I mean, the whole shake up in the Diablo 3 team after a small feud with old Blizzard North employees. Notably, Jay Wilson, Lead Director.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

"By fired, do you mean this Brian Kendrigan dude who messed up WoL's and HotS stories under Metzen's oversight?"

That would be a dream come true

[TheEconomist]

Almost everyone's already left anyways. No reason to keep a vendetta.

[RussianSpy27]

Almost everyone's already left anyways. No reason to keep a vendetta.

Right...SC was an excellent game and I guess we, people in our late 20s-30s, have such a powerful nostalgia for SC, which we experienced in our early youth, that by not delivering in SC2, they didn't just mess up an interesting sci fi series but personally attacked our teenage years.

Let's hope that there will one day be a JJ Abrams to our SC3.

[Nissa]

Um, JJ Abrams is terrible. He made 2 generic attempts at Star Trek movies, and produced a Star Wars movie widely proclaimed to be a retread of the first movie.

Not really a great metaphor, there.

[RussianSpy27]

OK...whoever the Rouge One director was then, lol

[TheEconomist]

He revitalized Star Wars by doing exactly what the fan base wanted which was a total rehash of the first movie. That is exactly what we need now. Hoping for more will lead to disappointment. Read real sci-fi in the mean time.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

Um, JJ Abrams is terrible. He made 2 generic attempts at Star Trek movies, and produced a Star Wars movie widely proclaimed to be a retread of the first movie.

Not really a great metaphor, there.

I agree, but at this point maybe SC needs a rehashed TFA style game to get the ball rolling and then they can actually try NEW (not 2010's popculture, ACTUALLY NEW) ideas in an expansion pack(s)

and yes TFA was almost scene for scene Episode 4 and 5 all over again. hopefully TLJ isn't the same way.

[Gradius]

Uhm, TFA was actually decent.

[TheEconomist]

If TFA was a disappointment to you, we need to stop pretending that the problem is with the franchises and not you.

[RussianSpy27]

If TFA was a disappointment to you, we need to stop pretending that the problem is with the franchises and not you.

The question is whether Blizzard execs would ever invest enough money into a new epic SP. MAYBE, now, since Esports of SC2 isn't what it used to be, there is a minute chance of that happening, though very doubtful indeed.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

If TFA was a disappointment to you, we need to stop pretending that the problem is with the franchises and not you.

Nah, its with the franchise, TFA was a total rehash of IV and V, it was a well made and well acted film, but it had 0 depth and forced a scenario to emulate the old "empire vs rebels" theme instead of going with a subversion (like the First order being in the position of the rebels and using their intellect to get ahead of the heroes who are now the establishment)

I enjoyed watching the film, but I really don't need them to rehash past this point.

Now, SC2's story is just dogshit by any benchmark, that is not a "me" or whoever else issue, that's a "bad writing" one.

[Turalyon]

The question is whether Blizzard execs would ever invest enough money into a new epic SP. MAYBE, now, since Esports of SC2 isn't what it used to be, there is a minute chance of that happening, though very doubtful indeed.

Not likely cos Blizz is too large now. The risk is much lower and its more economical if they design something simple and fun to play for anyone where they can nickel and dime willing players rather than try and cater to a specific demographic who are known to be fickle and unpleasable at the best of times (the story and lore crowd/us).

If WoL came out purely as a single player game back then, I'm definite that it would've bombed badly... "good" story or not.

[RussianSpy27]

Not likely cos Blizz is too large now. The risk is much lower and its more economical if they design something simple and fun to play for anyone where they can nickel and dime willing players rather than try and cater to a specific demographic who are known to be fickle and unpleasable at the best of times (the story and lore crowd/us).

If WoL came out purely as a single player game back then, I'm definite that it would've bombed badly... "good" story or not.

Good point but they should consider that if they do invest into an EPIC story with high quality writing, they may end up making more money this way.

[Turalyon]

Good point but they should consider that if they do invest into an EPIC story with high quality writing, they may end up making more money this way.

Unfortunately, quality writing is not a guarantee of making more money though (it's usually the opposite), especially when it comes to games. Given that the investment in making quality writing would be considerable and quanitifiable, just assuming it will make more money when there's only a comparatively niche interest in it for games, would be an unsound business decision for a large game business to make. Also, the return for such an investment would have to be considerable to even justify it - it wouldn't be efficient to just "make some more money" if all that "profit" was just a small margin above covering the expense that was the initial investment.

I'm thinking that this is the reason they're stopped developing more story based DLC since Nova. It's more efficient and profitable for them if they invest in Co-op.

[TheEconomist]

Turalyon is right, for most situations. However, Blizzard games have always benefited greatly from great writing in the past, and I think they understand this now. They just don't understand HOW to do it.

[RussianSpy27]

Turalyon is right, for most situations. However, Blizzard games have always benefited greatly from great writing in the past, and I think they understand this now. They just don't understand HOW to do it.

How to do it? Blizz is an extremely huge and wealthy company these days. INVEST $ into hiring talented and passionate writers who care about the SC Lore. If I was a Blizz exec, I'd have a sit-down with several popular writers from other series/SC book writers, several dedicated campaign creation longtime fans like Gradius and Desler (creator of SC Fenix campaign), make a phone call and invite James Phinney over, then hire some of the people, put a passionate creative director in charge and so on. This will cost less than the money they spend on graphics and other projects. They put too much trust in Metzen and viewed SC as an Esports machine and hence didn't care one bit about the story, but yes, that's how it should be done. It seems like it's a lot of effort but again, all they need is one person with financial resources to put together a dream team.

[Turalyon]

How to do it? Blizz is an extremely huge and wealthy company these days. INVEST $ into hiring talented and passionate writers who care about the SC Lore.

Thing is, Blizz thinks they did invest in writers who care about the development of lore. Andy Chambers used to work for Games Workshop developing WH40K, Brian Kindregan was part of BioWare in writing for Mass Effect 2 and James Waugh, a screenwriter, is an ascended Starcraft fan who wanted to make it into a movie. Heck, they did lore panels and released those short stories (really, the best thing in terms of story/narrative/lore that came out of this the whole time), so I'm sure they felt they had the right people on board and that the passion was there.


This will cost less than the money they spend on graphics and other projects.

Not really. The singleplayer experience is probably the most expensive part of the game to develop, since it's not just the writing side of things you have to consider. They have to hire a cinematics and arts department and get voice actors to try and bring that vision to life. They have to hire designers to create assets and non-core gameplay elements (like the hub area that is the Hyperion in WoL) that help build that universe up/make you experience that world. It's like to trying to make a film... but for a game... where it's main draw/appeal (which is where they bank their profitability on) is the gameplay, not the story (like a film).

[TheEconomist]

INVEST $ into hiring talented and passionate writers who care about the SC Lore

Sadly, life is not a 4X strategy game with "writing skill" rankings and corresponding costs where Blizzard can arithmetically min/max effectiveness. They need to know what makes StarCraft be StarCraft before they can find the right writers to do that, and they need to admit that catering to casuals for story isn't the way to go since a game like StarCraft is based on the devoted core gamers.

Also, what Turalyon said.


They put too much trust in Metzen and viewed SC as an Esports machine and hence didn't care one bit about the story, but yes, that's how it should be done.

This is true some what since the campaign was on the back burner for many of the first years before release. However, the story is not bad because they rushed it or didn't put enough effort into it. The effort and care is easily seen (especially compared to other RTS), it's just that you can't polish a turd that is shitty story. Even the story telling itself was alright/good (not great/amazing) but got the job done, it just wasn't telling an interesting story that had anything to do with StarCraft.

[RussianSpy27]

Turalyon and Economist, you make good points. James Waugh seems legit. Kendrigan also seemed legit, though when I heard him say stuff like "good story is about emotion, not too much logic" prior to the game's release, I had a bad feeling about it.

Maybe Waugh sounds good on paper but he may not be that good at writing an interesting story? I consider Gradius' custom made campaign to have better dialogue than most of SC2, for example. Does it mean that Gradius is generally a better writer than Waugh? I don't know.

What bothers me also is that HotS and LotV are generally also bad, with some exceptions. Dialogue is cheesy and childish. Following Amon into the Void? What is that, Hell in Space where human marines, zerg and protoss pop out in infinite numbers to fight against you? I understand that they messed up WoL by, like you said, not understanding SC, but they could still have fixed up HotS and LotV to suck less, but they didn't, despite all the feedback and criticism.

They brought Fenix back. They even included Stukov as homage to BW and other lore, but the cheesy, childish, uninteresting, Diablo in space/Warcraft in Space overall structure stayed the same.

I guess Blizz could have filtered these people more. Have any of them done fan SC campaigns? What did Waughn create before joining Blizzard? Metzen liked him because he seemed enthusiastic and wanted to make SC into a movie? I'm sure Waughn is a genuine and nice guy, maybe even charismatic and has passion, but does he really have the skills? What did Kendrigan do for ME2? Did he leave by choice, or did he overwhelm Bioware with too much emotion and not enough logic? I think it's something that should have been looked into.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

should've just hired me, even I could do better than some of those hacks.

[RussianSpy27]

It says on SC Wikia that Waugh was obsessed over the SC original manual and would read it numerous times. Why then did he (and Metzen) retcon Overmind's creation from being an evolutionary organism that XN were unable to contain to Amon's pet? That's disrespecting the manual 101.

[TheEconomist]

should've just hired me, even I could do better than some of those hacks.

If Gradius was on board, none of this shit would've happened.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

If Gradius was on board, none of this shit would've happened.

Can't argue with that.

[Turalyon]

Kendrigan also seemed legit, though when I heard him say stuff like "good story is about emotion, not too much logic" prior to the game's release, I had a bad feeling about it.

He's not completely wrong and it's all rather subjective in the end, but I'm guessing he equated "good" as to meaning "fondly remembered". The "not too much logic" is about suspension of disbelief - which is necessary for all fiction to even be accepted as more than the fluff that it really/objectively is. It's getting to the willing suspension of disbelief that's the hard part. This is where the writing has to have some form of internally consistent logic - even if that type of logic is of the fridge (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic) variety.


Maybe Waugh sounds good on paper but he may not be that good at writing an interesting story? What did Waughn create before joining Blizzard?

He was a screen writer/in the film industry before being part of Blizz, so that's enough cred imo.


What bothers me also is that HotS and LotV are generally also bad, with some exceptions.

In terms of the flow, structure, and pacing of the narrative acrosss each installment and having appropriate stakes, Sc2 actually improves. It doesn't make up for the fact that as a whole, it's not really a well-connected trilogy.


I understand that they messed up WoL by, like you said, not understanding SC, but they could still have fixed up HotS and LotV to suck less, but they didn't, despite all the feedback and criticism.

I think that WoL is more well regarded generally compared to the other two. It's haphazard presentation of the story, the general excitement/eye candy and in-the-moment highlights helped smooth over what was always, at its core, an empty and hollow premise (fighting amongst each other only to fight a bigger bad). When the narrative become more structured, like it is on HotS and LotV, there's less distraction and it becomes more obvious that the story has no meat/substance to it.


They brought Fenix back. They even included Stukov as homage to BW and other lore

I would've preferred it if they were left out as they were nothing more than cameo-for-the-sake-of-cameo. One could excise them completely and the story would still be the same.

I hear that the "Fenix" name-drop in HotS was due to criticism about Raynor seemingly having forgotten about him being a victim of Kerrigan. The name drop was then criticised for being blatant, unecessary and partly for making Raynor look like a superficial and judgemental dick (Raynor had plenty of time to rage against Kerrigan's former actions in Sc2 but he only does so when he sees Kerrigan back in infested form after being rescued by her, not realising she made the choice to become this way as a personal sacrifice to avenge his apparent death - what an ungrateful arsehole). That Kerrigan than acquiesces to his judgement by allowing him a chance to kill her was supposed to have been moving and a sign of her humanity/humility but it also confused and undercut her character as being strong, independent and beholden to no-one but herself. The SJW's would then have a field day and cry "sexism!" forevermore...


It says on SC Wikia that Waugh was obsessed over the SC original manual and would read it numerous times. Why then did he (and Metzen) retcon Overmind's creation from being an evolutionary organism that XN were unable to contain to Amon's pet? That's disrespecting the manual 101.

Retcons aren't inherently bad - it's just how you use them. The Overmind retcon was supposed to be an addition to what was in the manual and to clarify seemingly unanswered questions about the Overminds decisions in Sc1 (ie: leaving Kerrigan behind and attacking Aiur without her - there's been many a discussion here about that), but it was terribly implemented.

Nissa managed to speak to Kindregan recently and she hints that it may have been an executive decision/the old guard putting their foot down. I also hear that Metzen wrote Sc1 at a time when he was full of angst and that because he now was in a better place, he wanted to change things around. Also, it was probably for "what a twist!" reasons.

[Nissa]

This is a weird thing to say, but I think the problem is gaps. In SC/BW, the story benefitted a lot from having moments where we didn't know specifically what happened. Like, we don't know how Kerrigan convinced Raynor and Fenix to get Mengsk for her. This happened naturally, because the story could only be told through mission briefings and in-mission dialogue. The cinematics in SC/BW were less about telling story than just telling a mood -- they don't actually progress the plot much. That, and they conceptualized things badly. Like, they should have kept the Overmind consistent with his past self -- and probably not even in SC2, but that's debatable.


In terms of the flow, structure, and pacing of the narrative acrosss each installment and having appropriate stakes, Sc2 actually improves. It doesn't make up for the fact that as a whole, it's not really a well-connected trilogy.

Uh...no. SC2 pretty much annihilated the stakes from SC1, at least in WoL and HotS. The Overmind's a pawn, Mengsk is an idiot, the Dominion isn't shown to have the political rivalries it probably should have after the events of BW, the UED is nowhere, Umoja and Moria are nothing, and Kerrigan cares about civilians. They even made Valerian be a good guy who helps Raynor and co whenever they need it. The tension died, my friend.

[Turalyon]

This is a weird thing to say, but I think the problem is gaps. In SC/BW, the story benefitted a lot from having moments where we didn't know specifically what happened. Like, we don't know how Kerrigan convinced Raynor and Fenix to get Mengsk for her. This happened naturally, because the story could only be told through mission briefings and in-mission dialogue. The cinematics in SC/BW were less about telling story than just telling a mood -- they don't actually progress the plot much. That, and they conceptualized things badly. Like, they should have kept the Overmind consistent with his past self -- and probably not even in SC2, but that's debatable.

I think you're onto something here but there are also a lot of moments in Sc2 where we don't specifically know what, how and why things happened as they did either. The retroactive continuity in Sc2 (one example being that Amon was the Xel'Naga who created the Protoss and Zerg - if he had such control over them and wanted to ultimately exterminate them and the Cycle, he could've done so right from the start...) exemplify this to a massive degree. I think the "gaps" you speak of in Sc1 are potentially plot holes for sure, but they not majorly important (which gives one the ability for one to have fun by filling in the gap through fanon/theories) or necessarily plot-breaking as well (like they are in Sc2).


Uh...no. SC2 pretty much annihilated the stakes from SC1, at least in WoL and HotS.

Ah, you misinterpreted the context in what I said. The improvement I speak of (things such as brevity, pacing and having appropriate stakes) was not from Sc1 to Sc2, but rather from within Sc2 itself (from WoL to LotV).

[RussianSpy27]

T, so this is a bit nuts. The man creates a beautiful universe in the state of angst and then decides to retcon an interesting Sci fi based origin story of the Overmind? Did Metzen become very religious that he needed to substitute a story about evolution with that of the Demonic possession? Makes no sense.

Also, not to undermine the productive and detailed discussions people had here about why Overmind left K behind during Aiur invasion, but it seems simple enough to me. Per manual, Overmind knew Protoss to be the most powerful species created by XN which would lead to a huge conflict and he wanted K behind to oversee the Broods because he trusted her and maybe because he wasn't sure Zerg were going to prevail.

[Turalyon]

T, so this is a bit nuts. The man creates a beautiful universe in the state of angst and then decides to retcon an interesting Sci fi based origin story of the Overmind?

Seems like it. It's been more than decade since the first game, his mind changed throughout that time because of, you know, life... just like Raynor's did after 4 years between BW and Sc2.


Also, not to undermine the productive and detailed discussions people had here about why Overmind left K behind during Aiur invasion, but it seems simple enough to me. Per manual, Overmind knew Protoss to be the most powerful species created by XN which would lead to a huge conflict and he wanted K behind to oversee the Broods because he trusted her and maybe because he wasn't sure Zerg were going to prevail.

I'd disagree with your reasoning. The Overmind didn't leave Kerrigan behind or in safe-keeping on Char. It left her to do the job that she was created for: to fight the Protoss. And not just any Protoss, but the most dangerous Protoss (Dark Templar) the Overmind had yet encountered! The Overmind probably drew from Zeratul that Aiur was possibly safer than Char given the lack of Dark Templar there and decided to launch a surprise attack. Sure, Aiur's most likely well defended being their homeworld and all, but that's why it brings the greater entirety of the Swarm with it to Aiur! Afterall, there's nothing stopping Kerrigan from joining the Overmind on Aiur later on after she's finished on Char... except that the Protoss were more crafty than the Overmind and its superweapon Kerrigan had factored in. The Overmind was always confident throughout the campaign despite it being described as being almost in despair in the manual about facing the Protoss. Thing is, since the start of the Overmind campaign, the Overmind was over-confident ever since it found Kerrigan and in its hubris, thought itself unstoppable whilst Kerrigan was in its possession. In a way, Kerrigan was both the Overmind's greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Not sure if the thread is still around but FT and I had a good ol' debate with walls of text about this very thing. FT considered the successful invasion of Aiur as the end goal for the Overmind's final victory over the Protoss and that Kerrigan was billed by the Overmind to be the thing that achieved it. He felt it incongruous that what was the essential key to this end goal (Kerrigan) was not used overtly to reach that goal (since the Overmind just invades Aiur just like that after knowng Aiur's location) nor even that essential as it was built up to be (since Zeratul is the key to giving the Overmind Aiur's location). He had some good points but I countered that his presumption that the final victory over the Protoss being specifically the successful invasion of Aiur (with the natural implication of this being that Kerrigan's purpose was therefore to invade Aiur with the Overmind at that particular time) was incorrect.

[LordofAscension]

But anyway, has there been, or at least is there any hope to get Blizzard to hear and acknowledge our concerns? Not for nothing but they will definitely try to produce more DLC missions and perhaps more SC games and everyone can benefit from at least some
sort of dialogue.

I don't see this ever happening. Over the last decade I've almost puzzled out what happened (more or less), but anyone that actually knows the whole story will ever tell it (at least not in the foreseeable future). I spent time with Metzen, Chambers, Kindregan, and Waugh. Some of them played the cards they were dealt. I distinctly got the impression that pre-2007, SCII's story was more or less predestined.


Unfortunately, quality writing is not a guarantee of making more money though (it's usually the opposite), especially when it comes to games. Given that the investment in making quality writing would be considerable and quanitifiable, just assuming it will make more money when there's only a comparatively niche interest in it for games, would be an unsound business decision for a large game business to make. Also, the return for such an investment would have to be considerable to even justify it - it wouldn't be efficient to just "make some more money" if all that "profit" was just a small margin above covering the expense that was the initial investment.

I'm thinking that this is the reason they're stopped developing more story based DLC since Nova. It's more efficient and profitable for them if they invest in Co-op.

This. A thousand times this. Coop's popularity took them completely unawares. Coop is everything they thought the DLC would be. There's so many untapped story lines that would have made amazing DLCs (Kel Morians plz). Maybe in the future they'll return to DLC single player packs, but I think it has as good of a chance as SCIII. The future of the SC story will be told with EU tools (short stories/novels). In game canon is expensive.


What bothers me also is that HotS and LotV are generally also bad, with some exceptions. Dialogue is cheesy and childish. Following Amon into the Void? What is that, Hell in Space where human marines, zerg and protoss pop out in infinite numbers to fight against you? I understand that they messed up WoL by, like you said, not understanding SC, but they could still have fixed up HotS and LotV to suck less, but they didn't, despite all the feedback and criticism.

They brought Fenix back. They even included Stukov as homage to BW and other lore, but the cheesy, childish, uninteresting, Diablo in space/Warcraft in Space overall structure stayed the same.

The story is just bad. It lacks so many elements of SC & SCBW. Each of the three games' stories was never the story of SC or SCBW, they were too focused on telling more personal stories than that of the intergalactic war. One note on HOTS and LOTV - they were both boxed in by the choices made in WOL. Once that course was set, there was no deviating from the main story trunk. Yes, the dialogue could have improved and so could of the way the story was told, but it was one cluster after another. I wanted Tassadar back - HA. Fenix, please. Nothing about what that was what any Fenix fan wanted. Stukov was the closest to being good. But are there any examples of old heroes coming out of SCII more liked than their SC1 alter ego?


This is a weird thing to say, but I think the problem is gaps. In SC/BW, the story benefitted a lot from having moments where we didn't know specifically what happened. Like, we don't know how Kerrigan convinced Raynor and Fenix to get Mengsk for her. This happened naturally, because the story could only be told through mission briefings and in-mission dialogue. The cinematics in SC/BW were less about telling story than just telling a mood -- they don't actually progress the plot much. That, and they conceptualized things badly. Like, they should have kept the Overmind consistent with his past self -- and probably not even in SC2, but that's debatable.

Uh...no. SC2 pretty much annihilated the stakes from SC1, at least in WoL and HotS. The Overmind's a pawn, Mengsk is an idiot, the Dominion isn't shown to have the political rivalries it probably should have after the events of BW, the UED is nowhere, Umoja and Moria are nothing, and Kerrigan cares about civilians. They even made Valerian be a good guy who helps Raynor and co whenever they need it. The tension died, my friend.

I agree with so many elements of this. I harped to Gradius for years on topics just like this. SC1 - the story progression was driven by the mission briefings and the in-game dialogue. That was the extent of the tech. With the advent of better mechanics, Blizzard was so excited that they could tell the story differently, they never stopped to think if they should. Or perhaps more on point, they never stopped to think about what it was that made SC1's story so endearing and good. For me, it was the politics and the broad scope that was driven by strong characters. It was never the individual character's struggles or growth - yes some parts of those were important (Tassadar's journey from idealistic executor to the twilight messiah), but I never cared all that much about one particular ship's quest through the galaxy. I wish they had just stayed the course that they laid the ground work for in BW. There never needed to be an ultimate evil. What made SCBW Kerrigan so compelling was the fact that she knew what she was and embraced it. It was the choice that made the various betrayals meaningful.

I could go on and on and on. I can't count the number of times I tried to write my opus on this very topic, but I never could finish it.

~LoA