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If any of those were the case he wouldn’t be issuing ultimatums or sending a fleet to attack them. Tassadar had more information than the player about what was happening and reacted accordingly. Duke is also an a-hole so I’m inclined to believe Tassadar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nissa
The EN chronology does not include the circumstances that lead to Duke and Raynor coming into contact with Tassadar. So they end up staying in the core worlds and continue doing what they were planning to. In Duke's case that means fighting the Zerg left behind to exterminate humanity. In Raynor's case that means rebelling against Arcturus' dictatorship.
We could also bring in characters from other campaigns and stories. Most of the EU stories can be placed within the EN chronology with a minimum of changes.
For example, Executor Andraxxus and Jack Frost from Insurrection. The Brontes system was lost to the Zerg, but there is no reason that Andraxxus could not have used teleportation to evacuate the 7th Fleet and the New Dresdin Outlaws when it became clear they could not stop the Zerg and fake their deaths in battle using hallucinations to buy time. There is Syndrea's fate to consider, since her last known whereabouts were as a Zerg prisoner.
If we consider custom campaigns, more options open. For example, the "Corrupted Templar" from the Proditor campaign are still running around, although they are rumored to have joined Ulrezaj's xava'kai/taldarim. The custom campaign Enslavers Redux purports to continue the adventures of the Mar Sara Colonial Magistrate, who was captured by the Dominion and forced into service; he comes into conflict with Ulrezaj and Schezar.
EDIT: Another thing which I forgot to bring up was that the protoss had ethnic skin tones in SC1, as stated in the manual (emphasis mine).
Canonically, you can tell what tribe a Protoss is from by their skin color. SC2 threw this away, but we can easily ignore that and bring back protoss of color. For simplicity's sake I will assume the "tribal color" applies to both the SC1 game unit color and the ethnic skin color (as seen in the unit portrait). For example, the Akilae Templar have green skin as seen in the zealot, the Shelak Judicator have white skin as seen in the arbiter, and the Venatir Templar have brown skin as seen in the scout. (I suspect the original team was operating from this assumption.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Starcraft Manual p89
Tass wasn't a hothead because he approached Duke. He was a hothead because a completely rational response from Duke made him snap irrationally at someone he didn't need to get into a conflict with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Turalyon
Tassadar claims to "know" Duke well (probably from Raynor's experiences with him) and was just responding in kind. Duke, under a veneer of civility/"Southern sensibility", was really threatening to attack if they didn't leave whilst Tassadar, cutting the bullshit, responded with a threat in unveiled terms that he'd destroy them if Duke proceeded to halt them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nissa
So I found a number of custom campaigns that make more sense within EN than canon.
A relatively common conceit is a planet or fleet of independent protoss. Essentially Taldarim, of any iteration, before it became fashionable. Custom campaigns have added "isolated" Protoss planets or fleets like Ahman-ro, Artia, Idu'ran, Kharnikha, etc. These really do make more sense with the interstellar protoss empire.
Frontier Terran terran worlds or isolated independent governments are just as (or more) common.
Another plot common to SC1 maps are the cerebrates surviving indefinitely and either assisting or rebelling against QoB. Some have new cerebrates created willy nilly without the Overmind. A few have Zerg just showing up out of nowhere: the "Ignos" SC2 campaign (which takes place at an unspecified point when Nerazim are fighting alongside Firstborn) inexplicably has primal zerg on a random planet in protoss space.
I am compiling a list of existing custom campaigns that could easily fit into the EN chronology. Hopefully I will be finished within the near future.
So another detail of EN is that it posits the Protoss fought Zerg even before the glassing of Chau Sara. Ground forces were deployed initially before it became apparent that conventional tactics were not particularly effective against Zerg swarming. This needs some elaboration.
In the SC beta, Executor Andinunn had been watching Terran activity on the edge of Protoss space for some time before the Great War. The Terrans had been listening in on his transmissions, and decoded a census by Judicator Nuun-Minn. (The beta also suggested that Terrans were looking to exploit the planets of their Protoss neighbors, but nothing came of this in canon.) At the time Zerg were present and being studied by Terrans, including telepathic interrogation (which was apparently painful) in Liberty's Crusade. So we have an opportunity for Andinunn to engage the Zerg before the Koprulu Expeditionary Force arrives.
There is also the concept of "mutates" in the EU, infested terrans who have undergone nanite treatments to restore their personality and sanity. Examples include Morrik, Sistask and possibly Stukov. Dr. Loew did something loosely similar to hydralisks in the Teacher short story. I think those concepts are interesting and could stand to appear in more stories.
So let's talk a bit about the different factions of Protoss, because there are a lot even without trying to account for custom campaigns.
- The Protoss Empire, or Khala, is the faction everyone is most familiar with. They represent the bulk of the population.
- The Nerazim are a bunch of nomads who practice circumcision. They share the same proud warrior theme as the Empire, but they are more individualistic, more like humans in that respect. They are not really a faction so much as a confederation of tribes.
- The Daelaam are the formal attempt by Tassadar to unite the Empire and the Nerazim tribes, with mixed success. While the Conclave spearheaded a civil war on Aiur during the Great War, the massive size of the Empire means that unofficial alliances probably existed ever since the Zerg invaded.
- The Taldarim are not a faction at all, but a generic term for various extremist groups. These include the Xava'kai ("Fist of Ulrezaj," including both Nerazim and rogue Khala), the Taldarim under "Executor" Nyon, and the Slaynese. (What I found curious about the Slaynese is that all those we see in SC2 had white skin, like the Shelak judicator tribe. Their “chain of ascension” also feels like a perversion of the khala or “path of ascension.”)
- The Purifiers are mysterious autonomous robots dating back to the First Age that were awakened by archaeologists sometime prior to or during the Great War. Their motives are mysterious and possibly divided between different factions, but it is known that they are connected to the Khala and are able to download the personalities of dead Protoss into robot bodies. (This is my personal interpretation to fit them into EN and give writers more choice in how to use them.)
Void magic
Something interesting I found in the EN document is that the author posits a different explanation for how the Nerazim first developed their powers. Rather than Adun teaching them to hide themselves while somehow preventing them from accessing the Khala, EN posits that some Protoss in the Khala were simply alienated from others. They severed their own nerve cords to silence the voices and then ran off from society. Eventually, they encountered the rogue tribes and joined them. When Adun arrived, he tried to teach them to harness their innate psychic powers. While the uncircumcised rogue tribes would just end up connecting to the khala (barring, IDK, taking sundrop?), the circumcised outcasts could not. They developed new powers that Adun would go on to study, ultimately resulting in the psychic storms that ravaged Aiur. The Nerazim would circumcise not only as an insult to the judicators, but as a way to harness the power discovered by the outcasts.
I like that explanation, since it makes more sense to me personally that connecting to the khala is instinctive and harnessing the void requires suppressing it with drugs (like sundrop), circumcision, or extreme asceticism (like whatever Tassadar did).
I think I discussed this before but here is a quick refresher.
The manual introduced the Overmind as a gestalt consciousness of the Zerg. Cerebrates are a breed created to increase efficiency by managing broods. If killed, cerebrates may be resurrected or reincarnated unless they are killed by the nerazim's void magic. In SC2 Kerry is resurrected in the same way, so it may be assumed that all Zerg personalities may be so revived even without the Overmind. (It is not explained where they store their backups, but if this follows the same logic as the Overmind then these personalities are stored within the broods.)
The EN chronology follows this exactly, but it adds two additional rules: broods are only successfully managed by giant brain-like creatures (e.g. cerebrates, giga-brains, psi colonies), and the broods are instinctively driven to recreate the Overmind after its death by dominating their competition. Aside from psychic power levels, the biggest difference between the cerebrates and the assimilated terran brain monsters is that the latter lack the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the former. Otherwise they are both Zerg monsters driven to consume and evolve.
Something I am going to borrow from the Flood and Necromorphs is to apply the logic behind the Overmind to the broods individually. The Zerg are organized into a hierarchy of hive minds that follow the same basic logic. The Overmind is the hive mind of the entire Zerg race, while each brood has its own hive mind which is broadcast by the cerebrates like radio towers.
Zerg have two layers of psychic communion, as originally stated in the manual. The first is a psychic link between the Overmind/cerebrates and all their minions (and possibly between minions?), whose purpose is not explained. The second is the active relaying of orders from the Overmind to the cerebrates, to the overlords/queens/infestors, to the minions. These are not interchangeable functions.
The Zerg have undergone refinement over the millennia, which includes the equivalent of lobotomizing non-essential higher brain functions that are normally invisible. Since the Zerg operate under a hive mind where brain function is shared, they do not need to be able to function outside of it. Zerg which are unable to connect to the hive mind (such as in captivity) will act strangely and without any self-awareness, regardless of whether their intelligence matches or surpasses that of a human being, since they have essentially lost key brain function: minions will become rabid berserkers, overlords will repetitively follow their last orders, queens will churn out minions that immediately turn feral, etc.
Normally this is not a problem since the Zerg will naturally commune with other nearby Zerg to make up for their individual lack of awareness. When a cerebrate is killed, their telepathy allows the brood to retain some degree of coordination (albeit vastly inferior) until the cerebrate is respawned. Void magic does not simply sever the brood from the cerebrate's control, but traumatizes the psyche of the Zerg that composed the brood so that they cannot simply restablish the hive mind as they do when cerebrates are killed without void magic.
EN makes a distinction between feral zerg (broods that have lost their cerebrates) and insane zerg (broods whose cerebrates have lost the overmind), but under the overmind=hivemind logic this distinction becomes mostly a matter of semantics. In the same way that the broods as a whole are driven to recreate the Overmind, broods which have lost their cerebrates and survived are driven to recreate it.
In Protoss space, where psi colonies and giga brains were deployed in large numbers, these creatures are driven to claim control over the feral broods formerly managed by cerebrates. Since this is a function they were never intended to fulfill, they are not able to easily access the memories or personality fragments of dead cerebrates that may be preserved in the brood.
Now is a concept of my own creation, inspired by BW custom campaigns: Most broods that are rendered leaderless will destroy themselves. Those broods that survive without cerebrates or assimilated terran commanders will eventually spawn new cerebrates. These cerebrates, or neo-minds if one prefers, operate at a distinct disadvantage because their memories are fragmented by the trauma inflicted through void magic. Like all Zerg intelligences, they are driven to dominate their environment and by extension to recreate the Overmind. They may be more closely compared to the Flood or Necromorphs in personality than other Zerg.
That is not all. Without the Overmind to regulate the Swarm, there is nothing preventing broods from accessing (or modifying) the genomes for cerebrates, miniature overminds, and other brain-like organisms contained within the larvae. While in practice this will not allow any single brood to instantly win the brood wars by creating an avatar for the Overmind (who is too dead to make use of it), this knowledge is used to resurrect the Overmind. EN posits that after an unspecified period of time, the brood wars are brought to an end when an alliance of broods (a long story in itself) successfully creates the biggest brain monster ever (involving the fusion of many cerebrates in a way that mimics the creation of giga brains from humans) that successfully connects the hive minds of all Zerg in the galaxy at once and allows them to come to a consensus.
According to EN: the new Overmind is essentially the same person as the previous Overmind, since the Overmind is formed from the amalgamated minds of all Zerg in existence. That said, the trauma the Zerg suffered during the Great War and the Brood Wars has convinced the Zerg and the Overmind to (temporarily) set aside their quest for perfection in order to focus on immediate survival. The Terrans and Protoss, who by this time have enslaved many broods, developed anti-Zerg weaponry and are making diplomatic overtures to one another, present an existential threat to the Zerg. Before the Zerg can become perfect, these threats must be eliminated.
At that point the timeline for EN simply stops. I imagine that it ultimately ends in either a Zerg victory or the Zerg being destroyed, depending on the plot branch, since otherwise you would end up with Overmind/QoB/Amon/BigBadEvilGuy whack-a-mole.
The Starcraft lore is stagnant and dead at this point and the modding scene is mostly absent. It is still possible to introduce the UED as the new villain, but once they are gone then there is no way to move the story forward without retconning in another new faction that we have never heard of before. I have seen real suggestions to literally introduce the Burning Legion as the new antagonist. It honestly feels like the plot of Sailor Moon, where every season a new villain came out of the woodwork to keep selling merchandise. I can think of only one way to rejuvenate this rotting corpse of a franchise...
How could we write the story out of the corner and back into the galactic war status quo teased in the SC1 manual and website but glossed over in the games? Humanity is at civil war between the outer colonies and the authoritarian inner worlds while aliens attack. The zerg need to eat humanity to build psychic weapons of doom to defeat the protoss so that they can become perfect and conquer the universe. The protoss have a schism over whether humanity should die in the crossfire or not. Then the nerazim and taldarim show up to play the sides against each other. Ulrezaj founds his cult and stuff. Insert blah blah timeless themes of freedom versus control and all that shit which Metzen threw out in favor of his stupid romance fanfiction.
The "plot" of Enumerate, pretty much. How can we write Starcraft 3 to follow that, in what is basically a soft reboot of the series? Kerry's story is canonically finished so you cannot complain she is not in it! I want to see the zerg fuse thousands of human psychics into horrible giant brain monsters that shoot psychic nukes at the protoss. I want the Overmind resurrected yet again to rekindle the quest for perfection by assimilating the Protoss, then killed again to let the brain bugs and other monsters duke it out for control, then resurrected again to reunite the zerg against the evil terrans and protoss who would dare enslave them.
Fuck continuity because Blizzard never gave a fuck anyway!
P.S. I found a fanfic which has a similar backstory where the zerg are defeated by the dark templar on Shakuras and then centuries later try to weaponize humanity against them.
Basically your version is just the nuke option, erase the whole franchise and start all over from the very beginning
Not really. I'd pick up existing plot threads and exploit the SC2 fantasy multiverse retcons to resurrect dead characters. I can freely ignore continuity because Blizzard doesn't care about consistency. Observe:Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
Starcraft 3: Enumerate rehashes the plot of SC1.
The Overmind and his cerebrates have returned from the void (SC2 set the precedent that it is the afterlife for void users), reunited the zerg and invaded UED space to get tasty terran psychic powers. Zagara, Izsha, Dehaka, Abathur and Stukov roll over. Abathur makes new psychic soldiers, creep colonies and super weapons out of people. After torturing protoss prisoners for intel, they invade the galactic protoss empire.
A new faction of Protoss, the Reclaimers, show up from the woodwork (just like the forged and purifiers). They follow the Khala, the Conclave and have a massive empire on the galactic fringe, like SC1 manual khala. It turns out that Aiur was just a colony in the boondocks, retroactively rendering its importance nil and turning Amon into a joke. They send an expedition to UED space to exterminate the zerg and terrans are caught in the crossfire. This results in schisms against the human advocates and dark protoss too.
Valerian rails against UED oppression (they killed his family, nuked Korhal off-screen, or something else to establish them as the villains of his personal story) and uses psi-emitters to lure zerg to Earth and other key planets. The Dominion unites all of humanity, but Umoja and KMC secretly undermine it by funding rebels and pirates, then by enslaving zerg.
Ulrezaj and Alarak seek vengeance against the Conclave for exiling their people (the forged and dark templar are equivalent, nobody cares to keep them straight). Ulrezaj is fanatical, while Alarak just wants to conquer and build a harem. They team up with Alan Schezar, the Defenders of Man and Moebius to enslave zerg as weapons.
Nova, Valerian and Alarak form a love triangle, because why not?
Now I know you've gone madQuote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
To add insult to injury, the Overmind and cerebrates reveal that Duran, Ouros, Amon, Ulnar, the prophecy, the artifacts, the purple void goo dimension, and all the other "xel'naga" plot devices were just decoys they planted as part of an elaborate plot to... I don't know, find Earth? Kill Kerry? Conquer Aiur? Enslave the feral/primal zerg? Attract the attention of the reclaimers? Prepare their resurrection? The details are irrelevant, the important thing is they are back to continue their original plan to assimilate human psychic potential and then assimilate the protoss to become perfect. In any event, the real xel'naga were just a group of alien scientists who made a tiny mistake and ended up being eaten by their own experiments.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
It makes about as much sense as all of Blizzard's other lame retcons, but this way the frachise is back on track and has a future. With a genuine conflict and a massive scale, it should reinvigorate the modders to create more custom campaigns where the races fight each other for believable reasons.
Via retcon. Sc2 (plus BW and the game story of Sc1 according to Misla) is precedent so it's OK. The details of how, why, what and when don't really matter.
Huh, this was way easier to answer than I expected.
Man, this is why I like forums. Misla, you're truly an interesting character.
My vote is to pretend that nothing after BW (besides maybe a couple of the downloadable missions) counts as canon. And none of the novels/comics count either.
Also, SC:Ghost should have been made. That looked like a fun game.
You know, I never really looked into the SC Ghost storyline. Do you know what it was originally supposed to be about, Nissa? (And by that I meant what was Nova's mission)Quote:
Originally Posted by Nissa
I look at those and try to integrate it back to the existing lore as best I can, not just ignore it all. Now, if you want to come to CA and get Blizzard to redo the whole SC2 trilogy, then by all means I'll ignore the lore they made for the current SC2.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
I too vote for making SC2 non-canon.
I keep telling you Stratos there's no need, just redo the storyline in HotS and then see where LotV goes from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by KaiserStratosTygo
Nah, make it entirely non canon.
CLEAN SLATE
The whole reckoning will be necessary, but that's to see what future lore holdsQuote:
Originally Posted by KaiserStratosTygo
That is what I just said. See, the new lore makes a number of retcons that I retcon or add on to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Turalyon
Protoss Empire: In an old version of lore the protoss held a huge empire on the galactic fringe, and Koprulu was a tiny sector on their border. In the most recent version of the lore, they are limited to Aiur which is inside Koprulu. There are also numerous other differences, like SC1 protoss having different skin pigments by tribe that was changed to a homogenous pale blue in SC2, the SC1 developing their advanced technology before the aeon of strife whereas SC2 has them stone age and all their tech was made by the xel'naga, etc. Therefore, I would rationalize this as Aiur being an isolated colony of the empire which still exists outside Koprulu. In SC3, the empire sends another expedition to identify the threat posed by the zerg, since the empire discovered their probes on their borders and was disturbed by reading their minds. This allows you to bring back the Khala and protoss culture which was pointlessly destroyed by SC2 without even being really explored by the franchise, as well as opening the way for an actual galactic war between the zerg and protoss.
United Earth Directorate: In an older version of the lore Koprulu was completely cut off from Earth to provide a clean slate, by as of Heroes of the Storm Koprulu was settled by colonists from Earth and the UED fleet was sent to reverse the Dominion's secession (and continue some version of Project Bellwood, Black Flag, Blackstone or whatever the plot to weaponize zerg is called). They never heard from the fleet again, but they still have an intelligence network in Koprulu (never stated to be disbanded), so they can just send another fleet to annex the Dominion. This brings them into conflict with Valerian, who revives the Sons of Korhal and uses psi emitters to lure zerg to Earth so he can reform the Dominion. The Umojans and KMC can be brought in saboteurs, publicly serving the Dominion while secretly funding pirates and breeding armies of enslaved zerg.
Zerg Swarm: In an older version of lore the zerg wanted to create hybrids to conquer the universe, but in new lore this motive was moved to Amon (in fact, all of the original zerg motivation was moved to the xel'naga wholesale in a stupid attempt to make them good guys). However, in both versions of the lore the natural state of the zerg is vicious monsters that want to eat everything (which organically leads into Amon's motivation). The "corrupted" zerg do not and only because they were brainwashed: Zagara wants peace, Niadra wants to kill protoss. The atrocious Queen of Blades novel depicts cerebrates as having fantasy genre-style souls that survive their bodies, so it is actually quite easy to rationalize the SC2 "xel'naga" as being cerebrates in disguise. Duran and Amon were trying to usurp the Overmind, whereas Ouros remained loyal and tricked Kerry because her memories were erased.
This is not really necessary. Just make two retcons: the SC2 "xel'naga" were cerebrates in disguise, and Aiur is just a fringe colony of the SC1 manual protoss empire. In the plot of SC3, the overmind and cerebrates return to continue their original plan to weaponize humanity and consume the protoss, the protoss empire sends an expedition to terran space to investigate the origin of the zerg probes, and the UED sends another fleet to annex the Dominion and send Valerian on a repeat of the Rebel Yell plot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nissa
The lore is too long, inconsistent and unwieldy to make sense of now, so I would just ignore it in favor of writing a new story to appeal to new audiences that are not familiar with the lore. Only about two retcons to the organization of the zerg and protoss are necessary to open up the plot, and these do not require rewriting the cheesy and hackneyed plots of the games.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
Shadow Wars looks awful, to be honest. Niadra is only an antagonist because Kerry told her to kill protoss, which is exactly what SC2 retconned as the orders of the Overmind. It is a lame rehash. Furthermore, Niadra is nowhere near as interesting a villain as the SC1 Overmind and cerebrates. So screw her!Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
That is essentially what I just said. I acknowledge the events of past games as canon, but introduce a couple retcons to essentially recreate the plot of SC1. The plot of my SC3 idea would not require the player to have familiarity with the previous games, but will not contradict them.Quote:
Originally Posted by KaiserStratosTygo
Contradicting past games to that degree would only confuse consumers. Not everyone is a lore junkie.
The Starcraft story is so inconsistent and convoluted that it is not worth keeping track of it. Just pretend the games make sense and that they happened, but when writing the next entry don’t rely on them.
Here are my suggestions for making a sensible background.
Deliberate Retcons to faction histories:
- Terran: Koprulu was a deliberate colonization effort sent by the UPL, and never really lost contact with Earth. The governments of Koprulu nominally seceded from Earth, provoking the UED to send a fleet to annex them and deal with the alien threat.
- Zerg: The “xel’naga” characters in SC2 were actually cerebrates in disguise, as they have the immortality falsely ascribed to xel’naga. The xel’naga was not gods, but mortal scientists eaten by the zerg. The control of the zerg by Zagara is only temporary, as the Overmind and his loyal cerebrates will eventually return to continue the grand experiment.
- Protoss: Aiur is not the homeworld of the protoss, but an isolated and inbred colony. The real protoss empire from the SC1 manual is doing just fine on the galactic fringe. They are growing concerned by the lack of contact from Koprulu.
- Primal Zerg: The “Zerus” inhabited by the primal zerg is actually a lost colony from a zerg expansion forgotten centuries ago. The primal zerg are analogous to the forgotten fleets of the tyranids, not the original state of the zerg. The original zerg were telepathic, whereas the primal zerg have lost their telepathy.
- Tal’darim: The “tal’darim” is just a generic label for various fringe cults. There are multiple tribes of tal’darim with no relation to one another. Alarak’s tribe was of many lost colonies dating to the Aeon of Strife, but never had contact with Amon until recently. Not only did Amon lie to them, but he was never actually the god they worshiped in the first place.
Other retcons and rationalizations
- All of the planets seen in the series thus far are located in or near the Koprulu sector, including Aiur, Slayn, and jungle Zerus. They represent only the tiniest sliver of the diversity the galaxy offers. The FTL journeys are much, much shorter than the absurd scales given in canon. The real protoss and zerg homeworlds are too far away for any of the characters to travel within their life times. In fact, Koprulu is actually on the fringe of UED space and the protoss empire, within the Orion Arm. The actual distance traveled from Earth to Koprulu is around 60 light years, not the 60 thousand given on the wiki.
- The determinant is still a thing. While the Aiur protoss were pussies who could be defeated by the terrans, the real empire is invincible. The zerg need to assimilate terran psychic potential, then research and develop new weapons against the empire. Although the zerg have acquired a lot of psychic genes, they have yet to really explore the applications. The aberrations are just a random mutation that is redundant to the countless other warrior beasts in the swarm, and the swarm queens (SC2 style queens) and changelings (produced by overseers) only scratch the surface of what is possible.
- The protoss can be infested, because that is the only thing which makes logical sense. The zerg simply haven’t finished R&D yet. Amon’s hybrids are actually failures, since they are not perfect. They probably have short life spans and cancer or something.
- The void, void demons, and other fantasy elements are just smoke and mirrors created by the cerebrates. In order to compete with the increased power scale of SC2, I have increased their capabilities beyond what they had in canon.
- The adostra and chitha are not actually xel’naga, since as stated before the “xel’naga” was actually cerebrates. The “essence” used to create them is actually a mix of cerebrate and ghost cells. Cerebrates are vastly superior to Abathur and Zagara, so they are unable to replicate it.
Well, all entries after Sc1 (and even Sc1 itself) contradict it according to you, so shouldn't "contradiction and retcons be expected now? No-one really cares about the story anyhow, they'll lap it up as long as it looks good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
It's at the point now that I would absolutely accept anything that happens in the Sc universe no matter how ludicrous and I wouldn't even bat an eyelid nor care for it. Any continuation of the story is just an excuse to continue the story - it's all pointless and not worth caring about. Why beat a dead horse?
Eh, if it's not worth keeping track, why would you even bother making another entry/continuing from it? You'd only continue with something if there was something worth continuing on from.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
So let them take things from the SC2 lore POVQuote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
No, because of two reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
1) the SC2 story makes no sense, something which you seem incapable of realizing. Amon and Overmind always had the same goal, but one is a villain and the other a hero, which is bad writing.
2) the SC2 has no future without precisely the retcons I mentioned. Shadow Wars looks like it is shaping up to make Niadra the main antagonist to replace Overmind and Amon in another rehash of the SC1/SC2 plot template. Why not just resurrect the Overmind?
Im confused. Which one is the hero?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
The Overmind, somehow. The zerg underwent the same change as the orcs did, being pawns of a blood curse thing, except that the retcon sabotaged itself by portraying the natural state of the zerg as vicious monsters that consume other species for genes. The Overmind was rebelling against Amon only because Amon would discard the zerg, which is nowhere near sufficient to justify making Amon an entirely separate villain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gradius
Adding Amon is redundant and makes far less sense than resurrecting the Overmind a second time. So that's why my suggestion to put the franchise back on track was to retcon Amon into a rogue cerebrate and resurrect the Overmind. It makes so much more sense than the xel'naga space gods cycle prophecy stuff.
Not all of us got into the SC universe from the SC1 lore. There certainly are holes, something I'm still looking for ways to fill in, that is all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
What holes are you talking about and how do you propose to fill them? The plot of Starcraft 2 is embarrassingly bad and cannot be salvaged. Even my suggestions are just glossing over it while focusing on future games instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
I am aware that SC2 fans may have points of contention against my suggestions. Backtracking retcons will lose fans, SC2 players would be confused, a bigger protoss empire from nowhere would trivialize the Aiur protoss and creates plot holes, the psi emitter is overused, etc. To all those complaints, I say that Blizzard already pulls those stunts all the time and whining about them is pointless.
- Retcons are not inherently bad, and retcons to fix the franchise and put it back on track would only lose the shallow fans. The Overmind and Khala (as well as all the baggage associated with them like the cerebrates, broods, tribes, castes, etc) are the only parts of the zerg and protoss which make them interesting and different from humans. Starcraft 2 is crappy for destroying all that.
- Players introduced through SC2 had no problems understanding the plot (despite its sheer stupidity), so backtracking by re-introducing the Overmind and Khala would not be a big leap for them. The zerg and protoss are crappy and boring otherwise, because that was the entirety of their culture and they have nothing else to do but ape humans (which is stupid).
- Introducing a new protoss empire is no different from introducing the UED, since SC1 went to so much effort to cut off Earth for a clean slate only to throw all that work into the shitter in the first expansion. In fact, this is exactly what Blizzard did in Warcraft 2 and 3: introduce new empires and entire continents which did not exist before. Starcraft is a scifi setting in which they could introduce literally anything. Introducing a new protoss empire would fix more problems than it creates, since SC2 went out of its way to make the protoss into a generic dying race with no genetic diversity (the manual stated tribes had distinct skin tones) or any culture period beyond bland paladin stereotypes (again, the manual stated that tribes had their own cultures).
- The plot holes created by a new big protoss empire can be easily explained. The Aiur protoss did not evacuate to the empire? Well clearly there were extenuating factors, like maybe they did not have access or something? Maybe they were cut off for centuries and forgot the empire existed? In any case, that complaint is easily addressed.
- Yes, the psi emitter is overused, but that's the problem with introducing plot devices like that. You absolutely have to use them whenever it would be convenient, otherwise your characters will look like idiots. Really, you should chastise Blizzard for introducing psi emitters in the first place.
- Lastly, SC3 will definitely make a bunch of stupid new retcons that SC2 fans will complain about (while SC1 fans will just shake their heads knowingly), because that is what Blizzard does. At least my suggestions would make the lore less convoluted and inconsistent. It is virtually certain that SC3 will introduce new factions that never existed before in order to justify another galactic apocalypse plot and be essentially a self-contained story only tangentially related to the previous installments, since every single Starcraft and Warcraft game has done just that.
It's exactly this reason why I had gotten the impression back when I was on the battlenet forums that the people who disliked the SC2 storyline felt the writers should be locked in the insane asylum for writing a story that a monkey could have done better.
Now yes we all know even those who aren't die hard lore fans certainly felt there were serious problems with the storyline, but I'm not convinced to just use the nuke option on it
Again, I did not suggest the nuke option. I suggested resurrecting dead plot points to pick up the slack in this franchise.Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnarok
Seriously, if BW can retcon in the UED and SC2 can retcon in Amon, then retconning in a galactic protoss empire and a revived overmind is perfectly permissible. Blizzard will definitely do something like that to justify another apocalypse in SC3. Remember the Eredar fiasco?
Can anyone give compelling reasons why my suggestions would not rejuvenate the franchise and are not better than anything Blizz could think up?
Reading about the development of Starcraft reveals that major events like the fall of the Confederacy, the infestation of Kerry, the invasion of Aiur, Tassadar's sacrifice, etc were not originally planned but devised well into production. The backstory in the original manual seemed to have solidified before then and informed development. The status quo is that the zerg and protoss are fighting in koprulu with terrans caught in the middle.
Let's have a thought experiment. If you had to write the story of a new game using only the original manual as a basis, what would you have written?
Let's add some rules to keep things from getting stale: you cannot include Metzen's bizarre extraneous additions like Queen of Blades, UED, or the xel'naga. This is because Koprulu was deliberately cut off from Earth for a clean slate, the zerg build armies of monsters not individual mary sues, and the xel'naga are just a plot device to explain where the aliens came from. Adding those dilute the premise and, despite what some people might think, are not integral to Starcraft.
Obviously, I would have used Enumerate as my template so I have no further comment in that area.
There you go with this again, which shows you're mostly interested in using the nuke option
First tell me about the Eredar fiasco.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
Well, LotV potentially retconned this already though. Given that the Zeratul stuff in WoL was revealed to be part of a ruse by Ouros (the "Deceiver" as I like to call him) to manipulate things to get Kerrigan to him, all those things about Tassadar and the subsequent Overminds vision could all be bunk. I think Ouros is supposed to be the hero ("good Xel'Naga to Amon's "evil" Xel'Naga), not the Overmind. For all we know, they could make it as if Ouros being really of the same ilk as Amon and be the next big bad (and is now using Kerrigan as a vessel) if a SC3 had to follow on from SC2. Then the Kerigan haters can rejoice so that the story now has an excuse to put her down for good! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mislagnissa
You should probably also add the rule that the status quo (that the 3 races are always equal and never gain a decisive advantage over the other) has to be maintained because otherwise it'd be too easily biased toward one's race preference.
For example, if it were up to me following on from the manual and the status quo could be changeable, I'd just have the Zerg take the psionic potential off the Terrans and kill them all off cos the Terrans are really that weak. Then the Zerg fight the Protoss for some time until they get enough samples to start assimilating them and then eventually beat them as well. The bits in between are all just "details". As you can probably tell from this, I have a bias toward/like the Zerg and it'd make for a dull story... :p
If you're going to make Ouros the hero, you shouldn't have had him give Kerrigan the whole matter of ascension. Hell, just drain her instead. She can get the heroic sacrifice, and Ouros can deal with Amon himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Turalyon
Quote:
Let's add some rules to keep things from getting stale: you cannot include Metzen's bizarre extraneous additions like Queen of Blades, UED, or the xel'naga.
:rolleyes:Quote:
Obviously, I would have used Enumerate as my template so I have no further comment in that area.