Does Spawn Infested Terrans break your suspension of disbelief?

We all know that video games have suspension of disbelief where the player accepts how the gameworks even if it doesnt make sense. Gameplay tends to be more important than realism. However, there is a level at which the situation is so noticable and illogical that the suspension of disbelief is broken. This interupts the players immersion and possibly enjoyment of the gameplay experience.

Dustin Browder has offered that the Infestor eats the Infested Marines and then spits them out. However it is unclear whether this happens before or after the Infesor pops out of an egg in the middle of a PvZ battle.

Personally, I can let allot of things slide. I can buy a ultralisk hatching out of a small egg, I can buy 10 marines taking down a battlecruiser. Heck I can even buy mutalisks flying in space. But having Infested terran appear in a battle where there were no terrans to infest completly breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Nah, somebody came up with a pretty plausible explanation for it and it fits with the new Infestor model so I'm pretty fine with it now.

In any case, I wouldn't mind if it was a different unit/model that did the exact same thing as the infested marine, but it's fine the way it is IMO.

It actually seems like it would work pretty well too, as a psychological factor, when marines see infested marines (lorewise).

Blizzard's gonna have to touch up on the Infested Terran's model someday.

Why not make it completely organic and create wonderful new lore involving the remaining Infested Terrans' evolution, over the 4 years of inactivity?


-Psi

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Originally Posted by Pandonetho

Nah, somebody came up with a pretty plausible explanation for it and it fits with the new Infestor model so I'm pretty fine with it now.

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Which explaination?

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Originally Posted by PsiWarp

Why not make it completely organic and create wonderful new lore involving the remaining Infested Terrans' evolution, over the 4 years of inactivity?
-Psi

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If they made them just infested humans with no armour or guns I dont think anybody would have a problem believing the infestor could grow them. It would just mean that human DNA had been incorporated into the zerg genome. Heck they could even give them a bio gun

https://www.guysthatgame.co.uk/gtgsh...t_a__31052.jpg

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Which explaination?

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Don't remember exactly, but it was close to what Dustin said.
They go underground and take in the dead bodies of marines then infest them.

The problem with that is, since when did infestation bring people back to life?

Or at least be contained within the Infestor, not "contaminating" the Zerg genome.

Wouldn't it be great if the Infestor can store experimental DNA and spawn those mutant strains, I think that might be cool for the "Unit Test Drive" for Heart of the Swarm.


-Psi

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Originally Posted by ArcherofAiur

We all know that video games have suspension of disbelief where the player accepts how the gameworks even if it doesnt make sense. Gameplay tends to be more important than realism. However, there is a level at which the situation is so noticable and illogical that the suspension of disbelief is broken. This interupts the players immersion and possibly enjoyment of the gameplay experience.

Dustin Browder has offered that the Infestor eats the Infested Marines and then spits them out. However it is unclear whether this happens before or after the Infesor pops out of an egg in the middle of a PvZ battle.

Personally, I can let allot of things slide. I can buy a ultralisk hatching out of a small egg, I can buy 10 marines taking down a battlecruiser. Heck I can even buy mutalisks flying in space. But having Infested terran appear in a battle where there were no terrans to infest completly breaks my suspension of disbelief.

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Just because it doesn't get shown doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Could they require the Infestor to go to the pit and consume Terran corpses? Yes. But at that point the ability is no longer a spell. Its ammo based. Not even the Terran need to back to base to re-supply.

Some things don't need to be shown.

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Wouldn't it be great if the Infestor can store experimental DNA and spawn those mutant strains, I think that might be cool for the "Unit Test Drive" for Heart of the Swarm.

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Heh, yeah, it'd be pretty cool if the infestor could open up a list like the High Temp's hallucination, and spawn different test/mutant strains of Zerg, all costing different energy. Of course, that would probably throw off the balance of the game.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

Just because it doesn't get shown doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Could they require the Infestor to go to the pit and consume Terran corpses? Yes. But at that point the ability is no longer a spell. Its ammo based. Not even the Terran need to back to base to re-supply.

Some things don't need to be shown.

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I have no problem with the infinite ammo part of it. Its the having marines suddenly appear on the battlefield when terran arnt part of the battlefield that is the problem.

It seems like they tried to solve one race inconsistancy (infestation doesnt against protoss or zerg) and ended up substituting it for another one (infested marines dont make sense against protoss or zerg)

Oops, I voted yes when I wanted to vote no.

No, it doesn't break suspension of disbelief for me. Nothing wrong with carrying around the enemy in an infester's body, ready to spawn. I think of it as a clam and a grain of sand, where the Infester is slowly coating the Terrans with goop that makes it easy to carry inside its body and at the same time changing their genetic code. The infester's pretty big too.

I don't think the ability itself should be changed, just the infested terrans' model. Why would they still have armor and guns? Why not give them, like, spore shooters and zerg-like armor instead?

Honestly, of all the things I could wonder about in game, this is not high on the list.

It could be that the Infestation Pit will access all Infestor eggs via creep roots, sending Infested Terrans into the membranes before the Infestors fully mature...

The simplest way of visual indication and lore satisfaction would be to change the art on a Larva-to-Infestor egg, but that doesn't seem as attractive as an Infested Terran model change, at least to me :P


-Psi

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Originally Posted by ArcherofAiur

I have no problem with the infinite ammo part of it. Its the having marines suddenly appear on the battlefield when terran arnt part of the battlefield that is the problem.

It seems like they tried to solve one race inconsistancy (infestation doesnt against protoss or zerg) and ended up substituting it for another one (infested marines dont make sense against protoss or zerg)

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But it does make sense.

1. Infested Terran aren't alive per-say. The parasite infesting them is. It controls them by stimulating any nerves or tendons that haven't decomposed yet.

2. The Terran don't have to be from that battlefield. They could of been collected long ago. They don't even need to have been from that planet; the Zerg could have brought them with them through the wormholes they use.

I'd say the Infestor producing Infested Terran's it consumed previously is far more believable than Mutalisks in space.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

2. The Terran don't have to be from that battlefield. They could of been collected long ago. They don't even need to have been from that planet; the Zerg could have brought them with them through the wormholes they use.

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So in a protoss vs zerg battle the zerg have a wormhole in the infestation pit?

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So in a protoss vs zerg battle the zerg have a wormhole in the infestation pit?

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They could have collected them a long time ago, from different planets. When they're engaged in a battle with the Protoss, it could simply be bodies from past battles with the Terrans.

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Honestly, of all the things I could wonder about in game, this is not high on the list.

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Your point? Do you have better things to discuss? I hate people like you who go into a discussion without adding anything to it, just to say something stupid.

It's an interesting discussion for now... but let's look at it in the terms of 10-10-10

- If you look at this in terms of 10 minutes, it's an interesting conversation as an attempt to get lore out of the basis.
- If you look at this in terms of 10 months, the game will be out, and we'll just accept the fact that it spits infested terrans much like we now accept mutalisks flying in space, even though we don't understand it, we have become accustom to it.
- In 10 years, we'll be talking about this as a legacy issue (like the muta issue, or overlord flying) and will use it as a basis to explain how the portal in WC4 opened up a rift to Mars Sara and incorporated a futuristic technology base to rival that of gnomes... questioning whether or not it is believable.

Just two cents on the subject :)

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Originally Posted by Pandonetho

They could have collected them a long time ago, from different planets. When they're engaged in a battle with the Protoss, it could simply be bodies from past battles with the Terrans.

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But the entire zerg colony grows from a single hatchery. Its not like MULEs where you see the unit being transported on the battlefield. And its not like scarabs where the thing is created on the battlefield.

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But the entire zerg colony grows from a single hatchery.

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Multiplayer is a simulation.

Do you think in lore the Zerg really just send 5 drones to a planet, start a hatchery and build from there?

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Originally Posted by Pandonetho

Multiplayer is a simulation.

Do you think in lore the Zerg really just send 5 drones to a planet, start a hatchery and build from there?

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Yes I agree with you but this is about where you draw the line. The whole core gamplay system is overlaid with a visible story that explains how ingame elements came to be. Its not just that you ordered a zerg unit ok here it is. Its that you grew that hydralisk from a larva. And those larva are produced from a hatchery. And that hatchery grew from a drone.

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Originally Posted by Pandonetho

Don't remember exactly, but it was close to what Dustin said.
They go underground and take in the dead bodies of marines then infest them.

The problem with that is, since when did infestation bring people back to life?

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well, i dont remember well but i think that in Deception there was something about revive humans trought infestation.

maybe is a process like the necromorphs from Dead Space...


personally i prefer the old way to get infested terran, taking the infestor to a barrack and infest it.

Wasn't Alexei Stukov the only known reincarnated Infested Terran, with the addition of a Cerebrate's cells?

Normal Infestation would not have such effects. It is not a parasite, but injected Zerg hyper-evolutionary virus.


-Psi

Thats the other thing. We have infestation here without all the good parts of infestation. There is no feeling that you are taking control of the opponents base and turning his people into zerg.

I found something that's just as bad, and from SC Vanilla: Where does the SCV get all that metal to build buildings several times larger than himself? :p Surely they're not made of minerals.

While I have a waay easier time with the new explanation of swallowing 'hibernated' Infested Terrans to use as ammo - than I ever did the, "guns from eggs" debacle - there's still something just - well - cheesy about it. It's beyond ideas like, 'flapping in space' and 'neverending ammo' - I still say that if you want to have the infestor regurgitate anything, make it a new Zerg unit (with similar stats and abilities) - Lorewise, you can say it was a natural symbiotic organism to the Infestor's 'original' species (before it was assimilated) which also became, 'Zergified' in the process. (?)

Also have to say tho, that if it stays in the game, it wont be the end of the world for me; it's really is just an aesthetic thing - it'll just end up one of those little nonsensical things that occasionally makes me roll my eyes from time to time when I see it.


You know, like giving Duran, "Consume" or something.... :)


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I found something that's just as bad, and from SC Vanilla: Where does the SCV get all that metal to build buildings several times larger than himself? Surely they're not made of minerals.

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The materials are probably requisitioned by the commander and the SCVs build from there, or rather, "assemble" from there.

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Originally Posted by Kacaier

I found something that's just as bad, and from SC Vanilla: Where does the SCV get all that metal to build buildings several times larger than himself? :p Surely they're not made of minerals.

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Metal is mined from the earth. Are Infested Terrans? Now here is the thing. You cant get humans out of minerals so obviously the barracks is a suspension of disbelief. But thats not really the angle im argueing against. Its more that you have infested marines appears when their are no terrans to infest.

Yah you can give me an explaination that stretches the boundaries of believablilty. Yah you can point out other things that are more riduclous in SC. But was it so essential to have infested marines in the game that your willing to shoehorn them in even if you arnt actually infesting them?

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t's beyond ideas like, 'flapping in space' and 'neverending ammo'

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The thing about mutas flapping in space not bothering us much is because we always see them in play on maps that flying with wings is actually possible. Space platforms are also generally modified to support atmosphere by Terrans.

In any case, we do know marines run out of ammo, it's just common sense.

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You cant get humans out of minerals so the barracks is a suspension of disbelief.

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I presume there are already people within the barracks, and when you build a base/colony there are invisible NPCS all over the place, in buildings and such operating them.

@SCV dilemma: Or some type of advanced maintenance assisted assembler, you know, like that thing the SCV drops in SC2 :P


-Psi

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Originally Posted by ArcherofAiur

You cant get humans out of minerals so obviously the barracks is a suspension of disbelief. But thats not really the angle im argueing against. Its more that you have infested marines appears when their are no terrans to infest.

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I'm going to use it as an argument, as you seem to seek and believe that the base you start off with is all that you have, like you found it plausible that one hatchery could end up creating all that the Zerg build.

How is it one command center and a couple of SCVs have marines, tank commanders, battle cruiser technicians, science vessel scientists, etc. That breaks the suspension of belief as much as the Infested Marines. You argue that after forming an Infestation Pit, that there cannot be any Marines in there. Yet how does any other Terran building have Terrans inside them?

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Originally Posted by Pandonetho

I presume there are already people within the barracks, and when you build a base/colony there are invisible NPCS all over the place, in buildings and such operating them.

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Invisible Infested Marines. Voila? (this is merely a response, not an actual claim of suggestion :p)

To be perfectly honest, if I was gonna predict one ability that gets removed during the beta, it would be this. Not for the reasons this thread is about, but because of gameplay reasons.

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We all know that video games have suspension of disbelief where the player accepts how the gameworks even if it doesnt make sense.

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Fail.

Do you "suspend your disbelief" when you play PacMan? No. You accept the gameplay as it is provided to you. You control a thing named "Pac-Man". You move him over dots. Things called "Ghosts" follow you. If you eat a large dot, the "Ghosts" turn blue and can be eaten. If the Ghosts are not blue and they touch you, you lose a life.

There is no attempt at verisimilitude happening there. There is no attempt to get you to suspend your disbelief. What you do is play the game as it is provided to you. Most competitive games operate in this fashion.

Nobody complains that Chess pieces interfere with their suspension of disbelief. That's because when you play Chess, you don't have disbelief to be suspended. You are playing a game, and you know that from the first moment you put the pieces on the board to the moment when someone cries "Checkmate".

The same goes for competitive StarCraft. Mutalisks flapping their wings through space doesn't cause Jaedong to rethink his playing of StarCraft. In competitive play, every element of a game is reduced to exactly that: a gameplay element. Nothing more, nothing less.

To put it another way, when you're playing a competitive game, you have entered the realm of the Hard Core. You have the highest degree of human-to-game-system contact possible. There is no Mutalisk; the word and image is just a name tag and visualization mechanism to tell you that there is something with a specific set of gameplay properties and where it is in the gameplay space. Zergling, Hydralisks, Hatchery, none of these have any meaning for you outside of the gameplay. Even the unit quotes only mean something in terms of what they tell you about the game state.

Competitive games are all about the Hard Core. If you're thinking about the game elements as entities that live in a world, you're not among the Hard Core and are not thinking competitively. You have not Stepped On Up sufficiently.

Suspension of Disbelief is only necessary when you are playing a game where the attitude of the Hard Core is not expected. Where you're trying to do something more than just present a set of rules for the player to deal with. Many RPGs do this, as well as innumerable FPSs and so forth. The core of StarCraft, it's multiplayer, is not doing that.

So no, Suspension of Disbelief is not a requirement for a competitive game.

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Originally Posted by SaharaDrac

To be perfectly honest, if I was gonna predict one ability that gets removed during the beta, it would be this. Not for the reasons this thread is about, but because of gameplay reasons.

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Along with Plague, the one lacking more flavor than Infested Terran to Browder :P


-Psi

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Originally Posted by Kacaier

I'm going to use it as an argument, as you seem to seek and believe that the base you start off with is all that you have. Like you found it plausible that one hatchery could end up creating all that the Zerg build.

How is it one command center and a couple of SCVs have marines, tank commanders, battle cruiser technicians, science vessel scientists, etc. That breaks the suspension of belief as much as the Infested Marines. You argue that after forming an Infestation Pit, that there cannot be any Marines in there. Yet how does any other Terran building have Terrans inside them?

@ Invisible NPCs; invisible Infested Marines. Voila?

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Great you have invisible infested marines that were infested invisibly when some invisible zerg invisibly captured marines that were invisible stationed somewhere.

Is the model so cool that we have to include it in multiplayer even if the model is the only thing about infestation that makes it through the grinder and into gameplay? What weve done is nuetured infestation.

And Nicol, Starcraft is made for both the casual and hard core player.

@ Nicol.

You know, this game is not only designed for competitive playing right?

There is suspension of disbelief where it matters, to the casuals, to the people playing it for the atmosphere, the simulation of it.

Why do you think they made the game a trilogy? Why do you think they're putting so much effort into the singleplayer?

Why do you think there's even UMS? If it was purely competitive, none of these would matter and the game would be in beta already.

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Originally Posted by ArcherofAiur

Great you have invisible infested marines that were infested invisibly when some invisible zerg invisibly captured marines that were invisible stationed somewhere.

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That was in reference to Pandonetho's comment. Sorry, I should have properly quoted that, but I felt too lazy.

You still haven't commented on the existence of how there are Terrans inside a building after being constructed by a lone SCV. That means you had suspended your belief for that. I don't see how it's too much of a stretch for the Infested Terrans. ;)

I don't really care. As long as it helps the gameplay along. I'll be too busy microing my infested marines to bother with lore and belief.

I can believe the ability, it makes perfect sense (er... relatively speaking). It's just kinda dull, and I really liked how "Infest" worked.

But eh. It doesn't bother me THAT much.

Since I brought up the concept before Browder confirmed it, I have to say that it works just fine. Sure it's not as well justified as Reavers / spider mines, but it's not absolutely inconceivable as to break my suspension of disbelief.


X :cool:

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Originally Posted by Kacaier

That was in reference to Pandonetho's comment. Sorry, I should have properly quoted that, but I felt too lazy.

You still haven't commented on the existence of how there are Terrans inside a building after being constructed by a lone SCV. That means you had suspended your belief for that. I don't see how it's too much of a stretch for the Infested Terrans. ;)

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Oh I agree that there are "invisible" terrans at the base. My first point is that its allot easier to suspend disbelief for invisible terrans than it is for invisible infested marines + invisible infestation of those marine + invisible whatever infests them +invisible uninfested marines to get infested in the first place.

My second point is that its not really worth it to have infested marines if youve taken out everything about infestation except the tentacled marine. I admit the model is cool. You have huge claws and slime erupting from a marines suit. But why not just leave it for singleplayer? Or develop an infestation mechanic that works for multiplayer.

Its like in diablo if i had a necromancer that didnt raise skeletons from graves. He just carried around already rasied skeletons around in a bag and threw them at the enemy.