I think I figured out what was missing from the Single Player Experience

[broodmywarcraft]

Anybody that dislikes the pacing of the game can blame games such as mass effect. It is the cool new thing to do, to allow the player to explore things and get little bits of info or whatever at their own pace.

Personally, I do hope that they go back to a more traditional style where its mission to mission without the "exploration". Perhaps have a branching style where the decisions are made during the mission instead of picking which mission to do (yes, this would mean you will miss things the first time through). If they did that, the game would be amazing, or even perfect.

I don't blame the medium the idea was taken from, I blame the designers for their implementation of that idea.

Though I do agree with you on returning to the more traditional style.

[Gradius]

The Confederacy and, finally, Mengsk.

Zerg as well.

[Wankey]

The "Hyperion Cantina" and "Hyperion Bridge" thing is a classic Starcraft thing. In every Starcraft Cinematic there was a line of text explaining the location.

That is so wrong. Starcraft cinematics happened on different worlds. Most of these things depicted places like Antioch Prime or whatever. Planets or worlds, vast different environments that required a subtext in order for people to understand that this sin't just another place on one world, it's a completely different world or sector of space.

Again, it shows how little the Blizzard crew know how to build games now and just copy whatever it was that they did 10 years ago for "nostalgia" sake.

[TheEconomist]

Wow, you bitch about everything, don't you Wankey? It served a minor purpose and that was to give a brief interruption before the cinematic starts. It's called dramatization and at the very worst its pointless. I don't see how you can really even care about it, to be honest.

[Mattster]

Wow, a lot of you guys seem to be trying pretty hard to find ways to hate this game

[hyde]

Who was the antagonist in the vanilla terran campaign?

You were a terran magistrate/executor. Mar Sara just got burned by an Alien Force. Suddenly there's Xenomorphs all over the place. At the same time, hell there's a civil war basically going on. You got "F'ed" on numerous times.
Getting arrested by the Confed's, then getting stabbed by Mengsk. It climaxes at Mengsk and keeps you sort of on your toes throughout the whole game.

SC2?
Help glasses girl, then get high via a protoss drug and go on a vision quest...then top it all off with a loophole on stealing the Odin+Bringing Tychus into Dominion space...slipping past Mengsk's lesh/collar on Tychus all at the same time.
Then having tea with the Prince and making a brave heart speech on a volcanic world that brings it to rain. The Climax was surviving a made wave of Zerg forces and using a piece of rock. The only "twist" or "Turn" in the game (Tychus being a pawn) was spoiled by the introduction cinematic.

Don't forget the fact that there was hardly any story progression during actual missions. All the character and story development happened in-between missions (Hyperion stuff and cinematics). Each mission can be thoroughly summarised as "this thing happened" with not much else story progression despite them taking up the majority of "story" time - most of the campaign is just gameplay with a disjointed story draped onto the missions.

Yeah, I agree completely. Remember in SC1? When kerrigan got screwed over and you were "Witnessesing" it while it happened?
Or when you were playing as Kerrigan's cerebrate in Brood War, killing Fenix/Duke/Etc.
SC2 takes a stepback wards on video game story telling and uses way too many cinematics. I don't even think there was one cinematic with any seriously suspenseful or shocking moments.

Sounds kind of strange, but each time I replay the campaign, I like it more and more. I'm gradually becoming less and less disappoined by it. Who knows, maybe most of my discontent was nostalgia. I know a lot of it was the fact that if you've kept up with news and read the books, there was pretty much nothing new in the game, so that seems to becoming less and less of an issue.

I don't think a good game takes "multiple" plays to finally get good.
IF anything, that's a sign of a poorly made game.
To elaborate - SC2 was trying to do 2 things at once. A traditional Blizzard RTS and then a "Mass Effect CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE!" thing. But they couldn't focus and thus some of the best moments/cinematics in the game REQUIRE a second play (Like putting down Infested Ariel Hanson).
But NO single "gameplay" is good enough on it's own, it has to rely on playing all the missions and possibilities. Not to mention the "tough choices" in SC2 were bit of a joke.

Anyone who owns the MAKING OF DVD, go watch key storyline cinematics (especially the last few) with Commentary ON.
For those of you who do not have it, the story and key sequences lack a unified idea and are a product of multiple homages and "wants". This is due to a large team working on the cinematics/writing and they all had their own ideas.

[TheEconomist]

@hyde: You're talking about something completely different. I'm talking about giving the game a chance without the expectations I had the first time through. In fact, I had already played the alternate missions before this playthrough which I just mentioned. Also, I'm adjusting to the changes in tone and atmosphere from SC1 to SC2

[TheProgramer]

I had another thought when I went toplay SC I multiplayer. The battle.net interface didn't look futuristic. Perhpas things were developed a bit farther than I would like in SCII, because it sort off took away that factor of being in space and traveling by conventional (maybe not the right word) machinery that humans were able to develop. I don't know how to put into words what I'm feeling but I like the less-advanced technology of the Terran, it also made a better contrast to the Protoss's advanced technology.

[TheEconomist]

Just the other day, I was thinking how much more badass that moon-like landscape with a view of a planet was than the relatively empty black space that is in the background now. In fact, that image has been the focus my nostalgia whenever I got the urge to get back into SCBW.

That being said, SC2 UI >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SC UI

I'm only talking about that image here.

[Turalyon]

Wow, a lot of you guys seem to be trying pretty hard to find ways to hate this game

Well, what can I say? It's a life.