Gradius's HoTS Trailer Storyline Analysis

[Gradius]

Warning: if you care about spoilers, quit reading now.

This will be an analysis of clips from the recently released HoTS teaser trailer.


We can see Kerrigan is being injected with something. The question is if someone is doing it to her or is she doing it to herself? Perhaps she is attempting to rezergify herself in order to take back control of the swarm. Raynor taps on the glass with a look of sadness after this shot is played. Perhaps Kerrigan realizes she is the key to saving the universe, and needs to get her powers back. Or perhaps she simply doesn't want to be back in human form.



Here we see Mengsk standing in the throne room, which matches the architecture and even the carpet of the throne room in the leaked HoTS ending, which was confirmed to be real at the time.

The grey background in the window as well as the grey ambience in the prerendered scenes shown in this trailer leads me to suspect that they are from that scene, where the Zerg invade Korhal. You can see clouds in both shots and given Blizzard's penchant for making perfectly timed weather change scenes, it probably starts raining in the cinematic as soon as the city gets destroyed. You can see that Mengsk is looking down on ruined buildings.



If this is what I think it is, it's a great sign. The Dominion fleet is chasing Raynor's fleet, who has a fleet in the first place. Raynor's Raiders is more than a few guys on a single battlecruiser, hopefully, making their exploits in WoL somewhat more believable.



The Raiders are firing back. It appears Jim kidnapped Kerrigan from under the Dominion and they are giving chase.





The Hyperion takes damage. That poor bastard Katchinsky is in the background.



Nova comes for Kerrigan. It's possible the Hyperion itself was boarded.



This is actually a new installation tileset. Where it fits in remains to be seen.



Kerrigan fights Dominion. I'm thinking this is during the time when the Hyperion is attacked by the Dominion fleet.



It's possible this world is Char itself. It appears very similar to the terraformed jungle version of Char seen in artwork. Perhaps after redeeming the Queen of Blades, Valerian set to transforming Char itself to be symbolic of his victory.



So the flash freeze on the Kaldir mission appears to be a bit more serious than just a gust of wind. It still raises the question of how the Zerg avoid being frozen solid, even if they can survive the temperatures of space (which they were supposed to be able to in the first place after absorbing the behemoths).



There are trapped Zerglings which are being freed. Is someone making hybrids?



A fun space-battle map with realistic-sized units. Predators, which were basically giant point defense drones in the SC2 alpha, are seen here. Perhaps the Hyperion is still trying to fight its way through the Dominion fleet.






Here we see a new white marine suit come into the Hyperion bridge. There is a second one as well, and Matt yells at them to stand down, but Kerrigan telekinetically flings them both against the wall. Either way, something bad happens in the first few stages, leading Kerrigan to leave Char. The question is whether the planet is Dominion occupied or still under Zerg control. It was mentioned at the lore panel that you're trying to retake control of the Char brood. Popular belief holds that they are Moebius marines who came to kill Kerrigan, because Narud and the Dark Voice need Kerrigan dead for their plans to work.

Blizzard really needs to make models besides Marines however. Marines is all we saw in Wings of Liberty. As awesome as it is, we did not need another Marine model in my opinion. After all, the portrait for Tassadar is still just a recolored Archon.



A dropship makes its escape. Perhaps the Hyperion got destroyed and they evacuated, or perhaps Kerrigan decided to split off from Raynor and go her own path.



Valerian is being force-choked by Kerrigan. Is this before Kerrigan escapes Char or after? Either way I don't think we need to fear that Valerian is going to die. Blizzard has invested too much into this character to see him fail.




Drop pods incoming on the grey planet, Dominion reinforcements most likely. Or perhaps it's the Raiders coming to seal the final nail in the coffin. Raynor was present in the leaked cinematic where Mengsk was killed.






Gorgeous pre-rendered clips of the attack on the grey planet. Zerg drop pods land and Hydralisks spring forth. Ultralisks are huge, but still not as big as they were drawn in SC: Frontline - Why We Fight. And their ability to tank a giant explosion is impressive.

[Sheliek]

Not to derail your thread, but those are predators, the OLD ones in the screenshot showing the blue battlecruiser fighting a Dominion station. Just noticed that.

[Gradius]

Not to derail your thread, but those are predators, the OLD ones in the screenshot showing the blue battlecruiser fighting a Dominion station. Just noticed that.

Nah notice anything else let me know. :P

[l33telboi]

My thoughts (and reasoning behind it):

1. Raynor takes Kerrigan to a giant medical/science facility on some random planet. Presumably to check up on her current condition. I gather this because of the tileset shown in the art panel and the background in the parts of the cinematic that shows kerrigan in some form of giant lab. I'm assuming this could be Umojan because everything from the white marines to the look of the facility itself just screams technologically advanced, and the Umjoans are said to be more advanced then the Dominion. Or it's possibly a Moebius facility. It's probably not Umoja considering the planet is all brown from orbit.

2. The Dominion attacks the planet with Battlecruisers and there's a battle in orbit.

3. The defenders lose and drop pods are launched toward the medical facility, carrying marines, spectres and Nova. The facility we see in the sneak preview is actually this facility, and we know these drop pods are launched towards it because there are crashed drop pods on the tile-set (and can even see them dropping in in the cinematic). Their intent is presumably to either capture or kill Kerrigan.

4. EDIT: Kerrigan escapes with Raynor and Valerian along with some Umojan marines (the white ones). Valerian says something bad that pissess off Kerrigan and she decides to leave to do her own thing.

The other cinematic of the zerg attacking a planet is presumably unrelated to this story part. Possibly Kerrigan attacking Korhal at the end of the game, given that the view of Mengsk is both the same tone and coloration, the giant structures everywhere, and the fact that these are all high-quality images rather then in-game cinematics. Also notice the giant Leviathan just above the clouds... they're damn huge.

[Visions of Khas]

The White Marine appears to be a part of the medical team. It's the same suit as seen in the teaser where Nova and her spectres infilitrate in an attempt to assassinate Kerrigan.

I was under the impression that the fleet arrayed around the Hyperion were the remnants of Warfield's armada. It'll be interesting to see how they react to Arcturus' own fleet -- side with his emperor, or the man that saved the life of his crew? I'm thinking the latter. Huge civil war brewing, me thinks. ;]

Now, regarding the injection scene: it appears that Kerrigan is being shielded. You'll notice minor ripples across the surface Raynor pounds on. So this leads me to believe one of two things:

1.) This area is ray-shielded to contain the Zerg genetic material,

or

2.) Kerrigan has erected a psionic shield so no one can interfere with the injection of Zerg material.

She may have resumed her pre-Queen of Blades persona, but the sense of vengeance within her may be so extreme that she will see Mengsk dead... or see the sector burnt to ash around her. StarCraft seems to revolve around cycles: The Xel'Naga Life cycle; and eternal cycle of revenge.

[sandwich_bird]

Nooooo! Not Katchinsky! It's the only decently looking noob portrait!

So the flash freeze on the Kaldir mission appears to be a bit more serious than just a gust of wind. It still raises the question of how the Zerg avoid being frozen solid, even if they can survive the temperatures of space (which they were supposed to be able to in the first place after absorbing the behemoths).

They absorb a yeti who lives there apparently.

Honestly, if you can survive space which has a temperature close to 0k in the vast majority of its volume, the temperature of this planet shouldn't be a problem whatever it might be.

[Quirel]

Nooooo! Not Katchinsky! It's the only decently looking noob portrait!



They absorb a yeti who lives there apparently.

Honestly, if you can survive space which has a temperature close to 0k in the vast majority of its volume, the temperature of this planet shouldn't be a problem whatever it might be.

Yes...
Because space is cold... and it's not like the biggest problems of long range space travel have to do with radiating away heat generated by the propulsion...

/Sarcasm.

[l33telboi]

To elaborate a little: Space might be cold, but you're not going to freeze to death if you're thrown out an air lock. There's no air in space, and there's nothing to conduct heat away from a person. Setting aside the pressure issue and lack of breathable air for a moment, you're probably going to get hotter rather then colder if you're in space.

That's what makes Kaldir interesting. It's suggested that flash freeze reduced the surrounding temperature to almost absolute zero, but does so even when there's an atmosphere around. The zerg adapting to this is fairly spectacular.

[sandwich_bird]

To elaborate a little: Space might be cold, but you're not going to freeze to death if you're thrown out an air lock. There's no air in space, and there's nothing to conduct heat away from a person. Setting aside the pressure issue and lack of breathable air for a moment, you're probably going to get hotter rather then colder if you're in space.

That's what makes Kaldir interesting. It's suggested that flash freeze reduced the surrounding temperature to almost absolute zero, but does so even when there's an atmosphere around. The zerg adapting to this is fairly spectacular.

To clarify, my understanding was that Zergs somehow could isolate themselves for a certain amount of time from any environment. I guess the air would freeze over them but they wouldn't die from it?

[l33telboi]

It's possible. It's been some time since I checked out the Kaldir mission so I'm not sure about the specifics. Still, surviving such a thing is pretty crazy. Makes the zerg seem impressive -- which is a good thing.