Why the SC2 Story Was a Disappointment

[Turalyon]

I don't think it's as hard as you think.

I didn't mean difficulty or inability of doing it but rather whether it's worth their (Blizz) investment on time and resources for an unquantifiable and nebulous return (to turn around the haters) when the problem with it is just the story and that people will most likely still buy it in droves when it comes out anyway.

[DarthYam]

Honestly I felt wol was better than brood war. The temple in Protoss was just as much of a dues ex machina

1.) the prophecy actually cleared up holes. Why was Kerrigan left on char even after the dt went to aiur. Why manifest before you have victory in bag? Because the over mind WANTED

2.) Kerrigan was a sociopath. Due to the tinkering of her brain the only choice she could make was the evil one. To achieve redemption the conditioning would need to broken. Hence artifact

3.) the hybrids were foreshadowed in brood war

Gradius you are blinded by nostalgia you wanted it to go one way but when it didnt you got hissy

[Gradius]

Honestly I felt wol was better than brood war. The temple in Protoss was just as much of a dues ex machina

I agree that BW was worse than SC, not in the least because of that temple. But it's still ahead of WoL. At least in BW we knew what the temple did from the start and the story didn't use the temple as a "plot twist". Or was that meant to be a plot twist anyway? I don't think WoL had any real plot twists aside from the retcons.

1.) the prophecy actually cleared up holes. Why was Kerrigan left on char even after the dt went to aiur. Why manifest before you have victory in bag? Because the over mind WANTED

That's not really a hole. She was left on Char to fight the dark templar; they were the bigger threat since they could actually kill the overmind/cerebrates. And the Overmind needed the element of surprise on Aiur so he left ASAP.

2.) Kerrigan was a sociopath. Due to the tinkering of her brain the only choice she could make was the evil one. To achieve redemption the conditioning would need to broken. Hence artifact

She actually showed signs of her humanity still lurking beneath the surface in Brood War:
"They've all been destroyed. Let us return to Tarsonis to rest. For the first time since my transfiguration I am wearied of the slaughter."

Would it have killed them to perhaps let Kerrigan get her own redemption through character development and decent writing? Apparently it would, since they decided to take the easy way out by going with an artifact.

3.) the hybrids were foreshadowed in brood war

Not sure what this has to do with anything tbh. The hybrid storyline could have extended into just about anything that wasn't another cliche "ultimate big bad is coming to kill everybody for no very good reason" theme. I liked it better when it was just Duran.

Gradius you are blinded by nostalgia you wanted it to go one way but when it didnt you got hissy

What I wanted was a logical extension of the story from Brood War. Instead we got a flimsy, vapid, non-sequitur of a plot.

This was my biggest beef with StarCraft II: Lack of consequence.

To add insult to injury, Blizzard specifically said in an interview that they would prefer not to reference any of the choices in expansions again, in order to make us not feel like the one we picked didn't count. I remember them saying that they couldn't learn much from mass effect because it's a different type of game, but really...that just seems silly now. All they had to do was acknowlegdge what we did in in a later mission, instead of just having the character drop off the map.

I'm not really in agreement here, at least when it regards following up on Brood War.

The least interesting storylines after Brood War were the terran storyline. After all, the "greater war" between the protoss and zerg could continue with no terran involvement at all.

However, Blizzard wanted to deal with Raynor. His greatest remaining connections to the storyline were with Kerrigan and Mengsk. Blizzard had to tie together Raynor, Mengsk, Kerrigan, and at the same time continue the xel'naga storyline. I can't say they did the greatest job on it, but they did manage to have Raynor take place in a shakeup of the Koprulu Sector in a plot-relevant way. Raynor may have been motivated more by his love for Kerrigan rather than Zeratul's prophetic crystal, but in the end he did do something big.

Raynor didn't really finish his storyline with Mengsk at all. He turned the media around on him for a bit, but made little progress: "when this is over, me and you got a score to settle". True, Raynor finally was able to save Kerrigan, but in the most contrived way possible. I just have very little respect for that artifact plot.

The question is if they'll do anything substantial about it at this point. They change too much at this point and the story overall would seem weird.

To be honest, we should be used to that then, as WoL was like that anyway. The prophecy for example made no sense, Zeratul & Kerrigan talked like they already knew what the prophecy was before Zeratul ever found it himself. The Tassadar scene was just awful, and that's because it looks like they changed it in the last minute from the alternate storyline that I extracted from the editor.

[RODTHEGOD]

To be honest, we should be used to that then, as WoL was like that anyway. The prophecy for example made no sense, Zeratul & Kerrigan talked like they already knew what the prophecy was before Zeratul ever found it himself. The Tassadar scene was just awful, and that's because it looks like they changed it in the last minute from the alternate storyline that I extracted from the editor.

That extracted story was much better. It's a shame they didn't go with it.
Did you happen to find any other dialogue?

[DarthYam]

But after the dark Templar left char Kerrigan stayed behind. Even after the dark Templar arrived on aiur it never occurred to send his ultimate weapon after them? While there was humanity in her it was so small as to be insignificant. Only a monster would have done the atrocities in reckoning and omega. And why didn't the over'mind wait until after all resistance was crushed

[Gradius]

That extracted story was much better. It's a shame they didn't go with it.
Did you happen to find any other dialogue?

There might be some more laying around, I haven't looked through all the maps.

But after the dark Templar left char Kerrigan stayed behind. Even after the dark Templar arrived on aiur it never occurred to send his ultimate weapon after them?

Perhaps he was too busy, or perhaps Kerrigan was busy doing something else (like finding Shakuras and enslaving Raszagal). To say that this is a plot hole is an argument from ignorance and not that big of a deal to say the least. Either way the retcon is not a satisfactory solution to this problem. If the Overmind was created without free will, where did he find the free will to create Kerrigan and leave her behind on Char? The retcon deconstructs itself.

While there was humanity in her it was so small as to be insignificant. Only a monster would have done the atrocities in reckoning and omega.

People don't have to change everything about themselves to realize that killing everybody is not the answer to their problems i.e. Vegeta from DBZ, or Jaime from game of thrones.

As it stands, the infestation is 100% responsible for Kerrigan's actions in BW. Kerrigan doesn't even seem to remember what happened. Everything that she did is totally not her fault, and that's just lame IMHO.

[solidsamurai]

Old news no doubt, but aside from the retcons and the fact that the writers were afraid of anyone taking the campaign seriously, I've pretty much found the major reason why I consider the SC2 story to be a disappointment.

Do you guys remember the hype for SC2 before it was announced. Back then I wondered how they would script Kerrigan's interactions with everyone else, or what she would even do. At that point, the end of Brood War, Kerrigan has become the Queen bitch of the universe. She has pissed everyone off, and people would be stupid to trust her a second time. It got to the point where Kerrigan had to die as far as every other character was concerned. What kind of writing magic would the writers have to pull to create a plot where she interacts with others in any meaningful capacity beyond killing them all? How would Raynor live up to his promise to kill Kerrigan? How would Zeratul avenge his Matriarch? This was basically the hype for SC2.

Of course back then there were no prophecies or deux ex machina de-infestation artifacts in the SC universe, so I was counting on them using clever plot & character development to make this happen. Imagine my disappointment when they took the easy way out and created a prophecy which mandates that kerrigan must live or the universe will explode. What the f*** writers? This is the best you could think of?

This feels like red letter media's star wars review. If you want people to listen, you have to make it funny.

Really really funny. Which is red letter media.

[mr. peasant]

Haven't posted here in awhile. Just thought I'd throw in my two cents:

Personally, my biggest issue with the campaign is Blizzard's mentality, strange as it sounds. Throughout its development, Blizzard had previews, whole lore panels and press releases for the game; waxing on and on as to how epic the story was, etc. Which suggests that Blizzard intended, and more importantly believe, that the story and setting are awesome, top notch, and things to be taken seriously. Or at least, that's the impression I get. This, I feel, makes it somewhat inconsistent with the actual game's hamminess (especially the news), clunky dialogue and lackluster narrative.

For comparison, let's consider Red Alert 3. Objectively, it's campaign story was as bad, if not worse, than SC2. However, the game's creators seemed to know this and had deliberately taken steps to exploit it; turning the game into a 'hey, it's that guy' fest with corny dialogue and even cornier characters. But somehow, it works! The key difference here is that the story in RA3 knew not to take itself seriously; thereby making its deficits overlookable, or even downright enjoyed.

Blizzard's SC2 did not share this self awareness. As such, it's intended 'epic-ness' was undermined by a difficult to fully immerse setting (due to the characters being so heavily caricatured, cliched and corny) and a story that is not only poorly paced by full of holes.


Edit:
On a more literary level, my biggest issue is Blizzard's heavy use of info dumping (especially from where they come from). For instance, when facing the Taldarim, Findlay reassures Raynor (and the player) that they are religious fanatics unaffiliated with the Protoss on Shakuras. How does a guy who only recently escaped incarceration and who had until recently never encountered a Zerg know this while Raynor (who is the Terran who has gotten closest to the Protoss and thus is familiar with the factioning amongst them) not? Another one is how Raynor learned that the Artifact could de-infest Kerrigan - he found out about it from Valerian Mengsk. How did he know that? The game never bothered to explain. To expand further, all of this is 'telling' rather than 'showing'. Relying on this constantly is bad writing and possibly reflects Blizzard's hesitation/inability to develop story progressions from the original ideas; i.e. they're not very good at flowing the plot from Point A to Point B to Point C naturally.

[Turalyon]

On a more literary level, my biggest issue is Blizzard's heavy use of info dumping (especially from where they come from). For instance, when facing the Taldarim, Findlay reassures Raynor (and the player) that they are religious fanatics unaffiliated with the Protoss on Shakuras. How does a guy who only recently escaped incarceration and who had until recently never encountered a Zerg know this while Raynor (who is the Terran who has gotten closest to the Protoss and thus is familiar with the factioning amongst them) not? Another one is how Raynor learned that the Artifact could de-infest Kerrigan - he found out about it from Valerian Mengsk. How did he know that? The game never bothered to explain. To expand further, all of this is 'telling' rather than 'showing'. Relying on this constantly is bad writing and possibly reflects Blizzard's hesitation/inability to develop story progressions from the original ideas; i.e. they're not very good at flowing the plot from Point A to Point B to Point C naturally.

I don't quite understand your use of "info dumping". From the examples you've described, they sound more like Blizzard is "incluing" (scattering tid-bits of info throughout without bothering to explain them at the time) rather than providing actual exposition in a heavy-handed and content dense manner (which is info dumping). Either way, WoL is an example of the bad way of using this technique.

[mr. peasant]

I don't quite understand your use of "info dumping". From the examples you've described, they sound more like Blizzard is "incluing" (scattering tid-bits of info throughout without bothering to explain them at the time) rather than providing actual exposition in a heavy-handed and content dense manner (which is info dumping). Either way, WoL is an example of the bad way of using this technique.

What I mean is that it is intrusive, obvious exposition for the sake of exposition and in place of a more gradual and natural feeling revelation/development; made all the more worse (as in more noticeable and unnatural) given the sources of the information (as in the information in question should not have been known by the informant in the first place) as well as the timeliness of it (as in right before the information becomes pertinent).

In other words, Blizzard had dumped information unnecessarily AND done so poorly.