Character Comparison - SC1 vs SC2

[solidsamurai]

The problem with WoL kerrigan is that they simply didn't animate her well.

She looked great and can easily be presented as creepy with the right shots and angles, however motion capture doesn't capture her - it makes her look way too human. They need to make her more insectoid - make the chitin on her body slip and slide around more, etc.

I'd say, she can appear as graceful and as beautiful to human eyes as she likes, however staring at her hard enough should always be very creepy and horrifying - that this person isn't really human at all. She's an insectoid freak! SC 2 motion capture resulted in her being too anthropomorphic - may as well have made her a some kind of femme fatale human with powers and in control of zerg, and be done with it.

[Visions of Khas]

Artanis and Zeratul shared their model between them for the Wrath of the Xel'Naga cinematic, only they were palette swapped and had different clothing.

Listening to the fanmade Tassadar line, I really wish that voice actor remained for the newer StarCraft Metamorphosis movie. That VA was so spot-on.

[Pr0nogo]

The problem with WoL kerrigan is that they simply didn't animate her well.

You can say that about basically everything in SCII. The engine is cobbled together by interns and not processed or compressed well at all, and so we have to deal with the fact that SCII runs horribly on top of the line PCs (think WarCraft III but to a far greater extent), just so we can see some shitty animations and bloom. StarCraft II is very ugly. Like, Borderlands ugly.

The characters reflect that with their horrible, cobbled-together, last-second personalities.

StarCraft II is just not a good game from any standpoint. It's been gobbled up by casuals and fanboys because of the logo on the box, not because of any actual demonstrable feat of the developer. If another company released StarCraft II, Diablo III, or even World of WarCraft, those games would be excised by the industry's reviewers as the garbage they are.

[Gradius]

I've fixed the SC2 sounds that weren't working for some people & I added Zeratul.

[Robear]

No. The screw-up was that he didn't have nerve cords, not that he's using the dark templar model. There was no dark templar model in BW.

Not true! Couldn't find this picture on the internet; had to scan it myself.



It's obviously the same model as Artanis, only mirrored (the shoulder pad is on Artanis' left and the DT's right). I doubt it's the model that was actually used to render the sprites back in original SC. The only other difference is that the Dark Templar has a bit of wrapping around his ankle, while Artanis has bare legs.

[DarthYam]

Part of it is taste. With Kerrigans WOL lines I liked because it was the "keep it short and keep it scary". She's trying to undermine their resolve, and saying "you will all serve me" had just the aura of menace that was needed. I also liked the Overmind. I wanted to make a point about the free will debacle as well. In BW she had victory in the bag; here she's trying to undermine their resolve

In the bartimaeus trilogy, demons are summoned and if the summoning pentacles are done properly, the demons have to obey their masters command. They may hate to, but they are incapable of revolt. If, however, the commands are vague and open ended enough, they can find loopholes that allow them to fight back or turn their commands on them (for instance one master said "preserve me." Bartimaeus pickled the guy in such a way that his body was "preserved." Due to the vagueness bartimaeus was able to do this.). The OM was like the demons in that it was not allowed to defy except for finding loopholes in the binding to work around.

and pro, a smart person would say

You can say that about basically everything in SCII. The engine is crafted together by designers and is processed or compressed well, and so we have to deal with the fact that SCII runs well on top of the line PCs (think WarCraft III but to a far greater extent), just so we can see some shitty animations and bloom. StarCraft II is very beautiful. Like, Assassins creed III ugly.

The characters reflect that with their good, well made, consistent personalities.

StarCraft II is not just a good game from any standpoint, but a great gam. It's been gobbled up by most consumers not because of the logo on the box, but because of the demonstrable feats of the developer. If another company released StarCraft II, Diablo III, or even World of WarCraft, those games would be praised by the industry's reviewers as the masterpieces they they are.


WOL was put together by real designers who crafted a solid game

The only fanboy is you; the only people who think it's ugly are whiny little pissants like you; even Gradius acknowledges that from a gameplay and graphics perspective WOL is far superior.

[topsecret221]

Gameplay can be subjective. A lot of people claim that the 12 unit selection limit helped to bring out the difference in skill level. Though it's tougher on the newbies, it opens up a lot of strategies, and the bad pathing broke up deathballs and kept ranged units from being exceptionally powerful in groups.

It just depends on what aspect you're going to be examining the gameplay from.

[Pr0nogo]

I don't think removing the selection limit or adding smartcasting was a bad idea. Modernising the game is fine. But having units like the Reaper and Colossus that arbitrarily negate the terrain is not okay. Terrain is there for a reason, and if you can just lol over the terrain with a ground unit, there's not any kind of thinking that goes on in the player's head when he looks at terrain. He just says, 'Oh boy, I can lol over this! I can just pretend these cliffs aren't even here!', or, 'Let me abuse the cliffs with my units and annihilate the enemy's army!'

If another company released StarCraft II, Diablo III, or even World of WarCraft, those games would be praised by the industry's reviewers as the masterpieces they they are.

This is demonstrably false.

[Quirel]

I don't think removing the selection limit or adding smartcasting was a bad idea. Modernising the game is fine. But having units like the Reaper and Colossus that arbitrarily negate the terrain is not okay. Terrain is there for a reason, and if you can just lol over the terrain with a ground unit, there's not any kind of thinking that goes on in the player's head when he looks at terrain. He just says, 'Oh boy, I can lol over this! I can just pretend these cliffs aren't even here!', or, 'Let me abuse the cliffs with my units and annihilate the enemy's army!'

If this is true, then no game with air units would be balanced. The original StarCraft would have boiled down to air wars between Wraiths, Scouts, Corsairs, and Mutalisks.
Only, that didn't happen.

Ah, but /ground/ units arbitrarily negating terrain reduces strategic depth? Well, let's go look at the StarCraft II pro scene, where TvP boils down to skirmishes between Reapers and Collossi, with other ground units being few and short-lived.

Huh. That's not what's happening at all. It's as if the tactical advantage of being able to ignore certain types of terrain is countered by other weaknesses. Imagine that.

This is demonstrably false.

"Demonstrably". I do not think that word means what you think it means.
But maybe I'm wrong, and it is possible to step through a time machine and hand the game assets over to another developer.

Next time a smart person uses a big word, and you don't know what it means, reach for the dictionary.

[Pr0nogo]

If this is true, then no game with air units would be balanced. The original StarCraft would have boiled down to air wars between Wraiths, Scouts, Corsairs, and Mutalisks.
Only, that didn't happen.

Because air units are treated on a different level than ground units. My point was that ignoring terrain with such powerful, fast-moving, easily-abusable units is a mistake. Have they been nerfed to all fuck as a result? Pretty much. It still doesn't change the fact that the units reduce gameplay depth, not

strategic depth

Unbeknownst to you, taking someone's argument and replacing it with your own interpretation of the argument before attempting to tear it apart is called a strawman.

"Demonstrably". I do not think that word means what you think it means.
But maybe I'm wrong, and it is possible to step through a time machine and hand the game assets over to another developer.

You were wrong way before you assumed you'd need a time machine to demonstrate why my statement is logically (not literally) correct.

For this example, we will take two games.

The first will be Armies of Exigo and the second will be WarCraft III. Most of what I say about the latter can apply to StarCraft II.

Armies of Exigo had several flaws - notably that it was spat out the ass-end of Ubisoft before its corpse was cannibalised by EA. This game was released a short time after WarCraft III and reviewers wrote that the game's graphics were lacking and that it took too much from the aforementioned Blizzard game.

The problem is, the game's models and height maps showcased attention to detail and proportions, proper terrain tiling and design, and several other visual aspects that even StarCraft II lacks. Its gameplay held options that StarCraft II and WarCraft III additionally lacked, without actually being similar to the latter. Game reviews that lauded WarCraft III as a vastly superior game were basically only correct when it came to particle effects. Armies of Exigo was just a better game, graphically and gameplay-wise, showcasing options and abilities that Blizzard has still not uncovered in their blind stumbling. Most game reviewers that took it upon themselves to review Armies of Exigo were downright lying. Why? Because EA didn't pay them by the assload to inflate the scores and the developer wasn't a big-name brand.

WarCraft III runs horribly on technology from 2003-2005. It doesn't run well on 'newer technology', meaning machines released a few years after the game was released. The same is true for StarCraft II. Blizzard have never bothered to compress or finalise their engine, so performance suffers as a result. WarCraft IIIs graphics ranged from shoddy to blatantly terrible. The editor was a mixed bag at best. Gameplay felt clunky at first and merely average after patches. And yet, at launch, this title scored vastly higher than Armies of Exigo. Why?

Because of logo and flash.

And obviously, after the merger, Activision is willing to line anyone's pockets to review just about any game these days; just like THQ, EA, Ubisoft, and whoever else happens to be a game industry 'giant'. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Next time a smart person uses a big word, and you don't know what it means, reach for the dictionary.

You sure love biting yourself in ye ol' asshole, don't you?