Rewriting StarCraft II

[Visions of Khas]

So we've all bitched and bitched about the story, plot and characters. So let's be a little more constructive and see what we can do, eh?

What, specifically, would you change about the story, and how? What is your solution to those pressing storyline problems? Would you rewrite one character or scene? Or scrap everything and work from the ground up?

Zeratul says, "Come at me, bro!"

[TheEconomist]

1) Remove any tainted remains of the Raynor x Kerrigan love story.

2) Focus more on the larger conflict concerning the Xel'Naga. Stupid Terran squabbling should've been an early mission kind of thing to prepare you for the later stuff.

3) Make Mengsk an intelligent villain. I could write an essay on this but it's already been done to death.

4) Put more emphasis and back story on Protoss rivals.

[The_Blade]

I wish thess were the initial conditions for the plot in SC2, from the 4 year stalement between BW and SC2:

1) Mengsk "forgets" about his conflict with Raynor, actually builds a contingency plan against a new Zerg invasion. He pulls back to core Dominion Worlds under perpetual martial law. Salvages fringe worlds.

2) Fringe worlds are left to survive on their own. They Join other Terran factions or remain independent.

3) Umojan and Kel'Morian territories adapt to change. They also deploy anti-Zerg plans.

4) Fear against the Zerg is present among the Terrans, but most have only seen news reports on them. The military forces which engaged and survived the swarm 4 years ago are not a representative population. Refugees who barely made it through evac are also not representative.

5) Intel, projects and general knowledge on Zerg is lost and scattered. The Dominion is the only faction with significant knowledge on the Zerg, most of this information was either stolen or salvaged from Terran facilities during the fall of the UED.

6) Raynor steps down from the command of the Raynor Raiders. He feels guilt about many decisions made during his alliance with Kerrigan. Matt Horner and Michael Liberty now run the Raiders, with some help from Raynor. Raynor has developed an alcoholic habit.

7) The Raiders now work with the Umojans. Several Umojan leaders become relevant to the story.

8) The UED scatters. Small pirate group is formed.

9) Protoss forces are now divided. Separatist groups are formed. They leave Shakuras peacefully.

10) Zeratul is assigned a specialist task force to deal with the Hybrid problem.

11) Artanis is the leader of the Shakuras Protoss.

12) Zeratul encounters a hybrid lab and is attacked by unidentified Protoss and Terran forces. Facing annhialation, he messages Artanis with a "deep space probe" and informs him on everything he knows. He also sends a Probe for Raynor, encrypted to his DNA. He kept tabs on where the Terran was located.

13) With a new motive, Artanis must now join the Protoss factions.

14) Kerrigan was investigating the Hybrids on her own. Stukov is found during this time by her forces. He was used on several experiments.

15) Amon is a Xel'naga which survived the Zerg outrage by digitizing his conciousness. Missing technology resulted in a change of personality and an indoctrinated purpose. He deployed organic shapeshifters with the remaining biological resources left on the Worldships.

16) Ulrezaj found CPU Amon on a Xel'naga Worldship graveyard close to Zerus. He was unguarded, because his armies were being created light years away. Ulrezaj created an alliance.

17) Amon wants to destroy the Zerg, and refine the Protoss race into a new Xel'naga class race.

18) Crystal creatures and artifacts are the result of Xel'naga digitizing technology.

[Visions of Khas]

6) Raynor steps down from the command of the Raynor Raiders. He feels guilt about many decisions made during his alliance with Kerrigan. Matt Horner and Michael Liberty now run the Raiders, with some help from Raynor. Raynor has developed an alcoholic habit.

I like this idea. If Raynor were on the outs, finding him and recruiting him for a renewed war effort would be a good way to introduce him to new players and old ones alike. I really liked the parallels drawn between him and Mengsk in WoL, so perhaps we could harp on that a bit more; if he stepped down from command because he realized he was becoming more like Mengsk, or begins acting more like him after being brough back into the fold, that would add some interesting flavor to his character.

I also like your idea that more fringe worlds would independent or willing to ally with Raynor. I just never got the feeling that I was fomenting an armed rebellion in WoL; there was no effort or even montage of Raynor banding disparate pirates, refugees and insurgents together against Mengsk.

[FanaticTemplar]

Well, it depends on what exactly it is you are asking for. If you're asking how I would alter StarCraft II so that it would work better, the problem is that I find that Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm are a bit mutually exclusive, so I could rewrite StarCraft II around keeping Wings of Liberty mostly intact, but that would involve ditching most of Heart of the Swarm. I could rewrite StarCraft II around the ideas of Heart of the Swarm, but that would involve ditching most of Wings of Liberty. And probably still suck, since I think Heart of the Swarm is flawed at its very core, whereas Wings of Liberty merely suffered from poor execution.

Or, if you're asking me to rewrite the entire story without any regard for conservation of the existing material, then I'd start from the end of StarCraft and ditch Brood War along with most of StarCraft II.

[Gradius]

The biggest problems are IMO:

1) Deinfesting Kerrigan. Simply doesn't need to happen.

2) Amon. Of all the possible hybrid plotlines, I feel like they opted for the worst one. Fact is, Duran could not have seeded that many hybrids during the year or so that the zerg & protoss came into contact, and despite his hyperbole, they need not be some unstoppable force that nobody can defeat. They can be merely tools used by Duran to help serve his goals (rebirth of xel'naga, revenge on the cerebrates/zerg, whatever). The overarching plot should be about conflict between 3 races, not hybrids. In fact, I would have the hybrids come in at the very beginning and lay waste to the zerg, thereby canceling each other out and coming back to even ground with the other races.

3) Raynor needs to have a fleet. I feel like he could gain the support of the Umojans due to his connections to the protoss, and he should have the support of the fringe worlds like Blade said. In fact, that's what I thought was the case during SC when he fought on Aiur. Aaron Rosenberg is the one that butchered the lore and told us that he has 46 survivors living on one battlecruiser after the battles of Char.

4) No more incompetent enemies. Campaigns need to have a feeling of danger. Xel'Naga really need to stop infringing on the protoss' turf. Nowadays the protoss don't get credit for anything. What a coincidence that all these xel'naga artifacts came up as soon as WoL started, and even in the DT saga people started finding all these temples out of nowhere. The xel'naga need to stay in ancient history where they have no impact on anything. Enough goddamn xel'naga temples/artifacts.

[The_Blade]

I have to agree that BW also has a lot of plot holes, but the character complexity of the original StarCraft is still there. SC2 fails to gain any sort of momentum either through characters or plot.

About the Xel'naga:
I agree with Gradius, the Xel'naga plot shouldn't be handled as a "Ragnarok" scenario. I wish we could just ignore the artifacts of SC2 (forgot to make a point on that one), but I still find some Xel'naga technology needed. The Protoss don't look at this technology as an ancient rock, they have actually used it to create their own technology. In some cases they still use the Xel'naga counterpart. I believe artifacts and temples were always there, but Terrans were too simple minded to understand the technology. They finally were able to reverse engineer such divices after the Protoss showed up. Protoss technology in some way is a simple interpretation of the Xel'naga, and the Terrans could decrypt both technologies together. Of course, this is just a wild interpretation ment to kick some logic into a place were we are missing a lot of it.

I dumbed down Amon to a shadow of who he was, because I still don't want to see a true Xel'naga alive in the StarCraft Universe.

[Visions of Khas]

Well, it depends on what exactly it is you are asking for. If you're asking how I would alter StarCraft II so that it would work better, the problem is that I find that Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm are a bit mutually exclusive, so I could rewrite StarCraft II around keeping Wings of Liberty mostly intact, but that would involve ditching most of Heart of the Swarm. I could rewrite StarCraft II around the ideas of Heart of the Swarm, but that would involve ditching most of Wings of Liberty. And probably still suck, since I think Heart of the Swarm is flawed at its very core, whereas Wings of Liberty merely suffered from poor execution.

Or, if you're asking me to rewrite the entire story without any regard for conservation of the existing material, then I'd start from the end of StarCraft and ditch Brood War along with most of StarCraft II.

My answer is Yes.

All this time since StarCraft II has been released, we've done little else but bicker and complain about the acting, character development, missions and so on and so forth. This is a very creative community, so what I'm looking for is creativity. What went wrong in SC2? What would you fix?

[FanaticTemplar]

My answer is Yes.

All this time since StarCraft II has been released, we've done little else but bicker and complain about the acting, character development, missions and so on and so forth. This is a very creative community, so what I'm looking for is creativity. What went wrong in SC2? What would you fix?

I'd fuse Brood War and Heart of the Swarm, focusing on Kerrigan and applying the objectives of the latter and the end result of the former, and ditch Wings of Liberty. Taken in itself, I like Wings better than the other two, but it doesn't really lead from or to anything.

The devastation of the invasion of Aiur has left both the Protoss and Zerg severely crippled, Mengsk takes advantage of the opportunity to press his newly unified Terran might against them. The small nomadic Dark Templar tribes make ideal targets, and Dark templar keep getting killed or captured for experimentation. On Aiur, the Protoss are forced to evacuate because the mindless Zerg are completely unpredictable and the Khalai population can't be protected. They escape to Shakuras, the world where the Dark Templar meet to discuss issues relevant to the tribes. There is significant resistance to the Aiur Protoss 'invasion' of their world (maybe introduce Ulrezaj as an antagonist) and to buy some good will, the Templar set out to help liberate and protect the Dark Templar from the Dominion.

Also fighting the Dominion, they find Kerrigan who is pretty dead-set on revenge. Mengsk is basically making enemies everywhere, and Kerrigan is using the Zerg to spearhead the assault. It's all a big happy alliance of Mengsk-haters, and the Dark Templar help Kerrigan gain control over more Zerg by killing Cerebrates, but eventually the Aldaris thing happens because Kerrigan no longer trusts anybody and had neuraled Raszagal to ensure the Protoss' cooperation. The Protoss are outraged and turn on her. This begins a sequence where Kerrigan's descent into inhumanity causes her to be abandoned by her allies one by one until, during the final assault on Augustgrad Kerrigan's complete berserking makes even Raynor realise that she's now closer to Mengsk than to human Kerrigan, sacrificing anything and anyone to achiever her goals.

She kills Mengsk, but that hatred was the only remaining human emotion in her, the only driving force that kept her alive. Without her love for Raynor or her hatred for Mengsk, the only thing humanity has for her is pain, and rather than endure it she submerges herself into the Hivemind, giving up the torments of a self and taking refuge in the embrace of countless others who are like her. More than friends, more than family. One heart, one mind, immortal in a multitude of bodies. She retreats with the Swarm to Char to complete her metamorphosis, and when she returns, there shall be nothing human left of her.

[Turalyon]

Trust FT to hit the nail on the head...

If it were up to me, there'd be no Starcraft 2 whatsoever. Given that that's not an option, I would've foregone an expansion to Sc1 and just rework the story elements of the current and actual BW (along with some of the elements in the current Sc2) into becoming the full-fledged sequel. Some of the ideas and the execution in BW got a bit short shrifted because it was an expansion. The UED, although hackneyed in their sudden presence and plot-devicey secret plan in BW, are a great low-key and more grounded existential threat in contrast to the utter alienness of the Zerg/Overmind before it and especially given that SC2's Amon is poor-man version of the same type of threat.