Nissa finally caves in.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

Nah.

It's hard to get through.

but unlike HotS i'm still interested in playing the campaign (up until the epilogue)

HotS I really don't want to touch, that was the worst RTS campaign ever spawned.

But I do 100% agree on the "lens flare eyes"

that was annoying and goofy.

And yeah, Artanis armor is far too bulky and ridiculous, while the rest of the Protoss actually have a fairly decent cinematic design for their armor (tmore form fitting and less bulky)

[Nolanstar]

The Spear of Adun is Sclaed to 74 Kilometers, plenty big to house a few million civvies especially when you realize they can digitize them (warp prism)

[TheEconomist]

So yeah, claim that I only hate this because I "don't understand." Claim it all you like. But I understand perfectly well when Blizzard is taking everything I loved about the games and throwing it in the garbage.

I thought we were passed this. It's been five and a half years since StarCraft lore went south. LotV is the closest to the original storylines that the series has come so far. The focus is on the conflict and the overarching story. As hamfisted as it is in places, it's better than a focus on romance and other nonsense. Although, I'm stilling working through it. I haven't gotten to the epilogue, which I hear is pretty bad

I've always liked Starcraft for the plot. I'm not willing to shell out money if the plot sucks.

I'm not sure even I would be a fan of StarCraft lore (even the original) if it weren't for the game itself. How you've managed to care through all of this time, especially through StarCraft 2, will probably forever perplex me.

Also, the eye flare is fine. Seriously people.

[ragnarok]

Nah.

It's hard to get through.

but unlike HotS i'm still interested in playing the campaign (up until the epilogue)

HotS I really don't want to touch, that was the worst RTS campaign ever spawned.

But I do 100% agree on the "lens flare eyes"

that was annoying and goofy.

And yeah, Artanis armor is far too bulky and ridiculous, while the rest of the Protoss actually have a fairly decent cinematic design for their armor (tmore form fitting and less bulky)

Blame that on the Xel'Naga retcon, Stratos. I especially hated their interpretation of purity of form and everything. At least the purity of essence interpretation was close enough to what we hoped for.

HotS was not the worst either. You've played enough games where you've seen there are those who didn't even try, and others who tried but didn't know what they were doing.

Mainly I felt the whole SC2 series was because they thought "since WoW is so huge, maybe we can put all the traits from there into the SC universe", and that didn't work out.

[Turalyon]

I especially hated their interpretation of purity of form and everything. At least the purity of essence interpretation was close enough to what we hoped for.

Nah, the purity stuff is all messed up and muddy then ever. Why call ultimate psionic power purity of form when it's really purity of psionics? I mean, is it that hard to just call it as it is in the first place? The essence thing is even more nonsensical. Why call the ability for great change purity of essence when both seem to indicate two different and mutually exclusive things? I mean, how can something that is constantly mutating being called "pure" in any fashion? Seems like obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation.

It made more sense originally. Purity of Form is just that - an ideation regarding peak physical perfection. Purity of Essence - an ideation regarding the stability of ethos despite change - was a response to the Purity of Form being insufficient on its own to be classified as a perfect lifeform (according to Xel'Naga percepts).

[Nissa]

Wow, Tura, you seem to have understood it better than I did. I'm stuck on the out-world truth that both essence and form are just buzzwords.

I dunno, someday I'll get through this game. Someday. Econ, it's really my personality type that makes me choose the plot over the gameplay. That's why I said not to let me spoil that part for you. I'm just ranting about what spoiled what I enjoyed. If the game had simply not been what I expected, that's fine. But why LotV hurts more for me is because of what you said -- it's closer to actual SC lore, and ruins it. I can laugh at a Kerrigan rom com because that's stupid enough for me to ignore. Neither WoL nor HotS, as you said, had much to do with the core issues of Starcraft. Surely they should have. But also the lore should be handled with more respect, like we're talking about "real" people, not cartoons from movie trailers. Ugh, the melodramatic dialogue was a huge turnoff.

Maybe I expected too much. I just liked SC lore better when they left huge gaps of plot to the imagination. Heck, half the stuff we debate on this forums is or references stuff Blizzard never clarified in SC1. That makes it more interesting when it feels like we have more of a participatory role in SC lore, as well as making it easier for Blizz to write, since they don't have to fill in every gap.

Does anybody else listen to the Heroes of the Storm quotes and wonder why those guys didn't write SC2? Maybe I'm wrong and it is the same people, but somehow those guys seem to know how to create more natural dialogue. Maybe the writers were just trying too hard in LotV.

[Sheliek]

Preface: I got stuck on the last main mission before the epilogue and my mouse-hand's fucked right now, so I watched a walkthrough of the epilogue.

I enjoyed the Legacy of the Void plot. The epilogue wasn't even bad, just weird. I'd wager it's hard to do universe-spawning deities without weirdness being inevitable. It's a matter of how well that weirdness is handled. I can't really put my finger on the good or bad button, as it were, yet.

So, once my wrist is doing better, I'm going to be replaying Wings of Liberty through Into the Void in the shortest time possible to see how the whole thing handles as one work. I've been convinced that it will work best that way since before HotS came out, and I'm still convinced that's the case, having seen the finale in isolation.

As for why I replied with that here: should try the same, Nissa, if you put plot before gameplay.

[Turalyon]

Wow, Tura, you seem to have understood it better than I did. I'm stuck on the out-world truth that both essence and form are just buzzwords.

Yeah, it's kinda funny when I think about it now. It seems that some have trouble understanding what purity of form and essence are even when they've read the manual, which explains them pretty well (although not in dictionary-speak and exacting detail, mind you). Granted, the concepts (well really, only the essence one is) are a tad esoteric for the general lay-person, but any sci-fi lover worth their salt should've been able to see it when they read the manual in my opinion.

So, once my wrist is doing better, I'm going to be replaying Wings of Liberty through Into the Void in the shortest time possible to see how the whole thing handles as one work. I've been convinced that it will work best that way since before HotS came out, and I'm still convinced that's the case, having seen the finale in isolation.

Some very mild spoilers ahead for those who still happen to care...

I'll be very interested in this opinion - been looking for someone to try and review it as a whole rather than individually. I've long held that ever since HotS came out, Sc2 would not make for a very cohesive trilogy when LotV was to be released due to LotV being inherently and completely different from what came before. Ever since WoL and HotS came out, the Protoss are somewhat tangential to the actual main goings-on in those two installments since the focus is on Terran matters (yes, even HotS, which is supposed to be about Zerg, is really about a "Terran" woman exacting revenge on a "Terran" man who killed another "Terran" man for wholly "Terran" reasons).

The release of LotV and peoples subsequent opinions of it has actually confirmed/vindicated my suspicion of this since the specific focus of Protoss in LotV does give a kind of whiplash if one wants to see the trilogy as one whole. Sure, there are Terrans in it but they're only there to provide plot progression in regards the apt plot device that is the Keystone. In that sense, the main LotV could've done without Terran involvement at all. In fact, had we not seen WoL and HotS, I think LotV could have stand well on its own such that the actual Sc2 story could've started with LotV and we'd be none the wiser. So much for the trilogy hey?

This brings me to the epilogue. It's the only situation where the Terran characters are really brought back in a thematic way (as opposed to their plot progression role throughout the main LotV campaign) but a large part of the dissatisfaction, I think, is that it kinda feels ad hoc, as if the story just remembered that this is a trilogy and should include Terrans in some capacity beyond plot mechanics. Worse, it seems to undermine what the Protoss campaign was all about and what the majority of the time was spent on in LotV. To further the dissonance, there's a huge amount of irony present since the epilogue is actually needed to make Sc2 feel like a unified trilogy because without it, LotV would seem like a disjointed/out-of-position story compared to what came before.

[Sheliek]

You know, what you said about LotV seeming disconnected from the previous two installments got me thinking of a good use for post-Nova: Covert Ops campaigns. I think it would be interesting, and probably a good idea all things considered, to have, for instance, a protoss campaign taking place around the end of WoL and beginning of HotS, or more pertinent, Terran and Zerg campaigns during LotV.

But yeah, I'll post my thoughts during and after the playthrough.

[ragnarok]

Nah, the purity stuff is all messed up and muddy then ever. Why call ultimate psionic power purity of form when it's really purity of psionics? I mean, is it that hard to just call it as it is in the first place? The essence thing is even more nonsensical. Why call the ability for great change purity of essence when both seem to indicate two different and mutually exclusive things? I mean, how can something that is constantly mutating being called "pure" in any fashion? Seems like obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation.

It made more sense originally. Purity of Form is just that - an ideation regarding peak physical perfection. Purity of Essence - an ideation regarding the stability of ethos despite change - was a response to the Purity of Form being insufficient on its own to be classified as a perfect lifeform (according to Xel'Naga percepts).

That's what I didn't get with the whole purity of essence. In many ways I don't think Blizzard really understood the whole definition of "pure" in the first place, since that'd require things to be perfect regardless of the circumstances. That's never possible.

Essence to mean great change, THAT part I can easily accept, but I see your point to be pure in spirit or something. The whole being pure yet adapting to other situations and everything, well it just seems a bit contradictory.