What kind of retcons do you think will justify the plot of StarCraft 3?

[Nolanstar]

Just because blizzard has issues doesn't mean we cannot try to fix them, its the way to create a semi-coherent mess rather then giving up and ranting to anyone who tries to.

[ragnarok]

Blizzard does have problems with storytelling. You can't mesh SC1 with SC2 because Blizzard themselves didn't do it. They just did whatever they wanted gameplaywise and slathered it with generic silliness for a story. You can't debate these kinds of details because it's pretty clear Blizzard never did so themselves.

Give it up, man. SC2 is nothing to SC1.

I got into the storyline via the SC2 lore, as I was not interested back then when SC1 came out all those years ago. I'm not going to simply say it's better just to scrap the whole thing (and no time travel either just to make SC2 irrelevant). Of course, if Blizzard does do that for SC3, that's their choice.

[Turalyon]

You don't know that for the Hivemind Zerg.

Course I do. HotS spells it out for me.

Remember according to the SC1 manual, the only part Amon played in the whole uplifting was because Zerus's environment was too harsh for the Zerg (who were nothing but parasites then) to survive.

Wrong. The Xel'Naga also gave them the Overmind. In Sc2, it's retconned that the Xel'Naga is Amon, so therefore he gave them the Overmind for a reason. Given that Amon's ultimate motivation is to stop the cycle, it is more than reasonable to suggest that the implementation of the Overmind into the Zerg is a means to carry out his motivation.

The whole interference with the Zerg isn't the reason they can't assimilate Protoss. Remember, by the time Amon was still on Zerus binding them to the hive mind, the Aeon of Strife was still active on Aiur, BEFORE Khas used the Khala to end it. That means had the Zerg attacked Aiur BEFORE Khas's actions, the Protoss would have been vulnerable to assimilation. Even if Amon knew someday the Khala would eventually be rediscovered, it's not like he knew when that day would be.

This is also wrong. Protoss who are not part of the Khala are essentially using void energy to power their psionics - Protoss who use void energy are also immune to infestation or assimilation. We know this because the Dark Templar - being essentially a continuation of those Protoss who fought during the Aeon of Strife - are also immune to assimilation or infestation..

[Mislagnissa]

I'm merely trying to put the SC1 lore and SC2 lore together, despite the contradictions. It's better than what I heard back then on the Blizzard forums, which basically all just come down to "Blizzard was too damn stupid."

Now yes there's grounds to that claim, but still....

Just because blizzard has issues doesn't mean we cannot try to fix them, its the way to create a semi-coherent mess rather then giving up and ranting to anyone who tries to.

The retcons are irreconcilable. The wiki attempts to reconcile them, but the end result is a mess full of plot holes. Here are some examples:

• The Protoss were able to kill space gods and fight a galactic war despite being limited to stone age technology.
• Amon was able to take over the Khala, even though it was never a hive mind but a simple telepathic internet. The game does not bother to explain how this is possible, or even how the Khala is supposed to work.
• Duran spent millions of years doing nothing, then suddenly starts making hybrids after the Overmind died. In WoL, Duran needs Raynor to acquire the artifacts, but does not tell his taldarim followers to just hand them over. His assumed identities (all 2 of them) are palindromes: Duran and Narud.
• The 4-year gap between SC and SC2 where nothing happens.
• The Overmind sought out the humans because their psychic potential was necessary to fight the Protoss, but never actually acquired this psychic potential and fought the Protoss anyway.
• The Overmind infested Kerrigan to give the Zerg a ruler free of Amon's influence, but his required her to be deinfested and infested by the primal spawning pool. There's no possible way the Overmind planned that--oh wait, a chick with dreads and wings appears in the prophecy engravings from millions of years ago!
• Despite living for millions of years and consuming countless worlds, it never occurred to the Overmind to create something like broodmothers, despite them being superior to cerebrates in every way (e.g. able to function without the Overmind, able to move and defend themselves).
• There's little functional difference between the Overmind and Amon, as both desire to remake the universe in their own image. Despite this, the Overmind and the Zerg are played up as heroes like the orcs in Warcraft, even though their original portrayal is more interesting.

SC2 has a stupid plot even without being a sequel. Why would you want to keep any of the idiocy it introduces?

I got into the storyline via the SC2 lore, as I was not interested back then when SC1 came out all those years ago. I'm not going to simply say it's better just to scrap the whole thing (and no time travel either just to make SC2 irrelevant). Of course, if Blizzard does do that for SC3, that's their choice.

Then I have a question for you: how would you describe the Zerg? What are their motivations and culture? What makes them fundamentally different from Terrans and Protoss? What justifies a war between them and the Terrans and/or Protoss?

In SC1 pre-BW, they had an alien culture which valued the pursuit of perfection. They sought to consume the universe and remake it in their image. They were ruled by a hierarchy of hive minds, each of which specialized in pursuing a specific goal that benefited the whole. Their ruling class, the Overmind and his Cerebrates, spoke in a sophisticated manner reminiscent of the Old Testament and Shakespeare. They started the conflict in the K-sec by invading the human and protoss worlds in pursuit of their lofty ambitions. This sort of thinking is ingrained into their genome, such that even if the existing hierarchy were uprooted it would be replaced with clones.

In SC2, the Zerg have no ambition or self-awareness. Abathur supposedly values continuous evolution, but is a meat robot with no personality. Izsha is another meat robot whose purpose is to state the obvious and tell the other commanders what they already know. The primal pack leaders have no desires other than to fill their stomachs and refuse to shut up about their precious "essence." Niadra wants to destroy the Protoss because that was the last order given by her mother, regardless of how it benefits herself or serves any higher purpose. Zagara just does whatever Kerry tells her to. The other brood mothers have no goals beyond immediate survival and spend all of their time twiddling their thumbs until the plot comes along. They were never anything more than tools for Kerry to fulfill her personal vendetta.

Even if you were introduced through the SC2 lore, that does not change the fact that it is stupid. Lots of people introduced through the SC2 lore think that the plot is stupid. I was introduced through the SC1 lore, and I fully acknowledge that the original campaigns are quite lacking.

[Nissa]

Just because blizzard has issues doesn't mean we cannot try to fix them, its the way to create a semi-coherent mess rather then giving up and ranting to anyone who tries to.

Then we are essentially doing Blizzard's work for them. I don't mind fixing a plothole with logical fanon, but to reconcile what Blizzard probably never intended to be reconciled is purely absurd.

[ragnarok]

Wrong. The Xel'Naga also gave them the Overmind. In Sc2, it's retconned that the Xel'Naga is Amon, so therefore he gave them the Overmind for a reason. Given that Amon's ultimate motivation is to stop the cycle, it is more than reasonable to suggest that the implementation of the Overmind into the Zerg is a means to carry out his motivation.

I'm trying to blend the two lores together. And don't say "that's impossible because there's too many contradictions." In LotV at least they made an attempt to try to explain things.

This is also wrong. Protoss who are not part of the Khala are essentially using void energy to power their psionics - Protoss who use void energy are also immune to infestation or assimilation. We know this because the Dark Templar - being essentially a continuation of those Protoss who fought during the Aeon of Strife - are also immune to assimilation or infestation..

And where was the evidence that they were using the Void to power the psionics? I don't recall any evidence of that happening in the Aeon of Strife.

Then we are essentially doing Blizzard's work for them. I don't mind fixing a plothole with logical fanon, but to reconcile what Blizzard probably never intended to be reconciled is purely absurd.

This was the whole reason why Stratos told me that even if I won't see what he and others see about the flaws, the fact still stands I'm paying way more attention to detail and made a way better effort to try to tie the lores together than Blizzard ever did.

[ragnarok]

The retcons are irreconcilable. The wiki attempts to reconcile them, but the end result is a mess full of plot holes. Here are some examples:

• The Protoss were able to kill space gods and fight a galactic war despite being limited to stone age technology.
• Amon was able to take over the Khala, even though it was never a hive mind but a simple telepathic internet. The game does not bother to explain how this is possible, or even how the Khala is supposed to work.
• Duran spent millions of years doing nothing, then suddenly starts making hybrids after the Overmind died. In WoL, Duran needs Raynor to acquire the artifacts, but does not tell his taldarim followers to just hand them over. His assumed identities (all 2 of them) are palindromes: Duran and Narud.
• The 4-year gap between SC and SC2 where nothing happens.
• The Overmind sought out the humans because their psychic potential was necessary to fight the Protoss, but never actually acquired this psychic potential and fought the Protoss anyway.
• The Overmind infested Kerrigan to give the Zerg a ruler free of Amon's influence, but his required her to be deinfested and infested by the primal spawning pool. There's no possible way the Overmind planned that--oh wait, a chick with dreads and wings appears in the prophecy engravings from millions of years ago!
• Despite living for millions of years and consuming countless worlds, it never occurred to the Overmind to create something like broodmothers, despite them being superior to cerebrates in every way (e.g. able to function without the Overmind, able to move and defend themselves).
• There's little functional difference between the Overmind and Amon, as both desire to remake the universe in their own image. Despite this, the Overmind and the Zerg are played up as heroes like the orcs in Warcraft, even though their original portrayal is more interesting.

SC2 has a stupid plot even without being a sequel. Why would you want to keep any of the idiocy it introduces?

I wouldn't say Duran didn't command the Tal'darim to hand it over. It's a shame Blizzard didn't explain that, but I'm willing to bet it could be because Duran wanted to test Raynor: to see how far he's willing to go to get something (and it wasn't even about Kerrigan at the beginning, it was about his rebellion).

The DT Saga, along with the Spectre rebellion did happen, it's just that the terrazine wasn't really explained in the latter and Blizzard wasted the potential for the Tal'darim in the former as the Aiur Tal'darim didn't serve Amon.

The 4 years of quiet was something explained at the end of BW because of Kerrigan's premonition. Now yes none of us knew what that really meant back then. Personally before SC2 was revealed I had expected to be the UED's plan for revenge of something, since she too didn't know about the hybrid.

The Overmind's actions in going for the terrans in psionic potential was achieved in Kerrigan. Of course I didn't understand why the moment he learned where Aiur was he just went for it, unless something in Zeratul's memories showed that the Protoss people were too divided amongst themselves or something, and so the Overmind felt he could strike without the need for psionic potential.

I'm not convinced the carving at Ulnar was actually as old as you think. For all we know Ouros only made it very recently or something. Plus I don't think the Overmind knew that infesting Kerrigan would subject her to Amon's influence. In addition Blizzard made it clear the Overmind only did this to ensure the survival of the swarm. He didn't care if Amon killed everyone else. Therefore, if her strategy is to use the swarm to kill everyone in order for the zerg to grow strong enough to defeat Amon, that was fine from the Overmind's POV.

[ragnarok]

Then I have a question for you: how would you describe the Zerg? What are their motivations and culture? What makes them fundamentally different from Terrans and Protoss? What justifies a war between them and the Terrans and/or Protoss?

In SC1 pre-BW, they had an alien culture which valued the pursuit of perfection. They sought to consume the universe and remake it in their image. They were ruled by a hierarchy of hive minds, each of which specialized in pursuing a specific goal that benefited the whole. Their ruling class, the Overmind and his Cerebrates, spoke in a sophisticated manner reminiscent of the Old Testament and Shakespeare. They started the conflict in the K-sec by invading the human and protoss worlds in pursuit of their lofty ambitions. This sort of thinking is ingrained into their genome, such that even if the existing hierarchy were uprooted it would be replaced with clones.

In SC2, the Zerg have no ambition or self-awareness. Abathur supposedly values continuous evolution, but is a meat robot with no personality. Izsha is another meat robot whose purpose is to state the obvious and tell the other commanders what they already know. The primal pack leaders have no desires other than to fill their stomachs and refuse to shut up about their precious "essence." Niadra wants to destroy the Protoss because that was the last order given by her mother, regardless of how it benefits herself or serves any higher purpose. Zagara just does whatever Kerry tells her to. The other brood mothers have no goals beyond immediate survival and spend all of their time twiddling their thumbs until the plot comes along. They were never anything more than tools for Kerry to fulfill her personal vendetta.

Even if you were introduced through the SC2 lore, that does not change the fact that it is stupid. Lots of people introduced through the SC2 lore think that the plot is stupid. I was introduced through the SC1 lore, and I fully acknowledge that the original campaigns are quite lacking.

Now, as for the description of the zerg prior to the Xel'Naga on Zerus, the point is according to the SC1 manual was that the planet was too harsh an environment for them to survive. Therefore, I don't think they actually HAD a culture, as they were too busy for survival, which didn't happen until the Xel'Naga's arrival.

The whole perfection might not have been something the Zerg originally intended for. It's somewhat like the case with the Tal'darim: their culture and society was based off of brutality simply because of Amon's presence for so long (since they had been loyal to Amon even before he reached Zerus). Therefore, it's possible that even the primal zerg were affected by this, despite the fact that Amon couldn't control them.

If we use the SC1 lore, it was because the Xel'Naga didn't want the Zerg to fracture like what happened to the Protoss on Aiur, hence the need for the hive mind. But it was also necessary to ensure the hive mind wasn't some numbed out robot, thus the need to give the Overmind sentience. In SC2 it was explained this thinking genome was something Amon programmed into them so he could create a host body. He needed them focused on the task at hand, it's nothing more that programming a biological computer.

Now, moving to the SC2 lore, Niadra's goal for killing Protoss was the way the hive mind works. If you're stronger than the other person, you don't have to obey. As for WHY you have to obey the order, this I felt could be explained via the SC1 lore, when the Overmind said no Zerg could stray from his will. That means he didn't have to actually explain his reason for the cerebrates to obey, and it was the same with Kerrigan in SC2, prior to giving the broodmothers more independence and all that. Having said that however I DO feel Blizzard shouldn't have been this inflexible. This is nothing more than the concept of "blind obedience without conscience," something frowned upon today.

As for the whole vendetta process, this is what happens when your whole life you're only exposed to the worst humanity has to offer. I know because I have some experience of just that. The bottom line is this is exactly the reason why it wasn't until almost the very end of HotS that Kerrigan began to see the Dominion people and military as possibly something more than just a homogeneous mass of zombies.

[Turalyon]

I'm trying to blend the two lores together.

I know that and incorporated that in my previous response, which is why I still say you are wrong. Amon gave the Overmind to the Zerg according to the additive retcons in Sc2.

And where was the evidence that they were using the Void to power the psionics? I don't recall any evidence of that happening in the Aeon of Strife.

If you're looking to integrate Sc1 and Sc2 lore then you can't ignore the information the manual gives you then, right? Well, it says in the manual that it was a legend that "greater landmasses were devastated" by the AoS Protoss. Given the later retcons specify the Protoss in that age were actually of stone-age technology, the only explanation is that the description I mentioned earlier is indeed false/apocryphal (since it is a "legend") or that they used psionic power to wrought such devastation. Now, you may say that it is unclear that Protoss had indeed psionic powers in that age (although they had a psychic link - which may not be the same thing as psionic powers) to begin with because it's never actually stated they do have such powers in the manual. However, Sc2 confirms that they did have psionic powers from the start because they have "purity of form" from the very beginning (as it says in the manual) and that this actually means "great psionic power" (as retconned in LotV).

Given that later retcons say that all Protoss who become disconnected from the psychic link/Khala automatically draw from the Void to fuel their psionics and that there is never any mention of them losing their purity of form/great psionic power during the Aeon of Strife, the logical inference to all this is that the Protoss who lost their connection to the psychic link during the Aeon of Strife must have been using Void for their psionics, unless stated otherwise.

The Overmind's actions in going for the terrans in psionic potential was achieved in Kerrigan. Of course I didn't understand why the moment he learned where Aiur was he just went for it, unless something in Zeratul's memories showed that the Protoss people were too divided amongst themselves or something, and so the Overmind felt he could strike without the need for psionic potential.

You don't understand why the Overmind invaded when it learned the location of Aiur? Well, ask yourself this question. Would the Overmind have invaded if it did not have the psionic potential/Kerrigan? The answer is an obvious no in the sense that Kerrigan is the direct cause for the Overmind to find Aiur (via attracting Zeratul and then killing Zasz, forming a mind-link where information was shared) so it wouldn't even be in the position to invade it in the first place. So, ask yourself a slightly different question: What would it take for the Overmind to invade Aiur if it knew Aiurs specific location right from the start? The answer would depend on if it achieved its goal of obtaining its psionic potential/determinant. Did it have this psionic potential/determinant at its disposal? Yes. So, summing all those answers together, the reason why the Overmind invaded Aiur (when it found it) was because it already had the psionic potential/determinant and it had presumed from that point of obtaining this psionic potential/determinant that anything it would do from thereonin would amount to eventual and total Zerg victory.

[ragnarok]

I know that and incorporated that in my previous response, which is why I still say you are wrong. Amon gave the Overmind to the Zerg according to the additive retcons in Sc2.

Yes, something people then wondered why didn't Amon just tell the Overmind where Aiur was. But then, according to the DT Saga Twilight, the work on the zerg wasn't exactly finished.

Given that later retcons say that all Protoss who become disconnected from the psychic link/Khala automatically draw from the Void to fuel their psionics and that there is never any mention of them losing their purity of form/great psionic power during the Aeon of Strife, the logical inference to all this is that the Protoss who lost their connection to the psychic link during the Aeon of Strife must have been using Void for their psionics, unless stated otherwise.

Blending the two lores means one has to be taken over the other in case of contradictions. This is why I still believe that due to Amon's uplifting, the whole "purity of form" wasn't exactly as "pure" as you'd have liked, due to Amon's taint (despite at that point he wasn't actually trying to corrupt them). In addition I'm not convinced just because they didn't have the Khala it automatically meant they were using the Void. The later lore did say if you disconnect from the Khala, the Void will embrace you, but that didn't mean this holds true back during the AoS. That they used psionics back then I always believed they had to have developed something of their own.

Otherwise, you might as well say that EVERY possible psionic power, regardless of which species it comes from, has to originate from the Void (in the absence of the Khala).

Would the Overmind have invaded if it did not have the psionic potential/Kerrigan? The answer is an obvious no in the sense that Kerrigan is the direct cause for the Overmind to find Aiur (via attracting Zeratul and then killing Zasz, forming a mind-link where information was shared) so it wouldn't even be in the position to invade it in the first place. So, ask yourself a slightly different question: What would it take for the Overmind to invade Aiur if it knew Aiurs specific location right from the start? The answer would depend on if it achieved its goal of obtaining its psionic potential/determinant. Did it have this psionic potential/determinant at its disposal? Yes. So, summing all those answers together, the reason why the Overmind invaded Aiur (when it found it) was because it already had the psionic potential/determinant and it had presumed from that point of obtaining this psionic potential/determinant that anything it would do from thereonin would amount to eventual and total Zerg victory.

And how was the Overmind supposed to know Kerrigan's psionic enmanations from the chrysalis would draw Zeratul to Char in the first place? For that matter, how did it even know Kerrigan would enmanate those signals in the first place while in the chrysalis? It obviously couldn't have, this was all a matter of luck. Now, regarding the whole psionic potential determinant, it certainly achieved a MEASURE of it, but I'm not convinced it achieved it COMPLETELY. After all, in HotS (assuming you went to Kaldir AFTER Zerus) Kerrigan clearly admitted that even with the primal transformation she was still no match for the Golden Armada if she didn't have the swarm.

In that regard I feel that if the Overmind went for Aiur the moment it found it was possibly because he felt he could harness Kerrigan's psionic potential in order to create other agents just as deadly as her (though this would take time). And to a small degree, a part of me feels this could have been part of his work with the Khaydarin crystals when he manifested himself on Aiur (had Tassadar not killed him).