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

[Mislagnissa]

Typing this on my phone, so not much time for detail.

Blending the lore is ridiculous. Pick one version and stick with it, and completely rewrite everything that disagrees with it. BW and SC2 lore is needlessly convoluted and full of plot holes. Simplifying it would end up creating something identical to just using SC1 canon. So go back the basics and work from there. Don't try to justify Metzen's stupid.

Even in the original manual, the Zerg knew where Aiur was because Tassadar took deep space probes back to Aiur, so we immediately get a massive contradiction.

Kerry adds little to the plot, so kill her off to give Raynor some angst. Now give the Zerg a psychic army instead that fulfills the same role as QoB by sending psychic dreams and razor storms and shit.

Don't introduce the UED, Duran, Amon, Defenders of Man or other repetitive shit. Keep the Zerg the villains for ever and ever, because that's the only role that's interesting for them. There's only so much you can do with giant space bugs. Making them into space hippies is parody level silly.

[Gradius]

Agree, blending the lore is stupid. Have one consistent lore that makes sense instead.

[ragnarok]

Typing this on my phone, so not much time for detail.

Blending the lore is ridiculous. Pick one version and stick with it, and completely rewrite everything that disagrees with it. BW and SC2 lore is needlessly convoluted and full of plot holes. Simplifying it would end up creating something identical to just using SC1 canon. So go back the basics and work from there. Don't try to justify Metzen's stupid.

Even in the original manual, the Zerg knew where Aiur was because Tassadar took deep space probes back to Aiur, so we immediately get a massive contradiction.

Kerry adds little to the plot, so kill her off to give Raynor some angst. Now give the Zerg a psychic army instead that fulfills the same role as QoB by sending psychic dreams and razor storms and shit.

Don't introduce the UED, Duran, Amon, Defenders of Man or other repetitive shit. Keep the Zerg the villains for ever and ever, because that's the only role that's interesting for them. There's only so much you can do with giant space bugs. Making them into space hippies is parody level silly.

I'll have to check that part again in the manual with the deep space probes, forgot about that one.

As for keeping the zerg as the villains, you should know the concept of "Once a villain, always a villain" doesn't always apply. Then no one ever learns anything.

[Turalyon]

Blending the two lores means one has to be taken over the other in case of contradictions.

That's ridiculous. If you are to consider blending the lore, the baseline assumption for this to even occur is that everything that's been given has to be taken at face value and that there are no contradictions. If one has to cherry-pick which one is right because there's actual inconsistency, this makes your position of trying to blend the lore pointless.

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).

The Protoss naturally evolved with purity of form/great psionic power. The Xel'Naga (in the manual)/ Amon (as retconned in Sc2) found the Protoss with this trait inherently. Their interference with the Protoss only included influencing their cultural development by making themselves known and, as Sc2 additively retcons later, corrupting their psychic link.

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.

See, this is the problem of you trying to blend the lore. YOU cherrypick/choose to ignore lore that doesn't fit with your headcanon and the way you've done it is completely arbitrary (using an argument from ignorance no less). If the retcon lore says that all Protoss are automatically embraced by the Void if they disconnect from the Khala, you can't just arbitrarily choose when this happens in order to suit your needs/argument.

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).

No, that piece of lore only pertains to Protoss. What you've stated above is a gross and unfounded generalisation.

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.

Irrelevent to what I was talking about. I know that the Overmind isn't actually omniscient but that doesn't mean it can't be prone to overconfidence and hubris. The Overmind only invades Aiur because it has the determinant in its possession and this gives it the confidence to battle the Protoss directly. Without it, it would supposedly still fear the Protoss enough to not engage them directly even if it did know of Aiurs exact location right from the beginning (as one should suspect I suppose if they got the location from the Xel'Naga).

Even in the original manual, the Zerg knew where Aiur was because Tassadar took deep space probes back to Aiur, so we immediately get a massive contradiction.

You don't think that Tassadar would've disabled its telemetry before bringing it to Aiur? He already surmised they were deep space probes before capturing one, so you'd think that a military leader would know the importance of intel and its denial from a potential and unknown threat.

[ragnarok]

See, this is the problem of you trying to blend the lore. YOU cherrypick/choose to ignore lore that doesn't fit with your headcanon and the way you've done it is completely arbitrary (using an argument from ignorance no less). If the retcon lore says that all Protoss are automatically embraced by the Void if they disconnect from the Khala, you can't just arbitrarily choose when this happens in order to suit your needs/argument.

But this was AFTER the Khala link was reestablished. You don't know if this holds true BEFORE Khas rediscovered the link.

Irrelevent to what I was talking about. I know that the Overmind isn't actually omniscient but that doesn't mean it can't be prone to overconfidence and hubris. The Overmind only invades Aiur because it has the determinant in its possession and this gives it the confidence to battle the Protoss directly. Without it, it would supposedly still fear the Protoss enough to not engage them directly even if it did know of Aiurs exact location right from the beginning (as one should suspect I suppose if they got the location from the Xel'Naga).

For getting the location from the Xel'Naga, if we use the SC2 lore, I felt it's possible that because Amon's work on the zerg wasn't finished (According to Twilight), it's possible that he never got a chance to tell the Overmind where Aiur was before being forced into the Void, and he couldn't communicate with the Overmind from there.

The Protoss naturally evolved with purity of form/great psionic power. The Xel'Naga (in the manual)/ Amon (as retconned in Sc2) found the Protoss with this trait inherently. Their interference with the Protoss only included influencing their cultural development by making themselves known and, as Sc2 additively retcons later, corrupting their psychic link.

The Protoss merely had the ability to HOLD psionic power prior to the Xel'Naga's arrival on Aiur. The whole psychic link corruption I didn't consider much of a retcon because there was no evidence to suggest the Xel'Naga couldn't do it (though you could argue that back then the Khala was only a discipline, unless Amon reprogrammed it or something).

That's ridiculous. If you are to consider blending the lore, the baseline assumption for this to even occur is that everything that's been given has to be taken at face value and that there are no contradictions. If one has to cherry-pick which one is right because there's actual inconsistency, this makes your position of trying to blend the lore pointless.

This is exactly the problem I faced with those on the battlenet forums: that every time there's an inconsistency problem, they just go "Because Blizzard is too damn stupid." Fine if that's what they want, but all they do is complain on the matter and never actually contribute to try to see what Blizzard was trying to get at. Now Nissa did say trying to blend the lore this way means we'd be doing Blizzard's work for them, but it's better than just complaining all the time.

Look at it this way: for other game sequels where you saw contradictions in the sequel's lore when compared to the original, did you automatically just jump to the conclusion "Well there's contradictions here, so that must mean the sequel is comprised completely of BS and therefore doesn't really count as a story at all"?

[Turalyon]

But this was AFTER the Khala link was reestablished. You don't know if this holds true BEFORE Khas rediscovered the link.

That argument from ignorance is actually a meaningless distinction since it's established the Protoss have purity of form/great psionic power from the beginning. If they don't get it from the Khala/psychic link, they get it from the Void. Heck, this isn't even my personal opinion/subjective take on it - I'm using the very lore that's been given.

The Protoss merely had the ability to HOLD psionic power prior to the Xel'Naga's arrival on Aiur.

That's a meaningless distinction unless you mean that the Protoss never had purity of form. If they never had purity of form, that's an inconsistency and there are supposed to be no inconsistencies if one is in the position of melding the lore as a means to make sense of it.

Look at it this way: for other game sequels where you saw contradictions in the sequel's lore when compared to the original, did you automatically just jump to the conclusion "Well there's contradictions here, so that must mean the sequel is comprised completely of BS and therefore doesn't really count as a story at all"?

At the end of the day, all fiction is BS and "made up". The difference between good and bad fiction is whether it sufficiently builds up an appropriate willing suspension of disbelief/illusion of depth and verisimilitude. In other words, if the fiction feels more reasonable in an in-universe/Watsonian way (through things like good world-building), then it's less likely for people to criticise and point out the fiction being overtly driven by out-of-universe/Doylist reasons even though all fiction driven by out-of-universe/Doylist reasons in truth.

Sc2s sticks out most glaringly and is immersion breaking because while the intent of this new lore is to smooth over apparent inconsistencies, it's very obvious that it's trying to do so rather than it feeling like it's a natural and plausible development within that fictional universe. That and it raises more questions than it answers (like making more apparent inconsistencies) makes it worse.

[ragnarok]

That's a meaningless distinction unless you mean that the Protoss never had purity of form. If they never had purity of form, that's an inconsistency and there are supposed to be no inconsistencies if one is in the position of melding the lore as a means to make sense of it.

The whole "purity of form" was merely from the Xel'Naga's POV. Plus if we're to use the SC1 lore, it merely meant extremely well physical traits. That in itself can be open to interpretation as to what SPECIFICALLY it really meant. Again, I didn't think this was considered a retcon in SC2's lore, though you can argue that Blizzard abused the vagueness/interpretation of it all.

It's also the reason why I'm not convinced the whole ascension we saw at the end of the Epilogue was/would be permanent. If nothing else I believe Ouros WOULD have agreed with Amon's view that giving Kerrigan that power over an indefinite period wouldn't have been smart.

That argument from ignorance is actually a meaningless distinction since it's established the Protoss have purity of form/great psionic power from the beginning. If they don't get it from the Khala/psychic link, they get it from the Void. Heck, this isn't even my personal opinion/subjective take on it - I'm using the very lore that's been given.

Then tell me (and I don't care which lore you use): do you believe the Void is the origin where ALL psionic abilities came from? Because using the SC2 lore, it was the Xel'Naga that allowed planets to eventually give life in the universe. Since their power was from the Void....

Sc2s sticks out most glaringly and is immersion breaking because while the intent of this new lore is to smooth over apparent inconsistencies, it's very obvious that it's trying to do so rather than it feeling like it's a natural and plausible development within that fictional universe. That and it raises more questions than it answers (like making more apparent inconsistencies) makes it worse.

I personally felt they did try to answer some of the Qs back from SC1 and BW, except they didn't know how to do it scientifically, so they went in the metaphysical direction. To a lot of people (and I agree with some of their views), this was nothing more than a cheap excuse to say all the Qs have the same answer: "Deus Ex Machina."

[Turalyon]

The whole "purity of form" was merely from the Xel'Naga's POV. Plus if we're to use the SC1 lore, it merely meant extremely well physical traits. That in itself can be open to interpretation as to what SPECIFICALLY it really meant. Again, I didn't think this was considered a retcon in SC2's lore, though you can argue that Blizzard abused the vagueness/interpretation of it all.

Now, you're just trying to obfuscate things by saying "it's complicated and this gives me the right to interpret it whatever way I want". You can't bring up a set of standards ("melding the lore"), which I'm holding you up against with my responses, and then bail on them as soon as I test them. You're essentially defeating your own position that you initially set up.

The manual says purity of form was just physical traits and Sc2 "corrects" it by saying it's to do with great psionic power/potential. If you're melding the lore, it's a combination of both but it's clear they had purity of form from the start. You can't just now flip around and say it's whatever because it was from an unreliable POV and therefore should be something to be questioned by the audience member. All this information is exposition from an omniscient narrator to give the work any grounding. If you're advocating for basic, expositional information being up to question, there's no point in investing in it because it's all just potentially changeable at any time. This is part of the reason why Sc2 is so bad - it sets the precedent that nothing you know is solid, so what's the point in caring? It's essentially the writer admitting they're making things up.

Then tell me (and I don't care which lore you use): do you believe the Void is the origin where ALL psionic abilities came from?

Please stop trying to change the subject with non sequiturs. I don't care about "ALL" psionics because it is not relevant to the current topic we are discussing. We are talking about Protoss psionics and only Protoss psionics in this very instance.

[ragnarok]

All this information is exposition from an omniscient narrator to give the work any grounding. If you're advocating for basic, expositional information being up to question, there's no point in investing in it because it's all just potentially changeable at any time. This is part of the reason why Sc2 is so bad - it sets the precedent that nothing you know is solid, so what's the point in caring? It's essentially the writer admitting they're making things up.

You and I both know some of the lore in SC1 and BW was INTENTIONALLY left vague. It's possible Blizzard did it back then in order to give them room for a better interpretation later on in the future. What you and others feel is bad is because Blizzard did not interpret it in the way you thought they would, and didn't look at the details carefully enough (I'll agree on the latter point). However it was Blizzard's intent to try to tie things up and to reveal the picture in the sequel, which means (unless they intended to make SC3, I'll give it another 90 years or so before they think about it) what was left vague in SC1/BW MUST be interpreted in some way, even if it's not in the way fans wanted it.

There were certainly interpretations I felt just didn't work out either, of course.

[Mislagnissa]

That's ridiculous. If you are to consider blending the lore, the baseline assumption for this to even occur is that everything that's been given has to be taken at face value and that there are no contradictions. If one has to cherry-pick which one is right because there's actual inconsistency, this makes your position of trying to blend the lore pointless.



The Protoss naturally evolved with purity of form/great psionic power. The Xel'Naga (in the manual)/ Amon (as retconned in Sc2) found the Protoss with this trait inherently. Their interference with the Protoss only included influencing their cultural development by making themselves known and, as Sc2 additively retcons later, corrupting their psychic link.



See, this is the problem of you trying to blend the lore. YOU cherrypick/choose to ignore lore that doesn't fit with your headcanon and the way you've done it is completely arbitrary (using an argument from ignorance no less). If the retcon lore says that all Protoss are automatically embraced by the Void if they disconnect from the Khala, you can't just arbitrarily choose when this happens in order to suit your needs/argument.



No, that piece of lore only pertains to Protoss. What you've stated above is a gross and unfounded generalisation.



Irrelevent to what I was talking about. I know that the Overmind isn't actually omniscient but that doesn't mean it can't be prone to overconfidence and hubris. The Overmind only invades Aiur because it has the determinant in its possession and this gives it the confidence to battle the Protoss directly. Without it, it would supposedly still fear the Protoss enough to not engage them directly even if it did know of Aiurs exact location right from the beginning (as one should suspect I suppose if they got the location from the Xel'Naga).



You don't think that Tassadar would've disabled its telemetry before bringing it to Aiur? He already surmised they were deep space probes before capturing one, so you'd think that a military leader would know the importance of intel and its denial from a potential and unknown threat.

The Zerg still had numerous probes on the edge of Protoss space. They knew where the empire's borders were, and had in fact crossed them (since the K-sec is inside Protoss space, apparently on the frontier). Space telescopes, like the "witness" postulated by Gradius, would allow the Zerg to determine things like atmospheric composition and continents and so forth. They would know loads about the empire's movements from watching them. The Zerg apparently have FTL connection to their probes, so they would be aware if any were captured or lost. The Protoss do not possess psychic disruptor technology or they would have used it against the Zerg or each other. Which they logically should have, but whatever. Jamming the telemetry of a couple of probes doesn't solve the other problems.

In fact, combined with the Confederacy's rapid development of psychic warfare, Tassadar capturing probes may have contributed to the Zerg invaders going berserk at the end of 2499 despite spending the previous decade almost lazily expanding.