Why do you suppose Episode II would have been like without Kerry?

[Turalyon]

Not that I'm disagreeing with your overall point, but the Overmind is not the gestalt consciousness of all the Zerg. If it were, it wouldn't need the overlords to transmit orders down the chain.

I'm sorry but the manual disagrees with you:

...the Xel’Naga structured the collective sentience of the Zerg into a unified, amalgamated ‘Overmind’. The Overmind coalesced into a semi-sentient being that represented the primary drives and instincts of all of the Zerg strains.

...the Overmind represents the collective consciousness of the Zerg race.

As much as he is completely obedient to the Overminds, he has to be separate so he can function. Likewise, were the cerebrates not separate, they would have ceased to function when the Overmind was destroyed.

Think of it like how your nervous system is laid out. The Overmind is sort of like the central nervous system where it pretty much controls almost everything, has override controls and represents the driving will behind the machine that is your body, but there is also the autonomic nervous system (analagous to the cerebrates) which can autonomously control things like breathing, peristaltic motion of your gut or the beating of your heart (analogous to the primary directives of each cerebrate) without direct CNS/Overmind input.

Anyhow, the likelihood that the cerebrates would've ceased to function when the Overmind was destroyed is very much high at the end of Sc1. We know what happens when a cerebrate is truly killed, but there was no precedent for the Overmind being killed. One would imagine it'd be much worse than just a cerebrate dying... It's just that BW decided to take another path, where killing the Overmind didn't really do anything significant because the Zerg were just as dangerous as before, if not actually moreso than before. Their capacity to still successfully invade and almost defeat the most dangerous Protoss they've ever faced, the Dark Templar, on their own homeworld without the Overmind and that they could only be defeated with the use of some convenient all-powerful plot device.

which is why Zasz has the job of critiquing and questioning the Overmind's decisions.

This is only an informed trait by the manual, we don't actually see this in the game though. Zasz is perhaps a little sniveling at times but it, the supposed "rebel" cerebrate, is the one that's actually trying to rail in Kerrigan and to advise her not to go against the Overmind's wishes.

But anyway, the overall writing problem with the Zerg is that story comes from conflict, and as much as the Zerg are an interesting concept, there needs to be conflict to draw out the true storytelling potential of the Zerg characters: ie Zasz questioning things, Kerrigan doing what she wants, Protoss causin' trouble, etc. Otherwise the main Zerg players (the Overmind and the cerebrates) are only interesting as long as it takes for the player to understand how they cooperate and command the Zerg under them. Whatever happens next with the Zerg, they're going to need characters who have some form of agency if they are going to continue to be interesting/have the story told from their point of view.

I hear you. That's why it's a good thing, in a way, that the Overmind remains dead (even though I wish it not be true) so that something like Zerg factional conflict can develop. With the Overmind being around, there would not be a reasonable in-universe/Watsonian justification for any significant/appreciable inter-Zerg conflict to occur nor have any weight and without it also feeling like a contrived out-of-universe/Doylist justification (because the fans and/or writers wanted to do it for the sake of giving them some "conflict").

[Mislagnissa]

I think a good model for the Zerg would be the primordials from a roleplaying game called Exalted. Long story short, the primordials are so psychologically complicated that individual aspects of their personality have minds and bodies of their own, and those personified personality aspects in turn are so psychologically complicated that they have personified personality aspects. The latter don't have personified personality traits, but do create entire races which exemplify one or more of their personality traits. It's a top-down model of gestalt consciousness.

Something like that could apply to Zerg, where you have an entire cast of characters who rule over a single brood while unified by a gestalt consciousness. Multiply that by a gazillion, and you have some tiny inkling of how awesome the Zerg Swarm truly is. Episode II falls a bit flat because it feels tiny in scale, like the entire plot could be the politics within a single brood rather than the entire Swarm.

[Mislagnissa]

Steering back to the original question, I am going to paraphrase some stuff from the Enumerate fanfic. Instead of Kerry, the Zerg could develop new strains derived from the Terrans.

The first would be "psyolisks" or something. They are designed to counter zealots. Their psychic powers are used to enhance their physical atttibutes and debuff their foes with psychic terror. They are able to use the hive mind for parallel processing, increasing their power when grouped with other Zerg. When the DT attack, these guys fight them.

The second would be "psi-colonies" or something. They are stationary defenses like creep colonies, but use their psychic powers to enhance their attacks. They also provide control similar to overlords. During their development the human test subjects were fused together in trios and produced agonizing psychic signals which attracted the DT.

The third are "giga-brains" or something. They are a logical extension of psi-colonies, formed by fusing dozens or hundreds of psychic into giant brain monsters. They attack targets at range with psychic storms in a manner similar to Terran nukes. Their downside is that they cost large amounts of control, several overlords' worth a piece.

During the Brood Wars, the feral psi-colonies and giga-brains take control of feral zerg and compete with each other and the surviving cerebrates. Psi-colonies are at a disadvantage, since they need to work together in large numbers to compete with the cerebrates and giga-brains. (Psyolisks never provide control. While they could hypothetically command individual Zerg, their brains are literally too small to provide a net bonus to the total amount of control.)

See? These creatures hit all the same same plot points as Kerry did, but with a genuinely Zerg feel rather than a human in a Zerg suit. Credits to ToxicDefiler for making these up; I just gave them new names that fit with the other SC units.

[ragnarok]

Steering back to the original question, I am going to paraphrase some stuff from the Enumerate fanfic. Instead of Kerry, the Zerg could develop new strains derived from the Terrans.

The first would be "psyolisks" or something. They are designed to counter zealots. Their psychic powers are used to enhance their physical atttibutes and debuff their foes with psychic terror. They are able to use the hive mind for parallel processing, increasing their power when grouped with other Zerg. When the DT attack, these guys fight them.

The second would be "psi-colonies" or something. They are stationary defenses like creep colonies, but use their psychic powers to enhance their attacks. They also provide control similar to overlords. During their development the human test subjects were fused together in trios and produced agonizing psychic signals which attracted the DT.

The third are "giga-brains" or something. They are a logical extension of psi-colonies, formed by fusing dozens or hundreds of psychic into giant brain monsters. They attack targets at range with psychic storms in a manner similar to Terran nukes. Their downside is that they cost large amounts of control, several overlords' worth a piece.

During the Brood Wars, the feral psi-colonies and giga-brains take control of feral zerg and compete with each other and the surviving cerebrates. Psi-colonies are at a disadvantage, since they need to work together in large numbers to compete with the cerebrates and giga-brains. (Psyolisks never provide control. While they could hypothetically command individual Zerg, their brains are literally too small to provide a net bonus to the total amount of control.)

See? These creatures hit all the same same plot points as Kerry did, but with a genuinely Zerg feel rather than a human in a Zerg suit. Credits to ToxicDefiler for making these up; I just gave them new names that fit with the other SC units.

We already have the psyolisks via Evolution, give a better name. I'm surprised you interacted with ToxicDefiler. He was the only one on the Blizzard forums back then who ever made me lose my temper.

[Turalyon]

Instead of Kerry, the Zerg could develop new strains derived from the Terrans.

Not really sure about these strains appearing in Episode II, when that's when we're first introduced to the Zerg. Are we to assume they have them from the start of said campaign or eventually appear throughout the campaign? The former is concerning since it bypasses how the Zerg obtained the determinant in the first place and the latter is concerning in that the process is too quick. Assimilation, from what we can gather from the manual, is something that takes a while to do. This reason also retroactively explains why the Zerg only had Kerrigan as the sole psionic agent of the Swarm in the Episode II that we got.

[ragnarok]

Not really sure about these strains appearing in Episode II, when that's when we're first introduced to the Zerg. Are we to assume they have them from the start of said campaign or eventually appear throughout the campaign? The former is concerning since it bypasses how the Zerg obtained the determinant in the first place and the latter is concerning in that the process is too quick. Assimilation, from what we can gather from the manual, is something that takes a while to do. This reason also retroactively explains why the Zerg only had Kerrigan as the sole psionic agent of the Swarm in the Episode II that we got.

Was there any indication as to how long the assimilation process takes? Or did the manual never explain a SPECIFIC time?

[Turalyon]

Was there any indication as to how long the assimilation process takes? Or did the manual never explain a SPECIFIC time?

The original process of assimilation involved the Zerg parasite invading its host and manipulating the host's genetics over a few generations. Unless it's retconned that the actual timespan of Zerusian lifecyclesare actually short, "generations" would normally imply a longer time than what the events in Sc1 would've covered.

[ragnarok]

The original process of assimilation involved the Zerg parasite invading its host and manipulating the host's genetics over a few generations. Unless it's retconned that the actual timespan of Zerusian lifecyclesare actually short, "generations" would normally imply a longer time than what the events in Sc1 would've covered.

If that's true, you'd think SC2 already did just that, given that only 4 years passed after BW yet the roach, infestor, etc have already been incorporated into the swarm.

[Turalyon]

If that's true, you'd think SC2 already did just that, given that only 4 years passed after BW yet the roach, infestor, etc have already been incorporated into the swarm.

*Sigh* I'm not talking about Sc2 nor has that to do with anything I've said recently in this thread. The context, which was only 3 posts ago and what I thought you were keeping in with, was about Episode II in Sc1 and why there are no signs of assimilated psionics in the Zerg strains at that time. Please check you have the right context when responding next time, your non-sequiturs are very blind-siding.

[ragnarok]

*Sigh* I'm not talking about Sc2 nor has that to do with anything I've said recently in this thread. The context, which was only 3 posts ago and what I thought you were keeping in with, was about Episode II in Sc1 and why there are no signs of assimilated psionics in the Zerg strains at that time. Please check you have the right context when responding next time, your non-sequiturs are very blind-siding.

I always felt that the whole reason there's no assimilated psionics was because despite all those years of searching and assimilating species, the Overmind never actually got to a species with the proper psionics to assimilate or something....