Starcraft reboot ideas discussion thread

[Gradius]

There’s a bunch of background lore that doesn’t get touched on all the time. Who cares? The decision to save terrans by Tassadar was still a factor in the game though. What is your point? What does any of this have to do with asspull factions? Nice non-sequitur.

[Mislagnissa]

There’s a bunch of background lore that doesn’t get touched on all the time. Who cares? The decision to save terrans by Tassadar was still a factor in the game though. What is your point? What does any of this have to do with asspull factions? Nice non-sequitur.

There was no reason to introduce new factions when the existing ones covered all our bases. Reading the manual in isolation gives me all sorts of expectations about how the various plot threads introduced there will play out. It is perfectly reasonable to predict that Kerry and Tassadar will team up judging by their sparse bios and the open-ended nature of the manual.

I would expect something like the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones in space, but the game consistently failed to meet my expectations and turned all those interesting plot threads into footnotes at best. Umoja and Moria were single mission objectives at the best of times, while the UPL was pulled out of the woodwork and retconned into a sympathetic parody of itself. The broods and tribes were barely mentioned (if at all) despite the pages allocated to them in the manual.

There is this thing called the "law of conservation of detail." In short, writers should not introduce details that will never play a role in the story. If the pirate militias, zerg broods and protoss tribes will never play a role in the story, then they never should have existed in the first place. But they do exist and their storytelling potential is vastly more interesting than anything Metzen crapped out. Hell, Metzen makes the Kerry/zergling erotic fanfiction looks like Shakespeare.

Or, tl;dr, I am pissed off and bitter that Metzen wasted my time with all this fascinating lore only for the actual game to throw it in the garbage then go off on wildly unrelated tangents that had nothing to do with what attracted me to the franchise in the first place.

[Gradius]

It’s a background lore manual... What are you also mad that the game didn’t talk about random unit lore as well?

[Mislagnissa]

It’s a background lore manual... What are you also mad that the game didn’t talk about random unit lore as well?

We got short stories about an Overlord seeking revenge and an Infestor brainwashing a marine. That's more than we got about the pirate militias, tribes and broods combined.

Do you genuinely not care that the Starcraft story is a far cry from what it could have been in some idealized alternate universe or are you so utterly desensitized that you only come here out of morbid curiosity?

[Turalyon]

Reading the manual in isolation gives me all sorts of expectations about how the various plot threads introduced there will play out.

I would expect something like the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones in space, but the game consistently failed to meet my expectations and turned all those interesting plot threads into footnotes at best.

Think I found your problem. Curb your enthusiasm, dude.

There is this thing called the "law of conservation of detail." In short, writers should not introduce details that will never play a role in the story.

I disagree that this should be a universal law for story writing. This "fluff" contributes to world-building and it serves to give one an illusion of depth to what is really just a made-up world. They don't all have to be part of or included in the main focus of a story, but they enrich the world/universe the story is set in. Good fiction is about selling you the concept that the universe they present could exist within certain parameters.

Case in point, is the manual for the game Homeworld. It goes into painstaking and lengthy detail about all the history, peoples and factions on Kharak but none of it is required to enjoy or understand the story it presents. Why is it even there then, you ask? Well, I don't want to spoil it if you haven't played it but once you reach the third mission, the enormity of the feels you get is magnified 10-fold if you've read the manual.

[sandwich_bird]

Do you genuinely not care that the Starcraft story is a far cry from what it could have been in some idealized alternate universe or are you so utterly desensitized that you only come here out of morbid curiosity?

Jesus man, you don't get it. It's simple: we like the game. What you think would make it better is your opinion. It's not fact, it's an opinion. Why do you try to force it on everyone? You can share it, that's what this place is for, but you have to stop with the drama...

[Mislagnissa]

After having a bunch of pointless arguments about the determinant and the Overmind's knowledge of Aiur's location, I decided to open up a third thread for my favorite alternate universe Enumerate. To start off, Enumerate is an AU bible for Starcraft which more or less ignores the plot of the games in order to create a sandbox for custom campaigns. The advertised divergences include: no Kerry, no xel'naga, no UED and Tassadar lives. Links to the relevant materials are in my sig.

There are many other divergences which draw from the original manual.

• The protoss hold a huge galactic empire
• The Overmind knows the location of the protoss home world
• The zerg cannot effectively fight the protoss without the determinant
• The determinant results in many zerg breeds with human core genus

For the most part I adore Enumerate, but it still has a few flaws IMO. The major flaw I will note is that it adheres to the overall structure of canon events even when this makes no sense.

• Example: the zerg and protoss withdrawing after the fall of Tarsonis. This only happened in canon because Metzen needed it to for the story he was trying to tell, but it is detrimental to the story Enumerate is trying to tell. The reason for this isn't ever explained in EN.
• Example: the Ara/Akilae schism not playing a role during the Koprulu conflict, despite foreshadowing in the manual. This suggested that the protoss would fight a civil war, ally with the terrans (e.g. Umoja who tried to make contact in the past), dark templar ally with terrans, or any number of other possibilities. For a setting based on the original manual, this is a surprising oversight.
• Example: the dark templar having a deus ex machina that kill broods. This plot point was only introduced by Metzen in the game because he had rewritten the protoss into wimps doomed to lose against the zerg, when in the manual (and thus Enumerate) the zerg only just stand a chance with the determinant against the protoss' galactic empire. There is no reason for the dark templar to have that deus ex machina or for cerebrates to have instant resurrection. Retribution provides an example of how the plot could work without those.

There are minor flaws here and there with less effect on the broad strokes.

• For example, Enumerate misunderstands the KMC as a powerful government when it became a client of the Confederacy after the Guild Wars. Even if this is an intentional change (which isn't mention in EN), it seems unnecessary as I thought the KMC made more sense as trying to reclaim their territory from the Confederacy using the Great War as an opportunity.
• EN also soundly ignores the units and factions introduced in SC2, even when this isn't necessary. There's no reason to avoid using any of the units introduced in SC2 alongside those from SC1, or to rewrite the zerg queens so they don't have a command role (this goes back to gameplay and story segregation). While it makes no sense to add primal zerg when the regular zerg already do the same thing, the tal'darim make perfect sense as a nerazim branch or something.

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts, critiques and others.

[TheEconomist]

Wait? No Xel'Naga? Even the awesome star-faring scientists of the manual? Nrrrgghhhh

[Mislagnissa]

Sure. Enumerate is nice and would be nice to have.

Now what?

Is there something more specific you would like to talk about? Any criticisms, sudden inspirations?

I gave a few critiques of Enumerate myself, such as what to remove or what could be added.

Wait? No Xel'Naga? Even the awesome star-faring scientists of the manual? Nrrrgghhhh

I gave the wrong impression. The extragalactic scientists who died a bazillion years ago are still in the backstory. You can read all about it in the links I gave.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

Eh, Brood war seems pretty "fly by the seat of your pants" to me other than the Kerrigan is now a god tier strategist stuff.

I also agree with Mislagnissa that the sense of scale diminished (especially in the Protoss BW campaign where its almost entirely about a treasure hunt)

Even in Kerrigan's campaign she has like 3 different filler missions