Starcraft reboot ideas discussion thread

[Mislagnissa]

Okay then, so maybe not the end end, but if you're rewriting the main story campaign with this setup, what would you conceive to be a natural end point of the first arc? How many story arcs do you think there'd be to resolve it? If you don't intend to resolve it, how would you maintain interest in the mainline story in the long run?

I think there was a misunderstanding somewhere. I don't envision there being a main story campaign. Stories about individual planets, sure, but not about the entire sector. That's too huge to ever do justice believably (unbelievably, sure). Even the current scale requires a lot of leaps of logic in order to address in a campaign.

Trying to resolve a sector wide war with human extinction in the balance is... well, I doubt anyone could do it justice. If it was made, then I imagine that sequelitis would kick in pretty quickly because you can't really escalate further than the extinction of humanity.

I think in order for the Terrans to be maintained as one of the three is to completely rewrite their origins in the K-sector. They are otherwise way to weak to believably last against ancient and powerful alien races as lain out in the manual. You can still keep the determinant plot point but the Terrans just need to have a far reaching presence and be well established. This may mean having to shift the date in which the war takes place since 100 years or so of Terran development from scratch/when they crash-landed in the K-sector is just not enough. It's that or have Earth included and that Terrans are spread out across the galaxy. They can still be the "weakest of the three" but are really a sleeping giant like how the Trader Emergency Coalition are represented in Sins of a Solar Empire. Sure, I know you want the "human tenacity prevails over all despite not having the actual power/means/capability" thing but it just doesn't hold any verisimilitude.

That's more or less identical to the other scenario pitch about the terran and protoss being galactic empires locked in cold war. In fact, you could spin endless variations and remixes like shrinking the scales so that each race only controls a handful of worlds rather than galactic empires. The canon has a huge problem with retconning its scales (making the story impossible to follow), such as Koprulu being a system and Protoss having a galactic empire in SC1 versus later lore depicting Koprulu as many systems and the Protoss living inside it, or BW and SC2 depicting characters casually traveling between the spiral arms of the galaxy. It's simply not possible for the Dominion to take over the Confederacy unless the latter is limited to one system, not a whole bunch!

Speaking of which... now that I think about it, I think something important I forgot to mention is... Before we start throwing pitches around, I think we need to establish our scales and stick with them. Do we want galactic war? Interstellar war? Border skirmishes? Are we going to jump between scales? How are we going to do these scales justice given that the numbers are so huge our brains can't really handle them?

I was speaking on very broad level there, like, as in it had an ending where things were addressed and that it was ok for it to not continue should it not do so. Sc1 and BW have that even despite their "sequel bait".

They still have the mismatched scales I mentioned above. Even within SC1, the writers didn't seem to be able to decide on the scales. The game script barely gives a scale, but it seems to depict the terrans and protoss as being really small and weak whereas the zerg are big and strong. The manual describes the zerg and protoss as galactic polities in some sections while in others giving scales that make them much, much smaller. Did the writers proofread their work or was all that intentional?

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EDIT: I wrote a google doc in order to keep all my ideas in one place rather than force anyone to comb the thread. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Turalyon]

I think there was a misunderstanding somewhere. I don't envision there being a main story campaign. Stories about individual planets, sure, but not about the entire sector. That's too huge to ever do justice believably (unbelievably, sure). Even the current scale requires a lot of leaps of logic in order to address in a campaign.

There's no misunderstanding. The question was just independent and borne out of curiosity more than anything. Given you say the story is kinda bunk in Sc1 and how none of it is salvageable, I was just wondering if there was anything you would've done differently in terms of rebooting the story (which you've been keen on stating recently). If you were limited to making a single game/story with no promise of it being successful or having future beyond this one shot, how would you present the universe and story of this 3-way war effectively and efficiently? Stories usually have a beginning, middle and end and you've kind of settled/focused on the beginning, so I was wondering what was going to be your "middle" and maybe perhaps, the "end".

I know you want to make Starcraft as WH40K-lite, but with "better" characters and stories and then say how the story within Sc1 is bad in comparison to that context, so I wanted to ask what you considered to be a "better" story and characters.

Speaking of which... now that I think about it, I think something important I forgot to mention is... Before we start throwing pitches around, I think we need to establish our scales and stick with them. Do we want galactic war? Interstellar war? Border skirmishes? Are we going to jump between scales? How are we going to do these scales justice given that the numbers are so huge our brains can't really handle them?

It seems to me that you want it around the interstellar level at the least to give you enough scale. A bigger scale doesn't mean you can't have smaller, self-contained stories since WH40K does this all the time. What's certain is that the Terrans need to be retconned to have a larger physical presence (maybe even larger than the Protoss if need be) that can withstand and recover from the might of Zerg incursion and Protoss might because that's the only way to maintain your insistence on a persistent 3-way war.

They still have the mismatched scales I mentioned above. Even within SC1, the writers didn't seem to be able to decide on the scales. The game script barely gives a scale, but it seems to depict the terrans and protoss as being really small and weak whereas the zerg are big and strong. The manual describes the zerg and protoss as galactic polities in some sections while in others giving scales that make them much, much smaller. Did the writers proofread their work or was all that intentional?

Given that you're rebooting and grabbing bits from all over existing Sc stuff (even Sc2 bits!), I wouldn't think you'd be constrained by the manual for the scale. The scale of the conflict in Sc1 we did get is relatively small since it focuses on a single system where all 3 sides just happen to coincidentally intersect, irrespective of how large and ancient the Protoss and Zerg actually are compared to the Terrans.

[Mislagnissa]

There's no misunderstanding. The question was just independent and borne out of curiosity more than anything. Given you say the story is kinda bunk in Sc1 and how none of it is salvageable, I was just wondering if there was anything you would've done differently in terms of rebooting the story (which you've been keen on stating recently). If you were limited to making a single game/story with no promise of it being successful or having future beyond this one shot, how would you present the universe and story of this 3-way war effectively and efficiently? Stories usually have a beginning, middle and end and you've kind of settled/focused on the beginning, so I was wondering what was going to be your "middle" and maybe perhaps, the "end".

I know you want to make Starcraft as WH40K-lite, but with "better" characters and stories and then say how the story within Sc1 is bad in comparison to that context, so I wanted to ask what you considered to be a "better" story and characters.

There's no single way to answer that. There are countless different stories that one could tell to serve as an introduction to the setting.

StarCraft: Insurrection is one example. It touches upon the plot points from the manual. It would not call it stellar, particularly the bland zerg campaign, but it does stay firmly within the context of the first contact war rather than overreaching.

StarCraft: Retribution is another. It barely has a story, but it is okay if you are not interested in having characters that draw you into the setting. It touches upon various concepts that could be explored at length elsewhere.

It seems to me that you want it around the interstellar level at the least to give you enough scale. A bigger scale doesn't mean you can't have smaller, self-contained stories since WH40K does this all the time. What's certain is that the Terrans need to be retconned to have a larger physical presence (maybe even larger than the Protoss if need be) that can withstand and recover from the might of Zerg incursion and Protoss might because that's the only way to maintain your insistence on a persistent 3-way war.

Only if the war is consistently devastating. That doesn't necessarily need to be the case. Logistics and military science could be way more complicated than you make it out to be. The canonical interbellum period from the licensed fiction depicted intermittent skirmishes rather than 24-7 warfare, which makes plenty of sense for an active war period too. The terrans might very well be able to expel the alien invasion forces if they got their affairs in order, as claimed by the Liberty's Crusade novel.

The zerg and protoss could be pulling their punches too. The zerg are staying cautious because they don't want to play their hand too early where the protoss can see them. The protoss are really arrogant and have their ethical debates between the pro-life and pro-death factions that prevents further genocides from happening willy-nilly.

The terrans don't need to be bigger than the protoss. In a population sense they might very well be much larger since the protoss have centuries-long generational cycles, but the protoss are at least as power as adeptus astartes. The terrans might not win in a prolonged war of extermination, but they don't need to. They just need to hold their own for however long we want the first contact war to last. I didn't imagine that it would last more than a few decades at most.

ToxicDefiler already pitched that the timeline would be divided into different eras for different scales of war. These loosely corresponded to canon's great war, brood war and end war arcs. I can't say anything his pitch didn't already.

Given that you're rebooting and grabbing bits from all over existing Sc stuff (even Sc2 bits!), I wouldn't think you'd be constrained by the manual for the scale. The scale of the conflict in Sc1 we did get is relatively small since it focuses on a single system where all 3 sides just happen to coincidentally intersect, irrespective of how large and ancient the Protoss and Zerg actually are compared to the Terrans.

I'm just recycling the canon as a whole rather than arbitrarily ignoring everything past a certain point. That makes it easier to reference from the wiki.

I did try to do some rewriting of scales. The Earth sector would be connected by a warp rift to Koprulu, rather than the terrans having arbitrarily fast warp drives, to fit with the retcon from Heroes of the Storm that they were always in public contact. The Koprulu sector would include many different systems, among at five different sub-regions and further. The Confederacy has many systems, with the Koprulu system representing the small scale Confederacy from SC1; Therefore, the Dominion and Confederacy would still exist side-by-side. Earth might be devastated by aliens as per a rejected SC2 pitch. Did I already say this? Whatever!

Back to the timeline for a sec, it is entirely possible to combine the galactic war plot with the border war plot. Koprulu is essentially a border war, but it will have huge effects on the possible galactic war since the zerg are trying to get enough evolution points from the cyborg mutant criminals to wage a successful galactic war against the galactic powers. Although there is a focus on the protoss, they aren't necessarily the only galactic power or sub-galactic power. The zerg could be preparing for an assault on many different civilizations including the Earthlings.

At first I proposed Earth would be assaulted in the first contact war, but this could be moved to the galactic war period when the zerg assault the protoss home worlds.

[Turalyon]

Only if the war is consistently devastating.

But it would be devastating for the Terrans because the action is largely happening on their worlds and they have no backup to fall to in the Koprulu sector unless they generally have a greater physical presence (many more worlds) to absorb the impacts. In comparison, the Zerg can be regarded as limitless since they come from all corners of the galaxy whilst the Protoss have been native to the area for millennia and have an extended empire that is relatively untouched because the Zerg won't attack them yet.

The zerg and protoss could be pulling their punches too.

This only makes it harder to justify the Terran's prolonged continued presence. If the Terrans are only just able to hold them off even when they're pulling their punches, what happens when it gets into full-scale war? There needs to be more fluff behind the Terrans to shore them up as being equal somehow to the raw power and scope of the Zerg and Protoss from the get-go (I don't think Terran tenacity/ingenuity is realistically enough), so as not to rely on the other races conveniently holding back or supporting them (ie: the Protoss). They can still be comparatively "weak" in a direct match-up with either Zerg or Protoss, but if they're also more finite and fractured than the Protoss whilst also not potentially being "one-man armies" like the Protoss, it's hard to believe the Terrans would last long in a proper war.

[ragnarok]

This only makes it harder to justify the Terran's prolonged continued presence. If the Terrans are only just able to hold them off even when they're pulling their punches, what happens when it gets into full-scale war? There needs to be more fluff behind the Terrans to shore them up as being equal somehow to the raw power and scope of the Zerg and Protoss from the get-go (I don't think Terran tenacity/ingenuity is realistically enough), so as not to rely on the other races conveniently holding back or supporting them (ie: the Protoss). They can still be comparatively "weak" in a direct match-up with either Zerg or Protoss, but if they're also more finite and fractured than the Protoss whilst also not potentially being "one-man armies" like the Protoss, it's hard to believe the Terrans would last long in a proper war.

They wouldn't, not without unconventional methods. To a degree I felt that had the DT Saga been trying to explore the xel'naga history instead of merely being a prequel to SC2, it'd have made sense for Valerian to have done what he did under the disguise of archeological findings. Surely he knew the zerg can't be beaten by conventional means, and the only reason the Dominion, Umojans, and KMC were still around in the Koprulu sector was because the swarm's focus had been on the protoss. If they ever turned to the terrans, the result is self-explanatory. It's therefore not much of a surprise that in Flashpoint it's revealed that Valerian did know about the whole hybrid thing, he just didn't expect Narud to progress so far with it.

[Mislagnissa]

But it would be devastating for the Terrans because the action is largely happening on their worlds and they have no backup to fall to in the Koprulu sector unless they generally have a greater physical presence (many more worlds) to absorb the impacts. In comparison, the Zerg can be regarded as limitless since they come from all corners of the galaxy whilst the Protoss have been native to the area for millennia and have an extended empire that is relatively untouched because the Zerg won't attack them yet.



This only makes it harder to justify the Terran's prolonged continued presence. If the Terrans are only just able to hold them off even when they're pulling their punches, what happens when it gets into full-scale war? There needs to be more fluff behind the Terrans to shore them up as being equal somehow to the raw power and scope of the Zerg and Protoss from the get-go (I don't think Terran tenacity/ingenuity is realistically enough), so as not to rely on the other races conveniently holding back or supporting them (ie: the Protoss). They can still be comparatively "weak" in a direct match-up with either Zerg or Protoss, but if they're also more finite and fractured than the Protoss whilst also not potentially being "one-man armies" like the Protoss, it's hard to believe the Terrans would last long in a proper war.

The exact number is arbitrarily high. Logistics is hard.

[Visions of Khas]

I've always liked the idea of humans being the underdog, winning only through chance and home field advantage. I'm also a big fan of showing the dysfunction of government and military; for what I mean, look into Quagmire at Mapster. (The author goes all-in on bad intel, officers pursuing their careers over goals, politicians throwing away lives for a little extra money, and flagging public opinion. The campaign is basically Space Vietnam, I love it.) Under prolonged stress, society would naturally fall apart, however, and we can't just have a re-hash of Battlestar Galactica, with refugees living in space, but it could gain some inspiration from that.

Of course, constant warfare would reduce humanity to nothing. Fortunately, most wars aren't constant; there's an ebb and flow. I think humanity could survive, living under the shadow of the greater Protoss and Zerg conflict.

Another thing I love about Quagmire is that it doesn't undersell tragedy. In StarCraft, so many worlds get destroyed, and nobody bats an eye. I'm like, what? An entire world has been destroyed, the culture and history unique to it ended. The only time I feel there's any respect to accorded to the Protoss or Zerg or the earth-shattering chaos is when Jim Raynor scoffs at sending Kerrigan alone to New Gettysburg; you can hear the incredulousness in Clotworthy's voice: "First you sell out every person on this world to the Zerg, then you ask us to go up against the Protoss, and you're gonna send Kerrigan down there with no backup!?" In Quagmire, a colony is nuked out of existence, and the author totally nails the horror and tragedy and senslessness of it all.

I want that in my StarCraft.

[Turalyon]

I've always liked the idea of humans being the underdog, winning only through chance and home field advantage. I'm also a big fan of showing the dysfunction of government and military; for what I mean, look into Quagmire at Mapster. (The author goes all-in on bad intel, officers pursuing their careers over goals, politicians throwing away lives for a little extra money, and flagging public opinion. The campaign is basically Space Vietnam, I love it.) Under prolonged stress, society would naturally fall apart, however, and we can't just have a re-hash of Battlestar Galactica, with refugees living in space, but it could gain some inspiration from that.

Of course, constant warfare would reduce humanity to nothing. Fortunately, most wars aren't constant; there's an ebb and flow. I think humanity could survive, living under the shadow of the greater Protoss and Zerg conflict.

Surviving isn't enough though if the premise is a persistent war where all three sides are equally at each others throats with equal stakes. I'm under the presumption that the idea for the "reboot" was to stop the Terrans from being an afterthought/plot device/superfluous in the mainline story by making them more active in the participation of a continuous three-way war.

In order to justify the reboot of having the Terrans as an equal party to the others in a protracted three-way war, the presence of the Terrans needs beefing up to achieve verisimilitude (or the scale and power inherent in the Zerg and Protoss need to be curbed). They can still be presented as the overall underdog of the three and hounded by internal strife even with a larger presence because they are still out of their element/caught off guard.

The TEC in Sins of a Solar Empire fluff are considered to be "weak" compared to the ancient alien Vasari invaders and the technologically advanced and zealous Advent because their civilisation wasn't built for war and ponderous in regard to change, but they survived because they were beyond huge, could weather the blows and slowly adapt to the situation becoming potentially the figurative "waking giant". Now, the Terrans don't have to be as large, but the example is to illustrate that the Terrans need some back-up plan/counter to the Zerg are gunning straight for them initially and the Protoss burning their worlds.

It's either that, or reboot the Terrans having their whizz bang tech that can match the power of the Protoss in the lore/background story (like it does in the actual gameplay) to effectively hold off both Zerg and Protoss from the get-go, but then that sort of detracts from them being underdogs.

The only time I feel there's any respect to accorded to the Protoss or Zerg or the earth-shattering chaos is when Jim Raynor scoffs at sending Kerrigan alone to New Gettysburg; you can hear the incredulousness in Clotworthy's voice: "First you sell out every person on this world to the Zerg, then you ask us to go up against the Protoss, and you're gonna send Kerrigan down there with no backup!?"

Well, Raynor is really only railing against the fact that Kerrigan, whom he as an attachement to, is being sent to the meat-grinder, not that using Psi-Emitters on a world to lure Zerg to them is a morally abhorrent thing to do. If he really was railing against the morality of "selling out people on this world" to the Zerg, he should have baulked at the use of Psi Emitters initially on Antiga Prime.. So really, it's still kinda undersold if you ask me! Then again, the greyness of Sc1 means that it's not supposed to sell a particular morality/the light and darkness of things, it's meant for you to figure it out...

[Mislagnissa]

I've always liked the idea of humans being the underdog, winning only through chance and home field advantage. I'm also a big fan of showing the dysfunction of government and military; for what I mean, look into Quagmire at Mapster. (The author goes all-in on bad intel, officers pursuing their careers over goals, politicians throwing away lives for a little extra money, and flagging public opinion. The campaign is basically Space Vietnam, I love it.) Under prolonged stress, society would naturally fall apart, however, and we can't just have a re-hash of Battlestar Galactica, with refugees living in space, but it could gain some inspiration from that.

Of course, constant warfare would reduce humanity to nothing. Fortunately, most wars aren't constant; there's an ebb and flow. I think humanity could survive, living under the shadow of the greater Protoss and Zerg conflict.

Another thing I love about Quagmire is that it doesn't undersell tragedy. In StarCraft, so many worlds get destroyed, and nobody bats an eye. I'm like, what? An entire world has been destroyed, the culture and history unique to it ended. The only time I feel there's any respect to accorded to the Protoss or Zerg or the earth-shattering chaos is when Jim Raynor scoffs at sending Kerrigan alone to New Gettysburg; you can hear the incredulousness in Clotworthy's voice: "First you sell out every person on this world to the Zerg, then you ask us to go up against the Protoss, and you're gonna send Kerrigan down there with no backup!?" In Quagmire, a colony is nuked out of existence, and the author totally nails the horror and tragedy and senslessness of it all.

I want that in my StarCraft.

Totally agree. Not just dark and gritty, but deep and analytical. There is literary value in that.

The official story has a huge problem when it comes to giving proper respect to the ridiculously huge scales involved, especially the genocides. I've criticized the heroes like Tassadar and Raynor for not really seeming to care all that much about the lives they destroy. It's that whole "a million is a statistic" trope.

Surviving isn't enough though if the premise is a persistent war where all three sides are equally at each others throats with equal stakes. I'm under the presumption that the idea for the "reboot" was to stop the Terrans from being an afterthought/plot device/superfluous in the mainline story by making them more active in the participation of a continuous three-way war.

In order to justify the reboot of having the Terrans as an equal party to the others in a protracted three-way war, the presence of the Terrans needs beefing up to achieve verisimilitude (or the scale and power inherent in the Zerg and Protoss need to be curbed). They can still be presented as the overall underdog of the three and hounded by internal strife even with a larger presence because they are still out of their element/caught off guard.

The TEC in Sins of a Solar Empire fluff are considered to be "weak" compared to the ancient alien Vasari invaders and the technologically advanced and zealous Advent because their civilisation wasn't built for war and ponderous in regard to change, but they survived because they were beyond huge, could weather the blows and slowly adapt to the situation becoming potentially the figurative "waking giant". Now, the Terrans don't have to be as large, but the example is to illustrate that the Terrans need some back-up plan/counter to the Zerg are gunning straight for them initially and the Protoss burning their worlds.

It's either that, or reboot the Terrans having their whizz bang tech that can match the power of the Protoss in the lore/background story (like it does in the actual gameplay) to effectively hold off both Zerg and Protoss from the get-go, but then that sort of detracts from them being underdogs.



Well, Raynor is really only railing against the fact that Kerrigan, whom he as an attachement to, is being sent to the meat-grinder, not that using Psi-Emitters on a world to lure Zerg to them is a morally abhorrent thing to do. If he really was railing against the morality of "selling out people on this world" to the Zerg, he should have baulked at the use of Psi Emitters initially on Antiga Prime.. So really, it's still kinda undersold if you ask me! Then again, the greyness of Sc1 means that it's not supposed to sell a particular morality/the light and darkness of things, it's meant for you to figure it out...

The terrans are only equal under specific circumstances as contrived by the narrative (at least the SC1 manual iteration). Firstly, the zerg and protoss forces in the sector have sufficiently low numbers and fire power that the terrans stand a chance. Secondly, the zerg have strategic reasons and protoss have ethical reasons not to just annihilate everything immediately: the zerg are highly cautious about the protoss and don't want to play their hand before they're prepared, the protoss have sympathizers to the terrans who have fragmented the fleet so that they can't glass planets willy-nilly.

And this was originally my head-canon regarding the psi-emitter debacle: the zerg vanguard didn't have sufficient strength to openly war with the terrans. They didn't take the terrans seriously as an existential threat until the terrans showed progress with their psychic warfare that would interfere with harvesting efforts. The only reason the vanguard could even get reinforcements when it already took them 60 years to reach the sector was because the terran sector has a bunch of abandoned warp gates lying around. The zerg can't always steamroll their problems, and that's why they have broods dedicated to multiple types of warfare including terrorism. They've encountered threats strong enough that they needed to create the Surtur brood, who are so vicious that they have to be restrained outside of combat and will deal friendly fire on the field.

So events like most of the core worlds being destroyed outright can't happen as fast as depicted in canon, other it wouldn't make sense for the terrans to have the infrastructure and personnel they need for all the other wars they fight. As Visions said, wars ebb and flow. (This is depicted in the lore for the "interbellum" period, but makes as much sense for an active war period.)

If a world is lost, then its needs to be treated as a big deal. The terrans don't have enough worlds, infrastructure and people to survive a prolonged war with the full power of the zerg or protoss. And that's with all the cyberpunk dystopia stuff like rapid cloning and nano-machine manufacturing. The current alien forces are pulling their punches, and even then my very unscientific estimate is that the terrans would be extinct within a single human lifetime.

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A problem I had with my determinant scenario is reconciling the bits about protoss colonies being attacked. If the official website was anything to go by, then Blizzard had a lot of problems keeping the lore straight.

On the website, a minor bit mentioned is that the terrans were jealousy looking at the worlds of their protoss neighbors. This isn't consistent with other lore bits, like most terrans being unaware of the protoss, or the zerg invading the terrans for their "determinant" (which I've since rationalized as transhumanism in general and analysis of materials sciences, not just psionics), or the zerg independently invading protoss space for whatever reason (which seems to be a leftover from before the terrans were made the determinant).

However, it seems possible to reconcile these with some creativity.

Although most terrans aren't aware the protoss still exist, they do know of them from archaeology of the alien ruins scattered across the sector. The highest levels of governments are aware through monitoring of protoss transmissions, and do want to colonize the nearby protoss worlds. Koprulu is a frontier sector, but it is adjacent to a sector where there are some protoss colonies who keep their distance and secrecy.

Although the zerg are highly cautious of the protoss, for whatever reason they decided that it makes sense to invade the border colonies. Perhaps as a distraction from the koprulu invasion, perhaps to acquire archaeological relics, or any number of reasons. Although the zerg won't survive a galactic war, on the smaller scale they can hold their own for some time. As the protoss deal with xenomorphic threats a great deal, the zerg believe they won't realize the true danger until it is too late. The colonies are used to warp structures and personnel to nearby Koprulu, so this also serves as an attack on their logistics.

Thus, we can have campaigns where the zerg are invading the protoss without full-blown galactic war. Not only the zerg, but protoss rebels like Ulrezaj and such.

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I don't like the UED retcon, but I think my attempt to move Earth to Koprulu was overzealous. It would make enough sense to have Koprulu and Earth linked by a naturally occurring warp rift somewhere near Gantris. So Earth and the colonies could have trade over the centuries, and the UED fleet could arrive to interfere with the Confederacy's wars of aggression. When zerg and protoss go through the rift to attack the earthling colonies, Earth would be occupied and less able to sent reinforcements to the UED fleets in Koprulu.

[Visions of Khas]

The official story has a huge problem when it comes to giving proper respect to the ridiculously huge scales involved, especially the genocides.

Ugh, dude. Dude. When I first played Wings of Liberty, and aided Agria, I expected to see colonists taking refuge in Swann's hangar bay, with maybe some shuttles or transports hugging tight to the Hyperion in the background. It would have been incredible to see volunteers from this bunch join the Raiders and bolster their numbers. The same could have happened after the New Folsom breakout.

But Blizzard be like, "Consequences, in my games? I don't think so."

the zerg have strategic reasons and protoss have ethical reasons not to just annihilate everything immediately: the zerg are highly cautious about the protoss and don't want to play their hand before they're prepared

This was one of the more appealing aspects of the story for me. I love how, instead of openly invading each terran world, the Overmind opted for a prolonged infiltration, infesting colonies with hive spores and seeding agents among worlds. To the Zerg, time is no factor; they've waded through millennia of stars to get to Koprulu, and the Overmind is eternal. Why be overzealous? The insidiousness of it had me rapt. As slow as the traditionalist Protoss could be, the Overmind could -- and would -- have more patience by far.