What other ways could the xel'naga been drawn like?

[Mislagnissa]

In the case of the zerg, hardly anyone was prepared. In that regard it's why so many liked the Overmind as a villain via the SC1 lore, showing that the Xel'Naga underestimated their own creation, compared to the SC2 lore where it was just Amon's puppet. Still, I work with what was given to me....

Unprepared? Sacrificing billions of minions as ammunition does not suggest the xel'naga were unprepared, it suggests that their ships had really strong hulls. Furthermore, they were not prepared when the protoss attacked either despite having fair warning. Although the xel'naga escaped, hundreds of them were killed in the initial volley and at least one of their ships crashed.

The xel'naga are millions of years old and have likely seen the coming and going of countless intelligent civilizations and wars. It is unbelievable that they would not be prepared for combat unless their basic psychology is pacifistic. That itself implies that, I don't know, they never needed to worry about predators, chase down prey or compete with their own kind for mates.

In any event, this discussion is purely academic and contributes nothing of practical value. The xel'naga were intended as a generic cliche banal scifi plot device to justify the existence of and war between the zerg and protoss, not as characters to be explored. (Hence why exploring the xel'naga was the point at which the series went downhill fast.)

Speaking of Amon, exactly how was he resurrected by Duran? If Xel'Naga are thrust back into the Void, then hasn't he just been chilling for several millennia since Zerus? Or was dead in the Void too, and literally brought back to life? If the latter, what's to prevent him from coming back AGAIN?

The writers made the plot up as they went along and never tried to be consistent or logical. If you check the wiki explanations (and somehow ignore all the obvious inconsistencies and retcons that render the explanations nonsensical), you will notice that most of the citations point to interviews and Q&As where the writers explained the plot holes. I am pretty sure the writers never actually thought ahead to write a cohesive story and made up rationalizations when the community prompted them for an explanation.

These are the same guys who explicitly called Kerry a demigoddess in order to explain how she could take over for the Overmind, and who stated her surviving hatcheries would constantly resurrect her in contradiction of how resurrection worked in SC1/BW.

I wouldn't sidetrack if I were you. You know how Misla has a condition and is easily triggered - especially when it comes to any Sc2 stuff.

Here's some short answers for you though: retcon, maybe, maybe and retcon.

I gave up trying to understand Blizzard's mind long ago.

[ragnarok]

Unprepared? Sacrificing billions of minions as ammunition does not suggest the xel'naga were unprepared, it suggests that their ships had really strong hulls. Furthermore, they were not prepared when the protoss attacked either despite having fair warning. Although the xel'naga escaped, hundreds of them were killed in the initial volley and at least one of their ships crashed.

Tell me something: via the SC1 manual, did it ever give a SPECIFIC amount of time that passed before the Xel'Naga concluded their experimentation with the Protoss went too far?

Speaking of Amon, exactly how was he resurrected by Duran? If Xel'Naga are thrust back into the Void, then hasn't he just been chilling for several millennia since Zerus? Or was dead in the Void too, and literally brought back to life? If the latter, what's to prevent him from coming back AGAIN?

This goes all the way back to the thread I made over 2 years ago: my theory was that the Void energies are harmful to the Xel'Naga as well. For all we know, the Xel'Naga that won the battle at Zerus imprisoned Amon in a specific location believing that the harmful Void energies would kill him. This then explained Ouros's role in all this: Amon took Ouros with him and slowly drained his essence over a period of time in order to keep himself alive. This would then be consistent with what Ouros said to Kerrigan in "The Essence of Eternity" mission, that may the last of his essence give her the strength necessary to beat Amon.

I wouldn't sidetrack if I were you. You know how Misla has a condition and is easily triggered - especially when it comes to any Sc2 stuff.

Here's some short answers for you though: retcon, maybe, maybe and retcon.

And here I thought you'd ask him to look here:

http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthrea...We-All-Thought

[Turalyon]

And here I thought you'd ask him to look here:

http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthrea...We-All-Thought

I like my answers better. They're more concise and accurate.

[ragnarok]

I like my answers better. They're more concise and accurate.

You only said the whole retcon thing. You might as well have just told Mislag that the whole Blizzard team injected themselves with 10 billion syringes of crack into their bloodstream before they began work on the SC2 storyline, hence the inconsistency problems.

[Mislagnissa]

Tell me something: via the SC1 manual, did it ever give a SPECIFIC amount of time that passed before the Xel'Naga concluded their experimentation with the Protoss went too far?

The manual states "The Protoss civilisation spread across the face of Aiur within only a few thousand years, eventually culminating with the warring Tribes settling under a centralised rule", "As months passed on Aiur, the Protoss began to shy from their Xel’Naga teachers, and each Tribe cultivated wild and unsubstantiated rumours of their creator’s supposed treachery", "Many hundreds of Xel’Naga were murdered by the raging Protoss, who only decades before had worshipped them as gods", and "The Xel’Naga fended off the Protoss’ reckless attack and sorrowfully launched the greater number of their massive ships into the trackless void beyond Aiur."

Timescales given in the manual are highly questionable and often inconsistent, but the basic gist is that political revolutions take a lot of time in the game setting just like they do in reality. In any event, the xel'naga are clearly not omnipotent space gods and their purely defensive capabilities clearly cannot nullify the protoss weapons used at the time. While most of the xel'naga ships escaped, a minority were felled and their crews murdered by the protoss.

[ragnarok]

The manual states "The Protoss civilisation spread across the face of Aiur within only a few thousand years, eventually culminating with the warring Tribes settling under a centralised rule", "As months passed on Aiur, the Protoss began to shy from their Xel’Naga teachers, and each Tribe cultivated wild and unsubstantiated rumours of their creator’s supposed treachery", "Many hundreds of Xel’Naga were murdered by the raging Protoss, who only decades before had worshipped them as gods", and "The Xel’Naga fended off the Protoss’ reckless attack and sorrowfully launched the greater number of their massive ships into the trackless void beyond Aiur."

Timescales given in the manual are highly questionable and often inconsistent, but the basic gist is that political revolutions take a lot of time in the game setting just like they do in reality. In any event, the xel'naga are clearly not omnipotent space gods and their purely defensive capabilities clearly cannot nullify the protoss weapons used at the time. While most of the xel'naga ships escaped, a minority were felled and their crews murdered by the protoss.

I know about the hundreds of Xel'Naga killed by the Protoss when they abandoned the experiment. It proved the Xel'Naga were far from all-powerful, but it never really stated the Protoss casualties. You can't just say what the manual says implied they were defenseless.

You can argue otherwise, but this at least would prove (via the SC2 lore) that the Xel'Naga's actions at Zerus achieved SOMETHING

[Mislagnissa]

I know about the hundreds of Xel'Naga killed by the Protoss when they abandoned the experiment. It proved the Xel'Naga were far from all-powerful, but it never really stated the Protoss casualties. You can't just say what the manual says implied they were defenseless.

You can argue otherwise, but this at least would prove (via the SC2 lore) that the Xel'Naga's actions at Zerus achieved SOMETHING

Only zerg casualties are ever mentioned. If the protoss suffered casualties, it was not enough to merit a mention in the backstory. I seriously doubt they suffered anything noteworthy, since they most likely attacked the worldships with orbital weapons from thousands of kilometers away rather than throwing infantry and piloted vehicles at the hulls.

Why do you keep trying to defend SC2's story? Even if it was not a cash-grabbing sequel filled with pointless retcons, the story is still bad on its own (lack of) merit and is riddled with countless plot holes. Every else has discussed that at length (and still does). If you really like SC2's story, this is the wrong forum for you.

[ragnarok]

Why do you keep trying to defend SC2's story? Even if it was not a cash-grabbing sequel filled with pointless retcons, the story is still bad on its own (lack of) merit and is riddled with countless plot holes. Every else has discussed that at length (and still does). If you really like SC2's story, this is the wrong forum for you.

Because I take what is given, not just endlessly bash it (and I saw the plothole problems well before you joined).

And considering what you've been saying would be trying to imply that there's not a single person on the planet who didn't see the SC2 storyline was a failure in every way possible.......

Put it this way: even back when I talked to the people on the battlenet forums, some of them still tried to tell me they never insisted that the only "success" of the SC2 storyline was Blizzard failed everything

[Mislagnissa]

Because I take what is given, not just endlessly bash it (and I saw the plothole problems well before you joined).

And considering what you've been saying would be trying to imply that there's not a single person on the planet who didn't see the SC2 storyline was a failure in every way possible.......

Put it this way: even back when I talked to the people on the battlenet forums, some of them still tried to tell me they never insisted that the only "success" of the SC2 storyline was Blizzard failed everything

Blizzard cannot fail to meet a goal they never set. They set out to make a profitable esport, not a coherent story. They succeeded at what they intended.

The vast majority of people who play are not interested in the story at all. They don’t care for it. They just play the game part.

The only thing that failed were the expectations of people who didn’t know any better. I got into SC after LotV came out. After appraising the franchise from the beginning I concluded that the story has always been mediocre at best and jumped the shark multiple times.

To put it succinctly, none of the characters behave consistently based on their assumed motivations (if they have any). They never have. Most of the time characters are just levers to move the plot forward when it would not work out realistically. SC2’s bigger budget just made it more obvious that Blizzard is bad at writing believable characters and plots.

In SC1, Raynor knowingly assists in genocide halfway through the first campaign. He wasn’t a diehard member of the SoK, he was a wanted criminal (unjustly so) serving vigilante justice up to that point. The sudden genocide should have been a deal breaker if he was intended to be the hero, but he accepts it with only meager claims to the contrary. He only rebels when fellow war criminal Kerry is left to die with along with her billions of victims. This makes him look callous and petty, heavily contrasting when he was first introduced as a helpful vigilante rescuing civilians from hostile aliens.

A reboot could fix these problems by writing characters with consistent motivations and behavior rather than forcing them to arbitrarily act in service of the writer’s desired plot. If the characters acted consistently, nay, believably then the events of the games never would have happened. Amon would have been aborted in the womb with a laser spear when the xel’naga used their prophecy powers to foresee his betrayal.

[ragnarok]

This was something I had felt after WoL was out, before Blizzard released ANY info for HotS: that they had the mentality of "Oh everyone is only in it for the multiplayer, so we can make a crap story and no one would notice."

Personally I didn't feel WoL's storyline was crap, it was only HotS that make things really bad