Umoja and Kel Morian Combine

[Turalyon]

I kind of buy it (although it does need in-game explanation) because there are those people out there with weird psychology -- the types who sympathize with terrorists over their own nation, despite the fact that said terrorists are really quite open about their destructive ideas. I could see someone deciding that this is just revenge over the Confederacy and want to be like the Protoss. That, and combined with the fact that they would probably like to steal some Protoss tech means that getting close to the 'Toss is a plausible idea.

So you think the Umojan Protectorate think these aliens also care about their politics? Not very "enlightened" of them is it? But then again, only the UP see themselves as enlightened, so yeah, I guess we could interpret this as them being crazy. It's definitely an... interesting take on the UP to say the least.

The lore isn't consistent on what should be key details.

Yeah, my reply was from the perspective of knowing the information we have in the manual only (doubly so, cos I've never cottoned on to any other "outside" Sc lore aside from the short stories). Even then, the manual isn't entirely clear and consistent on things as you well know already.

I guess that the best retcon had to be the solitude of the Terrans before the Great War conflicts.

I like the concept of the Protoss and Zerg being active on the Kropulu Sector for a "longer" period before the spark of the conflict. The story sucks at managing power levels at several points of the conflict. If planets like Tarsonis and Aiur fell so hard and fast, why should any of the races have a chance at dealing with the Zerg. Likewise the Terran's would have stood little chance against either of the aliens.

I kinda vacillate on this at times. I've never really considered the Terrans as ever being equal to the Protoss or Zerg and I think that was part of its charm, at least for me at any rate. It's so common in sci-fi - even around back then - for humans to be at the forefront and being awesome if not all the time but always in the ways it counted (like even despite the grimness of 40K, the humans are pretty boss still). Starcraft was one of those rare sci-fis that wasn't afraid to depict humans as being the messy, petty, weak and largely pathetic creatures we are in the scheme of the larger universe at hand. Them being alone makes you sympathise with them more too, I guess.

When Starcraft came out, I never conceived it as a franchise that would go on perpetually. I always like to consider new IPs as potentially being "one-and-done", so even though the game was billed as a three-way tussle, I never really considered it an equal three-way tussle in lore terms. I think the manual and the game sets this up consistent with the feeling that the Terrans aren't really supposed to be there/are in the wrong place in the wrong time and that they're likely to be pretty much fucked no matter what.

[Mislagnissa]

I guess that the best retcon had to be the solitude of the Terrans before the Great War conflicts.

I like the concept of the Protoss and Zerg being active on the Kropulu Sector for a "longer" period before the spark of the conflict. The story sucks at managing power levels at several points of the conflict. If planets like Tarsonis and Aiur fell so hard and fast, why should any of the races have a chance at dealing with the Zerg. Likewise the Terran's would have stood little chance against either of the aliens.

That’s why my reboot suggestions always include better management of power levels.

Contrive circumstances so that the war has the present forces at roughly equal footing. Then see what happens from there in an organic fashion.

The zerg can’t steamroll terrans because 1) they need the populace unspoiled for processing, and 2) they can’t risk alerting the protoss to the true extent of their power, 3) Project Bellwood invented anti-zerg tech that nullifies key zerg advantages and provoked the zerg to attack openly despite other concerns, etc.

The protoss can’t steamroll terrans or zerg because 1) most of the Conclave doesn’t take the zerg seriously except as part of a political maneuver by the conservatives to reclaim power, 2) the Protoss Empire has other concerns elsewhere in the galaxy, 3) the progressives sabotaged the planet glassers because they want to protect the terrans, 4) the protoss honor and arrogance pulls their punches. Etc.

Yeah, my reply was from the perspective of knowing the information we have in the manual only (doubly so, cos I've never cottoned on to any other "outside" Sc lore aside from the short stories). Even then, the manual isn't entirely clear and consistent on things as you well know already.

The lore was never clearly defined by the time the game came out. It still isn’t clearly defined.


I sympathize with your other criticism and think you make fair points.

I have a few other suggestions for fixing the power level imbalance, but I’m saving those for my original universe. SC has too much baggage attached for us to discuss it without bias.

[sandwich_bird]

I think it can be argued that, in small scale skirmishes (as depicted during gameplay), the power levels are comparable or at the very least, I don't have any problem buying it as such. On the other hand, at a larger scale, technically speaking, this is easily Protoss>Terran>Zerg. I've touched on this before but, at this scale, you start talking about WMDs and both the Protoss and Terrans have some really OP crap. When you can destroy planets and such, the zergs have very little chance. Even their greatest advantage, reproducing quickly and swarming, isn't much of a threat when both the Terrans and Protoss have the ability to make robots. I guess they could give Covid-19 to everyone (why is there no real bio weapons btw? hello?! no "real" zerg virus? really?!)

That's one of the big problem I have with the Starcraft story. There's a lot of "well I know you can do X so why don't you do it?" and you have to use a lot of head canon to answer those. It's written like Harry Potter really. Characters(or factions) can do anything but the author doesn't explore what any of it really means as part of the universe. Instead, the author push the narrative that he wants without bothering with the larger implications of the things he previously introduced. It's not necessarily bad, I like Harry Potter lol, but you do offer a different experience when you write this way. A less serious one and I'll admit that I do a lot of eye rolling when they then try to do a 360 and make it look serious. Like, if they kill off a character and try to make a long dramatic moment, there's less emotional impact because you're just like "well you could have just done xyz and we wouldn't be there, this is dumb. I'm not primed to have those kind of feelings, my suspension of disbelief has left years ago!". Dramatic moments like that aren't really a SC1 story thing though(thankfully), but Blizzard does that stuff A LOT otherwise (looking at WoW >.>).

Anyways, I think it would have been cool actually if the story fully explored macro strategies that the 3 races would have naturally employed. It would not affect the gameplay because there are still reasons to fight at a smaller scale so that wouldn't be a problem. In fact, it could have given a pretty nice flair to the mission design.

[Mislagnissa]

I think it can be argued that, in small scale skirmishes (as depicted during gameplay), the power levels are comparable or at the very least, I don't have any problem buying it as such. On the other hand, at a larger scale, technically speaking, this is easily Protoss>Terran>Zerg. I've touched on this before but, at this scale, you start talking about WMDs and both the Protoss and Terrans have some really OP crap. When you can destroy planets and such, the zergs have very little chance. Even their greatest advantage, reproducing quickly and swarming, isn't much of a threat when both the Terrans and Protoss have the ability to make robots. I guess they could give Covid-19 to everyone (why is there no real bio weapons btw? hello?! no "real" zerg virus? really?!)

That's one of the big problem I have with the Starcraft story. There's a lot of "well I know you can do X so why don't you do it?" and you have to use a lot of head canon to answer those. It's written like Harry Potter really. Characters(or factions) can do anything but the author doesn't explore what any of it really means as part of the universe. Instead, the author push the narrative that he wants without bothering with the larger implications of the things he previously introduced. It's not necessarily bad, I like Harry Potter lol, but you do offer a different experience when you write this way. A less serious one and I'll admit that I do a lot of eye rolling when they then try to do a 360 and make it look serious. Like, if they kill off a character and try to make a long dramatic moment, there's less emotional impact because you're just like "well you could have just done xyz and we wouldn't be there, this is dumb". Dramatic moments like that aren't really a SC1 story thing though(thankfully), but Blizzard does that stuff A LOT otherwise (looking at WoW >.>).

Anyways, I think it would have been cool actually if the story fully explored macro strategies that the 3 races would have naturally employed. It would not affect the gameplay because there are still reasons to fight at a smaller scale so that wouldn't be a problem. In fact, it could have given a pretty nice flair to the mission design.

The zerg aren’t inferior to the terrans like you claim. They have technobabble!

List of feats in lore: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.co...e-thread.4613/

[Nissa]

So you think the Umojan Protectorate think these aliens also care about their politics? Not very "enlightened" of them is it? But then again, only the UP see themselves as enlightened, so yeah, I guess we could interpret this as them being crazy. It's definitely an... interesting take on the UP to say the least.

Well, it's kind of the inverse. Like, the UP would see the Confeds as politically embroiled, self-seeking tyrants, and so it is therefore "enlightened" to destroy the Confederates to find a better way of life. Versus how the KMC would only hate the Confeds specifically for their domination, less so their specific politics. Sort of like, the Confederacy is an unlikable government. The KMC would be the reformers of the government, and the UP would be the revolutionaries, except more focused on going off to do their own thing.

I kinda vacillate on this at times. I've never really considered the Terrans as ever being equal to the Protoss or Zerg and I think that was part of its charm, at least for me at any rate. It's so common in sci-fi - even around back then - for humans to be at the forefront and being awesome if not all the time but always in the ways it counted (like even despite the grimness of 40K, the humans are pretty boss still). Starcraft was one of those rare sci-fis that wasn't afraid to depict humans as being the messy, petty, weak and largely pathetic creatures we are in the scheme of the larger universe at hand. Them being alone makes you sympathise with them more too, I guess.

When Starcraft came out, I never conceived it as a franchise that would go on perpetually. I always like to consider new IPs as potentially being "one-and-done", so even though the game was billed as a three-way tussle, I never really considered it an equal three-way tussle in lore terms. I think the manual and the game sets this up consistent with the feeling that the Terrans aren't really supposed to be there/are in the wrong place in the wrong time and that they're likely to be pretty much fucked no matter what.

I agree with this strongly, and probably this was the idea from the get go. The Terrans are not the strongest, and if it was PvT war then the Protoss would win. This also plays into UP being impressed with the Protoss, as they are so technologically advanced and powerful that many people would want to get on their good graces.

But that aside, it makes the human struggle more interesting if we aren't on top. Not to mention it means that we have to make peace with the Protoss, because we can't beat them, except by luck. I've always seen the story as ending with a negotiated settlement somehow, because it's the most logical for all parties concerned (except Zerg, naturally). This is of course the problem for game writers, as how are you supposed to have a game of three factions fighting one another when it only makes sense for the P/T to fight the Zerg and not each other? Which is why I feel the best end for SC would have been a second expansion pack for SC vanilla to end all the major plot points, and then SC:G would be a fine first person shooter, where the conflict could be smaller scale and make sense for the type of game it was.

[Turalyon]

That’s why my reboot suggestions always include better management of power levels.

Contrive circumstances so that the war has the present forces at roughly equal footing. Then see what happens from there in an organic fashion.

The zerg can’t steamroll terrans because 1) they need the populace unspoiled for processing, and 2) they can’t risk alerting the protoss to the true extent of their power, 3) Project Bellwood invented anti-zerg tech that nullifies key zerg advantages and provoked the zerg to attack openly despite other concerns, etc.

The protoss can’t steamroll terrans or zerg because 1) most of the Conclave doesn’t take the zerg seriously except as part of a political maneuver by the conservatives to reclaim power, 2) the Protoss Empire has other concerns elsewhere in the galaxy, 3) the progressives sabotaged the planet glassers because they want to protect the terrans, 4) the protoss honor and arrogance pulls their punches. Etc.

It's curious that all these purported contrivances to prevent the steamrolling of Terrans are all about imposing limits on the power of the Zerg and the Protoss rather than addressing the real issue: that the Terrans are just plain weak and few in number. Since you are doing a reboot that is not beholden to the things setup even in the manual, you might as well make the Terrans actually more powerful/larger straight-up than what they were originally. That way, you don't need to rely on artifice so much in general by gimping and making excuses for the Zerg and Protoss in order to justify the continued Terran presence. One example of how you could approach that is to look at how the TEC faction in Sins of the Solar Empire are presented as (yeah, I know Sins isn't really a game about it's lore but whatever) - they're initially weak because they're unprepared for war being traders and all but they're also the largest faction so they can weather the attacks of the other two and are slowly adapting to the situation eventually becoming something like an awakening sleeping giant that could give serious pause to the others. Sure, it does mean you have to sacrifice the Terran "vulnerability" angle in the long-term but it's the only real answer to maintaining the ongoing "equal" three-way tussle you want.

I think it can be argued that, in small scale skirmishes (as depicted during gameplay), the power levels are comparable or at the very least, I don't have any problem buying it as such. On the other hand, at a larger scale, technically speaking, this is easily Protoss>Terran>Zerg. I've touched on this before but, at this scale, you start talking about WMDs and both the Protoss and Terrans have some really OP crap. When you can destroy planets and such, the zergs have very little chance. Even their greatest advantage, reproducing quickly and swarming, isn't much of a threat when both the Terrans and Protoss have the ability to make robots. I guess they could give Covid-19 to everyone (why is there no real bio weapons btw? hello?! no "real" zerg virus? really?!)

I'm sure it won't be that hard to conceive of a Zerg-based WMD since one just needs to look at the Defiler skill, Plague. One can imagine making a more deadly and larger version of that and presto. Afterall, one of the Zerg conceits is that they're on par with technology and don't need it (since otherwise you'd think they'd incorporate it and become at least cybernetic organisms already). Also, the Zerg have a brood based on terror tactics which implies they have an understanding of unconventional tactics.

That's one of the big problem I have with the Starcraft story. There's a lot of "well I know you can do X so why don't you do it?" and you have to use a lot of head canon to answer those.

Yeah, but that's a problem of any space opera sci-fi in general though. If you can have teleporters, instant matter generation and FTL technology, you wouldn't really need ground armies to begin with let alone ship battles. Starcraft makes it worse what with the Protoss being capable of magic mind powers and time manipulation...

Like, if they kill off a character and try to make a long dramatic moment, there's less emotional impact because you're just like "well you could have just done xyz and we wouldn't be there, this is dumb. I'm not primed to have those kind of feelings, my suspension of disbelief has left years ago!". Dramatic moments like that aren't really a SC1 story thing though(thankfully), but Blizzard does that stuff A LOT otherwise (looking at WoW >.>).

This is exactly how I feel about Sc2's big character deaths, especially Zeratul (might as well chuck in D3's Cain death, too, while we're on a roll). Those death's impact are largely dependent on the nostalgia the character evokes but since Z was nothing like previous the Z in SC1/BW, there was a huge disconnect... for me at least.

the UP would be the revolutionaries, except more focused on going off to do their own thing.

Well, they already had that kind of thing in the Sons of Korhal...

This also plays into UP being impressed with the Protoss, as they are so technologically advanced and powerful that many people would want to get on their good graces.

Yeah, but if we're from the position that the first contact with the Protoss was with them dealing death on Chau Sara unannounced (rather than just saying hello instead for example), there is no way in heck the UP would ever think they have benevolent tendencies.

Not to mention it means that we have to make peace with the Protoss, because we can't beat them, except by luck.

I dunno about this. I don't think the Terrans "have" to make peace with the Protoss. I like the prospect of the Terrans generally just being forevermore belligerent due to and in response to the Protoss' burning of Chau Sara, since it's a very human flaw to hold grudges/see opposition everywhere and to rail against it (a pertinent line from Duke: "I'm going to have to assume that was a hostile response" just sprang into mind as I wrote this). That's not to say that there are some human faction that do want peace with the Protoss (like the UP) but given how the Terrans are depicted and our general history (both in real life and the the fictional version), Terrans being the ones to maintain antagonistic relations in general feels like a more honest depiction.

[sandwich_bird]

The zerg aren’t inferior to the terrans like you claim. They have technobabble!

List of feats in lore: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.co...e-thread.4613/

I'm sure it won't be that hard to conceive of a Zerg-based WMD since one just needs to look at the Defiler skill, Plague. One can imagine making a more deadly and larger version of that and presto. Afterall, one of the Zerg conceits is that they're on par with technology and don't need it (since otherwise you'd think they'd incorporate it and become at least cybernetic organisms already). Also, the Zerg have a brood based on terror tactics which implies they have an understanding of unconventional tactics.

I mean, yeah I guess the 3 power levels are pretty much infinity vs infinity vs infinity I was placing Zerg last mostly because, contrary to the other 2, they don't have a weapon that can annihilate everything in an insane aoe area. Planet destroying stuff. They don't even chug asteroids at their enemies like in Starship Troopers. The plague or equivalent are indeed their biggest weapons but the destruction of a planet cracker or an apocalypse missile volley is an entire other level.

Yeah, but that's a problem of any space opera sci-fi in general though. If you can have teleporters, instant matter generation and FTL technology, you wouldn't really need ground armies to begin with let alone ship battles. Starcraft makes it worse what with the Protoss being capable of magic mind powers and time manipulation...

I watched the Expense not too long ago and I thought their depiction was fair. I don't know if you know anything about the show or books(which I didn't read), but even though everyone can destroy everyone else, they all have decent reasons to fight the way they do. Mind you, there's other MAJOR problems with the show's story but otherwise the universe is fairly believable.

This is exactly how I feel about Sc2's big character deaths, especially Zeratul (might as well chuck in D3's Cain death, too, while we're on a roll). Those death's impact are largely dependent on the nostalgia the character evokes but since Z was nothing like previous the Z in SC1/BW, there was a huge disconnect... for me at least.

Not just you! It felt pretty dumb overall.

[Turalyon]

I mean, yeah I guess the 3 power levels are pretty much infinity vs infinity vs infinity I was placing Zerg last mostly because, contrary to the other 2, they don't have a weapon that can annihilate everything in an insane aoe area. Planet destroying stuff. They don't even chug asteroids at their enemies like in Starship Troopers. The plague or equivalent are indeed their biggest weapons but the destruction of a planet cracker or an apocalypse missile volley is an entire other level.

Don't forget the stuff that goes into Scourge and Infested Terrans. Whatever is in them can do immense damage, so I'm sure the Zerg can upsize that to be an effective WMD. Also, since the Overmind could create wormholes to move the entire Zerg Swarm so I can imagine it potentially creating wormholes to redirect asteroids if it wanted to. Just because we didn't see it, doesn't mean it couldn't...

I watched the Expense not too long ago and I thought their depiction was fair. I don't know if you know anything about the show or books(which I didn't read), but even though everyone can destroy everyone else, they all have decent reasons to fight the way they do. Mind you, there's other MAJOR problems with the show's story but otherwise the universe is fairly believable.

I've been meaning to watch it but keep getting sidetracked and not wanting to get into a series that may end up being cancelled/incomplete (which was a high probability for this show up until recently).

My faith in TV sci-fi has waned a little bit lately given Altered Carbon Season 2 and Star Trek: Picard weren't very good. I'm kinda hoping Westworld Season 3 (will start that soon) doesn't suck.

[The_Blade]

I kinda vacillate on this at times. I've never really considered the Terrans as ever being equal to the Protoss or Zerg and I think that was part of its charm, at least for me at any rate. It's so common in sci-fi - even around back then - for humans to be at the forefront and being awesome if not all the time but always in the ways it counted (like even despite the grimness of 40K, the humans are pretty boss still). Starcraft was one of those rare sci-fis that wasn't afraid to depict humans as being the messy, petty, weak and largely pathetic creatures we are in the scheme of the larger universe at hand. Them being alone makes you sympathise with them more too, I guess.

When Starcraft came out, I never conceived it as a franchise that would go on perpetually. I always like to consider new IPs as potentially being "one-and-done", so even though the game was billed as a three-way tussle, I never really considered it an equal three-way tussle in lore terms. I think the manual and the game sets this up consistent with the feeling that the Terrans aren't really supposed to be there/are in the wrong place in the wrong time and that they're likely to be pretty much fucked no matter what.

Moreover, the Zerg are not the evolutionary threat at the same height as any of the other hive civilizations in sci-fi. Hell, that's a worse burden at a storytelling level than writing a big brain sentient being. Only the Halo series did a decent job narrating that overshoot of a concept. The fact that the Zerg "decolonize" a planet after the hive mind leaves is far a better narrative concept for an organic space faring civilization. At a core level StarCraft is a very well stablished three-way turf, as a concept. The execution has been crap for the majority of the cannon content.

But that aside, it makes the human struggle more interesting if we aren't on top. Not to mention it means that we have to make peace with the Protoss, because we can't beat them, except by luck. I've always seen the story as ending with a negotiated settlement somehow, because it's the most logical for all parties concerned (except Zerg, naturally). This is of course the problem for game writers, as how are you supposed to have a game of three factions fighting one another when it only makes sense for the P/T to fight the Zerg and not each other? Which is why I feel the best end for SC would have been a second expansion pack for SC vanilla to end all the major plot points, and then SC:G would be a fine first person shooter, where the conflict could be smaller scale and make sense for the type of game it was.

Instead we got a very ironic Brood War. Episode 1 and 3 were on point on what you've said, and are the anchor points of why Misla is so aberrant towards the story. Instead of having the Terran and Protoss factions align against a common enemy we have a division within the Zerg force, ilmao. The Dominion was a unified front, but they get sabotaged by the UED for no better reason than to exmachina a Zerg Overmind. Later, the dominion is demoted to mustache twirling villain, while it always had the potential of establishing a morality duel for the player.

That's one of the big problem I have with the Starcraft story. There's a lot of "well I know you can do X so why don't you do it?" and you have to use a lot of head canon to answer those. It's written like Harry Potter really. Characters(or factions) can do anything but the author doesn't explore what any of it really means as part of the universe. Instead, the author push the narrative that he wants without bothering with the larger implications of the things he previously introduced. It's not necessarily bad, I like Harry Potter lol, but you do offer a different experience when you write this way. A less serious one and I'll admit that I do a lot of eye rolling when they then try to do a 360 and make it look serious. Like, if they kill off a character and try to make a long dramatic moment, there's less emotional impact because you're just like "well you could have just done xyz and we wouldn't be there, this is dumb. I'm not primed to have those kind of feelings, my suspension of disbelief has left years ago!". Dramatic moments like that aren't really a SC1 story thing though(thankfully), but Blizzard does that stuff A LOT otherwise (looking at WoW >.>).

Anyways, I think it would have been cool actually if the story fully explored macro strategies that the 3 races would have naturally employed. It would not affect the gameplay because there are still reasons to fight at a smaller scale so that wouldn't be a problem. In fact, it could have given a pretty nice flair to the mission design.

100% agree. We've rebuilt much of the universe several times to explain all the mombo jombo.

SCBW suffered due to the lack of technology, but I believe it's heavily implied that the Zerg can infiltrate any space station or planet with either small numbers or just a cloud of billions of invaders. SC2's story then suffered due to the excess of technology, but with clear engine limits. I want my star battles with a layout similar to a hybrid between Sins of the Solar Empire and Planetary Annihilation. I will not accept anything less out of SC3. I want ground battles, ocean/ice/fire worlds, orbit battles with hybrid combat between surface and orbit, system battles, asteroid mining, etc. If the whole campaign can exist on a persistent galactic conflict map with ever-moving forces and skirmishes loading independent maps, we will have reached the height of my expectations.

I watched the Expense not too long ago and I thought their depiction was fair. I don't know if you know anything about the show or books(which I didn't read), but even though everyone can destroy everyone else, they all have decent reasons to fight the way they do. Mind you, there's other MAJOR problems with the show's story but otherwise the universe is fairly believable.

The story is not perfect, and it suffers from some form of godlike protagonists. However, I'm certain my suspense of disbelief is healthy because the core ideas that run the show's conflict are all based on a very solid universe they've created. The whole reality of the show stems from the main theme which is the fragility of human beings in space. There's a strict coherence in any technological concept that's designed to help the humans live in space. The space explored in the series is also tiny compared to other space operas, so I think it's not a good example to trump the problems of scale introduced by any of the tech Tura mentioned. The real question to burn down any space opera is, "What if I strap a nuke and a teleporter together and repeat this process thousands of times?"; which to an extent was, as a variation, the same question that created so much chaos among the Star Wars fandom after The Last Jedi.

[Mislagnissa]

It's curious that all these purported contrivances to prevent the steamrolling of Terrans are all about imposing limits on the power of the Zerg and the Protoss rather than addressing the real issue: that the Terrans are just plain weak and few in number. Since you are doing a reboot that is not beholden to the things setup even in the manual, you might as well make the Terrans actually more powerful/larger straight-up than what they were originally. That way, you don't need to rely on artifice so much in general by gimping and making excuses for the Zerg and Protoss in order to justify the continued Terran presence. One example of how you could approach that is to look at how the TEC faction in Sins of the Solar Empire are presented as (yeah, I know Sins isn't really a game about it's lore but whatever) - they're initially weak because they're unprepared for war being traders and all but they're also the largest faction so they can weather the attacks of the other two and are slowly adapting to the situation eventually becoming something like an awakening sleeping giant that could give serious pause to the others. Sure, it does mean you have to sacrifice the Terran "vulnerability" angle in the long-term but it's the only real answer to maintaining the ongoing "equal" three-way tussle you want.

"Ongoing" is a relative term. I do expect that the conflict would end at some point. I'm not trying to copy 40k's ten millennia of war. I intend the timeline between the start of the wars and humanity's potential extinction be planned out in advance, rather than being dragged out for indefinite periods of in-universe time. I don't want the wars to last more than a couple decades total before ending.

I mean, yeah I guess the 3 power levels are pretty much infinity vs infinity vs infinity I was placing Zerg last mostly because, contrary to the other 2, they don't have a weapon that can annihilate everything in an insane aoe area. Planet destroying stuff. They don't even chug asteroids at their enemies like in Starship Troopers. The plague or equivalent are indeed their biggest weapons but the destruction of a planet cracker or an apocalypse missile volley is an entire other level.

The zerg can generate wormholes. It's not difficult to imagine how to use wormholes as weapons.

Instead we got a very ironic Brood War. Episode 1 and 3 were on point on what you've said, and are the anchor points of why Misla is so aberrant towards the story. Instead of having the Terran and Protoss factions align against a common enemy we have a division within the Zerg force, ilmao. The Dominion was a unified front, but they get sabotaged by the UED for no better reason than to exmachina a Zerg Overmind. Later, the dominion is demoted to mustache twirling villain, while it always had the potential of establishing a morality duel for the player.

I think you meant antagonistic . I'm antagonistic to the story because of the excessive focus on Raynor, Mengsk, and Kerry to the exclusion of narrative cohesion, world building, the other political actors setup thus far, and any other possible narratives that could be occurring elsewhere in the setting. The Confederacy, Overmind, and Protoss Empire were setup as these big organizations equivalent in importance to the Alliance and Horde in WC and given numerous hints teased about their deeper cultures, then immediately killed off to promote Raynor, Mengsk, and Kerry to unearned and uninteresting positions of power over the entire setting.

I was expecting something like Starship Troopers or The Vang, not a soap opera about bug girl.

---

This thread is about dissatisfaction that UP and KMC weren't used, right? I feel the same way about the Confederacy, Overmind/cerebrates, and Protoss Empire.

The Confederacy was technically an alliance of many colonies, each with their own cultures and militias. The Protoss Empire was an alliance of many tribes, each with varying beliefs and varying conflict over their policies towards themselves and other species. The Zerg Swarm was composed of countless broods, each with its own specialization and personality.

There was so room to explore them, much less other groups like the pirate militias, the dark tribes, and the "escaped breeders" briefly mentioned in the Fenris brood bio.