Zerg were better off with the Overmind

[pure.Wasted]

Remember: as far as I'm concerned, you could remove the word "Zerg" from that sentence and get a reasonable statement.

How about "the Zerg Campaign in SC1 is by far the least interesting of all StarCraft campaigns."

Still reasonable? Cause it is exactly that. All three vanilla campaigns could be tremendously improved upon. But that doesn't mean 'The Overmind' isn't also fundamentally, irreversibly flawed.

[Taoo]

I am stilling not bought on the idea of Kerrigan not having her free will. Zasz was constantly suspicious of her and while she could do nothing to hurt the Overmind directly, that doesn't mean she could hurt it indirectly. For example not going to Aiur and distracting Raynor while the Overmind reinforced its position.

Another aspect of it is that I can not see why you are so obsessed with the Overmind being incapable of anything interesting, it made Kerrigan for one. That action goes against the nature which is the Zerg, the single mind, the pure essence. To me, it shows that the Overmind begins to deviate from the Xel'naga's original design.

[Gradius]

But that isn't a decision. Yes, Kerrigan can go about her conquest as she desires, in her own fashion, but ultimately, what this means is that Kerrigan can't make any plot relevant decisions.

Let's go over some of the "irrelevant" decisions Kerrigan made while "brainwashed" in the vanilla zerg campaign:
1) Spared Jim Raynor's life against the Overmind's command that all Terrans should be destroyed.
2) Disobeyed Daggoth's directive to destroy the Garm Brood and went to hunt Tassadar and the Dark Templar instead.
3) Went to increase her powers instead of humbly serving the Overmind, to Zasz's chagrin.
4) In Queen of Blades, she flat out told the Overmind that no, she does not want to go Aiur to lead the battles like the Overmind originally planned, and would rather stay to hunt down the Protoss.
5) In the original game, she effectively got Zasz killed because she fell for Tassadar's diversion (though that was retconned out of queen of blades).

Sure, the Overmind gets to pick what planets to invade, but there's alot more to a StarCraft plot than that. Anything Kerrigan did in Brood War could have been done with the Overmind had the Overmind given Kerrigan control of her own brood and enough freedom, which he already did.

In terms of overall epicness the Overmind takes the cake to be sure, but in terms of overall plot relevance, evolution (both in terms of character and biologically speaking) it was essentially a dead end. It's motives and objectives were clear. It had advanced intellect and a level of awareness far beyond most other sentient beings, but in the end, it was simply a force of nature, a personified hunger. It had a single mandate that dictated everything it did and how it went about it. That and as was mentioned earlier, was more or less unable to directly interact with it's environment and it's enemies on a personal level, and didn't display any particular nuances in it's personality that that would make it easier to relate to. There's only so much you can do with a villain like that.

Nobody is saying to make a campaign centered exclusively around the Overmind, just that it would be cool if he were back. There are endless possibilities to make the story interesting by showing interactions between the Overmind's subordinates.

Why should the writers "work around" a fundamental limitation if the resulting story is going to be predictably uninteresting? The SC1 Zerg Campaign is not interesting. It's no coincidence that its most memorable plot moments are the encounters with Raynor, Zeratul, and Tassadar.

No, I still don't buy this idea that just because of one requirement that characters need to be loyal to a cause will make the story "predictably uninteresting". Nobody has presented any evidence that this is true.

How about "the Zerg Campaign in SC1 is by far the least interesting of all StarCraft campaigns."

The Zerg campaign was one of my favorites. We should do a poll.

[Nicol Bolas]

Let's go over some of the "irrelevant" decisions Kerrigan made while "brainwashed" in the vanilla zerg campaign:
1) Spared Jim Raynor's life against the Overmind's command that all Terrans should be destroyed.
2) Disobeyed Daggoth's directive to destroy the Garm Brood and went to hunt Tassadar and the Dark Templar instead.
3) Went to increase her powers instead of humbly serving the Overmind, to Zasz's chagrin.
4) In Queen of Blades, she flat out told the Overmind that no, she does not want to go Aiur to lead the battles like the Overmind originally planned, and would rather stay to hunt down the Protoss.
5) In the original game, she effectively got Zasz killed because she fell for Tassadar's diversion (though that was retconned out of queen of blades).

2: Obedience to the Overmind does not mean obedience to the Overmind's flunkies.

3: This is what the Overmind wanted, as he said.

4: Not presented in the game.

5: There is at best a tenuous connection between what Kerrigan was doing with Tassadar and Zasz's death. Maybe there was a stronger connection in the book, but it certainly wasn't mentioned in the game.

And even if there was a connection, Kerrigan, like everyone else, thought Cerebrates couldn't die.

[Norfindel]

How about "the Zerg Campaign in SC1 is by far the least interesting of all StarCraft campaigns."

Still reasonable? Cause it is exactly that. All three vanilla campaigns could be tremendously improved upon. But that doesn't mean 'The Overmind' isn't also fundamentally, irreversibly flawed.

You know what's the most dissapointing of the Zerg campaign: Kerrigan. All the work to protect the crysalis, just to have her emerge. Well, at least that would serve to improve the psionic potential of the swarm. Nope, you have to wait to SC2 for that to happend.

Kerrigan pre-infestation is a kinda retarded character. She needs psionics to bitch about Raynor wanting to fuck her (with that ass, she should be used to that, anyways), yet still thrusted Mengsk even when he is going to use a Psi Emitter in Tarsonis, while she's holding the Protoss from engaging the Zerg?

Whatever is she after infestation, it's obviously not what her used to be.

The only way i see to justify her sudden change in BW, is to think that the Overmind foreseen his own fate and that of the Swarm, possibly doing all the Aiur stuff to buy time, and put a lot of "locked" knowledge inside Kerrigan's mind, in an attempt for everyone to overlook her until it was too late, and to give the Swarm time to evolve some psionics, which was the original plan when going against the Terrans.

[Gradius]

Nicol - your rebuttals can all be dismissed since they don't show how any of Kerrigan's decisions don't have an affect on the plot, which is what I was actually replying to. But let's go through them anyway.

2: Obedience to the Overmind does not mean obedience to the Overmind's flunkies.

Daggoth is the Overmind's right hand, and often shares the same mind as him. Now it depends on what your definition of flunky is, but it was made clear in the Overmind's first speech that Daggoth and Zasz are more than menial servants:

"Behold that I shall set you amongst the greatest of my Cerebrates, that you might benefit from their wisdom and experience."

3: This is what the Overmind wanted, as he said.

No. The Overmind simply said that Kerrigan can do what she wants. And Zasz said:
"You know of our grand mission, Kerrigan. Would you put your personal whims before the will of the Overmind?"

Not the kind of behavior you'd expect from a standard "brainwashed" minion who can't make decisions that impact the plot or go against the will of the swarm.

4: Not presented in the game.

Hence why I said "In Queen of Blades." =/

But that's not even the point; this kind of stuff could easily be added to the game to work around the Overmind's existence if people decide to bring him back.

5: There is at best a tenuous connection between what Kerrigan was doing with Tassadar and Zasz's death. Maybe there was a stronger connection in the book, but it certainly wasn't mentioned in the game.

And even if there was a connection, Kerrigan, like everyone else, thought Cerebrates couldn't die.

Again, if Kerrigan was a good infested minion that had no brain of her own, she would have held off. Zasz, actually being one of these good minions, warned Kerrigan against it.

The only way i see to justify her sudden change in BW, is to think that the Overmind foreseen his own fate and that of the Swarm, possibly doing all the Aiur stuff to buy time, and put a lot of "locked" knowledge inside Kerrigan's mind, in an attempt for everyone to overlook her until it was too late, and to give the Swarm time to evolve some psionics, which was the original plan when going against the Terrans.

Yeah, the Brood War Zerg campaign seemed contrived to me, almost just like the writers wanted to make Kerrigan look as good as possible.

[newcomplex]

Yeah, the Brood War Zerg campaign seemed contrived to me, almost just like the writers wanted to make Kerrigan look as good as possible.

Contrived? Hardly, the original campaign was just dumb. What exactly did you accomplish as a player for the first seven missions within the context of those seven missions.

You managed the Overlords affair back home on a character who at the time, held no greater significance at the time until the very last mission, in which case the character you revolved around was ditched.

Do you think Kerrigan wanted to sit home babysitting some zerg nests while the invasion commenced at auir? Doubtful, she was ordered to, and she couldn't disobey. She still has personality, but she doesn't have free will.

Applying this to Starcraft 2, the only possible development of Kerrigan as a character under this framework would be a)She continues to be a reluctant servant of the overmind, ultimately, obeying his orders more or less, in other words, no character development, b)She comes to terms with the overmind of her own accord, which as I said, cheapens the overminds motives, or c)She rebels against the overmind, aka brood war.

[Aldrius]

... Did you use the word "moral" in connection with DuGalle? Are you serious? Did we even play the same game?

I'm pretty serious. I don't think he holds true to any of them, but I believe he has certain ethics that he refuses to compromise. Until he has to anyway. Which is... often.

Yeah, he's totally a moral guy

He has morals. The demonstration wasn't to show off their new weapon, it was to convince Stukov that they were dealing with unstoppable monstrosities, and the thing they were doing required responsibility and effort, and respect. Stukov had kind of a laid back, apathetic attitude about the whole thing. He'd seen all of this in theory.

So Dugalle isn't going 'hey look at these awesome new Zerg things we're going to be controlling'. He's going 'look at these horrible new Zerg things we're going to unleash on fellow human beings'.

And yes, then he flies off without raising a finger to help anybody. He's a hypocrite... but a MORAL hypocrite! Who's bark is more powerful than his bite. Which is probably why he committed suicide.

Ya know, there's someone who might want to know about a Zerg spy in their midst. Maybe the Admiral?! He hates traitors, and you've got plenty of evidence of a traitor in your midst.

What evidence does he have besides conjecture? Besides that, Stukov is the one who's disobeyed orders. He didn't destroy the Psi Disruptor. It's his word against Duran's basically, and Duran has solid proof that Stukov's done something treacherous. Or he would.

I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, I don't think they gave very good reasons for Stukov not to go to Dugalle with this information (especially considering their friendship), but I can believe that there were reasons he didn't go to him.

I'm sorry, but there's no logical way to explain why Stukov didn't go to the Admiral with evidence of Duran's duplicity. The state of the Psi Disruptor wouldn't matter if DuGaulle put a bullet in Duran's head. Going to the Psi Disruptor was Stukov picking up the idiot ball and running a touchdown.

He didn't have evidence! What evidence did he have? That Duran let the Zerg through on Aiur? There's no proof of that. That Duran convinced Dugalle to destroy the Psi Disruptor? How is that treasonous? It was Dugalle's decision.

There is proof however that Stukov rebuilt the psi disruptor on braxis despite direct orders to destroy it.

Hell, actually, the reason Stukov DIDN'T go to the Admiral was probably because he actually trusted him (unlike Dugalle apparently). He didn't think he'd send an assassin after him. I guess he underestimated the moral delusion that Dugalle was under.

It was almost as stupid as what Aldaris did. Almost.

What Aldaris did wasn't stupid either. It was presumptuous. He didn't trust Zeratul or Artanis to do the right thing (or believe that Raszagal was infested) or maybe he believed that they were infested as well.

Or maybe he just hated the Dark Templar and this was the perfect excuse to wipe them out.

There are a hundred reasons Aldaris would not go straight to Zeratul and Artanis to tell them what happened. (Most of them involve Aldaris being a dick) It's pretty unreasonable, but hardly stupid.

Yeah, the Brood War Zerg campaign seemed contrived to me, almost just like the writers wanted to make Kerrigan look as good as possible.

Well... her face is on the front cover. And I don't think it's all that contrived. I think Raynor, Zeratul, Fenix and Mengsk all have perfectly good reasons and motivations for working with her.

[newcomplex]

Or maybe he just hated the Dark Templar and this was the perfect excuse to wipe them out.

Doing this while you're planet is under attack by giant space aliens is kind of the definition of stupid.

[Aldrius]

Doing this while you're planet is under attack by giant space aliens is kind of the definition of stupid.

Perhaps, but I wouldn't describe it as stupid so much as selfish and near-sighted.