[Finale Spoiler] Finale discussion

[Drake Clawfang]

And why would he? You think Tychus or Horner would buy that a random Protoss came aboard the ship completely undetected and told Raynor that Kerrigan couldn't die? Do you think that they would have given a damn what this Protoss said even if they believed him?

No; it's best that Raynor stayed quiet about that one.

Um....Raynor *does* tell them that. Dunno about Tychus but he definitely tells Tosh and Matt outright "Zeratul's crystal showed me a vision of the apocalypse, Kerrigan's the key to stopping it." But they never discuss this further, once you finish the Zeratul campaign the prophecy plays no role in the main story.

[unentschieden]

No it doesn't. There have been plenty of great games that completely separate gameplay from story; they manage to tell a good story too. Now, it might make for better storytelling if they integrated them, but nothing stops you from having them be fairly separate.

Expect then it would have worked even better as Movie. Yeah it can be acceptable but doing it like that doesn´t use advantage of the Medium. It´s the same distinction that you don´t write a book like you´d write a Movie.

I´m curious which Games with a clear Story and Gameplay distinction you consider great.

I'm trying to see where this has anything to do with what happened in SC2, but I'm not getting it.

Decision making is decision making, whether it is in a mission or out of one. Decision making is the core of gameplay, so any time that the user makes a choice of relevance (ie: has consequences), it constitutes gameplay.

The point is immersion. That is what Games have over Movies or other Passive Storytelling. The Hillsbrand segment in WC3 worked better as Mission where you control Arthas running around killing Civilians than it would have as cutscene. Because it´s YOU the player DOING it.

I´d argue that the last scene could have worked better as "epiloge" mission where you infiltrate the hive cluster, fight some Zerg that somehow survived and at the end where you find the helpless Kerrigan Tychus switches sides (with some pals maybe?) and turns into a "bossfight". Mostly like the "Belly of the Beast" Mission. That way you both reinforce Tychus as friend and usefull Ally because he is a usefull Unit that you use a lot and also the tragic situation at the end because the Player gets a Game Over if you don´t kill him.

There are few storyrelevant actions you DO as Player in WoL. On the top of my mind I can think of taking risks to save isolated Dominion Troops.

You can easily justify that on gameplay grounds too. Like, you know, "We want the player to play all the missions so that they have all the units before the drop on Char." Indeed, it seems more likely that it was a story decision to make various mission threads optional. Namely that the other missions don't lead to artifacts or connect to artifact missions, so all the player needs to do is complete the artifact missions.

See, the problem with the story isn't the mission separation. It's the separation of the storylines that connect the missions.

Take BioWare games, for example. The way they handle subquests and main quests is clever. In order to keep the main quest well-paced, you have to keep coming back to it. You have to keep progressing with it. Therefore, when you get dropped in a new area, you're quickly told what your main quest objectives are. However, if you visit the local town (or whatever) and talk to people, you'll get a number of side quests.

The resolution of most of these side quests requires going into one or more dungeons. The same dungeons that completing the main quests requires you to go in. In short, the side quests do not inhibit the progression of the main quest; you happen to be in the neighborhood on business, so you do them.

By segregating side quests from the main quests, such that progression in a side quest doesn't help your main quest progression at all, you lose pacing. You don't talk about the main quest much anymore; it drops into the background.

You can imagine that the original 10-mission version of WoL was basically the artifact missions and maybe one or two of the sidequest missions. Maybe some of the Horner ones and one or two from Hanson and Tosh. Perhaps there were only 4 artifacts instead of 5. Whatever.

When they expanded it, they expanded it wrong in terms of story. They didn't want to change their story, so instead they just made larger, more involved side-stories. That's not the way to tell a bigger story; that just tells a wider, more diffuse one. The side quests needed to be involved in the main quest to greater degrees.

Yes, that is my point. But I don´t think including all the Plot was the mistake. More Exposition isn´t necessearly diffusive, it can also be great Character develoment. Expect the Protoss part (outside maybe the Selendis part "Raynor is friends with the Protoss" is NEVER relevant to the Plot) none of the "extra" Plot is irrelevant to Raynors character, refer to my earlier Post.

[Freespace]

once you finish the Zeratul campaign the prophecy plays no role in the main story.

This is because of the "non-linear" approach. If it were good old linear, Blizzard would have complete control over the story and everything would have a consequence in the story. The producers would know what happened already in order to implement them into the cutscenes / conversations. Everything could have weight, at the small price that we don't get to choose the order we take the missions in.

[BusinessMonkey]

This is because of the "non-linear" approach. If it were good old linear, Blizzard would have complete control over the story and everything would have a consequence in the story. The producers would know what happened already in order to implement them into the cutscenes / conversations. Everything could have weight, at the small price that we don't get to choose the order we take the missions in.

Agree totally, I just can imagine Blizz implementing that choose it yourself well, regardless of always being able to tell a great story.
But in WoL, I simply can't understand how they weren't able...

[Gurluash]

If you complete the secret mission the prophecy is mentioned again though.

[Nicol Bolas]

The point is immersion.

You're not going to get immersion in an RTS anyway; it's too removed and distant from the action. You will never "be" Arthas, because you're not always controlling him. Or even usually controlling him. Your controls are very indirect: you tell units to attack and they do so at their leisure.

The very nature of RTS gameplay itself stands between you and immersion.

The Hillsbrand segment in WC3 worked better as Mission where you control Arthas running around killing Civilians than it would have as cutscene. Because it´s YOU the player DOING it.

Um, no, it's not. I'd argue that the aid-Selendis mission is more effective because you choose to do it. Whereas in the WC3 case, the crappy writers are forcing you to play through a scene where your clearly deranged commander has decided to do something horrible, and you have to go along for the ride if you want to keep playing the game.

I´d argue that the last scene could have worked better as "epiloge" mission where you infiltrate the hive cluster, fight some Zerg that somehow survived and at the end where you find the helpless Kerrigan Tychus switches sides (with some pals maybe?) and turns into a "bossfight".

Except that wouldn't make any sense. All Tychus needs is a clear line of sight to Kerrigan. The longer the fight goes on, the less likely Tychus would be to not kill her. And line-of-sight mechanics don't play well with StarCraft gameplay.

Oh, and seriously, Stop Randomly Capitalizing Letters Of Random Words. "Mission," "Exposition," and "Storyline" are not words that get capitalized.

This is because of the "non-linear" approach.

No it isn't! Again, BioWare. All it takes is good non-linear writing and storytelling.

[Pandonetho]

You're not going to get immersion in an RTS anyway; it's too removed and distant from the action. You will never "be" Arthas, because you're not always controlling him. Or even usually controlling him. Your controls are very indirect: you tell units to attack and they do so at their leisure.

The very nature of RTS gameplay itself stands between you and immersion

Is immersion always required for a good story?

Didn't you say homeworld had great story telling?

[Nicol Bolas]

Is immersion always required for a good story?

No, but he was talking about it.

[spychi]

It may be cliche, but I'd like to see sort of a Mass Effect 2 route where you get to choose to become more human-like or more infested and have the decisions in game reflect it in your character. Of course something like that would probably have to end up having both versions of Kerrigan die or something so the timelines both end with the same final result.

Blizzard's story-telling won't go that way for two reasons
1. the said that they don't want to retcon the story told here and there
2. their story-telling is predictable

[unentschieden]

You're not going to get immersion in an RTS anyway; it's too removed and distant from the action. You will never "be" Arthas, because you're not always controlling him. Or even usually controlling him. Your controls are very indirect: you tell units to attack and they do so at their leisure.

WC3 is actually very good about having you always control the protagonist of the current plotline. "Immersion" doesn´t mean convincing people that they ARE the protagonist but to get the player to identify with the protagonist, his goals feelings and methods. The "silent protagonist" ISN´T the pinnacle of immersion.

The very nature of RTS gameplay itself stands between you and immersion.

It does but Blizzard decided to go with a character driven Story nonetheless. Unlike WC3 however they can´t use the characters as Units in the game which weakens this approach. The Starcraft Storyline is driven by very few Characters (Raynor, Kerrigan, Mengsk, Tassadar, Zeratul...) but the Gameplay events are all about bigger conflicts - the ones small enough happen to be the ones where you DO get to control of Raynor himself.

It was bought up before but for a (non-RPG hybrid) RTS I think the Homeworld aproach works better. You are identifying not with certain characters but with your civilzation of choice as a whole. You can count the amount of characters with individual names in the Homeworld universe on one hand.

Um, no, it's not. I'd argue that the aid-Selendis mission is more effective because you choose to do it. Whereas in the WC3 case, the crappy writers are forcing you to play through a scene where your clearly deranged commander has decided to do something horrible, and you have to go along for the ride if you want to keep playing the game.

I wasn´t comparing Hilsbrand with Haven. Haven DOES work well in terms of storytelling because it´s the players choice but they shoot themselves in the foot in the same move by forbidding themselves to USE the character development in the rest of the campaign.

The point of the Hilsbrand level was to develop Arthas character more, in this special case his descent into madness. You can argue that "Arthas turns evil" is bad plot, but making it a mission wasn´t bad storytelling.

Except that wouldn't make any sense. All Tychus needs is a clear line of sight to Kerrigan. The longer the fight goes on, the less likely Tychus would be to not kill her. And line-of-sight mechanics don't play well with StarCraft gameplay.

That is a missiondesign question. There are plenty ways to circumvent the issue in "Gameplay logic", even better than cutscenes (the concept of HP anyone?).

The question in this case is simply that you can tell the plot "Tychus tries to shoot Kerrigan but Raynor protects her by killing Tychus" in a number of ways. In this case it was a cutscene and text (T rating meant that Tychuses death had to be off-screen, so he is confiremd dead on the singleplayer splashpage)
My argument is simply that it would have worked better as gameplay event.