[Finale Spoiler] Finale discussion

[unentschieden]

Except that's not what I said, is it? You're the one saying that I'm turning Kerrigan into the Overmind. You're the one who's further saying that the Overmind is a "non-character" (despite the fact that he has done character things).

If you're going to argue, you could at least argue my actual points, not some strawman you erect for yourself.

The overmind and your version of Kerrigan have one purpose: to give the Swarms will to grow and evolve a voice. In fact that is what WoL Kerrigan does, she doesn´t act to finish her revenge against her enemys, she protects herself and the swarm against the Artifact.

You asked specifically to not include those things, like "justifications" and whatever. So I gave you a specific sequence of events. ie: what happens.

With "justifications" I was thinking about handwaywy plotpoints like Kerrigan eating infant Cerebrates to gain power.

What does it mean? It means that there's something out there beyond human reason, beyond human moral law, beyond human thought. It means that Kerrigan has willingly given up her humanity to be something more. It means that she has become something new and incomprehensible.

That is what she does since the Broodwars after she had her revenge.

If you want a more "human" take, it's about a person finding herself and her place in the universe. And what one has to be willing to give up in order to attain it.
You could say that Kerrigan, Queen of Blades was a flawed creation because of her humanity. Because she was forced into. But Sarah Kerrigan choosing to give up her humanity, choosing to become fully one with the Swarm gives birth to a new kind of being.

That is the Arthats story over WC3 and WC3 TFT. Yeah it´s better that Arthas isn´t killed and resurrected as evil zombie in WC3 but that he chose his way. Fine but are you shure that is the Story SC2 should tell?

That's not what a plot is; that's what a story is. Story is three things: Theme, Plot, and Character. Plot is "what happened". Character is "why did it happen". Theme is "what does it mean?"

Exactly which is why I´m arguning that "Kerrigan keeps doing what she does since the end of SC:BW" isn´t much of a story.

[JellyKing]

Ahoy,

I'm new to the forum and have been following various discussions on what people made of the WoL ending. I've been reading through this one, but I can't keep track of every detail, so excuse me if I say things that everyone else has moved on from.

What brought me to the forums was an interest in whether many other players had been as disappointed with the ending of WoL as I was. I think we've all universally agreed that the gameplay was excellent. While I was playing, I didn't at first care too much for the lack of story progression. However, once about halfway through (knowing that there were 26 missions), I started wondering when anything was going to happen. Then, suddenly the revolution took second place after Raynor makes his deal with Valerian (unlikely boarding, indeed...) and then we're on Char. To be honest, my expectation was that the artifact wasn't going to do what Valerian said, only knock the Zerg sideways. I didn't think Kerrigan would be de-infested. I thought that was too lame to be possible but the idea fit in as a way of getting mopey-drunk-former-lover-Raynor to join Valerian's plan. But then... well, we saw the ending, and have opinions about it.

Now, my opinions are going to come from a slightly different angle. Well, I hope so, because if I didn't think I could bring something new, I wouldn't bother posting. First up, I don't think Blizzard stories are massively original. But games have the advantage of active participation, so you can rehash a basic story well and make a great game. Descent: Freespace springs to mind. You're in a stalemate was against an alien race, then another dazzlingly more powerful one appears from nowhere, so you have to band together with your old enemies. Not massively original, but the execution made it a great experience to me. So I won't criticize Blizzard on any front for a lack of creative overall settings.

Secondly, I don't support the claim that the SC universe has suddenly become more fantasy-based than it was before. In particular, a Xel'naga artifact that cripples the Zerg is not new. Did no-one play the Protoss campaign in BW? Because I'm pretty sure that ended by activating a Xel'naga temple using crystals, and the temple's power wiped the Zerg off Shakuras.

SC1 worked well for a few reasons for me, even if it wasn't necessarily a brilliant story. The first is that the characters fleshed out (to various degrees) during the story. I think this has already been discussed quite a lot, so unless I'm called upon to do so, I won't start quoting what I base that opinion on.

Why didn't that happen in WoL? Pretty simple: less happens. I don't think it's any more complicated than that. Characters develop more through events than conversations, IMO. I think there's broad agreement that the mission design was fun but almost completely filled with fillers that didn't advance the story much at all.

The second reason I think SC1 felt more epic was because it was immersive. How so? Well, more happened during the missions, even while I still had control. Kerrigan being taken from underneath me wasn't a cutsequence: I watched the Zerg burst out while I still had control of the units. I made the right-clicks that saw Fenix die. In addition, my actions carried immediate consequence into the next mission. If one was bringing a hero to an installation entrance, the next was exploring inside, and discovering things (something like the secret mission in WoL, to be fair). If in one mission I battle with expedient allies against a greater foe, then in the next I was betraying those allies in the aftermath.

The various elements of WoL that "un-immersed" us have also been discussed, so I'm not re-hashing that debate. I'll just say I felt distinctly more immersed in SC1. I kept playing WoL because I wanted to see what happened next, but that was driven by my 12-year wait from an epic I enjoyed. Yes, some of the lines in WoL were cringeworthy, but I agree that many of us would have overlooked that in light of a more immersive story. (Although "Some things are just worth fighting for" as well as Zeratul's Yoda-lines had me raising an eyebrow at the writing...) Point is there were lousy lines in SC1 too.

So that's two places where SC1 and BW succeeded and WoL has failed. There are also a few ways in which WoL made strange deviations.

Firstly, the alterations to the character's were completely unwarranted. A less controversial example is Mengsk. He's a cunning little rat in SC and BW but his depiction in WoL is very different. Raynor has very much washed out compared to the guy I last saw a decade ago when he swore he'd kill Kerrigan. I was pretty sure he was over her at that point. Guess not. But arguably the most disappointing was Kerrigan. The "Queen B!+$@ of the Universe" was not frightening at all. I should need to be told a level 12 psychic has been detected: the events in the game up to that point should make me aware of how powerful, deceptive, and ruthless she is.

Secondly, the writers seemed to be looking for material in stories that have been concluded. Guys, the Overmind should be dead. Not twitching four years later. Nor, indeed, should Tassadar be coming back. The last set of writers made an awesome and tragic character. Don't try to get in on that. There had better be a very good explanation ("for another time", indeed) but I suspect that there won't be. The reason I want a good explanation is that it undermines what we did at the end of SC1.

An extension of this was the neglect of events from SC1 and BW. Raynor has a long history with the protoss: he helped Fenix break Tassadar out near the end of SC1, aided in the death of the first Overmind and held the line on Aiur while the Warp Gate to Shakuras was shut down. I don't think he'd so easily drop those memories to make a quick buck for an obscure group of scientists. Also, Zeratul knows about the hybrids, and has done for four years. Many have said that we need to consider new players in the series, but I don't see how that's exclusive with acknowledging what's already gone. All it has to be is a line like "I have seen these abominations before".

Finally in this thread of deviations from SC1 I have a minor point. I'm pretty sure moving around the galaxy wasn't that easy in SC1 and BW. Campaigns were fought only on a few planets. How many planets did we see in SC1? Mar Sara, Antiga Prime, the orbital platforms around Tarsonis (e.g. New Gettysburg), Char, Aiur? Maybe one or two more. How many more did we get in BW? Shakuras, Korhal? I guess although I never imagined it taking realistic times (decades, centuries) to travel between worlds, I did imagine it was more difficult (though less so for the protoss with their understanding of warp). I felt like many of the new worlds were invented because designers had a cool idea for a mission setting (Supernova, The Devil's Playground, etc), rather than because they felt it was important to the universe to invent a hundred new worlds.

What I've tried to avoid is my own re-writing of the story. It's Blizzard's OP, so I can't complain how they choose to write it. But with three days thought I think I could have come up with some better basic ideas. If you want ways I think it could've/should've gone and created opportunities for much more material, you can ask, but I don't think that's the point.

The greatest flaw in the campaign is simply that very little happened. If there had been more events relevant to either the revolution or the new war with the Zerg, even if executed in the possibly flawed choose-your-next-mission system, there would've been ample opportunity for development and conclusion of characters and stories. And believe it or not, one can still write a story with conclusions to certain arcs without closing down the options for the expansions.

tl;dr

Good things in SC and BW that WoL ignored
- more happened, so there was more development of characters
- the players was more immersed, because actions carried immediate consequence and more happened in the missions themselves

Deviations WoL made from SC and BW
- the characters changed somewhat, in ways that were unnecessary and appeared to betray the events of SC and BW
- new material undermined concluded arcs in the previous games
- less NB, the planet-hopping is new: missions strung together would've made for more immersive gameplay (and perhaps more consistent with previous games)

The basic problem?
- Very little happened that wasn't predictable or completely unexplored/inconclusive
- What did happen was suddenly tacked on the end

The flawed story is only so obvious because we didn't feel like we were a part of it.

JK

PS: Whoa, that's a lot of text...

[pure.Wasted]

Great first post JK.

I agree with pretty much everything you said; it would be easier to single out the areas where I disagree.

I don't think that the portrayal of Mengsk has changed in the slightest. Your impression of him as a 'rat' is only due to the circumstances he often found himself in throughout Brood War. There's no real difference between the propaganda he spews on camera here and the propaganda he dished out as part of his inauguration speech.

Raynor does seem to have forgotten about his promise to kill Sarah, but... honestly, I think that was for the best. SC1 never sold me on his BFF relationship with Fenix, so I never really cared enough about Fenix's death to feel that it had now gotten in the way of the epic romance that was just waiting to be told (cue SC2, 12 years later) and said romance was no longer possible.

As for his history with the Protoss screwing up when he goes after the artifacts... the Protoss he encounters are almost universally the very nuanced variety. And he does attempt to be peaceful, so there's no real harm done to continuity there... but just think: how many missions do we have where the antagonist is essentially non-existent (aka, the Tal'Darim)? Like... 5? Point is, that's 5 missions Blizzard walked into knowing that the antagonist would be absolutely lame and un-interesting. Let alone their failure to take advantage of the interesting antagonists when they COULD use them...

But that's neither here nor there. You might be interested in the review I wrote up not too long ago. It goes into most of the issues you detailed here.

[Dalamar]

@JellyKing: Great post! I think you've touched on one of the most important issues. Namely, that very little happened during the campaign and, consequently, there were few opportunities for character development. Kerrigan felt toothless throughout the campaign, hardly the menace she was in BW. With one exception... the Prophecy chain mission, where Zeratul seeks the Xel'Naga prophesy in the caverns. The last part, where she chases after you and you attempt to escape, didn't need a forced "Class 12 psychic detected" message to convey menace. It did so by virtue of presentation alone.

[Nicol Bolas]

The overmind and your version of Kerrigan have one purpose: to give the Swarms will to grow and evolve a voice.

That's not what the Overmind was trying to do. The Overmind wanted to ultimately consume all life other than Zerg, absorbing the worthy ones into the Swarm. What I'm talking about doesn't have to be that.

In fact that is what WoL Kerrigan does, she doesn´t act to finish her revenge against her enemys, she protects herself and the swarm against the Artifact.

She protects herself. She only cares about the swarm to the extent that they are her tools.

That is what she does since the Broodwars after she had her revenge.

Your definition of "incomprehensible" is sorely lacking. Kerrigan described herself as "Queen Bitch of the Universe" and that's what she became. Everything, everything she did in BW could be traced back to purely human logic. Revenge and spite.

That's not what I'm talking about.

That is the Arthats story over WC3 and WC3 TFT. Yeah it´s better that Arthas isn´t killed and resurrected as evil zombie in WC3 but that he chose his way.

I seem to recall a magical wizard and some mind-controlling being involved. Arthas didn't choose everything. He was tempted by evil and thanks in part to magical compulsion succumbed.

What I'm talking about is neither temptation nor evil. It's about willingly transforming into something not human, that doesn't have humanlike thought. Arthas could be considered a story about a tragic fall; what I'm talking about is neither a fall nor tragic. Nor a sacrifice. It's about becoming something else.

Kerrigan being taken from underneath me wasn't a cutsequence: I watched the Zerg burst out while I still had control of the units.

Assuming that Kerrigan was "being taken" in your game. In mine, the Zerg ran into a wall of impenetrable metal. Not entirely unlike ZvT in SC2

In addition, my actions carried immediate consequence into the next mission. If one was bringing a hero to an installation entrance, the next was exploring inside, and discovering things (something like the secret mission in WoL, to be fair).

Those aren't consequences; that's just one mission leading into the next.

Consequences are when you lose half your fleet in a Homeworld mission and you have to fight at half-strength in the next. That never happens in SC1 or 2.

Furthermore, SC2 had some of missions leading into one another. The Odin missions, for example. And of course the choice to take out either the Nydus Worms or the air units before All In.

Raynor has very much washed out compared to the guy I last saw a decade ago when he swore he'd kill Kerrigan. I was pretty sure he was over her at that point. Guess not.

Yeah, it's almost like 4 years had passed since she killed Fenix

Secondly, the writers seemed to be looking for material in stories that have been concluded. Guys, the Overmind should be dead. Not twitching four years later.

But what they did with the Overmind was good. They patched plotholes and made it a different kind of character.

And personally, anytime we get to revisit the Overmind is good stuff in my book. Tassadar, not so much. But I never considered him much of a character anyway; certainly, SC1 didn't.

guess although I never imagined it taking realistic times (decades, centuries) to travel between worlds, I did imagine it was more difficult (though less so for the protoss with their understanding of warp).

That's your own fault. Fanon is only canon when it becomes canon.

but just think: how many missions do we have where the antagonist is essentially non-existent (aka, the Tal'Darim)? Like... 5? Point is, that's 5 missions Blizzard walked into knowing that the antagonist would be absolutely lame and un-interesting. Let alone their failure to take advantage of the interesting antagonists when they COULD use them...

WoL had a lot of wasted opportunities, plot-wise.

[unentschieden]

That's not what the Overmind was trying to do. The Overmind wanted to ultimately consume all life other than Zerg, absorbing the worthy ones into the Swarm. What I'm talking about doesn't have to be that.



She protects herself. She only cares about the swarm to the extent that they are her tools.

These things end up being the same effectivly, at least with the limited exposure we got up to this point. Especially in the latter case, Kerrigan never has to or does contradict "Zerg interests" for her own goals. Zerg are tools for everyone and Blizzard apparently attempts to "fix" that with the Overmind retcon/explanation.

Your definition of "incomprehensible" is sorely lacking. Kerrigan described herself as "Queen Bitch of the Universe" and that's what she became. Everything, everything she did in BW could be traced back to purely human logic. Revenge and spite.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Yeah, SC:BW in itself DOES make sense in that regard. But then she stops for some reason and well, what does she want now? Kerrigan has basically no character (and lines) during WoL, all we know is that she knows about the artifact and the Xel´Naga, wants the first and is fatalistic about the latter.

I seem to recall a magical wizard and some mind-controlling being involved. Arthas didn't choose everything. He was tempted by evil and thanks in part to magical compulsion succumbed.

What I'm talking about is neither temptation nor evil. It's about willingly transforming into something not human, that doesn't have humanlike thought. Arthas could be considered a story about a tragic fall; what I'm talking about is neither a fall nor tragic. Nor a sacrifice. It's about becoming something else.

Again, WHY does she do that when, by your own admission, at least until the end of of BW, she is human in mind and motivations (though evil) and doesn´t care for the Zerg other than how they support her "human" goals?

Also, how is it good for the overall Story to have a antagonist(?) with goals and motivations that are described as "something else"? And how does that work with the Hybrids which are also "something else"?

I mean you praise the Overmind exposition for making it LESS "something else".

[JellyKing]

Assuming that Kerrigan was "being taken" in your game. In mine, the Zerg ran into a wall of impenetrable metal. Not entirely unlike ZvT in SC2

The sudden and overwhelming Zerg attack happens irrelevant of where Kerrigan is. What I mean is that their massive attack begins during the mission even though the Zerg weren't making much progress through my defenses either...

Incidentally, the cinematic in WoL of this scene was absolutely brilliant IMO. If I had to convey the events of that mission to a newcomer to the universe, I couldn't do better than that. Dialogue straight from the original, too.

Furthermore, SC2 had some of missions leading into one another. The Odin missions, for example. And of course the choice to take out either the Nydus Worms or the air units before All In.

The Char sequence is what I was expecting more from in the game and I enjoyed playing it (despite "some things are just worth fighting for"). It did feel like the writers got that idea straight out of Ground Zero/Birds of Prey though.

A compromise between Blizzard's notion of choosing missions and the old school progression, I think, would just be to string the mini-campaigns together (spectres, colonists, whatever) with relic missions in between. So, for example, you would choose to play all Tosh's missions in sequence.

Raynor does seem to have forgotten about his promise to kill Sarah, but... honestly, I think that was for the best. SC1 never sold me on his BFF relationship with Fenix, so I never really cared enough about Fenix's death to feel that it had now gotten in the way of the epic romance that was just waiting to be told (cue SC2, 12 years later) and said romance was no longer possible.

Yeah, it's almost like 4 years had passed since she killed Fenix

But that stuck. That's the last time we saw him. Player objectives evoked that outcry. Also, the same could be said of Kerrigan/Raynor's relationship: it's been four years since he's seen her (and last time, she was a treacherous... horrible woman betraying her allies). Maybe it's down to opinion as to which partnership carried more weight, but the Raynor/Fenix alliance was present for more of the game (albeit as talking heads, most of the time) whereas the Raynor/Kerrigan thing was, what, 3 missions long? You could argue a bit more since he arrives on Char after she calls out. Then again, after she calls out, everyone arrives on Char.

As for his history with the Protoss screwing up when he goes after the artifacts... the Protoss he encounters are almost universally the very nuanced variety. And he does attempt to be peaceful, so there's no real harm done to continuity there...

Indeed, they are evil, but I only believed they were evil enough for Raynor to throw his history aside when I saw the imprisoned Dark Templar. That was the last mission! If we'd seen that closer to the start (like when we're sneaking in behind the Zerg attack), it would've been much easier to reconcile with Raynor's history with the protoss.

Let's call a spade a spade: the Tal'Darim were invented so that the player would have missions with protoss enemies.

But what they did with the Overmind was good. They patched plotholes and made it a different kind of character.

As I said, if there's a good reason for why they've started down that road, I'll eat my words. Granted, it does explain why QoB was created and we can still only speculate on what Blizzard have in mind for that arc. But if it's just in there so the writers could use an old favourite and make up a Burning Legion / Orc relationship so that the Zerg can become shamanistic, I won't be impressed.

In the same vein, I'm not massively militant about why Tassadar is back. We never really saw him die and the writers have all the freedom they want for inventing a psi-related mechanism that may have even fused Tassadar and the Overmind for all I care. But if that's where they're going, I'd really like a good, self-consistent explanation that doesn't require us to fill in enormous blanks ourselves.

That's your own fault. Fanon is only canon when it becomes canon.

I agree, it's part of my imagination of the universe since it isn't ever explicitly said either way. But the point does remain that the SC/BW campaigns were more focused on fewer worlds. Granted, they weren't as interesting, but I think many of the ideas in WoL could've been linked together on single worlds. The lava-floods could, for example, have been on the same world as the prison planet. Seems like a plausible place to build a prison, given that escaping might be a bit treacherous...

JK

[mr. peasant]

Good things in SC and BW that WoL ignored
- more happened, so there was more development of characters
- the players was more immersed, because actions carried immediate consequence and more happened in the missions themselves

Welcome to the forums, JellyKing. However, I think some of your comments were a touch unfair. SC and BW covered six stories across six compressed campaigns. Compared to WoL which was a single story, of course more things happened. Because more things needed to.

[unentschieden]

The big difference is that in SC most Missions were made for the story. The engine could only handle talking heads so they had to do "cutscenes" ingame. That has it´s own problems as Nicolas pointed out though. From a Gameplay perspective there are good reasons NOT to do that even though it´s great for Storytelling.

SC2 however put Gameplay first, I wouldn´t be suprised if the majority of the Missions was "Ok we want to do giant Laser, put that somewhere in the plot". This also creates filler in terms of plot however since the Laser is absolutely irrelevant. They make it even worse with the missionchoicefreedom since that strains the narrative even BETWEEN the missions.

It´s also good to point out that "Story" Missions like the two Odin ones are less reliant on their respective Units of the Mission. "Engine of Destruction" is used to introduce the Odin, not the Wraith.
As a personal optionon, they should have made the Rebellion plotlinen non-optional so that you could use the Odin on Char. The riots could also be used as excuse how Valerian can just take half the fleet to invade char and how he wouldn´t be able to do that otherwise (to avoid the "we have the artifact, why don´t we invade" plothole)

Regarding the relationship between Raynor and Kerrigan in SC1:
It´s one of Raynors major driving motivations. Basically everything Raynor does in SC1 after his part in the rebellion ends due to Mengsk being a dick is follow Kerrigan and try to free her from her thrallhood to the Overmind.
In BW as well, he is willing to cooperate with Mengsk for her. It´s also why her betrayal hits him so hard.

[Dalamar]

What I'm talking about is neither temptation nor evil. It's about willingly transforming into something not human, that doesn't have humanlike thought. Arthas could be considered a story about a tragic fall; what I'm talking about is neither a fall nor tragic. Nor a sacrifice. It's about becoming something else.

This feels like a plot exploring transhumanism. I would have loved to have seen such a story in SC2! Kerrigan would have been the perfect agent to explore such issues, in a non-literary medium. It sounds so interesting, it's actually painful, since we're unlikely to see Blizzard make such a plot!