SC2 HOTS Wish lists and improvements

[Pandonetho]

The reason why I thought SC1 was so brilliant was because a lot of characters that people loved, got owned.

Fenix? Bam owned. Tassadar? Owned, along with the Overmind. Raszagal, ok maybe no one liked her so good riddance. Aldaris some people liked, and he got owned. Ok Dugalle was an asshole so good riddance to him too, but Stukov? Noooo, owned (not taking into account his resurrection). Then we have good ol Duke, owned. Zasz, owned. Poor mr. Malmsteem, owned.

Don't forget the lead supporting actors like, poor johnny, and Harry the scientist.

Who died in SC2? Let's see... ok Tychus... and... some side characters like Hanson and Tosh IF you decide to be jerks to them.

Death just makes the universe so much more gratifying. Makes it feel bigger and each person less significant. Instead of sitting on a train ride with Raynor as he goes on a god like rampage without anyone stopping him.

Oh yeah, I also agree about the M rating thing although I made a thread a while back about it. Don't remember exactly how it went, but I remember Nicol being a big opponent to my topic.

Mengsk wins out through manipulating and positioning himself in a position of maximum gain, gains control over the Zerg using Psi-Disruptor data scavenged from the UED remnants (Guys who packed it down and shipped it to Braxis) and nukes the Protoss into the pre-Sapient age before taking on the UED Belligerants in a war that is sure to leave a large portion of the galaxy devoid of civilization more complex than raider bands and nomadic miners.

Mengsk would get face rolled by the UED so hard. Have you ever seen blood and bone? Mengsk is like the rich black guy who seems powerful at the start and does whatever he wants, until later you realize that he looks like an ant compared to those super rich white guys at the top (UED).

[Godless]

Pando, you're right on the money. More people need to die, the SC universe is bigger than any character.

[dustinbrowder]

Pando, you're right on the money. More people need to die, the SC universe is bigger than any character.

double agreed. And no resurrection, no coming to life, no "I actually didn't die, I was just hiding for all these years".

Though I would advice not to actually overdo it. While 2 maybe 3 characters are fine to be killed off, if all characters die, why would anyone care what happens with the SC2 lore !? - and it also becomes meaningful and has no impact to the player.

[Wankey]

There is a reason why shakespeare is renowned, EVERYONE DIES.

Death is significant because in death, you can value the character's life. If the character dies, gets resurrected, then what he died for isn't that much worth it.

Tassadar's image in WoL is just stupid, and the entire protoss missions were voiced badly.

The problem with Blizzard is that the original talent that worked 100% on the game are now in incredibly high positions. Chris Metzen has to oversee 3 games, and I'm sure he doesn't write the story. He just comes in, injects a few ideas and leaves.

Then you take someone like Andy Chambers, who makes up terrible stories like the ones in warhammer 40k and you get crap like WoL.

It's a shame really.

[dustinbrowder]

There is a reason why shakespeare is renowned, EVERYONE DIES.

Death is significant because in death, you can value the character's life. If the character dies, gets resurrected, then what he died for isn't that much worth it.

Tassadar's image in WoL is just stupid, and the entire protoss missions were voiced badly.

The problem with Blizzard is that the original talent that worked 100% on the game are now in incredibly high positions. Chris Metzen has to oversee 3 games, and I'm sure he doesn't write the story. He just comes in, injects a few ideas and leaves.

Then you take someone like Andy Chambers, who makes up terrible stories like the ones in warhammer 40k and you get crap like WoL.

It's a shame really.

Agreed. Warhammer 40k story is as cheesy and cliche as it gets. Worlds get attacked from all sides and "something is going on here" - O rly?
Hero 9 dies, expansion and he is resurrected, expansion dies again, expansion resurrected.
Probably where all the cheese comes from, hopefully the mass effect guy can steer the boat a little bit, though game stories seems to be going for worse, rather than better.

And Chris better sit his ass down and actually write some SC2 stuff and leave WOW alone.

[Sheliek]

. . .
And Chris better sit his ass down and actually write some SC2 stuff and leave WOW alone.

WoW has a plot? Could've fooled me.

[Zeraszana]

i don't want the protoss to loose any1 again..ok maybe urun that dude goes on my frikin nerves... other than that FCK NO! don't want anymore warcraft similarities with the races as it is...and more damn story! i want 60 missions if they want to water them down so much like they did in the WOL, and no i don't give 2 shits about the multiplayer thank you very much i want for the campaign to make sense like it did before and who cares about the stupid free choice we will ALL go back anyway to replay the game with the choices we didn't make the first time so it doesn't really matter...and please ffs the way this game went i wouldn't be surprised to see kerrigan and jimmy going at each other and even some protoss loving! i mean is ok...i have nothing against some good old corny stuff but..SCI-FI WAR!!! WAAAAAAR!!! after you won it i would gladly watch some earned humping..not before

and blizz better get their old peoples they used for sc1 back to make the story...this is worser than the shadow of xel'naga novel....enough of ranting...for now..

[pure.Wasted]

An added bonus to that would be that we'd get more cinematics of marines dying. C'mon Blizz, all your best cinematics were of terran rednecks getting slaughtered!

Starcraft Intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dLRh5zqpYI

It's a Zergling, Lester!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NEYE3tZJcw

Battle of the Amerigo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc9-2rb8TxU

Brood War Intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GMOTrIjVao&feature=fvw

And of course, Kerrigan's Victory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5ybRRz-vk

EDIT: Forgot one, the ambush!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AlEn...eature=related

Compared to these classics, the new cinematics kinda blow IMO.

Wow, can you say "nostalgia"?

The BW Intro has marines who aren't rednecks, and they don't get "owned," their (impending, not seen) deaths are tragic. The Ambush, Road Kill, and the SC1 Intro have rednecks who aren't marines, though they do get owned. And Kerrigan's Victory doesn't actually show a single redneck OR marine. You see a Bunker blow up. If that qualifies for "redneck Marines getting owned," I don't see how Tychus getting shot by Raynor can possibly not work for you.

WOL has marine rednecks kicking ass (Tychus in "The Heir Apparent"), getting their asses kicked (Tychus in "The Showdown"), and an awesome mix of both ("A Card to Play," "Bar Fight"). In an ideal world we could have a bajillion cinematics on every conceivable topic, but if my options are seeing characters I care about vs. seeing characters I don't care about, I'll take the former any day of the week.

Having said that, I'd love to see more extensive battle/war-type cinematics. As awesome as the action in any of "Heir Apparent," "Escape from Mar Sara," or even "Dangerous Game" might be, they're just too brief to get really excited about. More stuff along the lines of "A Card to Play" with all sorts of different units doing all sorts of different amazing things would be cool. But only if it makes sense for the story. What makes "Card" so good isn't the fact that a marine punches a Hydralisk out, it's the fact that we know that marine and care about him and go on interacting with him for the rest of the campaign.

The reason why I thought SC1 was so brilliant was because a lot of characters that people loved, got owned.

Fenix? Bam owned. Tassadar? Owned, along with the Overmind. Raszagal, ok maybe no one liked her so good riddance. Aldaris some people liked, and he got owned. Ok Dugalle was an asshole so good riddance to him too, but Stukov? Noooo, owned (not taking into account his resurrection). Then we have good ol Duke, owned. Zasz, owned. Poor mr. Malmsteem, owned.

Don't forget the lead supporting actors like, poor johnny, and Harry the scientist.

Who died in SC2? Let's see... ok Tychus... and... some side characters like Hanson and Tosh IF you decide to be jerks to them.

Death just makes the universe so much more gratifying. Makes it feel bigger and each person less significant. Instead of sitting on a train ride with Raynor as he goes on a god like rampage without anyone stopping him.

The issue of character death is a lot more complicated than it appears to be at first. No character deaths and the story lacks an emotional punch and lacks a sense of immediacy (seems like 'another installment'). But too many? You end up with what's happening in WarCraft over the last couple of years.

WC2 had a cast of characters that people grew to care about. WC3 abandoned all of those and created a new cast that people grew to care about. WOW abandoned a vast majority of those (Kael, Vashj, Illidan, Arthas, Malfurion, Maiev -- all prominent figures and interesting characters but complete non-entities for a vast majority of WOW's running time). Bolvar is the new Lich King... wow... that sounds like it'd have been pretty dramatic if I'd had more than a single cinematic with his cameo in it beforehand. Conceptually, I like it. Emotionally, I could not be more disengaged from it.

The SC universe is tiny right now and Blizz can't afford to be killing characters left and right. What that means is they should be going out of their way to create a lot more characters than they are. Why is Warfield the only new Dominion character introduced by WOL? There should have been 3-4. Then maybe we could have stood to lose one.

What would help with this, and what I really want, is for Blizzard to really crack down on their mission design, making sure that every single mission is being used to not ONLY progress the plot, not ONLY shed light on a character, but do so in meaningful ways that can't be done anywhere else.

Take the Tosh storyline. The first mission introduces him as a mercenary. The second mission introduces him as a Spectre. The third mission introduces the Spectre vs. Dominion conflict. That's two missions' worth of material, tops, but they spread it out to 3. Then you get stuff like the Dominion battle in Media Blitz and you wonder, couldn't Tosh have played a part in that? And if he did, would we have needed a separate Tosh vs. Dominion mission to begin with?

It's all about telling the story efficiently. Blizzard has a lot of great material in WOL, but they spread it out. If they instead learn to condense it, that'll create even MORE room for even BETTER material, and missions that feel a lot less one-trick-pony-ish.

As fun as it is to have a mission where you have to escape the supernova, at the end of the day, that's all I remember it as: "That mission where you escape the supernova." It's fun gameplay, but it's a completely wasted storytelling opportunity. There's a lot of room in each of these missions for learning new things about characters, for being introduced to new characters, for surprising plot twists, and 90% of the time that's not taken advantage of.

I feel like when Blizz got their hands on the "story-mode" of SC2, they decided that since they have this excellent innovation that's so conductive to drama and character interaction, they no longer need to do the outdated way of telling the story -- in the missions themselves. But that's a mistake. They should be doing BOTH. There's no reason characters can't be introduced or go through dramatic conflicts during an actual mission. If anything, that makes missions MORE intense. The way they are right now makes most of them feel like mini-games that you play in order to get to the next part of the story. I want the story to be happening 24/7.

[Wankey]

That's very true, I really don't understand why the hell they didn't include nova, tosh, and everyone else more in the game.

I know it's not supposed to be a hero centric game but adding these "specialty" units sure spices things up a lot. Who didn't like the Kerrigan missions?

The problem with SC2 is that they removed in game dialogue completely and changed them to portrait dialogues. Without in game representation, you're really just looking at 2 portraits talking to each other.

What would be better is if 2 hero units were in game (similar to SC1 and War3) and have them chat for a bit, at least that doesn't delineate the storyline to only cutscenes after the gameplay.

HotS needs to learn some of these lessons:

The story needs to be choiceless and epic

There needs to be in game heroes that have a use in the actual mission.
The idea that you are Jim Raynor makes the game feel awkward, you're not jim raynor, and WoL doesn't really make it a very big deal that you're playing through the eyes of Jim. You're always feel like a third party, and they should've kept it that way. In the original SC1, you were a commander in training and that gave the player a lot of insight into things.

Please don't make us play through the eyes of Kerrigan. That would just be ridiculous. I want to be an individual, under Kerrigan's command or something. I don't want to be forced into the main character's role without actually having any of the main character's choices or affecting the storyline.

Other people into be interweaved into the game more. I can't stand how Zeratul was a side quest, or how Nova was a side quest. This isn't fucking WoW. There are no side quests.

Nova should've been with you during the Odin missions, during the last battle, you should've had Tychus in the Odin with you. Warfield should've been with you, commanding another base to help you.

What happened? It's like this is it boys, everything is at its end, and then they all leave? Hunker up in some bunker somewhere and wait while Kerrigan launches attacks on the base? And where the hell is the Hyperion? Why isn't it in the game helping you in the last mission? Wtf was Matt Horner doing all the time, telling you to use the stupid artifact?

If they have issues with heroes dying, all they needed to do was implement a revival thing like the OTHER SIDE QUEST (god damn Blizzard and their side quests) before you hit the last mission.

Like if the Odin got destroyed, it should have a fast reboot option. Same with the hyperion, fast repair.

At least the game would've been hell of a lot more fun.

Instead they added achievements to make the campaign replayable, well sir, the campaign is boring as shit.

[SinsWage]

I do agree that character mortality is an important and underused device. When a character is essentially invincible it makes you detach from the story. When anyone has the possibility of dying you get much more emotionally involved.

That being said I really wasn't bothered by the campaign. I do agree a bit more character death would have been beneficial to the story, this is war after all, I don't feel as strongly about the overall storytelling and delivery as many of you do. Sure it was pretty trite and predictable, but it's not that far off from the quality of the original IMO. I think a lot of people just subsist on nostalgia and that gets in the way of seeing how good, or bad, something is on it's own merit, set apart from it's predecessor.