Critics on WOL's Plot

[RussianSpy27]

This is the intro of brood war



Look at how much darker, sinister, grand universe it's about.

Compare that to SC2's intro. It's about one guy. All 3 cinematics for SC2 are about 1 or 2 people. In fact, ALL of Starcraft 2's in game cinematics are about 1 or 2 people, with cannon fodder in the background. There are actually no lines for anyone out of Raynor's posse's dialogue.

Starcraft 1, you had sarge, lister, the black crazy due, the guy shooting, the various people dying. There isn't such a vertical hierachy of characters, and there were a million more interesting more characters than SC2. Dugalle, Duran, Duke, etc... Even zeratul was in the first game.

Starcraft 2, there were 5 or so heroes and that's it. I find that incredibly pathetic compared to the sheer number of characters in Starcraft 1 original. There were overminds which were more interesting than Tychus or Dr Narud.

It's clear to me that the original creatives of Blizzard have long left the company. People like Bill Roper and his entire team is gone, considering what a momentus story that Diablo 2 offered. It's obvious Diablo 3 won't be as grand or amazing as Diablo 2.

Blizzard has no longer become the story driven studio it is, instead it's been consumed by character driven stories due to WOW and gameplay. If you notice in Sc2, it's all about the characters, their feelings, their lives, their attitudes, rather than the grand overall story. I think the studio has gone the way of George Lucas and Michael Bay rather than Christopher Nolan in terms of the single player. I feel like they're an incredibly hard working company that's lost the creative critique power of Blizzard North, considering how good the dialogue was in Diablo 2 / SC1 / etc and how ridiculously poorly written it is in SC2.

Rather than make Starcraft 2 a M rated game, they opted to make it cheesy and appeal to a general audience. That's just too bad eh.

It didn't have to be M rated to be awesome. It's possible to make a superbly good and epic PG or PG-13 story (Empire Strikes Back). Though given the "Aliens" nature of the Zerg and overall maturity of the themes, I would have liked it to be M rated.

Anyhow, as for your post as a whole, I couldn't have said it better myself, Wakney. Thanks for finding the intro in HD!!!!

[Pandonetho]

It's BW that was badly written and unconvincing... people just didn't realise back then.

Much like your argument.

Despite 90% of those sites being jokes, it's pretty much common opinion that the SP was disappointing compared to the original.

The gameplay was a nice improvement though.

[ooZer0]

Look at how much darker, sinister, grand universe it's about.

Although I don't know how this cinimatic would give a "grade universe" scope to anything, I do agree that the darker scope is nice in light of the very monotone or upbeat side that Sc2's cut scenes had. There is no "dark" cinematic in Sc2. The closest would have to be if you took Havens Fall, the infestation of Hansen... but even then its less dark, but more... well less. It didn't have that emotional attachment as some of the scenes in Sc1 had. So yeah, I do kinda miss that tone that the SC series has had.

Compare that to SC2's intro. It's about one guy. All 3 cinematics for SC2 are about 1 or 2 people. In fact, ALL of Starcraft 2's in game cinematics are about 1 or 2 people, with cannon fodder in the background. There are actually no lines for anyone out of Raynor's posse's dialogue.

Starcraft 1, you had sarge, lister, the black crazy due, the guy shooting, the various people dying. There isn't such a vertical hierachy of characters, and there were a million more interesting more characters than SC2. Dugalle, Duran, Duke, etc... Even zeratul was in the first game.

Don't you find these two statements kind of contradictory? You say Sc2 has nothing but cannon fodder, but you can't even name crazy black dude, guy shooting or the dude who got torched by the firebat. Sarge isn't even the guys name, it's just a nickname or the guys rank. In essence, they too are just cannon fodder, because they don't have a backstory for us to care about. Just a fake sense of backstory because Lester has a name. We don't know anything about them, they are just cannon fodder.

Starcraft 2, there were 5 or so heroes and that's it. I find that incredibly pathetic compared to the sheer number of characters in Starcraft 1 original. There were overminds which were more interesting than Tychus or Dr Narud.

Your comparing 6/6 of Sc1 to 1/3 of Sc2. To make a fair comparison you would need to compare the Terran campaign from vanilla to WoL. What were the characters with names in Sc1 Vanilla? Raynor, Kerrigan, Duke, Arcturas. That's it, even less the Sc2! In Sc1 Vanilla Terran campaign, the confederacy was just a faceless generic bad organization that needed to be overthrown. There was no overmind or cerebretes, the zerg were just wild creatures that killed anything that got in their path, there are no characters or emotional attachment there. The Protoss were some enigmatic terrorist that just killed without reason and blew up planets, to the humans. We knew nothing about them, much less any individuals. It wasn't until the Zerg campaign that suddenly the universe was brought to life. Now the Zerg had structure that we never even thought of and the Protoss were honorable warriors trying to save the universe from corruption. Then there were the Xel'naga... Yeah the universe was very narrow in focus until we looked at it through a Cerebrete's eyes and eventually an Executor's.

In essence, we find the same thing in the Terran Sc2 story that we had in the Terran Sc1 Vanilla story. Raynor and his cohorts (Raynor's Raiders in Sc2, Sons of Korhal in Sc1) rebel against a corrupt organization. He converts old enemies (Warfield in Sc2, Duke in Sc1) into allies with heroic acts, perfect timing and charisma. Friends die(?) along the way (Hanson and Tycus in Sc2 and Kerrigan in Sc1). In essence WoL story is mirrored in Sc1 Vanilla Terran campaign, with a few little twists here and there to account of time.

You can't praise Sc1's story and pan Sc2's story, because they are in essence almost the same thing. The only thing that makes Sc1's story feel better, is that we have all of it too look back on. I'm not saying reserve judgment until ALL of the games for Sc2 come out, but do make fair judgments based upon the segments we have. Look at how big our view of the Sc universe became once we jumped into the Cerebrete's shoes! Maybe HotS will do something similar.

Don't get me wrong, I was quite disappointed with WoL's story, it felt very rushed and not nearly as fleshed out as it could have been. There were far more interesting things they could have done, but didn't. Perhaps they should have taken another 6 months or so to fully get everything right... Who knows, but we would have been whining for 6 more months. Meh, hindsight and all that good jazz.

Rather than make Starcraft 2 a M rated game, they opted to make it cheesy and appeal to a general audience. That's just too bad eh.

You don't need an M rating to tell a good story, just as R rated movies don't always have good stories. M rating basically involves, lots of swearing, bloody gore in high resolution, nudity and things along that line. No amount of any of that is going to suddenly make a bad story good, but it can make a good story repulsive. A good story is good regardless of censorship, some of those "M" elements can be used to spice up points along the way, but they do not a good story make.

[Gradius]

Although I don't know how this cinimatic would give a "grade universe" scope to anything, I do agree that the darker scope is nice in light of the very monotone or upbeat side that Sc2's cut scenes had. There is no "dark" cinematic in Sc2. The closest would have to be if you took Havens Fall, the infestation of Hansen... but even then its less dark, but more... well less. It didn't have that emotional attachment as some of the scenes in Sc1 had. So yeah, I do kinda miss that tone that the SC series has had.

In the SC2 cinematics DVD, I also liked how the artists claimed that they added the voodoo scene because Tosh getting stabbed in the head was too dark in their opinion and there needed to be some comic relief.

[Louis]

To be fair there was little in BW that couldn't be fixed by making the UED more relevant and extending the whole campagin by few more missions and/or replacing some of the pointless missions. Honestly, the UED were more interchangable with the WoL Tal'Darim than most of you would want to admit. "Tal'Darim/UED come in from out of nowhere to delay Kerrigans/Valarians shennanigans, forcing them to ally with their greatest enemies, Arcturus/Jim in order to take what they want from Tal'Darim/UED". I'll admit that as it stands that the UED were better executed, but hopefully the expansions give them a more emotional introduction than the non-existant one of WoL. And Kerrigan needed something better to do than to "manipulate" the protoss into doing something that they would have done before they ever met her. I think that adding a bit of Duran would have made the Shakuras portion of BW a lot better.

[RussianSpy27]

Although I don't know how this cinimatic would give a "grade universe" scope to anything, I do agree that the darker scope is nice in light of the very monotone or upbeat side that Sc2's cut scenes had. There is no "dark" cinematic in Sc2. The closest would have to be if you took Havens Fall, the infestation of Hansen... but even then its less dark, but more... well less. It didn't have that emotional attachment as some of the scenes in Sc1 had. So yeah, I do kinda miss that tone that the SC series has had.



Don't you find these two statements kind of contradictory? You say Sc2 has nothing but cannon fodder, but you can't even name crazy black dude, guy shooting or the dude who got torched by the firebat. Sarge isn't even the guys name, it's just a nickname or the guys rank. In essence, they too are just cannon fodder, because they don't have a backstory for us to care about. Just a fake sense of backstory because Lester has a name. We don't know anything about them, they are just cannon fodder.



Your comparing 6/6 of Sc1 to 1/3 of Sc2. To make a fair comparison you would need to compare the Terran campaign from vanilla to WoL. What were the characters with names in Sc1 Vanilla? Raynor, Kerrigan, Duke, Arcturas. That's it, even less the Sc2! In Sc1 Vanilla Terran campaign, the confederacy was just a faceless generic bad organization that needed to be overthrown. There was no overmind or cerebretes, the zerg were just wild creatures that killed anything that got in their path, there are no characters or emotional attachment there. The Protoss were some enigmatic terrorist that just killed without reason and blew up planets, to the humans. We knew nothing about them, much less any individuals. It wasn't until the Zerg campaign that suddenly the universe was brought to life. Now the Zerg had structure that we never even thought of and the Protoss were honorable warriors trying to save the universe from corruption. Then there were the Xel'naga... Yeah the universe was very narrow in focus until we looked at it through a Cerebrete's eyes and eventually an Executor's.

In essence, we find the same thing in the Terran Sc2 story that we had in the Terran Sc1 Vanilla story. Raynor and his cohorts (Raynor's Raiders in Sc2, Sons of Korhal in Sc1) rebel against a corrupt organization. He converts old enemies (Warfield in Sc2, Duke in Sc1) into allies with heroic acts, perfect timing and charisma. Friends die(?) along the way (Hanson and Tycus in Sc2 and Kerrigan in Sc1). In essence WoL story is mirrored in Sc1 Vanilla Terran campaign, with a few little twists here and there to account of time.

You can't praise Sc1's story and pan Sc2's story, because they are in essence almost the same thing. The only thing that makes Sc1's story feel better, is that we have all of it too look back on. I'm not saying reserve judgment until ALL of the games for Sc2 come out, but do make fair judgments based upon the segments we have. Look at how big our view of the Sc universe became once we jumped into the Cerebrete's shoes! Maybe HotS will do something similar.

Don't get me wrong, I was quite disappointed with WoL's story, it felt very rushed and not nearly as fleshed out as it could have been. There were far more interesting things they could have done, but didn't. Perhaps they should have taken another 6 months or so to fully get everything right... Who knows, but we would have been whining for 6 more months. Meh, hindsight and all that good jazz.

Zero, I see your point about waiting for all campaigns. In fact, I've just replayed the Demo + Terran campaign (using god mode for story purposes) and I'll tell you what: there is a way to create something with limited scope and with a share of cliches but to do it very well - well enough that you're hit with the right amount to suspense for the next episode. Not that there is 0 suspense with what's going to happen to humanized Kerrigan, but it's different. At the end of the SC human campaign, the good guys lost: (1) Raynor lost his friend and love interest, (2) to a trecherous leader he believed in (3) who rose up and fulfiled his plan of becoming a dictator and our hero Raynor barely got away - almost like ending of Empire Strikes Back right there in the first campaign.

The "Aliens movie type" fact of experiencing Zerg as mindless beasts running around and slaughtering things was good and felt right with that campaign...the overshadowing Confederacy could have used more but the way it was presented and brought together, I didn't care not meeting anyone but Duke, the way Protoss - higher alien beings came in eradicating planets of the Zerg felt right too and in place - I know I'm using the word "feel" a lot, and it's the chore of subjectivity, but most of what happened there fit.

WOL is "Return of the Raynor" with sub-plots and scenes that don't connect, haven't been polished and put together. I'm no critic, but when stuff is not put together well, the story usually does not work. To continue with the analogy to classic SW films, the difference between SC1 Terran campaign and WOL's is like "I love you...I know" experienced between Han and Leah in ESB and the same phrase uttered in ROtJ - same phrase but one was epic, one was cheesy.

In terms of the BW Cinematic, it was obviously not about the Sarge or soldiers in the trench in the long run of the game, but that was not the point of the flick. The point, IMO, was to set up a very emotional theme, personalities of DuGalle and Stukov who used colonists, living and breathing human beings who trembled in fear of being overrun by the monsters as experimental rats and that message was conveyed VERY WELL! (The vid further foreshadows how DuGalle will himself be a rat hunted and exterminated by the Zerg like the soldiers in Trenches). Sarge and the soldiers appear for but a few moments, and yet the episodic figures are filled with souls and, however limited, "personality."

Blizzard could have saved the WOL game had they worked on mastering either the emotional component or structural one. I say either or, because both would be aiming for a very high mark. There are games out there like Indigo Prophecy and Havy Rain that lack some needed structure, but puts in enough properly channeled emotion to work well, but WOL failed in that.

[flak4321]

Regarding the story, I'm just gonna point blizzard to my sig.

Edit: While I will agree "dark" cinematics were few and far between, there were several:

Every cinematic involving Zeratul was dark, if cartoony.

The mini-cini's talking to Gabriel Tosh were all rather dark, but again cartoony.

The mini-cini's with the merc guy (name eludes me) had a dark side, but could be said to not entirely qualify.

Matt Horner was a depressing guy, except where his "love affair" was concerned.

The bonus level and its cinematics were very dark.

Others already mentioned.

That said, I agree also that we should let this story unfold. There were many bright spots. They just seem disjointed, out of flow.

[pure.Wasted]

To be fair there was little in BW that couldn't be fixed by making the UED more relevant and extending the whole campagin by few more missions and/or replacing some of the pointless missions. Honestly, the UED were more interchangable with the WoL Tal'Darim than most of you would want to admit. "Tal'Darim/UED come in from out of nowhere to delay Kerrigans/Valarians shennanigans, forcing them to ally with their greatest enemies, Arcturus/Jim in order to take what they want from Tal'Darim/UED". I'll admit that as it stands that the UED were better executed, but hopefully the expansions give them a more emotional introduction than the non-existant one of WoL. And Kerrigan needed something better to do than to "manipulate" the protoss into doing something that they would have done before they ever met her. I think that adding a bit of Duran would have made the Shakuras portion of BW a lot better.

In pointing out a valid parallel between the UED and the Tal'darim you completely miss the single key difference: the characters. DuGalle, Stukov, and Duran (even less his role in the Zerg campaign) are by far some of the most interesting and believable characters that the SC world has conjured up. People say that the UED was pure evil and all that... you know what? I was rooting for them. Because with guys like Stukov at the top, they're not going to be pure evil. They can't be.

You think I was rooting for Generic_Tal'darim_Executor_4553?

[Louis]

In pointing out a valid parallel between the UED and the Tal'darim you completely miss the single key difference: the characters.

Not really. And anyone can tell that Blizzard tried a lot harder with the UED than the Tal'Darim of WoL, so of course the protoss will be lesser.

DuGalle, Stukov, and Duran (even less his role in the Zerg campaign) are by far some of the most interesting and believable characters that the SC world has conjured up. People say that the UED was pure evil and all that... you know what? I was rooting for them. Because with guys like Stukov at the top, they're not going to be pure evil. They can't be.

I'm pretty sure that Valerian was meant to be the new challenger that we're supposed to be paying attention to, though whether or not he's destined to become the next gen stukov, Arcturus, or is just a pawn for Duran is impossible to know. But I'm curious to find out, so I guess that the character fulfilled it's purpose for me.

You think I was rooting for Generic_Tal'darim_Executor_4553?

I don't think Blizzard were trying to make that happen. It's hard to relate to fanatics, doubly so when they're aliens.

[pure.Wasted]

Not really.

Oh, oka-- waaaaaaaaaiiiit a second. Tsk, almost got me. Unfortunately "you're wrong," a strong argument does not make. You said that the UED and the Tal'darim are similar and made no mention of characters. Seeing as how characters pretty much define our understanding of and appreciation for different factions, that's a pretty big hole.

I'm pretty sure that Valerian was meant to fill a UED-like role

Yes. Valerian's appearance in 2.5 missions completely makes up for the roles of 3 characters spread over 7 missions. (P.S. I think Valerian is a great addition to the roster. I would have loved to see more of him.)

I don't think Blizzard were trying to make that happen. It's hard to relate to fanatics, doubly so when they're aliens.

Auto-fail. That's why you don't write fanatics in extended roles.

Let's take a moment to appreciate the logic at work. The most redeeming thing about the UED is the characters... so obviously when we make a new game we should do everything the same except nix the character thing completely! There is no possible way this plan could fail!