>Starcraft 1>Tassadar breaks away from tradition and cooperates with the dark templars and the terrans to defeat a common enemyoooh so heckin based this is the only way we must embrace diversity>Starcraft 2>Artanis breaks away from tradition and cooperates with the Zerg and the terrans to defeat a common enemyNOOOOO FUCKING SJWs RUINED MY GAME FUCK DIVERSITYwhy are people like this?
>>2418680Why would you think SC1 is promoting diversity? The Zerg dindu nuffin in the sequal as a retcon. In full 90's glory the Zerg Overmid is a genuinely evil bastard.
>>2418680>why are people like this?Starcraft1 There is a clear villain in the overall story and Tassadar dies at the end to finish the job.Stracraft2 Kerrigan is a past female villain from SC1, gets redeemed completely and everything bad forgotten and BECOMES A LITERAL COSMIC GOD BY THE END.Other problems: - One character willingly sacrifices his life for something he believed in, the other character becomes a god as compensation for all the bad things that were done to her.- SC2 has no clear villain faction like the Zerg was in SC1. And people are tired of the trope where factions are supposed to fight each other but every time there is a sudden greater threat so they need to stop fighting and band together. Also this removes the agency and relevance from all the factions as they are :1) too weak on their own and thus their significance is diminished2) stupid for not seeing the obvious need to band together and they need main characters to tell them3) unable to achieve relative peace among themselves after their worked together successfully and defeated the greater threat and just revert to the previous status quo of just fighting with each other 4) since the plot reverts to the previous status quo, factions never learning the obvious lessons also makes the all story events meaningless since the world is technically back at the starting line again (until the next episode)
I've been replaying the SC2 campaigns and they are pretty annoying with their writing. There's always an evil version of a faction to fight. You killed all those Protoss, but it's ok, don't feel bad because they were evil Protoss enslaving other Protoss. They started this shit in WC3, but at least the Undead were bastards throughout. I would have preferred if the orcs or night elves were as well instead of the 3 all working together. But in SC2 it's just friendship all over.The main problem is combined narrative campaigns. This will always be the inferior way to do RTS campaigns because you either have a main character that jumps between factions or all the factions just team up by the end. The correct way is to have a separate story for each faction where your faction is the winner at the end and the other ones lose. If you want a sequel, you just pick a faction's ending and make that canon.
>>2418803>Zerg Overmid is a genuinely evil bastardThe Overmind did its own thing. Why do you need to frame it as evil like a dumbass?Saying or implying that OG Overmind was great due to it being evil is the dumbest thing.
>>2418962He was a great villain
>>2418976>He was a great villainTrue, but it was nothing to do with "evilness" or whatever. Zergs had their goal, each Terran faction had their goals and so did Protoss tribes. And then they clashed with each other. The end. 10/10 KINO. Almost no stupid bullshit (except the scene in OP). If you REALLY, REALLY have to pick one, the most ruthless and "evil" faction in SC universe were OG Protoss... which are so marvelized by the LotV it's funny to see.
>>2418680>>2418803The Terran Conferacy was 10,000 times more interesting than the Dominion and you can't change my mind.
>>2418680>we must embrace diversityi don't think that marxist politics were ever at all a subject in starcraft. it's just a stupid sci-fi game
>>2419297your mother is stupid
>>2419331your thread is trash and i will not be bumping itgood day
>>2419333your mom is trash
>>2418962>>2419162The game manual frames the Zerg that way. Constantly emphasizing their malice or cruel sadism with the Zerg units and explaining that the entire nature of the Zerg is an extension of the Overmind's own will.The only part you could consider to be neutral with the pre-retcon Overmind is the ambition to hunt down the Protoss and that all of its galactic conquest was preparation for that sole goal.
Sc1 was fucked from the start by constantly emphasizing Kerrigan in the Zerg campaign instead of having the player play as genuinely evil and alien conquerors, instead we are supposed to give a fuck about this human turned monster. Yawn. There's no confidence in the player. Destroying everything the good guys have built would be genuinely fun. Why can't we be a lieutenant for the overmind? Why does he need to die? The rot began here
>>2418680>cooperates with the Zerg and the terrans to defeat a common enemyThis isn't the problem. It's that the only way to defeat Amon is for all the Daelaam to get neural circumcision (desperate but reasonable), and then they choose to completely abandon the Khala instead of preserving it for future generations of Daelaam (despite it's pseudo-hivemind that also acts as a cultural archive for them). Then later they also all abolish their entire caste system at the end because a neckbeard(toenail?) IT support guy had to fight. If LotV came out five years later it would've also ended with Artanis abolishing the title of Heirarch and replacing it with a Protoss Council.This is gay because I like my aliens to be alien, I like when there are major societal rifts between different groups because of differences in opinion on weird shit, like being a part of a subconscious hivemind, learning the reason why they have these opinions, etc. Even when it's done in a cartoonish way with the Tal'darim it's still at least entertaining. Yellow Protoss turning into vaguely western and bland space elves is thereby pretty gay. However, that's definitely not my biggest issue with SC2 and I doubt we're ever getting a SC3 to explore these ideas further so it really doesn't matter.One last thing I will give this shit though is that it's not out of character, and not just for the reasons you give. For what it's worth SC1 did end with almost all of the Judicators being killed along with the rest of the Daelaam leadership after the loss of Aiur. Massive social upheavals in cataclysmic events like that aren't weird and were observed throughout SC1. I just think ditching your society's massive psychic library where you can check out grandpa's memories at any time even after Space Satan was defeated by the embodiment of Metzen's troubled marriage in the name of progress is gay.
>>2418680I don't think there ever was an argument more made up and artificial than thisjust make a normal starcraft 1 thread, the other one hit bump limit long ago anyway
>>2418680>>>/pol/b8
>>2418680>Artanis breaks away from tradition and cooperates with the Zerg and the terrans to defeat a common enemy>NOOOOO FUCKING SJWs RUINED MY GAME FUCK DIVERSITYI've never heard anybody make this criticism of SC2, not even the most retarded chudsSC2's story is bad because it's literally "an ancient evil has returned" and "the chosen one must stop it"
>>2419744then you clearly weren't on 4chan back in 2015
>>2419778You weren’t too until Zion Don came into power
>>2419864I've been here since 08 nigger
>>2419744>SC2's story is bad because it's literally "an ancient evil has returned" and "the chosen one must stop it"There's nothing inherently wrong it. You can make a good "ancient evil has returned and chosen one must stop it story". The problem is that they didn't. It didn't make sense, was stupid and contradicted the previous games. It's not like OG SC story was immaculate either, but at the very least it was sincere and whoever wrote it was trying.
>>2419778The ending sucks because of starchild Kerrigan.
>>2419778and you liked those 2015 conversations so much, you decided to revisit them with your wonderful thread? thanks a lot
Peak Starcraft was the video for the second Terran mission"Sarge, I think you just ran over some poor feller's dog""That's a zergling, a smaller type of zerg"I never played SC2 so I never had to worry about what dumb shit they did with the series. Feels good man.
>>2420355you're welcome
>>2420365I LOVE YOU SARGE
>>2420239Wings of Liberty was good but the plot went to shit really fast when Kerrigan started getting Dragonball Z powers.
Why did this sort of “enemy factions unite against the true evil” thing work in WC3 but not SC2? I don’t disagree with that, but let me hear your takes.
>>2419206It was. Dominion is just mengsk mengsk mengsk. Very one dimensional and predictable. Confederacy was just that - a confederacy of space hicks, with a mean old racist general at the head of its military. Based
>>2422813Humans, insular purple humans and green rowdy humans band together to fight against the undead demons from hell Compare with weird aliens without faces and humans and distilled evil corpse eater aliens banding together.
>>2422813WC3 is a high fantasy setting with many intelligent races, enemy factions uniting to fight against true evil is a somewhat common trope.SC2 is a science fiction setting with xenophobic and condescending protoss, the niggery and senseless zerg, and the xenophobic and greedy terransIt doesn't make sense and it would take a space god void lord world of warcraft raid boss to make it into a warcraft situation where the factions can really unite.At least in Brood War the writing made sense because the Overmind was heavily drugged
>>2423015the overmind was dead in brood war cause tassadar allahu akbar'd it and then in sc2 they became best buds
>>2418680Starcraft 2 retconned the Xel'Naga. They went feom precursers that die to the Zerg, which makes the Zerg a threat, to space squids that died cus one of their own genocided them. Also making people pay for 3 bad missions to end the franchise sits bad for everyone.
>>2423526UED drugged the nascent baby overmind in the last terran mission of brood war campaign. The remaining sc1 cerebrates began to form it in an attempt to get back to business without kerrigan. Then kerrigan-puppeted raszagal told zeratul to kill the new baby overmind and he actually did it lmao what a madman
>>2418809how would Zerg fans feel that they are the villain and the story made it so it was kept that way? realistically most of them might not really care, but maybe there are some Zerg players who appreciate the writing somewhat. (I don't really care, I'm a Terran fan and it's hard to really say anything specific about SC2's writing)
>>2425750My post is not about the fandom, it is about the story setting's structure and the relevance of a faction in it.Fandoms usually develop organically from how the story portrays the characters/factions in the first place. Compelling villains often easily grow just as great of a fanbase as heroes sometimes even greater. Yes, some fans might want the zerg to be heroes (or anti-heroes), this can lead to the eternal debate on "Who was right?" or "which character/faction's actions are justified on what grounds" etc. which never because morality is too complicated.But being a villain does not limit a character/faction's relevance or popularity in fact it often bolsters it provided that it is a compelling enough character/faction.
>>2420365>the video for the second Terran mission>not "Thank God for cold fusion!"
>>2420365kerrigan and duran have a dbz battle, it's way betterer and cooler than any of those dumb boring sc1 cutscenes
>>2419778>>>2418680at least they had an refugee redpill
>>2418803The Overmind was also a stupidly competent villain who also was a benevolent, even fatherly figure to both the Cerebrates and the Zerg in general (like how he gets happy when the player Cerebrate succeeds in his tasks and commence on his growth, or how he's livid over what happened to Zasz and calls his slaying by Zeratul downright murder).>>2425971That was horribly stupid, had no place in StarCraft and you have shit taste.
>>2422813Because the Zerg are a literal swarm of sadistic murder bugs that are a scourge on the galaxy.Terrans are space undesirables that Earth kicked out for not being genetically pure and not fitting into its perfect socialist order.Protoss are dogmatic, religious psychic space barbarians.All of the factions are xenophobes to each other, but Terrans take the cake since they have absolute loathing towards the Zerg and even more limited trust towards the Protoss than the Protoss have towards Terrans (glassing the Sara system where both Chau-Sara and Mar-Sara were was one of the reasons here even though there were Zerg on those planets...and yet they didn't come and at least tried to help until Tassadar was fed up with glassing planets by orders of the Conclave and wanted to be a good guy instead).
>>2425858I myself wouldn't be against a Zerg Brood that is full-blown anti-hero led by someone who would encompass this (even then there should something like resisting the more destructive Zerg urges), but it should be only this. A single Brood. The Zerg should always be the evil bastard race.Hell, their design and even their biology is pure sadism. The friggin Hydralisk and Defiler lores are proof of it.
>>2423534The Xel'Naga were precursors to Protoss and Zerg.They also retconned them from super scientists to literal void gods.I seriously hate what Blizzard did with the setting and characters.And I'm not the only one.The one thing that could save StarCraft now is retconning StarCraft 2. Either it never happened or use the XCOM2 plot point in order to retcon it.
>>2418680Any storyline so lazy as to involve gods and fate is a bad one.
>>2429379
>>2429549don't worry about him he just hates chris metzen
>>2418680Tassadar was bringing his people together. The overmind is evil and was suppose to be evil. I hated when they tried giving zerg some redemption arc in Starcraft 2. Its okay to have an Evil fucked up race. Kerrigan should of died after killing like all of Raynors friends.
>>2418680Because Starcraft 2 makes Starcraft 1s ending trivial. The whole point of the split between the High and Dark Templar is because the Dark Templar were afraid that the High Templar would lose their personality and would be susceptible to being influenced by stronger minds which the original game pointed out that both ways of life were viable and that they are draw backs to both but neither are inherently bad. The fact that the fears of the Dark Templar became reality trivializes the ending for SC1 by showing that 1 culture is inherently faulty.Doesn't matter if both games have the same message. How that message is told matters. One is just a shittier version of the other.
>>2425858>>2429035Stukov should've been the SC2 Zerg protagonist.
>>2430541>be me>play sc1>don't play sc2>no problemFeels good man
>>2430605Yep. And be a unique hybrid faction with access to a number of infested variants of Terran units like he does in Co-op Commanders mode.>>2429549>>2429557In case of SC2 it IS lazy and even stupid.StarCraft was known for its dark, gritty atmosphere and setting. Blizzard turned it into full-blown sci-fantasy with SC2 and that's utterly loosing the point of the setting. That and the overall combined story is sadly shit.
>>2430849https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-eJezQV1cYare you saying this doesn't fit the tone of starcraft?
>>2430849your mom is lazy and stupid
>>2432395No. Never did. StarCraft was more grounded while the sci-fantasy part was somewhere in the background covered by the dark and grit too. This and the mission that followed are pure sci-fantasy idiocy.>>2432508Your mom is my mom too.
>>2430360Noo the evil is always somehow justified and there was an ancient prophecy unless it concerns humans and fascism then its always unequivocally bad
>>2419430>The game manual frames the Zerg that way. Constantly emphasizing their malice or cruel sadismIt's an alien race that tries to assimilate all life. Whether it's le evil or not is redundant. It's like saying that predator species are not virtuous pacifists or something. It's just dumb. The only real pervy deviant zergs ever had was Kerigan.Everyone else who was sentient and had major agency (Overmind + Cerebrates) was pretty chill. Most conversations went like>Go to that planet and wipe out everyonePretty level headed and without any of the: " and then we'll stab them, then skin them while listening to their screams".
>>2433249There is the thing.What kind of predator uses biological weaponry so damn powerful and harmful that can kill its own kin?[[COUGH]] DEFILER [[COUGH]]Not to mention Hydralisks massacre people far harder than other Zerg units.But agree. The Cerebrates and Overmind were pretty chill.And even helpful (Daggoth especially) and the Overmind was like a father to the Cerebrates.
>>2418934Honestly I think BW did it best.One story with one conclusion but you're jumping between factions and aiming to achieve their respective goals throughout. Though it did feel a bit retarded to go from enslaving the overmind to suddenly playing as zerg and starting the plot from a huge setback - or to finally conquer Aiur just to then switch teams to the pussy-whipped Protoss you've been fucking into the dirt for 5 missions.
>>2419430I can't say I agree. The Zerg are an animal, they're not cruel or sadistic or evil, they have a purpose and they work towards it. They are single-minded killing machines
>>2423008I find it extremely hilarious how SC2 characterizes Mengsk as an evil man but then the idiots making the sequel forgot that Korhal was nuked into a desert in SC1 so when they designed the new Korhal to be a giant utopian metropolis with unparalleled military power that can hold against the Zerg they forgot that it would inadvertently imply that he's an incredibly competent leader.It's even more funny considering that on paper only 4 years had passed between Mengsk's defeat by Kerrigan at the end of BW and the start of WoL. You're telling me I'm supposed to hate this guy when he turned a radioactive desert into a regional superpower in just four years?It's sad how little continuity exists between BW and WoL, I think the old games had a much cooler and grittier setting. The terrans were filthy, the zerg were terrifying and the protoss were ruthless. They stole the best things from all the scifi IPs and went with them, SC2 is such a boring, safe, uninspired piece of shit in comparison, especially HotS and LotV. Covert Ops was surprisingly good in comparison.
While we are here can we take a moment to appreciate how retarded the Zerus retcon is? In BW the zerg are a parasite-esque organism that can devour genetic code to create a race of super-efficient killing machines, designed into their current form by the Xel-naga - whom they ultimately destroyed since they didn't know they had a hivemind. Zerus was a volcanic planet where the zerg organism originated.Meanwhile in SC2:>primal zerg are all permanently evolving>but they are also just dumb animals who didn't even develop opposable thumbs and they don't even use tools or anything>they all speak english for some reason>also they can assimilate genetic code still but it happens individually to each creature somehow... but they still hatch from eggs... though none of them lay eggs or reproduce... except there's giant bug creatures that spawn them... but they can spawn anything from lings to ultras... but they're all supposed to be unique individually developed creatures>also they have an ancient Spawning Pool ™ - an organ bio-engineered by the Zerg to hatch larvae in? Even though the primal zerg don't have larvae. Plus not one primal zerg used the ancient Spawning Pool ™ in a millenia to become giga-powerful despite that being their main schtick>when you arrive on the planet it is full of utterly helpless prey animals like deer, crabs and giant porcupines - wouldn't these be all hunted and eaten in a day?>if you kill them they don't just die but give Kerrigan Essence ™What the fuck were they thinkingBonus space magic:>the Xel-naga weren't defeated because of their hubris but because one of them was le evil and created the overmind - also they are magic space gods now instead of an alien race>but also the zerg are necessary for the defeat of The Dark One ™>also that happened millenia ago and somehow the Zerg only actually clashed with the protoss recently even though their sole purpose was to wipe them out>also there's
>>2435944The books actually did explain he fixed Korhal and a lot of inner worlds with a lot of the technology he managed to pilfer from the Protoss and Xel'Naga. The only problem people had was the whole dictatorship thing.
>>2437136yeah that's horrible, how dare the warlord not follow due process and rule of law while his country is being assaulted by mindless murder aliens
>>2435944>I find it extremely hilarious how history characterizes Hitler as an evil man but then the idiots writing the books forgot that Germany was reduced to an economically impoverished vassal state in WW1 so when they designed the new Reich to be a giant utopian metropolis with unparalleled military power that can hold against the French, English and Russians, they forgot that it would inadvertently imply that he's an incredibly competent leader.>It's even more funny considering that on paper only 6 years had passed between Hitler's election by the german people at the beginning of 1933 and the start of WW2. You're telling me I'm supposed to hate this guy when he turned a servile vassal state into a regional superpower in just six years?I hate to break it to you, but... yes. Yes you are.
>>2437136>The booksBruh
>>2437630>I find it extremely hilarious how history characterizes Hitler as an evil man but then the idiots writing the books forgot that Germany was reduced to an economically impoverished vassal state in WW1 so when they designed the new Reich to be a giant utopian metropolis with unparalleled military power that can hold against the French, English and Russians, they forgot that it would inadvertently imply that he's an incredibly competent leader.>It's even more funny considering that on paper only 6 years had passed between Hitler's election by the german people at the beginning of 1933 and the start of WW2. You're telling me I'm supposed to hate this guy when he turned a servile vassal state into a regional superpower in just six years?This but unironically
>>2437630While I do agree with your sentiment (gogo Hitler!!) I think the scale of things is a little different considering the inter-stellar proportions
>>2438110russians are just the zerg and you know it. Basically no difference, except the average hydralisk is more civilized than the average russian
>>2418803Awaken my child
>>2418962He was clearly intelegent so he knew he was causing a great deal of suffering. He is able to feel emotions so he knows they exist. He can be described as evil.
>>2419457>spoiler THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING! ! 1 No wonder why SK is such a blatant Mary Sue in SC2.
>>2418803Sc2 retcons basically made the overmind the hero of the story
>>2439634This thread makes me really glad I never played SC2.
>>2439656wings of liberty is very fun and the story is pointless so you can just ignore it
>>2422813I never touched Starcraft, but I played tons of WC3, and for me the compelling part of WC3 ending up in a giant alliance against the Legion is that it's not only completely rational given the circumstances but that most of the bad blood between the factions is actually reasonably portrayed and manageable>Night Elves never gave a shit about anyone else in the first place, but have a truly undying hatred for the Legion because they are the original defilers of their utopian empire, orcs cutting up a few trees and dispatching Cenarius is very undesirable, but nothing will never top the disastrous consequences of the Legion finding Azeroth which they are technically responsible for thus it would be hypocritical to obstruct the alliance, also everyone is immortal so there is nothing lost in translation about this social position>Orcs were repeatedly enslaved, sent off as disposable thugs to savage everything they ever touched, robbed of their ancestral connection to the spirits of their homes and forefathers, yes humans rounded them up when they were vanquished and there is much more recent animosity but nothing as soul destroying as the Hellscream clan's fall which provided a direct example of the consequence of failure>For Humans: Lorderon Has Fallen. Billions Must Scry, also it is now made clear through the conciliatory talks Medivh arranges that while orcs are not forgiven, they were ultimately tools of this greater menace who are capable of opening Dimensional Rifts like the one the Expedition disappeared into and there is ultimately no where to hide in any plane>The Undead were always playing the long con and remain truly pragmatically evil played completely straight, fuck the World Tree, call us when you need to Doxx some Dreadlords lmao >Illidan just wants to live his fucking life, the Blood Elves are effectively homeless, and the Naga have inscrutable ulterior motives but a cultural connection to Illidan and thus are homiesIt was all very kino
>>2438649This post be bussin'
>>2435970The Zerus retcon is just the peak of the iceberg.All the stupid SC2 presented MUST be reversed if someone should outsource the IP to someone to make SC3.
>>2418680That was not the criticism people had of LotV when it came out, the criticism people had was it felt too much like a marvel movie. You know, that and obviously the epilouge, but let's pretend that never happened.
>>2419457I never had an issue with the Conclave as a system being torn down because all the way back in SC1 there were Protoss calling for reform and how their caste system was incredibly short-sighted, arrogant, and foolish. Their species was being wiped out and they decided to hold a trial of Tassadar because that was more important, HE BROKE TRADITION AND WORKED WITH THE DARK ONES! And as you said, they paid the price for that, they were wiped out. It's already clear by the point of WoL that the Toss learned a lot from the events of SC1 and BW and learned to not be so arrogant which is why outside of one (sadly canon) mission, you never fight the Golden Armada and instead fight Tal'darim assholes.I get what they were going for in LotV, it was "look how strong the Protoss could be if we'd just stop factionalizing and fighting each other so damn much", which is why when the united species comes to Aiur they just completely kick in Amon's shit pre-prolouge like it wasn't even a challenge. I could see what they were going for in all the "just because we don't have a literal psychic connection anymore doesn't mean we are alone", they just fumbled the execution. As it stands WoL still has the best story of the 3 and HotS still is easily the worst, and as long as you pretend the epilouge never happened then LotV is kinda just in this awkward middle where the old guard of Blizz writers were gone but the people replacing them weren't at complete hackfraud level yet, just kinda halfway there.
>>2441536>pre-prolougepre-epilouge, I meant
>>2435944>It's even more funny considering that on paper only 4 years had passed between Mengsk's defeat by Kerrigan at the end of BW and the start of WoL. You're telling me I'm supposed to hate this guy when he turned a radioactive desert into a regional superpower in just four years?Don't ever look into the timeline, even the loremaster Subsourian who has written like half the wiki admits the time scale makes no fucking sense when you think about it, the entirety of SC1 and BW happens in just over a year and all of SC2 is like...I think 10 months?
>>2429030Even in SC1 the Terrans and Protoss learned to get along pretty well and the whole Raynor-Fenix friendship in the first game showed how 2 guys who are different in so many ways could be best friends. The entire reason the Tal'darim were invented was because at some point the writers realized "wait hold on, what reason would the Terrans and Protoss have to fight? We can't just have 0 missions in this game of fighting Protoss." So they had to bullshit these other Protoss that conveniently were never previously mentioned.
>>2441544The thing is that it's only Raynor and his Raiders being buddies with the Protoss.The Terrans in general however along with the Protoss have strained relationships.There were still conflicts after the 1st StarCraft.The Protoss in SCII were too busy planning and prepping for retaking Aiur.And agreed with the Tal'darim thing, but then again we could chalk it up to there being a number of still unknown Protoss tribes out there in the Koprulu Sector.
do protoss consider two male templar merging into an archon gay?
Thinking of picking up SCBW to play vs players. Is it worth learning this game or should I put my effort on SC2? I do like that this game gets no class balance patches anymore but am afraid of spending a lot of time grinding a dead game
>>2442104It’s only gay if the balls touch
>>2435942>The Zerg are an animal, they're not cruel or sadistic or evil, they have a purpose and they work towards it.Pre-SC2 Zerg are artificial lifeforms made from a template based on fleshcrafting alien species they take via assimilation. The combat units are explicitly cruel and sadistic as a design feature. The only exception to this are Defilers which are noted to have free will and are like that by choice.
>>2442159SC2 is dead, all players moved on to Age of Empires 4 which plays the same just with a different setting.BW is an old game but has a more alive community than SC2.
>>2443760>Pre-SC2 Zerg are artificial lifeforms made from a template based on fleshcrafting alien species they take via assimilation.Nah. The Zerg pre-SCII were descended from a species of parasitic maggots by the same name that managed to attach itself to organisms, fuse with their spinal cords and absorb their spinal fluids as nourishment...if I remember well.The Xel'Naga slightly tuned up their capabilities until the maggots started to assimilate everything on Zerus into proto-Zerg until the nagas dropped the Overmind because at this point the newly created broods were out of control.
>>2429379homeros btfo
>>2435970essence
>>2441586>The thing is that it's only Raynor and his Raiders being buddies with the Protoss.While true, you're playing as the Raiders all game so the Dominion hating the Protoss doesn't really matter. You're the one group who are bros with them
>>2435970The primal zerg are literally just the demons in Devilman, and I refuse to believe it's a coincidence when the big bad's name is Amon, which is the name of the demon that Akira takes the form of in Devilman.
>>2435944Not for nothing but Korhal is shown in the SC1 terran ending cinematic and yes there's a lot of desert but it also shows Augustgrad which is clearly a futuristic city.
>>2445183Agreed. Also wished that Raynor's Raiders had access to selected Protoss units.Or at least could've gotten unique Protoss mercs on top of the mercs you get in SCII (and before you ask, yes, Protoss mercs exist and Hill even muses about hiring some...shame it never happened).
>>2445183>>2445201And when it comes to mercenaries...the canon Secret Missions also have Zerg mercenaries.
>>2445202>Zerg mercenariesKek what the fuck
>>2445257Yeah. There is at least two infested terrans. One is Morik (who threw his lot with the Kimmerian Pirates) and the other a woman (Eschueta The Wicked, who uses Kerrigan's model and leader of a brood that included specialized Queens called Eschutriarchs) and some hyper-evolved Zerg individuals from various Zerg strains that were both sentient and sapient (along with even having free will). Brood leaders like Gilson The Evil (Guardian and leader of Gilson's Oppressors that included the much more powerful Mastermind Overlords), Frayne the Feral (Hydralis and leader of a brood that had very powerful Feral Guardians), Meserole the Marauder (Zergling and leader of the Plague Bringers who had particularly powerful Defilers called...you guessed it, Plague Bringers) and finally Wise Old Torrasque (Ultralisk of the Torrasque strain who lead the Swarm of The Torrasque which included the Empress Queens that were far superior to regular ones). There was also Cardis the Destroyer (Mutalisk) who was part of the faction Stukov called "Detestable Vermin" which included Cardis's Zerg, the Kimmerian Pirates and Protoss mercs under the leadership of the Archon Mertick the Mauler.
>>2445305You expect me to believe all that ridiculous nonsense? What’s next, the SC1 campaign editor contained an unused hero firebat named in a nod to Fahrenheit 451? Please, anon, make your fantastical bait more believable next time.
>>2445310The StarCraft 1 editor has a Tassadar/Zeratul Archon that wasn't used.Currently was given the name Zeradar.
>>2445201Eh, at least we got the protoss vision missions. Hell when you first meet the Tal'darim, Jimmy tries to be cordial with them but Nyon (his name is never said in-game, I only know it because it's listed there for his multiplayer portrait) is such a gigantic asshole that he starts the fight. Though in fairness, as LotV showed, most of the Tal'darim are high on space meth.I actually have very few complaints about WoL's story. Even the ending works as it is, it's not WoL's fault that HotS couldn't follow up on it well.>>2445310And a Goliath pilot who is a reference to the anime Escaflowne who is the person responsible for capturing the infested Stukov. No, that wasn't a SC2 retcon, it happened all the way back in the N64 version of 1.
>>2445187tbf Amon is a name for a demon or an evil djinn or something in the bible so they both took it from there.
>>2445698Ok but...this is the infamous scene of earth's past in the Devilman OVA (skip to 22:03 if embed doesn't work for you. Also it has boobies if you're at work)https://youtu.be/9ApCS76HXvw?si=cXHTRUS2ErBcloqK&t=1323Does this not seem familiar at all? The prehistoric world where demons (zerg) are in a constant battle of near-instantaneous evolution to surpass each other on a death world? With that being on top of the bad guy of SC2 having the same name as Akira's devilman form?
>>2445201>Or at least could've gotten unique Protoss mercs on top of the mercs you get in SCIIThis is actually pretty standard in a lot of campaign mods
>>2441542The one that gets me personally is the UED.>UPL was reformed into the UED after the discovery of alien species (zerg and protoss) in the Koprulu sector because apparently they had been spying on the Terrans the entire time>an expeditionary force is then sent to deal with the problem>within only a couple months they arrive at a sector that the Terran prison ships took TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF CONSTANT HYPERSPACE TRAVEL to reach from earth>again, in a timeline where apparently all of the events of the first game and its expansion were less than 2 years
>>2445742>were less than 2 yearsJust over 1 year, and yes I know that's less than 2 years but when the timescale is that small it really makes a difference.Also I looked it up, from the first mission of WoL to Kerrigan gives Mengsk an explosive purple nurple, is only 6 months in the timeline. LotV is about 11ish or so months long meaning all the shit Artanis did took twice as long as everything Jimmy and Kerrigan did in their respective campaigns combined. And then there's a 2 year jump in the timeline before they have a vision of "oh shit, we need to kill Amon in another dimension" and the epilouge happens.Oh and if you're wondering why Terrans take such a massive backseat in LotV, in probably the smartest thing Amon ever does in the entire SC2 trilogy he was using the Golden Armada to go around and just fucking glass every Terran planet they could find and Korhal pretty much only didn't suffer that fate because he needed the Keystone. So yeah, the game doesn't portray it very well but the Terrans almost got completely exterminated because they have no real way to stop Protoss who just completely stop fucking around, and that's why they're so absent from the plot.
>>24457742/2, hit character limitWas going to say that honestly the cinematic with Raynor portays this really well because he's accepted that this is one that is genuinely too big for his ragtag group of rebels even if Valerian would back him up, even putting aside that Terrans are super vulnerable to XN corruption. You do actually need the level of firepower that only Kerrigan's swarm or the 74km long behemoth that is the Spear of Adun to handle.
>>2445694>I actually have very few complaints about WoL's story.Me too. Of all the campaigns it's still the better written.But still wish the overall story was better and gave better explanations on why it is like it is or the impact of the UED on Terran worlds post-Brood War.
>>2445719Gonna have to look those up.
>>2446061Most of them are on GiantGrantGames' discord since he's the guy that raises money to help fund campaign modding projects. 2 for WoL that I would highly recommend are Wings of Mensk (replaces the Raiders with the Mengsk co-op faction with some bonus stuff and the campaign is rebalanced for that level of power,), and Revolution Overdrive (entire playable roster is replaced, every mission is completely remade from the ground-up with new maps, etc)
>>2446058>Me too. Of all the campaigns it's still the better written.Hell I'll even defend the ending. Yeah de-infesting Kerrigan is...controversial, but that final cutscene with Tychus is perfect. His hesitation, the reason he has his visor open for that scene, is because he WANTS Jim to kill him. He can't do it, he can't bring himself to finish the job after everything him, Jimmy, and the Raiders have been through together. He has gone from an amoral merc willing to sell out everyone for his freedom to a true believer in the cause and when the chips are actually down in that moment, he can't pull the trigger. And that's why he had to die in that scene, he's rather die than betray Raynor now, and the direction of the scene as well as the cutscenes in the last act of the game leading up to it sell it really well. It is imo one of the best-written finales for a character Blizz has ever done.And then they shit over his sacrifice in HotS by Kerrigan murdering billions again anyway with the writing treating her like she's doing nothing wrong outside of the scene of Warfield calling her out.
>>2447347Testing out Revolution Overdrive.That's a wonderful chaos here.On the other hand FUCK YEAH!, airstrikes!Also need to go and check out more of the Moebius mod.Played it some time ago but switched to vanilla to get some achievements.>>2447351Yeah. This actually sucks.In fact everything Kerrigan does in HoTS is turbo-hypocrisy.And not only does she kill billions, she also infests people on Skygeirr and that prison ship where Jim is held captive (don't get me started on how Matt doesn't call her out on this).I fucking hate this, I wish SCII was retconned and the IP given to someone who genuinely loves the setting since game 1 and because of game 1. But it will never happen and we're stuck with simply making custom campaigns.And all Blizzard could do is one very simple trick here to fix it all.
>>2448372I know it's fanfictiony as hell but I really liked the custom campaign The Swarm Reborn for this reason. It takes massive, MASSIVE liberties with the writing to make Kerrgian a more likeable and reasonable person. Is it a little too "the power of friendship" at times? Oh yeah absolutely, but it sure as hell beats the writing we got where she did lots of horrible things then treated like she did nothing wrong.Plus I love what he did with HotS's gameplay, he added an insane degree of variety.
>>2448623OK, will check it out.But in all honesty, all Blizzard needs to do is simply retcon SCII into a UED VR simulation XCOM2 style where Jim and Artanis were captured by the UED and stuck in endless simulations due to them having contact with Kerrigan.All those times people played the campaigns to get achievements or to just replay the game because they liked the missions? All a VR simulations.All those prophecy and gods stuff? Added by some UED stooge to make it more colorful.I just hope that something happens that will not cause us to live with this for good.
>>2448626>I just hope that something happens that will not cause us to live with this for good.Nah I'd rather they just leave it alone. Blizz being unable to monetize it means it's safe from nu-Blizz tampering for the most part.
>>2448649Or, alternatively, have Microsoft outsource the IP to someone who:1. Knows how to make RTS games (because Blizz abandoned RTS and nobody except for the skeleton crew of SCII knows what to do).2. Who knows how to write a story (which Blizz cannot for the love of anything, do it at all).3. Who genuinely loves the setting since game 1 and thinks game 2 is too much of a tonal shift.But this is my wishful thinking. It will never happen. We're stuck with this sci-fantasy idiocy.
>>2448652Not for nothing but Sarah being a mary sue was always going to happen even if the old writers were in charge. People seem to forget this because of nostalgia but like half of BW's plot is "everyone loses 15 IQ points in her presence so that she can always win". Everyone who was competent suddenly becomes way less competent in Episode VI, and that's where all the "DuGalle is an idiot" memes come from.I wouldn't say that BW is the WORST thing to happen to her character since you know...giant fire Kerrigan happened. But it does kinda undercut her being free from the Overmind if she just decided to be evil anyway, which makes any notion of her having free will in question. Like if she was free and immediately went the HotS route of vengeance against Mengsk, possibly even siding with the UED to achieve that, then yeah ok. But she just decides to be, in her own words "queen bitch of the universe", for basically no reason.
>>2448656So according to Subsourian, the admin of the SC wiki and the guy that has personally written like half of it because he's read pretty much every piece of supplemental material ever, later writers did realize that Kerrigan being evil in BW doesn't really make sense in the writing beyond making her look badass so they tried to square that circle. They came up with 3 reasons>consolidating power so that no one could control like like the Overmind did ever again>at some point after Duran bailed she kinda sorta figured out something like Amon was coming and thus needed a bigger Swarm to handle it, and the whole reason she launches her invasion at the start of WoL is to disrupt Duran's attempts to resurrect him>you can't just "turn off" infestation (please ignore that the Keystone literally can just turn off infestation), even if the Overmind is gone it still rewired her brain to think like a Zerg
>>2448656Honestly? I don't think Kerrigan was a MS at this point.And I don't think everyone was an idiot here...except for DuGalle.Everyone was more like gullible and naive instead of idiots.The Protoss were like this because Kerrigan dangled the info about the Cerebrates creating a new Overmind and she played the part where she doesn't want to be enslaved again (which was true) and that she wasn't the killer she was anymore (which was a lie). And Aldaris being paranoid was the other Protoss dismissing it as Aldaris being Aldaris (and to be fair, he and the Conclave were all but helpful in the OG Protoss campaign).In Jim's case it was because he still believed that Kerrigan was her old self to some extend and Fenix went with it trusting Raynor's judgement. Her becoming a villain and the Queen Bitch of The Universe would've attributed to the infestation and how far the Overmind twisted her morality (not to mention that being sadistic is a Zerg trait that was build into their genetic makeup). So much so that she actually enjoys this.>>2448668Would've preferred options 1 and 3.Screw the Amon part.
>>2448949>And I don't think everyone was an idiot here...except for DuGalle.And Zeratul, and Duke, and even Mengsk to a degree that makes no goddamn sense in hindsight.>And Aldaris being paranoid was the other Protoss dismissing it as Aldaris being Aldaris (and to be fair, he and the Conclave were all but helpful in the OG Protoss campaign).And yet no one found it suspicious that she decided to kill him right when he was about to reveal something super important about her and the Matriarch.
>>2448949>Aldaris being AldarisIs Aldaris ever wrong outside of his hate for DT? He consistently called shit out correctly, he was just a giant asshole about it that made people not want to listen.
>>2449466>>2449575Like I said. More naive than idiots...except for DuGalle. He was a true idiot here.I mean Zeratul did give Kerrigan a chance after she said everything about the new Overmind and helped the Protoss obtain the Uraj and Khalis.In case of Duke and Mengsk...I can see your point unless Mengsk had a contingency plan in case Kerrigan devastated his forces. But SCII never explained that nor Blizzard on how Mengsk rebound from that. If they said that Mengsk had secret factories build on Korhal since the whole Sons of Korhal days and build more of them in secrecy on other Dominion Worlds, and those factories spat out hardware without anyone noticing, then that would've explained how he managed to bounce back so fast after Kerrigan crippled him and neither the Umojans nor Kel-Morians managed to fill in the power vacuum.And that's exactly the thing with Aldaris. Dude was an arse and he could've done it differently without needlessly going full revolt mode.
>>2449781>except for DuGalle. He was a true idiot here.Which again is because of writer fiat. He was extremely competent UNTIL Kerrigan starts being in the same room as him.
>>2449889Yeah, but on the other hand why would you hear out some Duran guy who tells you the Psi-Disruptor is a threat to the UED?The very fact that it DISRUPTS psychic stuff (and the Zerg are psionically linked to each other) would've instead proved to be brutally useful. Pity he realized that (and Duran's betrayal) after Stukov's death.
You know I never hear anyone say anything about the Nova mini-campaign, how is it?
>>2450051It's mid. And I don't mean in the meme way people tend to use that word where they actually mean "it's shit", I mean it in its actual meaning which is to say, it's just kinda whatever. It doesn't do anything wrong but outside of the ways you can customize her army's loadout it's doesn't do anything special. Someone once said it best, it feels like an episode in the middle of a show's season where you'd just kinda expected to know who these characters are and then the episode ends without anything really being resolved because the season isn't over yet.Still, it's nowhere near the worst writing Nova has been subject to, that would be what would've been the story of SC Ghost. Be thankful we got the novelization loosely adapting it because the actual game's story was WAY fucking stupider than the book's, with the final boss "infesting" himself in a way that turns him into the Hulk.
>>2450051I fancy it. The scenarios themselves are interesting, you can see they put effort into them, the objectives are more of what you'd expect. I don't particularly enjoy the hero-focused missions myself and those are slightly overrepresented here.The characters and writing are strong, courtesy of Matt and Alarak. The new additions don't steal the show but they are servicable at worst.What I like most is the development of a plot which returns to space politics instead of god killing.
>>2450102>I don't particularly enjoy the hero-focused missions myself and those are slightly overrepresented here.See that's something I liked about it, because it felt like a WC3 campaign in SC2 (not counting when people literally remade WC3 in its entirety in SC2)
>>2450053They have one of the more interesting sci fi settings post Brood War and yet Blizzard didnt make the game. They bought the guys who made Metal Arms and got to them to make a deathmatch demo. Blizzard still canned it and the world is lesser for it. Even if it would have been bad they could have tried.
>>2450210Oh the gameplay certainly looked cool but the writing was nu-blizz 15 years before that was even a thing. Be lucky we got the Nova we did. Also the axing of the game gave us Tosh and Tosh is a MUCH better character than Jackson Hauler (or Cole Bennett, doesn't matter which name you pick, they're clearly both just aliases)
>>2450053>Still, it's nowhere near the worst writing Nova has been subject to, that would be what would've been the story of SC Ghost.What was so bad about it? At the time it was going to be Nova's first major appearance in Starcraft so you don't get to complain that her characterization is different in it than what Blizzard went with later on. And Nova Covert Ops' story was plenty stupid on its own especially towards the end.
>>2450617>What was so bad about it?It's really fucking stupid and gives us a way worse version of the terrazine and Spectre plot than SC2 gave us. Subsourian has actually written up a full summary of the game's originally planned plot but I won't link it's because it's on reddit and I don't want to be the kind of person who links to reddit, it should be easy to find, just look for his stuff and the Nihilistic Build. The book Starcraft: Ghost Spectres, as I said before, very loosely adapts its plot, taking out 90% of the facepalm-worthy shit and is actually a fairly fun read.>At the time it was going to be Nova's first major appearance in Starcraft so you don't get to complain that her characterization is different in it than what Blizzard went with later on. I'm complaining, I'm breathing a sigh of relief that that's not what we got.
>>2450626>subsourianWasn’t that leak just shit that he copied off 4chan in the first place? Wouldn’t trust the veracity of it.>a worse version of the sc2 plotIt’s pretty much the same except SC2 was more shades of grey with Tosh while Ghost makes the Spectres more straight-up malevolent and unhinged. You are welcome to prefer the former but that doesn’t make the latter somehow unbearably awful.
>>2450653>Wasn’t that leak just shit that he copied off 4chan in the first place? Wouldn’t trust the veracity of it.First off, that leak originally posted to this site contained the playable build of the xbox version so that in of itself puts some weight behind it. Secondly, there are aspects of it that point to it being real>the text document containing the game's dialouge script is really fucking long, way too long for someone to write as a shitpost or for some quick e-fame, here's just part of it as it's not even the full thing we got https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/StarCraft:_Ghost_campaign_quotations>whoever wrote this, if it was fake, clearly did not simply read a summary of SC: Ghost Spectres, they actually read the book in its entirety and cribbed a bunch from it, which is way too high effort for the average user>despite how much they cribbed, they intentionally made the writing worse and dumber in a way that specifically caters to the dudebro audience of the early 2000s, and not even in a parody way, it's so well-done that it makes me think if it is all a shitpost, the person who did it worked in the industry at some point>inconsistencies that only make sense if this really is a years-old work whose lore changed over time. Why maker Hauler/Bennett the leader of Omega Squadron in the game instead of Nova Squadron outside of the fact that maybe in a game it's confusing to have Nova fight someonething called Nova Squadron? Why does he just fulfill the same role in our canon narrative as Tosh, but evil?
>>2451075>Why does he just fulfill the same role in our canon narrative as Tosh, but evil?I just want to harp on this point for a second since it's the last thing I brought up and how from a literary standpoint, you just don't do that. When 2 characters effectively fulfill the same role, and are similar enough, there's no point in them being 2 separate characters, every writer worth his salt will just combine them into one character. This is why in most adaptations of Dracula, there is one Lucy suitor instead of three (Arthur Holmwood, Dr. John Seward and Quincey Morris), because sure the three of them have somewhat different personalities but they effectively just all do the same thing in the book's plot, so adaptations just combine them into the most notable of them which is Arthur Holmwood.An actual writer would have not created a character who was basically just "Tosh, but evil", especially since Hauler isn't like that in the book. They would have just put Tosh in the story and made him evil (which they can't do in the book because Tosh is an actual character in the book and he is the one that kills Hauler). Why wouldn't you just use the characterization of Hauler from the book? To do the former is again, way too high effort for someone that's just shitposting or looking for quick e-fame, it points more to this being an actual old piece of lore before Blizz scrapped it and wrote something new.
