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So I read UED was originally going to be in SC2 but Blizzard went with a totally different story lol
Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 16:27
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Honestly as a fan of the backstory in the Starcraft 1 manual I found the UED showing up at all to be bullshit. quote:Originally scheduled as a one-year trip,their voyage took a turn for the worse. At some point during the journey the navigational systems linked to ATLAS shut down, erasing not only the coordinates of Gantris VI, but those of the Earth as well. The four ships,carrying their hapless cargo in stasis, barreled blindly through space at warp speeds for nearly thirty years. But that pales in comparison to how Starcraft 2 treated everything previously established.
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Aug 10, 2020 17:13
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General Battuta posted:
My only wroblem with Kerrigan (and be extension Arthas and Sylvannas's) story is that the Zerg (and Forsaken) are implied to make you evil via their science/magic and transformation. On the one hand, yah they are evil with their evil actions but also...they are being manipulated and hand their minds warped by the inherently evil thing that is most definitely going to make you evil. My point is that Arthas story is the 5th time Blizzard did the THIS GOOD GUY IS CORRUPTED angle and I didn't like it.
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Aug 10, 2020 18:50
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Mooseontheloose posted:My only wroblem with Kerrigan (and be extension Arthas and Sylvannas's) story is that the Zerg (and Forsaken) are implied to make you evil via their science/magic and transformation. On the one hand, yah they are evil with their evil actions but also...they are being manipulated and hand their minds warped by the inherently evil thing that is most definitely going to make you evil. At least Arthas got the distinction of getting a descent into madness before he grabs the unholy sword of ally slaying.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:02
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FoolyCharged posted:At least Arthas got the distinction of getting a descent into madness before he grabs the unholy sword of ally slaying. Yeah, I haven't played the campaign in a bit but he's already broken quite bad before he ever touches anything evil, hasn't he? Certainly he's a proper war criminal by the time he picks up frostmourne, but I don't think anything before then was corrupting him, he was just being a lovely dude.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:09
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Mooseontheloose posted:My only wroblem with Kerrigan (and be extension Arthas and Sylvannas's) story is that the Zerg (and Forsaken) are implied to make you evil via their science/magic and transformation. On the one hand, yah they are evil with their evil actions but also...they are being manipulated and hand their minds warped by the inherently evil thing that is most definitely going to make you evil. Maybe, but Kerrigan's also been betrayed and abandoned by every major figure in her life by that point, so I think she's got plenty of motive to become genocidally self-sufficient. The swarm is her body and self; it's no coincidence that her main enemies in Brood War are the men trying to control the Zerg for their purposes.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:34
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Kerrigan goes from hero in SC1 to zero in SC2. SC1's Kerrigan has her be a compelling figure, who is fully self-actualized, and immensely powerful mostly through her ability to lead/rule/manage. SC2 has her be less compelling, less reasonable, and less powerful except for her anime powers at the end. She used to run systems, man. Now she barely runs a base. She dethroned the Big Boss of the zerg and then they retcon that to "actually he wanted her to take the throne" in SC2.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:44
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I don't understand how anyone can possibly be invested in WoW's story or lore because, like, it's literally impossible. You can't invest in it because it's fluid as gently caress. The retcons are so loving constant that the big fancy tomes they put out to set the lore straight and finally establish what the actual canon was were already retconned by the time they hit shelves, IIRC. How can you possibly invest in a story when all parts of it are in a state of perpetual flux? Plus, you know, it's terribly written and really bad and also I will never understand how people aren't taking Blizzard to task for the fact their noble savage race wasn't overt enough so they made it that they are literally brown skinned and come from a place reminiscent of Africa.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:53
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Ainsley McTree posted:Yeah, I haven't played the campaign in a bit but he's already broken quite bad before he ever touches anything evil, hasn't he? Certainly he's a proper war criminal by the time he picks up frostmourne, but I don't think anything before then was corrupting him, he was just being a lovely dude. Nothing corrupting him, but I think it’s fair to say Mal’ganis was manipulating him towards the path he took.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:20
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Ainsley McTree posted:Yeah, I haven't played the campaign in a bit but he's already broken quite bad before he ever touches anything evil, hasn't he? Certainly he's a proper war criminal by the time he picks up frostmourne, but I don't think anything before then was corrupting him, he was just being a lovely dude. Arthas' fall is actually pretty well-written - he makes a series of mistakes and bad decisions because he's an inexperienced royal doing real work for the first time. He gets frustrated by his little war not turning out to be an adventure full of glory where all of the bad guys are smote and nobody dies, so he quickly starts to crack under the pressure instead of accepting that "the best job" does not necessarily equate "a perfect result". Overall, his descent is a pretty believable transition from "the means justify the ends" to "the ends justify the means".
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Aug 10, 2020 20:44
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Anakin's fall is actually pretty well-written - he makes a series of mistakes and bad decisions because he's an inexperienced jedi doing real work for the first time. He gets frustrated by his little war not turning out to be an adventure full of glory where all of the bad guys are smote and nobody dies, so he quickly starts to crack under the pressure instead of accepting that "the best job" does not necessarily equate "a perfect result". Overall, his descent is a pretty believable transition from "the means justify the ends" to "the ends justify the means".
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Aug 10, 2020 20:58
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Kith posted:"the ends justify the means". *explodes*
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Aug 10, 2020 21:01
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Kael's story was great too. Just abject racism pushing him right out of the Alliance and into a way, way worse enemy's hands along a completely reasonable path; I personally agree with everything Kael'Thas did in TFT. And it wasn't even him being vainglorious, he was like "demons? this isn't right" then he gets hosed over and the only people who support him and the elfs are the "bad" guys, and he did it all solely because he felt that was what was good for his people, and he was right since Lordaeron got hosed up and was controlled by the Dreadlords. This is also why it's dumb when they made Kael go crazy with demon magic, they really did him dirty. He was never arrogant, the racists just called him arrogant even though he was behaving in a way that was anything but. Then Blizzard says the racists were right and turn him into an arrogant, vainglorious dude after TFT. I also think the worst retcon was what happened in Legion where they turn Illidan into "a good guy all along" when Illidan had started loving with demon poo poo like ten thousand years ago solely out of self-aggrandizement. I think at one point he was having his fellow mages empower him directly so that he could be more powerful, even though they would have been far more effective if they were doing magic themselves. WoW really hosed up a lot of warcraft things, imo. jokes fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 21:06
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Mooseontheloose posted:My only wroblem with Kerrigan (and be extension Arthas and Sylvannas's) story is that the Zerg (and Forsaken) are implied to make you evil via their science/magic and transformation. On the one hand, yah they are evil with their evil actions but also...they are being manipulated and hand their minds warped by the inherently evil thing that is most definitely going to make you evil. Metzen is incapable of writing anything other than ~CORRUPTION~ its a thing. He's gone now though, but replaced my even more hacky writers it seems. Kanos posted:Kerrigan's Brood War story where she embraced her villainhood by backstabbing everyone else gloriously and laughing in Raynor's face about it was absolutely great and the decision to throw all that entertaining characterization out the window in favor of making her a brainwashed damsel in distress was....perplexing. Seriously SC1 kerrigan is such a great character. And the SC2 writers knew she was beloved, so they.... completely loving trashed her and turned her into a wife in a fridge for Raynor. Its downright offensive. SC2 is like, Game of Thrones the TV show vs SC1 as GOT the book. They take the characters and just do completely bafflingly stupid things with them, while also going through the most cliched plot beats. Everything that felt dark and real about SC1 is instead saccharine and Hollywood in SC2.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:07
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jokes posted:Kael's story was great too. Just abject racism pushing him right out of the Alliance and into a way, way worse enemy's hands along a completely reasonable path; I personally agree with everything Kael'Thas did in TFT. And it wasn't even him being vainglorious, he was like "demons? this isn't right" then he gets hosed over and the only people who support him and the elfs are the "bad" guys, and he did it all solely because he felt that was what was good for them. This is also why it's dumb when they made Kael go crazy with demon magic, they really did him dirty. He was never arrogant, the racists just called him arrogant even though he was behaving in a way that was anything but. Then Blizzard says the racists were right and turn him into an arrogant, vainglorious dude after TFT. My favorite part of that illidan bit was that they had the player relive him munching on his followers for demonic power followed by everyone around him going "holy poo poo what have you done?" And then the game turns around and tells you what a great guy illidan was for doing that and making "hard choices" People got so upset about that that blizzard killed off the wind chime that gave you that quest.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:10
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Ainsley McTree posted:Yeah, I haven't played the campaign in a bit but he's already broken quite bad before he ever touches anything evil, hasn't he? Certainly he's a proper war criminal by the time he picks up frostmourne, but I don't think anything before then was corrupting him, he was just being a lovely dude. That's what makes the fall work. But the whole time, you can KINDA justify what he's doing. He purges Stratholme, but he did so knowing that they were going to turn undead and kill more innocents. He burns his own men's ships in Northrend when they mutiny, which is extreme, but again its because he is unwilling to give up on his quest to SAVE HUMANITY. Its because he feels so much responsibility and he's just committed to a "the ends justify the means" mentality. So then when he finds the evil cursed sword, and Moradin is like "oh poo poo dude, don't touch that", it makes 100% total sense to Arthas character and everything we know about him that he would say "you know what, I know this is wrong, but I'm gonna do it anyways because it'll give me the power to save humanity" The ultimately dramatic irony being that by touching the sword he becomes the lich king and destroys humanity. IMO, that's pretty decent writing. Its not like, a bestseller novel, but its better than the dreck they do these days. There's a clear and consistent arc there that starts with Arthas needing to go outside the law and ending with him taking the ultimate extreme option, because he's come so far and done so many bad things already he CAN'T turn back, he can't say no. He HAS to get to his end in order to justify all the means he's already gone through. He's trapped by his own ambition. That works! The Wiggly Wizard posted:Anakin's fall is actually pretty well-written - he makes a series of mistakes and bad decisions because he's an inexperienced jedi doing real work for the first time. He gets frustrated by his little war not turning out to be an adventure full of glory where all of the bad guys are smote and nobody dies, so he quickly starts to crack under the pressure instead of accepting that "the best job" does not necessarily equate "a perfect result". Anakin whines about his girlfriend and does stupid things in the films so not the same. Arthas may flirt with Jaina but he's not grabbing Frostmourne to save her, nor does he force choke her and shout NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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Aug 10, 2020 21:12
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There's a bit of an argument to be had about overall Blizzard game quality post Warcraft III, but the lore since Warcraft III has definitely gone into the dumpster, lit the dumpster on fire, and then burrowed beneath it.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:15
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He was supposed to be the "I thought I was special! I thought I was in control! I did it for the right reasons!" guy and then, when he's getting chopped up and munching on his lieutenants, it's apparent he's definitely not in control of loving anything. The entire TBC expansion was to show how horrible he was, and how he was megalomaniacal and evil. Slave Pens! gently caress! And then, in a 2 minute cutscene in Legion, all that stuff is ignored and retconned because Blizzard is, like, 100% on board with "tough choices" bullshit.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:15
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jokes posted:He was supposed to be the "I thought I was special! I thought I was in control! I did it for the right reasons!" guy and then, when he's getting chopped up and munching on his lieutenants, it's apparent he's definitely not in control of loving anything. The entire TBC expansion was to show how horrible he was, and how he was megalomaniacal and evil. Slave Pens! gently caress! Yeah but he says "You are not prepared" a lot. People like that.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:22
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Oh while we're bitching about modern Blizzard writing, can I bring up my biggest pet peeve character after what they did to Kerrigan? loving Jaina Proudmoore. In War3 she was the cool, younger mage who didn't have the racist views of her kin. She was willing to see the bigger picture, and was more of an adult than the adults, seeing past Thrall's green skin and working with him in order to save the day in the 3rd war against the demons. But... we can't have that! Horde and Alliance have to hate each other because WoW has factions and nobody at blizzard knows what to do with them. So Thrall becomes Jesus and kinda forgets about The Horde so he can be neutral, which is really dumb, and on the other side... Jaina's hometown gets destroyed (by a magical nuclear bomb because the warcraft universe definitely can handle something as serious as Hiroshima with respect and gravity needed) so she completely 180s in a massive heel-turn and is now the most racist person in the Alliance. Everybody else is like "wow we have problems, lets maybe not fight the Horde right now" and Jaina is like "FUUUUCK ORCS THOUGH!". I will never understand why they didn't just create a new Alliance character to be the "screw the horde!" character. Turning Jaina evil is so stupid. It makes everything that happened in warcraft 3 into a complete loving joke. I mean honestly "And then the nice lady's hometown was blown up by a nuclear bomb made by goblins so now she's racist" is something I would expect in a high schooler's edgy fanfiction. F- come see me after class.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:39
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The whole Jaina-Thrall thing was great. Two people showed mutual respect to each other who weren't even around when the things that cause their respective races to hate each other happened (other than the loving slavery jesus christ). And they motivate their factions (well, Jaina's was very small) to put down their hatred for each other to literally stand shoulder to shoulder against Archimonde. WC3 had some great character things (as pulpy as it is).
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Aug 10, 2020 21:56
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Since Diablo 1 and 2 were my favorites I do have to give the crown to bad writing to 3. The whole time I was playing I'm thinking man someone could do a great RLM style breakdown of this poo poo.General Battuta posted:*explodes*
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Aug 10, 2020 22:51
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Groovelord Neato posted:Since Diablo 1 and 2 were my favorites I do have to give the crown to bad writing to 3. The whole time I was playing I'm thinking man someone could do a great RLM style breakdown of this poo poo. You didn't like diablo with tits? Or the shopkeeper from d1 is back and not dead and also very evil and has 100x the dialogue of her previous existence? Or...
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Aug 11, 2020 03:16
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Or the one character in all of Diablo that anybody actually cares about, Deckard Cain, gets killed in a very lame cutscene when the game forces you to be dumb and run off falling for a distraction anybody should see a mile away? Its like Blizzard is trying to be bad sometimes.
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Aug 11, 2020 06:50
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Death by butterflies.
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Aug 11, 2020 07:12
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Zaphod42 posted:Or the one character in all of Diablo that anybody actually cares about, Deckard Cain, gets killed in a very lame cutscene when the game forces you to be dumb and run off falling for a distraction anybody should see a mile away? My friend who I used to play an ungodly amount of the first two games into the wee hours of the night totally forgot Deckard Cain died until I was talking about how stupid 3 was.
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Aug 11, 2020 13:24
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Zaphod42 posted:I know his name is a reference to the French General, that was hence my question. But his voice actor sounds like he could be shooting for Russian as much as French, its just a kinda stuffy nondescript European accent. I think the touch they were going for was more "Space Colonists = America/New World" and "UED = Old World (Europe)" Also a big strength of SC1 plot stuff people aren't mentioning is the voice acting was largely almost universally awesome. The Protoss in particular had a bunch of great talent that managed to sell all those cheesy HONORABLE KLINGON-ELVES dialogue. Grape fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 15:53
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A big strength of the SC1 plot stuff is coming back to it after experiencing the SC2 superfriends epilogue
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Aug 11, 2020 16:43
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One good thing about SC1 is that it steadily makes the universe more interesting by changing up the status quo. Each campaign ends in a big change to the setting and the next campaign is a direct reaction to it. In SC2 all the big plot events are about averting new changes, or rolling back past changes.
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Aug 11, 2020 16:52
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General Battuta posted:One good thing about SC1 is that it steadily makes the universe more interesting by changing up the status quo. Each campaign ends in a big change to the setting and the next campaign is a direct reaction to it. In SC2 all the big plot events are about averting new changes, or rolling back past changes. Whoa, it's like an allegory for Blizzard games themselves! 
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Aug 11, 2020 19:26
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Also while there were tons of southern accents in SC1, one notable not southern accent haver was Raynor.
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Aug 12, 2020 16:03
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I don't even hate the idea of some sappy Kerrigan/Raynor romance plot, but SC2 handled it in what's probably the worst way possible. Magical space artifacts, turning the Queen of Blades into a separate entity that Kerrigan must be saved from, deinfesting Kerrigan and then she reinfests herself, she's a chosen one and turns into an actual angel to shoot lasers at Space Satan... It's so bad. NARUD. NO ONE FIGURES OUT THAT IT'S DURAN. HIS NAME IS DURAN BACKWARDS. But honestly, I think one of the more baffling things about the SC2 writing is that it feels like there was no plan and things were being changed up in between installments, mainly relating to Narud, the Xel'Naga, and the Hybrids.
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Aug 13, 2020 12:57
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They even managed to throw in some random rear end temple which contained a prophecy that they were the chosen ones to save the universe. Just jamming in every lame cliche they possibly could.
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Aug 13, 2020 16:08
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Primal zerg lol
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Aug 13, 2020 17:19
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Groovelord Neato posted:Primal zerg lol The primal zerg are so hilariously dumb it rules. Which process creates stronger combatants: deliberate, intentional genetic manipulation and harvesting of species from across space specifically to absorb and modify and mix their traits to be more effective killing machines, or a bunch of animals randomly running around and eating each other aimlessly? Apparently the answer is the latter!
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Aug 13, 2020 17:47
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Flayer posted:They even managed to throw in some random rear end temple which contained a prophecy that they were the chosen ones to save the universe. Just jamming in every lame cliche they possibly could. Which I can buy in a warcraft fantasy setting but in a sci-fi world where there's literally billions of people on multiple planets, having everything hang on a "chosen ones" plot is soooooo bad Kanos posted:The primal zerg are so hilariously dumb it rules. Which process creates stronger combatants: deliberate, intentional genetic manipulation and harvesting of species from across space specifically to absorb and modify and mix their traits to be more effective killing machines, or a bunch of animals randomly running around and eating each other aimlessly? Apparently the answer is the latter! I also like how Broodwar obviously tees up the Zerg-Protoss hybrids as the big bad in the future and then SC2 is just like "nah"
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Aug 13, 2020 17:57
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Kanos posted:The primal zerg are so hilariously dumb it rules. Which process creates stronger combatants: deliberate, intentional genetic manipulation and harvesting of species from across space specifically to absorb and modify and mix their traits to be more effective killing machines, or a bunch of animals randomly running around and eating each other aimlessly? Apparently the answer is the latter! Also we've already told you the Zerg started as little worms on this planet that were uplifted by a hyperadvanced race but uhh actually they're *flips through Warhammer 40k manual* Kroot!
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Aug 13, 2020 18:24
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Kanos posted:The primal zerg are so hilariously dumb it rules. Which process creates stronger combatants: deliberate, intentional genetic manipulation and harvesting of species from across space specifically to absorb and modify and mix their traits to be more effective killing machines, or a bunch of animals randomly running around and eating each other aimlessly? Apparently the answer is the latter! I mean, conceptually they were really stupid, but they had some sweet models.
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Aug 13, 2020 18:38
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Flayer posted:They even managed to throw in some random rear end temple which contained a prophecy that they were the chosen ones to save the universe. Just jamming in every lame cliche they possibly could. wow I apparently memory holed all the prophecy stuff from SC2
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Aug 13, 2020 19:26
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Groovelord Neato posted:Primal zerg lol IT'S ALL COMING BACK I HATE YOU I DON'T LIKE IT It's like how Zerus was said to be a dead, lifeless world of fire. Then in SC2, it's like some volcanic rainforest planet filled with incredible forms of life. I always figured Zerus was like Char, hence why the Zerg made that their main base of operations.
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Aug 14, 2020 10:30
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