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what if he had a rebellious young ward a zerg boy whom he himself orphaned perhaps Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Jul 23, 2023 |
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Jul 23, 2023 13:21
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What they planned to do, and what they would have been able to pull off, well.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:24
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Hwurmp posted:what if he had a rebellious young ward Then he'd have to die at the middle so that the ward can swear revenge. But it turns out that Mengsk was secretly a good guy and had a deep and compelling backstory that actually justified everything and in the end the ward wins but feels conflicted.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:25
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rastilin posted:I think the proposed version of the campaign would be even worse than what we got. There are already way, way too many overwrought "grappling with my inner demons" stories for it to be in any way novel or clever; and it lacks the punch it would have if it was a retelling of something that actually happened to a real person. At least romance stories have the benefit of being fun to read, but someone just being drunk and tormented doesn't have that. imo it would have ruled to have Raynor be a total loving loser. just an absolute has-been being like "HEY TYCHUS REMEMBER WHEN WE ROBBED THEM TRAINS? THAT WAS SO COOL. I TOLD MY PRETTY GIRLFRIEND ABOUT IT AND SHE THOUGHT IT WAS COOL" and dealing with the constant unreliable narration and everyone around him trying to prop him up as a figurehead so they can keep the rebellion going like yeah it'd be character assassination to an extreme degree but at least it'd give the campaign a unique vibe instead of being... y'know. that.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:34
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Kith posted:imo it would have ruled to have Raynor be a total loving loser. just an absolute has-been being like "HEY TYCHUS REMEMBER WHEN WE ROBBED THEM TRAINS? THAT WAS SO COOL. I TOLD MY PRETTY GIRLFRIEND ABOUT IT AND SHE THOUGHT IT WAS COOL" and dealing with the constant unreliable narration and everyone around him trying to prop him up as a figurehead so they can keep the rebellion going I think it would have been painfully cringe. Like, it could work if Blizzard were really clever about it, but... Beyond that, there's a huge oversupply of washed-out main characters in media. I personally don't see the appeal of pretend people grapple with pretend demons in a really over-wrought and terrible way. Like it would be more novel at this point if Raynor was completely mentally balanced and super competent. Like, clean cut, no alcohol, no inner demons, just completely nailing "cognitive behavioral therapy" and was just great at handling interpersonal conflict and providing counseling.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:47
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rastilin posted:it could work if Blizzard were really clever about it, but... This line can apply to basically anything Blizzard has done in the past decade and change.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:48
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Kith posted:-snip- That's incredibly interesting, and it explains a lot - e.g. why Raynor's just sitting at a bar on Mar Sara for no reason at the start. On the one hand I think it would've been better and more interesting than what we got; on the other hand I don't trust Blizzard to responsibly handle a topic like substance abuse, so... Hard to say. Like there would definitely have been a scene where Raynor finally is forced to confront his problems and just magically gets cured of alcoholism is all I'm saying. Probably him all looking back and forth between an awful problem he's caused and his flask, then getting real mad and throwing his flask away and it's done. Ooh, or maybe the Gentle Tender Love of Ariel Hansen would make him give it up for good.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:52
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Honestly, I think the Blizzard of then could have done it. Fourteen to fifteen years ago, Activision hadn't really started stepping on necks yet and it honestly sounded like Metzen was trying to break out of his Trademark Corruption Storyline cycle. Then the rest of the team pushed back on it because it was "too bleak" or "too real", and the rest is history. Absolutely no loving chance that Modern Blizzard could have made it work, though. Zero percent possibility on that.
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Jul 23, 2023 14:02
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rastilin posted:Like it would be more novel at this point if Raynor was completely mentally balanced and super competent. Like, clean cut, no alcohol, no inner demons, just completely nailing "cognitive behavioral therapy" and was just great at handling interpersonal conflict and providing counseling. Raynor has been through way too much poo poo to have "no inner demons, completely nailing therapy, and just great at handling interpersonal conflict and providing counseling". He *should* be emotionally hosed up after being betrayed by the Confederacy at Mar Sara, being betrayed again by his former ally/superior Mengsk, then being betrayed again (#3!) by his former crush Kerrigan. Oh, and Kerrigan's betrayal also included the murder of his closest comrade-in-arms (Fenix), and a bunch of Protoss troops who helped Raynor survive Aiur. And then for the past four years, he's been hunted as a wanted criminal and has probably seen yet more friends die at the hands of his former ally Mengsk in occasional close calls, narrow escapes, etc. If he didn't have mental and emotional scars, remorse, self-doubt, etc after going though all that poo poo? That wouldn't be a sign that he's "completely mentally balanced", it'd be a sign that he's incredibly abnormal.
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Jul 23, 2023 14:39
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MagusofStars posted:
Are you saying that a mentally abnormal person is completely unsuited to be a protagonist in a Blizzard Entertainment game?
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Jul 23, 2023 14:42
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Look, if they were going to have a dude drinking in a bar telling stories as their plot they should have gone full call of juarez: gunslinger with it.
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Jul 23, 2023 15:04
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FoolyCharged posted:Look, if they were going to have a dude drinking in a bar telling stories as their plot they should have gone full call of juarez: gunslinger with it. Ok, yes, but the plot of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was genuinely clever and brilliant.
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Jul 23, 2023 15:12
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rastilin posted:Are you saying that a mentally abnormal person is completely unsuited to be a protagonist in a Blizzard Entertainment game?
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Jul 23, 2023 15:28
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Kith posted:As such, I can tell you that the "emotional purgatory" is a post-hoc justification and a total load of crap. The events of the first game and its expansion(s) were intended to have messed up Raynor pretty bad, and Metzen's original draft of the story was all about portraying that. Unfortunately, the team didn't want the first third of Starcraft 2's lifecycle to be so negative since the Terrans spent so much time losing or being manipulated in the previous installments, so the narrative was shifted to something simpler and more empowering. This part right here stuck out to me as a sign that OG Blizzard was dead and buried by this point, because everything being "too negative" was kind of the point off the majority of the campaigns in Vanilla and Brood War (not to mention the canon outcomes of WarCraft 1 and 2, let alone how everything plays out in Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne). It isn't just the Terrans that have it bad in SC1, the entire Protoss campaign is about an apocalyptic invasion of their homeworld, with the conclusion being that they can kill the Overmind, but they cannot kill all of the remaining Zerg after, and so they have to abandon Aiur at the beginning of Brood War. You also see this in Diablo 1 and Diablo 2, the PC "wins" but, due to unforeseen circumstances, they get sequel hooks and a conclusion that shows that, even at their most powerful, the PC is kind of out of their league when facing the final boss. I dunno, I just see that summary of the writing team saying they want something more positive and uplifting and I think "then why are you writing for StarCraft? if ever there was a game that fully embraced the term 'grimdark' unironically, this is certainly one of the most popular ones." I mean, the concept of the hybrids were introduced before the final mission of Brood War (as a bonus, but still) and the final text crawl of the game shows that even Kerrigan is in a state of unease even as she has beaten back every force capable of threatening her power and dominion. I'm not saying there isn't room for uplifting stories in the universe, but I definitely think it is the wrong approach to look at the emotional arc of an entire campaign and say "we want the good guys to unequivocally win"
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Jul 23, 2023 16:58
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As I said earlier it was entirely possible to have Raynor poo poo the bed somewhere in the mid campaign and have the successive plot be full of "he's making an effort and we've no choice but to stick with but could we ever trust him again?"
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Jul 23, 2023 17:04
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I'll say again. The opinion of almost everyone I knew who had never played SC1 for WoL was almost universally positive. Deeply contrasting the opinion of those who'd played the first game.
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Jul 23, 2023 19:43
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BisbyWorl posted:
Why does Tosh put Raynor's name in quotes? It's a funny thing to emphasize. I'm guessing it's supposed to call back to how Zeratul spoke to him, but it sounds more like he's saying that isn't his real name. Y'know, I never pegged on that the alcoholism thing was supposed to be more significant. I thought it was just more of the "cowboy" trope. Y'know, with the hard drinking, and the shooting at televisions, and stuff like that.
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Jul 23, 2023 20:56
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Oh I think you do, 'James Raynor'. Something was on this ship just now. I still smell it on you. Protoss...interestin'...
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painedforever posted:Why does Tosh put Raynor's name in quotes? It's a funny thing to emphasize. I'm guessing it's supposed to call back to how Zeratul spoke to him, but it sounds more like he's saying that isn't his real name. Yeah, it's just emphasizing that Zeratul is the only one who's called him that so far. Nobody else calls him by his full name. It's a formality that only the protoss engage in with him.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:34
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I like Horner and Tosh.  SirSamVimes posted:Each game has one character worthy of being a favourite, and none of them are the main protagonists. Tychus, Abathur, and Alarak. Abathur is the best character in all of SC2.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:44
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Aces High posted:
I don't think that what was being said at the time. It was more along the lines of "we don't want to keep taking the player's victories away" and I can understand that. I don't think it would bother me personally but I could see people feeling frustrated that the first half of the game would have you "lose" no matter how well you played, without knowing what the mission structure would be like it's hard to say what it would be like but it seems like the dev team had a concern about tarnishing the player's achievements. The narrative arc could have been fine, appropriate even, but the way it gelled with the game-play loop sounds like there was some disconnect.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:54
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CheeseThief posted:I don't think that what was being said at the time. Eh, you could easily do stuff like a new Gettysburg analog where your ground force gets the job done, but doesn't get needed evac when the hordes arrive: this time because Jim is passed out drunk or nonresponsive because he's flashing back. Or have Jim gently caress things up for the player in mission and the player has to scramble for victory in spite of Jim. Or have the mission itself be the gently caress up and the player gets a Terran version of in utter darkness because Jim hosed up that bad. There are tooons of gameplay ways to make story defeats happen without feeling like the player's fault. That's a lame rear end excuse, and if in house was that dysfunctional, the fact that the game released at all, let alone that it was good, is a miracle.
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Jul 24, 2023 02:42
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SirSamVimes posted:Each game has one character worthy of being a favourite, and none of them are the main protagonists. Tychus, Abathur, and Alarak. wologar posted:I like Horner and Tosh. personally cannot understand how anyone thinks Zagara is not superior to Abathur 
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Jul 24, 2023 03:42
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DoubleNegative posted:All of Metzen's hand wringing over not wanting Raynor's alcoholism to mean robbing the player of their victories. And then, two short years later, Rockstar's Max Payne 3 portrayed just that very thing. Sure, that story got kind of dark and bleak, but it also made his rock bottom sobering up moment all the better. I think the difference is found better in RPG's and certain action games. It's the fights where you're supposed to lose, vs lose in the cutcene after you beat the guy. There are some RPG's where you have to beat the boss, but immediately after the fight is over, all of a sudden your team is huffing and puffing and the boss just flexes. Even if you literally didn't get touched during the entire fight and oneshot the guy. Doesn't feel very good (there is a relatively recent example of this in a Certain Star Wars Game Darth Vader) The better option is fights you're built to fail, like the first fight in DMCV (well, theoretically you can win it but then you don't have a game to play...). It feels better for the player because they can prolong the fight to a certain extent, but no matter what, their tactics just fail. But you can't pull that gambit more than once or twice in a game, otherwise it feels horrible. The only other real option to run with what Metzen was trying was to have Raynor take one crew and run off in one direction, while the player (as Horner) booked it the other way. Raynor keeps messing up, so you have to come in and clean up the mess again and again. It doesn't feel great, and the player starts screaming at the screen "THEN WHY DID YOU LET HIM GO OFF ON HIS OWN AGAIN YOU DUNCE!" to the sane person. How do I know this? Because the main story missions in Assassins Creed:London (I forget the real name) are built this way, with Jacob doing something he thinks is good, only for it to turn out to have been stupid and shortsighted, so Evie has to go in and fix what her brother broke. Starcraft 2's story suffers from effectively having a similar ultimate goal for two games, then having to cram a BUNCH of stuff into the final campaign to make it all work. Plus the narrative they are going for is hampered in the "Choose your own adventure" style of level select.
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Jul 24, 2023 03:55
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Even the current SC2 has an example in Zero Hour. It is a laughably easy mission, and you can clear all 8 Hatcheries which reduces the Zerg attacks to a trickle, but the end cutscene still has Horner coming in on the Hyperion to save you. Even if you have CCs at all 4 bases with defences everywhere.
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Jul 24, 2023 04:19
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I've been reading JohnKiltrane's SC1 playthrough and this thread, and I've finally just caught up on both. Starcraft is in the top three of my favorite games of all time. Staying up until 3 am slamming down Bawls and doing LAN parties are golden memories. Used to get all the internet friends together around XMas every year to do 12 Days of Starcraft, the custom map where you get to hear all the unit VA's doing impressions of drunken singing. I even did decently at the ladder, in those ancient days pre-Youtube at the dawn of the modern internet. Built ridiculous fanfictiony UMS maps that I still somehow have in old backups. Fairly proud of one I built that was modeled after C&C's commando missions with a lot of custom edits. But the plot was the real reason I was there. I see repeated in both these threads fairly frequently the sentiment that the plot of Starcraft 1 is just okay. Hard disagree. Maybe if you just read a summary of events that might seem to be the case, but when you don't know what's going to happen next it comes off as an expertly-done sequence of reveals expanding what you thought you knew about the world. At the time Starcraft was new, the PC gaming space consisted of a lot of plot and atmosphere-heavy games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Thief, and Starcraft slotted in just fine next to them. Spoilers for JohnKiltrane's thread kind of: 1. You open the plot with space rednecks fighting the good fight against both a corrupt government and mysterious alien invaders. You join up with an incredibly smooth-talking, charismatic rebel leader, get that sinking feeling as you gradually figure out he's a very different man from what he portrays himself as, and then the gutpunch at the end of the campaign. 2. You open the Zerg campaign, and holy crap these weird mindless animals are way, way more complicated than they seemed before. There's some kind of alien god proclaiming in biblical tones at you, there's actual intelligent generals bickering and advising and generally putting motivation to what the weird animals are up to, and things just ramp up nonstop as the Protoss try and then fail to outmaneuver you ending in the scale of the world expanding dramatically as you attack their homeworld. Everything you thought you knew about them from their glimpse in the other campaigns is turned on its head. 3. You open the Protoss campaign, and holy crap these hyper-advanced, mindgame-playing alien psychic ninja masterminds who seem like they should have easily crushed everyone else turn out to be incredibly, incredibly dysfunctional, their own worst enemies, and the one (young, smart, slightly awkward but very determined) leader who might have a chance to turn things around is busy spending all of his time fighting against the gross old boomers. Everything you thought you knew about them from their glimpse in the other campaigns is turned on its head. Not only is the writing well-done in both the larger and the subtle points, but Starcraft also has some absolutely top-notch S+ class acting to go with all of it. Everyone they cast is a professional at the top of their game, and it's unfortunate that a screenshot LP doesn't quite get that across. More than one person has pointed out some of the highlights. In SC1's Terran campaign, Raynor just has this laid-back biker dude vibe for most of the campaign, which he manages to somehow maintain a hold of right until mission 10. "Aw, to hell with you!". You can feel the man practically vibrating with frustration and anger. Mengsk's speech at the end of the campaign is chef's kiss uplifting propaganda. Mengsk in general is oily smooth, a believable demagogue. Tassadar is awkward, young and earnest. Zeratul is a cynical, slightly mocking, but responsible leader and his lines come across that way. You believe Kerrigan when she declares herself "pretty much Queen %&$#( of the Universe". Aldaris is living smug self-assurance. There are no bad actors in the entire cast list. I can still remember most of these lines in my head exactly as they were spoken twenty five years ago. Then we come to Starcraft 2. I remember nonstop praise for the campaign back in the day (was it really thirteen years ago? Wow. I don't like being old.), and I'm glad to see that I'm not crazy after all here and everyone else acknowledges just how godawful everything about SC2's campaign plot is. Wings of Liberty starts by just ignoring everything that happened in the final Brood War mission - Jimmy is pining for someone who was never actually his girlfriend and who murdered his best friend, we're on Mar Sara despite it getting glassed way back at the end of Rebel Yell, Mengsk is an uncharismatic buffoon who couldn't convince a fish to breathe water. We're supposed to believe that after Kerrigan wiped out the entirety of the Dominion, UED and Protoss militaries they rebuilt this much in a couple years. Zeratul is a generic Mysterious Mystical Warrior Man who chases prophecies and speaks in faux-Important. It's a steep downhill slope from here, and gets even steeper right before the end of WoL and never recovers. Point I'm getting at is that making Raynor an alcoholic couldn't be character assassination, they assassinated the characters of everyone from the first game already with this dialogue and this lazy plot. The upcoming Zeratul missions are probably the worst example of this in WoL. If this ever gets on the LP archive I hope some of the lore posts expanding on *why* they picked up a good ball and fumbled it so bad wind up included. bladededge fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jul 24, 2023 |
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Jul 24, 2023 17:41
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bladededge posted:If this ever gets on the LP archive I hope some of the lore posts expanding on *why* they picked up a good ball and fumbled it so bad wind up included. Unfortunately, I've had to accept that this will never hit the archives unless baldurk comes out of nowhere and gives a massive boost to image size. Squishing everything down to 900px would turn this:  Into this:  It'd just make it far to hard too read what's going on for my tastes. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jul 24, 2023 |
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Jul 24, 2023 17:57
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Is there no way to extract the text?
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Jul 24, 2023 18:04
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By popular demand posted:Is there no way to extract the text? It's not just text, fine details in general become hard to make out.   This shot of Zero Hour makes it next to impossible to see the Zerglings on creep, for example. Like, yeah, I could do specific zoom-ins as needed, but having to do it for the entirety of SC2 + Covert Ops + Co-Op would add a massive amount of work to what's already going to be well over a year of work.
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Jul 24, 2023 18:14
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BisbyWorl posted:Unfortunately, I've had to accept that this will never hit the archives unless baldurk comes out of nowhere and gives a massive boost to image size. Squishing everything down to 900px would turn this:  (I'm reading SA exclusive via phone now)
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Jul 24, 2023 18:28
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does internet archive have a system for SSLPs? I know a lot of VLPs end up there (and then a whole bunch of others got lost to the sands of time)
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Jul 24, 2023 18:47
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BisbyWorl posted:It's not just text, fine details in general become hard to make out. For what it's worth, I've never sized any of my LPs to go into the archive for this reason. I think the archive size works well for handheld games and games with simple UIs and very clear, distinguishable graphics, but doesn't work well for anything complex.
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Jul 24, 2023 18:49
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This pretty much hits the nail on the head for how I feel about the Starcraft franchise. Hell, one simple change that would have made me less annoyed about WoL's setup would have been to replace the photo of Kerrigan with one of, I don't know, younger Raynor leaning against one of Fenix's dragoon legs and grinning like a dipshit.
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Jul 24, 2023 22:17
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Bloody Pom posted:Hell, one simple change that would have made me less annoyed about WoL's setup would have been to replace the photo of Kerrigan with one of, I don't know, younger Raynor leaning against one of Fenix's dragoon legs and grinning like a dipshit. That would be so loving cool. I mean, yes! That would be an instant reminder of what a gutpunch it was when Fenix dies... and how Kerrigan mocked Raynor about it.
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Jul 24, 2023 22:26
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Huh, I don't think I've seen anyone say that Starcraft 1's plot is mid. It's said a lot about Wings of Liberty - if you ignore the connection to the first game then it's a not-amazing-but-not-terrible story that does its job of justifying the fun missions without being offensively bad most of the time. Its biggest crime is definitely ignoring the status quo of the first game's ending while specifying it's too soon after for things to have realistically changed that much.
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Jul 24, 2023 22:29
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Bloody Pom posted:Hell, one simple change that would have made me less annoyed about WoL's setup would have been to replace the photo of Kerrigan with one of, I don't know, younger Raynor leaning against one of Fenix's dragoon legs and grinning like a dipshit. Now I really want this  gently caress it is weird how much kid me loved Fenix, I can still hear literally every one of his lines in my head both as a zealot and a dragoon lol.
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Jul 24, 2023 22:31
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Fenix is great because he's so unlike every other named Protoss we encounter. Dude immediately pulled the stick out of his rear end and started beating the Zerg to death with it. Also, instead of seeing Terrans as inferior, he respects them for fighting well despite their relative frailty. He's basically a Klingon in Protoss cosplay 
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Jul 24, 2023 23:10
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 We are pondering Zeratul's magic rock to see the answers he has uncovered. All of them are bad an at least one is an offensively blatant retcon.
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Jul 25, 2023 15:22
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Unit Spotlight: Siege Tank 
On the other hand, who gives a poo poo, they're still Siege Tanks. They two shot Hydralisks. They three shot Zealots. Even the mighty Ultralisk can only take eight hits before dropping. The old Siege Tank + Bunker combo makes Terran the undisputed king of base defense, and there are a good number of missions that let you take full advantage of that. Armory Upgrades  Maelstrom Rounds
If Siege Tanks struck fear into the hearts of our enemies before, they will inspire abject terror when fining the Maelstrom Round. This shaves off shots against a bunch of enemies, and it not impacting splash damage doesn't really matter when you can just throw in another tank or two. Shaped Blast 
Field tests have shown that this shell reduces friendly fire fatalities by 75%, though due caution is still recommended when walking into a fire zone. Not absolutely vital if you're just tucking tanks behind your bunkers, but this takes a lot of risk out of using them offensively or if there's a good tank spot a bit away from a bunker line. Mercenary: Siege Breaker   A small but elite unit of ex—Confederate siege tank pilots. They claim they can solve all of your problems with one shot from their customized and over—charged cannons.
Field Manual Artwork  The comments on the bottom right are a nod to Sgt. Hammer, a hero from Heroes of the Storm who pilots a Siege Tank. 
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Jul 25, 2023 15:25
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I'm surprised there's nothing about cupholders. Considering the universe, you'd think there would be.
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Jul 25, 2023 20:18
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Seige Tanks rule and Sgt Hammer was my main in HotS. She was such a fun character to play.
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Jul 26, 2023 00:29
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