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Prophecy 4: In Utter Darkness Video: In Utter Darkness  Today, we finally finish pondering that drat crystal, and complete our first mission chain.      We will not be seeing that many protoss in the mission proper.      I start with an absolutely loaded base. 10 mineral fields and 3 geysers, with two Nexus to saturate quickly. Two Gateways and Robotics Facilities. A Forge, Cybernetics Core, Twilight Council, and Fleet Beacon. Strangely, despite having a Fleet Beacon to unlock high tech fliers, I start with 0 Stargates.   And my starting forces consist of 8 Zealots, four Stalkers, and two Immortals, High Templar, and Colossi.   And on top of all that, I have a boatload of resources and enough Pylons scattered about to open with max supply.  As you can tell by the top left, this is an unwinnable defense mission. I have to hold out long enough to reach my quota of 2,000 kills. Difficulty plays a major role here, with Brutal needing 2,500 kills and Normal/Casual only needing 1,500. My first move is to merge those High Templar, because like hell am I going to remember to micro them.  Queue up a full load of Probes on each Nexus.  Then make a Dark Shrine...  Three more Gateways...  And an extra Forge and Cybernetics Core.  At which point my camera is forced back to the center.  And those three High Templar duck into that doohickey in the middle.  The Archive is the bonus, and requires you to keep it alive for 25 minutes regardless of difficulty. This forces me to deal with attacks from three sides, instead of just pulling back to the ramps and making a much more defensible wall there. It also means that there's no possible way to win this in under 25 minutes, and will take even longer after to hit the quota. This makes In Utter Darkness a pain to deal with on replays.  The Archive itself has a decent amount of bulk.  Seriously this is the only unit unlocker I start with, and I can't even use the drat thing. I have to shell out for advanced infantry/mech units myself.  Thankfully, the game will kindly give me two free Stargates (one offscreen) soon enough.  Here's the main gimmick for the map. Protoss heroes will periodically warp in to join the battle, bringing with them a new unit type and unlocking it for normal construction. The reason I didn't start with Stargates is because I had zero air units unlocked.  Urun comes in piloting a Phoenix, a dedicated anti-air fighter. They have the Graviton Beam ability which lets them force any non-Massive enemy into the air, making them a sitting duck while the other Phoenixes can take them down. In Utter Darkness is very rude for beginner players, and Urun is one of the reasons why. Graviton Beam makes fights a lot safer, but can't be autocast, so setting up their own command group and microing them is mandatory.  With this level of economy, getting fully upgraded is a cakewalk.  The 2 minute mark is when our mysterious mastermind makes an appearance. Not to be confused with the Voice in the Dark from the Dark Templar Saga. Completely different people.  Dark Templar are the only infantry worth making here. The zerg don't send out Overseers for a good while, so DTs can both thin out an attack wave with zero risk and body block Ultralisks from getting to my more visible units.  This is important, as the zerg are not loving around here, opening with a bunch of Zerglings, Roaches, and Mutas. You can also see the other thing here that can screw you over: That Observer, which has siblings on the other two entrances. Unlike other defense missions like The Dig or even Zero Hour, I'm given no free vision and need an Observer to get early warning on where the next attack will hit. The problem is that Observers will happily get selected if I mindlessly hit F2, at which point my next move command will have them ditch their posts and leave me blind. This effectively makes F2 utterly worthless until after the Archive is finished and I can pull back.  The Mutas like to break off to go hit Photon Cannons, so I need Urun on hand to zip over and help clean up.  Alright, that's the first attack wave down and I'm... 2.8% of the way there. We're going to be here for a while.  Phoenixes have a decent cost to them, which is bad when I want to save up for something later, but I don't have a say in the matter. I need a good sized wing on hand at all times.  Warping in Zealots is a decent panic button if you get caught off guard and need bodies at an undefended area, but Photon Cannons are a far better mineral dump.  The second wave starts, and the Observer is juuuuust close enough to an Overseer that it gets poked a bit. Not enough to die, which is important.  Graviton Beam is really, really good.  This is then followed by an attack on the opposite side.  For now, the play is to sink money into Colossi and Phoenixes. The spread damage on the Colossus is vital for dealing with these hordes, and by the time the zerg start packing Overseers in their attack waves I'll have something better to replace the screening DTs.  The nudged Observer reveals an expansion I can push out and take. Much like The Dig, grabbing it will give a hefty boost to my economy (Rich Mineral Fields!) but forces me to hold a much harder to defend location. Also like The Dig, I will not be grabbing it. The resources in my base are more than enough to win, and having to station defenses all the way out here will make it harder to respond to attacks on the other sides.  Hey, did you like Maar? Because he's already been downgraded so much that they're sending Hybrid in groups.  The Hybrid Destroyer is mini-Maar. It has a ranged attack and keeps Graviton Prison.  Hybrid Reavers, meanwhile, hit you. That's it. For being the end of the world and all, the Hybrid get a really piss poor first showing. They're just big beatsticks.  They're also not Massive, letting Graviton Beam render them utterly helpless.  And even if I didn't have enough Phoenixes to keep them pinned, none of them are detectors so my DTs can shred them.   What Urun means here is that a steady trickle of zerg will start pouring in from the top left.  And a few Mutas.  Followed by another stream on the bottom right.   Followed by another from the top right.   And now Brood Lords have been added in, forcing a quick Phoenix response unless you want your defenses sniped.  Thankfully, the next hero shows up at the 10 minute mark.  As seen in Welcome to the Jungle, Void Rays are mostly for anti-Armored. While this means they can tear through Roaches, Ultras, and both kinds of Hybrid it also makes them less effective at defending themselves against Hydras and Mutas. I throw them into my main command group and leave the Phoenixes on their own.  I make a few more Cannons any time I notice a surplus of minerals between waves.  The zerg don't actually have bases here, instead directly spawning units in just offscreen, but they do have Omegalisks guarding the edges of the map.  They hit really, really hard, but for whatever reason they only show up in two missions in the entirely of SC2. Both of them are in Wings.    Also Mohandar came in with five Zealots. I just noticed them standing around.  I start the last of my upgrades at this point. An air-focused army is the best way to finish this mission, as it renders Zerglings, Banelings, Roaches, Ultralisks, Brood Lords, and Hybrid Reavers 100% harmless so there's no reason to grab ground armor upgrades.  Top right.  I could probably start skipping past waves now, but I really want to get across the feeling of just how drat long this mission is, you know?  Immediately followed by an attack on two fronts.   We also get our first look at an Infestor, a late game caster unit that can spawn Infested Terrans or freeze a group of enemies while dealing damage with Fungal Spore.  I have enough ablative Cannons up by now that even this can't reach the Archive. They can hold aggro long enough that I can finish off one wave and swing down to the second.  I also get another two Stargates up for later.   Nydus Worms start popping up.  The first few aren't able to drop off a single unit.  Before you get any ideas, these Worms only spawn Broodlings, which don't count for the quota.  You know what Fleet Beacons unlock, right?     En taro Tassadar, Zeratul!The rest of the map is just Carriers. Carriers until I cap out on supply, then even more Carriers once my existing forces start to fall.  Also Interceptors can now be set to auto-build! Although they don't default to autocast, so I have to set it on each Carrier I build.  Top left.  Fittingly enough, this is the exact point where they start sending Overseers. Keeping Observers out is much harder at this point.   Top right.   Bottom right.   At this point I start building Cannons on the high ground in preperation for when I can abandon the center.   This kicks off another stream of zerg.         More Cannons.  And more waiting.   With just a few seconds left on the Archives we get one last Worm wave.  And done. Just another 651 kills to go! A mere 32% of my quota!  The Worms pop out much closer to my base, but that's what all the Cannons were for.  I still make more.  Bottom right.  And also top left while I'm here.    Shoutout to this one Stalker that's somehow survived nearly 30 minutes with only 4 kills to his name.  Top right.  And top left.  The starting Pylons give exactly 200, so now that I'm losing the low ground I need to make more.   And coming in with the protoss capital ship is good old Artanis. You might be thinking that the writers are using this mission to introduce future protoss characters that they could use in Legacy of the Void. You'd be partially right. One of the new hero units makes future appearances and the other two will be unceremoniously banished to the Side Story Dimension.  The Mothership picked up some of the Arbiter's tricks, like the cloaking field and Mass Recall.   And Artanis' appearance is just in time to hit that magic number.   Now, this whole vision is presumably how the Overmind knew Kerrigan would play an important role, and guided all his plans from then on. The problem is that the only reason the vision reveals it is because the Dark Voice decided to loving gloat. If he just kept his mouth shut that would be it. Universe ends, no moral.  And that was all we get for sitting through all 2,000 kills.  The mission is technically done here, speedruns would start targeting their own units to finish the job faster, but let's see how long I can last.  The Mothership is insanely strong. That's 144 damage every time it attacks.  Once you hit the quota the zerg start sending out Banelings in their attacks.  Zeratul is usually the first to fall, on account of being the only ground hero.     They send a lot of Banelings. Devastating if you haven't gone full air, powerless if you have.   My base starts mining out, so I send all my spare Probes to their death to free up space for more Carriers.  Which had the unintended side effect of splitting this attack wave.    And now drop pods start falling.  At this point I sorta just...  Went AFK.  Stretched, got a drink, that sort of thing.  Just like with Zero Hour, the drop pods hold Creep Tumors which you can see on the minimap.  At this point, the zerg know I'm running fliers and start sending swarms of Mutas and anti-air Corruptors in response.  This is around the point where supply starts dropping.      And so it ends.      The Hybrid start draining the life from all the zerg.        And I, uh, seem to have triggered an easter egg voice line? The normal line here is:  Your light is expended... it is finished.  Grounded and Scared - Complete the "In Utter Darkness" mission without building a unit from a Stargate on Normal difficulty. Two things here. The first is that instead of Victory! we have Glorious End! The second is that this is the only mission in Wings that lets you play on Normal to get both achievements. Which seems fair, considering there's no way to make this mission easier and it's with a race you might not have much experience playing. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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Aug 19, 2023 04:26
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I think you do get vision beyond what the Observers give you to start with, but it goes away over time- I seem to remember being able to see the starting Zerg forces for the first ten minutes or so, and having vision of the entire starting area even after losing all the structures aside from the archives until around the time Artanis warps in. There are a few other missions that pull similar vision tricks so it's definitely something they're capable of. The second achievement is available on Normal but I think it's actually easier to achieve on harder difficulties since it boosts the number of Zerglings showing up so you get a lot more kills prior to the Defiler/Hybrid combo waves, which are generally what starts to actually kill your forces. Overall the mission is a decent setpiece, but as you said it gets pretty dull on repeat plays. It's also the second and IIRC final mission in the entire campaign to have rich mineral fields, even if you're never realistically going to be able to take advantage of them.
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Aug 19, 2023 06:50
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A few comments: A very useful bug happens with the Nydus worm spawn in the 2nd base. Instead of broodlings which don't increase the kill counter, it instead summons an inifinite amount of Zerglings. 3-4 DTs at the top left sitting around the nydus worm speeds up this mission by at least 5 minutes, each of my DTs had 100+ zergling kills at the end. Hilariously, this also means Artanis spawns at the same time as getting the final achievement, so he gets shot down immediately by his fellow Protoss. The 10th Anniversary achievement for this mission is to not build a single Starport unit. I decided to try an Immortal/Colossus/Stalker composition, and to my surprise they actually perform just as well as the pure Skytoss, easily getting all achievement on Brutal. Immortals tank and destroy armored stuff, the Colossi eat Zerglings/Banes, and Stalkers are enough along with the starting flyers to handle the air. Speaking of which, the trigger for the enemy to send purely anti-air comps is when you lose all your buildings and ground forces. Once that happens, you're only going to get an extra 50-100 kills or so, since there's no more zerglings/banelings to kill. This can be avoided by having random DTs in your main base + secondary base, because the Overseers struggle to go through your Skytoss.
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Aug 19, 2023 08:34
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As it's clear, this mission is very cool the first time, a total drag every time after. Also jeeze, the protoss heroes here are just a bunch of wasted potential. Aircraft heroes! Those are the coolest! But nothing, nope, they make zilch appearances in SC2's campaigns from hereon out. And that's probably better than what happened with Selendis.
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Aug 19, 2023 09:41
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Nah this mission rules and I have fun experimenting with different comps and strategies to see how far you can go.
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Aug 19, 2023 09:44
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I am honestly surprised you didn't go for the gold minerals, if you rush them you can generally mine out a good bunch. Of course this only matters if you are a masochist who wants the mission to go on as long as you can.  BisbyWorl posted:
Yeah, this was a great way to undercut the tension. Sure, they can take a lot of punishment, but a galaxy ending threat should pose more danger than "the Protoss will run out of all conversation topics while waiting for their fleets to kill them". It's funny that the one unit that's actually issue to Skytoss is pure Zerg (corruptor). ... I also dislike the schmaltzy lines the heroes have on death.
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Aug 19, 2023 10:28
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BisbyWorl posted:The problem is that the only reason the vision reveals it is because the Dark Voice decided to loving gloat. If he just kept his mouth shut that would be it. Universe ends, no moral. NewMars posted:And that's probably better than what happened with Selendis. Welcome to modern Blizzard y'all.
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Aug 19, 2023 13:03
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This line, and a related one in HotS, always really annoyed me. Like buddy, who were you, President Overmind of the Zerg Republic? You literally made a bunch of little guys whose job was to be kamikaze bombers.
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Aug 19, 2023 13:09
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Also, one thing I find really funny is that despite never being playable in any form, the Hybrid have costs in their unit data. In particular, they both take 8 supply each.  That means I killed 1,424 supply worth of Hybrid.
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Aug 19, 2023 13:18
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GunnerJ posted:This line, and a related one in HotS, always really annoyed me. Like buddy, who were you, President Overmind of the Zerg Republic? You literally made a bunch of little guys whose job was to be kamikaze bombers. Well, yeah, but those are their slaves, not the slaves of some filthy voice in the dark. And the doofy voice man would enslave the overmind and could turn it into a suicide bomber. That's for the peons!
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Aug 19, 2023 13:44
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FoolyCharged posted:Well, yeah, but those are their slaves, not the slaves of some filthy voice in the dark. And the doofy voice man would enslave the overmind and could turn it into a suicide bomber. That's for the peons! That'd make some sense but the Overmind seems to lament the Zerg being in a status of enslavement, period. In the phrase "my Zerg" you can hear an echo of the SC1 Overmind's attitude of paternal divinity. Like the vibe wasn't "they're taking my stuff," or at least it didn't seem that way to me whenever I played this.
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Aug 19, 2023 13:49
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GunnerJ posted:That'd make some sense but the Overmind seems to lament the Zerg being in a status of enslavement, period. In the phrase "my Zerg" you can hear an echo of the SC1 Overmind's attitude of paternal divinity. Like the vibe wasn't "they're taking my stuff," or at least it didn't seem that way to me whenever I played this. Also hi, I recently caught up on this LP and it’s great.
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Aug 19, 2023 14:51
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I can't believe the Overmind was in love with Kerrigan too e: and Zeratul e2: and the fallen one Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Aug 19, 2023 |
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Aug 19, 2023 15:01
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Honestly, I think the gloating makes sense because at this point the Ultimate Badguy has already won. The only way that the gloating could undercut him is if somehow someone had a vision of the future of this exact moment. Is it a hacky and lovely narrative device? Absolutely. But I don't think the gloating itself is an issue.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:06
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folks i think the writing in this game isn't very good
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Aug 19, 2023 15:10
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biosterous posted:folks i think the writing in this game isn't very good it's all downhill from here
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Aug 19, 2023 15:12
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BisbyWorl posted:it's all downhill from here Nah, there are some fun side stories left in the Terran Campaign.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:16
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BisbyWorl posted:it's all downhill from here Eh we've gotten the worst out of the way now, for Wings of Liberty at least.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:23
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BisbyWorl posted:Now, this whole vision is presumably how the Overmind knew Kerrigan would play an important role, and guided all his plans from then on. This bit seems contradicted by the heroes' dying lines, either generic "welp we didn't know at the time / should have acted sooner" or one that specifically mentions her by name... which imply there was some big dramatic revelation. The issue being the writers deciding to go "tell don't show" and have a bunch of NPCs standing around dramatically commenting on the fact that everyone in-timeline (and the overmind watching whatever vision) somehow knows Kerrigan was the only one that could have prevented this situation. How the gently caress do they know and who was the one that explained to them? Did Kerrigan forget to update her Fated Chosen One certification? Even more incoherent prophecy bullshit? It's bad writing in an attempt to cover up more bad writing, but failing and making it even worse. silentsnack fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Aug 19, 2023 |
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Aug 19, 2023 15:25
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The hybrid are really disappointing. I don't like their designs that much, and the fact that they never become a full independent faction of their own makes it really hard to take them seriously as a threat.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:39
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Rhonne posted:The hybrid are really disappointing. I don't like their designs that much, and the fact that they never become a full independent faction of their own makes it really hard to take them seriously as a threat.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:47
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Nostalgamus posted:Nah, there are some fun side stories left in the Terran Campaign. This was also around the time when the whole maxim of “the main story’s middling/cliche as all hell at best, but the side stuff is usually pretty decent” with modern  games in general first really started taking root, right?
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Aug 19, 2023 16:07
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I feel that in the hands of a better writing team, and as part of a different story, this mission would have been superb. Let's look at what's actually going on here. The entire rest of the universe is implied to have been literally consumed and eaten, a combination of the 'grey goo' and 'superpredator' apocalypses. Your army here is literally all that's left, and everyone is coming together not to fight their way out of it, because that ship's long sailed, but to put together some kind of archive of their civilization's existence in the hopes that billions of years from now when life in the galaxy has died out and then repopulated, one of them will find it and know that they lived. While doing this they all see with the benefit of hindsight exactly how they got to this point - their own actions, performed in ignorance of the wider picture of things. That is heavy stuff. That is good stuff. This is some actual science fiction ideas in our ridiculous 'THE CORRUPTION' fantasy story. Unfortunately, this is Starcraft 2, where absolutely nothing was leading up to this, the scenario makes no sense, they had to severely retcon or ignore an entire other developed story to shove this in, and the superpredator is throwing dumb cartoon villain lines at them somehow, as if they know they're a final boss in a video game.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:20
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BisbyWorl posted:Urun comes in piloting a Phoenix, a dedicated anti-air fighter. They have the Graviton Beam ability which lets them force any non-Massive enemy into the air, making them a sitting duck while the other Phoenixes can take them down. It's not just enemies, you can pick up your own units too. Handy to pick up e.g. immortals that are about to die if the enemy has no anti-air. Doesn't really come up often, though.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:45
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It's running into a stakes and scale issue again, too. It came up earlier on how between games the Terran Dominion in particular and the Koprulu Sector in general seem to have massively inflated in numbers. Everyone acting like there's at least an order of magnitude more settled planets and people than just four years ago. And also, we're now conflating this chunk of the galaxy with not just the entirety of the galaxy but suggestions of it being the entirety of the universe. Things has ramped up from the Zerg being a terrifying but basically local problem that could snowball into something greater to "no it's about literally everything now." The most important thing possible is happening here and it never manages to feel earned to me.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:47
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I remember this mission as being an eye-opener for me the first time I saw it played blind on Youtube. I think it was Lowko? IIRC he had some weird unit composition that didn't super make sense and kinda coasted on this mission on Brutal just through sheer macro alone. It's what really made me realize how much of playing RTS games well really revolves around just acquiring and spending resources as quickly as possible.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:48
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the speedruns for this are actually fun to watch, as are ones where people try to see how long they can last. I recall watching a video (like, 7 years ago or maybe more) where the player used Cybernetics Cores as blocking structures at the left and right bridges, as well as full lines of hold-position DTs on the bridges. I think they finished the map with about 6000 kills or something? I dunno, it was cool to watch someone else play the mission that well, I sure as hell wouldn't want to do that but as I've said in the Brood War thread, I don't have a lot of patience for RTS missions like these edit: disposablewords posted:It's running into a stakes and scale issue again, too. It came up earlier on how between games the Terran Dominion in particular and the Koprulu Sector in general seem to have massively inflated in numbers. Everyone acting like there's at least an order of magnitude more settled planets and people than just four years ago. And also, we're now conflating this chunk of the galaxy with not just the entirety of the galaxy but suggestions of it being the entirety of the universe. Things has ramped up from the Zerg being a terrifying but basically local problem that could snowball into something greater to "no it's about literally everything now." The most important thing possible is happening here and it never manages to feel earned to me. was this one of the first big AAA games to do this kind of stakes raising? The only earlier series I can think that had such high stakes was Mass Effect, but that was the baseline endgame scenario from the outset, and they were careful to keep it relegated to only the Milky Way galaxy Aces High fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Aug 19, 2023 |
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Aug 19, 2023 16:50
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Aces High posted:was this one of the first big AAA games to do this kind of stakes raising? The only earlier series I can think that had such high stakes was Mass Effect, but that was the baseline endgame scenario from the outset, and they were careful to keep it relegated to only the Milky Way galaxy I'd say "probably not" but I also can't really think of any particular examples in the AAA space that go for this specifically? But you just get it all the time in any narrative where the threat suddenly becomes one to the biggest world-unit the characters and setting are concerned with, be that the literal planet they live on or more. Threats that span the world, the galaxy, the planes, all humanity, whatever. Like Persona 4 going from "weird local murder mystery that touches an alternate magic realm" to "this fog will consume the world if you don't stop the bad guy," or the original Dune novels going from "stagnant empire that lasts millennia" to "humanity must spread and change to survive a vaguely-defined but more immediate Terrible Threat" by the end.
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Aug 19, 2023 17:07
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disposablewords posted:I'd say "probably not" but I also can't really think of any particular examples in the AAA space that go for this specifically? But you just get it all the time in any narrative where the threat suddenly becomes one to the biggest world-unit the characters and setting are concerned with, be that the literal planet they live on or more. Threats that span the world, the galaxy, the planes, all humanity, whatever. Like Persona 4 going from "weird local murder mystery that touches an alternate magic realm" to "this fog will consume the world if you don't stop the bad guy," or the original Dune novels going from "stagnant empire that lasts millennia" to "humanity must spread and change to survive a vaguely-defined but more immediate Terrible Threat" by the end. it's a common MMO problem, at least
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Aug 19, 2023 17:37
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GunnerJ posted:This line, and a related one in HotS, always really annoyed me. Like buddy, who were you, President Overmind of the Zerg Republic? You literally made a bunch of little guys whose job was to be kamikaze bombers. the Overmind is the collective consciousness of all zergs disposablewords posted:It's running into a stakes and scale issue again, too. It came up earlier on how between games the Terran Dominion in particular and the Koprulu Sector in general seem to have massively inflated in numbers. Everyone acting like there's at least an order of magnitude more settled planets and people than just four years ago. And also, we're now conflating this chunk of the galaxy with not just the entirety of the galaxy but suggestions of it being the entirety of the universe. Things has ramped up from the Zerg being a terrifying but basically local problem that could snowball into something greater to "no it's about literally everything now." The most important thing possible is happening here and it never manages to feel earned to me. you should probably ignore what Starcraft 1 says about the terran worlds: per the manual, all the terran planets including Tarsonis, Moria and Umoja are in the same system; there are either ten or thirteen terran worlds total; only four (out of thirteen) survive the zerg invasion if Blizzard doesn't retcon the size of the Dominion then SC2 is a very short game
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Aug 19, 2023 23:11
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Lt. Danger posted:the Overmind is the collective consciousness of all zergs Well, except how it pretty much has to be a separate entity given how it's written about and the consequences of destroying it. Everything treats it as a top-down master instead of an emergent property of the swarm, including how it can be personally slain and a new collective gestalt does not naturally reemerge but is instead depicted as something that has to be deliberately created and imposed.
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Aug 19, 2023 23:20
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disposablewords posted:Well, except how it pretty much has to be a separate entity given how it's written about and the consequences of destroying it. Everything treats it as a top-down master instead of an emergent property of the swarm, including how it can be personally slain and a new collective gestalt does not naturally reemerge but is instead depicted as something that has to be deliberately created and imposed. that too is a quote from the manual
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Aug 19, 2023 23:23
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The... manual you said to disregard?
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Aug 20, 2023 00:56
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Well, at least it's over and done with. We can now get back to the Interstellar Adventures of Raynor's Rogues.
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Aug 20, 2023 01:11
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painedforever posted:Raynor's Rogues Jim Rats
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Aug 20, 2023 01:13
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disposablewords posted:The... manual you said to disregard? sure, why not. I'm happy to accept Starcraft 2's story on its own terms
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Aug 20, 2023 01:20
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disposablewords posted:It's running into a stakes and scale issue again, too. It came up earlier on how between games the Terran Dominion in particular and the Koprulu Sector in general seem to have massively inflated in numbers. Everyone acting like there's at least an order of magnitude more settled planets and people than just four years ago. And also, we're now conflating this chunk of the galaxy with not just the entirety of the galaxy but suggestions of it being the entirety of the universe. Things has ramped up from the Zerg being a terrifying but basically local problem that could snowball into something greater to "no it's about literally everything now." The most important thing possible is happening here and it never manages to feel earned to me. Yeah, it doesn't work since even accounting for the expansion in SC2 the terrans and protoss control a little fleck of space, so the galaxy being on fire is yet another "we saw it in other media and jammed it into our own" blizzardism edit: Also the Dark Voice going "Protoss....welcome, to die!" over and over doesn't help either The Chad Jihad fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Aug 20, 2023 |
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Aug 20, 2023 01:54
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Intermission 11       And one last research milestone from the Prophecy missions to see us off. >Watch news.     >Talk to Tosh.    Who knows how the wheel turns? Cycles upon cycles. This much I know - Those that see the future best take heed. It's both a gift... and a curse. But is it cast in stone? That's what I need to know. Who knows? I've heard you say we are who we choose to be. If that be true, the future cannot be fixed. >Talk to Horner.    In this time-line she was dead. Killed by...us. That's what Zeratul's been trying to tell us all along. She has to live or we're all doomed. >Talk to Swann.    Bah, no use worrying about what might happen if you ask me. You want me to help, you just let me know. >Examine Protoss Tank.  >Use Research Console.  And this is what we're left at. One zerg and five protoss research away from capping out the entire thing. And for comparison: four missions ago posted:This is what we had before we started pondering the rock. The protoss missions give an insane power boost.  This is the second pair of units you can get from research. The choices are the Raven, a flying spellcaster with a bunch of different abilities.  And the classic Science Vessel, which has traded out Defensive Matrix and EMP Shockwave for the ability to heal mechanical units.  The choice here is obvious.  And despite no longer being highlighted, the crystal is still available for pondering.  Although all it does at this point is repeat the prophecy.  And now we can actually play as terran.  Here in the terran campaign.  How novel.   
BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Aug 20, 2023 03:29
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Let's go do some charity work. If only for the amusement of doing that chains next mission without any air to air units.
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Aug 20, 2023 03:53
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We've been putting off Matt's missions long enough, and the final unit from his series is a fun one.
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Aug 20, 2023 03:55
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