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On some level I sympathize with the writers, because the ending of brood war does not give them much to follow up on. Much of the deep and nuanced characters, power blocks and cultures in the setting are, broken without retvons. The UED is gone, and the Terran dynamic of a powerful central government opressing the frontier colonists should be broken. The protoss empire has been broken twice over, and many of itsfounding myths revealed as lies. And the zerg are just unrecognizable-all the cerebreates and the overmind dead for realzies, no more coming back. Just a swarm of monsters lead by Kerrigan, who really has no motivation beyond surviving and gathering more power. Kerrigan is really the big problem-there's no way for the protoss/terrans to rebuild without her crushing them for being a threat. You really have to come up with something to take her off the board in a heavyhanded way. I'd have been very tempted to reboot the setting, or at least retconning the final mission of brood war into a zerg defeat.
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Sep 18, 2023 06:25
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I think the problem is that they made her seem too powerful in the final cutscene and text blurb. I think it would work better if her having to take down 3 factions at the same time on Char ended up having some consequences. She had to expend so many resources to protect her primary hive clusters that she broke connections with some other clusters across the sector, so now there's some broken broods running amok. Sure, she still has Char, but she will have to spend time recovering and maybe trying to bring those renegade broods back, or destroying them because they are threats to her power. Something like that could work better with her coming back with such force in WoL, while the Dominion and Protoss are just getting back on their feet, Kerrigan was able to get back to her former strength and so some desperate measures might need to be explored to stop her from running roughshod all over the sector...again
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Sep 18, 2023 08:30
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I like the spider-mines in the Armory, they sometimes have a little leg duel for dominance.
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Sep 18, 2023 09:40
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You could do a lot of things to break it up. There could be splinter broods, previously out hunting around the edges of human space, to clean up minor colonies and do some scouting, coming back and not recognizing her as their leader. You could have Zerg genetics automatically throwing up cerebrates, and Kerrigan constantly having to stomp out a dozen small rebellions since she doesn't have the psychic link the Overmind had to outright control them, and no patience for negotiating with them. Perhaps the Zerg's biggest weakness is actually victory, and at some point local biospheres just can't sustain their ravenous hunting any longer, and they start devouring each other, and she has to deal with some of them going feral, etc. Maybe, sitting on her throne, supported by two giant ultralisks and a billion skulls, Kerrigan is the one who stares into the stellar blackness and goes: "...huh, this doesn't feel as good as I thought it would." and she silently abdicates the throne in some way, leaving the Zerg to slowly slip her grip as she goes looking for something with meaning to her. Wings of Liberty could still be about knocking the Zerg about and dealing with Mengsk, but Kerrigan's plotline could instead literally be her having found a hobby(amateur Xel'naga archeology, maybe) and popping up at odd places, raiding Protoss vaults, in the middle of backwater planets doing her own little zergy archeology digs, etc. It could explain why the Zerg are giving humanity a breather rather than just mercilessly curbstomping them utterly, they're confused, infighting and many of them, except for Kerrigan's personal guard, are still finding their new footing. If you still wanted to keep the stellar threat, it could certainly just be Kerrigan intentionally or unintentionally loving things up with her new goals. She would be a far more compelling villain than Samir Duran. It's the sort of thing that could require rewriting the entire storyline, but A) it would've in my mind been more interesting and done away with Duran Duran's entire stupid loving participation in the plot, B) it would have let Kerrigan actually be around during Wings of Liberty. She's loving nowhere! Presumably whatever Zerg Things(tm) happen are in some way by her command, but she never shows up to go "lmao john starcraft you sure are a nerd" or anything else that lets her actually figure in the plot except for Raynor beating off to her behind the scenes.
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Sep 18, 2023 10:38
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Yeah, it’s like they picked and chose what to keep from Brood War: Kerrigan is Queen Bitch of the Universe, but somehow Mengsk is in charge of a cohesive Dominion very shortly after getting his poo poo pushed in by the UED and then by Queen Bitch Kerrigan. Jimmy has completely forgotten he wanted nothing more than to avenge Like, Brood War ends pretty unambiguously in a way that makes it hard to follow up on, but it cannot be emphasized enough that they completely dropped the ball and it’s only going to get worse.
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Sep 18, 2023 11:07
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mr_stibbons posted:On some level I sympathize with the writers, because the ending of brood war does not give them much to follow up on. Much of the deep and nuanced characters, power blocks and cultures in the setting are, broken without retvons. The UED is gone, and the Terran dynamic of a powerful central government opressing the frontier colonists should be broken. The protoss empire has been broken twice over, and many of itsfounding myths revealed as lies. And the zerg are just unrecognizable-all the cerebreates and the overmind dead for realzies, no more coming back. Just a swarm of monsters lead by Kerrigan, who really has no motivation beyond surviving and gathering more power. When you put it like this, it's kind of astonishing that Blizz was willing to put so much effort into the initial setting lore - all the factions and tribes and broods - just to wipe almost all of them out. I have to respect it.
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Sep 18, 2023 12:46
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It's not as bad as all that. The UED still exists iirc, it's only the fleet they sent to dominate space Australia that got annihilated, because they weren't expecting a space emu war. I could totally see Earth sending an even bigger fleet to find out what the gently caress happened to the first one and really put their foot down. Similarly, while the protoss have suffered many setbacks, they also came together to unite as a race again, and the spiritual and technological development that uniting the disparate paths of the Khala might provide could put them in a very interesting position; maybe lean even harder into the whole "expensive but worth it" role they were originally designed as. And people have already brainstormed many ways for Kerrigan to not be as powerful as she postured at the end of Brood War, or just be distracted. E: A Xel'Naga resurgence admittedly seems like a no-brainer to up the stakes for a sequel, but it could have been done with far less melodrama, and wouldn't even necessarily require a member of their race to still be around for them to have an impact. The archaeological digs already at the center of the plot could easily have gone in a similar direction to the Halo rings: tech left behind that is massively dangerous, and who gets to control it, and tip the balance of power. Felinoid fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Sep 18, 2023 |
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Sep 18, 2023 13:29
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Felinoid posted:E: A Xel'Naga resurgence admittedly seems like a no-brainer to up the stakes for a sequel, but it could have been done with far less melodrama, and wouldn't even necessarily require a member of their race to still be around for them to have an impact. The archaeological digs already at the center of the plot could easily have gone in a similar direction to the Halo rings: tech left behind that is massively dangerous, and who gets to control it, and tip the balance of power. And then the last game in the trilogy reveals that there are still some of them around, and you have to have read a trilogy of books to know what their deal even is?  (Halo 4 was such a clusterfuck)
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Sep 18, 2023 13:59
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Regalingualius posted:And then the last game in the trilogy reveals that there are still some of them around, and you have to have read a trilogy of books to know what their deal even is? drat I can't wait for Starcraft 3: It turns out humans kicked the Xel'Naga's asses 50 bajillion years ago
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Sep 18, 2023 14:06
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I kinda like the hollow victory depressed Kerrigan idea. It doesn't even need to be that elaborate--it works fine without needing to change much else about her because the most believable part is that someone who is wondering what the point of it all is, now that there's no pressing crisis to draw her attention, would absolutely withdraw inward and not do much. And because the Zerg is a hive mind, her mental state makes the rest of the swarm lethargic, giving the Terrans and Protoss breathing room until something (the Xel'Naga/Mengsk) starts presenting a crisis again and gives her an external motivator. It's a cool idea based in some well-trod mental health topics, which means Blizzard absolutely doesn't have the chops to implement it.
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Sep 18, 2023 15:25
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I could even see it working as a major swerve in-game: the first couple mission arcs are pretty much exclusively Raynor vs. the Dominion, and then in the middle of one of those missions, the Zerg abruptly reappear and scare both sides shitless after years of inactivity… which also starts drawing the battered Protoss back into the fray as well.
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Sep 18, 2023 15:43
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I can forgive the retcons of "the Dominion/Koprulu Sector are actually way bigger than we said they were" and "the Dominion rebuilt way faster than a reasonable person would expect after BW" much more than I can stuff like the characters' motivations. The fast rebuilding and bigger scope are part of making the game work as a near-term sequel to Brood War, but you don't have to do stuff like mess with why the Overmind created Kerrigan or all the "actually, that was the work of Amon" stuff, that kind of thing. All those are much less necessary.
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Sep 18, 2023 16:35
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Warmachine posted:I kinda like the hollow victory depressed Kerrigan idea. It doesn't even need to be that elaborate--it works fine without needing to change much else about her because the most believable part is that someone who is wondering what the point of it all is, now that there's no pressing crisis to draw her attention, would absolutely withdraw inward and not do much. And because the Zerg is a hive mind, her mental state makes the rest of the swarm lethargic, giving the Terrans and Protoss breathing room until something (the Xel'Naga/Mengsk) starts presenting a crisis again and gives her an external motivator. I like the mental health angle, that way you can keep stuff like her fighting with Zeratul and she's being all "I am ready for oblivion" and you can explore that further. It's like Metro Man's epiphany, except in this case it's the villain doing it (wait, though I guess Metro Man is the villain? because it's Megamind's story? ah gently caress)
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Sep 18, 2023 17:08
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The alternate Starcraft 2 story is now Substance Abuse Raynor and Ennui-Depressed Kerrigan, but what mental health problems should the Protoss have to deal with?
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Sep 18, 2023 17:18
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The protoss lost their homeworld and had a massive internal near civil war, so paranoia protoss would fit
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Sep 18, 2023 17:22
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Regalingualius posted:I could even see it working as a major swerve in-game: the first couple mission arcs are pretty much exclusively Raynor vs. the Dominion, and then in the middle of one of those missions, the Zerg abruptly reappear and scare both sides shitless after years of inactivity… which also starts drawing the battered Protoss back into the fray as well. I think this is the biggest thing that really hurts Wings of Liberty. It's more about T v T rather than involving the other factions to much until the end. I don't mean this in a "you don't fight the other factions" method, but rather "The main parts of the other factions are missing". Sure Kerrigan shows up, but a majority of the game is spent trying to fight with the Dominion and trying to unseat Mengsk (which is admittedly in line with Raynors SC1 portrayal). The Protoss as a whole are effectively a non entity beyond Zeratuul and the insane cultists you happen to run into on occasion. The "Greater Scope" villain has been mentioned but gets little attention, which I think overall harms the story they were trying to tell.
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Sep 18, 2023 17:23
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GunnerJ posted:The alternate Starcraft 2 story is now Substance Abuse Raynor and Ennui-Depressed Kerrigan, but what mental health problems should the Protoss have to deal with? The massive amount of self-culture shock that they’re collectively going through, between losing Aiur (and most of their leadership) and reuniting with the Dark Templar. This is the first time in millennia that they’ve had any kind of change to their status quo, let alone one as traumatic as that.
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Sep 18, 2023 17:25
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GunnerJ posted:The alternate Starcraft 2 story is now Substance Abuse Raynor and Ennui-Depressed Kerrigan, but what mental health problems should the Protoss have to deal with? Survivor's guilt, of course.
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Sep 18, 2023 18:12
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GunnerJ posted:The alternate Starcraft 2 story is now Substance Abuse Raynor and Ennui-Depressed Kerrigan, but what mental health problems should the Protoss have to deal with? Midlife crisis. They discovered sports, and all their warriors are now dead convinced they can play in the big leagues if they just give it a shot.
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Sep 18, 2023 18:45
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FoolyCharged posted:Midlife crisis. They discovered sports, and all their warriors are now dead convinced they can play in the big leagues if they just give it a shot. Only if the Dragoons get to play soccer.
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Sep 18, 2023 18:48
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Starcraft has never been concerned with the particulars of its politics: the abrupt transition from liberal democracy to monarchy with a former terrorist at the head (why not a planetary leader or senator with some existing legitimacy and cross-appeal? why not Duke?); the equally abrupt and absolute occupation of the same state by the UED (Mengsk and Duke are in exile, so who is operating the quisling government?); who exactly the "special interests groups" Mengsk recruits to attack Kerrigan are etc. etc. it's always been very broad strokes clash-of-heroes stuff, where interpersonal conflict between two characters is a cipher for astropolitical relationsCalax posted:The Protoss as a whole are effectively a non entity beyond Zeratuul and the insane cultists you happen to run into on occasion. this is a larger problem across the entire series: the protoss don't actually want anything except to be left alone. their participation in SC1/Brood War happens only because they are directly attacked by the Overmind/renegade broods/Kerrigan, and whenever they are not being attacked they spend all their time on Aiur/Shakuras doing nothing. every protoss action in the series has to be dragged out of them except perhaps their goal at the start of Legacy of the Void which is immediately derailed when they are attacked regarding your larger point, Wings of Liberty functionally has the same purpose as Terran Act 1 from the original: a minor conflict as prelude to the much larger war with much greater stakes Regalingualius posted:Calling in every favor, taking out every loan, etc. from everyone he could and still coming up short should have essentially ended any aspirations for him being emperor of anything more than a planet, and yet... it just never really gets brought up in SC2. this is kinda on Brood War, which states he goes back to Korhal and reconstructs the Dominion in the text slides
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Sep 18, 2023 19:11
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FoolyCharged posted:Midlife crisis. They discovered sports, and all their warriors are now dead convinced they can play in the big leagues if they just give it a shot. More game universes need Blood Bowl-esque spinoffs where everyone realizes they can have fun without war.
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Sep 18, 2023 19:12
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Warmachine posted:I kinda like the hollow victory depressed Kerrigan idea. It doesn't even need to be that elaborate--it works fine without needing to change much else about her because the most believable part is that someone who is wondering what the point of it all is, now that there's no pressing crisis to draw her attention, would absolutely withdraw inward and not do much. And because the Zerg is a hive mind, her mental state makes the rest of the swarm lethargic, giving the Terrans and Protoss breathing room until something (the Xel'Naga/Mengsk) starts presenting a crisis again and gives her an external motivator. Yes. The last time we hear her in Brood Wars, is in the legendary "I'm pretty much the Queen Bitch of the Universe" speech. Her next appearance is in the sequel, leading her minions in a campaign of destruction, clearly in order to finish what she started years before... Then the Zeratul cutscene, and we hear the voice of a tired , post caring individual waiting for the apocalypse. The grat problem of the series was the transition from the first game to the second: it lacked a vision from the beginning, they were remoulding the subject along the way.
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Sep 18, 2023 19:37
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The state of things at the end of Brood War pretty much all boils down to my main annoyance with its plot: The Zerg simply weren't allowed to have truly meaningful defeats. Protoss and Terrans were very much in shambles as a result of the events, but the writers seemingly declared nothing that ever happened against the Zerg really counted. Their strength was never really reduced in any way. They wrote themselves into a corner with apparent favoritism.
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Sep 18, 2023 19:51
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Alpha3KV posted:The state of things at the end of Brood War pretty much all boils down to my main annoyance with its plot: The Zerg simply weren't allowed to have truly meaningful defeats. Protoss and Terrans were very much in shambles as a result of the events, but the writers seemingly declared nothing that ever happened against the Zerg really counted. Their strength was never really reduced in any way. They wrote themselves into a corner with apparent favoritism. Part of this is just that the Zerg campaign was last. The player still has to win, after all, and that means someone is coming out of the story basically okay. It could have been cool to have the final mission being Duran telling the player-Cerebrate that the only way it was going to survive is to betray Kerrigan and shatter her forces so it can make its escape to the Hybrid project, or something, which legitimately could have ended with all three species totally sundered. But that would have been an unsatisfying ending, really, since that's basically a huge sequel hook instead of the victory march you get to actually end on. Kerrigan did still kill her pet Cerebrate so at best we're left with her having conquered the Swarm but with no support in controlling it, something even the Overmind needed to delegate. As far as I know the canon is that she spent at least some of the quiet inter-game years solving that problem.
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Sep 18, 2023 20:10
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Alpha3KV posted:The state of things at the end of Brood War pretty much all boils down to my main annoyance with its plot: The Zerg simply weren't allowed to have truly meaningful defeats. Protoss and Terrans were very much in shambles as a result of the events, but the writers seemingly declared nothing that ever happened against the Zerg really counted. Their strength was never really reduced in any way. They wrote themselves into a corner with apparent favoritism. Kerrigan is arguably the main protagonist of Starcraft so I'm not surprised that BW ended with her victorious. That's usually how video game stories work and I wouldn't call that favoritism. And maybe you're referring to BW only but I wouldn't say the Zerg had no meaningful defeats in SC1/BW. The Overmind was killed! That was kind of a big deal!
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Sep 18, 2023 20:11
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PurpleXVI posted:Maybe, sitting on her throne, supported by two giant ultralisks and a billion skulls, Kerrigan is the one who stares into the stellar blackness and goes: "...huh, this doesn't feel as good as I thought it would." and she silently abdicates the throne in some way, leaving the Zerg to slowly slip her grip as she goes looking for something with meaning to her. Wings of Liberty could still be about knocking the Zerg about and dealing with Mengsk, but Kerrigan's plotline could instead literally be her having found a hobby(amateur Xel'naga archeology, maybe) and popping up at odd places, raiding Protoss vaults, in the middle of backwater planets doing her own little zergy archeology digs, etc. It could explain why the Zerg are giving humanity a breather rather than just mercilessly curbstomping them utterly, they're confused, infighting and many of them, except for Kerrigan's personal guard, are still finding their new footing. If you still wanted to keep the stellar threat, it could certainly just be Kerrigan intentionally or unintentionally loving things up with her new goals. She would be a far more compelling villain than Samir Duran. Oooh, I kinda love this... Given the choice, whether to rule a corrupt and failing empire, or to challenge the fates for another throw, a better throw against one's destiny - what was a queen bitch to do? Get Amy Hennig to write it. Instant classic.
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Sep 18, 2023 21:05
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gohuskies posted:Kerrigan is arguably the main protagonist of Starcraft so I'm not surprised that BW ended with her victorious. That's usually how video game stories work and I wouldn't call that favoritism. Though even that was ultimately retconned into a Zerg victory thanks to the whole “I need to die so the Zerg gets a new leader without the Xel’naga baggage” business.
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Sep 18, 2023 21:08
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gohuskies posted:Kerrigan is arguably the main protagonist of Starcraft so I'm not surprised that BW ended with her victorious. That's usually how video game stories work and I wouldn't call that favoritism. The UED is positioned as a major threat in Brood War precisely because they absolutely chumped the Zerg faction. Are the Brood Wars of the title not referring to zerg infighting? Kerrigan was still figuring out how to actually manage her newfound power when these guys pop out of a long long trip, steal a local fleet + the plans for how to build local Terran military hardware, recover some Mad Science, and then figure out how to use it as a weapon against her. Kerrigan is absolutely on the ropes for the second half of the expansion campaign and only comes out of it victorious by playing her old boss, the Protoss, and that lost little puppy Jimmy against both the UED and each other until she doesn't need them any more.
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Sep 18, 2023 21:10
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Y’know, thinking about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if Arcturus tore a page out of Kerrigan’s book and took pains to ensure that his loaner fleet took almost the entirety of the casualties from that disastrous last stand… then immediately turned around with what was left of his personal army and pressured his now-disarmed rivals into “forgiving” the lease.
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Sep 18, 2023 21:23
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An ennui-stricken Kerrigan who starts doing Xel'Naga archeology to push away the encroaching cobwebs sounds entertaining, you have left behind nerve centers doing reflex twitching and ordering attacks with basic Zerg while she's away, Terrans in the sector have an incomplete unification after being shattered, the UED has sent a smaller task group to investigate because they don't have many to spare, the Protoss gloriously reunited and immediately broke along other lines as soon as the need to unite fell away and have enormous thought-shadow intrusive thoughts lurking in their shared consciousness deal, revanchism, paranoia, greed for power and resources, contempt and hatred and fear, dynamic civil war inside the shared soul of the connected. Everyone has had a good look at everyone else's stuff and integrated new tech according to their doctrine, meanwhile Xel'Naga archeology is inspiring and Kerrigan's personal experimental pack has things like hybrids reinforced with P and T tech and she's decided to give herself a few upgrades, those include looting a number of clothing shops (infinite cloaking is a handy thing), the high heels are actual shoes, she can take them off.
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Sep 18, 2023 22:35
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BisbyWorl posted:Only if the Dragoons get to play soccer. Rocket League but with the various Starcraft mecha, and the ball is a primed Scarab. Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Sep 18, 2023 |
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Sep 18, 2023 23:20
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SIGSEGV posted:An ennui-stricken Kerrigan who starts doing Xel'Naga archeology to push away the encroaching cobwebs sounds entertaining, you have left behind nerve centers doing reflex twitching and ordering attacks with basic Zerg while she's away, Terrans in the sector have an incomplete unification after being shattered, the UED has sent a smaller task group to investigate because they don't have many to spare, the Protoss gloriously reunited and immediately broke along other lines as soon as the need to unite fell away and have enormous thought-shadow intrusive thoughts lurking in their shared consciousness deal, revanchism, paranoia, greed for power and resources, contempt and hatred and fear, dynamic civil war inside the shared soul of the connected. So Kerrigan tries to conquer the sector in preparation, but it ends up being too costly, and she realizes the Xel’Naga are already involved (Duran), so she throws herself into researching the Xel’Naga but is struggling to control the Swarm because she was never meant to do so and the Protoss have already picked things over pretty thoroughly (yet uncritically) so she’s starting to feel hopeless and decides she might as well kill Mengsk while she can. The Protoss, for their part, feel an increasing sense of impending doom. Some of them turn to worshipping the Xel’Naga in a way to beg their forgiveness. And Zeratul takes it upon himself to figure out what the gently caress is going on. Maybe Jimmy sees Fenix and Tassadar in a dream/drunken stupor to round things out. Kurgarra Queen fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Sep 19, 2023 |
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Sep 19, 2023 04:12
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Man, you goons already have made the sequel's trilogy far, far more interesting and engaging just in the back and forth here. I'd read it.
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Sep 19, 2023 04:30
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I dunno, I think pushing it for the big epic stuff is the wrong direction. I think another episodic season of Jimmy and friends go have some dumb space adventures without any prophesies or epic doomsday nonsense. Just robbing some trains and ignoring infected colonies' pleas for help as they're overrun by the slowest zerg swarm in the sector.
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Sep 19, 2023 05:03
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I don't think that something as big as starcraft in the cultural zeitgeist can get away with being smaller in scope. Maybe have the first act of Wings be something like that, with Raynor and his crew acting like a bunch of wild west outlaws and robbing trains at the start, but it needs to expand to him fighting against Mengsk or searching for a way to "save" Kerrigan at some point. And I don't mean this prophecy BS, I mean he has such survivors guilt that he's pulling out all the stops to try to figure out how to "cure" Zerg. Meanwhile Kerrigan is constantly running around trying to figure out the little glimpses she has of the Overmind's plan, but keeps getting interrupted because she's unable to manage the Swarm effectively. She hasn't controlled the Swarm because on a primal monkey level, she's terrified of creating new Cerebrates, due to what's happened in the past. She has to constantly struggle between "What do I do now" and figuring out the confused memories/thoughts of the overmind's last moments as he basically shoved all his plans into her head with no warning. Ultimately she creates the Hive Queen's as a non-cerebrate middle management group to run different broods of the swarm, freeing her up to try to piece together WHAT the old master plan was. And the Protoss are struggling to reclaim their Homeworld, battling feral Zerg for the crown Jewel of their lost empire. But occasionally they come across a thinking Zerg who's got a ghost of the Overmind in it's brain. They begin to piece together that there's something behind all this, which forces them to make the decision to either abandon Aiur and face this greater threat, or continue to cleanse Aiur and hope that more information comes together. Ultimately Zeratuul leads those that want to Abandon, while Artanis leads those who keep cleansing Aiur. Things happen, Duran is ultimately revealed as the chessmaster behind Mengsk's rise, Kerrigan is about to figure out the master plan when a good meaning Raynor "cures" her with tech given to him by Duran, and Zeratuul's group learns what's coming and is in a race to return to Aiur so that they might be able to marshal some defense against Duran's master. Just as he sends out the call is when Kerrigan is 'cured' and an unhindered swarm of Zerg, everything that Kerrigan has held back, just begins an all fronts onslaught to eat the sector.
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Sep 19, 2023 06:18
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Well, the episodic structure is part of the problem in that regard. Don't get me wrong, the Episodic design means that the SC2 campaign is actually longer, in number of scenarios, than SC1 + Brood War combined, and something that size wouldn't have been feasible to release as one blob. But it also means that the narrative can't escalate in the same way as SC1's did, or even as any of SC1's acts did. SC1 is a relatively slow burn because SC1 can take all three of its campaigns together to reach the culmination of its plot. Each act needs its own escalation and climax, of course, but these don't all have to feel earth-shattering on their own. They're part of the same story, you can see them all together on the Campaign screen, and if you REALLY want to you can spam "there is no cow level" to jam straight through to the next part of the story. A big chunk of A1 Terran's runtime is taken up by the VERY slow-ramp tutorial missions on Mar Sara, and its ending with Mengsk's victory really doesn't answer ANY questions it raised about the nature of the Zerg, or the Protoss, or basically anything except the Sons of Korhal's direct narrative. It can do that, because it has A2 Zerg right there to pick up the plot threads and aim them over at Aiur for the A3 Protoss climax, and both A2 Zerg and A3 Protoss get to take their sweet time with their narratives -- they're both mostly taken up by internal power struggles in their factions rather than accelerating right to the point, fleshing out the Zerg and Protoss from the otherwise extremely myopic view given in A1 Terran. This process repeats itself albeit somewhat sped up in Brood War, due to Brood War being an expansion, having shorter acts, and importantly having SC1 already set all the groundwork and foundations to build off of -- we don't need to introduce Raynor, Fenix, Duke, Mengsk, and Kerrigan, after all, they did that already. By contrast, WoL has to be its own entire self-contained narrative -- as an episodic game, remember, it released all on its lonesome and had to stand that way for MONTHS. It has to capture the feel of an ENTIRE Starcraft game -- where SC1 ended with you ramming a spaceship into a stadium-sized hivemind -- while playing as only one of the factions, and go through the whole arc in itself (which also hurt Swarm and Void, since they had to escalate even further beyond THAT). it doesn't have Heart of the Swarm there to pick up after it immediately -- it will EVENTUALLY, but the player can't shuffle right over to it. I'd call this the bigger reason why WoL couldn't work with a smaller scope -- if SC2's campaign had been the same size and scope as SC1's, you absolutely could have gotten away with a Raynor's Raiders slow burn start, because the subsequent campaigns could have taken that somewhere right away. It's also why WoL really needed to be pin-perfect on its own; in addition to being the free "hook" to sell everyone on SC2 and buy in, it had to stand all on its own for MONTHS until HotS could appear and, for better or worse, continue the plot threads it hadn't tied up. And yet paradoxically, Wings of Liberty had to try to stand on its own but fundamentally never could, because it was episodic! We knew from the start that it was just the first part of a storyline later pieces would carry, so any attempt it would make to create a full narrative would by design wind up with the same "smell" as something dangling blatant sequel bait. You can see this in other designed-for-episodic titles like the Half Life 2 Episodes and the never-finished Sin Episodes: no matter how well they may present themselves they're not designed to stand on their own, but they still have to try. It's one of the less-discussed reasons why episodic content fell out of favor. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Sep 19, 2023 |
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Sep 19, 2023 08:01
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Kurgarra Queen posted:Hell, you could keep the part where the Overmind made Kerrigan to fight a (possible) Xel’Naga resurgence. It’s easy to hand wave as her being human i.e. not a race made by the Xel’Naga makes it harder/impossible for them to mess with her,  ...oh, that's... that's already true.
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Sep 19, 2023 09:07
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Calax posted:Maybe have the first act of Wings be something like that, with Raynor and his crew acting like a bunch of wild west outlaws and robbing trains at the start, but it needs to expand to him fighting against Mengsk or searching for a way to "save" Kerrigan at some point. And I don't mean this prophecy BS, I mean he has such survivors guilt that he's pulling out all the stops to try to figure out how to "cure" Zerg. I think leaving in any kind of "saving" Kerrigan is a wild goose chase, I think it does both Kerrigan and Raynor's character arcs a disservice, and that if you want to give Kerrigan any sort of "redemption" arc, it should come from herself and her own choices, not from someone else trying to ride to the rescue. Like, Starcraft 1/Brood War Kerrigan is a supremely unfortunate person who got betrayed by someone she trusted and exploited by a titanic monster that, intentionally or not, ended up giving her more agency and power than anyone else in the region, and she ended up, in her cold fury, getting revenge both on the people who hurt her and on the people whom she perceived as potentially being future threats, even if they were once her allies, and eradicating anyone who was roughly similar to herself mentally or in a space to actually understand her situation a little(the Cerebrates). It was implied that infested psionic humans were the Zerg's next step in evolution and power, but Kerrigan appears to be the only one who got that treatment, the Overmind presumably getting asploded before it really had a chance to grab anyone else of reasonable power OR seeing it as something not plausible on a large scale after Kerrigan. So she's probably suffering from immense loneliness and, once her blood's cooled some, a sense of regret in addition to that. Who actually understands her? She can't really pour her heart out to a hydralisk or any other Zerg creature. They don't "get" her and their responses are what she orders, not what they think. Maybe she actually starts planning a suicide of sorts, but realizes that without her at the top, the Swarm is going to develop a new leader and do immense damage. So maybe she looks for a way to wipe out all the Zerg, herself included, in one fell swoop OR for a way to set the Swarm "free." To grant the higher-level creatures a freedom from being will-less animals, to do something "good" in some way. Not quite un-Zerging the Zerg, but cutting the threads of control and making it so nothing will ever be able to rally the entire Swarm again. Not powerful Zerg, not herself, not some humans with fancy techno gadgets. To outsiders, it probably looks like she's just doing the Usual Swarm poo poo when she raids Terran research outposts and Protoss archives with information on the Xel'naga, with both Protoss and Raynor worrying that she's actually plotting some sort of supervillain poo poo instead. Have the Terran campaign end with a showdown with Mengsk, but have Kerrigan be a side character, not an end goal, during it, doing her own things. For the Zerg campaign, you could have Kerrigan's project start as the campaign starts, liberating a number of higher-tier Zerg creatures, some of which are thankful and work with her, some of which just gently caress off into space on their own, others who oppose her and want to take control of the Swarm before she cuts all the strings. Meanwhile she's fending off everyone Protoss and Terran who's pissed off about the damage caused during her project(she's regretful, after all, but still thinking in a somewhat non-human war criminal way even while trying to do "good" for the Swarm) as she tries to complete it. The Protoss campaign could be picking up as Kerrigan prepares to cut the last threads of the swarm. The protagonists could be the Protoss who realize they were at the strongest working with the Terrans rather than being isolationist dickheads, and who want to reach out and have an actual relationship with other sapients, rather than smugly sneering at them. The antagonists, meanwhile, the smugly sneering traditionalists who want to go even farther back. Who want to eradicate the Terrans for having meddled with sacred, secret Protoss technology, who want to go back to worshipping the Xel'naga, and who're wondering whether, since a bunch of human dorks managed it, couldn't they try to mind control the Swarm before Kerrigan liberates it, but do it right this time? And use it to establish themselves both as safe from the Zerg and with the local Terrans war crimed back to the stone age? Your Protoss/Zerg hybrids could be these "traditionalists" juicing themselves up with Zerg genes to become part cerebrate, rather than some dark master plot from Duran, convinced they're approaching ultimate power. In that way you'd even have something approaching a common theme across all three campaigns of breaking free from the past and refusing to just repeat the same old war crimes because you're scared of change and scared of accepting that you hosed up.
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Sep 19, 2023 09:28
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PurpleXVI posted:I think leaving in any kind of "saving" Kerrigan is a wild goose chase, I think it does both Kerrigan and Raynor's character arcs a disservice, and that if you want to give Kerrigan any sort of "redemption" arc, it should come from herself and her own choices, not from someone else trying to ride to the rescue. That would be a genuinely great campaign and excellent writing and that's why Blizzard didn't go with it.
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Sep 19, 2023 11:05
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