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Calax posted:I don't think that something as big as starcraft in the cultural zeitgeist can get away with being smaller in scope. Except the smaller scope stuff is the only stuff people like in sc2. Nobody likes Raynor's quest to save Kerrigan. Nobody likes Zeratul's prophecy bunk. People do like the bits about robbing trains, prison breaks, racing the zerg through a protoss base for a silly trinket and some cash, and having races to hire a spunky mercenary army before your opponent of the week can.
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Sep 19, 2023 12:15
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That's only because that's the only good stuff in SC2, if it had any good larger scale stuff, it might be possible to like it.
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Sep 19, 2023 12:33
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SIGSEGV posted:That's only because that's the only good stuff in SC2, if it had any good larger scale stuff, it might be possible to like it. The bigger stuff from Blizzard was always terrible, and the smaller stuff had a much stronger track record. The company never figured this out and played to their strengths. Every story had to be an increasingly over the top epic confrontation spoken of in prophecies and every last large scale plot line across all their games sucked. They should have played to their strengths and maybe there would have been a whole game of good stuff.
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Sep 19, 2023 12:37
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Entirely true, but also it would not be Blizz if it was the case.
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Sep 19, 2023 12:38
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FoolyCharged posted:The bigger stuff from Blizzard was always terrible, and the smaller stuff had a much stronger track record. The company never figured this out and played to their strengths. Every story had to be an increasingly over the top epic confrontation spoken of in prophecies and every last large scale plot line across all their games sucked. They should have played to their strengths and maybe there would have been a whole game of good stuff. It reminds me strongly of Bioware, whose strength was writing charming people and moderately interesting normal-stakes stuff and then everything just HAD to end with fighting a skeleton the size of a small moon.
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Sep 19, 2023 13:18
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FoolyCharged posted:Except the smaller scope stuff is the only stuff people like in sc2. Nobody likes Raynor's quest to save Kerrigan. Nobody likes Zeratul's prophecy bunk. People do like the bits about robbing trains, prison breaks, racing the zerg through a protoss base for a silly trinket and some cash, and having races to hire a spunky mercenary army before your opponent of the week can. I think this is the case for most plots. Almost every book series I've ever read is best at the start where the stakes are relatable and worse at the end where they have to stop all dimensions from unraveling. The problem is that universe spanning conflicts are too big to care about, they're so contrived they start becoming completely un-tethered from any concept that you could conceivably relate to; it's impossible to care about them in any way and this also makes them completely break the immersion that keeps people hooked. It also inevitably leads into a race where progressively bigger and bigger numbers get thrown around until they lose all meaning.
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Sep 19, 2023 14:26
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 My copy of AC6 looks loving weird...
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Sep 19, 2023 14:37
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And that ties somewhat into my earlier rantette about the size of space and the interchangeability of its terms: a single galaxy on its own is almost incomprehensibly large, ruling/threatening/destroying one is so difficult to imagine.
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Sep 19, 2023 14:39
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rastilin posted:I think this is the case for most plots. Almost every book series I've ever read is best at the start where the stakes are relatable and worse at the end where they have to stop all dimensions from unraveling. The problem is that universe spanning conflicts are too big to care about, they're so contrived they start becoming completely un-tethered from any concept that you could conceivably relate to; it's impossible to care about them in any way and this also makes them completely break the immersion that keeps people hooked. It also inevitably leads into a race where progressively bigger and bigger numbers get thrown around until they lose all meaning. There's also the issue that when you're fighting the Strong Nuclear Force or something, anything you do to counter its machinations is inevitably going to be faith, magic or technobabble, and all of those are incredibly hard to write satisfyingly and not just have them feel like deus ex machinas.
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Sep 19, 2023 15:17
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Unit Spotlight: Vulture Overview:
A classic Starcraft unit that sadly falls into the exact same pitfalls it ran into back in 1998. Map design doesn't encourage harassment, enemy attacks are too frequent to want to keep a mine field up all the time, and being Yet Another Anti-Light Unit means they don't do much when hitting bases. And unlike SC1, they don't have competitive performance to redeem them. At the very least, they're a better mineral dump for Mech armies than the loving Hellion. Abilities  Deploy Spider Mine
 Replenish Spider Mine
Meanwhile you could pay an extra 30 minerals and get a new Vulture to go with your mines. Armory Upgrades  Cerberus Mines
They make your mines, well, mine...ier and they cost next to nothing. There's no reason not to get it if you have your heart set on using Vultures.  Replenishable Magazine
At the very least, the Vulture is an incredibly cheap unit to max out. The payout from Cutthroat alone would be enough! Field Manual Artwork 
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Sep 19, 2023 15:25
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All that is a shame because hoverbike should immediately trigger the "cool and good" portion of the lizard brain, but the vulture is just kinda undertuned for it. I disagree with the Hellion take though. At least, my memory of WoL Ladder play supported Hellions as being pretty solid. Hellions suck is a problem for the campaign, for mission structure reasons that have already been litigated. In a competitive match, I'd take the Hellion over the Vulture because my biggest problem to solve with that slot in the comp is piles of zerglings or zealots locking down my tanks and thors. Having something with AOE damage against light that can kill several units in a single shot dramatically improves the survivability of my tanks and thors. Does gently caress-all to counter Immortals, sure. But nothing in the terran mech bucket does that--you splash in Ghosts for EMP if you need something to deal with their shields. (And IMO if you're facing protoss without ghosts for an opening EMP salvo, you're missing out. This was my standard procedure whenever I got into a TvP matchup, whether I was going bio or mech.)
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Sep 19, 2023 17:30
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BisbyWorl posted:
boooo, missed an opportunity to say "Nice!" to finish the song
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Sep 19, 2023 17:34
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If we're talking about missed opportunities for a Brood War sequel I'd like to point out that the designers excellently set the stage for three entire new armies in the plot, each a combination of one of the existing armies, in a way that me of twenty years ago was sure was deliberate. Combined Terran/Protoss faction, Raynor's Raiders. Something different from the dark/high combined templar army Artanis was leading. Raynor starts the story not as a viewpoint character but a background force acting on the environment and thwarting plans in his burning quest for vengeance that other factions need to work around or respond to. Combined Terran/Zerg faction, Alexi Stukov. Blizzard has this whole sidestory being set up for literally years across map-of-the-month web maps + the Starcraft 64 exclusive mission. Where were they going with it? We'll never know now, but a fleshed out infested terran faction creating a bunch of mini-Kerrigans would have given the writers some fun toys to play with. Combined Zerg/Protoss faction, Duran and the hybrids, of course. Which were done dirty by this low effort Dark Voice nonsense. Would have worked better if the Xel'Naga stayed dead and gone and something completely new using their old tech had shown up, preferably with plenty of body horror and horror movie tropes. A rival species with less lofty goals but a more pragmatic mindset? Space is very big and we've set precedent that there are lots of aliens out there, this one could have been really alien Aliens.
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Sep 19, 2023 18:45
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BisbyWorl posted:Field Manual Artwork It looks awesome. I just wish it was in a different genre of game.
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Sep 19, 2023 20:59
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Don't worry, it will be eventually.
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Sep 19, 2023 22:01
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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's why I basically had Raynor running around on his own to find something that possibly didn't exist. In the vein of your post, his whole thing is letting go of his guilt about being part of the organization that betrayed Kerrigan and led to her becoming the queen of blades. He's not trying to help her as the person she is, he's trying to rescue the ghost on Tarsonis 10-20 years after that person was effectively killed. Admittedly all of this is like looking for character depth in Power Rangers given our original introductions to the game and it's setting, and then when SC2 came out.
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Sep 20, 2023 03:38
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Rebellion 3: Engine of Destruction Video: Engine of Destruction  Woo, typo in the subtitles!     Yep. Tychus is definitely our best man for this kind of job.       Great, even Tychus can't wreck it then.     The mission starts with a short no-build segment, just like the cutscene ended on.  Tychus, meanwhile, is an AI controlled ally.  He'll blindly charge ahead, forcing you to keep up lest he run into the enemy and die. His movement is trigger based, so you can take a break and heal up between pushes, but once he starts he won't stop.    And here's the obligatory Zerg Goop I have to find for research.  Eh, money is money.  The objective is just up ahead, but this spot has some Perdition Turrets tucked away.   And then just one small group between me and the Odin.     The Odin is assembled bit by bit.          Tychus isn't listening.   Dammit, Tychus! Stand down! Can you read me?!   The rest of the mission involves keeping the Odin alive while Tychus moves from one Dominion base to the next.  The Odin itself is a beast, with 2500 HP backed by a brutally powerful cannon that also deals splash damage.  Although its anti-air leaves much to be desired.  And what are the odds, the first thing the Dominion does is throw air units at it.  Good thing we got anti-air Wraiths for this mission!  The Engineering Bay pop up is just letting me know that we've finally unlocked 3/3 upgrades.  The Wraith's job is to knock out any air units that try to get close, then use their ground attack to snipe any priority targets that the Odin's too far away to notice.  Of course they don't give you a free Tech Lab here, forcing me to wait before I can make more Wraiths.  Despite being nowhere near the expansion, I get started on a second CC. This will let me squeeze in some extra MULEs.   There will be the occasional attack wave, at least until the Odin pushes far enough to cut them off, so I make sure to get that Bunker filled up.  The Odin is strong enough to handle the first base by itself, so I instead take the time to keep building up my economy.   40x2 with splash is really strong.  Now that my base is set, I rally my CCs to the Odin and start sending SCVs over for repairs.  The first base is pretty much done at this point.  The repair upgrade is already putting in work.  Waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of you.  Does he always talk this much, Sir? Yep, once you get him in a fight he never shuts up.  Good thing I brought me some liquid refreshment...Between bases Tychus will stop for a few minutes to let you patch up before the next fight.  I finally start making more Wraiths.    The second base onwards will start to have air units for the Wraiths to deal with.  It also has the expansion.  Once the initial defenders are dead the rest of the base falls quickly.  Did you notice that the Odin has an energy bar?  Because it has a dedicated 'gently caress you and everything in your general area' attack.  The second bonus is also up here, so I send one of my starting Marines to grab it.  And that's 2/5.  With a second base, I make a second Bunker to keep it safe.    The third base starts throwing in Mech units, including the anti-Armored Diamondbacks. Don't ask why they're using prototype Confederate tanks.  And Siege Tanks, requiring me to snipe them down with Wraiths so they can't take potshots while the Odin is tied up fighting everything else.    Science Vessels can also repair the Odin, but only one Vessel can repair the same target a time so mass SCVs are better for quick work.  Not even halfway through and my main is already close to mined out. This is the power of MULEs.  Now, the enemy composition here might seem a bit strange, lots of Vultures, Diamondbacks, and Reapers, but they're all unable to hit air to encourage you to mass Wraiths and nothing else.        The last bonus is down here.  But beyond that it's just more of the same.     Now, have you notice that other bonus that's just been sitting there the entire time?  The Loki is a suped up Battlecruiser and it's just...  Here.  It has an AoE attack, but with 28 Wraiths it melts in an instant.  What even was the point of that? I don't get research for it. I don't get more money. It never gets brought up. The only thing you get for killing it is an achievement.   This line starts with the sound of a toilet flushing, confirming that Tychus is able to use the bathroom while locked in the suit. Tyranny this isn't.     No.   The mission is basically over at this point.          Limited Warranty - Repair less than 5000 damage on the Odin in the "Engine of Destruction" mission on Normal difficulty. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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Sep 23, 2023 05:02
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All those floating resources make me twitchy. Just 5k sitting in the bank. Dayum shame. I know this isn't a sweaty LP, I'm just so used to 'floating resources are not killing the enemy' that it is reflexive. I spent a lot of time when I was playing SC2 just getting into the habit of always be building something when I had the minerals/gas, and if I started building up a bank, that meant I needed to build more production structures to spend that bank as fast as I got it. This made Brutal very easy to complete.
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Sep 23, 2023 05:21
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Ahh, the good ol' Wraith. The Wraith's absence from multiplayer is perhaps the strangest exception. I understand basically why it's not part of the core Terran kit -- the Viking and the as-yet-not-really-met Banshee fill out the Terrans' air kit and are both more powerful at their respective roles than the Wraith. However, the Wraith can do it all and make breakfast, forming a nice middle ground -- and it's the Wraith, after all. Definitely worth rolling with in the campaign, in my opinion. The only real flaw is that it comes so far in -- Engine of Destruction is deep into the overall campaign and you can pick up the Viking much earlier, as evidenced by how long it's been taking us to get back to Hanson regarding Haven. But I have a soft spot for the classics.
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Sep 23, 2023 05:40
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The beginning no-build section of this mission is surprisingly challenging on Brutal - the extra damage from the enemies means Tychus can end up pretty close to death. As for the rest of the mission, it's basically the same - I think the enemy bases have more detectors (Missile Turrets and Ravens) so they're harder to clear out with cloaked units before the Odin gets there. I don't know, I typically wait to do this one until unlocking Banshees, so I have access to both anti-air and anti-ground ships.
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Sep 23, 2023 06:06
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Redeye Flight posted:Ahh, the good ol' Wraith. Classic it may be, but in Starcraft 2, the Wraith is just bad. You said it yourself - the Viking is better at air-to-air, and Wraith anti-ground attacks have always been a joke, only ever valuable when you absolutely must have an air-to-ground attacker and it's the literal only one available to you. I love the wraith for nostalgia and style as much as the next guy, but it really is just a terrible unit. Even Bisby pointed out how hard the level itself goes out of its way to convince you to use them by having mass amounts of ground units with no air attack alongside the occasional token air units for your Wraiths to target down so the Odin doesn't waste its time on them. It's not quite to the same degree as the Trains level with Diamondbacks, but boy howdy is this one of those missions that is designed entirely around the unit it introduces.
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Sep 23, 2023 06:29
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Tychus' line reads in all of this mission are all great.
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Sep 23, 2023 08:32
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BlazetheInferno posted:Classic it may be, but in Starcraft 2, the Wraith is just bad. You said it yourself - the Viking is better at air-to-air, and Wraith anti-ground attacks have always been a joke, only ever valuable when you absolutely must have an air-to-ground attacker and it's the literal only one available to you. I know... honestly I do, I just hate talking down the original line units even though it sometimes winds up looking like I'm reaching for positive points. It didn't HAVE to be terrible, though -- there's no reason they couldn't have cranked it up in one direction or another to make it fill a role rather than being put in basically exclusively for the sake of obligatory continuity. Which is the part that always gets me. The Goliath, Vulture, and Wraith didn't have to be subpar units in the SC2 roster -- the devs made the active choice to not tweak or boost them for the new meta and just replace them instead. I'd argue not for the better, either, in the Wraith and Vulture's case -- the Viking actually has a decent personality but it's not as distinctive aesthetically as the Wraith's T shape OR the Goliath's ED-209 walker. As for the Hellion, it's really not distinctive at all and it basically wholly obsoletes the Firebat on top of the Vulture -- and while the Firebat may not have been good, you'd have to be nuts to argue he doesn't have one of the most strong and distinctive personalities in Starcraft.
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Sep 23, 2023 09:15
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The devs actively made the goliath worse. Not sure about the wraith but the vulture felt a lot slower and less agile than how it was in SC1.
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Sep 23, 2023 09:26
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Faint praise, but the Legacy of the Void upgrade to the Hellion to give it a transformation mode was a good choice. I think it gets its distinction there, at least from a unit design standpoint--hell yeah, an honest-to-god Transformer. I didn't do much competitive LoV, though, so I can't comment on its actual effectiveness. But this is a WoL LP, not LoV, so we're stuck with the unflavored oatmeal of the Hellion, which while technically still having its niche as a light unit killer, suffers the indignity of harassment just frankly not being possible in most missions, putting it in the same shallow grave as the Reaper. For the Wraith itself, I think there's a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in it that is perhaps undeserved. I remember thinking it cool in Brood War as a middle schooler, and being excited to have it for at least the campaign in SC2. But overtime, I found myself not really missing it, or using it in subsequent playthroughs. As Blaze points out, it's just bad. The Banshee does cloaked harassment better, and the Viking does air-to-air better, with the Viking even having its walker mode to assist with ground targets. Sure, you gotta transform it, which exposes it to ground-based attacks, but once I got the hang of the micro, it felt so much better to use than the Wraith. Brood War was so long ago for me that it may have been better in that game, but from a Starcraft 2 perspective, I think the decision to cut it from the competitive roster and relegate it to campaign only was a good one. The two units we got for the trouble both have great identity and do the respective roles much better anyhow.
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Sep 23, 2023 09:41
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I found this mission outrageously difficult on Brutal, the Odin just gets annihilated so quickly and economy is not so generous. The Wraiths are also fairly ineffectual. Sci Vessels are near-mandatory, and if you're really patient, waiting for Cruisers does make things quite a bit easier. Doing it with neither was well beyond my abilities, at least.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:49
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Warmachine posted:Faint praise, but the Legacy of the Void upgrade to the Hellion to give it a transformation mode was a good choice. That was a Heart of the Swarm change, wasn't it?
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Sep 23, 2023 12:17
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Staltran posted:That was a Heart of the Swarm change, wasn't it? Correct, LotV added an upgrade to speed up transformation times.
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Sep 23, 2023 12:39
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SirSamVimes posted:Tychus' line reads in all of this mission are all great. Tychus is basically the only person having fun with anything at all in this campaign, and it shows.
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Sep 23, 2023 14:46
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I understand that Tychus is supposed to be a deep cover agent or whatever but "hijack your handlers' gigantic war mech and use it to attack their capital" is outrageously deep cover. EDIT: really this entire set-up makes zero sense, and I've had a problem with it since the game launched. the entire research base is destroyed but they just nonchalantly transport the Odin to Korhal with zero questions asked? I seriously don't get what's supposed to be happening here. HannibalBarca fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 14:49
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It makes me wonder how the Odin's cockpit accommodates Tychus's jumbo marine armour that he's locked into and cannot remove
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Sep 23, 2023 14:49
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I believe you guys are thinking about it far more than the writers intended, or likely even thought about it themselves
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Sep 23, 2023 15:05
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HannibalBarca posted:I understand that Tychus is supposed to be a deep cover agent or whatever but "hijack your handlers' gigantic war mech and use it to attack their capital" is outrageously deep cover. Yeah this mission or the next mission at the absolute latest, what's the point of even having an agent if they don't stop this stuff? As far as I can tell, Mensk thought "Ah, Raynor's starting a rebel group. I'd better have a guy on the inside in case he decides to save the life of the evil omnicidal maniac he previously swore he'd kill" Qwertycoatl fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 15:12
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Qwertycoatl posted:Yeah this mission or the next mission at the absolute latest, what's the point of even having an agent if they don't stop this stuff? Tychus' entire plotline, from beginning to end, makes more sense if his line about Moebius securing his release was actually true.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:14
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HannibalBarca posted:I understand that Tychus is supposed to be a deep cover agent or whatever but "hijack your handlers' gigantic war mech and use it to attack their capital" is outrageously deep cover. Yeah, that always bugged me as well. You manage to steal the Odin! …by blowing up the outpost it’s supposed to be coming from. So you either slaughtered the whole place without anyone getting a distress signal out (and thus everyone who could have internally vetted for the thing when it’s transported to Korhal), or this was somehow a relatively surgical strike on a larger military installation (in which case, all they’d have to do is see the smoldering ruins of this place to know that something’s up, and then call it in to Korhal).
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Sep 23, 2023 15:16
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Regalingualius posted:Yeah, that always bugged me as well. At the very least it is mentioned that the Hyperion is jamming their distress calls. The entire thing still leaves far more questions than it ever attempts to answer.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:21
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Look, accidents happen. This is a prototype that can launch tactical nukes and maybe it just had a bug.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:22
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the Odin is also a deep cover agent this is why Tychus can fit in the toilet
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Sep 23, 2023 15:22
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HannibalBarca posted:I understand that Tychus is supposed to be a deep cover agent or whatever but "hijack your handlers' gigantic war mech and use it to attack their capital" is outrageously deep cover. I figure if nothing else, the Dominion is not aware of who is piloting the Odin beyond 'One of Raynor's crew", and Tychus sure as gently caress ain't reporting that little detail.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:48
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Some dude at the research site found out about Emperor Mengsk's hentai stash and this was the only way Arcturus could think of solving his problem.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:58
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