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Kerrigan being invulnerable isn't the problem. She's scary if engaged. It's that when she starts searching a building she can't do poo poo. She's not scary if you can drop a marine next to her for a spot of tea and a nice chat without repercussions.
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Oct 14, 2023 09:14
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There's a reason that major plot-important characters only showed up in Brood War under the following conditions: 1: Under the player's control or allied. 2: In a cutscene at the beginning or end of a mission. 3: When they were going to die. Why? In situation number one, the character has to survive to win the mission, and the player gets to keep trying until that happens. In scenario 2, the player has limited or no control, which means that the plot-important character can overrun the player or warp out or whatever is required to keep the plot from going off the rails. In number three, they need to die anyway so it's not a problem if the player has the ability to fight them or lose the unit. It's a little contrived, but it works because it does a good job of straddling the line, preserving player agency within the confines of the mission while still letting important characters show up from time to time. Contrast that to SC2 - major characters rarely show up in missions, and when they do, they tend to play a larger role. In theory that's good because it gives the character a better feeling of impacting the world, but the problem is that it always runs facefirst into a wall of ludonarrative dissonance. Kerrigan is incompetent in the last mission because the plot requires her to be. She's not even targetable because two shots from an Arclite cannon would turn her into paste. This, in turn, makes the player feel like they have no agency - why is this idiot running around on the map wearing such blatant plot armor? Kerrigan isn't feared for her ability to not die to bullets, it's because she's a master manipulator, planner, and psychic. Hell, sometimes Brood War even played with this. Sometimes the protoss use their hallucination ability to make projections of themselves. That's cool! It works because you get to end the mission by destroying something which plays by the established rules of the game, and even if it's a hollow victory, it makes sense because it is not only lore established that the protoss do it, but the player themselves can use the hallucinate ability.
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Oct 14, 2023 09:59
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BisbyWorl posted:Yeah, but even if no one in the main cast knows it's just insulting that Blizzard went for something as low effort as the ol' 'just flip their name bro' plan. Especially for someone who's been working towards this for god knows how long. But if they’d done that, literally nobody would have made the connection. It needs to be obvious because you’re intended to figure out it’s Duran, wonder what the gently caress, and become even more suspicious of Mobius’ motives in pulling Tychus strings.
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Oct 14, 2023 10:13
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I still can't believe they really did the loving Narud thing. Did they expect players not to immediately spot it? Did they feel clever?
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Oct 14, 2023 10:21
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MagusofStars posted:They had to make it blatantly obvious with the name because we-the-players are supposed to realize it. Yes, logically, the immortal shapeshifter should have a totally random generic name like Johnny Smithson to go along with his brand new visage as a grizzled old white guy. But they could have put in some work over just handing it over to the player. Name him after Alex Rhodes or something to maintain a Duran Duran connection and throw in a few innocuous lines that might fly over a new player's head but start setting off alarm bells if you've played BW.
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Oct 14, 2023 11:45
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PurpleXVI posted:I still can't believe they really did the loving Narud thing. Did they expect players not to immediately spot it? Did they feel clever? Of course they intended for people to spot it, c'mon. Kerrigan even says in this very mission that she's "seen through Dr. Narud's pathetic charade", so if there were any players who didn't notice, that would also tip them off that something wasn't right with this guy.
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Oct 14, 2023 11:49
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Xarn posted:Hercules's carrying capacity and drop speed is ridiculous, and if there were more maps for drop play, it would be awesome unit. In particular, because of the way the campaign is structured, they couldn't have any main or side objectives require drop play until now because you could be waiting until this point to get any dropship at all. Did Mengsk interact with Duran at all in Brood War? Been long enough since I played it that I don't remember. I wonder if they could have just explicitly made him still be Samir Duran in the same identity since no one in the Dominion knows that's suspicious.
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Oct 14, 2023 12:25
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BisbyWorl posted:But they could have put in some work over just handing it over to the player. Name him after Alex Rhodes or something to maintain a Duran Duran connection and throw in a few innocuous lines that might fly over a new player's head but start setting off alarm bells if you've played BW. SoundwaveAU posted:Of course they intended for people to spot it, c'mon. Kerrigan even says in this very mission that she's "seen through Dr. Narud's pathetic charade", so if there were any players who didn't notice, that would also tip them off that something wasn't right with this guy. I kinda wish Kerrigan actually said outright that Narud is a Xel'naga. It's not like anyone would believe her after Brood War and any kind of in-universe check on the guy would come out as clean as Mr. Clean's forehead (because Narud knows what he's doing). I think the only other person that could see through Narud's disguise is Zeratul; good luck finding his forward address at "xel'naga ruins avenue n° 423729, planet buttfuck, sector nowheresville".
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Oct 14, 2023 12:38
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BisbyWorl posted:But they could have put in some work over just handing it over to the player. Name him after Alex Rhodes or something to maintain a Duran Duran connection and throw in a few innocuous lines that might fly over a new player's head but start setting off alarm bells if you've played BW. I think the fact that we don't have to work for it is why they made it so blatant- after all, it had been a decade or so between Brood War and WoL, it would be possible that a more subtle reference might have gone over someone who'd played BW. Still though, I agree in that I think Blizzard overcorrected. Maybe instead of Kerrigan hunting MacGuffins, we could have had her hunting Duran himself or something.
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Oct 14, 2023 12:57
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It's not really a spoiler to say that we will fight Kerrigan again, and she is scary as gently caress there (unless you are going for massive levels of cheese with ghosts). The reason she works is that 1) She is legitimately scary 2) There is reasonable time between her appearances 3) The number of her appearances is limited, you either win or lose. This mission is silly though, with her channeling making her harmless -> she should've kept her attacks and skills while channeling.
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Oct 14, 2023 13:00
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Omobono posted:I kinda wish Kerrigan actually said outright that Narud is a Xel'naga. It's not like anyone would believe her after Brood War and any kind of in-universe check on the guy would come out as clean as Mr. Clean's forehead (because Narud knows what he's doing). I don't think the original BW writers meant for him to be a Xel'naga. The backstory from the manual was pretty definite that they're gone - they were too busy nerding out over their cool new creation the Overmind that they didn't figure out that their precious baby had grown way past their control until it ate them all and escaped. Hubris, like Dr. Frankenstein? Blindness like a parent who refuses to believe their precious Johnny is really bullying the other kids? Who knows. But they were presented as people that had power but not the wisdom to use it. They're gone. Duran's actual line back in BW was that he had "taken many names over the millenia" and was a "servant of a far greater power". What that suggests is something entirely new. The original writers left open a hook for a different, scarier thing than the stupid nerds who left their monster's cage open. Tenebrais is correct, I don't think anybody who knew Duran and spoke with him directly other than Kerrigan, Zeratul, and Stukov are still around, but him changing names again would be in character. Too bad he just picked 'generic white guy alucard' instead of naming himself something more interesting though. Han Garry Luka-Wulf! At this point though, we know the level of creative writing we're working with. bladededge fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Oct 14, 2023 |
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Oct 14, 2023 13:13
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BisbyWorl posted:But they could have put in some work over just handing it over to the player. Name him after Alex Rhodes or something to maintain a Duran Duran connection and throw in a few innocuous lines that might fly over a new player's head but start setting off alarm bells if you've played BW. As for “a few innocuous lines”, that’s also too subtle. Duran just doesn’t have any specifically memorable lines along the lines of “I’m going to be the one that kills you” or “I’m Queen Bitch of the Universe” that everybody remembers a decade after BW. Omobono posted:I kinda wish Kerrigan actually said outright that Narud is a Xel'naga. It's not like anyone would believe her after Brood War and any kind of in-universe check on the guy would come out as clean as Mr. Clean's forehead (because Narud knows what he's doing).
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Oct 14, 2023 13:36
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Xarn posted:It's not really a spoiler to say that we will fight Kerrigan again, and she is scary as gently caress there (unless you are going for massive levels of cheese with ghosts). tbh I dunno why she even needed to show up personally for this. Just have her as an off-screen commander taunting Jim and sending waves of Zerg units to trash buildings. Then you can even try to kill the units she sends as a stalling tactic, rather than having it be a strictly time-limited thing (i.e., Zerg will try to kill one building after another at whatever pace the number and type of units they send allows for).
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Oct 14, 2023 13:47
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I don't know why everyone is having on my buddy Lime. He's so clever! A doctor even! And yeah, now that it's been pointed out, I've found this mission to be a pain in the rear end, but that's mostly because on brutal there's poo poo that shoots down unescorted transports everywhere and you have practically no resources. Kerrigan and the timer have never really hit me.
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Oct 14, 2023 14:09
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Emil Narud. My God, it's an anagram. "I'm le Duran." The Xel'naga were French.
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Oct 14, 2023 15:55
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Am Nude IRL
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Oct 14, 2023 15:59
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GunnerJ posted:tbh I dunno why she even needed to show up personally for this. Just have her as an off-screen commander taunting Jim and sending waves of Zerg units to trash buildings. Then you can even try to kill the units she sends as a stalling tactic, rather than having it be a strictly time-limited thing (i.e., Zerg will try to kill one building after another at whatever pace the number and type of units they send allows for). This right here. Plus it would satisfy map-clearers like me. You could get the mission done in 15 minutes by focusing appropriately, or you could take an hour trying to set up a full defensive perimeter blocking the carnage path, to give you time to break every last blocker on the way to the objectives then stop short and even try to push to the spawner base before finishing the mission. And heck, if they didn't cheat (no invulnerable units, no insta-spawns like the end of W3:RoC, just like 10-20 hatcheries) I'd be positively over the moon with the self-imposed challenge. E: Incidentally I absolutely love that in The Dig and Welcome to the Jungle you can just wipe the Protoss off the map and you win right then and there, even with a little line from Horner about it. I've even done The Evacuation and Smash and Grab that way, though they still continue apace. (Smash & Grab I even took the time to replace the Protoss defenses on the north side with my own, because it keeps dropping zerg pods on the path after the protoss defenses break.) Felinoid fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Oct 14, 2023 |
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Oct 14, 2023 16:05
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I suspect they didn't want to introduce any other intelligent Zerg characters yet. Kerrigan isn't just here to break poo poo, she wants to find out what Moebius knows about the artifacts, and that's a difficult job to entrust to a bunch of zerglings. This could have been a good opportunity to introduce one of the brood mothers, but I'm not sure if they'd even settled on the design for those yet, unless they're going to appear in the campaign finale.
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Oct 14, 2023 16:22
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Tenebrais posted:Kerrigan isn't just here to break poo poo, she wants to find out what Moebius knows about the artifacts, and that's a difficult job to entrust to a bunch of zerglings. what if the zerglings were named after popular musicians
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Oct 14, 2023 16:28
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Tenebrais posted:I suspect they didn't want to introduce any other intelligent Zerg characters yet. Kerrigan isn't just here to break poo poo, she wants to find out what Moebius knows about the artifacts, and that's a difficult job to entrust to a bunch of zerglings. This could have been a good opportunity to introduce one of the brood mothers, but I'm not sure if they'd even settled on the design for those yet, unless they're going to appear in the campaign finale. I mean in that case, change the mission parameters: She's there to stop you from getting the info, maybe even to stop anyone from getting it.
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Oct 14, 2023 16:51
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Xarn posted:It's not really a spoiler to say that we will fight Kerrigan again, and she is scary as gently caress there (unless you are going for massive levels of cheese with ghosts). They could have fixed it by just taking her unit off the map while she's 'in' a building checking it. Keep the map marker, keep the shaking building, just remove her token to represent that she's inside the building and can't deal with whatever is outside.
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Oct 14, 2023 16:54
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Intermission 19 Cinematic: The Betrayal/Who We Choose To Be    Welcome back to scenic New Gettysburg. It's had a bit of a change, going from an orbital platform to a city on Tarsonis itself, but I can't blame SC2 for the change. That little retcon has been in place ever since Liberty's Crusade.      I'm like 95% sure this cinematic is only in because the art team really wanted to remake this scene.          Kerrigan's able to fend off a few Zerglings.  But Hydralisks are a different story.          She manages to kill the Hydralisk.  But her gun has run dry.         Serah hears some distant zerg screeching.       Hopelessly outnumbered.  Completely outgunned.  Serah Kerrigan does the only thing she can:    Give up.        Oh, this was all a nightmare Jim was having. Guess the run-in with his ex brought back some memories.      Raynor tries to grab the bottle, but Matt isn't budging.     It's hard to make out, but the news report says 'L800ETC At New Folsom.' I have a sneaking suspicion they won't be getting a large crowd.                   >Watch news.    And since maintaining continuity with this kind of mission structure is nigh-impossible, Donny's back to his usual Dominion fellating self.     Okay this is actually extremely rude, considering Raynor lost his kid to exactly this in his backstory. >Talk to Tosh.    Maybe you and Kerrigan keeping runnin' into each other because you both want the same thing? But Tychus - there's something else he don't want you to know. I can't see what. Just watch your back. Always remember that he's a force o' destruction that one... a stone killer.So Tosh knows that Mengsk has a mole on the ship, and he knows that Tychus is hiding something. Shame there isn't a single soul on the Hyperion who can solve this puzzle!  >Talk to Hanson.   And this is hysterical, considering she should already know they're true from the Rebellion missions!  Her...plus a few billion innocent civilians. After that we knew exactly what kind of man we'd been dealing with. I don't care about much of anything anymore, but the one thing I hold onto is seeing Mengsk brought to justice before I die. The Medivac is the first Starport unit to show up in the Armory. >Examine Medivac.  >Use Armory Console.  The Medivac's upgrades consist of to a boost to deployment speed, and the ability to heal two targets at once for 115K credits.  I get neither, instead finally grabbing the other Marauder upgrade.  >Talk to Tychus.    I'm trying, old buddy. I'm trying real hard.>Talk to Horner.     We may have ruined Kerrigan's trip to Tyrador, but at least her summer home on Haven is okay. But you know what we haven't done in ages?  Steal some of the Tal'darim's cultural treasures. 
BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Oct 18, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 03:22
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Fun note: despite using the exact same voiceline and take from the actual New Gettysburg mission, there's a line in that cinematic that has two different subtitles between Starcraft 1 & 2. Starcraft 1: "What? You're not just gonna leave 'em?" Starcraft 2: "What? You're not just gonna leave her?" They even added more distortion and radio noise over the line here to obscure the fact that he is absolutely not saying "her" in that line. Also, to be fair to Hanson, what was proven was that Mengsk unleashed the Zerg on Tarsonis deliberately to topple the Confederacy. Not that he abandoned his own men and Kerrigan herself in the process. And finally... since we're taking the approach in this LP of knowing that yes, Tychus is a mole for Mengsk, take note that once we start running into Kerrigan, Tychus, the one who is connecting us with these missions, the man who was previously all gung-ho about killing her if the opportunity came up, and the man who has since learned that Raynor still cares about the woman she used to be, seems to be getting cold feet about going after these missions after all. Curious, that. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 04:14
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I don't care about our planes but I refuse to let you go to Haven so anti ground.
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Oct 15, 2023 04:14
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I really can't wait to see how Banshees outshine Wraiths.  Meanwhile I really don't care if we ever see Vikings, given that every time I've seen them in-game as an enemy they do jack poo poo. The two in the first mission don't even finish transforming before your handful of marines blows them apart. The closest they come to doing things (so far) is in the secret mission, just because you've got a tiny force that might actually take a casualty. But then you hit them once with a plasma cannon and they fall down.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:05
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Felinoid posted:I really can't wait to see how Banshees outshine Wraiths. Vikings are actually extremely good at anti-air. The problem is that I can't really run an air army on account of my crippling lack of (good) air units. So the best an enemy Viking can do is fly into range, transform so they can attack my ground army, then instantly die because they're defenseless for three seconds while transforming.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:12
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Vikings are incredible at air to air and completely dumpster Wraiths in the role, which is pretty much all they need to do when paired with one of the upcoming units we're likely about to see.
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Oct 15, 2023 05:46
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BisbyWorl posted:Vikings are actually extremely good at anti-air. The problem is that I can't really run an air army on account of my crippling lack of (good) air units. So the best an enemy Viking can do is fly into range, transform so they can attack my ground army, then instantly die because they're defenseless for three seconds while transforming. Pretty much this. Vikings actually slap in anti-air roles, but the transformation gimmick only works either when you're out of sight or there's something else there to distract whatever would otherwise shoot the Viking. Most of the time though, you just don't want to transform the Vikings because you've got everything else for anti-ground poo poo, and landing them just takes away their biggest defense, which is that there's a lot of poo poo that can't shoot up. If you're landing Vikings normally, you're either 1) using them for harassment, 2) taking a victory lap, or 3) desperate. Or you're playing the Haven mission, I guess. Which we're not going to do because we're going to Typhon to get my favorite unit, Banshees. Also, Vikings are big and chunky, and their size messes with the transformation because air units will clump up on top of each other, requiring them to spread out BEFORE they can do their long rear end transformation animation. Which messes with the landing time and can result in half your Vikings landing and the other half being in the air if you give them another order before they finish spreading out. edit: And with even more thought, doing Typhon before Haven might give Wraiths more time to shine. I usually do Typhon once I already have Vikings, but Wraith cloaking will synergize well with Banshee cloaks. Never really thought about that before. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 06:06
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wait, Raynor had a kid?
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Oct 15, 2023 06:29
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Aces High posted:wait, Raynor had a kid? It comes up in Liberty's Crusade. Back on Mar Sara he had a wife and kid, kid had psi potential, had a 'training accident' while being trained as a Ghost, and the wife died of despair after being told.
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Oct 15, 2023 06:31
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BisbyWorl posted:It comes up in Liberty's Crusade. Back on Mar Sara he had a wife and kid, kid had psi potential, had a 'training accident' while being trained as a Ghost, and the wife died of despair after being told. And IIRC, in that version, him flashing back to those memories and the associated thoughts of thinking that Ghosts are bastards when Kerrigan first meets him is the  actual reason she reflexively calls him a pig after getting a surface read of his mind
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Oct 15, 2023 06:36
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Regalingualius posted:And IIRC, in that version, him flashing back to those memories and the associated thoughts of thinking that Ghosts are bastards when Kerrigan first meets him is the Nah, that scene remains unchanged. Mike accidentally thinks about it around Kerrigan later and it catches her completely off guard.
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Oct 15, 2023 06:39
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If we keep ignoring a mission until end game, will we then have to play without the unit unlocked? Because having Bisby play the air variant of the final mission without Vikings sounds hilarious and we should do it 
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Oct 15, 2023 09:25
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Not only do I like the Banshee but we're not going to Haven until it can't be put off any longer.
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Oct 15, 2023 09:34
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You know, something occurs to me. In game, Hydralisks are ranged units that never attack in melee, both in SC1 and SC2. But I think that in both SC1 and SC2 we never seem then acting as ranged units in cutscenes. Like in SC1 that science vessel cutscene they gib some marines with their big bone spur claws, rather than shooting them, and here that Hydralisk could've pelted Kerrigan with ranged spines before getting that close.
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Oct 15, 2023 10:13
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PurpleXVI posted:You know, something occurs to me. In game, Hydralisks are ranged units that never attack in melee, both in SC1 and SC2. See, the funny thing here is that Hydralisks do have a melee attack animation that they use when they're right next to a target. It just inherits the stats of their ranged attack, but it does bypass Point Defense Drone.
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Oct 15, 2023 10:17
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PurpleXVI posted:You know, something occurs to me. In game, Hydralisks are ranged units that never attack in melee, both in SC1 and SC2. SC2's cutscenes feature some ranged attacks. We see the things whizzing by/embedding themselves in the terrain in the New Gettysburg scene, as well as some later scenes. Most notably Warfield on Char loses his arm to getting spiked by Hydras.
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Oct 15, 2023 10:45
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Alcoholism Narrative Reference Counter: 8 Alcoholism Narrative Reference Counter: 9 Now, I know what you may be thinking - "Really, Kith? Counting the same cutscene twice?" And yes, I am! I'm not counting every single time Raynor shows up in the Cantina with whiskey in his hand, let me have this. Anyway. This is the biggest (and I believe the last) direct reference to the original narrative, foreshadowing the final confrontation via Matt directly referencing Raynor's mistakes and visibly preventing Raynor from continuing to drink. The next cutscene in the storyline would go like this: Kith posted:This narrative would all come to a head when, after one of the mop-up missions, Matt confronted Raynor about how his mistakes cost lives. Raynor would shoot back that people should be thankful because it would've been far worse if the Raiders hadn't been there at all, and Matt would counter with how Raynor sounded just like Mengsk. Raynor would fly into a rage, Matt would beat some sense into him, and Raynor would realize that Matt was right. As part of this scene, Raynor would reveal (or come to the realization) that the reason that he was obsessed with saving Kerrigan was because he felt personally responsible for letting Mengsk trick him into abandoning Kerrigan to be infested, and he needed to do everything he could to right that wrong and quiet his conscience. He would mention that killing the Queen of Blades wouldn't bring back the people that they'd lost to her, and that was supposed to be his Big Hero Moment: realizing that revenge was meaningless and redemption was the True Hero's Path. He'd clean up his act, get his poo poo together, and the rest of the game would happen as it does for much better reasons. What we get instead is... interesting.
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Oct 15, 2023 11:37
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Kith posted:Now, I know what you may be thinking - "Really, Kith? Counting the same cutscene twice?" And yes, I am! I'm not counting every single time Raynor shows up in the Cantina with whiskey in his hand, let me have this. Frankly, I'd add one more to the count specifically for this instance of Raynor in the cantina during gameplay. Because he drank himself into a stupor, woke up at nearly four in the morning, immediately started drinking again, and is still drinking six hours later.
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Oct 15, 2023 11:41
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BisbyWorl posted:Frankly, I'd add one more to the count specifically for this instance of Raynor in the cantina during gameplay. Y'know what, fair. Alcoholism Narrative Reference Counter: 10
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Oct 15, 2023 11:42
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