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This mission is incredibly fun. Very well balanced, giving the sense of hurry even though you actually do have a decent amount of time to get everything done (at least on Normal/Hard).Tenebrais posted:Honestly, from how the rest of the plot plays out, the Tal'darim are probably totally fine with the artifact being destroyed and I'm not sure why they aren't doing it themselves. BisbyWorl posted:The Normal achievement here is weird. Because you all saw how slow the fire was, right? The only way you're losing a unit to it is if you accidentally forgot an SCV in a base or something. MagusofStars fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 13:31
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Tenebrais posted:Honestly, from how the rest of the plot plays out, the Tal'darim are probably totally fine with the artifact being destroyed and I'm not sure why they aren't doing it themselves. If you take a moment to do a creative exercise by putting yourself in the Tal'darim's shoes, see things from their perspective, knowing what their outlook and goals are, you quite quickly realize that they have none. Nobody bothered to give these guys a motivation or reason to exist other than "Protoss that can be used as an opposing force". Would they just destroy an artifact to stop it from being stolen by aliens? Why don't they seem to care that all their stuff is being burnt up? Are they still into that gas or did they forget about it once the aliens didn't want it any more? Where were they while Aiur was being invaded? Iunno. Nobody at blizzard thought establishing these guys was important in any way. bladededge fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 13:40
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It's the team rocket thing. Your plan almost worked before the protagonist showed up, just try it again when they've left !!
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Oct 21, 2023 14:18
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In later games they get some characterization. Would have been nice to get that here but as we've discussed before, despite having 10 years to figure out what the plot of Starcraft 2 should be, it seems like things were figured out in the game dev equivalent of an all nighter before the group project is due.
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Oct 21, 2023 14:25
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I forget if it's his in-game quotes or Heroes of the Storm Quotes, but a certain Tal'darim character to be met much later on actually gives a bit of context for these Tal'darim and their leader. Nyon, the name of this Tal'darim leader revealed only in the label on his portrait, was apparently sent to harvest Terrazine until he went nuts from overexposure. Presumably his forces went similarly insane.
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Oct 21, 2023 15:34
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BlazetheInferno posted:Nyon, the name of this Tal'darim leader revealed only in the label on his portrait, 
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Oct 21, 2023 15:37
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This mission is one of the, if not the only one to actually get patched and be made harder. There wasn't much detection around the back of the temple at first, so it was very easy to cheese. Now on Brutal it's covered in cannons, phoenixes and observers. This mission is the sole reason I never seriously pursued doing Brutal Speedruns (back in the day, Brutal was the only speedrun people did) because there is a like, one pixel spot that is free from detection, and you need to spam right click on that spot incredibly fast to make all your banshees stay stacked there and then slowly chip away at the temple. Maybe another strat got discovered since then, but I couldn't pull it off consistently at all, and it killed my motivation for the run. So this mission is my least favourite in the game. EDIT: Did some research and yeah, people bring along a tank to siege the temple from the low ground and a few marines to kill the phoenixes on Brutal. Also saw a strat where a ghost nukes the temple to kill the observer on top of it. SoundwaveAU fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 16:19
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BisbyWorl posted:If I had them. Count your blessings, I didn't even want you to have wraiths. Although when I did it without Vikings, I wound up just dumping minerals in marines so I could use all my gas on more banshees. Which about sums up my feelings on wraiths. It feels better ramming medic free marines into collossi and psi storms in suicide waves aiming at air to air than than it does to build wraiths.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:09
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Banshees are an awesome unit, easily my favorite in the Terran roster. They have one job and they do it extremely well.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:50
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anilEhilated posted:Banshees are an awesome unit, easily my favorite in the Terran roster. They have one job and they do it extremely well. Kind of a shame the later expansions added a unit that does their job better! Banshees still have the distinction of cloaking, though, so they're still useful in rush strategies to catch the enemy with their pants down and bomb their workers with impunity before they get detection up. Or to force them to invest in some detection for their army.
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Oct 21, 2023 18:24
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Intermission 20 Cinematic: Heir Apparent  We get another cinematic coming out of Supernova. Every mission in the Artifact chain so far has had one, in fact.            Oh drat, Mengsk finally remembered that he's sorta the antagonist!             We then cut to the hallways of the Bucephalus.                      While all this has been going on, a man with a distinctly non-Mengsk hairdo is enjoying a little music.       Somehow, the fact that Mengsk has suddenly turned into a blonde has completely gone over Jim's head.       Okay, let's break this down. Valerian wants to deal with Kerrigan, and is using Raynor as the muscle and Moebius as the go-between.  And now that the plan is almost ready he... baits Raynor into nearly killing him?  Like, if Raynor decided to just blast the Bucephalus with the Hyperion, Valerian dies.  If Raynor decided to not draw it out and shoot on sight, Valerian dies.  And let's not forget that Valerian got his own men killed for this! Four Dominion troops died trying to keep Jim out just so Jim can break in, and that's just what we see!  Also, if Valerian owns Mobius, does he have ties to   Good thing Jim Misses His Girlfriend and will ask absolutely none of these questions!   And here's where the open-ended structure really falls apart, because we've long since pondered the orb.  We know that Kerrigan has to survive in order to save the universe.  Even discounting that, the cinematic where Zeratul gives us the orb is mandatory. You can't clear Supernova without finishing The Dig first, so at a bare minimum Jim's still told about Kerrigan by Zeratul even if he doesn't have the full context.  Meanwhile everyone is acting like this is a grave betrayal and that Jim's doing this solely for himself.    You can't put ambiguity into your narrative when we already know that one of the outcomes will result in everyone dying.   Holy poo poo new Mercs. >Watch news.    Of course, Donny. But there's also a sense that whatever the zerg were after... they either got it, or they've given up on it. We may never know. >Check Mercenaries.  On one hand, it'd be a bit unreasonable to expect a brand new model for every unit in the game so there could be more Mercs.  On the other hand, it's been like 8-ish non-prophecy missions since we got a new one. Also, the video preview there is very clearly showing the starting base from Supernova, but the Merc Compound is much further up and it has Supply Depots for whatever reason.  >Talk to Hanson.    That's what worries me. Just don't lose sight of who you are - that's what's important. A lot of people are counting on you and... I'm one of 'em.>Examine Artifact.    If I said 'no' would you even believe me? The only person who can really know what the artifact does is the one who made it - and they're long gone...I hope. >Talk to Swann.    It ain't up for discussion, Swann. I gotta do this.>Examine Banshee.  >Use Armory Console.  The Banshee gets a hefty boost to cloak duration and an aoe effect on attacks for 110K.  I get both.  Matt points out a new thing to use, if you happened to not see the text notice. >Talk to Tychus.    Just watch your back, ol' buddy. That's all I'm askin'. I said I can handle it! If you don't want to be a part of this, you can take your thirty percent and go.>Talk to Horner.    We were starting to make real progress against Mengsk. If we go after the Queen of Blades, we're throwing that away!You know, I bet if with the right mission order you could get here with zero Rebellion missions done and do absolutely nothing to Mengsk aside from the tutorial missions. This is bigger than Mengsk. Matt, if we succeed on Char, we'll save billions of lives. Billions. Mengsk can wait. I didn't sign up for this. You signed up to follow my orders! If you can't do that anymore then get the hell off my ship! Sir.>Talk to Valerian.        I asked you a question. Everyone wonders if I will be as good an emperor as my father. But I want something more. To prove that I will be a better emperor. And a better man. That shouldn't be hard. If I reform the worst mass murderer in history, make her human again... teamed with the famous outlaw Jim Raynor... it's all the proof I'll need.Ahh yes, reform Sarah Kerrigan, the woman who... killed several billion people in the past month alone. This is a totally reasonable goal that won't result in a galaxy spanning lynch mob. So I'm just a cog in your machine. If it gets you what you want, do you care? Guess I don't.  Believe it or not, these are the last two missions before Char!  We'll be completely finished with Wings of Liberty by mid-December. 
BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 03:13
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Okay, fine. Let's go to Haven and get your anime mechs.
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Oct 22, 2023 03:26
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The last chance? Nonsense. The Mission Archives can be accessed at any point. You could concievably delay Haven until the very last update of this LP. 
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Oct 22, 2023 03:31
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I legitimately can't tell what the designers want us to think about Valerian. What portrayal are they even going for here? Are we supposed to think he's a manipulative genius? A naive but trustworthy idealist? An uncertain ally like Tychus or Tosh? Because he just kind of seems like a dumbass.
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Oct 22, 2023 03:55
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MagusofStars posted:I legitimately can't tell what the designers want us to think about Valerian. What portrayal are they even going for here? Anyway, he's a dumb dweeb and it makes no sense for Jim to trust him, except that the plot has decided that Jim is going to work with Valerian because he cares about absolutely nothing but the former coworker he worked with for a few months years ago who later went on to murder his best friend and billions of others in cold blood.
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Oct 22, 2023 04:06
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Yeah I'll be honest, Valerian seems like a friggin' schmuck. I was expecting him to be like the good son who wants to distance himself from his father (and his crimes), but no, he's just looking to one-up his dad because that'll show everyone he's totally not a corncob! He's even practicing villain monologues, ffs.
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Oct 22, 2023 05:03
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MagusofStars posted:I legitimately can't tell what the designers want us to think about Valerian. What portrayal are they even going for here? I think Valerian at this point is meant to come off as both. Manipulative and untrustworthy, but also a naive idealist. At heart, he's the latter, but he's putting an effort into looking like the former. He wants Raynor to think he's just being used as a cog in Valerian's machine, and that may even be true. But in his heart, Valerian really does want to prove he can get good things done, and he sees this as one of the greatest positive impacts he can possibly have - if he succeeds. And he is nothing if not meticulous in his planning. He's just inexperienced, is all. Which is why he's turning to people he knows have more experience than he could ever hope for - General Warfield, and James Raynor.
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Oct 22, 2023 05:09
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Fun fact: Valerian's also voiced by the guy who did Prince (later King) Anduin from WoW.
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Oct 22, 2023 06:08
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I had forgotten Anduin Wrynn* here was on paper the leader of Moebius. It would make the corp a juicy target for Narud to infiltrate. *WOW character E: and I kinda like Valerian in this game. There's the tension wondering if Jim is going to get Mengsk-ed again by another Mengsk and he has echoes of his dad's political savyness in 1, even as he's clearly not fully ready for whatever poo poo he's planning. Some of this was even intended by the writers. Omobono fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 06:18
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MagusofStars posted:I legitimately can't tell what the designers want us to think about Valerian. What portrayal are they even going for here? Valerian has powerful "smart idiot" energy. I actually like him as a character because of that, even if he comes with just an impossible number of plot holes. The comm exchange between him and Jim, the whole, "I can see why my father wants to kill you," bit is genuinely funny to me. Raynor gets to enjoy a moment of pettiness that feels so good and we get to see that while Valerian has an ego, it's one that can tolerate a little bit of bruising. One of those rare moments that's actually kind of well-done sandwiched between nonsense and cliche.
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Oct 22, 2023 07:16
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Honestly I kind of wish that Jim cutting the call had gone on a couple more times, and we got treated to Valerian getting increasingly ticked off every time it happens.
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Oct 22, 2023 07:24
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Regalingualius posted:Honestly I kind of wish that Jim cutting the call had gone on a couple more times, and we got treated to Valerian getting increasingly ticked off every time it happens.  Are you calling in a report just so you can cut me off again? You know it!
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Oct 22, 2023 07:27
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Haven. I'm of the opinion that the Battlecruiser needs to cap it all off. And Maw of the Void is a TON of fun, so better to save it for last. BlazetheInferno posted:I think Valerian at this point is meant to come off as both. Manipulative and untrustworthy, but also a naive idealist. At heart, he's the latter, but he's putting an effort into looking like the former. He wants Raynor to think he's just being used as a cog in Valerian's machine, and that may even be true. But in his heart, Valerian really does want to prove he can get good things done, and he sees this as one of the greatest positive impacts he can possibly have - if he succeeds. And he is nothing if not meticulous in his planning. He's just inexperienced, is all. Which is why he's turning to people he knows have more experience than he could ever hope for - General Warfield, and James Raynor. Valerian's my favorite character out of the narrative for pretty much exactly these reasons. He's VERY much his father's son -- he has Mengsk's flair for the dramatic, his love of slick talking and wheels-within-wheels plots, of using other people as go-betweens to get things done. And as we've seen already and will see even more imminently, he DEFINITELY has Mengsk's ambition. But he lacks the one key thing that made Arcturus Mengsk into a monster -- the hate that fueled the Sons of Korhal, the bitter desire for vengeance that drove Mengsk to unleash nightmares on entire planets to get revenge on the Confederacy and scarred him far too deeply to let him turn back after he'd won. Without that hate, Valerian can turn that idealism onto the world he lives in unfiltered, and it's going to do incredible things. It will also get a TON of people killed very shortly, but, honestly, A. That's basically par for the course in Starcraft, B. The numbers are going to be far less disgusting than the ones Mengsk churned up for the sake of mere revenge, and C. Realistically, what's about to happen was never going to happen without a whole lot of bloodshed.
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Oct 22, 2023 07:32
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Eh, let's delay Haven until we can deal with it using Battelcruisers.
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Oct 22, 2023 08:12
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BisbyWorl posted:
Renegade points gained. I'm committed to the drat bit, so you bet it's not Haven.
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Oct 22, 2023 08:50
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MagusofStars posted:I legitimately can't tell what the designers want us to think about Valerian. What portrayal are they even going for here? The answer to this riddle will be revealed in time, when the game simply screams it in your face. Regalingualius posted:Fun fact: Valerian's also voiced by the guy who did Prince (later King) Anduin from WoW. Other Fun Fact: Valerian appears in Heroes of the Storm!  ... as a skin for Anduin!
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Oct 22, 2023 08:56
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The first couple of times the choice came up, I always voted for Haven. But now we're committed, I'll never vote for Haven again. I'm sure once we de-zergify the Queen of Blades, the colonists on Haven will be just fine!
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Oct 22, 2023 09:28
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Why is Matt talking about the Bucephalus's shields being down? Terrans don't have shields!
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Oct 22, 2023 11:43
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Ballistic shields. The parts that go over the various loading/boarding bays.
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Oct 22, 2023 12:28
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GunnerJ posted:Why is Matt talking about the Bucephalus's shields being down? Terrans don't have shields! Not equipped with shields...? Well then, buckle up! You know what, fine. Haven. You can have your japanese animes. Besides that, the map is one of the ones that Nukes utterly trivialize, gotta have one more shot at calling down the thunder before we get our BCs and forget them.
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Oct 22, 2023 13:22
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Does Hanson say anything after Maw of the Void?
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Oct 22, 2023 13:24
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Man, this whole encounter was incredibly stupid. Probably the dumbest part of WoL. Were the marines on the Bucephalus under orders to kill Raynor, or were they expected to just make a show of it while he guns them down? It would have been so easy to change the scene into one where Valerian boards the Hyperion instead, flanked by marines and with the multiple Dominion battlecruisers outgunning them enough that they can just order them to stand down. I wonder if they already had the ideas/animation for the revolver with one bullet and the "have a nice day" grenade and they really wanted to use them somewhere, but since so little of the campaign actually involves fighting Mengsk this was the best place they could find to shove it. There's a lot of interesting places you could take Valerian's character. He's his father's son through and through, but with his driving goal of achieving great things for the Dominion, there's a genuine possibility of him sacrificing its brutal oppression in order to be able to say he ended the rebellion. And then dealing with what this would mean for the actual members of the rebellion, who had got themselves all psyched up to finally overthrow the brutal Mengsk dictatorship only to be told they're reforming the Dominion from within. And he's presumably doing all of this outside of Arcturus' knowledge and attention too - but also perhaps he isn't, and his father is actually completely unafraid of Raynor and his crew. Doesn't give a poo poo what they're up to, they just make a good bogeyman to scare the citizenry with. Maybe that's why Tychus isn't reporting on or interfering with any of this, because even revealing he was responsible for Tarsonis isn't actually any real threat to his rule. There's good story potential there too. Unfortunately we're close to the end of the campaign now, it'll shortly be All Kerrigan All The Time and none of these threads are going to get development. What kind of person is Valerian? He's a person who wants and is able to cure Kerrigan. What's Arcturus' position? He wants Kerrigan dead, that's the whole reason she is the way she is in the first place. I hope you're ready for the alien waifu campaign! And that's still not going to be the worst part of SC2's overall plot. Anyway. We're not going to see any of it unless maybe we do Haven, but does Valerian have stuff to say about any of the other missions you can get up to if you do this one as early as possible? He's not actually on the ship so it makes sense if he's just waiting for you to join him for his missions, but you'd think he'd at least have some thoughts about Media Blitz...
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Oct 22, 2023 13:47
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This action sequence should have been a phone call, that's entirely on people deciding they wanted a cool action sequence. Valerian has the potential to be interesting, of course, we all know what goes on at blizz when there's potential waiting to be realized.
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Oct 22, 2023 13:58
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There's some weirdness with the greater narrative, but I will always mark out for Raynor immediately checking that his revolver has that single bullet loaded and ready. He's been saving it all this time, and he's ready.
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Oct 22, 2023 14:18
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This sequence is where the game's story definitely lost me. Up to now, you could still reasonably hope for an interesting finale, with Raynor torn between killing Kerrigan and letting her get away with her atrocities "for the greater good" but lo and behold, here's Mengsk ex machina, you can have your cake and eat it. I didn't mind the retcons, I didn't mind the prophecies (I think I mentioned a few ways of how those could be worked around before) but this was the last straw and the moment I completely lost interest in the campaigns.
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Oct 22, 2023 15:26
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Imagine if the shot Jim fired into the screen at the very beginning was supposed to be the Very Symbolic One (like the first bullet he got as a member of the Sons of Korhal), he only realizes it a moment too late, and then has to embarrassedly spend the rest of the story pretending that this is the real one. Hell, if you wanted to get dark with it and they had kept in the alcoholism subplot, that could have even been the first sign of just how hard he’s slipped since Brood War, with a moment of him cussing himself out for having irrevocably wasted that opportunity.
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Oct 22, 2023 15:27
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If we don't run the joke of passing up on Haven into the ground what's even the point of this being a goon LP
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Oct 22, 2023 18:27
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A redemption arc in which we learn how to better fit in larger human society.
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Oct 22, 2023 18:29
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Haven. It's Viking time!
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Oct 22, 2023 18:58
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This is what we've been building up to all this time. Picking Haven now is the coward's way out.
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Oct 22, 2023 18:59
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