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PurpleXVI posted:Please let's not have a repeat of what happened in Cyth's thread where someone insisted on unwanted levels of detail about what turned them on despite a remarkable number of "please stop" warnings. Yeah that is 100% as far as I was going to go and it's more an oblique reference to how Kerrigan gets treated by weirdos (including Blizzard) than anything else, considering the other ways Hanson gets compared to her. Apologies to the thread in general for my bad joke if someone actually tries to take that as invitation to go further.
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Nov 5, 2023 21:48
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unfortunately blizzard's decision to put tits on a bug has had far-reaching consequences
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Nov 5, 2023 22:20
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disposablewords posted:Yeah that is 100% as far as I was going to go and it's more an oblique reference to how Kerrigan gets treated by weirdos (including Blizzard) than anything else, considering the other ways Hanson gets compared to her. Apologies to the thread in general for my bad joke if someone actually tries to take that as invitation to go further. Sorry if I seemed a bit too eager to jump down your throat there, it was more meant as a polite: "Okay, funny, but no details" in general considering what happened on the other side of the forum.  You didn't weird me out and I don't figure you really weirded anyone out either.
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Nov 6, 2023 00:32
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I'd say it was a fair enough warning; we wouldn't be goons if we could parse social cues NOW LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOW MUCH i LIKE BUG GIRLS. IN THIS ESSAY I WILL
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Nov 6, 2023 01:41
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So, wait, the colonists were all infected with Zerg and basically turned as soon as the Protoss fleet came into orbit? And Hansen did within like an.. Hour or so? So, like, how is it possible that siding with the colonists does /not/ result in a planet full of millions of Zerg?
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Nov 6, 2023 02:55
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It's simple, they are all already infected and the virus only activates when it detects its trigger signal which has been carefully engineered by Kerrigan to be the presence of Raynor in the OPFOR.
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Nov 6, 2023 02:57
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wedgekree posted:So, wait, the colonists were all infected with Zerg and basically turned as soon as the Protoss fleet came into orbit? And Hansen did within like an.. Hour or so?
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Nov 6, 2023 03:26
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wedgekree posted:So, wait, the colonists were all infected with Zerg and basically turned as soon as the Protoss fleet came into orbit? And Hansen did within like an.. Hour or so? She injected herself with an incomplete cure in a desperate bid to prove that it was curable and stop the slaughter. wedgekree posted:So, like, how is it possible that siding with the colonists does /not/ result in a planet full of millions of Zerg? I'm pretty sure this question gets answered.
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Nov 6, 2023 04:24
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wedgekree posted:So, like, how is it possible that siding with the colonists does /not/ result in a planet full of millions of Zerg? Jim asks them "Can't you just...stop being infested?" and they do
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Nov 6, 2023 04:25
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wedgekree posted:So, wait, the colonists were all infected with Zerg and basically turned as soon as the Protoss fleet came into orbit? And Hansen did within like an.. Hour or so? As other goons have mentioned, it's reality bending around the player's actions. If they side with the Protoss, then it's far too late to engineer a cure. If they side with the colonists, then way-hey, Raoynor's come along just in time!
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Nov 6, 2023 05:02
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wedgekree posted:So, wait, the colonists were all infected with Zerg and basically turned as soon as the Protoss fleet came into orbit? And Hansen did within like an.. Hour or so? CommissarMega posted:As other goons have mentioned, it's reality bending around the player's actions. If they side with the Protoss, then it's far too late to engineer a cure. If they side with the colonists, then way-hey, Raoynor's come along just in time! It's this. 100% the same as Tosh vs. Nova. It'll be clear after our trip to the non-canon zone. Blizzard took the coward's approach to choice, bending the meta of the story around what the player chooses to ensure the player never has to doubt themselves. I want to say it wasn't until 2013 or so when I finally got off the 'choices' bandwagon and started giving a dim eye to the practice in game design. These days, I am far more in favor of either long, curated narratives where player input into the story doesn't exist or is explicitly too small to matter (do you want pancakes or waffles for breakfast?) OR a short narrative stuffed to the gills with reactivity that rewards multiple short plays. There's an inherent trade-off between length and reactivity, and cost to develop scales exponentially if you try to increase both with diminishing returns. Plenty of studios didn't get this memo and like to promise long games with choices that matter and... most of the time it just doesn't work out that way. Blizzard got bit by that bug in 2010 and tried to inject choice into StarCraft 2. What that gave us is a nonsense sequence of events that can't actually interact with each other in any meaningful way except for Tosh and Hanson maybe sometimes having an opinion about a thing. Could Blizzard have made this work and made the campaign react meaningfully? Sure, it's short enough. Add some bonus objectives to take advantage of having Ghosts/Specters or something. Maybe make Media Blitz easier if you side with Hanson on Haven because Raynor looks solidly like the Good Guys having funded medical research that turned out a counter to a Zerg bioweapon. But all else held constant, more time spent on the campaign means less time spent on multiplayer and general gameplay polish. And Starcraft was Blizzard's PREMIER esports franchise. Sure, that might not be what people buy physical copies for (we already litigated those statistics real good) but if SC2 shipped as a mess that couldn't at least claim to be a successor to Brood War multiplayer? It might not have ended the franchise, but it would have been a pretty big black eye to 2010 Blizzard. I specifically call this the coward's approach as well because it's a deliberate choice to avoid doing anything that might trigger dissonant feelings in your audience. Blizzard likes to play it safe, and the Activision acquisition isn't part of this equation--I can't think of anything post-2000 that was particularly ground breaking in Blizzard storytelling. Certainly not after WoW. Blizzard doesn't want to make waves, they want to appeal to the widest demographic possible to sell the most copies possible. Given how many people trip over themselves to buy Blizzard games even after the scandals, I'd say they're pretty good at it regardless of what the WoW grognards have to say about it. After all, they still seem to buy the expansions and play the raids no matter the complaints about the nonsense story. So when they hopped on the choice bandwagon in 2010, they opted to take the safe and boring route of ensuring that reality confirms the player's choice no matter what that choice is, rather than presenting the player with any ambiguity. Fortunately, this is the last we'll see of this particular nonsense. There is one more choice in the game, but it isn't a choice between helping and betraying someone, but whether you want to face air attack wave or ground attack waves in the final mission.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:29
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Maybe too early to raise this, but would a "I want to kill Kerrigan" versus "I want to rescue Kerrigan" choice have worked in WoL? Obviously they'd have to be rail-roaded to the same final resolution, but maybe you could have gotten different cutscenes or missions along the way.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:33
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imo should've gotten more than just research points out of this mission, here. Something with a little substance, based on who you side with, like a Bio/Zerg vs Mech/Protoss upgrade outside the research system. Iunno, free tamed zergling with every marine/firebat/etc, or the like.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:39
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Though then you potentially run into the problem of “I want this upgrade because it’s objectively better (to my playstyle/in general), but I hate the story branch it’s locked behind”
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Nov 6, 2023 06:10
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Regalingualius posted:Though then you potentially run into the problem of “I want this upgrade because it’s objectively better (to my playstyle/in general), but I hate the story branch it’s locked behind” You already have that problem if you don't know about/do the secret mission before progressing to the end of Tychus' missions. If you want tech reactors reasonably early, you need the secret mission or you need to go deep into Tychus/the main storyline.
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Nov 6, 2023 07:23
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Warmachine posted:Blizzard took the coward's approach to choice, bending the meta of the story around what the player chooses to ensure the player never has to doubt themselves. not every game can be Alpha Protocol, perhaps the only title in the "your choices matter!!!" era which actually followed through shame about a lot of other parts of that game but the reactivity was absolutely top notch. Really demonstrated both the strengths and the weakness of 'you have to play the whole game at least twice to really get it.' Psion fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Nov 6, 2023 |
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Nov 6, 2023 07:45
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Mass Effect 3 was almost pulling it off, before Marauder Shields and  made everything go to poo poo.It was not Alpha Protocol level and you could often see the stitches and the rails, but the Tuchanka sequence was almost  (Then as said the ending happened and welp)
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Nov 6, 2023 10:28
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Regalingualius posted:Though then you potentially run into the problem of “I want this upgrade because it’s objectively better (to my playstyle/in general), but I hate the story branch it’s locked behind” Ah, so the Protoss missions. eta: I liked them the first time through, but on subsequent playthroughs it's a slog that pretty much ahs to be done if you want the toss/zerg upgrades in a reasonable time
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Nov 6, 2023 14:04
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Omobono posted:Mass Effect 3 was almost pulling it off, before Marauder Shields and And then the ending happens. I don't think I will ever replay Mass Effect again. The ending just killed any desire I had to do so. It's written worse than anything in Wings of Liberty, and I don't say that lightly. But don't worry, SC2 has two more shots at being worse and by God I think Blizzard did it!
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Nov 6, 2023 16:42
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Kurgarra Queen posted:I legit loved that series. And I loved ME3 all the way up until the ending. The Citadel DLC is a loving riot. Lets not say anything we can't take back. When the start is poo poo, the ending being poo poo has less impact, you know? You've gotta factor that into the judgement.
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Nov 6, 2023 16:47
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Kurgarra Queen posted:I legit loved that series. And I loved ME3 all the way up until the ending. The Citadel DLC is a loving riot. I agree with all this and will just add that one reason I've never wanted to replay is that the ending nonsense somehow retroactively makes the Citadel DLC, which owns, worse. Because it's such tone whiplash and makes it feel utterly irrelevant. What a terrible storytelling choice.
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Nov 6, 2023 17:16
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I sorta like the "Choices Matter" gameplay, but then I also hate it because I want to get the best ending possible. Like Dragon Age: Origins. You could let the Wood Elves die to recruit the Werewolves, but you could cure them instead and get the Wood Elves.
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Nov 6, 2023 21:30
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The choices have to matter, which is hard. Basically nobody is willing to pull Witcher 2 and just make a whole act completely different based on your previous choices. Alpha Protocol extremely owned though.
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Nov 6, 2023 21:31
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Xarn posted:The choices have to matter, which is hard. Basically nobody is willing to pull Witcher 2 and just make a whole act completely different based on your previous choices. This is the fundamental problem, and I'll never move off this soapbox. I agree that choices are cool and I'd do some nasty things to wrench the IP away from Sega and give Obsidian a shot at Alpha Protocol 2 because they pretty much nailed what "choices matter" was meant to be. But the also-rans demonstrate the problem: it's expensive and labor intensive to pull off even in small games mean to be played multiple times. Affordable, Reactive, Long, pick two. Realistically, studios pick "affordable" and one of the other two, normally long because "300 hours!" is an easy marketing punchline that is proven to work while they add some token choices to the mix so they can technically use the tagline, but the assertion will fall apart under sustained scrutiny. Mind you, that can be fine--"choices" can only matter so far as characterizing the player character and frankly that's where the compromise can normally work. They give the illusion of player agency by letting the player determine their reaction, but not necessarily the outcome. gohuskies posted:Maybe too early to raise this, but would a "I want to kill Kerrigan" versus "I want to rescue Kerrigan" choice have worked in WoL? Obviously they'd have to be rail-roaded to the same final resolution, but maybe you could have gotten different cutscenes or missions along the way. This could have worked! You can keep the same linear plot but Jim's reaction to events changes, recontextualizing the narrative. Since Final Fantasy 14 is on my brain right now, there's a dialogue choice at the end of the main story in Endwalker that can be kinda divisive. It does gently caress-all to change the outcome, the fight happens the same way, the post fight monologue from the villain is the same, the only thing that changes is how the player's Warrior of Light perceives the event. And people will get spicy about which is the 'right' choice. Does the choice have any baring on the plot? Nope. Does it matter? Arguably, yes, but not from a mechanical standpoint. Unless you count whether you smirk or not as a mechanic.
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Nov 6, 2023 21:48
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I feel, in the vein of strategy games, Triangle Strategy made quite a strong attempt at showing your choices matter, with the game branching into four at one point and a whole extra ending existing if you made a certain set of choices through the game.
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Nov 6, 2023 21:58
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Omobono posted:Mass Effect 3 was almost pulling it off, before Marauder Shields and ME3 is pretty much the opposite of SC2 and what Warmachine was describing as the "coward's approach" - it goes hard on an ending that deliberately evokes dissonant feelings in the audience (literally the meaning of "lots of speculation") and caught a lot of stick for it. Final Fantasy VII all over again with regard to SC2, it's just author-stance as opposed to actor-stance. SC2 isn't asking "do you think these colonists are infested or not" or "is Tosh on the level" - utterly impossible to determine - but "what kind of story are you looking to tell" speaking more generally, to be honest it's weird to get upset over this like Blizzard betrayed us or the choices ruin the story. it's just an alternate ending for a three-mission sidestory for a subplot that isn't that important. the whole thing is potentially skippable. I would argue Wings of Liberty was more than just the next chapter of the Starcraft story (lmao) but also a commercial product, a showcase for the engine and for Blizzard as developers. as such there are gonna be aspects that aren't about the deep characters and themes of Starcraft: Orcs in Space (christ), but instead show off features of the editor, stretch the boundaries of the genre or make splashy talking points for previews and reviews the lesson Blizzard actually learns is to drop the subplots altogether and have shorter, leaner, more plot-focused campaigns
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Nov 7, 2023 00:00
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If you want a game where choices matter just play Disco Elysium tbh
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Nov 7, 2023 01:46
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gohuskies posted:Maybe too early to raise this, but would a "I want to kill Kerrigan" versus "I want to rescue Kerrigan" choice have worked in WoL? Obviously they'd have to be rail-roaded to the same final resolution, but maybe you could have gotten different cutscenes or missions along the way. A potential WoL equivalent is whether Raynor is collecting the artifacts because (a) he's trying to rescue Kerrigan or (b) re-humanized Kerrigan is much easier to shoot with a pistol. Either way, he's still collecting artifacts and the goal is still to turn Kerrigan human again, it's just why he's doing it and how Tychus/Matt/etc respond.
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Nov 7, 2023 02:58
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Lt. Danger posted:
Counterpoints: 1. Complaining about the bad writing is great entertainment. Picking apart this franchise in particular, as a botched sequel (plotwise) to an original that was an unexpectedly good writing work, is fun for lit nerds, and people invested in storytelling in general. I count myself among them, this thread has made for some great reading. 2. Pointing out the flaws is educational. You experience the bad stuff and in figuring out why it's bad, it increases your appreciation for the good. This is something you learn as a cliche in every 'appreciation of cinema' class, that you learn more from the failures than the masterpieces. Over the months we've seen some really great comments and insight here that really sheds light on the 'why' of why SC2's writing inspires such derision. 3. Activision is a horrible company and it is morally just and good to mock them and their products. No further comment.
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Nov 7, 2023 04:11
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bladededge posted:Counterpoints: I think a lot of us here are non-subscribers to the adage of not wanting to know how the sausage is made. I know I am; understanding how things are made really helps me appreciate the amount of craftsmanship that went into something that's done well, especially in smoothing touches that you don't notice because they're smoothed out well -- and examples like the ones we're discussing here shows us how important (and surprisingly difficult) those can be to do right, by demonstrating what happens when you don't. (Also hard agree on both other points, but that goes without saying)
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Nov 7, 2023 09:28
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Unit Spotlight: Viking  Overview:
The last new unit we'll be seeing in Wings, and the counterpart to the Banshee, the Viking is a solid anti-air specialist that you'll never, ever make. 9 range will let it get free hits on approaching enemies, although the zerg focus in Wing's endgame hurts it slightly as it won't get bonus damage on the multitude of Mutalisks you'll be seeing. The problem is that most missions don't really have enough air to justify making a unit that can only hit air, and the walker form is useless because Goliaths exist. To make things worse for them, campaign Vikings actually have a buffed ground attack over their Wings Skirmish counterpart, getting +2 damage which leaves it on par with the Goliath's autocannon. Thankfully, you don't have to actually make Vikings... Abilities   Fighter Mode/Assault Mode
Armory Upgrades  Ripwave Missiles
Helps make up for not getting bonus damage on Mutas by letting you hit the entire flock instead.  Phobos-Class Weapons System
A lot handier than it sounds, considering the stock missile range already matches an upgraded Goliath. Brood Lords have 9.5 range, so on missions that send them at your base on attack waves you can place a few Vikings safely behind your bunkers and let them shoot down any Brood Lords that show up without having to send them out of the base. Mercenary: Hel's Angel  
Why build Vikings when you can just buy better versions of them? A 5 minute cooldown is short enough to come online before you're in any seriously danger, and getting 6 in total will more than cover your anti-air needs. Field Manual Artwork 
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Nov 7, 2023 15:09
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Vikings are an important piece of the puzzle if you want to brute force some Protoss bases on Brutal difficulty on missions where wiping out the whole base gets you an achievement (The Dig, Welcome To The Jungle) because of how hard they wipe out colossi, which (along with storms) are the only thing that can properly beat marines and medics together.
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Nov 7, 2023 15:28
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bladededge posted:Counterpoints: Very agreed. Plus if you ever do any writing yourself, having failures as a way to identify the missteps is very useful. Figuring out how a bad story could have been unfucked is an extremely useful exercise
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Nov 7, 2023 15:36
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PurpleXVI posted:Very agreed. This right here is how about 90% of the fanfic that isn't about one slash pairing or another starts.
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Nov 7, 2023 15:58
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Fajita Queen posted:If you want a game where choices matter just play ftfy
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Nov 7, 2023 16:52
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And here’s where Blizzard chickened out of a great line; originally Raynor was apparently supposed to comment “What is it with me and women?” after shooting Monster Hanson. Dark or not, failing to make the obvious joke about Jim’s “type” is a terrible missed opportunity.
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Nov 7, 2023 18:25
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bladededge posted:Counterpoints: the specific argument is that Haven/Tosh choices aren't significant enough to the story to make criticism important or meaningful. per point 1, we are pedant-academicians competing to be the first to spot a mistake and earn kudos - hence the overemphasis on throwaway details and irrelevant questions SC1 was quite poorly written but you will find few willing to pick that darling apart
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Nov 7, 2023 18:32
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It's not wonderful but it mostly works mechanically, which is enough to be excellent for a game.
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Nov 7, 2023 18:38
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Bisby, the Unit Spotlight: Medivac link isn't showing in the OP. To be fair the unit is pretty much forgettable since Medics exist.
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Nov 7, 2023 18:38
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Lt. Danger posted:the specific argument is that Haven/Tosh choices aren't significant enough to the story to make criticism important or meaningful. per point 1, we are pedant-academicians competing to be the first to spot a mistake and earn kudos - hence the overemphasis on throwaway details and irrelevant questions Or, or, maybe people just like talking about things that disappointed them and breaking it apart to figure out why, and continue to dig in as things occur to them and for the sake of conversation. Different stuff throws off different people in different ways. Also SC1 is a lot more spare in its writing while this tries to fill in unnecessary details constantly so SC1 just has less to pick apart.
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Nov 7, 2023 18:39
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