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Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




Bloody Pom posted:

Of those options, I think her feigning losing control would be my preferred choice. Having her turn around at the end and go 'I loving lied, this was meant to teach you that you can't control the Zerg, so stop trying'.

Isn't that the intended reading of it, though?

I figured it was a case of her wanting to mark down her boundaries with Valerian in the quickest and most definitive way, especially since she has every reason to believe that he might try pulling the "well, since I did this for you..." card sometime in the immediate future.

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Nissin Cup Nudist
Sep 3, 2011

Sleep with one eye open

We're off to Gritty Gritty land




Are we gonna have, like, a talking hydralisk as our #2?

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Regalingualius posted:

Isn't that the intended reading of it, though?

I figured it was a case of her wanting to mark down her boundaries with Valerian in the quickest and most definitive way, especially since she has every reason to believe that he might try pulling the "well, since I did this for you..." card sometime in the immediate future.

That appears to be what she's going for - but what she's just ended up saying is "you can't control the zerg, I control the zerg", which only communicates that if he wants a zerg army he'll have to force Kerrigan into it. Which is a hell of a negotiating position when she's already in his prison and the one person she cares about is right there with him.

The big problem with this scene is that it can't agree with itself what the situation is. Is Kerrigan here willingly? She's in a cell and isn't happy about the situation, but she doesn't seem to want to leave either. Is she under threat? Valerian doesn't try to do anything to her when she's acting up, but everyone's still acting like he's the one in charge here. If it committed to any actual idea it would improve, no matter what choice that is. The best read into this situation I can get out of this is that Kerrigan largely trusts Valerian and doesn't want to hurt anyone but still doesn't want to let him control her, and is rebelling a little to make a point. But that kind of good-feelsy situation doesn't usually involve evacuating the civilians.

Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Dec 18, 2023

Fajita Queen
Jun 21, 2012

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

Are we gonna have, like, a talking hydralisk as our #2?

Oh just you wait :allears:

Kith
Sep 17, 2009

You never learn anything
by doing it right.


Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

Are we gonna have, like, a talking hydralisk as our #2?

There is no :allears: big enough.

aniviron
Sep 11, 2014

I too want to know. I just remember that Zasz The Cowardly Cerebrate died in Brood War and I'm sad it won't be returning.

gohuskies
Oct 23, 2010

I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.
Maybe Kerrigan's #2 will be her loving boyfriend, Jim Raynor, since clearly their relationship is going great and they'll surely stay together for the rest of the game.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Tenebrais posted:

That appears to be what she's going for - but what she's just ended up saying is "you can't control the zerg, I control the zerg", which only communicates that if he wants a zerg army he'll have to force Kerrigan into it. Which is a hell of a negotiating position when she's already in his prison and the one person she cares about is right there with him.

The big problem with this scene is that it can't agree with itself what the situation is. Is Kerrigan here willingly? She's in a cell and isn't happy about the situation, but she doesn't seem to want to leave either. Is she under threat?

The narration says she's here for testing regarding how much Zerg Junk is still inside her, which seems like a reasonable thing for her to cooperate over since she needs to know what her state is and what she can do. Both she and Jim are clearly getting impatient with the fact that Valerian is jerking them around for Zerg Control research, which is why he issues that ultimatum about this being their last test. The implication to me is that they can leave any time they want and Valerian probably isn't stupid enough to try and stop them (because he knows that would go badly for him), but they all understand that his assistance isn't strings-free.

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

It could have been interesting if Jim's conflict between his fantasy girl and the actual woman was a deliberate plot thread they intended to explore, instead of presenting it as a tragedy that befalls our hero through no fault of his own, without even realizing that that is what they wrote.

I think saying the story presents what goes on with Kerrigan is a tragedy inflicted on Raynor is a bit much, tbh, but that's a conversation that I can't have effectively until the very end of the campaign, so :shrug:

GunnerJ
Aug 1, 2005

Do you think this is funny?

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

Oh, I mean, it is absolutely not intended to be read that way; there's more than enough unsubtle hints in the opening cutscene alone to tell us that Kerrigan absolutely reciprocates his feelings and does want them to be together, only she wants Mengsk to be dead first.

I just don't think that makes the framing any better. It could have been interesting if Jim's conflict between his fantasy girl and the actual woman was a deliberate plot thread they intended to explore, instead of presenting it as a tragedy that befalls our hero through no fault of his own, without even realizing that that is what they wrote.

Well, I was talking more about whether her interaction with Jim here reflects a broader anxiety about women seeking revenge, not so much their feelings for each other.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

GunnerJ posted:

Well, I was talking more about whether her interaction with Jim here reflects a broader anxiety about women seeking revenge, not so much their feelings for each other.

I think that would be a lot more fair of a potential criticism of the scene if Jim's plot arc in the last game wasn't about giving up revenge.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




Really, it almost feels like WoL and HotS should have been swapped around chronologically and/or thematically.

You just can't follow up "you need to let go of your cravings for vengeance for the greater good" and expect it to stick when the immediate followup is "JK GET YOUR REVENGE ON THE MAN WHO hosed YOU OVER THE MOST".

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Sanguinia posted:

I think that would be a lot more fair of a potential criticism of the scene if Jim's plot arc in the last game wasn't about giving up revenge.
It wasn't, though. His revenge drive got retconned instead and WoL Raynor is a completely different character from how he was at the end of BW.

Octatonic
Sep 7, 2010

gohuskies posted:

Maybe Kerrigan's #2 will be her loving boyfriend, Jim Raynor, since clearly their relationship is going great and they'll surely stay together for the rest of the game.

I've got a good feeling about this. I think they can make it :)

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



Sanguinia posted:

I think that would be a lot more fair of a potential criticism of the scene if Jim's plot arc in the last game wasn't about giving up revenge.

I mean, if we're examining gender dynamics here, the optics of "man giving up revenge" and "woman giving up revenge" have very different social connotations. The first would be a kind of martyrdom when viewed through the lens of western masculine stereotypes. The second would be a return to the natural order by the same feminine stereotypes.

Which is the exact level of ick I expect from Blizzard.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




Warmachine posted:

I mean, if we're examining gender dynamics here, the optics of "man giving up revenge" and "woman giving up revenge" have very different social connotations. The first would be a kind of martyrdom when viewed through the lens of western masculine stereotypes. The second would be a return to the natural order by the same feminine stereotypes.

Which is the exact level of ick I expect from Blizzard.

And again, in light of the revelations about their work environment in the timeframe that SC2 was being developed…

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Warmachine posted:

I mean, if we're examining gender dynamics here, the optics of "man giving up revenge" and "woman giving up revenge" have very different social connotations. The first would be a kind of martyrdom when viewed through the lens of western masculine stereotypes. The second would be a return to the natural order by the same feminine stereotypes.

Which is the exact level of ick I expect from Blizzard.

If that's the direction we want to take our critique, we'd need to look at how the story actually progresses the arc from this starting place of "Man who gave up revenge encourages woman to also give up revenge," but obviously we can't do that yet. Unless you want to read spoilers, in which case the endpoint of this journey is that that there is a completely different outcome than the one Raynor came to on the issue of revenge and the cutscene frames it as a good thing, so I guess the different social connotations got their due

Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Dec 18, 2023

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon

Sanguinia posted:

I think saying the story presents what goes on with Kerrigan is a tragedy inflicted on Raynor is a bit much, tbh, but that's a conversation that I can't have effectively until the very end of the campaign, so :shrug:

Just to clarify, I'm not referring to the story as a whole, I'm just super skeeved by this one specific scene.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

Just to clarify, I'm not referring to the story as a whole, I'm just super skeeved by this one specific scene.

Fair enough

anilEhilated posted:

It wasn't, though. His revenge drive got retconned instead and WoL Raynor is a completely different character from how he was at the end of BW.

Not against Kerrigan, his revenge against Mengsk.

Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Dec 18, 2023

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Was that an arc or simply Valerian showing up with "we need to do this right NOW instead" and Raynor going "Okay"?

painedforever
Sep 12, 2017

Quem Deus Vult Perdere, Prius Dementat.
I dunno, any story can be good if it's written well. What doesn't work, and what irritates the hell out of me, is inconsistency.

As an example, we tried watching the Thundercats reboot, and it was so awful. The tone and characterization would swing wildly between episodes. They tried to do it "grim and serious", while also trying to wrap up stories within a single episode, while also trying to lay out multi-story arcs, and did all of them badly.

Starcraft 2 so far seems to be the same. This first episode doesn't bode well. I hope that the gameplay is at least decent.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Warmachine posted:

I mean, if we're examining gender dynamics here, the optics of "man giving up revenge" and "woman giving up revenge" have very different social connotations. The first would be a kind of martyrdom when viewed through the lens of western masculine stereotypes. The second would be a return to the natural order by the same feminine stereotypes.

Which is the exact level of ick I expect from Blizzard.

a reading that isn't based on anything in the text but on what other texts might have said is a weak reading indeed



it's not that complicated, thread. James Raynor leads a largely ineffectual rebellion which has just been co-opted by the state into a paramilitary action against a common enemy. for all his talk about kicking the revolution into overdrive, Raynor doesn't really care that much about political change - Horner's the liberal with ideological goals, but Raynor just does whatever seems right in the moment, and has always been like that since joining the Sons of Korhal in SC1. even his feud with Mengsk is largely directionless, based more on hating the man than on wanting to replace his regime with something different. Raynor, like dogs, just sort of does things arbitrarily

I don't think this is necessarily a flaw. Raynor's character genuinely is that of a well-meaning idiot and always has been. so, you know, he's here, he's got his old gf back, zerg invasion is over, gently caress it let's go and leave it all behind

Kerrigan is different because while she also doesn't have any particular ideology (like most SC characters), she at least likes winning. it might be worth waiting to see what the game actually says about this before working ourselves up making big judgements about sci-fi blockbuster treatments of "revenge"

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




your point about there being a lack of direction or ideology from most of the mains makes sense. The Blizzard RTS stories don't have much variety in the ideological sense because they couldn't when they were made, or were designed to not have players think about it. Warcraft by the time of the release of Brood War has been "Orcs are an invading force, bent on conquering and/or killing everything in their path" and the other nations of Azeroth have been "oh gently caress, it's do or die time. if you are working against us, you're in league with the Orcs and so you'll die like them" which doesn't lead a lot of room for differing points of view. We might've gotten some of that if Lord of Clans was actually released, but it wasn't, and for all the talk about how Thrall was going to change the Horde, Cythereal's LP has shown that the writers at Blizzard weren't equipped to add that kind of nuance and still keeping the War in Warcraft.

In Brood War, we have similar reactionary politics but that's also just the state of the RTS genre of the time. If you aren't seeing your heroes every mission and you don't have a Hyperion hub between missions to check-in on how everyone's doing after Mengsk decided "gently caress the people of Antiga Prime in particular" or "huh, guess we can't expect even the most hard-lined sycophants to not be sacrificed by Mengsk" then you can't really get a reading on any kind of political leaning.

I think the Protoss are the closest we get to that, and even that is just because centuries (or possibly millennia) before the events of the game, they had a big ol' ideological civil war and the current plot is "we either get our poo poo pushed in from an existential threat, because the side that won the civil war has become complacent and refuse to listen to the one that has seen evidence of how to defeat this threat, or we work with the people we exiled forever ago because evidence shows that their methods are working."

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!
May 31, 2006
this is the problem with trying to tell a more character based story when your original plotline is "two factions fighting for god knows what reason, go kill the other one." attempting to bolt some kind of ideology and motivation onto people retroactively is a HUGE pain in the rear end. the Starcraft 1 Zerg were just about as pure a WE ARE THE BAD GUYS HEE HEE HAW faction as you can get! the fun twist of the Zerg campaign was that there was some small degree of personality among the weird evil swarm out to consume everything in the name of itself, but at the end of the day, they're still a weird evil swarm out to consume everything in the name of itself.

one of the things that made Game of Thrones so good was that you saw ulterior motives built up well ahead of time: back when everyone was friends (sort of) you could see rival agendas running, and every new crisis saw another fracture/realignment that sort of made sense. anytime someone does something either calculated or impassioned, you can feel the potential consequences looming ahead, because Martin had set up up a huge array of characters with a huge array of motivations both strategic and personal.

meanwhile, in Starcraft 2, the list of characters with a motivation as of right now is Jim Raynor (I Heart Kerrigan), Sarah Kerrigan (I Heart Raynor, Also Let's Kill Mengsk), Valerian Mengsk (Show Up My Dad), Arcturus Mengsk (Stay In Charge, Probably Kill Raynor And Kerrigan), Zeratul (Vaguely Defend Universe From Vaguely Prophecized Threat), and Samir Duran, Sort Of (Vaguely Cause Vaguely Prophecized Threat). the list of Zerg who have ever spoken in the series is the Overmind (dead) Daggoth (dead) Zasz (dead) Infested Kerrigan (dead) and Infested Stukov (dubiously canon, also probably dead.)

there really is no place for the story to go BUT retcons!

the Orb of Zot
Jun 25, 2013

Apport: the Orb of Zot
The orb shrieks as your magic touches it!
Yoink! You pull the item towards yourself.
You see here the Orb of Zot.
This is the rollercoaster starting to go down.
It does not stop going down until the next expansion.

SporkChan
Oct 20, 2010

One day I will proofread my posts well, but today is not that day.

the Orb of Zot posted:

This is the rollercoaster starting to go down.
It does not stop going down until the next expansion.

But the rollercoaster going down is the most fun part!

BisbyWorl
Jan 12, 2019

Knowledge is pain plus observation.


Umoja 2: Back in the Saddle

Cinematic: Get It Together + Video: Back In The Saddle








Never.







Billions, Sarah. With a B. In the first few moments of Wings alone, not even including everything that went down during Brood War.

God, it's like the writers are trying to downplay her past or something.











Headin' your way now.

Heart doesn't bother with a quick intermission section like Wings did in Mar Sara. It just directly goes from one mission to the next.

But hey, new game also means new mission screen! Lab Rat has one, but you only see it if you replay the mission in the archives. The briefing there is just:

quote:

Get ready, Kerrigan. We're going to run a simple test to determine how well you can communicate with the zerg.



Jim's picked a perfect time to head out.

Why?



Oh.



No reason.

















Oh no it's Nova. I'm sure she isn't holding a grudge over what happened with Tosh.

















Jim's just a second too late.



But don't worry, Sarah Kerrigan may not be the Queen of Blades anymore...









But she's still the strongest Ghost in the sector.





















Alright but, again, what's the alternative here. Kerrigan is 100% correct, the man will not stop.







Jim grabs a rifle off one of the dead Ghosts.





























I want you all to keep this tip in the back of your mind for pretty much the entirety of Heart.





Kerrigan, I'm glad you're alive. But we're cut off from your location. You'll have to fight your way across the lab to the tram station. That will take you to Jim's ship.

Roger that, Junior. We can handle it.







Heart of the Swarm takes a page from Warcraft 3, and makes Kerrigan a constant hero unit. She'll level up, she'll get new moves, and aside from a very small number missions she'll be with us from start to finish.

Jim himself can't be selected or controlled, and will automatically follow Kerrigan and attack any enemy in range.

There's also even more hidden dialogue, this time from sitting in this spot for two minutes:

quote:

Isn't there - really Jim? (Laughs) Six years later and you're still a pig...

What can I say? Old habits die hard.



There are a number of zerg specimens scattered throughout the map as map doodads.



Once I approach these enemies I lose control of Kerrigan as she's forced to this spot.



Kerrigan gets some tutorial moments for her starting abilities, and her first is... uh...



uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It's a loving

a loving yamato cannon

with no windup

and lower cost

and can be used every 10 seconds

on a hero you'll have for the entire game

as her first spell.

Heart of the Swarm is pretty much the easiest of all the games, just because Kerrigan is that ludicrously powerful.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that a properly built Kerrigan can effectively solo end-game missions.



The Marauder, with his measly 100 HP, is promptly atomized by the former Queen of Blades.



Sure, they get some backup, but the Dominion is using Firebats.



Kerrigan's not even flagged as Light!





Until the enemy starts fielding things like Thors or Battlecruisers, Kinetic Blast will let me instantly delete someone at the start of every fight.



Also, the healing cubes from Piercing the Shroud make a return.



It fully heals Kerrigan and Jim, plus tops up her energy. It'll go on cooldown for a bit before spawning a new cube.





Around the corner I lose control again for another tutorial.





Where Kinetic Blast is a dedicated gently caress This Guy In Particular button, Crushing Grip is an aoe stun with a bit of damage tossed in.





It isn't that strong when Kerrigan is effectively on her own like now, since she can only get off three attacks before it ends, but this will let an army of Zerglings safely close the gap and go to town without getting attacked on the approach.











The funny thing is that I'm now on the receiving end of Marines being the deadlist terran unit, just because Kerrigan ignores the bonus damage from Firebats and Marauders.



Oh no, Mr. Marine get out of the way!



:rip:









I can. Be ready though, the zerg specimens got loose in the attack.

Yes. I can sense them down there. But I don't think I should control them again.

I won't ask you to do that. We'll handle them.

And that's why Kerrigan can't just grab every zerg in the building and rush the Dominion.

The door will open in... Three. Two. One!





There are some zerg here.



The Dominion break in there.



ez









Make this easy on everyone and surrender now.





This next bit is a succession of timed escape sequences.





The zerg and Dominion are fighting each other, but I hold off on nailing the group with Crushing Grip for a few seconds while a second group of Zerglings run in.



They can't kill each other if they're all helpless, after all.











My hair's got more gray in it.

And my hair's got more zerg.

Right.



Each segment has a cube at the end, so you don't have to wait for Kerrigan's energy to regen.



And shortly after the next timer starts.





An Ultralisk has more than enough bulk to tank a blast.



But that works in my favor, as the debris keeping it away is pretty much dead by the time it goes down.



We've been through worse together.

Also there's a poor little Lurker trapped in a cell while machines poke and prod at it.



That Ghost does not get to finish his sentence.



Yeah, I may have gone a little overboard.







Are you surprised?









They have caged zerg in there. We can use this console to set them loose.

Or we can use it to activate the gas defenses.

In case you really missed Piercing the Shroud, we also get a repeat of the security cams.



The gas will kill all the Marines, but leave the vehicles unharmed. The zerg will go after everything, but I'll have to fight through the survivors myself.



I go for the gas. The only threatening thing left is the tank, which I can one shot with Kinetic Blast.



Oh well, it evened the odds. Let's hit it!

And since I have high ground, it can't even shoot back.













Roger that, Valerian. Hail us when you're on the bridge.

Just you and me now, Jim. Let's move out.





This section is an annoyingly long defense section. See these engines? If all six of them die, I lose.

There's just one problem.



It's painfully easy to see where the enemy is coming from on the minimap.



So you can easily take someone out with Kinetic Blast as they approach, then tag the survivor with Crushing Grip to pin them long enough for Jim and Kerrigan to shoot down. And since there's two cube dispensers on the tram, there's zero risk of Kerrigan running dry.



Also they send in Wraiths. loving Wraiths.



And Medivacs, which will drop a bunch of units on me if they can reach the tram.



If.



After a bit the tram emerges into open air.



But it's just more of the same.



A while later, the tram slows down and the section ends.

The entire thing took about three and a half minutes, and there's just no real bite to it.







Almost there. Let's follow these guys to the shuttle bay.









And here we are.







For whatever reason, the Dominion really loves the Viking's gimmick.



So they made an even bigger version.





Kerrigan rushes across the bridge, but Jim stops to deal with a enemy Marine that literally appears out of nowhere just to stall him.

five seconds ago posted:



I'm not kidding. There's zero place for him to hide before this cutscene.







And the two are separated once more.







The Archangel is an honest to god boss fight.







It gets a health bar and telegraphed attacks and everything.

The marines here just throw in a bit of extra damage, they have no interest in dodging attacks and their lifespan is up to the whims of RNG.



The strategy here is as simple as it gets: Shoot it a bunch and use Kinetic Blast whenever it comes off cooldown.



At certain HP thresholds the Archangel will transform and fly away.





Some enemies will drop in while it does telegraphed strafing runs.





The Marines...



...aren't particularly smart.



More will occasionally come in from the bridges on the sides, at least.



Phase 2 has the Archangel bombard half the field.





Another wave of enemies.







For phase 3 it blasts Kerrigan's general direction.



And that's all she wrote.



Back in the Saddle is a good introduction to Kerrigan as a hero unit. She struggles a bit in prolonged fights once her energy runs out and she's stuck with her gun, but even at level 1 she's a shitwrecker beyond compare.







Raynor, Kerrigan! I'm on the Hyperion, we're setting course for the rendezvous. What is your status?

Kerrigan is taking my drop ship. I need extraction.

I understand and I'm sending a team for you.

Do not screw this up, Valerian.

Kerrigan, I'll see you at the rendezvous. And... I'm sorry I didn't listen to you sooner.



Yes'm. Noted.





Roger that. Get the Hyperion to the rendezvous. I'll find another way off world.

See you there.





And Nova finally catches up.



Well well. Jim Raynor.



This is one of the few times the Tosh/Nova split gets acknowledged. Unfortunately, siding with Nova just gets you:

quote:

You helped me with my Tosh problem, and I appreciate that. But a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do!

Sometimes you just can't win.







Back in the Saddle - Complete the "Back in the Saddle" mission in the Heart of the Swarm campaign.

Full Throttle - Prevent the Dominion from destroying a Tram Engine during the Tram Ride in the "Back in the Saddle" mission.

Brutal Legend - Don't take damage from the Archangel in the Back in the Saddle mission on Normal difficulty.

Nick of Time - Complete "Back in the Saddle" with more than 40 seconds on each lockdown on Hard difficulty.

Giddyup! - Complete the "Back in the Saddle" mission in less than 15 minutes on Normal difficulty.

BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Feb 6, 2024

BisbyWorl
Jan 12, 2019

Knowledge is pain plus observation.


Also I'm currently on vacation, so after next week there will be a short hiatus until I get home and start recording again.

BlazetheInferno
Jun 6, 2015
I mentioned it in my last post, but it bears repeating.

The Koprulu Terrans' system to measure and rate Psionic Capability measures on a scale of 1-10.

Kerrigan is a 12.

ilmucche
Mar 16, 2016

What did you say the strategy was?
in that last scene is nova running around an active combat zone with a bare midriff and thighs or does her model just have some poorly chosen colours

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

BisbyWorl posted:

Billions, Sarah. With a B.

milliards

with a ard

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

ilmucche posted:

in that last scene is nova running around an active combat zone with a bare midriff and thighs or does her model just have some poorly chosen colours

The latter. Nova runs around in a skintight white and blue spandex suit.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

ilmucche posted:

in that last scene is nova running around an active combat zone with a bare midriff and thighs or does her model just have some poorly chosen colours
Colors, but it's really not much better - Raynor gets marine armor and Kerrigan and Nova run around in skintight bodysuits.

BlazetheInferno
Jun 6, 2015
To be fair, the Ghosts' Hostile Environment Suits (their Stealth Suits) are basically some of the most advanced stuff in the Koprulu Sector. The Ghosts' suits may look tiny and flimsy, but the fact is, they have the GOOD poo poo.

According to the Wiki, it has adjustable temperature settings, is laced with psi-sensitive artificial muscle fibers which augment the Ghosts' natural Strength, agility, and endurance, the suit helps channel their psionic abilities, the removable helmet (primarily seen being used by male Ghosts) acts as a chemical agent mask, the suit itself provides full NBC shielding, can withstand the vacuum of space and depressurization, and allows the Ghost to breathe, at least for a while, in environments without oxygen. Exactly how long isn't specified.

Zomborgon
Feb 19, 2014

I don't even want to see what happens if you gain CHIM outside of a pre-coded system.

I wonder if the Ghost unit ever had shields at some point in development.

Anyway, hey, it's the Archangel. May as well be a battlecruiser on Odin legs. It was a pretty neat fight as far as a first boss goes. Way different from anything in Wings; at the time I recall thinking of this mission as "ah, Blizzard is drawing from the MOBA crowd now."

GunnerJ
Aug 1, 2005

Do you think this is funny?
The Archangel looks like a bigge Viking with double bayonets on each of its two giant Gatling guns. I think that's a relevant design decision to recognize. :v:

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




If anything, Archangel felt like something pulled out of Diablo 3 and given a sci-fi paintover

Kith
Sep 17, 2009

You never learn anything
by doing it right.


Fun Fact #1: The "Dominion Ghosts" in the intro are just Spectres recolored blue. They were supposed to be placeholder models but they never got replaced, so there's a weird little bit of fucky canon going on there. First of many, unfortunately.


Fun Fact #2: This mission is full of insanely cool editor tricks, like the tram portion. Especially the tram portion. The moving background, the bloom lighting as the characters' eyes adjust to being outside, all kinds of crazy poo poo. There's also a lot of terrain stuff going on, like the Umojan facility floors getting chewed up when Drop Pods come in too hot and pop holes in the ground.

Fun Fact #3: The Umojan forces use the Mercenary versions of Terran units that... look nothing like what they do in the cutscenes! This was a major criticism of Back in the Saddle when it demoed and Blizzard promised that the unit models would be replaced with something more accurate when Heart of the Swarm launched for real. Then... that just didn't happen! Heart has a ton of really cool art assets floating around here and there, and it's odd that some things got attention and others simply didn't.

The Umojans eventually got their day in the sun with a skin pack for multiplayer. For the units that we saw in Back in the Saddle, this is what the Actual Umojan Forces would look like:



Blizzard once mentioned the possibility of back-porting skin packs and other unique models to the various campaigns, but that just didn't happen either. However, custom campaign mods do this pretty much all the time.

Fun Fact #4: Raynor's model was co-developed for Blizzard Allstars, which eventually became Heroes of the Storm. It looks pretty good, except...



... the model has a pretty major rigging error that rotates the right shoulder way out of position. Blizzard promised to fix this and then didn't.

Fun Fact #5: Much like Heroes of the Storm, Raynor's Allstars model was used as the basis of Tychus's Allstars model. This model is not supposed to be publicly available and can't be found in the editor, but I happen to be friends with some tricky lobster people.



Interestingly, this model has significantly better rigging than the Raynor model despite having been scrapped. It also features Tychus's original minigun, which was used for the Heroes of the Storm key art:



... despite the fact that Tychus's minigun for his official release was completely redesigned:



... which parts of were then cannibalized for his updated Co-Op Model:



... despite the fact that Blizzard undoubtedly still had access to the fully rigged, textured, and animated Allstars model.

Just a lot of really baffling resource decisions going on all the time.

This will be an ongoing theme.

Kith fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Dec 23, 2023

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015
We have now seen one of the reasons why I think this is the weakest campaign gameplay wise. Kerrigan is stupidly strong, and Bigsby isn't kidding, she can solo the Brutal difficulty on multiple missions. And if you try to play without her, good luck, the game is balanced around having her, even if used badly.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
It's especially insulting if you're a Zerg player because their units are actually really fun - the missions just don't let them shine as they should.

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Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




She’s basically the crutch character from a JRPG that starts off more powerful than the others… except there’s never really a point where she tapers off, your later units fill in the gaps, etc thanks to how customizable she is.

Like, she ends up with at least one ability that might as well say “destroy an enemy base or two” by the endgame.

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