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Intermission 5 No post-mission cutscene this time, we just cut straight to the Leviathan with >Talk to Izsha.    Will it not destroy us? It's called a gamble. It's something terrans do, when their instincts tell them the time is right. I see. Just as when the terran James Raynor came to Char to return you to your original form? Yes, just like that. The thing about gambles, Izsha, is that sometimes you lose.Can you really call it a gamble when you're explicitly told that not doing it leads to everyone dying anyways? >Talk to Zurvan.    Zurvan is a dramatic fellow who has to roar in Kerrigan's face before talking.    He desired our strength, the ability to steal essence. But we were independent... we would not follow. And so he bound the zerg to a single overriding will. They lost their identity, and became his slaves.Essence count: 24 The hive mind. That's Amon's corruption? It is, and a terrible fate for a strong primal zerg. Mutalisks show up in the Pit, meaning they'll be getting an Evolution Mission down the line. >Talk to Abathur.     Yep, the primals stealing my units isn't some extremely convenient case of both of us figuring out the same kind of ranged unit over a long period of time, they're cheap copies even in-universe! Within just a couple hours every primal pack in the area got the same idea and started mimicking the Swarm! Somehow. Despite their whole thing being evolving based on the essence they consume. Abathur, are you upset? Unacceptable! Swarm's power, ability to assimilate strengths. Primal zerg must not take from us! Don't worry about it. They'll be on our side before I am done here.>Examine Mutalisk.  The Mutalisk has some neat mutations. They can choose between amping up their bounce gimmick-  Completely losing the bounce in exchange for a bonus against Armor-  Or gaining super regeneration when out of combat. Mutalisks have 150 life, so any Muta that survives a fight is fully healed in a maximum of 20 seconds.  It's really good.  Kerrigan's stat boosts.  And now to claim Zerus' power.  You may be torn apart. If your rage makes you strong enough, the power of Zerus will be yours.Oh, so when the primals steal designs Abathur gets pissy, but when Abathur- BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 04:35
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You Wouldn't Download A Hydralisk
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Feb 4, 2024 04:42
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Honestly, Abathur's reaction in this conversation is utterly delightful. And the absolute deadpan way Kerrigan just asks "...Are you upset?" makes it sound like she thinks this is really goddamn funny, too. And his irritation with the Primal Zerg is far from over, my friends. But that was definitely the height of it. ...Also, it always bothered me that when she talks about "a gamble", Kerrigan tells Izsha WHEN Terrans gamble... but not what a gamble actually is, expecting her to merely understand from current situation context, I guess. ... And I mean... if the Primal Zerg are going to steal from the Swarm, then all's fair game, right? (Besides, to be fair, Abathur's whole outrage is rather specifically about the fact yes, stealing biological designs and traits to incorporate into our armies is OUR thing, how dare they turn it around on us! As for how all the Primal Packs got it... maybe a bunch of smaller mini-broods and probing forces got sent around the planet to scout before Kerrigan went down herself, and got munched by those Primal Hives that keep birthing new Zerg, so they "evolved" the ability to spit out Primal Zerg that use that new design? I dunno, I'm asspulling here.
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Feb 4, 2024 04:46
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In theory a single larva is all they'd need to munch on, since those contain the whole catalogue of the Swarm Zerg's designs.
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Feb 4, 2024 04:57
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On the one hand, the Primals just copying the Hydralisk is kind of stupid since their gimmick is supposed to be that they have to kill and consume in order to evolve. They don't have some laboratory like Abathur where they can do it on a cold and clinical way because they think what they're looking at is cool. They're supposed to be "reactionary and improvised." On the other hand, the idea that the Hydralisk was recognized as such a superior model that all the Primal Zerg wanted that poo poo and it spread like wildfire over the entire planet in a matter of days even without the Swarm's centralized nature and infrastructure to help it do that is kind of cool, as is the fact that Abathur is pissy about it. It's a good slap to the face to send a message that it was hubris when he underestimated these things because they do their Zerging in a different way than he does. The REALLY interesting thing here is that reveal that the Hive Mind is the thing that's wrong with the Zerg from the Primal's perspective. Obviously the powerful Primals can exert some control over lesser Zerg, but it seems the "debate," being set up here is Hive vs Pack. The Primals look down on the Space Zerg because they can't function without a higher will to direct them, and the higher will's authority is never challenged. In theory any Primal Zergling who kills and eats enough could evolve to become a Pack Leader, and anyone who's a Pack Leader has to fight and kill and evolve to keep their station rather than their dominance being an unquestionable given. What's interesting about that to me isn't so much the concept as the fact that I know the Primals have to be wrong on some level. This is the second mission set of the game. The Zerg aren't going to stop being The Swarm and undergo a radical mechanical change in how they work when this is over. That suggests that rather than Kerrigan embracing the idea of being a Primal Zerg, accepting their claim that the Hive Mind is their weakness, and getting rid of it, she's going to enact some kind of synthesis that blends the Primal Pack and Swarm philosophies into something new. ...I've got this really dreadful feeling that all that sounds really cool to me but they're not even going to come close to living up to it when we see where this leads.
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Feb 4, 2024 05:32
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Original essence, do not steal!
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Feb 4, 2024 05:39
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I enjoy how the rewards of the mission line up with the story here: +10 levels is not a small amount.
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Feb 4, 2024 05:42
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Yeah, this is going to be a SUBSTANTIAL power spike for Kerrigan herself that Kaldir and Char were definitely not balanced for. Char's going to be funny after this.
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Feb 4, 2024 05:53
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 This is exactly when I fell in love with Abathur.  His voice as he repeats "unacceptable!" is filled with emotion even in his robotic inflection.
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Feb 4, 2024 06:17
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wologar posted:
There's a very peculiar joy in having a character seemingly in active revolt against the script. Happens surprisingly often.
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Feb 4, 2024 06:43
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Sanguinia posted:What's interesting about that to me isn't so much the concept as the fact that I know the Primals have to be wrong on some level. This is the second mission set of the game. The Zerg aren't going to stop being The Swarm and undergo a radical mechanical change in how they work when this is over. That suggests that rather than Kerrigan embracing the idea of being a Primal Zerg, accepting their claim that the Hive Mind is their weakness, and getting rid of it, she's going to enact some kind of synthesis that blends the Primal Pack and Swarm philosophies into something new. Kerrigan's whole deal with the Broodmothers kinda gestures at this.
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Feb 4, 2024 06:50
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I love Abathur's indignation here, because to me it shows how he's a relic of the old Swarm. Throughout the original Zerg campaign you're constantly getting your ego stroked by the Overmind as you progress, and the other cerebrates you encounter all seem to have developed haughty, even arrogant personalities. All they've probably ever heard, for their entire existence, is the same glorious purpose lines the Overmind has been feeding your POV cerebrate. So it makes sense that Abathur, as another form of autonomous agent, would have also developed an inflated opinion of himself and his role.
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Feb 4, 2024 07:08
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Sanguinia posted:What's interesting about that to me isn't so much the concept as the fact that I know the Primals have to be wrong on some level. This is the second mission set of the game. The Zerg aren't going to stop being The Swarm and undergo a radical mechanical change in how they work when this is over. That suggests that rather than Kerrigan embracing the idea of being a Primal Zerg, accepting their claim that the Hive Mind is their weakness, and getting rid of it, she's going to enact some kind of synthesis that blends the Primal Pack and Swarm philosophies into something new. Wrong being relative, of course. The Primals claim no loyalty bar that of Strength; The Swarm brooks no disunity within the Brood, but even previously, within itself to begin with. These positions are not incompatible, especially from Kerrigan's perspective, who consistently since SC1 has found herself maintaining a much looser control over various cerebrates, broodmothers and zerg forces than the Overlord previously did. But in this case, the way that Zurvan here is discussing the situation and difference between the Primal Zerg and the Swarm is really more a history lesson than a philosophical debate. Amon, as the Fallen Xel'Naga, basically enslaved many of the Primal Zerg, and the Swarm is the result. For the Primals, it is anethemic. The obvious parallel in other Blizzard Games is, obviously, Thrall's Horde going to Outland and finding the Mag'har Orcs trapped there, albeit with less verbal sparring about who is right. But as we'll soon see, this really isn't the story being told here.
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Feb 4, 2024 08:28
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yeah, this explanation for why all the primal zergs are swarm units but recolored doesn't work for me. I don't have an issue with the idea that they munched on some zerglings/hydras/ultras/whatever somewhere, I do have an issue with the idea that on the whole loving planet, there are like 5 primals that haven't evolved into swarm units yet. Where are all the wild mutations of primals that didn't munch on zerglings? Or munched on zerglings, but didn't mutate into zerglings because they already munched on different cool predators, so they just got some extra sharp teeth instead?Sanguinia posted:she's going to enact some kind of synthesis that blends the Primal Pack and Swarm philosophies into something new. 
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Feb 4, 2024 09:16
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The worst part about this is I'm 99% sure there's another mission later that I have to wait for before I try to properly piece together everything the game expects us to believe happened wrt primal zerg. But I'm gonna sit and wait for that, because right now I'm not sure if my thought process is fever dreams or based in canon. Which is to say, blizzard's writing is working as usual. 
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Feb 4, 2024 10:08
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I feel like I'm already having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of a world where might makes right and the only law is consuming others to absorb them into yourself and thereby grow stronger... but also (judging from the mission preview) it just so happens to have a designated Proving Grounds for the anticipated Chosen One to be Tested to gain the true power of the planet. This is gonna be really stupid, isn't it?
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Feb 4, 2024 10:21
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Grammarchist posted:There's a very peculiar joy in having a character seemingly in active revolt against the script. Happens surprisingly often. All Kerrigan says is "MENGSK, PRIMALS, REVENGE, KINETIC BLAST" I just wanna improve the Swarm for God's sake!
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Feb 4, 2024 10:22
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BisbyWorl posted:>Talk to Izsha. This is the one conversation I actually remember from HotS and I absolutely hate it. like even setting aside the prophecy stuff where we and Kerrigan already know it is something she can and must do, just the framing that what the badass alien hivemind swarm really needs is a human who understands the human concept of a "gamble" at the helm
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Feb 4, 2024 10:48
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Yeah, I think Abathur was the high point of HotS for me. I imagine he's trying to develop a genetic EULA right now.
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Feb 4, 2024 11:36
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BisbyWorl posted:[b]He desired our strength, the ability to steal essence. But we were independent... we would not follow. And so he bound the zerg to a single overriding will. They lost their identity, and became his slaves. quote:Yep, the primals stealing my units isn't some extremely convenient case of both of us figuring out the same kind of ranged unit over a long period of time, they're cheap copies even in-universe! Within just a couple hours every primal pack in the area got the same idea and started mimicking the Swarm!
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Feb 4, 2024 11:58
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:This is gonna be really stupid, isn't it? Less than you may think, more than you can possibly know or hope.
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Feb 4, 2024 12:09
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Abathur is a treasure. By far the best character on the Leviathan. Big slug guy is absolutely incensed that somebody is trying to rip off his gimmick.
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Feb 4, 2024 12:22
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Numbus26 posted:Abathur is a treasure. By far the best character on the Leviathan. Big slug guy is absolutely incensed that somebody is trying to rip off his gimmick. Swarm conquered designs. Fair and Square. How dare Primals. Conquer them back.
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Feb 4, 2024 13:27
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Essence is my word.
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Feb 4, 2024 14:35
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By popular demand posted:I'm dead serious, they should have fired the writing team and hired Vince McMahon. I just started reading this thread and hooboy talk about poorly aged posts...
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Feb 4, 2024 16:15
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This area is also where Blizzard stopped putting any care into naming their characters, instead opting for the WoW-style "let's pull a mythological name out of a hat and maybe alter a letter". Amon? Egyptian god. Zurvan? Persian god. e: VVV Warhammer knows it's silly, though. Blizzard is playing it straight. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 17:51
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should've done it like Warhammer the Primal Zerg, led by Zergus Primus
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Feb 4, 2024 18:04
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Zergus Primus and his followers The Prime, who have been corrupted by Prime Magic, currently occupy the Primal Bastion where he and his three lieutenants can be cleared in a brisk two hours by a well-geared party
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Feb 4, 2024 18:18
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Man, Dune comparisons really come up a lot in this thread, don't they? Not a complaint, mind you. I am possibly the worst offender here on that. I think it's just that Frank Herbert's universe is a widely known and familiar example of how A) to avoid cliches in your plotting, and also B) if you aren't avoiding them, how to play with your cliches and make them interesting or inverted entirely. The key is thinking through the implications of your ideas, which Dune almost always does and Starcraft 2 almost never does. The entire thing about needing to 'go back to the source and become Primal' doesn't even work by itself, stripped of the context of the Zerg's original (better) backstory. Millennia of constant stress-testing of biological changes somehow created _weaker_ killing machines than the ones that just stay behind on one planet eating each other? That is just so amazingly dumb. It's dumb. So dumb. That is not how anything works. Your janky rear end prototypes are not going to be magically more powerful than the refined, tested, fully developed production model. For example see anything in the real world. An Apple I built in Woz's garage by hand is not more powerful than an Apple II, built in factories by the millions. Or for an analogy more fitting with what's happening in the LP right now, a Apple I vs. a new 2024 macbook air. It's so dumb. This level is when I realized thirteen years ago, beyond any hope of rationalization, that I was playing a Very Stupid Game. Affected me so much that here I am all these years later complaining about it on the internet to strangers. IT'S JUST. SO. DUMB.
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Feb 5, 2024 06:23
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I want to expand a bit on my complaint with Primals. They are supposed to be Zergs but without hivemind, so they are individuals organizing into packs. But from the gameplay, how do you tell? All primal zerglings/hydras/ultras/whatever are 1) copies of swarm units, 2) perfectly standardized. All primal units are perfectly happy to fight mindlessly to death. The only individuality we see is in the leaders, but if you nameswap them to cerebrates, you couldn't really tell them apart from the swarm. What should've happened with them is more models and units so that they look like packs of individuals. Admittedly that would end up pretty expensive, but at least giving the units "random" variations so they are a bit different would be nice. Who says that all primal zerglings evolve into exactly the same identical zergling? Make some attack faster, some harder (some slower, some weaker ) and already it wouldn't just be swarm but with different colour scheme.
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Feb 5, 2024 11:03
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Xarn posted:What should've happened with them is more models and units so that they look like packs of individuals. Admittedly that would end up pretty expensive, but at least giving the units "random" variations so they are a bit different would be nice. Who says that all primal zerglings evolve into exactly the same identical zergling? Make some attack faster, some harder (some slower, some weaker Alternately go more in on what we saw in the cutscene. Swarm Zerg don't evolve randomly because they've got the Overmind/Abathur/Whoever holding their genetic leash, letting them only incorporate useful genes, but Primal Zerg just attack whatever's around and they don't have that barrier, so if they run into a pack of Moosealisks on the way to your base, they eat those first, grow antlers and really big, if they run into a pack of Waspalisks, suddenly they're flying and stinging, if they hit a pack of Snailalisks, whoops now they're slow as poo poo and hide in their shell instead, etc.
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Feb 5, 2024 11:16
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by all rights, from just incorporating whatever the zerg here ought to be mostly plants and herbivores.
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Feb 5, 2024 11:58
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PurpleXVI posted:Alternately go more in on what we saw in the cutscene. Swarm Zerg don't evolve randomly because they've got the Overmind/Abathur/Whoever holding their genetic leash, letting them only incorporate useful genes, but Primal Zerg just attack whatever's around and they don't have that barrier, so if they run into a pack of Moosealisks on the way to your base, they eat those first, grow antlers and really big, if they run into a pack of Waspalisks, suddenly they're flying and stinging, if they hit a pack of Snailalisks, whoops now they're slow as poo poo and hide in their shell instead, etc. That sounds like a bit much gameplay for a three-mission gimmick faction, but it would be cool if e.g. when a primal zergling kills one of your non-zergling units it turns into the primal version of that unit. There's a definite tension here between wanting the Primal Zerg to be interestingly different from the familiar zerg, and them being the main representation of ZvZ in this campaign. The more you lean into them being unique, the further you lean away from Starcraft faction battles. Honestly, it's just more reason the concept would have been better if they were an offshoot from the Overmind's swarm than something that existed before it. You could still have the spiritual purpose of them being the pure, uncorrupted zerg that lack the corrupted influence of Amon, The Fallen Xel'Naga that Kerrigan is here to adopt and have less corruption.
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Feb 5, 2024 12:07
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There's a mod for HotS (real scale, maybe?) where the primals are all mini-hero units, and gain levels that increase their stats as they kill things. It's a step towards making primals something other than Zerg-but-not.
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Feb 5, 2024 13:20
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PurpleXVI posted:Snailalisks 
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Feb 5, 2024 13:29
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But where'd Primals get the idea for Ultralisks or Guardians? Our swarm doesn't have either. Also my theory is that the idea behind the Primal Zerg was 100% a workaround after they realized they wrote themselves into a corner with some other things, but we won't see that until the final missions.
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Feb 5, 2024 13:55
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Honestly, if it wasn't for all the straight copies I'd at least chalk the Primal Ultralisk up to some kind of 'we don't know what it is, exactly, but it's big like an ultralisk and smacks groups like an ultralisk so let's call it that for convenience's sake' thing. But then they straight up yoinked the Guardian. We don't even get those as a campaign exclusive thing.
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Feb 5, 2024 14:34
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The funny thing is that, well, the primal Zerg are getting torn apart by the actual Zerg anyways. They view themselves as purer due to not having been CORRUPTED, but the fact that they’re still losing to what could charitably be called an echo of the armies the Overmind could field sums up the difference in power perfectly. Their Ancient One literally admitted the only reason they didn’t get corrupted was that Amon didn’t see them at the time or decided he had enough for his EVIL plan and thought the leftovers were worthless enough to not bother with. The fact they’re trying to copy the Swarm’s creatures to the point Abathur is basically accusing them of copyright infringement also is a clear signal. They’re trying to play catch-up to what the Swarm has accomplished, and only have a few things going for them that the Swarm doesn’t have an equivalent to yet (like their buildings being able to move and attack)
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Feb 5, 2024 16:08
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Okay so I have to do some side recordings to make sure I cover everything, and I decided to just blitz through everything on Casual. As it turns out, you can't right click to set a rally point on Casual. You have to use the actual Set Rally Point and Set Drone Rally Point keys. It loving sucks!
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Feb 5, 2024 16:13
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But... why?
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Feb 5, 2024 16:21
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