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gohuskies posted:All those missions we spent in WoL turning Kerrigan into a human feel like a super productive way to have spent our time now that she's been turned right back into the Queen of Blades again! No but you see we had to uncorrupt her so she could get the noble essence of the first zerg to 
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Feb 10, 2024 07:01
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This is so loving dumb it’s almost funny. Poor Abathur: a random stew of genetic material- the equivalent of a bunch of
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Feb 10, 2024 07:02
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I kept playing the game to its conclusion (including the third part) but I noped tf out of the narrative right here. Absolutely beyond the pale of any reasonable human writing. No credit awarded for any minor good choices beyond this point. F-.
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Feb 10, 2024 07:08
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The worst part is that all of the release-time ads for this game spoiled this whole segment
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Feb 10, 2024 07:15
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BisbyWorl posted:
No, no, you see, she turned herself in the Primal Queen of Blades. Totally different. (efb by Warmachine) Kurgarra Queen posted:This is so loving dumb it’s almost funny. Well, I assume Kerrigan was directing the zergification process this time around. Heart's plot is so loving dumb
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Feb 10, 2024 07:19
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gohuskies posted:All those missions we spent in WoL turning Kerrigan into a human feel like a super productive way to have spent our time now that she's been turned right back into the Queen of Blades again! i was so mad about this back then lol. oh i guess we're just completely undoing what we did last game?? ok????
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Feb 10, 2024 07:45
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Kurgarra Queen posted:This is so loving dumb it’s almost funny.  Heels efficient. Abathur said as much. Proper use of essence. Abathur proven correct, even by chaotic knock-off of refined processeses. Eradicate Primal Zerg for infringement now?
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Feb 10, 2024 08:11
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didn't even take the opportunity to redesign her into something less stupid. blizzard sucks so loving bad it's almost unbelievable
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Feb 10, 2024 08:13
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
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Feb 10, 2024 08:24
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VostokProgram posted:i was so mad about this back then lol. oh i guess we're just completely undoing what we did last game?? ok???? Even if you're not mad anymore I can be mad for you now because this is my first time seeing it and, well, what the gently caress. I called it as soon as the chrysalis started and I am still mad. Also the ending cinematic is so edgy. I genuinely can't get over the fact that the writers thought that this would be an interesting way to top off all of Kerrigan's ugly hate machine dialogue and still expect me to take it seriously. I don't think even DBZ ever did something where a person was angry enough to make a laser shoot into space and spawn a maelstrom because they were mad. On a more positive note, the design of the swarm hosts is cool. Are they actually good? Worth using?
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Feb 10, 2024 08:33
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This is probably the worst part of HotS for me. "Oh the entire driving force of Wings was saving Kerrigan, i wonder what she's gonna do—aaaaaand now she's purple." What was even the point of Jim's whole crusade then? He didn't kill her, he didn't 'save' her from the Zerg, she's basically doing the same thing but her eyes glow less, and Mengsk has the artifact the same way he would have if Raynor had stayed in the bar! What hasn't been retconned at this point? Is it *just* the Pondering?
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Feb 10, 2024 08:51
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In theory there can be value in a character choosing to embrace a power that was previously forced on them and then was removed from them. Something meditative about identity or agency or the nature of power and the responsibilities and burdens that come with it. This ain't it. This mission is 25 minutes long and somehow despite that runtime it can't be bothered to offer any new insight into the Primal Zerg, the nature of their existence and philosophies, or the supposed dichotomy between Pack and Swarm that the last mission implied was central to what was wrong with the Space Zerg and why they needed to become Primal. There is a leaderless pack, a powerful Primal that is part of no pack, a new pack leader Zerg AND the Ancient One all on screen on this map at once, and we can't get a single piece of dialogue to provide insight on any of them or why it's a good idea for Kerrigan's Zerg to be more like them. We also get no new insight into Izsha as Kerrigan's second. She's been placed in charge for the first time, trusted to protect her leader against impossible odds. As part of the Zerg Swarm that is also a naive young sentient being who's done nothing but ask questions and try to understand the universe since she was introduced, she'd be the perfect figure to probe at these Primal Zerg, give us a window to understand them, but also stick up for the Swarm's merits on behalf of her creator. Abathur is also actively monitoring, more than capable to chipping in his two cents on the topic. This was their opportunity to establish why the Zerg we know are important, why we should think of them as more than just a plague of mindless monsters set upon consuming the universe, why we should accept them as one of the heroes of Starcraft II's story against their Hybrid and FALLEN XEL'NAGA villains. They didn't even get out of bed and try. gently caress, we don't even get any new insight into Kerrigan. We've learned more about how she's changed over the years and how she views the universe right now in single lines of shitposting between missions than we did in the 25 minute long mission in which she willingly returns herself to being the Queen of Blades. What the gently caress hell? When they were mapping out this campaign on a big white board at Blizzard headquarters, this mission had to be marked as one of the three most important in the entire game, and its a worthless mess both in story terms AND mechanically. It's beyond baffling.
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Feb 10, 2024 08:55
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Bisby didn't show it off, but this guy shows up again in this mission:
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Feb 10, 2024 09:00
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this plot is fuckin dumb lol
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Feb 10, 2024 09:23
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Nostalgamus posted:Bisby didn't show it off, but this guy shows up again in this mission: Genuinely more invested in wanting to know what this thing is than whatever is going on with the plot.
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Feb 10, 2024 09:30
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it's a good dog, played it a bunch in heroes of the storm
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Feb 10, 2024 09:50
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Ah, swarm hosts. Total poo poo. They are so bad that this mission is a lot easier if you make other units instead. The three options you get in Abathur's mancave are all basic functions the unit needs in order to be relevant. They're expensive in both resources and supply, they are EXTREMELY vulnerable to everything, they are quite large so trying to micro them is a pain, the locusts things are quite fragile when you're up against a standard sized attack wave and they don't deal much damage for what you pay.aniviron posted:Genuinely more invested in wanting to know what this thing is than whatever is going on with the plot.
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Feb 10, 2024 10:09
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Obviously the reason why we had to dezerg and rezerg Kerrigan is that now, being a PRIMAL Queen Bitch of the Universe means that she is immune to Mengsk secret weapon; the artifact. Right? RIGHT?
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Feb 10, 2024 11:17
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 Have you tried turning the Kerrigan off and on again?
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Feb 10, 2024 11:26
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but swarm hosts make free* zerglings** infinitely***!  *not counting the huge price tag for the swarm host itself **not actually equal to zerglings in impact and actually significantly worse ***if they don't get easily ganked because they're big, slow, and defenseless on their own swarm hosts are everything that the core zerg army is not: they're not fast, they're not tough, and they're not flexible. unlike the other zerg units that exist outside of those bounds, swarm hosts don't have nearly enough going for them to make up for their downfalls. the development inspiration for them was supposedly a drive to create a siege unit that operated differently from siege tanks or colossi, yet somehow the developers forgot that loving brood lords already existed and did the same job more effectively i cannot recall a single time i've ever seen swarm hosts used competitively, either.
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Feb 10, 2024 11:37
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That's because you blocked out an entire era of competitive HotS, where they were hideously oppressive and ground the game to a terrible state.
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Feb 10, 2024 11:42
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Poil posted:Ah, swarm hosts. Total poo poo. They are so bad that this mission is a lot easier if you make other units instead. The three options you get in Abathur's mancave are all basic functions the unit needs in order to be relevant. They're expensive in both resources and supply, they are EXTREMELY vulnerable to everything, they are quite large so trying to micro them is a pain, the locusts things are quite fragile when you're up against a standard sized attack wave and they don't deal much damage for what you pay. Yeah, I've always solved this one with a death ball of mutas and some queens thrown in for spine crawler repair. Even on their big, shining moment mission built around them, the swarm host's spot is better filled by the basic defensive turret we've had since literally the first base building mission.
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Feb 10, 2024 11:57
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TeeQueue posted:That's because you blocked out an entire era of competitive HotS, where they were hideously oppressive and ground the game to a terrible state. i was pretty into competitive sc2 during the HotS era so this is a wonderful way to find out that i've lost even more of my loving memory.
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Feb 10, 2024 12:01
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Xarn posted:Obviously the reason why we had to dezerg and rezerg Kerrigan is that now, being a PRIMAL Queen Bitch of the Universe means that she is immune to Mengsk secret weapon; the artifact. Right? RIGHT? don't say it don't say it don't say it don't say it ...Fuckin' Brainworms. Yes, that is exactly it, Kerrigan is now a Primal Zerg version of herself and this is actually different from her Queen of Blades version in a way that matters. I will not be elaborating at this time.
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Feb 10, 2024 12:22
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Kith posted:i was pretty into competitive sc2 during the HotS era so this is a wonderful way to find out that i've lost even more of my loving memory. Can't say for sure if you lost your memory or not, since they eventually patched it out in that same era. Lemme grab more info. Ok, after refreshing my memory: in 2013 when the Swarm Hosts were new, Zerg players would go heavy on defense until they could make around 8-10 of them and take advantage of the free spawn to slowly pick away at their opponent. In the meanwhile they'd put the rest of their cash into queens, anti-air, static defense, and some spellcasters. By engaging solely with free units on the enemy, they would force the opponent to either fight freespawn forever or make a move into very unfavorable positions with lots of static d, and it didn't matter how bad their exchanges were as they were still gaining as long as they killed A Unit. More detail available on youtube over here.
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Feb 10, 2024 12:25
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In current competitive, Swarm hosts are used as well with Nydus to pop up, spawn, and run back in. Locusts can really take down Nydus and Hatcheries (CC's can float), and are just as devastating against workers and actual units. However, they're so expensive that the Zerg needs to do so much damage with them before they can actually be considered worth it, and if the Zerg gets attacked or loses it, its usually gg.
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Feb 10, 2024 12:29
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the mission is fine, it is very straightforwardly a test of Kerrigan's commitment - by rezerging she has given up her chance at a normal life with Raynor. this is a layer of development deeper than any other SC1 character save Raynor swarm hosts are underpowered in this mission but the evolutions boost them considerably
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Feb 10, 2024 12:39
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I've seen swarm hosts appearing in competitive sometimes. Usually when games run long. Zerg armies chew through a lot of resources and get hit harder by the map being exhausted, so they're incentivised to transition to swarm hosts who can produce attacking units for free. This doesn't translate well to campaign though, where there is basically always some other mission timer that will expire long before your mineral patches do.
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Feb 10, 2024 12:49
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This is dumb on some level, but also not as dumb as people make it out to be. Queen of Blades Kerrigan is more powerful than Terran Kerrigan. OG Queen of Blades Kerrigan was controlled by the big bad, newly transformed Kerrigan isn't. It's basically the only difference, but it's a huge difference. It very much makes sense for the prophecy to say Kerrigan needs to be de-zerged, to free her from the big bad's control, but she then has to re-zerg herself to get the power to oppose said big bad.
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Feb 10, 2024 12:50
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If the story said that on any level, it wouldn't be nearly as stupid - even if that involved Kerrigan looking directly into the camera and explaining it to the player. It also wouldn't be nearly as stupid if Kerrigan's new* form looked even slightly different outside of having purple lines all over it.
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Feb 10, 2024 13:09
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Kith posted:If the story said that on any level, it wouldn't be nearly as stupid - even if that involved Kerrigan looking directly into the camera and explaining it to the player. Absolutely. This story beat is a huge blunder in any case. While it is internally consistent, I'm not sure the average player is likely to pick up this angle (uncorrupted zerg Kerrigan is needed to fight big bad), and the game goes out of it's way to frame it in a very different light. That Kerrigan will do anything to get her revenge on Mengsk, even getting turned back into the Queen of Blades is the main take-away from this mission. And given her questionable moral choices in the starting missions and on Kaldir, it only reinforces the notion that Kerrigan is a baddy, even if Mengsk is one, too. Basically spitting on all the things Raynor has done and sacrificed to get her back. And on the meta level, it's certainly a choice to undo what you've worked all of WoL towards in one of the earlier missions of HotS. This would work better in a TV series or a book series, where you'd emphasize with Raynor in the first arc, but aren't a video game player who spent several dozen hours to de-zergify Kerrigan. The model thing is egregious, too. I'm sure that if Blizzard had had infinite resources, they would have made a new Kerrigan model, and more different models for the primal zerg, too. But they didn't, and maybe they even shaped the story around the fact that they somehow had to get Kerrigan back into the cool Queen of Blades model they spent so many resources creating. So yeah, it's a really lovely plot beat for several reasons, even if it does make some sense in-universe.
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Feb 10, 2024 13:27
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you shouldn't empathise with Raynor. he wants a dumb thing: to run away with his gf and bury his head in the sand. he's a wimp getting revenge on Mengsk is good. he makes hybrids, he's an ally of Amon. rezerging yourself is good. pacifism is for the comfortable
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Feb 10, 2024 13:41
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At least it will be interesting how Kerrigan has to deal with the swarm, now that she isn't part of the zerg hivemind created by the big bad.
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Feb 10, 2024 14:06
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Xarn posted:At least it will be interesting how Kerrigan has to deal with the swarm, now that she isn't part of the zerg hivemind created by the big bad. ha ha ha you think anything about how she interacts with other zerg will change
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Feb 10, 2024 14:25
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TeeQueue posted:Can't say for sure if you lost your memory or not, since they eventually patched it out in that same era. Lemme grab more info. I remember watching what might have been "the" match where a Protoss player figured out that a big dumb meme unit no one took seriously could counter this (i.e., using Motherships to cloak everything so the locusts couldn't target anything and sniping any Overseers that got scrambled over) and like, it was a genuinely liberating moment to see, like loving finally something can push this bullshit back!
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Feb 10, 2024 15:00
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Also, I know it's not uh the biggest lore issue with this mission, but the Viper showing up as a Primal Zerg unit is a bit odd, isn't it?
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Feb 10, 2024 15:02
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Parallel evolution I’m sure Excuse me, the primal viper essence stems from the spacefaring flying creature whose essence was captured by primal creatures seeking essence essence essence ess
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Feb 10, 2024 16:49
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Well, it has a pretty specific origin in that it's a flying Defiler, kinda. (Actually, I just looked this up and it's yet more Abathur deciding turnabout is fair play!)
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Feb 10, 2024 17:06
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It is pretty obvious that this is not just undoing the whole thing from WoL, unless you guys have just been looking at the pretty pictures instead of reading the words accompanying them, in which case yeah she looks the same as the QoB so you might think that she's turned right back into it. Ye olde queene of blades was robbed of her humanity and crafted specifically to lead the swarm, to seek power and destroy the swarms enemies because that's what (the swarm type of) zerg are supposed to do. It's in the text that she was part of a corrupted swarm and was robbed of a lot of her original feelings and memories and motivations, in the effort to make her into the Overmind's perfect successor. When Jim mostly dezergifies her at the end of WoL she regains a lot of what she lost, and is expected to retain it thrrough this transition, as per what Zeratul, the Primals, and Kerrigan herself have said about it. This is her sacrificing an element of her humanity to become powerful enough to defeat Mengsk and avenge Jim, but it is still going to be Sarah at the helm. By going back to the source of the Zerg, she's getting all that Zergy goodness but without any of the big bad's corruption. There's a bit of dramatic irony that Jim's gone through all that for her and now she's got to undo some of it for him, but it's not a full reversal. Kith posted:i was pretty into competitive sc2 during the HotS era so this is a wonderful way to find out that i've lost even more of my loving memory. I think they tended to be a little less oppressive in the Korean scene (when it was absolute dominant over the rest of the world's efforts), but I have vivid memories of, like, Snute and Stephano in particular going 40-60 minutes fairly regularly. Honestly some of the games were kind of impressive from a stamina and "who's going to break first" tension angle, even if the minute to minute engagements kind of sucked to watch.
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Feb 10, 2024 17:17
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Honestly I'm just waiting to see if she has anything to say about it during the intermission (or at least somewhere before the end of the arc), or if they completely missed the opportunity to do anything remotely like what they were trying to.
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Feb 10, 2024 17:35
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