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Have they explained/will explain why they resurrected & infested Stukov, specifically? Like, what does he bring to the zerg table?
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Mar 16, 2024 20:13
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Gun Jam posted:Have they explained/will explain why they resurrected & infested Stukov, specifically? Like, what does he bring to the zerg table? Not yet, but it'll become obvious later.
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Mar 16, 2024 20:20
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Gun Jam posted:Have they explained/will explain why they resurrected & infested Stukov, specifically? Like, what does he bring to the zerg table? zerg rush zerg russian
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Mar 16, 2024 21:19
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Communist Thoughts posted:I think this is maybe why I don't like him at all, people seem to really dig him but all the zerg fall really flat in this for me. I'm one of the Abathur-likers, so I'll just put it out there: You're right, and the original brief for cerebrates & the hive structure was more interesting. I really like that SC1 wasn't afraid to have your main contacts on the briefing screen be weird fleshy jello blobs and a gigantic eyeball surrounded by connective tissue. It feels genuinely alien, and I love that it also provides the Zerg with a massive weakness, a decapitation strike against them is the end of the threat. I love that it does salve the normal ludonarrative dissonance which would normally be so prominent, that you send thousands of zerglings to die in a single mission but it's okay because they weren't sapient, and in some ways they're almost more like ants than complete organisms. But Blizzard decided not to go that route with SC2, and if we're going to be stuck with Izsha & other characters who have human-like faces and personalities, Abathur is the most interesting of the ones we get, and fits better into the premise than the others.
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Mar 16, 2024 21:35
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I don't have a problem with Izsha and the Brood Mothers personally. They're less freaky and alien than the Cerebrates and Overmind, but a) it makes sense, narratively, that Kerrigan being in control of the Swarm would transform at least the leader-facing parts of it into something a bit more human, and b) they do present the Zerg as a more female-coded faction, while still leaving it as a bunch of gribbly monsters. Aside from Kerrigan herself (who exists only in the campaign) none of them are sexualised. Which is a cool thing to have, especially for Blizzard. I still like Abathur's actual character writing, but he'd fit better as the representation of the ways of the old Swarm if he actually fit into the concepts of the old Swarm.
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Mar 16, 2024 21:54
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Mazerunner posted:zerg rush 
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Mar 16, 2024 22:13
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PurpleXVI posted:I mean you complain but I think that a Zergling with a little janitor's cap and a broom would be adorable. That Zergling is unexplanatorily Finnish and named Ahti
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Mar 16, 2024 22:47
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I remember really liking Stukov, but I don't particularly remember why. He does have a cool accent and I don't think he does anything egregiously stupid?
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Mar 16, 2024 23:03
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I don't think he does anything egregiously stupid? hey, spoilers ):<
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Mar 17, 2024 00:52
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Egregious stupidity in Starcraft 2? Don't talk nonsense. As someone who was there at the time I can assure everyone that no, the Stukov stuff was not a deep cut, basically everyone expected him to show up in SC2. Clearly Blizzard had big plans for him, hiding him in after-release bonus maps that formed a kindof story arc! Right? Jack-Off Lantern posted:That Zergling is unexplanatorily Finnish and named Ahti Viscera Cleanup Detail: Zerg Edition. bladededge fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 01:31
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Jack-Off Lantern posted:That Zergling is unexplanatorily Finnish and named Ahti if I could have a zergling sing yöton yö for me in the leviathan I would consider heart of the swarm to be good
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Mar 17, 2024 02:14
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I genuinely don't understand people that liked Ahti in Control, I thought he was the most tiresome and unfunny part of the entire game.
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Mar 17, 2024 02:41
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Intermission 11  She is impressed with you and wishes to bring her brood back into the Swarm.Oh boy, time to lay waste to another world!     She gets this smug little grin on her face too.  oh poo poo new moves  Tier 5 is another set of passives. Infest Broodlings gives her the same type of ability as Corpser Roaches, which also works with AOE attacks like Psionic Shift or even just Chain Reaction. Fury temporarily increases her attack speed by 15% every time she attacks, capping at 75%. Ability Efficiency cuts the cooldown and energy cost on all her abilities by 20%.  At max stacks, Fury lets Kerrigan attack faster than an Adrenal Zergling while dealing 43 damage a shot. And if you wanted, you can combine it with Malignant Creep to make her even faster! >Talk to Stukov    Zerg and protoss DNA combined - something that should not be possible. And these creatures will follow Mengsk's order? He believes they will. I am not so sure.>Talk to Izsha. There is a familiar presence coming from the labs. We must be prepared for anything.>Talk to Zagara.   But technology at this scale... This is beyond Mengsk's engineers. Perhaps they have help from something greater than themselves? If there are any answers, they are inside.>Talk to Dehaka.    I do not need a wall, I will evolve armor. I do not need a weapon, I will evolve claws. The toolmakers might create something stronger than your armor and claws. Their tools stay the same. I collect, I change.>Talk to Abathur.  The Infestor doesn't get to show up in the Evolution Chamber, sadly. No making it even more stupidly overpowered.   The hybrid wait within. Let's send them to hell.Time to go find out who's running this dastardly laboratory!
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Mar 17, 2024 03:15
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PurpleXVI posted:I genuinely don't understand people that liked Ahti in Control, I thought he was the most tiresome and unfunny part of the entire game. When you hunted down and killed the youthful innocence in your soul, was it also tiresome and unfunny?
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Mar 17, 2024 03:52
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Gun Jam posted:Have they explained/will explain why they resurrected & infested Stukov, specifically? Like, what does he bring to the zerg table? I mean, it seems very vaguely like Kerrigan is collecting different 'flavors' of Zerg as we run around doing stuff. Zagara is the 'classic' Zerg Rush Zerg, Dehaka is the 'quality over quantity' guy, and Stukov is the Infested Guy. Like, it's not an accident that the mission he returns in has us creating massive swarms of Infested Terrans.
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Mar 17, 2024 06:00
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BisbyWorl posted:
Why does it have a submarine on top?
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Mar 17, 2024 06:07
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Gervasius posted:Why does it have a submarine on top? Why do you not have a submarine on top? 
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Mar 17, 2024 06:15
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Gervasius posted:Why does it have a submarine on top? Narud: I binge watched the original Space Battleship Yamato anime when designing the facility.
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Mar 17, 2024 08:27
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If you put a screen door on your space submarine you might be a space redneck
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Mar 17, 2024 12:16
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Grand Fromage posted:Why do you not have a submarine on top? 'Cause then it'd be a supermarine?
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Mar 17, 2024 18:18
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Gervasius posted:Why does it have a submarine on top? It's like the lure on an anglerfish.
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Mar 17, 2024 18:23
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JackSplater posted:'Cause then it'd be a supermarine? no, nova gets those
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Mar 17, 2024 20:30
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PurpleXVI posted:I genuinely don't understand people that liked Ahti in Control, I thought he was the most tiresome and unfunny part of the entire game. I didn't find Ahti funny as such, but he was a slightly odd but still charming older guy who was just puttering around getting his job done in this weird-rear end place like it was the most normal thing. Any humor was in his indifference. Yes, yes, strange scary monsters but also the toilets still need cleaning.
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Mar 18, 2024 01:31
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Unit Spotlight: Aberration Overview:
Aberrations are still worth making even after unlocking Ultralisks, just for the higher per-hit damage and ease of use. Abilities  Towering
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Mar 20, 2024 03:33
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Er, is that the whole unit post?
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Mar 20, 2024 03:46
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habeasdorkus posted:Er, is that the whole unit post? No upgrades, no evolutions, no field manual art. Some units just get the bare minimum, sadly.
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Mar 20, 2024 03:57
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E: what Bisby said. A shame they don’t get much really. They don’t even get a skirmish presence! Blizz just couldn’t find a way to integrate them there. SteveSteveSteve fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 03:59
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Poor Abby Ration.
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Mar 20, 2024 03:59
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The Overmind was so excited about that neato psychic potential in humans, but the human meat only ever seems to be used as generic cannon fodder or as walking bombs by its cerebrates, Kerrigan, and kerrigan's broodmothers. The abomination is just a bigger ball of meat. As a human I find it sort of low-key insulting, actually. What does the zz'gash dunerunner or slothien caterpillar-cow have that we don't?
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Mar 20, 2024 04:02
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Essence
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Mar 20, 2024 04:07
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Fun Fact #1: The Aberration can burrow! Much like most burrow animations, it looks real goofy underground:  Fun Fact #2: The Aberration has an unused animation for some kind of charge attack:  They run forward, flailing their arms. Fun Fact #3: During development, the Aberration was called the Centaur and was intended to be something of a cross between an Infested Colonist, Baneling, and Ultralisk - a beefy melee unit that hit hard and exploded on death:  The animation remains, but it has no gameplay effect.
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Mar 20, 2024 04:46
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bladededge posted:The Overmind was so excited about that neato psychic potential in humans, but the human meat only ever seems to be used as generic cannon fodder or as walking bombs by its cerebrates, Kerrigan, and kerrigan's broodmothers. The abomination is just a bigger ball of meat. poo poo, now I want to see a hypothetical setting where the Overmind never died but instead progressively integrated human neural biology into the Swarm to try to tap that psychic potential for something other than "hive mind," and it started turning the cerebrates into even more fractious and catty pricks. Branches of the Swarm going rogue because it turns out that our messy and unfocused kind of psychic power is actually really bad for the hive's psychic radio.
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Mar 20, 2024 05:00
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bladededge posted:The Overmind was so excited about that neato psychic potential in humans, but the human meat only ever seems to be used as generic cannon fodder or as walking bombs by its cerebrates, Kerrigan, and kerrigan's broodmothers. The abomination is just a bigger ball of meat. Yeah haha it sure is weird that the overmind couldn't use humanity except for the really powerful psychic but kept infesting them for some reason, this will never come up again.
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Mar 20, 2024 11:12
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I wonder if calling it a centaur is a fallout reference.
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Mar 20, 2024 11:36
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Aberrations are weird, because they have multiple different versions in the campaigns, so you always have to spend a moment thinking "ok, which version of aberrations am I facing today?".
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Mar 20, 2024 12:00
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Torchlighter posted:Yeah haha it sure is weird that the overmind couldn't use humanity except for the really powerful psychic but kept infesting them for some reason, this will never come up again. I must have memory-holed whatever you're referencing with this one.
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Mar 20, 2024 16:29
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Skygeirr Station 2: Hand of Darkness Video: Hand of Darkness      An ancient shapeshifter who has worn many faces over the years, he made me what I am.Aaaaaaaaaand Narud is revealed as not only a villain, but a servant of Amon himself. With zero fanfare. Like, if you haven't played Brood War and didn't notice the flipped name, the only time you've seen him was during The Mobius Factor where he was completely on the level. Hell, if you didn't shell out money for Flashpoint you wouldn't even know he was evil at this point!  None of those. He is the servant of an ancient xel'naga known as Amon. I learned of Amon on Zerus. He's dead.   Fun fact: This is the only mission chain in Heart that has Hybrid.   Kerrigan doesn't even wait for the Marines to die before building a Hatchery.    They are the ultimate weapon of the final war.  A Hybrid wakes up and floats out of its pod.  At which point some Marines immediately open fire on it. This carries over into the mission proper. The Hybrid are hostile to everything on the map and will go after any Dominion troops that get close.    The Hybrid does something and gets some fancy particle effects.  Which does something to Kerrigan!  It's attacking me psionically! Draining me...   There are eight Hybrid scattered across the map, and Kerrigan will be tagged by a life drain as long as any Hybrid are currently active. Despite how it looks, the life drain doesn't actually do anything to Kerrigan, it's just a failure timer.  Bring it down! Now!The Hybrid Dominators themselves have a sizable amount of health. We've seen Dominators in Co-op, but this is before they got their unique model in Legacy so they have to share one with the normal Hybrid Destroyer.  With Vile Roaches in my initial forces to blunt the damage (only by 20%, Hybrid are Heroic units after all!) and Mend to keep everyone patched up it doesn't take much to kill the first.  Each Dominator will open up with Psionic Shockwave, knocking back all nearby units while dealing 20 damage and stunning them.   They also have Graviton Prison, same as Maar.  As soon as it dies, the timer vanishes.   Narud...Hey look, it's Narud!   Three Hybrid pods get marked. They'll open on their own over time, or I can manually destroy the pod to free the Hybrid early if I get over to one before it pops.   As soon as the next Hybrid wakes up I'm on another 4:30 timer.  This one has a small force guarding it.   The second Hybrid is more of the same.   I made a few Impalers to help with base defense.  The bonus.  Although for once they don't just slap markers on the minimap for it, you have to find the Brutalisks yourself.  Whoops! Turns out I was going the wrong way!   The expansion is up here, at least.    The third Dominator onwards starts using Separation, creating two clones of itself that have the same attacks and abilities of the original, but copies how much life it had when it was cast and the clones automatically die if you kill the main one.   The first Brutalisk is nearby.   That's one.  We've seen a bunch of these in Wings, and now we get to play with them!  50(+5) x2 damage is incredibly strong, but at 2 speed it's the slowest unit in my army. Making use of it means having to sit around before each fight just so it can catch up to everyone else. 1500 life is also a bit of a double edged sword. While it means it can take an insane amount of punishment, it'll take a lot of effort to patch up after combat and will drain all my Swarm Queens dry.  There's another base sending these attack waves out.  Clearing it out means I never have to worry about an attack from this side ever again, and it opens up a second expansion if I need it!   The catch for this Hybrid is that it has several production structures near it, so you have to take those out without getting close enough to aggro it.  By the fourth Dominator you probably have a sizable army up and running.  So it does what any self-respecting being with protoss DNA would do: start blasting with Psi Storm.    And here's the second Brutalisk.   Perfect timing!   This one uses both Storm and Separation, jacking up the number of Storms going out.    Whoops, got pincered by an attack wave and lost Kerrigan!  Shame it does nothing more than slightly delay me!  Even with that mishap, I still had more than enough time to clear the area out before the Hybrid can pop.  So I give it a wakeup call.   No, because it died in nine seconds.  When this is over, I'm coming for you Narud.Bro you got two Dominators left in the entire facility who the hell are you fooling?   Said Hybrid are right next to each other, and opening one early will wake up the other.  There's also one last Dominion base next to them.  Do I have to destroy it? No.  But drat if it ain't fun.  Then for funsies I make a few more Impalers to help out.    And done.   Have the Swarm flood into the lower levels. Kill everyone in our way. Narud is up to something, and I intend to find out what.  Hand of Darkness - Complete the "Hand of Darkness" mission in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Shattered Command - Destroy 2 Command Centers in the “Hand of Darkness” mission. Power Underwhelming - Destroy 3 Hybrid Holding Cells before the Hybrid are released in “Hand of Darkness” on Normal difficulty. Dominion Domination - Kill 3 Hybrid Dominators with Terran units in the “Hand of Darkness” mission on Hard difficulty. Two-Man Swarm - Kill 50 units with rescued Brutalisks in the "Hand of Darkness" mission on Normal difficulty.
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Mar 23, 2024 05:00
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It's interesting how Stukov shifts framing this mission chain from being part of the revenge quest against Mengsk: To saying the truth, which is this is an Amon thing (to be expanded upon next mission): BisbyWorl posted:
I don't entirely mind that Stukov is manipulating Kerrigan to get his revenge, but it seems odd not to be more commented upon.
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Mar 23, 2024 05:30
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...did Kerrigan have no idea who Amon, Duran and the hybrid were before this mission, other than Amon being dead and and having been on Zerus? What the gently caress did she mean when she said she'd figured out who Dr. Narud was? That was like the one piece of characterization she got in WoL!
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Mar 23, 2024 06:34
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:...did Kerrigan have no idea who Amon, Duran and the hybrid were before this mission, other than Amon being dead and and having been on Zerus? No, no, that was the Queen of Blades personality. That one disappeared after all in and definitely doesn't exist anymore, so there's no reason to care about the multiple billions of people she killed.
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Mar 23, 2024 08:56
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