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bladededge posted:That same character was in SC1 and wore basically just a loincloth so this design is extra weird. You'd think that giant thing on the back of his shoulders would knock against doorframes and ceilings all the time. Oh, for real? I absolutely did not recognize that it was him. Hope he doesn't pilot a Scout this time around, probably hard to fit in one with that poo poo on his back.
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May 8, 2024 05:59
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that is the Scout
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May 8, 2024 06:14
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Those Earthsplitters seem pretty rad, it's like someone took the tier 3 artillery weapons from Supreme Commander and put them in Starcraft.
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May 8, 2024 08:24
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BisbyWorl posted:The extra half is co-op. What do you count the prologue as? And, uh... the other thing.
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May 8, 2024 08:55
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Kith posted:What do you count the prologue as? And, uh... the other thing. Those are all under LotV's banner, so I'm treating them as one whole thing.
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May 8, 2024 09:00
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Cythereal posted:I suspect it's the same phenomenon you see in the Warcraft teams: the central plot and banner content is designed by committee and the writing ordained by executives and managers. The side content there to pad things out gets written by people who actually care. You kind of see a similar thing in Mass Effect, where the main story is kind of... passable and roughly functional, with okay characters, and then every second side planet you look at have way more interesting idea hooks and descriptions than anything you get to interact with, even if they'd result in a less "epic" plot. And the "comedy" side characters are usually far more interesting than the dramatic central characters.
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May 8, 2024 11:53
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bladededge posted:That same character was in SC1 and wore basically just a loincloth so this design is extra weird. You'd think that giant thing on the back of his shoulders would knock against doorframes and ceilings all the time. Fun fact: in Heroes of the Storm, one of his annoyed quotes pokes fun at this: "What do you think of the new armor? My last one left me feeling a little...exposed."
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May 8, 2024 12:32
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BlazetheInferno posted:Fun fact: in Heroes of the Storm, one of his annoyed quotes pokes fun at this: "What do you think of the new armor? My last one left me feeling a little...exposed." I can't believe they censored Artanis
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May 8, 2024 13:53
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Hwurmp posted:I can't believe they censored Artanis They covered up his vagina bones and everything
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May 8, 2024 14:13
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The Co-Op mode shows glimpses into a universe with a far more fun plotline than the one we got.
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May 8, 2024 15:03
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NewMars posted:The Co-Op mode shows glimpses into a universe with a far more fun plotline than the one we got. yeah pretty much
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May 8, 2024 15:20
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I maintain that Tychus' co-op Announcement Video provided an explanation that could totally work in the canon lore, they simply chose to leave it non-canon. The story there literally picks up at his death and goes "He didn't die, but Mengsk didn't know that" and then it proceeds from there. Taking time to make amends with Jim, then leaving the Raiders formally only to form his gang specifically to help them.
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May 8, 2024 16:22
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The co-op modes 'canonically' take place during THAT PART of the protoss campaign that Bisby alluded to earlier. With allowances for characters who are clearly dead by the time that takes place.
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May 8, 2024 16:27
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BlazetheInferno posted:I maintain that Tychus' co-op Announcement Video provided an explanation that could totally work in the canon lore, they simply chose to leave it non-canon. The story there literally picks up at his death and goes "He didn't die, but Mengsk didn't know that" and then it proceeds from there. Taking time to make amends with Jim, then leaving the Raiders formally only to form his gang specifically to help them. I am imagining Jim shot him in the right spot/in the face just so that either the transmitter was destroyed or his heart stoppped long enough that he was considered “dead” and so the deadman’s switches failed so he was badly injured/unconscious but survived long enough that Swann/Stettman was able to peel him out of the suit and he was kicked out of the Raiders.
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May 8, 2024 18:37
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They could have just said that he survived because he was shot in the Queen's Chamber, which was specifically designed to fully heal Kerrigan from near-death.
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May 8, 2024 18:49
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Kith posted:They could have just said that he survived because he was shot in the Queen's Chamber, which was specifically designed to fully heal Kerrigan from near-death. Throwing him in a zerg pool they have no way of controlling at the moment seems like a good way to get Infested Tychus.
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May 8, 2024 18:51
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I'm sure he'd be fine
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May 8, 2024 18:56
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BisbyWorl posted:Throwing him in a zerg pool they have no way of controlling at the moment seems like a good way to get Infested Tychus.
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May 8, 2024 19:13
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BisbyWorl posted:Throwing him in a zerg pool they have no way of controlling at the moment seems like a good way to get Infested Tychus. HOTS showed that was not necessarily a bad thing Kith fucked around with this message at 17:08 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 19:32
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Cythereal posted:I suspect it's the same phenomenon you see in the Warcraft teams: the central plot and banner content is designed by committee and the writing ordained by executives and managers. The side content there to pad things out gets written by people who actually care.
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May 8, 2024 21:28
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MagusofStars posted:For Warcraft, it's also that the side content tends to be farmed out to specific people, who just get very broad scope outlines like "this is a water zone revolving around the Naga" or "can you do a set of quests revolving around the Alliance's spy network" or whatever. Then that specific person (or couple people) are just sort of let free to do it all, resulting in a level of consistency that just isn't possible for a big plotline that starts with that committee design which then gets filtered down to individual devs taking up small pieces of the overall whole. That quest actually made it past the test realm to live, if I'm not mistaken, before it got patched, but if I'm wrong, it should never have hit the test realm anyway.
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May 8, 2024 21:49
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no that quest got placed in the community test server, or whatever, and the overwhelming response to it was "uh, this is gross, why did you write this?" and so it got removed. Unless Blizzard decided to doubledown and just did a slight rewrite tweak and released it to the public
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May 8, 2024 22:34
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No the quest never made it to live, they changed that daily so you go back in time and ensure that her enslavement is discovered so she can be rescued.
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May 8, 2024 22:38
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And it says pretty damning things about Blizzard's management and editing (or lack thereof) that no one killed it before it reached the PTR. That wasn't just one writer, people had to come up with the quest gameplay mechanical design, the mobs, environments, etc.
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May 8, 2024 22:51
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Cythereal posted:And it says pretty damning things about Blizzard's management and editing (or lack thereof) that no one killed it before it reached the PTR. That wasn't just one writer, people had to come up with the quest gameplay mechanical design, the mobs, environments, etc. Yeah, this is honestly it. Like, some writer ham-handedly trying to address it in a bad way? Bad, but no bad ideas in brainstorming, that's why you don't move forward with it. It making it past more than one or two set of eyes? That's the real issue there.
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May 9, 2024 08:43
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Serperoth posted:Yeah, this is honestly it. Like, some writer ham-handedly trying to address it in a bad way? Bad, but no bad ideas in brainstorming, that's why you don't move forward with it. It making it past more than one or two set of eyes? That's the real issue there. Agreed, the issue isn't (or at least isn't just) that someone decided to write that, it's that multiple people signed off on it.
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May 9, 2024 09:33
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kaosdrachen posted:Agreed, the issue isn't (or at least isn't just) that someone decided to write that, it's that multiple people signed off on it. Thanks, that's sort of implicit in the point I was trying to make. I'm not sure if the problem is you've got this loose cannon designer who (a) gets to authorize the development of these quest lines without oversight or 360 degree input, or (b) any external review of the designer's work is cursory at best, weak enough to let this slip through the goal. Whichever it is, if some, e.g., model animator, at ActiBliz had the guts pre-PTR to write an email saying, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't do a quest about dragon rape," would there even have been anyone to send it to, and if so would that person have listened, or would they have just forwarded it back to the guilty designer with an "FYI" tagged on the front?
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May 9, 2024 16:57
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Admiralty Flag posted:"Hey, maybe we shouldn't do a quest about dragon rape," Warcraft was pretty great when it was a goofy game about cartoony fantasy humans fighting goofy power metal album cover orcs that went "zugzug", but they clearly got lost somewhere between there and here.
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May 9, 2024 19:13
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Someone clear up a weird Mandela Effect feeling I’m getting: Did the announcers for the original co-op maps ever get changed early on? Like, I remember someone other than Sargent Hammer announcing her own mission.
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May 9, 2024 21:08
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The Co-Op announcers have shuffled several times.
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May 9, 2024 21:16
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Oh dang I’m not crazy. I leveled every coop character to max (prestiging Stettman and Mengak once and re-leveling them) and got to level 80-something some years ago. Then on a whim I prestige’d them all, regretted it, and then started real-leveling them a few weeks ago, switching to the next commander each time I gained a level. I feel like I’m hearing new lines from the commanders after I win, and I don’t remember the unique lines from Stettman if someone takes him as a commander on Mist Opportunities.
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May 10, 2024 20:24
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JackSplater posted:Since I have too much time on my hands, I checked. Of the 23 missions, 10 are timed, 7 are non-timed, 4 are no-build, and 2 are soft timers. Huh, apparently all the missions mixed together, because I don't remember that many timed ones. Out of curiosity, do you count say Last Stand as timed?
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May 10, 2024 23:07
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Prologue 1: Dark Whispers Video: Dark Whispers  Legacy of the Void is a bit more in-depth than the others, being split into three parts. Whispers of Oblivion is mostly separate from Legacy as a whole, and was mostly a teaser to get people to pre-order it back in the day when pre-orders opened up in July of 2015. The prologue would be made available to everyone that October, with the full game coming out a month later. The prologue is all about Zeratul, much like the Prophecy missions in Wings. I'm sure the writers will finally give him something intere-  Oh who am I loving kidding of course it's even more prophecy bullshit.     God, remember when the xel'naga were dipshit science nerds that got got by their own creations? Twice?     They way they say this is just ...insulting. If you haven't played SC1, you'd have no idea who Duran is or why he's important. If you have, then Blizz thinks you're so loving stupid that you haven't figured out the name flip after two full games.     An unknown force has been abducting templar from our colony worlds.Despite Zeratul's whole 'I must face the judgement of my people' thing when he left after taking Kerrigan to Zerus, the other protoss still seem very happy to see him.  Kerrigan we have been out of your high heels for 3 minutes, how are you already causing problems!?     This mission makes zero loving sense.  Kerrigan is fighting Amon. Zeratul is fighting Amon.  There is no reason for any conflict here, other than Kerrigan being a complete and utter bitch!  This is doubly galling because she's telling this to Zeratul! The guy who told Raynor about the prophecy to keep her alive! The guy who took her to Zerus! I'm not exaggerating here when I say that she owes Zeratul everything!  She doesn't even have the excuse of being laser focused on revenge anymore, she's supposed to be an actual hero at this point!  But she can't even take five loving minutes out of her busy schedule to save a few prisoners. If any innocents die, well they're just a few small sacrifices made in the war against Amon.  Thankfully, the writing quality will skyrocket once we hit LotV proper. Not by that much, mind you, but it does hit the lofty heights of a saturday morning cartoon show.  The last time the protoss were playable in the campaign was during the Prophecy missions in Wings, which was five years ago by the time this came out. Despite that, they're more than willing to throw you into the deep end with the majority of the protoss tech tree (aside from air units) available with no reminder tutorials or anything.   Now, you might try to get tricky and pick a fight with Kerrigan to buy time.  Yeah, that ain't loving happening. She still has all her fancy campaign toys, while I'm stuck with a basic army. The 10th Anniversary achievement here is to completely wipe out the Swarm, naturally.  You may have noticed the Nexus has energy now. That's because we got the protoss' counterpart to MULEs and Inject Larva, Chrono Boost.  Spend 25 energy, get a speed boost on any building for 20 seconds. Early on I can use it to speed up worker production, then once that's done I can boost army production or upgrades as needed. Technically they had this back in Wings, the devs just disabled it for the Prophecy missions. I guess it makes sense to introduce it now, since we're about to spend an entire game playing as protoss, but Legacy gives Chrono Boost a campaign tweak that's much simpler so ????   Kerrigan sends out occasional attacks at Moebius. She'll keep her word and never send an attack directly at me, but she will pick a fight if any of my units get in range of hers.  And I'm not surviving that matchup.  The attack runs into a heavily defended outpost. While they'll be able to fend off this attack, the mass of Banelings at the start of every wave do enough upfront damage to ensure it'll fall sooner rather than later. There are two smaller bases between Kerrigan and the reactor, and all three take about two separate attack waves to clear.  I'm on the clock, but the soft timer I'm on is fairly lenient so I can spend a decent bit of time building up.  The Void Seeker still has that 1000 DPS cannon.  Oh yeah Moebius has gone full mask off after losing Skygeirr Station and are now all brainwashed Amon cultists.  But this is where attack waves will be hitting me from.  Kerrigan sends out another attack.  And while she finishes off the first outpost I finally get moving.    Once Kerrigan finishes off an outpost she'll replace it with one of her own.  And there are some resource caches scattered around.  Proxy Pylons are handy here, just to cut down on travel time.  But while I wait for it to build I have to make some Dark Templar walk over.  There isn't an oppressive amount of detection on this level, and Scanner Sweeps are fairly rare, so DTs get a lot of milage.  And even when there is detection, the Zealot's Charge helps them take aggro first.     What do you know of this facility, zealot?  I have seen foul work of this nature before, but Narud is dead. Whose hand brought you here?Zealot: Alas, I know not. Praetor, we wish to join you-to avenge our brothers in arms. Speaking of, why didn't Moebius take away their psi blades? Then ready yourselves, templar.  A free six Zealots for saving the first batch, not too shabby! They even have a different skin than the ones I make.  These Medics flee to the side when I approach.  Where they have a Pylon in some sort of device.   This is one of the few times they think to use a Scanner Sweep.   Wow, racist much?  On top of some free units, the Pylon remains active for warp-ins.   Kerrigan sets up again, this time from her new base.  Girl it takes like 20 minutes to save the prisoners, Zeratul is not asking for anything outrageous here. Take an early lunch or something. loving chill.  So I have to wait a bit for this wave to enter the base.  And we're clear.  This is where all those Moebius attack waves have been coming from.  With another control node to open up a shortcut.  Past there is the second batch of captives, plus an expansion.   I'm not sure if the game bugged during the intro cutscene or something, but there are a few Zealots just sitting around. Doing nothing.  Immortals have gotten a rework since we've last used them in Wings. They've lost Hardened Shields (shield damage is capped at 10), and got Barrier (gain a 100 point temporary shield. Autocasts when shields hit 0) in return. It sounds like a bit of a ??? change at first, but protoss regained access to Shield Batteries in skirmish for Legacy, so Hardened Shields had to be scrapped or else they'd be practically unkillable on defense.   Kerrigan, you know as well as I that Amon lives. Slaying his hybrid is a meaningless act. We must awaken the xel'naga... No response. Better to reason with a stone than the zerg. The final cell awaits us, Zeratul. We should delay no longer.Oh gently caress right off, Kerrigan.  In a better written game this could be used as a way to show how arrogant and selfish a protagonist looks when you're not in their shoes and controlling their every action. Like one of those comics where a man is just relaxing at home only for Link to barge in and break all his pots for pocket change. But this is Blizzard, so they'll just ignore this when Kerrigan needs to look like a hero.   Those who side with Amon deserve no mercy. Devour them whole.There's a side area with a few caches here.  And some more here, (formerly) guarded by two Thors.  You can see just how much damage a few DTs can do here. The majority of the time the only thing that can touch them is splash damage from a Siege Tank.  Another Pylon is down here.     I'm cutting it somewhat close, Kerrigan only has another two or so attack waves before she hits the reactor, but it's a straight shot from here to the last cell.  There are a few hybrid between me and the end.  Which previews an important shift going forward. In Wings, we fight all of two hybrid (not counting the vision for In Utter Darkness). Maar is a stage-spanning threat, and the hybrid in Piercing the Shroud is an unkillable horror that has to be escaped rather than killed. In Heart, we only saw hybrid at Skygeirr, but we fought a bunch in two different missions there. In Legacy, we'll be seeing so many loving hybrid.  Like right here alone there are five of the bastards in the span of a minute, and we haven't even hit Legacy proper!   It's nice to get back to protoss, but good god everything about this mission is moronic.  This last batch has a High Templar, who actually got a basic attack for this game! Admittedly said attack deals 4 (+1) damage, so it's more of a 'please stop ramming your head into the enemy' buff.   The Tal'darim? Those heretics have never ventured so close to our worlds. This can only be the work of Amon. Templar, where were they holding you.   Of course, if Kerrigan managed to destroy the place Zeratul never would have learned this. And who knows if any other lingering Moebius facilities has this on hand.  And, guess what, Erris will be where Zeratul gets some Hot New Prophecy Deets that'll be vital in saving the universe.  Meaning Kerrigan came close to dooming the universe. All because Sarah Kerrigan is a horrible person.  Dark Whispers - Complete the "Dark Whispers" mission in the Whispers of Oblivion Campaign. Massive Aggressive - Destroy 30 Zerg units during the "Dark Whispers" mission. World of Warpcraft - Destroy 6 Terran units as they are warped in during the "Dark Whispers" mission in Normal difficulty. Raszagal's Retribution - Destroy all Zerg structures before freeing all captive Protoss on the "Dark Whispers" mission on Normal Difficulty. While the prologue campaign still got a set of 10th Anniversary achievements, they never got any Mastery achievements for whatever reason.
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May 11, 2024 04:04
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BisbyWorl posted:Speaking of, why didn't Moebius take away their psi blades? It's RTS campaign law that captured units are fully armed and ready to go as soon as they are freed from their captors, no matter how little sense that makes.
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May 11, 2024 04:52
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BisbyWorl posted:Speaking of, why didn't Moebius take away their psi blades? those are psi-shivs, cobbled together from canteen spoons and toilet paper
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May 11, 2024 06:25
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Taking an early lunch is antithetical to Kerrigan's Gaslight Gatekeep Genocide ethos. If/when I pick this up again, I might try for that 10th achievement just on principle.mr_stibbons posted:It's RTS campaign law that captured units are fully armed and ready to go as soon as they are freed from their captors, no matter how little sense that makes. I was playing Dawn of War Soulstorm recently and was definitely curious how the Dark Eldar had managed to keep a fully armed squad of Karskin and like three platoons of Guardsmen, Ogryn and assorted riff-raff with all of their kit completely docile...
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May 11, 2024 07:14
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Hwurmp posted:those are psi-shivs, cobbled together from canteen spoons and toilet paper As we've seen from Zeratul, they don't use toilet paper since Protoss don't poop, they lore dump And yea this mission makes no sense, it feels like something that might have originally been planned for HOTS but then reused for Zeratul
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May 11, 2024 07:21
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It doubly makes no sense because she's perfectly willing to help the Protoss later on in the main campaign. Maybe she just really loving hates Zeratul?
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May 11, 2024 07:25
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He's the only Protoss she met in her campaign who didn't die. She's got a chip on her shoulder about that.
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May 11, 2024 07:42
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This one always felt like a mission gimmick that was seeking a story, and the latter got put off until real late. Anyway, I never actually knew about the prologue until years later. I just jumped right into the main expansion whenever it released in full. Not sure how missable it was on the UI at the time. Not much a loss though
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May 11, 2024 08:04
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