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 The year is 2007. Brood War has been out for nearly a decade, and the juggernaut that is Starcraft is showing no signs of slowing down. But then, something happened: Blizzard announced a sequel. Words cannot describe how much hype the words, 'Hell, it's about time,' generated that day. Blizzard was still riding high on their golden reputation and the sequel to Starcraft was just automatically accepted as being incredible. The first campaign, Wings of Liberty, released in 2010 to massive acclaim. It would then be followed up with Heart of the Swarm in 2013, Legacy of the Void in 2015, and Nova Covert Ops in 2016. Unfortunately, while gameplay was tightened up significantly compared to its predecessor, the writing... wasn't. Major moments being swept under the rug, retcons, complete rewrites of character motivations, and more are rampant from the word go. This was not written by the Blizzard of old, this was written by a newer, more modern Blizzard. One that prioritizes cool moments over any kind of meaningful sense. I won't be able to spot all of their writing fuckups, but by god will I try. How will this work? I'm covering all of it. Wings of Liberty right through to Covert Ops. Much like the currently running Warcraft and Starcraft LPs, I'll be doing an SSLP to be able to make play-by-plays. However, since Starcraft 2 has cutscenes that are more than talking heads and really good mission design, I'll also be posting (uncommentated) videos alongside everything. There will also be some thread participation. While I'll be doing writeups on units, I won't be doing in-depth competitive analysis on them because 1) I've never really been into the scene, so anything I say would be me talking out my rear end, and 2) Unlike in SC1, where campaign units were pretty much identical to their multiplayer counterparts, SC2 has a number of units that have never been available in versus, and even units that are in both will typically have campaign exclusive upgrades. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, by the time we hit Legacy of the Void, there won't be a single unit that acts the same as their competitive version. Wait, I haven't played the first game! Lucky for you, there's a very good in-progress LP of SC1 by JohnKilltrane right over here! You should totally read it because it's cool and good and a lot of units and mechanics are carried over from there! Beyond that, you should at least have some passing knowledge of what happens in the first game, since this is a sequel and all. Spoiler Policy Anything in SC1 and any sidestories that take place before SC2 are fine, anything we haven't reached in-game should be spoiler tagged. Updates: Wings of Liberty Mar Sara 1: The Outlaws Mar Sara 2: Liberation Day Mar Sara 3: Zero Hour Intermission 1 Artifact 1: Smash and Grab Intermission 2 Colonists 1: The Evacuation Intermission 3 Colonists 2: Outbreak Intermission 4 Covert 1: The Devil's Playground Intermission 5 Covert 2: Welcome to the Jungle Intermission 6 Artifact 2: The Dig Intermission 7 Prophecy 1: Whispers of Doom Intermission 8 Prophecy 2: A Sinister Turn Intermission 9 Prophecy 3: Echoes of the Future Intermission 10 Prophecy 4: In Utter Darkness Intermission 11 Intermission 11.2: Pollectric Boogaloo Covert 3: Breakout Intermission 12 Covert 3.5: Ghost of a Chance Intermission 13 Rebellion 1: The Great Train Robbery Intermission 14 Rebellion 2: Cutthroat Intermission 15 Rebellion 3: Engine of Destruction Intermission 16 Rebellion 4: Media Blitz Intermission 17 Rebellion 5: Piercing the Shroud Intermission 18 Artifact 3: The Mobius Factor Intermission 19 Artifact 4: Supernova Intermission 20 Artifact 5: Maw of the Void Intermission 21 Colonist 3: Haven's Fall Intermission 22 Colonist 3.5: Safe Haven Intermission 23 Char 1: The Gates of Hell Intermission 24 Char 2: Belly of the Beast Intermission 25 Char 2.5: Shatter the Sky Char 3: All In Finale Heart of the Swarm Opening Umoja 1: Lab Rat Umoja 2: Back in the Saddle Umoja 3: Rendezvous Intermission 1 Intermission 1.5 Kaldir 1: Harvest of Screams Intermission 2 Kaldir 2: Shoot the Messenger Intermission 3 Kaldir 3: Enemy Within Intermission 4 Zerus 1: Waking the Ancient Intermission 5 Zerus 2: The Crucible Intermission 6 Zerus 3: Supreme Intermission 7 Char 1: Domination Intermission 8 Char 2: Fire in the Sky Intermission 9 Char 3: Old Soldiers Intermission 10 Skygeirr Station 1: Infested Intermission 11 Skygeirr Station 2: Hand of Darkness Intermission 12 Skygeirr Station 3: Phantoms of the Void Intermission 13 Space 1: With Friends Like These... Intermission 14 Space 2: Conviction Intermission 15 Korhal 1: Planetfall Intermission 16 Korhal 2: Death From Above Intermission 17 Terran Unit Overviews Unit Spotlight: Marine Unit Spotlight: Medic Unit Spotlight: Marauder Unit Spotlight: Firebat Unit Spotlight: Hellion Unit Spotlight: Reaper Unit Spotlight: Goliath Unit Spotlight: Siege Tank Tech Spotlight: Base Upgrades Unit Spotlight: Spectre Unit Spotlight: Ghost Unit Spotlight: Diamondback Unit Spotlight: Vulture Unit Spotlight: Wraith Research Spotlight: Zerg Unit Spotlight: Thor Unit Spotlight: Medivac Research Spotlight: Protoss Unit Spotlight: Banshee Unit Spotlight: Battlecruiser Unit Spotlight: Viking Zerg Unit Overviews Unit Spotlight: Zergling Unit Spotlight: Swarm Queen Unit Spotlight: Roach Unit Spotlight: Hydralisk Unit Spotlight: Baneling Unit Spotlight: Aberration Unit Spotlight: Infestor Unit Spotlight: Mutalisk Unit Spotlight: Swarm Host Unit Spotlight: Ultralisk Hero Spotlight: Sarah Kerrigan Co-op Showcase Co-op Showcase 1: Jim Raynor (Ft. TeeQueue) Co-op Showcase 2: Rory Swann (Ft. JackSplater) Co-op Showcase 3: November Terra (Ft. Kith) Co-op Showcase 4: Matt Horner and Mira Han (Ft. MagusofStars) Co-op Showcase 5: Tychus Findlay (Ft. MagusofStars) Bonus Updates: Bonus: Terran Unit Quotes BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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May 31, 2023 22:09
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Reserved.
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May 31, 2023 22:10
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Mar Sara 1: Liberation Day Video: The Deal  We start with the same cinematic used in the announcement trailer, way back in 2007.      The door begins to open.  Revealing...   A man.   On his back is a tattoo that reads, 'Heaven's Devils.'    Remember when this was a sign of quality? When you knew everything was made to perfection before you even bought it? What a fall from grace.     Our man's name is   His shackles are removed, but his feet are locked into the boots.       Machinery starts to spin up.       The framework gets screwed together.  And before our eyes, Starcraft's iconic power armor is assembled around him.                   A hydralisk lunges.   A ship slips between two buildings.   The Queen of Blades gives us a harsh look.   Mutalisks tear through the skies.   Zeratul defends himself against organic high heels. Yes, you heard me right.   A hydralisk gets obliterated.     I must reiterate: You have no loving idea how much hype this one line inspired.    We then immediately cut to the game itself. I'd like to point something out here, namely:  Remember, Starcraft 1 begins in 2499, and Mar Sara got torched by the Protoss shortly after. To quote Starcraft 1: Terran 04: The Jacobs Installation posted:So we're expected to believe that it took just 2 years since the end of Brood War to recover from that and repopulate the planet? And to go even more in-depth: Liberty's Crusade posted:Where the energy beams struck, they burned. The sky itself curdled as the beams pierced through the atmospheric envelope. Air itself was torn away from the planet by the force of the blows. Again. Just 2 years. To fix up a backwater planet. While the Dominion was recovering from the UED and Kerrigan kicking their poo poo in for the entirety of BW. A recurring Thing in Starcraft 2 is the writers completely ignoring reason to do something they wanted. Starcraft 1 started on Mar Sara, so let's make Starcraft 2 start on Mar Sara! Who cares about the fine details! No one will notice! Video: Liberation Day   Instead of just a quick briefing with talking heads before missions, we get actual cutscenes! The power of 2010 technology! Anyways, we drop in on good old Jim Raynor. Last time he we saw him, he was swearing bloody revenge on Kerrigan after she killed Fenix.      He isn't doing so good on that, considering he's knocking back drinks in a seedy bar by himself.       In fact, he's completely forgotten about the whole thing! Jim Raynor is a SAD MAN because he MISSES HIS GIRLFRIEND. He MISSES HIS GIRLFRIEND so loving much that Fenix will never get mentioned in Wings of Liberty. Also, pay no attention to how the closest thing Raynor and Kerrigan had to a romantic moment, even in the side materials, was an off-screen in Liberty's Crusade and that Kerrigan had a bigger romance with a one-off character who was introduced and killed in Uprising. Starcraft 2 very heavily insists that this is TRUE LOVE, you guys.   While Mengsk's voice keeps on going after finishing his line, but his voice has been muffled so much he's incomprehensible. Jimmy's THAT GODDAMN SAD, you guys.        Now that the galaxy is free from a foul, propaganda spewing TV, Jim starts up that computer by his side.        Destroying Dominion authority here will cripple Emperor Mengsk's operations throughout the planet. And that leads into our first mission! Mission screens give you a quick few lines explaining the mission, plus show you what unit you'll unlock for doing it. Starcraft 2 has four difficulties. Casual, Normal, Hard, and Brutal. Higher difficulties, instead of just giving enemies unfair buffs (most of the time), will instead do things like tweak pre-placed enemies or give you less leeway on objectives. They also govern how low you can set your game speed, Casual will let you go all the way down to Slowest, while Hard caps you at Fast and Brutal at Fastest. Since I am Decently Good At Starcraft but also Kinda Suck At Micro, I'll be sticking to Hard for the entire thing.   This has become the hub for all operations on Mar Sara. The Dominion recently pulled troops out of the city, and they are now understrength.Backwater Station is another SC1 callback. It was the location of Terran 02, where you had to fight through some zerg and destroy an Infested Command Center.  Are the locals cooperating?     The mission opens up with Raynor's dropship flying in.  Which then drops off the man himself, plus five Marines.  And then we gain control! Our first mission involves no building at all. Instead, we have to take our little group of Marines and take out the building marked in the top right.  Marines in SC2 are much the same as their SC1 counterparts. They are Man With Gun. They shoot things, and shoot 'em good. They're also substantially stronger thanks to SC2's improved pathfinding and unit groups no longer being capped at 12 people. If you have 100 Marines on hand, you can point them all at a target with a single click.  Jimmy, meanwhile, has the same role as the last time he hit the field waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the Jacobs Installation. He's just a bigger, beefier Marine that can soak some hits early on to keep the little guys alive.  As I start to move up, I'd like to point out the Light - Biological on Jimmy's unit card. Instead of SC1's Normal/Concussive/Explosive damage types, SC2 changes for a more modular approach. Now everything deals base damage to everything else, but some units get a bonus against specific unit tags. Here, Jim is tagged Light and Biological, so any unit that get a bonus against either type will tear through him.  Another change is that the game will mark any lines being spoken by a unit. We can also see a checkpoint, with a number of trashed vehicles at the stop. Looks like the Dominion doesn't want anyone getting out.  Also, we can zoom in!  The game will bring up these tutorial prompts whenever something new comes up. I won't be bothering to show them off, they're all basic things like 'the Marine is your basic infantry unit!'  Pushing up, we run into some burning buildings and a civilian warning us away.  Bullshit posters with barbed wire along the bottom. Mengsk has stepped up his dystopia skills.  Past the sign are our first victims.  Their AI lock on to the first unit to open fire, instantly shredding through this poor Marine, but the magical power of clean pathfinding lets me pull him back to safety while the others mop up.  The first pack dead, I move Jim up in front to soak some hits. His 2 base armor and 200 HP will let him tank shots this early on and preserve my Marine count.  A cutscene starts at the top of the hill.  Commander, destroying the Dominion Holoboards will help incite rebellion against the Dominion. This introduces a new mechanic to SC2: Bonus objectives. Pretty much every mission will have one, and they'll have tasty rewards to incentivize going out of your way.  Not here, mind you, the tutorial missions are just to get you used to the concept. But really, being able to blow up Mengsk's ugly mug is it's own reward.  Just past the holoboard is a gas station, a garage, and what looks like a semi with jet engines strapped on.  Also two dead Marines.  How the hell were you planning on fitting 'gently caress You' in that tiny space, man? Honestly, I think those Marines shot you just for your poor graffiti design.  This is starting to look ugly. Further ahead we get our first checkpoint save. At launch, these were the only way to save mid-mission, with quick saves being added several months la-BATTLE BROTHERS.  SPACE MARINES, TODAY THE ENEMY IS AT OUR DOOR! WE KNOW OUR DUTY AND WE WILL DO IT.  AND IF WE DIE THIS DAY WE DIE IN GLORY, WE DIE HEROES' DEATHS, BUT WE SHALL NOT DIE, NO! IT IS THE ENEMY WHO WILL TASTE DEATH AND DEFEAT!  AS YOU KNOW, MOST OF OUR BATTLE BROTHERS ARE STATIONED IN SPACE, PREPARED TO DEEP STRIKE!  THE CODEX ASTARTES NAMES THIS MANEUVER STEEL RAIN. WE WILL DESCEND UPON THE FOE, WE WILL OVERWHELM THEM - WE WILL LEAVE NONE ALIVE!  WE ARE THE SPACE MARINES! WE ARE THE EMPER-I'm sorry I think I blacked out there for a second. The last thing I remember was starting the big fight in the town square early to thin out the enemy and keep more of my reinforcements alive.  Jimmy's hurt, sure, but now I have enough bodies to steamroll the rest of the mission. If I sat back and let the drop pod Marines start the fight, a few of them would have died by the time I moved my starting force in.  Another holoboard is to the southeast of the square.   Go blow that board in the center.  This is bad.And the fourth is to southwest. A fun little detail about voice lines is that the game tracks the status of the speaker. If the speaker dies, the line cuts off instantly.  To the northwest is a road leading to the base.  And another cutscene.     The man at the end of the line takes a few steps back.    SC2's vastly improved pathfinding results in a new bit of tech in combat. See, if I just attack moved my army into this fight, the first guy would stop and start shooting, which would force the second guy to walk around him so he could start shooting, which would force the third guy to walk around both of them so he could start shooting. This would result in most of my army not actually being able to attack as they slowly formed a circle around my target. The solution?  A lovely little technique called stutterstepping. You have your army attack-move at an enemy.  Then, during the delay between attacks, a normal move command.  Then another a-move. This lets your entire army get in range of an enemy and fire on them as one.  And with this many Marines, a single volley is enough to kill an opposing Marine.  Also even the Dominion transport has a gun mounted.   Thank you Raynor! We know you wouldn't forget us! There's more people still bein' held up ahead!But I'm able to clear out the fight and take down the fifth holoboard with only two casualties.  Just up the road is the final holoboard.  We're with ya, Raiders!Again, we get nothing for that.  Approaching the base causes the alarm to start blaring, and also makes all the civilians rush the place.  Where they will then proceed to firebomb the bastards.  We also got some monuments to Mengsk we can destroy.  Again, optional, but fun.  Right in front of the HQ is a new unit: the Viking.  They're a dedicated air-to-air fighter, that can transform into an anti-ground walker. We'll be seeing more of them later.  Bullets and firebombs take care of these two in short order.   And the HQ doesn't last much longer.      At the end of every mission is a score card, which lists how well you did and any achievements you got. Blizzard also added in a new achievement for every mission in the game with during SC2's 10th anniversary. Liberation Day gets: Quick Sign Off - Destroy all 6 Dominion Holoboards in the "Liberation Day" mission in less than 3 minutes on Normal difficulty. They're all made to be done on Normal, as some of the conditions can be rather difficult to accomplish. I don't have every achievement, nor will I get them by the end of this LP, but they're fun to see. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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May 31, 2023 22:10
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oh dear sweet Jesus. I gave up on this after Heart of the Swarm, so it'll be exciting to see someone else suffer. If I might make a suggestion, though? Reduce your screenshots to 900 pixels or so wide, it makes the thread a LOT more readable.
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May 31, 2023 22:18
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Bookmarked IMMEDIATELY I love this silly game
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May 31, 2023 22:24
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This was the first modern Blizzard product I stopped buying the expansions for. Going to be really interesting to see in detail what I missed.
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May 31, 2023 22:30
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So Mar Sara was terraformed by Kel-Morian Combine which was a intact political organization?
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May 31, 2023 22:30
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Ooooh, goody, here we go. Worth noting: that initial teaser trailer with the very large man getting bolted into the Marine armor? The original teaser version didn't have Arcturus' narration. No dialogue except for the one big line from the big man.
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May 31, 2023 22:30
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Man, this game. The amount they've botched the story is impressive and we're already seeing it. But the campaigns are incredibly fun to play though. Blizz may have completely lost their way on the writing but the campaign gameplay and missions were excellent. PurpleXVI posted:If I might make a suggestion, though? Reduce your screenshots to 900 pixels or so wide, it makes the thread a LOT more readable.
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May 31, 2023 22:39
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PurpleXVI posted:oh dear sweet Jesus. I gave up on this after Heart of the Swarm, so it'll be exciting to see someone else suffer.   The problem with that is it makes text and small details a lot harder to make out, which is bad when you're doing a game that has a lot of text and small details. I'm basically starting this with the assumption that it'll never be able to be archived, barring Baldurk coming in out of nowhere and bumping the archive's size limits by a ton. Hell, half the reason I started at this size is because Killtrane is also working at 1920px. ChaosDragon posted:So Mar Sara was terraformed by Kel-Morian Combine which was a intact political organization? Still leaves the tiny issue of the sheer amount of resources that would have been needed to fix up Mar Sara, when even in-universe it was considered a backwater planet so out of the way that the Confederacy was alright with experimenting with zerg there. Like, of all the planets fried by the protoss, you pick Mar Sara? Not even Chau Sara as a PR thing for fixing up the first planet lost to the alien menace?
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May 31, 2023 22:42
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BisbyWorl posted:
It's less about archiving, it's more that with the screenshots that big I'm finding them actively eye-straining. I can personally still read the text perfectly well at 900px, but even a midpoint like 1000px or 1200px would help a lot.
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May 31, 2023 22:45
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There minerals created from the glassing?
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May 31, 2023 22:51
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PurpleXVI posted:It's less about archiving, it's more that with the screenshots that big I'm finding them actively eye-straining. I can personally still read the text perfectly well at 900px, but even a midpoint like 1000px or 1200px would help a lot. Mmm. I already have the next mission finished, but on Terran 03 I'll try stepping down to 1200px and see how that looks.
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May 31, 2023 22:56
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BisbyWorl posted:Mmm. I already have the next mission finished, but on Terran 03 I'll try stepping down to 1200px and see how that looks. Even if you've recorded at a higher resolution, Irfanview, among others, can easily batch-resize all your screenshots(or do things like cutting out the cinematic black bars on cutscenes).
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May 31, 2023 22:57
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Alright, there's a big, understated elephant in the room between sc1 and sc2 and that's already apparent. The events of SC2 take place 4 years after brood war. But everything in the story would only make sense, that is, the parts that do make sense, if it was somewhere closer to 40 years. Or at least a generation's worth. On a similar note as regards scale, it was already happening in brood war and definitely got amped up in between SC1 and SC2, but in the original, the confederacy was 13 planets. And seven of those god mulched! The Dominion in this is implied to be dozens, likely well over a hundred.
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May 31, 2023 23:13
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PurpleXVI posted:Even if you've recorded at a higher resolution, Irfanview, among others, can easily batch-resize all your screenshots(or do things like cutting out the cinematic black bars on cutscenes). Yeah, but I've already uploaded to lpix and don't want to just leave a full update's worth of images that'll never get used floating around baldurk's servers.
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May 31, 2023 23:15
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NewMars posted:Alright, there's a big, understated elephant in the room between sc1 and sc2 and that's already apparent. The events of SC2 take place 4 years after brood war. But everything in the story would only make sense, that is, the parts that do make sense, if it was somewhere closer to 40 years. Or at least a generation's worth. Maybe after Brood War they went back home and conquered the Earth and its attendant colonies.
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May 31, 2023 23:17
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Human Kerrigan got quite a bit whiter between games. Well, that or Raynor uses a very questionable filter on his paper photos.
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May 31, 2023 23:17
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Ahhh, SC2. Of all the video games that exist, this is certainly one of them. I fell off the SC train a long time ago but in the past couple years I ended up finding some ridiculous challenge runs on youtube that got me a bit back into it - never to play competitively, but as a casual observer. I never cared too much about the plot, so all the retcons, holes, and plain dumb stuff didn't bug me too much. Still, an LP should be fun to keep up with. Good luck!
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May 31, 2023 23:19
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theshim posted:as a casual observer. I never cared too much about the plot, so all the retcons, holes, and plain dumb stuff didn't bug me too much. Still, an LP should be fun to keep up with. Good luck! Don't worry, I care a lot about it, so I'll shout enough about it to make up for your silence. 
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May 31, 2023 23:25
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I, personally, am only familiar with the earlier books since I read them a bunch of a kid. Did you know that Mengsk got duped by the recruitment office as a kid? Because he got duped into joining the military right after high school.
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May 31, 2023 23:32
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Man. After the SC1 LP came back briefly I got on a bit of Starcraft kick, started replaying both games. There's something about the setting that does manage to grab me very well, even in the quagmire of bullshit that is this game. I have so many ideas about how Starcraft 2 could have been written better. Setting this game twenty years after the first would be a start, with the Dominion making an active effort to (re)colonise more of the sector now that every other faction is either weakened or destroyed. I wouldn't even have Raynor be the protagonist. Let him and his crew have settled among the Protoss worlds while Mengsk uses the idea of them as a boogeyman to justify his authoritarianism. But I don't want to get ahead of myself about all the problems we're going to see. The gameplay really is great, though. And you can really see the efforts they went to to redesign the factions around how they ended up getting played in Starcraft 1. All three armies manage to feel significantly more powerful while still being more or less balanced, which is always good. Hell, as far as I can tell pro Starcraft 2 is thriving better these days than the original, now that it's been long enough that you can't chalk that up to recency bias. The main downside, at least when it comes to the e-sport, is that the control and pathfinding improvements mean the optimal strategy most of the time is to gather your army into a deathball and smash it into the enemy rather than fighting for territorial control over many fronts. Both games are very much worth watching if you're into that kind of thing.
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May 31, 2023 23:35
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I confess, I found the gameplay pretty tepid. Most missions could be solved by just producing a lot of a single all-rounder unit type and doing an attack move order.
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May 31, 2023 23:38
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I think the single best thing about Starcraft 2 is the co-op mode, which I have played entirely too much of. I've seen nothing like it anywhere else, and figuring out team-ups to stomp the comp with was a lot of fun.
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May 31, 2023 23:53
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Oh nice! I hope there's going to be more of what's going on in the SC1 thread. Or even if it isn't. I don't care. I liked the updated graphics of SC2, and the gameplay felt significantly easier (I guess). There was a lot of improvement in general so far as gameplay is concerned. But yeah, the story was a bit weird. And yeah, the romance thing came out of nowhere, because Raynor flirted with Kerrigan, but it was more in a "He'll hit on anything in a dress" sort of way. I mean, it was an unsubtle way to introduce that Kerrigan is a telepath, and that was it. Was he even broken up about her getting killed in SC1? Where is that post...
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Jun 1, 2023 00:00
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painedforever posted:Was he even broken up about her getting killed in SC1? Where is that post... He was definitely angry at Mengsk for abandoning her on Tarsonis, and there's a line in the Protoss campaign where Tassadar (or was it Zeratul?) comments on his feelings for her on Char. They definitely had a bond when they were fighting together in the Sons of Korhal. But then all of Brood War is supposed to have happened, and by the end of it Raynor had sworn bloody vengeance on her for killing someone he'd developed a stronger (if less flirty) bond with. Blizzard seemed really determined to ignore everything that happened in Brood War besides the character deaths.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:05
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Raynor got Big Mad that Mengsk intentionally threw Kerrigan into the middle of a Zerg Hive just to leave her there after she'd completed her objective, but that was more a "don't leave a fellow soldier behind / don't be a massive dick" kind of a thing. Then he went rogue because who knows who would be sacrificed for the cause next.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:08
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NewMars posted:On a similar note as regards scale, it was already happening in brood war and definitely got amped up in between SC1 and SC2, but in the original, the confederacy was 13 planets. And seven of those god mulched! The Dominion in this is implied to be dozens, likely well over a hundred. ChaosDragon posted:So Mar Sara was terraformed by Kel-Morian Combine which was a intact political organization? These two bits together really highlight something about SC2's writing that annoys me, aside from the really obvious issues it'll have. SC1's relative minimalism worked strongly to its advantage. We'd hear lots of names but little in actual detail, but used suggestively enough you were invited to imagine how to fill in the blanks on your own. The Confederacy was stretched thin, so the Sons of Korhal could operate. There were other human governments doing their own thing. The Koprulu Sector was still large and terrifying, with the zerg and protoss coming out of seemingly nowhere. Now it feels a lot more filled in, but in a way that's not informative. It makes me feel like I know less about the universe despite them saying more. It's just that they don't say much more that's useful to understanding.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:10
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To be fair, the conversation Raynor and Kerrigan had at the start of the New Gettsyburg mission did sort of imply there was some off-screen development of feelings between the two.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:11
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As horrible as all the writing right out the gate is in SC2, it's by far and away the most fun single player RTS experience ever made. Every campaign on Brutal is an absolute joy to play with a ton of variety in both mission objectives and how to approach them, and you can do all kinds of hilariously whacky poo poo once you really know what you're doing.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:19
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Yay! I loving LOVE Wings of Liberty. The rest of Starcraft 2 is.... iffier. This whole introductory section is nice and straightforward, but it still has a lot of nuance. We're introduced to Tychus, but at this point we needn't assume he's anything special. If you read the Starcraft 1 Manual and/or the computer screens and know what "indentured" means, then you already know that a lot of Terran Marines are penal brigade soldiers. For all we know every person pulled out of their cell and handed their rifle and power armor gets a slightly personalized variant of that little propaganda speech. Of course, when he does appear, it then creates a source of dramatic irony for the player, as we can make assumptions about why he was released. The track that plays over the trailer is called "The Deal:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhcHJKcsX6A and it seems almost out-of-place in Starcraft. It's a bombastic, horn-heavy and often mournful military anthem, of the type one might expect to play over an image of the Battle of Stalingrad... and that indeed seems to be the point. Subconsciously we're being introduced early to the level of authoritarianism the Dominion and Mengsk have embraced, and by extension the falseness of the glory and the true extent of the horror that he speaks of in his speech to the convict. This juxtaposes in an interesting way with Tychus and his armor, not something shiny and new ready to walk a military parade in Berlin or Red Square, but well-worn, scarred, and covered in markings that represent the wearer's individuality. That's not even talking about the symbolism of that big ol' stogey the man's chomping on behind his visor. There is always a fundamental rift in a fascist society, because no matter how clean the streets are they were built by hands covered in blood, but we're being given hints of a second rift here. Starcraft is a Western, and the humans who live here are cowboys. If you'll forgive the term (given Starcraft's unfortunate but sadly genre-savvy use of Confederate iconography) the heart of Starcraft Terrans is a Rebel Heart. Mengsk needs to use that, but whether he can truly control it is another matter entirely. On the far side of this prelude we get either our actual Introduction or Chapter 1 of the story proper, where we meet our protagonist, Jim Raynor. The fact that Jimmy is the protagonist is itself an interesting choice because in the original Starcraft the player themselves is the main character. Granted, they were a faceless and voiceless commander who changed in each campaign, nevertheless they were treated as a distinct individual. Indeed, Raynor clearly considers the human commander a friend fairly early in the first campaign. Making our point of view character into one of the established major personages of the story instead of a blank-ish slate for the player to imprint on is a pretty major shift that will have repercussions throughout. The bar scene firmly puts us back into the realm of the western. Everything from the whiskey to the engraved, silver-plated six-shooter to the yellow-tinted lighting to the swooning guitar and harmonica of "Public Enemy:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWlSTBv8i-8 screams that we have just walked into a Clint Eastwood Joint. A couple of details always stick out to me here. We get a quick glimpse of Mengsk's new outfit, an ostentatious Nazi-Officer-Meets-Roman-Emperor affair, as well as his passion for Wolf Iconography. Nobody ever accused Starcraft of being subtle. Another is the oddly strong language used by the reporter when questioning him, accusing him of "squandering" money chasing down Raynor in the face of potential Zerg aggression. Now, this actually IS subtle, a brilliant depiction of controlled opposition. She asks what sounds like a hard question, but all she's really done is offer him a lay-up so he can give a long, unchallenged propaganda line about what a terrorist our hero is and why he needs to be stopped even though he's also weak, washed-up and incompetent. The classic fascist paradox of an enemy that is both strong enough to justify endless militarism and weak enough that they are subhuman and a detriment to society that can't be permitted. Even the off-handed mention of the Zerg threat serves as a useful boogeyman to silence real opposition. Mengsk's famous speech from Starcraft 1 establishing the Dominion framed the whole enterprise as necessary because of the threat of the alien menace, after all. Even the setting, Mar Sara, is useful for reinforcing this. The OP rolled his eyes at this choice seeing it as empty fanservice and/or ham-fisted "full circle" storytelling because it's where the first game, and Raynor's story, started. I think it's a perfect sign of the decadence of false prosperity of the Dominion's fascism. Remember, Arcturus made his capital on Korhol, a desert planet consumed by the Terran Confederacy's nuclear hellfire and still suffering the ravages of radioactive fallout, just for the sake of the symbolism. The resources he squandered making it not just livable, but the center of government and commerce for an interstellar empire (and we'll see how successful he was at that in this game, especially compared to how the place looked in Brood War) are staggering to contemplate. In light of that, why not recolonize Mar Sara? What better empty gesture toward your government's greatness and triumph over the alien than to go back to a world they glassed and rebuild it, not matter how absurd the expense or how much suffering the colonist have to endure to make it happen? Sure, they have to live in a hellish police state and struggle to eke out a subsistence lifestyle, but at least you got to run up the flag and cut a ribbon! Finally, we should address Jim's character as presented. OP isn't the only person to express frustration with Raynor's pining for Kerrigan in this story, but I never really took issue with it. For one thing, it's thematically right on point with the classic "The Cowboy Gets Revenge," plot this whole sequence is homaging. The personal connection underlying the grander idealism which itself is hiding under many layers of gruff individualism is the traditional empathetic thread this type of story relies on to hook the audience early and keep them rooting for the hero even when he goes astray. It's not at all weird to see it here. Expanded universe materials aside, it's not like Starcraft 1 or Brood War didn't make it very clear that Jim and Sarah had feelings for each other multiple times, even if they're being way more explicit here. I personally think its a sensible direction for him after the events of Brood War. One who objects to Jim keeping his torch for Kerrigan alive after her betrayal and Fenix's death could just as easily argue that its weird Raynor is right back to fighting a rebellion against Mengsk when he'd more-or-less moved past that in the last game. He spent that whole story trying to rise above his anger and put aside the petty struggles of Terran factions and the divides separating the three races. It was necessary to defeat the threat of the UED and their enslaved Overmind. He even saved Arcturus' life and helped put him back on the Dominion throne. Why should he go back to caring about politics when the "Bitch Queen of the Universe," is out there somewhere as an existential threat to human and protoss? The answer is because Kerrigan's last betrayal broke him. He spiraled back down into who he was before the Brood Wars happened, embraced again his old grudges and old battles because he doesn't see anything on the horizon worth living for anymore. Embracing his feelings for Sarah despite what she did, creating a false dichotomy in his mind between her human and Zerg selves that he doesn't even manage to keep consistently intact (because some part of him knows its bullshit), and letting her memory serve as sort of an emotional crutch to keep himself moving forward is just as much a regression as fighting this battle against the Dominion at all. In that vein, we're going to see that his self-labeled revolution is more pantomime than than he's willing to admit, at least for him personally, at least at the moment. We'll see this idea be more clearly revealed, developed, and played out in a lot of neat ways as Wings of Liberty pushes forward.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:27
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To me, Wings of Liberty amounts to
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Jun 1, 2023 00:42
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Cythereal posted:literal whitewashing of Kerrigan I confess, as I remember Kerrigan in SC1, wasn't she also red-haired and pale-skinned then? I don't recall ever having anything to go on beyond her unit, uh, face thing on the status bar that would indicate otherwise. The only real design difference I notice is that they removed her dreads.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:45
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PurpleXVI posted:I confess, as I remember Kerrigan in SC1, wasn't she also red-haired and pale-skinned then? I don't recall ever having anything to go on beyond her unit, uh, face thing on the status bar that would indicate otherwise. The only real design difference I notice is that they removed her dreads. She had red hair, but it was crimson red rather than ginger. And her skin colour was white-ish but more ambiguous. She might well have been intended to be white (or at least, considering the developers and era, not intended to not be white) but it wasn't that obvious.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:51
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PurpleXVI posted:I confess, as I remember Kerrigan in SC1, wasn't she also red-haired and pale-skinned then? I don't recall ever having anything to go on beyond her unit, uh, face thing on the status bar that would indicate otherwise. The only real design difference I notice is that they removed her dreads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie_3zGFZKFI Yeah, I think they just gave her white girl dreads because it was the 90s and that's what progressivism was. She's on the tan side, you could 100% justify a feeling that she might be POC if you wanted to, but I don't think Blizzard devs in the 90s had the wherewithal to imagine a black woman could have red hair and green eyes. The name itself is of Irish etymology.
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Jun 1, 2023 01:02
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I'd figured she was just a standard sci-fi mixed-race person of no particular ethnicity. Certainly not this green-eyed red-haired Disney princess with flawless porcelain skin.
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Jun 1, 2023 01:22
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Oh, yeah, I won't disagree that she's definitely whiter, she's been prettied up in an odd way that more or less erases what she originally looked like, and removing the dreads was an odd choice, too, I thought you implied she was clearly of some minority ethnicity in SC1 and that had been deleted. My bad.
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Jun 1, 2023 01:27
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, yeah, I won't disagree that she's definitely whiter, she's been prettied up in an odd way that more or less erases what she originally looked like, and removing the dreads was an odd choice, too, I thought you implied she was clearly of some minority ethnicity in SC1 and that had been deleted. My bad. I do remember her looking a bit weirder in the original game and then overly prettied up in the sequel (and the cancelled Ghost game, but yeah, I always shrugged that off as a "game" thing. Y'know, that things look funny in games because they can't quite render them right. So characters have hair that looks like dreadlocks because you can't render individual strands of hair. Or the face has funny features so that they can animate the face better. Tenebrais posted:He was definitely angry at Mengsk for abandoning her on Tarsonis, and there's a line in the Protoss campaign where Tassadar (or was it Zeratul?) comments on his feelings for her on Char. They definitely had a bond when they were fighting together in the Sons of Korhal. That was kinda my read of it too. I was all like, "Yeah, they turned it into a romance because she's literally the only female character in the game." I mean, if it weren't her, they'd have to get Raynor to romance the computer AI lady. Kinda like what they did with the female elf character in the Hobbit movie series...
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Jun 1, 2023 02:28
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Tenebrais posted:Blizzard seemed really determined to ignore everything that happened in Brood War besides the character deaths. Pretty much. The UED especially got sort of memory-holed as an old shame.
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Jun 1, 2023 03:05
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painedforever posted:I was all like, "Yeah, they turned it into a romance because she's literally the only female character in the game." I mean, if it weren't her, they'd have to get Raynor to romance the computer AI lady. Maybe I'm crazy, but I always got a romantic vibe between Raynor and Kerrigan. The first words they exchange are her reading his mind about how he'd like to bang her with kind of an amused lilt to her chiding, and after he's initially embarrassed he goes back to flirting with her soon after, which implies they're both interested. Both the dialogue and the voice performances of their exchange in the mission where Kerrigan is lost to the Zerg drip with romantic tension. He tries to talk her out of her loyalty to the mission because it's so dangerous, citing that she doesn't owe it to Mengsk just because he saved her, implying that he would never ask the same when he points out how many times he's saved her life. She says the Knight In Shining Armor routine suits him sometimes before making it clear she's doing this to try and save the people of Tarsonis, not because Arcturus told her to. While they're not completely dropping their defenses, it's a pretty frank admission of their deeper motives and emotional vulnerabilities, and its not hard to read between the lines on what's being left unsaid, especially when Jim is the last person she calls out to before being lost and his first words in the next mission are a self-flagellating comment about how he should have been there with her. When she's in the Chrysalis, Jim is the person who she calls out to by name in the cutscene (though of course her psychic emanations reach others) and Jim takes his whole army to rescue her despite his own obvious doubts that what he thinks the visions mean could possibly be true. And when she has him in her grasp, and talking about all her new power and how she loves being Zerg, the first thing she does is let him walk away with his life. I dunno, it always seemed to run way deeper than just being comrades in arms to me, and not just because they're The Main Breeding Pair among the principal cast.
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Jun 1, 2023 03:07
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