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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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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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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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BisbyWorl posted:Then nine years later we finally get the continuation to his story and he immediately drops it with no fanfare and starts staring longingly at a photo of her. It's just incredibly unsatisfying if you've been wondering how the scrappy underdog would manage to beat the Queen Bitch of the Universe, which sours the whole thing. I don't totally disagree. That moment was certainly burned into my brain as well when I beat that mission in High School. Well, there will be plenty of opportunity to talk about it more in-depth as the LP moves deeper into the story. I don't want to get ahead of things. Kerrigan's handling in the entire Starcraft II trilogy was full to bursting with problems, unforced errors and questionable editorial choices. For now I'll just stick to what I said in that initial effort post, which is that I was OK with the idea of Jim pining for Kerrigan in her human form and trying to put up a mental wall between that woman and the Zerg Queen she became because it was representative of the fact that he starts this story far more broken by the events of Brood War than he lets on, or maybe even realizes himself.
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Jun 1, 2023 03:32
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I mean, I'm not going to defend the timeline. It only being 4 years since Brood War (according to the reporter, I don't know anything about Starcraft's expanded canon except the lore that was in the instruction manual and the official strategy guide that was packed in with the box set) is stupid. It should have been at least 10 if not more, and I don't think that extra period would have necessitated any more radical changes to the characters designs. Nobody really cares how old Batman is and if its plausible for him to be able to maintain his muscle mass. I'm just looking at what's going on on a thematic level. Side note, World of Warcraft has this problem constantly. The official line from the company I believe is that every expansion has been an in-universe year, and this current expansion just had 4 year time skip which is supposed to justify a lot of changes but doesn't really account for the fact that it's been like 10 years of constant war and near-apocalypse before that. I just don't think anybody in the Blizzard writers room has any concept of time scale.
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Jun 1, 2023 05:02
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:the wider universe of Wings of Liberty can be summed up very quickly with "trying to have your cake and eat it too" Accurate
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Jun 2, 2023 02:02
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There's not overmuch to say about this update. We formally meet Tychus, and as OP mentioned we don't need the prior relationship to be over-explained by those novels. One went to prison, one became Our Hero. Jim doesn't seem to think there's any bad blood between them, and Tychus doesn't let on that he's holding any grudge. The dialogue is mostly mechanical and serves the purposes of establishing their pre-existing relationship and the plot point that's going to have them working together, so there's not much to read into it. It's probably worth noting that Tychus needles Jim a bit on his status as a revolutionary, as if doubting its veracity, and that Jim does lightly stand up for himself and his cause despite the fact that there's nobody there to judge what he says and based on their interactions he'd have no reason to lie or put up a front to Tychus. That's about the only thing in the text for this section that ISN'T just necessary plot business and VERY basic character establishment, so we can keep it in mind for later. We also get the start of an important element of dramatic irony in the story. We, the player, immediately know that Mengsk let Tychus go, and our very first assumption (reinforced at every turn by his characterization as a shady rear end in a top hat) has to be that he's here to kill Raynor. Except he doesn't, and we're left to wonder why, and what his true agenda is. Has he double-crossed Mengsk right out of the gate and gone into business for himself? Or is this all part of a deeper design on our villain's part? The UNN News Reports become a fun (if, again, pretty basic) running gag in these inter-mission scenes. It's a ham-fisted and cartoonish depiction of state-controlled media that masquerades as independent journalism, compared to more serious takes on the trope like Babylon 5's ISN, but Starcraft has never been afraid to embrace silliness alongside the edgy drama. Character-wise, we see that despite the fact that she was used as Controlled Opposition in Mengsk's press conference, Kate Lockwell is not a willing tool of the Dominion, even though the institution that she works for is. Jim's dialogue toward the photo of Kerrigan is the first of many odd choices they make regarding their relationship. I think there intent here to illustrate how complex his feelings toward Kerrigan really are, that he would say SOMETIMES he thinks it would have been better if she were already dead, which in turn implies that there are other times he's glad she's still alive. That's not terribly consistent with how this part of the plot is going to carry itself forward in this game, let alone how he ended Brood War. Theoretically one could argue that that's the point. He's in so much conflict with himself about Kerrigan he doesn't really know what he feels, and any statements he makes about her ought to be regarded as suspect until he actually takes action to back them up. I don't know if I would swallow that argument though, and I'm more positive on this game's story than most. I think it was just a bad call, a stumble right out of the gate that could have been improved pretty easily. From a gameplay perspective, there's not much to say about the first level, but it is a first taste of just how different this campaign is going to be compared to the old Starcraft games, and RTS games in general. Few entries in this genre are willing to diverge between the campaign and multiplayer designs so much, and its one of the things I most enjoy about Starcraft 2. Also, I hope whoever came up with the opening and closing Supply Depots was given a raise. And a promotion. And possible a medal of some kind. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jun 3, 2023 |
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Jun 3, 2023 07:10
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Szarrukin posted:
It's not meant to be a plot twist when its in the introductory movie. Though there is the minor twist that the actual mission Mengsk gave him is to kill Kerrigan, not Raynor.
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Jun 3, 2023 10:06
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Aces High posted:You know, I never realised the time between the end of Brood War and this was only 2 years. I remembered thinking (the first time playing the game) that it was a 12 year skip, and that was why things were "better". Mar Sara got fixed up, the Dominion has stabilized, Kerrigan is just off chillin' like a villain. Drawing the line on tone to some degree seems more likely to me. Starcraft 2 tonally has a lot less grit and grimness than the originals, and while they don't want to totally abandon that there's a pretty clear effort to make everything just a little cleaner and less Gen X Subtextual Edgy. They didn't go as far as they did when they did the same with Diablo 3, or something like the shift from the original Star Wars to the Prequel trilogy, but its similar. Maybe Indianna Jones Crystal Skull is a good point of comparison. That wasn't nearly as big a tone shift as the other examples I mentioned but there was a distinct uptick in family friendliness and cartoonishness.
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Jun 4, 2023 04:03
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Unless I'm completely misremembering, or it was in some side material, Starcraft 1 never brought up that Raynor was an outlaw before he was a law man. It's a fun little nugget and a common trope in Cowboy Movies, which again shows how deep into the Western genre Starcraft 2 is intending to go. OP mentioned it in a previous update, but this is where we get our first textual confirmation that Tychus spent the entirety of the first game and the Brood Wars on ice, and knows nothing but vague second-hand prison gossip about both the Zerg and Protoss, which is interesting given future events. The existence of Matt Horner as a character is fascinating to me, though I'm guessing OP will talk about it so I'll just say that and leave it for now. Also I fell in love when they showed off the new Battleship with this rescue. Also I love the Spine Crawlers, because while they are not as cool as a giant underground death tongue, they do help me get over the angst regarding whether or not I was placing my defenses optimally as a Zerg player, in much the same way the retractable supply depots and salvageable bunkers do when I play Terran. The ability to easily reposition quiets my brain worms, and you can't put a price on that.
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Jun 10, 2023 10:32
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I was too busy to post during the last update, but  at me because I too believed that Horner was actually the PC from Starcraft 1 and that's what I was so excited to talk about. Bummer. I do still like Matt as a character though. His relationship with Raynor and how both of them influence each other will be fun to talk about as the story goes on. As it stands, at this point in the story he seems like a real douchebag, but we also know that Tychus is up to something, either playing Mengsk who we know freed him or our Protagonist who's sticking up for him and isn't aware that there's a knife coming.Swann's a fun minor character, although I enjoy the lore dumps we'll get in his armory more than him for the most part. He'll get a couple of moments to really shine though. One of the things most worth talking about here is that Billions death count for Kerrigans new, unprovoked Zerg invasion (starting from the assumption that we can trust that number on the Dominion Propaganda news, in this case I think we can). I mentioned this before, but in the grand scheme of Starcraft Kerrigan did not have a ton of fully innocent blood on her hands compared to most of the other villainous characters. Kerrigan never even went to Aiur in Starcraft 1, and most of the engagements she was involved in directly were pretty small scale compared to the Zerg's big bodycount events, like planetary invasions. Most of her time was spent handling her own business or fighting purely military objectives. Even when we get to Brood War, the majority of her crimes are pretty personal in nature. She betrays allies, kills named characters, wipes out the UED and other military opponents without mercy, corrupts Rashagal and uses Zeratul, but the only Mass Casualty event you can actually lay at her feet that wasn't purely military is the city of Telamantros. If you really wanted to you could even argue that Duran is more responsible for that than her because it was his plan and there's not really indication that she knew what would happen when he set those bombs off, especially because we the players soon learn that Duran has his own agenda and is not loyal to Kerrigan at all. There's even some evidence that Kerrigan regrets how far she goes in Brood War, such as her choice to end the slaughter after killing Duke and Fenix and then again after crushing the three fleets that came for her on Char (sans the UED, which she killed for the arguably practical reason of keeping Earth away for good). Granted, this is just one perspective you can take on Kerrigan's actions, casting her in the most favorable possible light, and only accounts for the in-game story and not any expanded materials. But my point here is not to stan for Kerrigan or claim she did nothing wrong, merely to point out that the writer's choice to lay a completely unambiguous genocide at her feet in the opening act of this game when there was room to debate it before is god drat bizarre. Even without talking about what happens later in the plot, just the fact that they chose to start the game with Raynor looking back fondly on the human Kerrigan despite his Brood War pledge to kill her, clearly creating a mental separation between that woman and the Queen of Blades, and then right after they did that they had Kerrigan slaughter billions of people for no apparent reason... it's one of the strangest and (imo) most ill-conceived choices they made in this narrative. It casts a long shadow over all of Starcraft 2's story and, in classic blizzard fashion, they barely seem to recognize that it does so. I don't even think this Blitzkreig Slaughter up again in the future in any significant way. As for this Protoss Mission, I really enjoyed the addition of Protoss Factions in this trilogy beyond the High/Dark Templar, it did a lot to benefit them I think, especially given what's been going on with the "main" protoss that we'll see soon. Even if in this game the Tal'Darim are pretty one-note and just an excuse to let us fight Protoss without it being weird given that Raynor is their friend, they're a good start to giving the race more political nuance/realism. The OP also did a great job illustrating how Wings of Liberty tutorializes new players on tactics, strategy and unit function through direct gameplay and mission design, which is one of my favorite things about Starcraft 2, even if it can be a bit dull for an advanced player. My other favorite thing is how you customize your army using the special campaign resources you gather through gameplay, which is not a common thing in the RTS genre and we've only begun to scratch the surface on how far SC2 takes that concept.
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Jun 17, 2023 21:12
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I'll say one thing for Raynor's speech, I do appreciate how thick is lays on the "WE COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT TRUSTING EACH OTHER, BEST FRIEND TYCHUS FINDLAY!" when its juxtaposed with that final little dialogue the pair have at camp where Tychus is talking about pardons from Mengsk and tossing out the idea that Kerrigan might not deserve to be saved to take his friend's temperature on the endgame for all this. If the words hadn't hit him somewhere soft, he probably wouldn't have bothered.
Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 17:48
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VostokProgram posted:it is pretty funny that Jimmy, Arcturus, and Tychus are the Last Space Southerners. in the hands of better writers this could have been a reconstruction analogy or something Every western is a reconstruction analogy if you try hard enough
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Nov 30, 2023 09:09
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Here's a youtube short I found that seems relevant to the thread https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Kapf8tPsw
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Dec 2, 2023 21:26
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JohnKilltrane posted:Absolutely. This is one of my favourite missions for this reason. Just good clean fun. It's especially nice as a breather level on Brutal before the absolute meat-grinder of... well, we'll see. I guess its because Raynor is the main character and if he were totally ignorant of the possibility of a betrayal all the dramatic focus would be on Tychus? Maybe they should have just made him the main character, that'd have been pretty interesting. Seeing Jim's shifting priorities and indecision from the outside and leaving the fate of the player's avatar so far up in the air would made for some high drama.
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Dec 4, 2023 20:57
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JohnKilltrane posted:Like, in universe, yeah, for someone to make a connection that "Hey, Narud is Duran spelled backwards, this old white scientist dude must be that lieutenant from a few years back, just in a different body" would be completely off the wall. Like that is moon man talk, it's a completely unhinged theory that no character could rattle off without sounding like Koprulu Alex Jones. 
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Dec 6, 2023 19:11
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PurpleXVI posted:You know in a setting where body snatchers and ancient aliens are both provably real, having a Koprulu Alex Jones as a side character or radio show alternative to the official Mengsk News Network would've been a pretty funny and obvious slam dunk. Brings to mind Babylon 5 and how Garibaldi, a fairly staunch "Law And Order But Also Pretty Libertarian If You're A 'Good Guy,'" 90's-rear end Conservative was one of the loudest and most aggressive voices of opposition to actual fascism. Boy, wasn't that a nice fantasy?
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Dec 6, 2023 20:09
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What the gently caress? I've never even seen that. Apparently the bug that stops it from playing is easy to to trigger. That doesn't even make sense with the direction of her character in HotS. What were they smoking?
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Dec 9, 2023 10:31
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:Didn't the Pondering show us that the Overmind infested Kerrigan with the express purpose of creating an agent that could act outside of whatever was ~*corrupting*~ it? Kerrigan actually being under the control of the big bad the whole time doesn't just fail to make sense in the context of SC1, it makes no sense in the context of this game. This is a great point. They included a line of dialogue that makes no sense with the plot of the first game, the previous game, the current game AND the next game and for what? The most vapid possible idea of romance? Like, I was more into the Raynor/Kerrigan romance plot element than most even going back to the original games, and even I am dumbfounded.
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Dec 9, 2023 12:04
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Felinoid posted:Unfortunately I've replayed SC1 a lot more recently than BW (even doing another run at present to quench the RTS itch while we get into bits of SC2 that aren't free), and the zerg mission where Kerrigan hatches has a big fuckin' plot point about her having sent psi dreams from her cocoon to Raynor and Mengsk to come save her. Naturally when she does hatch and confronts Raynor (Mengsk sent Duke, who doesn't bother to talk during the mission), she is just pleased as punch about her new power and sends Raynor packing, minus most of his men's organs. By itself, there are multiple reasons she might have gone that way, including her simply changing mentally as well as physically. But when you put another thing of her reaching out, while the Queen of Blades is still active, it puts the initial calling out into a different perspective. This is now definitely someone who's always been there, but maybe suppressed by a new dominant personality or something. I appreciate the thinking behind this, but I just don't buy it. Kerrigan shows her humanity through the facade of The Queen of Blades several times in SC1 and Brood War in spite of herself. In that first mission when she confronts Raynor, she keeps calling him "Jim," and when she's making excuses about how he's not worth killing, she tells him to be "be smart," in taking her offer to walk away. I think she's telling him the truth that she likes what she is now, that she feels powerful and free as part of the swarm and doesn't need to be rescued despite her psychic calls from within the chrysalis, but those subtleties in the dialogue don't allow me to buy that she's threatening him earnestly. Similar undercurrents pepper her actions in Brood War from time to time. I don't doubt that the process of being infested with zerg biology and linked to the Overmind changed her personality, just like being betrayed by Arcturus changed her, but I can't accept this idea that there was a split personality or the "real" Kerrigan was suppressed under some kind of psychic overlay. The theory that this is a very recent thing that's happened only in this game makes a little more sense. Kerrigan's actions are extremely erratic in WoL. She starts an invasion of the Dominion looking for Xel'Naga information and technology as if she wants it to avert whatever is coming at the same time she tells Zeratul that the situation is hopeless and they're all doomed. If the answer is that THE DARK ONE's control through her Zerg biology is in a struggle against the independent human core she's had since she first hatched, THAT would make sense. Sadly, as far as I can see/remember, the text never explains anything like that and we're just guessing.
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Dec 9, 2023 23:40
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Felinoid posted:To be fair, I am mostly assuming the worst, in line with Blizzard plots from like 2008 until today (well, like six weeks ago when I played the mission), and it's entirely possible they hadn't sunk so low just yet in 2010. Boy, we're in for a ride with HotS.
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Dec 10, 2023 01:51
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wedgekree posted:For the guy driving the narrative, Arcturus seems very unimportant. It's tough to say what the right move here is. Wings of Liberty is, at its core, a Western. The genre carries an expectation of spending most of your time on the frontiers and fringes, and the story takes place against the backdrop of an unexplained Zerg offensive against the core worlds. The Tychus and Colonist storylines are very much in-line, as are the Train Robbery and the followup to decrypt the data hidden on the robot. I think Mengsk being mostly absent from the early part of the story makes sense, especially since we have the dramatic irony of Tychus being some kind of plan on the villain's part looming over everything. On the other hand, the parts of the campaign with the Protoss Crystal, meeting Valerian and going to Char are largely about Jim finding the motivation to leave his fruitless, self-indulgent grudge against Arcturus to one side and return to being the hero he was in Brood War, the guy out there saving the universe rather than dealing with politics and personal vendettas. So it makes sense for Arcturus to not appear THERE either. The only part of the story where more direct interaction with Mengsk makes sense in the last three quests of Horner's questline, and possibly the Nova/Tosh storyline. But at the same time, as we're about to see Mengsk's plan with Tychus was never about Raynor at all. Raynor was nothing to him. He only wanted Kerrigan dead. So what would have been accomplished by more direct antagonism with him during that part in a macronarrative sense? Part of the problem is the a la carte nature of the story. By letting you do the missions in whatever order you want, any definitive character arc for Raynor ends up haphazard and diluted. The other part of the problem is the bit I put in the spoiler text. When the big reveal is that your hero's struggle against the villain never mattered to him, how do you make their conflict more personal? I think it was a solvable problem with some script revisions, but it IS a problem.
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Dec 10, 2023 03:59
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The twist that Tychus was never after Raynor and that his mission was always to kill Kerrigan is one of my favorite things about WoL. It's such a small thing but it has a lot of implications about everything we've seen to this point, the kind of twist that changes almost nothing and yet changes everything about the relationship between the two lead characters. I also love two specific moments from the last cutscene. The first is that Tychus calls Mengsk to confirm he still wants the order carried out in light of Kerrigan's change, which illustrates that for all his macho bravado and the nasty words he had for Jim during that fight in the bar and his general scumminess, their friendship was real and he didn't want to go through with this betrayal. The second is that Jim lets him shoot. That line about choices wasn't an empty Cool Guy line. He was willing to wait until his friend made the decision. He was willing to take a bullet before he served one up because the friendship was just as real on his end. Its a well executed Western Finale. If I have one complaint, its that I am a tremendous lover of the Bullet With A Name On It trope, and even though they did do the job of setting it up with the boarding action and paying it off here with Tychus... its pretty badly undermined by the fact that the first thing we do is see Jim shoot the TV with the same gun. 
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Dec 10, 2023 05:27
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gohuskies posted:I think they probably had a very confused writing process with a lot of different ideas mixed up in it. The rebellion angle was definitely a part, but even the text of the game admits it's not what the game is about. Part of the narrative's flaw is that Raynor isn't far enough down the hole, I think. He's too noble and too committed to helping people when he should be more focused on getting revenge on Mengsk, as implied by the first cutscene. Maybe the Spectre vs Ghost plotline alongside Tychus' artifact hunt should have been the first leg of the story. Cast Jim as in a much darker and more morally ambiguous place, then have the Zerg Invasion force him back out to the fringes, where helping people and some distance from what he was doing starts to swing him back to the side of the angels. Then we get Zeratul's intel about the coming apocalypse and Kerrigan that forces him to give up his vendetta because saving lives, and the universe, like he did before Fenix died, is what really matters to him. A branching finale where you have to choose between saving Kerrigan and exposing Mengsk would have REALLY paid off that conflict. You don't even need to hugely change Heart of the Swarm for that, I don't think. It just leaves Kerrigan is a different starting place and with a different model. I think you could make it work.
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Dec 10, 2023 22:28
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Bloody Pom posted:When you take into account Kerrigan's early life (kidnapped, family murdered, brain scrambled like all Ghosts), years spent as a state-owned killer, her subsequent betrayal by Mengsk, and then getting her suppressed childhood memories unlocked after getting Zerged... is it any wonder that she'd be firmly on the side of 'actually gently caress humanity' after her free will was restored? It seems to me like the biggest dividing line between SC1/BW and WOL is the absence of context surrounding Kerrigan's character. In WoL as a vacuum, we only know Kerrigan as Jim's Photo/Memories and the monster in front of us. The game never digs into the society that raised her, the ideals she fought for, the scientific experimentation she was subjected to. Even when they show her betrayal I don't know if someone who didn't play the previous games would really get what it meant for her to take that mission from Mengsk over her own objections AND Jim's warnings and then be left to die. You don't even need to look at the expanded universe materials, all that is in the Terran and Zerg campaigns. When Kerrigan revels in her villainy in Brood War, it felt good for a lot of people because they saw the whole chain that got her there and recognized that she was, if nothing else, FREE. There is an element of empowerment there, the fantasy of striking back at all the evils, personal and systemic, that created everything you don't like about yourself and the world. It also helps that along the way she IS still recognizably human, for all the good and ill that comes with that. She's not some Zerg zombie that's only there to consume and destroy for its own sake, she has recognizable motives, goals and feelings about those things. If you don't have that picture, and you only see Kerrigan in WoL as a good person who didn't deserve to become the monster who's killing billions, then yeah, the ending would certainly work for you. You would be happy that Jim saved her instead of taking the easy road of destroying her.
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Dec 11, 2023 04:10
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TURN IT UP!
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Dec 11, 2023 05:21
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JohnKilltrane posted:Any serious analysis of StarCraft will quite obviously demonstrate that Mengsk is Stalin and Raynor is Trotsky. And Kerrigan is that horse who works harder until he gets sent to the glue factory, and then he comes back as a mutant superhorse and destroys Animal Farm.
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Dec 13, 2023 19:07
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JohnKilltrane posted:Tychus, of course, is the pig on two legs. 
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Dec 13, 2023 20:16
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And so it begins... The size of that Battlecruiser is INSANE. I bet that Viking pilot thought he was the coolest, biggest hero ever with that Robotech poo poo. RIP Bozo. How did not ONE of those Seige Tank shells his that Ultralisk? They hit every molecule of Zerg around the Ultralisk but missed the Ultralisk! Anyway, there's not much going on in this cinematic in terms of theming compared to Tychus' suit-up. We just get to see the Zerg say It's Zergin' Time and Zerg all over those guys. I do remember already being bothered by the amount of collateral damage on display. The Zerg Campaign was always a villain campaign before, but WoL went far out of its way to establish that the Zerg were not the true threat, and indeed would be NEEDED to stop the true threat. Hell, they were victims of that threat to some degree thanks to the Overmind retcon and the bit at the end of Zeratul's final mission where they were wiped out by the Hybrids. Why show the swarm raining death upon a city of millions of innocents after all that set-up, even if it is a dream? Why show Kerrigan reveling in revenge when one of the most important themes for the last game's protagonist was letting go of a need for revenge? I do, in retrospect, appreciate the shot of Kerrigan lying on that operating table. Right after seeing the mighty Queen of Blades standing tall over the charred remains of her enemies, her body armored with chitin, her wings at the ready to rip and tear, the camera zooms out to a wide angle as she wakens. She is small now, soft, vulnerable. The shot from above is oppressive, especially as she looks around with room with obvious nervousness. Most of all, she is framed on every side by those mechanical arms, an allusion to the medical experimentation she was subjected to as part of the Ghost program. You can literally hear the barely contained fear in her breathing as the logo fades in. They're planting a crucial seed in those final moments and I completely missed it the first time I played this, so I have to give credit where credit is due. There won't be a ton of credit to go around on the road we're walking.
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Dec 16, 2023 08:15
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To be fair to Kerrigan, she saw what happened when the UED attempted to control the Zerg (dumb lines about her not remembering being the Queen of Blades aside), and the Umojans and/or Valerian had a LOT of live specimens stashed away in there. If there's even a chance the kid was thinking about trying to make his own private swarm from what he'd learned studying Kerrigan's physiology, I'd say it was a worthwhile effort to smash as much of the lab as possible and put the fear of god into as many scientists as possible so long as she didn't kill anybody. We didn't learn very much about Valerian as a character in WoL, and we don't have any particular reason to trust that he has noble motives if he's telling Kerrigan to spawn Zerg base structures just because. It's not like these are Joe Average Umojans, this is a black site being privately funded by the heir to the Dominion on a distant, uncharted planet that doesn't even have a proper name. What confuses me a lot more is Jimmy telling Kerrigan that she should be running away with him instead of going after Mengsk. I mean, the later part is fine, his whole arc was about giving up his need to get revenge on Mengsk, he SHOULD be encouraging Kerrigan to do the same for consistency's sake. But he also knows that she's needed to save the universe from the Hybrids. He can't run away from that, and he shouldn't be trying, especially when his big final speech in WoL was about reaffirming his commitment to fighting for higher ideals and the preservation of the galaxy. If anything, Kerrigan should be trying to run away from it all. Jim should be trying to convince her that she's the key to saving everybody and that she has to embrace that while she should want to find some quiet hole to disappear into with the man she loves. Getting back into the fight means possibly losing her second chance to walk away from the endless violence, the most precious gift ANYONE has ever given her since she'd been forced to be a weapon by everyone since practically her birth. Make Mengsk force her hand, cut off all her avenues to avoid going back on the war path and make it clear that the Dominion under his control cannot be allowed to endure or it will be the doom of them all. Don't have her start off ready to die for nothing but payback. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 04:44
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bladededge posted:SC1 Raynor:It may not be tomorrow, darlin'. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day. I wrote a bunch at the start of the thread about how Jim not really holding onto that promise to avenge Fenix didn't bother me. Half of the conversations in Wings of Liberty feel like they're designed to make Raynor feel burned out and non-committal about everything he's doing, and I really latched onto that. Humanity's greatest hero who helped the Protoss defeat the Overmind was so broken by the Brood Wars that he collapsed back into petty grudges and politics, spending years fighting useless battles on the fringes of human space and chasing revenge against a man who couldn't even be bothered to assassinate him. Of course, the OTHER half of the conversations in Wings of Liberty undermine that and paint Jim as a decisive leader who's legitimately committed to his crusade, and the only question is whether he's made the fight too personal to the point of placing the higher goal of ending tyranny at risk. But we don't need to get back into all that. The point is that I never felt like Raynor letting his venom for Kerrigan bleed out in the years between BW and SC2 was a betrayal of his character. I would have preferred the game address that change more directly and substantially, have him EARN letting go of that grudge like he did with his grudge toward Mengsk, but having it happen at all doesn't bother me. That other bit DOES bother me though. Kerrigan had moved beyond Mengsk in Brood War. He was beneath her, and she told him as much. There's no good reason she couldn't have kept that attitude going into this game. They've made it very clear in these introductory scenes that she loves Raynor and the fact that he overcame impossible odds to save her (including his own reasons to let her die) means the world to her. Why have her BEGIN with this obsession? Why not have Mengsk push her back to this hateful, bloodthirsty place? He could even throw her past mockery back in her face when he came to ruin her chance to leave it all behind and live peacefully with Jim. "Oh, you thought DUKE was the threat Kerrigan? Look at all I've accomplished without him! You stripped me to the bone, took everything from me, and I rebuilt it all stronger than ever because you were arrogant enough to decide I was inconsequential. You're the inconsequential one, Kerrigan. You always were, whether you were my lapdog in the Sons of Korhol or crowning yourself "Bitch Queen of the Universe." You never had the wits to see what I was, what I was capable of. This time I'll make sure you learn." It's not like Mengsk did much to establish his villain chops in the first game. Give him a big moment right at the start, make us despise him, on-board us to that Zerg RIP AND TEAR mindset so when Kerrigan starts doing what she does in this game we're eager to ride with her. If you want the Zerg to be on the heroes' side, give them a villain worth fighting.
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Dec 17, 2023 10:19
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Tenebrais posted:That appears to be what she's going for - but what she's just ended up saying is "you can't control the zerg, I control the zerg", which only communicates that if he wants a zerg army he'll have to force Kerrigan into it. Which is a hell of a negotiating position when she's already in his prison and the one person she cares about is right there with him. The narration says she's here for testing regarding how much Zerg Junk is still inside her, which seems like a reasonable thing for her to cooperate over since she needs to know what her state is and what she can do. Both she and Jim are clearly getting impatient with the fact that Valerian is jerking them around for Zerg Control research, which is why he issues that ultimatum about this being their last test. The implication to me is that they can leave any time they want and Valerian probably isn't stupid enough to try and stop them (because he knows that would go badly for him), but they all understand that his assistance isn't strings-free. Zulily Zoetrope posted:It could have been interesting if Jim's conflict between his fantasy girl and the actual woman was a deliberate plot thread they intended to explore, instead of presenting it as a tragedy that befalls our hero through no fault of his own, without even realizing that that is what they wrote. I think saying the story presents what goes on with Kerrigan is a tragedy inflicted on Raynor is a bit much, tbh, but that's a conversation that I can't have effectively until the very end of the campaign, so 
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Dec 18, 2023 02:29
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GunnerJ posted:Well, I was talking more about whether her interaction with Jim here reflects a broader anxiety about women seeking revenge, not so much their feelings for each other. I think that would be a lot more fair of a potential criticism of the scene if Jim's plot arc in the last game wasn't about giving up revenge.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:42
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Warmachine posted:I mean, if we're examining gender dynamics here, the optics of "man giving up revenge" and "woman giving up revenge" have very different social connotations. The first would be a kind of martyrdom when viewed through the lens of western masculine stereotypes. The second would be a return to the natural order by the same feminine stereotypes. If that's the direction we want to take our critique, we'd need to look at how the story actually progresses the arc from this starting place of "Man who gave up revenge encourages woman to also give up revenge," but obviously we can't do that yet. Unless you want to read spoilers, in which case the endpoint of this journey is that that there is a completely different outcome than the one Raynor came to on the issue of revenge and the cutscene frames it as a good thing, so I guess the different social connotations got their due Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 18:50
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Just to clarify, I'm not referring to the story as a whole, I'm just super skeeved by this one specific scene. Fair enough anilEhilated posted:It wasn't, though. His revenge drive got retconned instead and WoL Raynor is a completely different character from how he was at the end of BW. Not against Kerrigan, his revenge against Mengsk. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 18:59
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Jim and Kerrigan have great chemistry in this mission, and it really does feel like they're right back to where they left off in the first half of the SC1 Terran Campaign. Its also cool to see Kerrigan as a Ghost again, but with these incredible psychic powers. Her first big thing when she was made Zerg was a raid on a Science Vessel to undo all her mental conditioning and whatnot keeping her abilities in check, and now all these years later we get something akin to seeing what she could have been if the system she was born into wasn't dead-set on controlling her. I think we can also praise calling in Nova as the immediate antagonist here. She's an obvious foil for this re-humanized Kerrigan, a fellow lady Ghost but a loyalist who believes in the Dominion. At the same time, if you follow her path in WoL you know that she's not completely indoctrinated. She's capable of making her own decisions and having her own agenda. If she thinks it serves the greater good of the Dominion, she'll go against what Mengsk would want, but in some ways that makes her more dangerous than a mindless sycophant would be. A few more missions of playing cat and mouse with Jim and Ghost Kerrigan (and some Zerg that she's being forced to use because they're both cut off from backup) working together against Nova would have been a HUGE boon to this campaign.
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Dec 23, 2023 08:50
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So, looking at this series of events from the perspective of establishing the characterization of our main character, we start off with Kerrigan telling Jim that she doesn't care about him and that she wants revenge on Mengsk. We see her teach Valerian Mengsk and his science team a lesson about controlling Zerg (one which they seemingly needed) but does so with brutality and fear as her preferred methods. She never injures a single human, but there is a very real question lingering in the air as to whether or not she would have. She's cold, heartless, seemingly consumed by wrath and a desire for revenge. Then in the second mission, when she actually gets to spend some time with Raynor, that persona drops away a bit. We see her express a little humanity: she cracks a joke, she uses a gun, she admits (at least by implication) that she's afraid of the part of her that's still Zerg, she expresses that Jim matters to her in a way that she was denying to his face in the previous cutscene. She event trusts Valerian to get Jim off the planet instead of going back for him personally. Now we have this series of events. Kerrigan literally trying to choke the poo poo out of Valerian for failing to save Jim like he promised IS a bad look. I do think its worth remembering that we really don't have any particular reason to like Valerian or give him any benefit of the doubt for not having an alternate agenda at this point in the story. He got very little characterization in WoL or these first two missions other than the very distinct impression that he was manipulating us to get what he wanted. That said, her being THAT oblivious to anything but the thought to hurt the guy, to the point that she's not even making an effort toward self-preservation in the face of an attack that will kill her, makes her look stupid and irrational, and completely ungrateful at least to Matt and Raynor's Raiders, whom she knows Jim cares for. That's a really bad look for a character who's defining features as a human were compassion and loyalty and as a zerg was Machiavellian genius. BUT! The scene on the dropship and the final lines of the mission before it DO recontextualize those stupid actions to some degree. We're seeing a legitimate dichotomy to her character, and more importantly we're seeing that she doesn't actually like the fact that this dichotomy exists. There is a clear, comprehensible moral descent on display from "Use fear and shows of violence but don't hurt anyone," to "Hurt someone because they wronged me but managed to hold myself back," to "Kill people (using the Zerg I fear connecting with) to save someone I love," to "Ruthlessly slaughter my enemies without even thinking about it," and Kerrigan recognizes that and it makes her so disgusted with herself and afraid of herself that she starts calling out in the darkness of space, hoping that the one thing that anchors her to any hope that she's a good person will show up and help her through this. Despite what she told Jim, she doesn't want to be a destroyer, like she was in that dream, even if it gets her what she wants. He, and by extension her capacity for good, matters to her. We also have this really interesting element of the Zergling in the scene. Kerrigan associates the swarm with that violence, that part of herself she fears. Regardless of its meaning in a meta-narrative sense, she's clearly taken comfort within the story's universe from this notion that the Queen of Blades was some other, separate persona, and she wasn't responsible for what "that person," did. She worries that being in mental contact with the Zerg is why she slipped so easily into being that person, which is why she was nervous enough about reaching out to them in the lab that she was willing to say it to Jim out loud, and why she ran away from them after she caught herself giving that order to kill all the Terrans and heard the Swarm Queen rejoice in response. When Kerrigan gets the news about Raynor being 'dead' she looks at the Zergling as if she's choosing to embrace her dark side to get revenge. But the way the Zergling's presence is framed is clearly to convey compassion and comfort, as one might receive from from a pet. It's effectively trying to give her what she wanted from Raynor, a connection to the parts of her that are good, in its own instinctive, animal sort of way. This retrospectively helps us recognize that the Zerg down on the planet were more or less doing the same thing. Yeah, its not great that the Swarm Queen was fist-pumping at the order to kill the humans to the last man, but all she really wanted was to help Kerrigan. She never questioned the fact she was ordered to kill humans specifically to save another human. Just being helpful to her creator was enough for her. This way of framing the Zerg as a potentially positive force is narratively important, as is Kerrigan completely misreading what's going on with her association with the Zerg. Finally, we actually get some very subtle and important characterization for Acrturus in these scenes. He was almost a non-entity in WoL by design, relying more on the shadow he cast than anything he was doing to act as our primary villain. We're still going that here, but now we're much more direct. First, we get that comment from Valerian, that his father won't even hesitate to kill him if it means killing Kerrigan. Then we get this public address and the story of killing Raynor, which we have every reason to believe is a lie. Putting two and two together on these comments brings us to an inescapable conclusion: Arcturus is GOADING Kerrigan. He knows that she's slipped away, and rather than allow her to go to ground, he's trying to bait her into striking. Like Valerian said, he will do ANYTHING to kill her, and from this sequence of events that means being ruthless, but it also means being cunning. Whatever storm falls on him for sticking a knife in Kerrigan's most vulnerable spot is worth it, because it means she'll come to him, and he'll get his shot to put her down. In the context of who Kerrigan used to be in SC1 and Brood War, there's obviously a lot that could rub people the wrong way in these scenes. I think most of the same goals could have been served and made her look a lot less lovely if she'd simply taken Raynor's dropship strait to the Zerg without the interlude of smacking around Valerian and looking like a idiot. I also think its fair to call how heavily this Female Main Character is predicating her characterization on a man problematic. But honestly, I can see what they're trying to accomplish here, and if you're willing to look at just SC2 (including WoL) in a vacuum, they're hitting more shots than they're missing so far. Of course, we're just getting started. Plenty of holes left to fall in...
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Dec 31, 2023 09:26
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Omobono posted:The fix would be so easy. Just have Kerrigan acknowledge that the broadcast was probably propaganda next cutscene, then adding "oh, also keep out an eye for Jim" to her motivations and objectives. If they really wanted to be clever, they could have looped this back to the first mission. You can have her believe Raynor is dead for a second, after all she was in an emotionally vulnerable place right before hearing this, but then (arguably thanks to comforting presence of the Zergling) have her think about it for a second and realize that this must be a manipulation. Maybe Mengsk did kill Jim, but its also highly likely that he kept him alive for the same reason he made this broadcast: he's trying to control what Kerrigan is going to do. In response, Kerrigan could then resolve to teach her dear friend Arcturus the same lesson she did to his son: that you can't control the Zerg. She's going to do exactly what he wants her to do, and he's going to live just long enough to regret having the idea.
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Dec 31, 2023 19:08
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301 ESSENCE I don't necessarily blame Kerrigan for not trying to be diplomatic with the Protoss. She has every reason to think they wouldn't even consider peaceful negotiations, even though the commander is initially taken aback by her more human form. If they wanted to make her more palatable as a protagonist it probably would have been a smart idea though One of the things that the scene-by-scene sinew of this campaign really struggles with is consistent tone. One of my big theses on this game is that it's attempting to evoke the Rape/Revenge exploitation film sub-genre of the 70s in the same way that WoL evoked the Western, providing a thematic and structural touchstone for all its other plot elements. To that end, the game will often indulge in unnecessarily edgy or anti-heroic behavior on the part of its protagonist, taking her in the darkest possible directions virtually without thought. At the same time it doesn't seem to have the stomach to keep that going at a consistent pace because it knows where it's trying to go in the end, so they'll keep falling back to moments that are intended to make Kerrigan seem more compassionate and traditionally heroic in defiance of the bad things she's doing. There's a constant effort to have their cake and eat it too on having Kerrigan, and by extension the Zerg, still be kind of evil but not TOO evil, and that does a lot of damage to the narrative experience. Like, take for example the moment in this map where Kerrigan finds the brutalized corpse of one of her Swarm Queens. The writers take this as an opportunity for her to become outraged, as if the Protoss have done some horrible crime worthy of retribution. Remember, Kerrigan doesn't remember making these Swarm Queens, so she has no reason to be attached to them, and based on the dropship cutscene she believes that she's embracing her dark side by using the Zerg for her vengeful ends. She hasn't really internalized the idea that these creatures care about her, or that she might care about them. They haven't EARNED the moment of her being upset by seeing this, its just an excuse for her to show a bit of empathy while she's slaughtering people the audience think of as "Good Guys," in the hope it makes her look less villainous. The logical thing to do here if you want tonal consistency is have Kerrigan treat Nafash as callously as she does the Protoss. Lean fully into the idea that she's a rampaging revenge machine that's not interested in anything but getting what she wants. Then, later, after she's gone through some character development, you can have her look back on this moment with regret, both because she destroyed the Protoss without even trying to find a peaceful solution AND because she disrespected the dead Swarm Queen, who deserved better than to be butchered by the Protoss just as mindlessly as she killed them. Alternatively, you could have leveraged the tonal friction instead of just creating it and ignoring it. Have Kerrigan come down to the planet, collect a few Zerg, then stumble across Nafash and see what the Protoss did to her at the same time you find the frozen Hive Cluster. Take a moment to have her disturbed by the image of the Swarm Queen's ravaged remains, lean on your really quite talented voice actress to convey that she's bothered by what she's seeing, even if she doesn't completely understand why and intellectually has no reason to be. Then have the Protoss see that the Queen of Blades is here and make ready to call in reinforcements to destroy her. In this scenario, there's some nice ambiguity to Kerrigan's decision not to parley with the Protoss. Does she believe its a waste of time because of her past mistakes? Is so so consumed by her desire for revenge that she's indifferent about the Protoss' lives? Or does some part of her want justice for what they did to the Zerg here, no matter how silly that might seem to her conscious mind if she were to say it out loud? Something else they could have done here is really lean on the freeze mechanic to allow for some player expression. As we saw from the OP, you can complete the mission while doing remarkably little damage to the Protoss bases if you leverage those moments where they're helpless. Give Kerrigan a line where she muses in some ambiguous way that if she is careful, she can break those communication towers with minimal collateral damage. Then put up some kind of tracker on the UI that tells you how many Protoss buildings you've destroyed out of their starting total. You don't even need to attach a reward to this if you don't want to, just giving the player some kind of metric to evaluate how evil they're choosing to be and leaving the decision in their hands would have been neat. Establishing that you can choose to limit the harm you do in this initial confrontation would also make the progression of events to come on this planet a bit more interesting.
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Jan 13, 2024 20:24
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quote:She was intelligent, careful, and tenacious. But she made one mistake. She ran away. This is a really excellent line. Kerrigan just projects herself onto a Swarm Queen, extrapolating from the situation that what she's decided she has to do with Mengsk really is the only path, and it makes complete sense for her character to do that. I really wish she'd started this game off just wanting to walk away from everything, it would make so much more sense. quote:I justify nothing. There is no moral high ground here. Your people have killed billions of zerg. We are all covered in blood. There may be more on my hands than yours, but in the end we are both killers. This one on the other hand... it's a line that's easy to mock, but it's also the sentiment that this game was clearly built from the ground up in an attempt to prove. It's just that there's nothing at this point to even attempt to hold it up. Kerrigan has no reason to care about Zerg lives. She's happy to throw them into the meat grinder to get what she wants, and why shouldn't she be? As the player, WE have no reason to care about Zerg lives. Yes, WoL planted the idea that they're being used and have been since the start. Yes, this game showed them in a minor sympathetic life by showing them enthusiastically wanting to help Kerrigan, their beloved queen, whether they're intelligent or not. But mechanically they're designed to be disposable and plot-wise they've pretty much only ever been a plague of locusts on the galaxy when left to their own devices and an apocalyptic weapon when controlled by someone else. Hell, even just in this game we have that little psycho Abathur and before that we had a Swarm Queen cheering on the order to slaughter every Terran to the last man! I think there are ways to make this conversation work. For example, instead of pointing at the Zerg, she could have mentioned Tassadar, and how her people sent him to exterminate humanity to keep the Zerg in check. The Protoss are covered in blood because they're fundamentally THE SAME as the Zerg, a species of super-predators who don't hesitate to kill when it serves their interests and only rarely even pretend that they think other species aren't beneath them. Another possibility might have been to put even greater emphasis on Nafash. Establish that when Kerrigan became human and the Zerg split into factions, she came to this inhospitable ball of ice where almost nothing could survive to protect herself and her swarm. She didn't want to fight the others for dominance, and was completely happy to eke out a quiet existence in a place nobody else could possibly want until someone rose as the new Queen and she could rejoin them, or the heat death of the universe arrived, whichever came first. Then the Protoss came looking to do a little terraforming experiment, found a hive, a struck without hesitation or mercy. They could have moved on, done their work on some other iceball. They could have taken note that when they attacked, the Zerg fled rather than holding their ground, and wondered if maybe something was different about this hive. Maybe without the hated Queen of Blades, whatever entity was running it could be reasoned with. Maybe the Zerg were nothing more than animals without their leader, able to be contained rather than exterminated. But why would they bother with thoughts like that? Better to just kill them all. I dunno. God, this game can be depressing with how bad it is.
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Jan 14, 2024 06:45
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