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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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Sanguinia posted: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! So like, in 2500, he's so short on soldiers ships, and equipment that he has to play tons of politics to even defend his own territory against the omnipresent Zerg threat, but within two years, he's got enough free liquidity to throw away resources completely rebuilding the entire ecological system and atmosphere of a lovely backwater colony nobody cared about? Even in a soft sci-fi setting with Space Magic, that really stretches credibility. Mengsk has dozens of higher priority ways to spend his time and money during the two years between BW and the recolonization. If he wanted an empty propaganda gesture, it's much more reasonable to just leave the planet glassed as a constant reminder of the need for unity, how only I can protect you, how the Zerg are still a threat which justifies my tight-fisted rule and et al...then use those resources in a more productive fashion.
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Jun 1, 2023 04:48
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Cythereal posted:Personally, my theory is that Blizzard had much the same mentality that EA did when handing Bioware orders about Mass Effect 3: they did not want to create a feeling that players of this game needed to play the previous game(s) to understand what's going on.
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Jun 4, 2023 02:37
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I really like the freeform mission setup. It really adds variety to campaign replays because going in different order completely changes your available options for a given mission. But as we'll see, the missions also tend to be balanced well enough that you're not going to screw yourself even if your mission order means you end up missing out on key units for a long time - some units might make certain missions easier of course, but I never felt like there was a mission where I was in deep poo poo because I hadn't yet unlocked X or Y. As for upgrades, Stimpacks are a no-brainer since they're basically the defining feature of Marines. Interesting you took the Bunker personnel upgrade though. I personally never bothered to take it, since I always found that four in a Bunker was plenty when supported by SCV's and other units.
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Jun 11, 2023 04:21
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PurpleXVI posted:The "unit showcase mission" feels like design that Blizzard first experimented with in Warcraft 3, and honestly? I really don't like it. To me it means that until the very last couple of missions, everything feels like you're still playing a tutorial, because every mission is designed to give your latest toy some special attention rather than forcing you to engage some brain gears. It also makes various missions feel more distinct, rather than a lot of SC1 where so many missions feel repetitive because, for example, "tanks and tanks and tanks" is a viable answer to almost every single Terran mission once you get them. MagusofStars fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jun 17, 2023 |
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Jun 17, 2023 16:03
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I always chuckle at the arcade game being named The Lost Viking. Very nice subtle callback to Blizzard's classic SNES puzzle games.
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Jun 18, 2023 14:47
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painedforever posted:So, you get limited cash throughout the campaign, right? Is it better to buy upgrades for units, or to buy mercenaries? 1.) They all come from the Merc Compound and don’t require the normal tech tree, so for high tech units, it lets you get them out easier and earlier in the mission. 2.) Mercs show up instantly when bought. AI shows up with an attack force when you weren’t paying attention / just sent off your own army / whatever? No problem, just summon some mercs to save your rear end. Or bring them in right before you get ready to attack as a quick supplement to your forces. They also (like all Terran units) can be healed, which synergizes very nicely with their much higher stats. I wouldn’t buy a Merc contract over a key unit upgrade, but if you’ve got some spare cash, I found them better than some of the “meh” upgrades.
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Jun 19, 2023 01:28
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Koorisch posted:I'm guessing they're *far* more useful in a Bunker than actually running around on the field? If you're given Firebats as part of your starting forces and you have spare Bunker space, you might as well put them in there as "meh might as well, better than nothing", but that's the best you can say.
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Jun 25, 2023 15:08
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Felinoid posted:Which makes the fact that their first instinct was to turn humans into bombs a bit of an insult to our usefulness.
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Jul 3, 2023 03:11
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I found Reapers to be slightly useful in the campaign for scouting and to grab caches since they're fast and mobile. It's true most of the enemy stuff is fixed, but that's not really relevant if you're playing casually since you won't know the maps ahead of time anyways. I never built more than a couple of course, but since you already have the building pre-reqs, building 2-3 usually felt like they at least served enough of a purpose that I didn't regret having them around. In future expansions, Reapers got some pretty interesting buffs. The "damage versus Light" was replaced with just straight damage so their overall DPS is something like 30% higher, while also removing the Tech Lab requirement and giving them out of combat regeneration. Still pretty limited usage though because they have uses early game but fall off fast in the mid-game once air units come into play - both because Reapers can't defend against them and also because Reapers' main niches (scouting, attacking workers from unexpected directions) can be better handled by fliers.
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Jul 13, 2023 00:30
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Myriad Truths posted:The only saving grace for this mission on Brutal for me was trying to grab as many altars as possible in one go, since their counterattacks don't really scale up even if you're taking more than one at once. The colossi are such a big problem here so I found the attrition really problematic otherwise. Cythereal posted:For me, the trick to this mission is that the SCVs only need to return the canister to a command center. And command centers can relocate. Say, right next to an altar. Simplifies things quite a bit.
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Jul 15, 2023 14:31
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Regarding Tosh, I just chuckle that a primary piece of 'evidence' for him being untrustworthy is that he destroyed a Dominion weapons facility. That's a perfectly reasonable target for a rebellion. poo poo, if the intel about the factory had come to Matt Horner rather than Tosh, that could very well have been a covert mission Raynor's Raiders pulled off themselves!. I know the focus is supposed to be on the fact thousands of civilians died, but c'mon, that's on Mengsk for building the weapons facility in a residential neighborhood in the first place. Frankly, Mengsk is enough of an amoral rear end in a top hat that he probably chose the location specifically because of the potential collateral damage/human shields.
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Jul 16, 2023 17:37
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disposablewords posted:Yeah, "artifact radiation" would read a little less dumb if someone was just like, "okay, this strange radiation these artifacts emit..." "artifact radiation, gotcha, get on with it." Mobius representative: We have another mission for you on the planet Xil. We had originally detected an important artifact based on the ionic emanations of the site and (begins to start continuing with scientific explanation) Tychus: (cutting him off) Let me stop you right there, partner cuz I got no idea what that sciencey bullshit you're spoutin' means. Some kind of artifact radiation or somethin'? Mobius representative:  Fine, let's just go with that, artifact radiation. Anyways, what we need from your mercenary friend...
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Jul 23, 2023 03:01
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rastilin posted:Like it would be more novel at this point if Raynor was completely mentally balanced and super competent. Like, clean cut, no alcohol, no inner demons, just completely nailing "cognitive behavioral therapy" and was just great at handling interpersonal conflict and providing counseling. Raynor has been through way too much poo poo to have "no inner demons, completely nailing therapy, and just great at handling interpersonal conflict and providing counseling". He *should* be emotionally hosed up after being betrayed by the Confederacy at Mar Sara, being betrayed again by his former ally/superior Mengsk, then being betrayed again (#3!) by his former crush Kerrigan. Oh, and Kerrigan's betrayal also included the murder of his closest comrade-in-arms (Fenix), and a bunch of Protoss troops who helped Raynor survive Aiur. And then for the past four years, he's been hunted as a wanted criminal and has probably seen yet more friends die at the hands of his former ally Mengsk in occasional close calls, narrow escapes, etc. If he didn't have mental and emotional scars, remorse, self-doubt, etc after going though all that poo poo? That wouldn't be a sign that he's "completely mentally balanced", it'd be a sign that he's incredibly abnormal.
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Jul 23, 2023 14:39
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rastilin posted:Are you saying that a mentally abnormal person is completely unsuited to be a protagonist in a Blizzard Entertainment game?
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Jul 23, 2023 15:28
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Stare at the rock. Get all the Protoss stuff done at once IMO because holy crap is it a mess story wise. Fun to play though.
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Jul 30, 2023 04:10
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Szarrukin posted:I wonder what's worse - SC2 writing or Shadowlands writing. Or to put it differently: SC2's writing was a mess, but it doesn't make me look back and retroactively think less of SC/BW's storylines; it feels more like a bad sequel where things went off the rails. Shadowlands' writing worked so hard to invalidate all the previous storylines that the storylines of previous games/expansions actively feel worse because I know that canonically, it was all basically pointless - and even the successes were meaningless due to the Jailer's long long long con planning for us to temporarily succeed to further his plan.
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Jul 31, 2023 03:06
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Torrannor posted:There's no prospective follow-up to SC2, but WoW continues onwards.  The non-joke answer of course is the boring business reality: WoW continued because it's a subscription MMORPG which needs to pump out a game every 24 months to keep people subbed while SC is an RTS that people buy once.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:27
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Cythereal posted:There's been numerous allegations from relatively reliable sources that Blizzard tried to make a Destiny clone based on Starcraft, an MMO looter shooter, after SC2. And based on what we know, there's no obvious point where it would have made sense for Blizzard to be secretly working on a World of Starcraft. When they were developing WoW as their first foray into the genre, the Starcraft IP was being developed for Ghost. Once WoW became wildly successful and they decided to build a successor to WoW, they instead chose to do Titan rather than using one of the existing IP. Then they canceled Titan rather than compete with their own still highly-successful product. So while I'm sure they had some meetings or internal discussions about the concept over the years, there's not much reason to think they actually did any real development.
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Jul 31, 2023 20:59
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One interesting quirk of the fact Archons can now be created with any pair of Templar is that they have a variable cost depending on which combo of units you combine - 100 minerals/300 gas, 175/275, or 250 of each. In practice, this never really felt relevant to me since I'd just merge whatever made situational sense - heavily injured guys, a high templar who was dry on energy, or whoever happened to be conveniently located when I wanted some juicy Archon firepower. I assume in multiplayer people do a lot more planning and thoughtfulness into their Archon merges though.PurpleXVI posted:Like... if you were a competent writer, and you were dealing with a Super Spooky Monsterman that had been hinted at like... over ten years ago in a much-beloved expansion and was otherwise largely undetailed... I feel like what you'd do would be to have it pop up briefly in a cutscene or maybe a single mission without getting blasted wide open, just to scare the player a bit and drive up some sense of urgency and worry. Of course, given that multiple people have said they totally forgot this mission existed (and add me to that count too), it's pretty clear that fell completely flat.
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Aug 6, 2023 00:48
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Void Seeker: Prioritizes speed and subtlety over weaponry Also Void Seeker: Does 200 damage per shot Should we stop saying "En Taro Tassadar" now? The noble sacrifice that made him a rallying cry was apparently neither noble (Overmind was on our side all along!) nor a sacrifice (he can never die?).
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Aug 12, 2023 04:14
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ulmont posted:The second objective for that mission makes it clear that it's going to do nothing but waste your time from the point the first objective is achieved onwards. Because for anybody who likes the basic concept of the mission and is trying to do their best to live up to it, you're likely to last well beyond the targets for both objectives unless you're way over your head on difficulty level. The challenge isn't in simply meeting the objectives, it's seeing just how much beyond that you can go.
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Aug 12, 2023 16:06
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FoolyCharged posted:There's another big argument for cellular reactors over bioregenative steel: look over at the next options for the protoss tree. One of those units heals mech. With energy. At a rate substantially higher than 0.6 hp/s. Frankly, cellular reactors would be hard to beat even if you buffed bio-regen. +100 starting energy is a huge buff to letting newly produced casters being immediately combat-ready...well, once we do missions to get them anyways.
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Aug 13, 2023 15:10
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painedforever posted:This sounds like the sort of thing I would do which makes me a bit suspicious about it. I read in a book about military tactics that amateurs are always looking for a superweapon or trick to overwhelmingly beat opponents, and solid (albeit) boring tactics in the hands of a veteran will win every single time. Literally all of the usual tactics. If you’re completely outclassed, you’re almost never winning by playing it straight because of the raw skill difference. But maybe if you with an oddball high-variance strategy, you can get lucky and catch the opponent off-guard.
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Aug 17, 2023 23:33
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Torchlighter posted:The counterpoint to that is that Starcraft, and SC2, isn't entirely a single battle so much as it is a resource war with a hugely abstracted logistics system attached to it, and one of the biggest advantages that veterans have over new players is a much better grasp of the logistics involved rather than micro advantage (although obviously they often have that as well). Moreover, the entire game is built around when you choose to compromise your economy to threaten your opponent with victory. Floating your command center actually exacerbates this disadvantage, handing both map control and economy time to your much stronger opponent without actually threatening them.
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Aug 18, 2023 01:44
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The Raven sounds like it could be a really interesting addition as a spellcaster, but healing and Irradiate just seem too good to pass up. My understanding is that Ravens are, however, in the multiplayer Terran loadout, so anybody out there got comments on how they work in practice? (edit: update near the end of previous page)
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Aug 20, 2023 04:53
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BlazetheInferno posted:I remain convinced that this is the one "Choose who to support" choice in Wings of Liberty where there is an objectively wrong choice. …Did you notice what was missing? There’s literally zero promises of anything. No mention of her being on our side, no indication of her supporting us, no agreement to not flip on us to Mengsk immediately afterwards, or anything of that nature. There’s not even an indication that she will support us during the battle at Avernus. She doesn’t even attempt to refute Tosh’s “she won’t join you” argument! For all we know, we’re target #2 on her list once eliminate target #1 of Tosh…or that she’s just using us as a guided missile to the Spectres hoping we wipe each other out and solve two problems at once. MagusofStars fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Aug 21, 2023 |
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Aug 21, 2023 20:29
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ulmont posted:Are the campaigns worth buying if I haven’t played them, and what’s up with the pricing? It looks like Wings of Liberty and the Protoss campaign are both free, I think, leaving it $15 for Heart of the Swarm and $10 for the Nova campaign, or…$40 for the collection which gets me in addition ??? With your listed pricing, I'd go with the free Wings and Protoss, spend the $15 for Swarm and just play through those three major campaigns. The Nova campaign and the Legacy prologue were both fairly minor (still enjoyable, but not a big deal to miss).
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Aug 22, 2023 14:14
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Will the Non-Canon Zone be able to show off the post-mission Hyperion Bridge dialogue too? I don't think I've ever actually chosen the Nova campaign side (because why the gently caress would you trust Nova over Tosh) and it'd be interesting to see just how Ariel, Horner, etc react.
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Aug 27, 2023 03:31
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Nova's "not today" response to the question of whether she's about to betray and murder Raynor is very reassuring. Oh good, she's not going to immediately hunt us, excellent. I mean, given that Mengsk is undoubtedly giving Nova the "deal with this rear end in a top hat" order soon, but sure, that's technically not today. I do like the crew's reactions here though. Horner, Tychus, and Swann all making the Kerrigan connection (each in their own way) seems pretty on-point.
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Sep 3, 2023 04:11
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Gleisdreieck posted:Tychus is right. Jimmy isn't hitting on Hanson either. Is Raynor
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Sep 3, 2023 15:44
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Gun Jam posted:Can we just straight up abandon 'em? The way the mission structure works is that the first three Mar Sara missions (Outlaws/Liberation/Zero Hour) are required, then the Mobius Foundation missions are the only hard-required content. The other mission chains (Tosh, Haven, Matt's missions, Pondering) are optional, but you need to have a certain number of missions completed to unlock the next Mobius mission. Don't remember the exact numbers, but in practice, you need to do like 3 of those 4 mission chains start to finish to have enough completed missions to unlock the finale. The speedrun totally ignores the entire Haven chain (unnecessary units) and also skips In Utter Darkness (20 minutes that can't be sped up), but needs to do every other mission to meet the final-mission unlock criteria.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:42
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bladededge posted:in the worst case for players being able to actually fail the campaign or make it significantly harder with enough bad decisions. What would actually happen in practice is first-time players would still do all the side missions to see the content, get hosed over, realize they're hosed, and just leave pissed-off. They're not restarting the 20+ hour campaign, they're not reloading a save from 5 missions ago, they just walk away angry. That said, there is an argument for doing what games normally do and making it feel like there's time pressure through dialogue (but without affecting the actual gameplay) - putting off Haven's missions makes Hanson more and more frantic about "people are dying out there! we need to help my people!", if you go several missions ignoring Matt's train robbery he questions whether Raynor is getting distracted from the primary goal of fighting Mengsk. Etc. Doesn't affect the missions, just gives it a different feel to the player.
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Sep 5, 2023 12:45
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Staltran posted:The Dominion government isn't a hivemind, though. Even if we assume no one outside the government would be able to verify it, there would be people in the government who could, and it's unlikely all of them would be OK with Tarsonis. Mengsk might be in power, but there’s clearly a pretty sizable base of powerful people in key places that are somewhere on the spectrum from “meh, whatever” to “actively undermining his rule”.
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Sep 18, 2023 02:26
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Nostalgamus posted:You'd think the reveal of Tychus' kill-switch would prompt Raynor to do something, but since the mission is technically optional everyone will ignore it completely going forward. But instead with the way the game chose to handle between-mission discussions, any of those Raynor/Tychus chats about the kill switch happen totally off-screen.
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Sep 24, 2023 10:57
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Fajita Queen posted:Also I've heard rumors that starcraft 3 is all-but-confirmed to be being developed currently, which confuses the hell out of me. Blizzard delivered two major games this year, Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, the current iterations of WoW and Hearthstone keep chugging along in their current forms, so a new Starcraft seems to be their only real option to continue an existing series. And in terms of development time, the gap between Brood War (1999) and Starcraft 2 (2010) was 12 years. Legacy of the Void is now 8 years old, so if you assume they're early in development and a couple years away, it seems pretty reasonable to think they're moving on SC3. The only real confusion is the usual "god I'm fuckin old, how is that eight years ago" sense of time. Who the gently caress knows about the story though. SC2 veers far enough from the 'expected' track from the end of BW that I wouldn't be at all surprised to see SC3 take a hard pivot from the ending of Legacy of the Void.
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Sep 24, 2023 23:37
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Poil posted:Maybe it's Mobious that handles everything Tychus, including monitoring (if they even bother), and they probably don't give the tiniest poo poo about what he does unless it were to go against THEIR plans. -Mobius is the one in charge of Tychus and they're secretly undermining Mengsk, which explains all sorts of things about why Mengsk isn't stopping Tychus, the kill-switch, etc. -Tychus not being aimed at Raynor personally suddenly makes sense since Mobius sees Raynor's Raiders as a useful pawn and doesn't have the personal history like Mengsk does. -It even helps explain how Matt is able to pull off this mission, because a wealthy corporation with powerful connections is quietly smoothing the path in front of Matt.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:51
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aniviron posted:I played Wings but haven't touched the other two; if there are follow-up LP threads for the other parts of SC2 I dread to see what happens to the writing. But yes, the writing is a loving disaster area.
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Oct 7, 2023 03:32
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PurpleXVI posted:I also don't quite get it. Is the idea that the Dominion stole some hybrids and were poking them with sticks to see what they were? Or that the Dominion were helping Duran make them? Or that there were two simultaneous war crime experiments going on? Also, it's spoilers to describe in detail, but let's just say that as usual, the variable mission structure means that there's some information we could already have that helps answer your question.
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Oct 7, 2023 13:48
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BisbyWorl posted:Yeah, but even if no one in the main cast knows it's just insulting that Blizzard went for something as low effort as the ol' 'just flip their name bro' plan. Especially for someone who's been working towards this for god knows how long. But if they’d done that, literally nobody would have made the connection. It needs to be obvious because you’re intended to figure out it’s Duran, wonder what the gently caress, and become even more suspicious of Mobius’ motives in pulling Tychus strings.
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Oct 14, 2023 10:13
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