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Alright, there's a big, understated elephant in the room between sc1 and sc2 and that's already apparent. The events of SC2 take place 4 years after brood war. But everything in the story would only make sense, that is, the parts that do make sense, if it was somewhere closer to 40 years. Or at least a generation's worth. On a similar note as regards scale, it was already happening in brood war and definitely got amped up in between SC1 and SC2, but in the original, the confederacy was 13 planets. And seven of those god mulched! The Dominion in this is implied to be dozens, likely well over a hundred.
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May 31, 2023 23:13
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I still maintain that a lot of problems with the timescale between 1 and 2 would go away if there was a 0 on the end of that 4 year gap. Because like, that's two full generations, enough time for colonies and a huge population boom to really expand the terran reach and for the dominion to have rebuilt, refocused and rearmed itself.
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Jun 1, 2023 08:12
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Mission's a straightforward fight to introduce you to how other base building missions will be different. Good gameplay. But onto bad writing. Bad writing isn't just gigantic, lovely twists and confusing themes, it comes across in small ways, too. The one that really stuck out here: quote:Is this one and the way he says it, all wistful-like. Keeping continuity with brood war character wise at least, could've been done without rewriting the whole thing by just having him sound bitter and changing it to the more straightforward "It would've been better if you died that day." Going with the last time we saw him: pledging to murder her.
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Jun 3, 2023 05:15
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Every time I hear the term stimpack the voice line plays in my head. Also Firebats because it'll annoy you.
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Jun 11, 2023 07:50
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I talked about the planets/population thing before: the terrans had 13 worlds total in starcraft one. 9 of them were mulched by the end of the terran campaign. This degraded by the time of Brood War with the number becoming far fuzzier and SC2 is basically just a different setting with the same names.
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Jun 12, 2023 01:03
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Tenebrais posted:This is probably the idea behind the convict marines sealed in. I doubt they need any more encouragement to stay in there than the fact they're welded in, since they'd have to go AWOL, escape whatever base they're stationed at, and get to whoever might be capable of taking it off. And those units would just be deployed directly into a zerg hive or what have you. Convict marines are "neurally resocialized." I. E. subject to heavy brainwashing and memory replacement. They aren't sealed into their armour because depending on sources they literally can't fight without being ordered to.
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Jun 12, 2023 12:58
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Now, if being set on fire made organic units panic or something.... ...It'd probably be OP or useless.
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Jun 24, 2023 10:49
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In the manual for starcraft 1, the ships that carried the terrans to the Korpulu sector had an extremely rare mutation that lead to the development of psychic powers. It also notes that at this time this mutation had not been expressed on earth. Mind you, this is likely because the UED killed anyone else who could have it, given their genocide of 400 million people that specifically targeted those with mutations like that.
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Jul 4, 2023 10:42
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Yeah, you can see how the "evil female villain becomes prettier over time" progression goes. This was Kerrigan in SC1  This was her by brood war.  And this is her right now. 
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Jul 4, 2023 13:54
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PurpleXVI posted:Outside of the box art, I can only really find one time where we see Kerrigan as something other than a tiny, crusty sprite prior to Starcraft 2. About the only parts of her that still look remotely human are the legs, hands and face, everything else is more insecty chitin than anything. That's not actually true! You can see her in the brood war campaign menu and she looks like this.  Edit: whoops got sniped.
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Jul 4, 2023 15:32
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Kith posted:prophecies suck because they ruin the mystery of upcoming events by their very nature unless the story deliberately calls the whole thing into question, either making the prophecy itself completely wrong (and therefore a waste of time) or only partially wrong (which can be cool if the the gimmick successfully shifts to "how much of it is wrong and how much of it is right") Prophecies can be very good, it's just that most modern storytelling traditions use them in the worst way possible. Better games can use them better, like Six Ages, which both has a central one and also every in-game year minor ones like "this is a good year for raiding people" or "One of the priests had a vision of clouds and no one knows what the hell that means." Also the one at the centre of the almost-released part two, which is... well. Complicated and pretty incredible.
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Jul 29, 2023 14:37
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:i have seen one extremely good take on the subject, based, of all things, on a throwaway joke from an episode of MST3K There's actually a game with this premise: Dragon Quest Builders. Of all things. Actually that series used a similar idea with Dragon Quest V where your role is to be the dad of the one spoken in prophecy.
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Aug 2, 2023 11:56
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JohnKilltrane posted:I'd kinda like to see fiction where prophecy works the same way it does in actual Abrahamic religions, as a divine or otherwise supernatural oracle concerned more with speaking to the present than the future. Imagine Zeratul all bringing the prophecy to Raynor and saying "I bring this now because the prophecy is meant for you, James Raynor." "Me?" "You, and all Terrans. You are the recipients of this divine oracle." And he reads the prophecy and it's all "Listen up, fuckwads, when we Xel'Naga made sentient species we did so with the expectation that you'd be caretakers of the worlds, so stop loving irradiating everything. You people are obsessed with nuking your problems away and it's ruining everything. Believe it or not there are some of us left so if you can't get your poo poo together we'll come sort it out for you and believe us, you will not like that." Note from a bit back, but Six Ages/KoDP and it's setting, Glorantha is like this. In those games, the more regular kind of prophecy exists, but most augury is what historical augury was: not asking what the future is, but asking what the gods want and are doing. So, every year you get signs from them, which can be like "you should explore far off places" or "the crops are not gonna be good" or "If you cease fighting people, we'll give you good fortune." That sorta thing.
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Aug 6, 2023 00:56
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Hey now, don't worry, we've only just started on making the Zerg less interesting.
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Aug 12, 2023 07:55
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As it's clear, this mission is very cool the first time, a total drag every time after. Also jeeze, the protoss heroes here are just a bunch of wasted potential. Aircraft heroes! Those are the coolest! But nothing, nope, they make zilch appearances in SC2's campaigns from hereon out. And that's probably better than what happened with Selendis.
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Aug 19, 2023 09:41
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Huh, that decal looks like a combo between the original sc1 arm with whip but stylized to resemble the emblem of the brotherhood of nod from command and conquer. ...That's a much better look than what we got. Kith posted:Fun Fact: The results screen shows a beta version of this mission where the opponent did not have access to upgraded bunkers and used an earlier version of the Dominion decal.
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Aug 26, 2023 08:08
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If starcraft had better writers, they'd lean on the fact that Mengsk's dominion was forged basically as an alliance at the end of the terran campaign: he had to call the planets and terran governments to rally to himself to establish the dominion and merely a year later it'd already been kicked near-fatally by the UED. He had to sell a lot of goodwill to "various interest groups" at the end of broodwar to try ant take down Kerrigan: and he failed. So by all rights he should be less "unchallenged authoritarian dictator" and more "at the centre of a web of influential groups that he has to constantly set against each other to stop them from turning on him."
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Sep 18, 2023 02:36
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The odin mission's pretty fun, weird plot holes aside. Actually, the one thing that does make sense there is the Odin itself. Militaristic authoritarians love their giant, impractical superweapons. That it's full of completely impractical parts is entirely sensical if you keep in mind that it's probably supposed to be a showpiece, never made for mass production. Instead, when you make something like this, it's to show off new, experimental technology and to push the limits of what you have. What's actually interesting is that it scales down into something legitimately useable, with, presumably, no flushing toilets onboard.
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Sep 24, 2023 06:39
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I just want to note that virophage is a bizarre name for those things that opens up a whole can of worms: Virophages, in real life, are viruses that require a second, separate virus to infect the host before them. They then actually infect this virus to hijack it's replication structures, being unable to spread on their own. So, in that case, wouldn't the implication be that the structures just activate dormant infestations in the colonists, who are all already infected? Obviously this is all just a result of Blizzard once again using words without knowing what they mean.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:05
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Killing off Tychus was a dumb decision: the dude was like, the only character added to WoL that was worth keeping, except for the mechanic. He was funny! He was a logical guy for newcomers to relate to because he'd been on ice and missed the entirety of the first game! He had a neat conflict! It's pretty telling that they brought him back in non-canon form like, twice.
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Dec 10, 2023 12:06
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At least the ghost thing is consistent in being utterly useless outfits. In a moment of hilarity, the spandex covers more than the SC1 suits did.   They got like a tabard.. bandolier.. thing... jeans and boots. And nothing over their arms.
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Dec 22, 2023 23:51
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This all reminds me of how infested kerrigan originally looked. See that? That is horrifying. Infested terrans in SC1 were no better.  They've taken out a lot of the sheer hosed-upedness of the design for what are, granted, more coherent but less repellent looks for them, minus the abominations.
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Jan 12, 2024 12:58
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The thing about the evolution missions is that they also provide a glimpse into a better campaign design than you actually see: one where you play the swarm rapidly overtaking world after world and being all ridiculously cool about it. A far better promise than what we got.
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Jan 21, 2024 08:50
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Yeah, it is stupid no matter the justification.
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Feb 10, 2024 22:02
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Tenebrais posted:Ironically Warfield actually did stop trying right before Kerrigan ran out of scourge and he'd have overwhelmed her. Yeah, if he had exactly one more gorgon it would've worked.
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Mar 2, 2024 17:08
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The whole broodmother devouring random worlds thing is one of the more tonally braindead parts of heart of the swarm and also one of the more disappointing: you're literally devouring an entire world while trying to be morally superior and you don't even get to play it out.
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Mar 3, 2024 05:37
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Note that we just attack the protoss in the evolution mission for banelings for literally no reason. No, seriously, they're just kind of there and Kerrigan decides to massacre them? At least the dominion mining camp has a military garrison.
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Mar 10, 2024 07:22
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Char could make a lot of sense if they ever felt like it needed a justification. 1. It's pretty isolated. 2. It has a lot of mineral resources. 3. The zerg already have a massive presence there. 4. Nostalgia: Kerrigan was "born" there as the queen of blades, after all, and it's where she kicked everyone's rear end. But, they didn't see the need to actually explain anything, so it's just inexplicable.
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Mar 11, 2024 23:29
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I wonder if calling it a centaur is a fallout reference.
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Mar 20, 2024 11:36
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PurpleXVI posted:You know, stuff like the option to infest the prisoners or various bystanders to add more power could be some sort of interesting moral choice in another game, where you're constantly tempted with gameplay advantages to do bad things, but something turns out different if you don't. Like Kerrigan can prove herself to Horner and Valerian, or she can just force them with parasites. She can release the Protoss Lady from the start whom I forget, or use her as a trojan horse to get a leg up against her enemies. And ultimately in the final mission that could change something like, do you get more wormy zergy buddies, or do, say, the Terrans or Protoss show up to give you a hand because you've proven that you're not a single-minded psychopath. I mean, on the one hand yes: on the other hand, you'd have to structure large parts of the third game in a planned trilogy around the outcome of these choices, which is an assload of work.
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Apr 13, 2024 11:56
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Co-Op Tychus comes from a better timeline, where Blizzard didn't kill off pretty much the only interesting character in WoL.
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Apr 18, 2024 09:54
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The Co-Op mode shows glimpses into a universe with a far more fun plotline than the one we got.
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May 8, 2024 15:03
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