StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

[Black]

#fuckprotoss420

 

[Maculo]

Broodwar's campaign/story had some dumb moments and filler levels, but it was still decent. I wish blizzard would release extra campaign levels, such as the rogue Dark Templar story in Broodwar and the Rexar story.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Broodwar's campaign/story had some dumb moments and filler levels, but it was still decent. I wish blizzard would release extra campaign levels, such as the rogue Dark Templar story in Broodwar and the Rexar story.

I always thought Brood War's campaign was a little funny just because the first two campaigns are pretty well done but the Zerg campaign was so obviously phoned in. Every single mission feels the same, just with the enemy getting progressively stronger each time.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Again, "epic" overload. I actually find it quite creepy how hard they are trying to make the player feel awesome.

 

[Maculo]

I always thought Brood War's campaign was a little funny just because the first two campaigns are pretty well done but the Zerg campaign was so obviously phoned in. Every single mission feels the same, just with the enemy getting progressively stronger each time.

I think the Zerg campaign Broodwar swung between extremes. The final mission was fantastic in my opinion, but the whole Samir Duran story went very quickly. He went from Kerrigan's second in command to traitor really quickly.

 

[racofer]

Pre-ordered.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Again, "epic" overload. I actually find it quite creepy how hard they are trying to make the player feel awesome.

It will never beat Half Life 2 in that regard.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

It will never beat Half Life 2 in that regard.

Well.... Craphesda is a strong contender, if you look at some new Elder Scrolls trailers, it feels like watching some anime DBZ shit with indestructible heroes and everything.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yeah, but do they have in game characters that always go "you are so awesome Gordon" "that was incredible Gordon" "WOW ITZ GORDAN FREEMAN". One of the few games where i literally wanted to punch the devs in the face.

 

[Black]

Diablo 3 is still one of the top offenders in that case, everyone wants the chosen one/nephalem's dick.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Yeah, but do they have in game characters that always go "you are so awesome Gordon" "that was incredible Gordon" "WOW ITZ GORDAN FREEMAN". One of the few games where i literally wanted to punch the devs in the face.

Many games do that, just instead of "Gordon" there is "Chosen" or "Dragonborn" or "Sheppard" of whatever. But the DevPunch™ feature sounds really interesting, especially for the AAA titles. :D

 

[racofer]

Patch 3.0 will bring a completely revamped UI for the game:



I particularly liked it.

 

[Havoc]

I think the Zerg campaign Broodwar swung between extremes. The final mission was fantastic in my opinion, but the whole Samir Duran story went very quickly. He went from Kerrigan's second in command to traitor really quickly.

And now he is a Dragon Ball Z level villain.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Jesus fucking Christ, what kind of homogayassfaggotry is this:

 

[Black]

Well, protoss was always a race for gay homo fags.

 

[Maculo]

And now he is a Dragon Ball Z level villain.

That part of HotS annoyed me. At least in SC1, he seemed confident and subtle. That being said, I did enjoy that level with Kerrigan being sidelined on max difficulty. While I bitch about the story a lot, I do enjoy the campaign levels/design for the most part.

Also, even in SC1 the protoss were Dragon Ball ish element with Archons and Tassadar turning into a suicide bomb. SC1, however, never went to these levels.

 

[cvv]

SC1 comes from better times, times of restraint and relative intelligence. Today Blizzard is pushing the cartoonishness beyond taste, beyond parody even.

Some of the Hearthstone barks and voiceovers are not even funny anymore, just deeply embarrassing.

 

[Maculo]

SC1 comes from better times, times of restraint and relative intelligence. Today Blizzard is pushing the cartoonishness beyond taste, beyond parody even.

Some of the Hearthstone barks and voiceovers are not even funny anymore, just deeply embarrassing.

I am not so sure about that. SC1 was full of Simpson references, pop humor, and cartoony humor. Remember the cinematic with the beer in the cold fusion bomb and the two soldiers that hit the zergling with the truck? ("I love you Sarg") Terrans were always very campy and goofy (Confederacy, Southerners in Power Armor, etc). It is hard to say it was more intelligent CVV, because many parts were not memorable.

Blizzard's only real serious and non cartoonish franchise/serious was Diablo. Arguably, even Diablo 2 started to change with some of the goofy creature designs (Gibbons) and silly one liners (Necromancer).

 

[Atomkilla]

There's a difference between cartoonish approach of SC1 and SC2.

The original had cartoonish elements and pop-culture references (from the Simpsons you mention, to the obvious Aliens and Starship Troopers). However, most of those were just flavour, in case you decide to click on a unit multiple times (something I always appreciated about Blizz games) - when it come to campaign-relevant, up-front goofiness, it was mostly reserved for Terrans, usually Marines (which somewhat serves to break the mold of WH40K Space Marines on which they were based), SCVs (stereotypical blue-collar redneck) and tanks, and again, it was there as a sort of flavor.
Other than that SC1 was a pretty serious, dark and violent game. Most Terrans, while not very deep, still rarely fall into the typical black-or-white character division (even Raynor, who is closest to a typical goody-two-shoes is an ex-criminal) - each having their own motivation and goal, and are often ruthless to achieve those - Mengsk, namely, who is intended to be a bad guy because of the stuff he has done, but it is shown that his regime is an improvement over the old government - or so I recall.
Protoss are shown to be the ones who bring order to Koprulu - a sort police of the galaxy - and a very brutal one. Noble as they are, they do not care if they commit a genocide of an entire planet due to a handful of Zerg being present on it, and they never show remorse for it (except for Tassadar, which is a major plot point). Other than that, Protoss are essentially as xenophobic as possible and don't care much about lives of those which they deem below them - like Eldar on which they were based.
Zerg, based on Tyranids, are beasts of war and carnage which survive on killing and assimilating other species. There is no morality to them, no remorse, nothing. They are pure engines of destruction. Kerrigan, who was a assassin-revolutionary with a murky past to begin with, fell from grace and became a "bitch-queen of universe", no less a monster than other zerg - just with human intelligence and cruelty. She is essentially evil incarnate - genocidal, cold, ruthless, manipulative and brutal.

So, in short, while SC1 does have a layer of cartoonishness to it, it is in its core a dark game. Not WH40K grim-dark, but still, there are very few positive things to find in this and its plot game, at least when it comes to the three main races. Most of the characters also have their bad sides shown, so there's that too. What's most important - the basic premise of the game is the struggle for power, survival and dominion in Koprulu - and absolute annihilation of anybody who opposes that.


SC2 took a full shit on all that.
Kerrigan is suddenly a good girl again, with a horrible past she can't account for. Terrans are full-on parody of what they were - the only logical thing to them is the fact that Raynor became an alcoholic. Protoss...well, we haven't seen much of them so far, but since they are working with Kerrigan and Terran against this bad ass Saturday morning cartoon evil guy who wants to destroy the universe™, I have no hope for them to be anything else but a joke of the original Protoss from SC1.


StarCraft was never a pinnacle of writing in video games, and had quite a few crimes to account for (UED for example), but SC2 is a whole level below it. From a relatively "adult" SF video game, it went to a cartoon for kids with an incredibly simplistic good against evil plot, cliche and flat characters. In fact, I'd say that the decline of SC's storyline started with some elements of Brood War (the mentioned UED and hybrids) - or at least, the shit that SC2 is evolved from BW's lowest points.

 

[Maculo]

While I agree that the Zerg and Protoss were more serious, the goofiness went beyond just the multiple clicks. In the terran mission where you invade some science installation, you get the "well, what's the any key" from the marines to open up the security doors. Moreover, you have the goofy terran cinematics ("thank god for cold fusion").

I think there is a difference between a game being dark and having dark moments. I think SC1 had dark moments, but I did not view it as an overly dark game. To view it as a dark game, I believe that one needs to fill in the blanks that Blizzard left behind. While I would agree with your impression of the races, none of that is explicitly said in-game. Ultimately, I would argue SC1 is an example of "less is more." It was just a story thrown together for the game. It was not complicated, but it worked.

In my opinion, SC2's problems stem from the fact that Blizzard tried to fill in the blanks and "inbetween" events. In trying to fill out Kerrigan's character, they made her into the cringe worthy supergirl. They wanted characters that were deeper than SC1, but they made it generic.

 

[Daedalos]

Nobody is denying the fact that both SC1 and SC2 have goofy elements, it's fucking blizzard games ffs, it's part of the charm..

But SC2 has waaaaay more cheesey and borderline dumb stuff than SC1 ever had.

Trust me, I'm a major fucking blizz fanboy I'll admit, and a starcraft fanboy at that. The story and presentation of the SC2 campaign was fucking atrocious compared to SC1.

It was like having your favourite childhood memory ripped out and stomped on, pissed on, deficated on and then raped and put on a display.

There were defintely some cool and good moments in SC2, but they were far and in betweeen compared to SC1, which had almost nothing but fucking awesome shit.

The story of SC1 for me at least, stands as some of the best sci-fi fiction ever written for a game, despite the goofy shit and pop references. Hell, even the background story and the stuff from the manual was awesome.

I really hope they can turn the ship around with Legacy of the void, but I doubt it. It's been to much fucked up at this point, to be relevant and good anymore.

The story had real potential to go places after the end of Brood War, but they fucked it up beyond belief with Wings of Liberty and the godawful, Heart of the swarm.

It's a fucking shame. Really is. I had such high hopes for the story going in, and boy was I let down. Well fucking done, Blizzard.

At least the multiplayer is 100 % solid ...

 

[Maculo]

Don't get me wrong, I mainly agree with the above and I cringed hard at HotS. Where I disagree is cvv stating that SC1 showed restraint or intelligence. It just showed less, and we had to the opportunity to imagine an interesting setting before Blizzard filled in the blanks with shit.

 

[Atomkilla]

To be fair, just comparing an average dialogue from SC1 and SC2 shows that writers of SC1 had more intelligence.

 

[DeepOcean]

Don't get me wrong, I mainly agree with the above and I cringed hard at HotS. Where I disagree is cvv stating that SC1 showed restraint or intelligence. It just showed less, and we had to the opportunity to imagine an interesting setting before Blizzard filled in the blanks with shit.

I read the Starcraft 1 manual with Starcraft 1 background storyline, it was very cliche but surprisingly well written. It isn't just a case of Blizzard filling the blank space with their usual shit, actually there was a sharp decline since then.

You know, the villains motivations were Disney like evil but kinda made sense at that time but nowdays demanding that a plot make sense is harassing the writer and opressing his writing freedom or whatever. I think there were some drastic changes on Blizzard's writing staff with WoW, after WoW, the plots became ridiculous and fan service reached Bioware levels. Not only the plots became stuff of low quality anime, the dialog too had a sharp decline, childish lines that made me vomit were rare on Starcraft 1, on Star Carft 2, there is one in each cutscene. The romance beween zerg Kerrigan and Raynor alone is enough to win the trophy retardation of the decade.

I'm happy there won't be any Blizzard game with a single player story for some time after Legacy of the Void, at least Blizzard don't embarass itself so much again, so soon.

 

[cvv]

I'm happy there won't be any Blizzard game with a single player story for some time after Legacy of the Void, at least Blizzard don't embarass itself so much again, so soon.

Reminds me, what is actually in the longterm pipes for Blizzard? More WoW addons, more HS adventures, shit like that but actually new games? (Not counting their shitty TF2 knock off thrown together from Titan scraps, that's not a new game.)