ghardy
Novice
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2024
- Messages
- 67
Agree. I find Stormgate looks unappealing.I wouldn't say I like that soft, cartoony art style; looks like they're trying to make it look like DOTA 2.
Agree. I find Stormgate looks unappealing.I wouldn't say I like that soft, cartoony art style; looks like they're trying to make it look like DOTA 2.
I could name a dozen of games in which the story is an important aspect, including RTS games. I revisited Starcraft (1) and Warcraft (2 & 3) recently and these games hold really well as far as providing a story that gives good enough context for maps combat takes place in. Another excellent mix of story and gameplay would be Emperor: Battle for Dune. Yes, you could have the game without the story component, but I'd argue these games wouldn't be as interesting, especially in their singeplayer aspect.I imagine that the story is gonna be torn to shreds because it doesn’t live up to the nostalgic idealized childhood memories of yesteryear. Story in a video game is as irrelevant as story in a porno, sure, but I would’ve liked having a new universe to invest in after the extensive rot in the current crop.
I’ve already explained why the Blizz stories are bad multiple times.I could name a dozen of games in which the story is an important aspect, including RTS games. I revisited Starcraft (1) and Warcraft (2 & 3) recently and these games hold really well as far as providing a story that gives good enough context for maps combat takes place in. Another excellent mix of story and gameplay would be Emperor: Battle for Dune. Yes, you could have the game without the story component, but I'd argue these games wouldn't be as interesting, especially in their singeplayer aspect.I imagine that the story is gonna be torn to shreds because it doesn’t live up to the nostalgic idealized childhood memories of yesteryear. Story in a video game is as irrelevant as story in a porno, sure, but I would’ve liked having a new universe to invest in after the extensive rot in the current crop.
I am SPECIFICALLY not talking about Starcraft 2 (hence why I used "(1)" in my post when mentioning Starcraft), so using that pile of shit as your argument is a miss.I’ve already explained why the Blizz stories are bad multiple times.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=20150
Here we go again.. he hates all SC games. And no point arguing with him. He hates is because Raynor chose to stop the Zerg over being faithful to Terrans or some such similar shitI am SPECIFICALLY not talking about Starcraft 2 (hence why I used "(1)" in my post when mentioning Starcraft), so using that pile of shit as your argument is a miss.I’ve already explained why the Blizz stories are bad multiple times.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=20150
The article is talking about Starcraft 1. The writing in that game is mediocre at best. I've explained multiple times why. You can see one explanation below.I am SPECIFICALLY not talking about Starcraft 2 (hence why I used "(1)" in my post when mentioning Starcraft), so using that pile of shit as your argument is a miss.
Raynor stole the plans for the psi-emitter and placed emitters on multiple inhabited planets specifically to lure the zerg there, where the zerg went on to kill about 90% of the human population of the entire sector (alongside Tassadar glassing the planets and their inhabitants after the zerg arrived).He hates is becuse Raynor chose to stop the Zerg over being faithful to Terrans lol
If the story acknowledged that Raynor was a psychopath responsible for billions of innocent people being eaten and incinerated, then I wouldn’t have a problem. The thing is, the writers and fanboys think he’s an unambiguous hero and fawn over him. They cyberbullied me for pointing out all the contradictions, driving me out of the fandom.Why does Raynor need to be the good guy? Who cares. This is not a story about good guys, nobody is good guy except maybe Dark Templar Protoss that seemed to be treated unfairly by other Protoss.
EB4D is what I consider the bare minimum when it comes to RTS story. Right off the bat, it focuses on the factions and emphasizes their ideologies with neat little intro videos. The leaders are exemplars of their faction values, not hijackers with inconsistent motives. The story is about the houses first and foremost. This is how you write an RTS story!Another excellent mix of story and gameplay would be Emperor: Battle for Dune. Yes, you could have the game without the story component, but I'd argue these games wouldn't be as interesting, especially in their singeplayer aspect.
Is it?:The article is talking about Starcraft 1.
It has been suggested by some that the campaign story in Starcraft 2 is hammy, obvious, and slathered in thick, cheesy melodrama.
The way I look at it, the focus is on Starcraft 2. There is some using of Starcraft 1 as a backdrop, but it comes off as being better than Starcraft 2 as a result of the comparison.And then we get to Starcraft 2…
In Starcraft 2, we’re no longer constrained by the graphical and budgetary limitations of 1998. Blizzard has heaps of riches, tons of skill, and lots of processor power to throw at the problem. If they want their story to look like a movie, it can. It does.
I'd tell you to ask Shamus to write a review of the sc1 story to explain its flaws, but he's dead. In any case, I agree with him.By the way, I disagree with "I don’t think Blizzard’s storytelling has gotten any worse", because it obviously did get worse.
I spent years looking, but there simply isn't a critique of the writing anywhere online. Would you like me to do a mission by mission breakdown, a breakdown of the manual, and a breakdown of how the lore evolved over time during the early days?Maybe I will discuss the story of Starcraft 1 later (the article does a good job of dealing with Stacraft 2).
Do you mean Starcraft: Shadow of the Xel Naga? Yeah, that was awful. I am really glad I found it in a library, because it would be horrible to waste money on that. That said, I found Starcraft: Liberty's Crusade by Jeff Grubb to be fairly enjoyable (Mostly. In some places even excellent, by that I mean the short bits between the chapters), although it has its share of issues and overall is rather unremarkable novel for someone who isn't fan of Starcraft.It got more obvious with the increased visuals, but Metzen was always a bad writer. Read the novelization of the terran campaign. I'll wait.
This is true only to a degree ("less is more" is the part I agree with). I know the script by heart and in my opinion "what the writer wrote" is solid on its own. The good voice acting only helps to reinforce that.The plot only seems to make sense because Blizz didn't have the visual fidelity at the time, so they left a lot of stuff vague and thus easy for your brain to gloss over with headcanon. But at the end of the day, you're doing the writer's work for them. That's not how you evaluate writing.
You judge writing based on what the writer wrote, not the amazing story you imagined in your head.
I will mostly answer what you already posted in #506 and #508, maybe use that as jump-off point for counter-arguments of the story. So you could add to that, if you want. I don't think there is need for breakdown of the lore or the manual though. The manual's role is not as important as it was for Warcraft 2 in terms of establishing the setting, because it is shown well enough in the game itself via the campaign.Will you criticize the script or just accept it as good uncritically? I spent years looking, but there simply isn't a critique of the writing anywhere online. Would you like me to do a mission by mission breakdown, a breakdown of the manual, and a breakdown of how the lore evolved over time during the early days?
I don't think so. In fact, I am going to address some of the points you've already made (probably on Saturday).Will that be more likely to convince you than the many other explanations I have already given?
I think the same of the game script it is adapted from. It’s a weak story that doesn’t stand on its own.although it has its share of issues and overall is rather unremarkable novel for someone who isn't fan of Starcraft.
I would say it does so very rushed and poorly. The manual painted the broad strokes of a much longer and larger war. The game script rapidly burns through all the plot hooks introduced, does not give proper breathing room, then starts making shit up and retconning things when the expansion rolls around.The manual's role is not as important as it was for Warcraft 2 in terms of establishing the setting, because it is shown well enough in the game itself via the campaign.
Well, I can’t say I didn’t try.I don't think so.
Okay, but that’s not gonna convince me that anything I said is wrong. I’ve spent the years since LotV released examining the scripts and coming to the conclusion that they’re terrible. Rather than picking at plot points and rebutting your coming rebuttals of my criticism of a decades old game script, which sounds like a headache of epic proportions, I would much rather describe what I wish starcraft had done instead.In fact, I am going to address some of the points you've already made (probably on Saturday).
Do tell, please.I would much rather describe what I wish starcraft had done instead.
On and off. I probably only spent about twenty hours per year actually reading, if that. And I stopped doing it around 2020 after becoming too frustrated with stupid people online.Spending years examining vidya scripts![]()
Thanks for asking! I find that so much more constructive and fun.Do tell, please.I would much rather describe what I wish starcraft had done instead.
Ain’t that the truth?The bar for video game writing is so low that most people are willing to overlook the flaws in anything that contains half a semblance of logic and structure.
Unless the war is large in extent and time, with preplanning, then it will run into the sequelitis problem. After Merzen exhausted all the plot hooks from the manual, in very rushed and unsatisfying ways imo, he started pulling stuff out of his ass.That would work but Sc1 story works as well. It is only with Sc2 that things got screwed up a lot with needless addition of 4th faction which are basically space demons or space infernals from Warcraft.
Also your version would make this much bigger war which is not what original wanted, it would be a different game. Maybe they chose to make it smaller so it looks less like WH40K that they were already being accused of stealing from.
Also a bigger war makes it more similar to C&C games and TA and they wanted to make a different narrative that felt different to play.
I was young but Kerrigan being left behind and Raynor being mad and wanting revenge made me feel something compared to C&C and Red Alert which was all most for laughs.
Exactly. I don’t agree with Blizz’s creative decisions. Why are you surprised?Also your version would make this much bigger war which is not what original wanted, it would be a different game.
In the moment sure, but that was due to the decent voice acting and you being young at the time. Metzen’s writing still relies on huge leaps of logic and inconsistent world building. Just because young you was impressed doesn’t mean the writing is good. I loved The Magic Voyage as a child, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s bad. Children have poor taste and lack critical thinking skills, it’s just how things are.I was young but Kerrigan being left behind and Raynor being mad and wanting revenge made me feel something compared to C&C and Red Alert which was all most for laughs.
It is a miracle that sc1 og even has the illusion of coherence that it does, since it was thrown together by a first time writer who had to work around studio mandates and decisions by the design team.For Starcraft, this only applies to the first game. Brood War gets by on gameplay and mission design, but it's impossible to ignore the idiocy of the writing.
While a lot of your criticisms of blizzard storytelling are sensible, I do hope you realize that you deciding that the story of starcraft should be about factions and grand wars is completely arbitrary. Your personal strain of autism simply imprinted on some promotional booklet you read 20 years ago and you imagined in your head how things should go and when they didn't go how you imagined, you got extremely butthurt and started your grand crusade against Metzen or whatever. You undermine your own positions by getting distracted by completely irrelevant things.I’m making a story for adults, not children. I’m respecting my audience’s intelligence by world building coherently and with forethought, rather than making things up on the fly like Blizz admits to doing in interviews.
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
At least until Blizzard drove their IPs into the ground. Whatever good people saw in the past is now pointless because of all the crap that came later.Also, as a general rule you should just accept that people will always prefer interesting characters to nebulous factions.
The success of 40k by doing exactly that begs to differ. Not that it matters now, since Blizz drove their IPs into the ground.I do hope you realize that you deciding that the story of starcraft should be about factions and grand wars is completely arbitrary.
This thread is full of people criticizing Stormgate for being seemingly aimed at children.Here's a fitting quote from a guy smarter than either of us:
And that's why I say a lot of your criticisms are on point. It's just the insistence on factions as the be all end all, and the whole 'character x should've done this instead of that' that consistently miss the mark. Even C&C that you bring up as the opposite to blizzard stuff, no one cares about the factions or knows what NOD or GDI stand for. But everyone has fond memories of Kane, Yuri, and communist Tim Curry going into space. So it's not about factions, it's about the hacks writing them.You know what I mean. There’s a difference between children’s stories that you can still appreciate in adulthood, or appreciate even better as an adult, versus stories written by hacks that think children are dumb.
So are there RTS writers who aren’t hacks? Who can balance writing interesting factions with cultures and ideologies that stand on their own complemented by interesting characters to populate them?it's about the hacks writing them
It sounds to me like you guys subconsciously apply different standards to past games due to childhood nostalgia and are upset that the genre’s writing hasn’t grown up with you even as technology has advanced, rather than the writing genuinely getting worse over time.I don't really see Stormgate's story criticized that much on account of us not having seen that story yet. It's criticized for its art style - that's bad - and mechanics - that somehow manage to displease both the WC3 and SC2 people at the same time. What does get flak with Stormgate's narrative side are the bits of cutscenes we got in trailers that make it seem like another Blizzard story. Cliches aren't bad and they worked well for WC3, hence as you say people having fond memories of it. When Blizzard then went ahead and told the exact same cliched story in SC2 (but worse), that's where people rebelled against them. And now it looks like another company that tries to ape Blizzard is actually trying to sell us the exact same cliched story again. And it's hard not to mock that.
This argument is a non-sequitur. The campaigns are continuous episodes, comparable to a television show. They’re not disconnected in the way that Conan vignettes are.Your problems with conenctive tissue not making sense are disregarded precisely because it's an RTS. You're not experiencing a continuous story. Instead it's a series of missions with who knows what happening in between them. So it's less a novel and more a collection of short stories. No one gets on Robert Howard's ass when in one story Conan is a thief and in the next a pirate. Same principle applies to RTS storytelling.
This is another very odd thing to say. I would say it’s like going to mcdonalds and ordering a burger, only for them to give you a romance novel instead.As for the potential being there for a good RTS that focuses on deep faction dynamics? No one's denying that, and if someone did that, I imagine a lot of people would really be into that. But criticizing games not even attempting to focus on factions for not focusing on factions, that's just silly. That's like coming to mcdonalds and then complaining to the manager that they're not selling you a pizza.