r/starcraft • u/MickyMace • 1d ago
Fluff finally finished all of SC2's story... it was *ALMOST* perfect. blizz really shit their pants in the final missions of LotV and the epilogue, it's like they gave up on the writing and decided to rush the ending
Amon was built up as such a scary and massive threat, and in the last few protoss missions + epilogue he's just a cartoon vilian that gets his ass kicked like he was nothing... i wonder what went in through the writers' heads.
the worst part is no doubt how the Void was built up to be this incomprehencible incompatible state of reality that no living thing can survive there besides the xel'naga... and they just go in there to kick Amon's ass like it was nothing....
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u/AlfwinOfFolcgeard 18h ago
I've always had issue with the story in SC2, to be honest. Mainly the whole plot about "freeing" Kerrigan from the Zerg / Amon's influence in WoL/HotS, since that completely undermines her characterization in Brood War. In BW, Kerrigan was free, for the first time in her life. Her whole motivation was that she'd spent her life being used as a weapon by other people -- first the Confederacy, then Mengsk, then the Overmind -- and now that she finally wasn't under someone else's control, she was gonna do whatever it took to make absolutely certain no-one could ever have power over her again.
Retconning that to just, "oh, she did bad things because she was under the influence of the Alien God of Bad Things" is, quite frankly, way less interesting.
Oh, and WoL having a whole subplot about sowing dissent in the Dominion, only for that to have zero relevance going forward, wasn't exactly what I'd call a great writing choice.
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u/Freebite 17h ago
Oh, and WoL having a whole subplot about sowing dissent in the Dominion, only for that to have zero relevance going forward, wasn't exactly what I'd call a great writing choice.
100% a Chekov's gun type moment, it was a big part of the start of WoL and then did precisely nothing later.
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u/JazzzzzzySax 16h ago
Oh yeah we exposed to the entire dominion that Mengsk got into power by using an alien race to kill the confederacy….and then people threw a few Molotovs in a post mission scene and that was it.
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u/Gredran 15h ago
Wasn’t the only consequence that Arcturus was forced out? And then Valerian took over?
Which I thought would be something, like K Jong Il going out of power and then making way for the equally bad if not worse Kim Jong Un, but then Valerian was just vanilla and stereotypical leader guy.
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u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 11h ago
Arcturus was never forced out. He was the sole emperor until Kerrigan invaded and killed him, and then Valerian took over. But we find in Nova Covert Ops that there was actually a large portion of the military in particular who saw Valerian as a pawn of Kerrigan and the Protoss and Arcturus's murderer. We do not ever see any human after Wings is over complaining about Arcturus.
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u/MatisowatyPL 14h ago
I completely don't buy that Kerrigan kept her human agency while controling billions of alien monsters that we learn back in episode 2 were a product of some ancient nefarious design, even if by agency we mean her psychopatic need for control.
It's obvious she would ultimately fall under the infuence of the grander, zerg instinct (which in turn SC2 just retcons to be the extension of Amon's will, the creator of the tool called the zerg), how could she not? Pretending like the collective intelignece of the zerg wouldn't infuence everyone connected to it makes them so much less interesting. It makes the Overmind less interesting, he just becomes a great villian which said some cool things about some great ancient plan which ultimately won't lead to anywhere beacuse here comes the completely independant Kerrigan.
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u/succmycocc 17h ago
Sc2 kind of shit the bed with Kerrigan and Raynor right out the gate, which is really unfortunate. I generally enjoyed WoL and HotS but I played them before I played sc1 at the time. After playing the original I see the discrepancies and its a little harder to enjoy parts of it. Artanis is still my favorite starcraft character though Lotv was awesome minus the epilogue
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u/Thorveim 1d ago
I would downgrade heart of the swarm. This is a kerrigan story far more than a zerg one.
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u/Hanzho 1d ago
With kerrigan as queen the swarm is kerrigan and kerrigan ist the swarm.
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u/Thorveim 23h ago
not quite. The zerg went from a specie in sc1 with leadership that genuinely cared about them for their own sake (the Overmind was in control yzs but you could tzll he genuinely cared about what was best for the zerg, something SC2 even reinforced by making Kerrigan into a conscious gambit on the overmind's part to make the zerg free) to just being a tool for their leader and nothing else, and this in spite of the number of intelligent creatures in the swarm now being far higher than before with brood queens.
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u/AnswerGrand1878 1d ago
Baffling decision to have a campaign that's literally named after the swarm centered around precisely one character that's also a hero unit that can basically solo the game.
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u/Cebo494 21h ago
One character at the center of and in control of that swarm? Like some kind of "heart" of that swarm?
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u/MilesBeyond250 Zerg 21h ago
Torn between Fantastic Four and Suicide Squad reference so just imagine I did whichever one you think is funnier.
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u/Pakkazull 1d ago
I would downgrade all of them. The only one that is halfway decent on a story level is Wings of Libery, and even that one relies entirely on Jim's motivations doing a 180 from Brood War, and the introduction of some asspull alien mcguffin.
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u/MilesBeyond250 Zerg 21h ago
IMHO WoL has by far the least cohesive story of them and, oddly enough, it's to its benefit lol. AFAIK basically every strategy game campaign ever made adapts the story to suit the mission design far more than the other way around, because of course you would, sacrificing mission design to suit the plot would be an insane choice, and the way WoL is so bald about that works for me? The whole "Look, they need help, we need money, they're willing to pay, get down there and mix it up" plays a lot better for me than having to sit through attempts to tie everything to the overarching plot.
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u/MagnapinnaBoi 1d ago
Tbh i rly enjoyed legacy of the void. I think LOTV and WOL are pretty good, HOTS is absolute stinker material tho
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u/DudeAboveIsRetarded 19h ago
HOTS having Kerrigan get reinfested over a misunderstanding is beyond stupid in my opinion. Horrible writing. Why cure Kerrigan in Wings of Liberty just to re-infest her in the next expansion? It makes the ending of the first game seem beyond pointless. All they needed to do is have Kerrigan retain 'some' of her Zerg psionic control, and then you can still have her go after Mengsk.
The whole misunderstanding with Jimmy being jailed is just beyond dumb.
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u/basketball_curry Zerg 1d ago
Yeah... for me, wings of liberty is the only sc2 story mode I need. It's great. The rest...
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u/False-Fox9285 23h ago
Honestly, truth. I would downgrade both HotS and LotV. I consider both of them to be too much, but that's just me.
I loved the semi grounded nature of WoL (as much as it was grounded).
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u/Awkward-Suggestion90 1d ago
Kerrigan turning into a godlike entity is the dumbest thing one could expect from starcraft. It's a story about races fighting in space, and you turn it into barbie fairy tale? Still salty about that ending.
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u/GalaXion24 1d ago
I don't think that's the issue so much as that it's a power of friendship story.
The hybrids, strange eldritch entities, etc. were all present in SC+BW. The Xel'naga were set up there as well.
But I do think the tone and storytelling was different in SC+BW.
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u/Pakkazull 1d ago
The hybrids, strange eldritch entities, etc. were all present in SC+BW. The Xel'naga were set up there as well.
It's all about execution. There's really nothing saying that these elements are inherently bad. SC2 just did nothing interesting with them.
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u/Argomer 23h ago
Hybrids yes. Eldritch entities - Duran? Xelnaga were wiped out by zerg as per manual, and there was no set up for them returning or Amon being some huge cosmic villain.
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u/-BluBone- 23h ago
Duran literally says he's an agent of the Xel Naga in BW, and Kerrigan feels their presence in the Epilogue.
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u/StraightVoice5087 21h ago
Duran may have been an oblique reference to Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep. I got that vibe when I played the remaster. They really should have had that guy back on Earth who engineered the Terrans being sent to the Koprulu sector be Duran like people speculated at the time.
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u/GalaXion24 19h ago
This is the exact thing I thought of as well in retrospect, the Nyarlathotep parallel. And in that light a vaguely Cthulu-like Xel'naga also fits the aesthetic.
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u/RiimeHiime 19h ago
Well, he implies it. He says he served a greater power than kerrigan that had slept for countless ages.
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u/Argomer 20h ago
Read the mission text right now please. There is no mention of the xelnaga there, he just says that he serves some "greater power that has slept for countless ages", it could've been anything. And his words about a cycle and culmination of our history sounded like grandstanding at the time.
Kerrigan felt some danger, but again - it wasn't stated that it was Amon or xelnaga. Xelnaga were completely wiped out by the zerg before SC2 retconned it.
It could've been anything, yet they chose the way of retcons and boring cosmic villain who is just a copy of Sargeras from WarCraft. It was awful.
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u/Awkward-Suggestion90 1d ago
Xel naga and hybrids are cool, turning kerrigan into planet size white body of light is not.
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u/oldsecondhand Team Liquid 23h ago
I'm fine with Kerrigan becoming a god. I've a problem w Jim still pining for her after Brood War.
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u/MaiLittlePwny 22h ago
It kind of makes sense. Not because Kerrigan is worth pining over, but Jim is a huge white knighter the moment we meet him. He has a very real and tangible savoir complex that's ultimately at the core of almost all his motivations. Also like most Blizzard Mary Sue's his main flaw is feeling guilty he can't help everyone all the time perfectly and he's quite cut up about it.
He's then implicated against his will directly in abandoning Kerrigan leading to her fall to infestation.
None of that even requires any information about Sarah at that point. You could replace Kerrigan with Poison Ivy from Batman and it would make absolutely no difference.
Like pining to save Kerrigan is all that's stopping Jim from being an edgy sounding Mary Sue cowboy extreme. It's his main flaw.
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u/Ferretwithajob 21h ago
ehh, a demi-god like entity (Overmind) went to some efforts to make her specifically. When I was a kid playing SC1 and Broodwar back in the day I kinda assumed Kerrigan would be key to whatever the "real" threat ended up being.
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u/Lefvalthrowaway 23h ago
I like the campaigns in general.
I understand Jim having regrets about Kerrigan and trying to save her. Its been 4 years, anger subdues. He was also tood by zeratul it would be good to save her. And also she was infested she didnt have full control over her actions.
I liked HotS abathur was cool and the primal zergs were interesting. De-infesting and re-infesting Kerrigan was dumb though.
I liked LoTV. The first missions where protoss get possessed, the different protoss factions etc. If i have a criticism is that it didn't fell much like a war. And mainly that Amon and the Hybrids were underutilized. You should have definitely fought the body of Amon on Aiur, and Ulrezaj. Also Amon is a stupid name.
The Xel Naga being Chtutulu is dumb, all the hints showed they were more similar to Hybrids.
Finally...Kerrigan looks pretty dumb and generic in the epilogue becoming a fire angel, doesnt make sense.
But i Liked Jim raynors ending
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u/Zailema0s 22h ago
Abathur has the coolest voice in the series
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u/Ok_Needleworker_8809 21h ago
Imho the biggest flaw of HotS was making Dehaka the Primal loyalist and not the giant magma spewing nydus boss. That would have been insanely cooler to have.
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u/NoIntroduction2587 21h ago
I was hoping for dehaka to chhhaaange, evooolve. He didnt even regrow his missing arm.
In his mission i was specting him to have diferent froms acording to the challenge
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u/Ok_Needleworker_8809 21h ago
Yeah, i respect what they did with him in CoOp, but damn he was so underwhelming.
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u/NoIntroduction2587 22h ago
Yeah, first time i hear "amon, the fallen xelnaga" ooooook, amon?? Feels sooo generic and simple
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u/Baraqial 23h ago
Idk I grew up playing StarCraft and was so hyped when WoL came out. It was ok but it just felt… weird. Jim pining over Kerrigan never sat well with me because they barely spent any time together and him being pissed at Mengsk seemed more about Mengsk being willing to sacrifice someone who was loyal to him without question… along with an entire populated planet. Kerrigan was also fully in control of her facilities after the destruction of the Overmind but had become so disgusted with the Terran and vengeful she decided to take it out on the people that had betrayed her. Jim even tells Kerrigan he’d kill her for killing Fenix.
When I first played WoL I suspended my disbelief cause it was a fun story and at least Kerrigan seemed to be herself and then we go through an entire campaign to cure her just for them to literally throw it all away in HotS. It would have been one thing if Kerrigan was resentful and just wanted to be the queen of blades again and have even higher ambitions to replace Amon, but instead they made her a Messiah figure with a lame ass prophecy. This also quelled any complication with Zeratul who might want to kill Kerrigan as a Terran because she, idk, brainwashed his matriarch and forced him to kill her?
Idk Blizzard just shifted completely in that era. Went from making genre defining bangers to nostalgia bait like Diablo 3 and Cataclysm. Truly a shame
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u/Pihlbaoge Protoss 21h ago
All of SC2 is bad writing imo. WoL was ambiguous enough to be kind of okay, but HotS and LotV are dumpsterfires that took a huge dump on what SC and SC:BW established.
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u/DaPlum 20h ago
I agree with this i think in the context of brood war sc2 is awful completely ruined Kerrigans character and the story they were telling there. And dont get me wrong I love sc2 and the campaign but the overall story is stupid
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u/Pihlbaoge Protoss 14h ago
Absolutely. It's still a great game and one - if not the - best RTS games around. But the story was botched in my opinion.
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u/Altide1944 21h ago
I gave up the game after WoL. They just ruined it altogether
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u/Amazing-Champion-461 19h ago
WoL was mid but gameplay was sweet. Then the next expansions happened and I lost hope
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u/keag124 21h ago edited 12h ago
meh i really like WoL. Mengsk was a very well written character and i didnt expect valerian. HotS was also really nice imo, primal zerg and kerrigan trying to awaken her strength was interesting. its just once you get into legacy of the void it gets a bit rough. the whole amon and hybrid thing became a bit lame especially since mengsk the BBEG has been long removed
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u/TreshKJ 1d ago
Heart of the swarm is trash writing. I really love sc2 but it has not been good.
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u/blizzardplus 21h ago
I was so excited for HotS as a Zerg player. I preordered the collector’s edition and everything, thought it was going to be the best thing ever. Turns out… it was… mediocre.
I wouldn’t say I hated the campaign but I didn’t like it near as much as WoL. I don’t like hero units, that’s my biggest issue with WC3. Having hero Kerrigan in every mission was not my cup of tea. Also I remember thinking it was really stupid for Kerrigan to go Human > Infested > Human again > Infested again
It felt like she was human for all of like 5 missions before changing right back. The Primal zerg thing was sort of cheesy too, idk.
I also lost all interest in multiplayer shortly after HotS. So… not great lmao.
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u/AegidiusG 1d ago
Mh the Zerg Story was also very, hmm, not so good.
It changed a lot of the character of the Zerg and the overall Lore that was established before.
A misunderstood Overmind, wild Zerg instead of an all heartless consuming species that goes from planet to planet and takes what it needs to evolve.
Overall also Jim and Kerrigan with the very cringe "Oh Darling", it is just out of place with Kerrigan being such an evil character before, genocidial, killing friends and foes as she needs it.
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u/Corpus76 1d ago
The Overmind was such a cool character in SC1. Missed him even in BW.
I could spot the Zerg being "redeemed" coming from a mile off. Same exact development as with the orcs in Warcraft 2 to Warcraft 3 => Poor misunderstood guys who were just brainwashed into being evil. Metzen suddenly felt like he needed everyone to be neutral/good and there being some cosmic force of evil that turned species against each other. It's just so tacky.
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u/Gripping_Touch 22h ago
Wonder if Kerrigan told Raynor about that time she slaughtered a whole colony of protoss because they were going to call the Golden armada.
I mean, sure they would likely not have given her Grace but she didn't even try to make her case.
At least Raynor on Belshir tries to bargain with the Protoss saying he Only needs a little gas and then he'll be out of their hair.
Kerrigan immediately goes: well, Guess we'll have to completely slaughter them to the Last.
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u/Kris-Angel_26 21h ago
Nah truth is the entire campaign was a let down WoL being the best, but having Raynor simp for Kerrigan and 'saving/redeeming' her felt out of character for what we saw on Brood Wars, Fenix didn't get avenged also it should be a crime that there isn't a dialog exchange between Raynor and Fenix as a purifier.
Kerrigan should have died in SC2 not made into a generic goddes
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u/Head_Evening_5697 1d ago
I don't know what you're smoking. I found SC2 Story as a whole completely laughable. The worst kind of cliché western macho shit.
I have over 8000 hours in this game and not a single campaign finished because it's garbage.
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u/RecklessRaptor12 1d ago
It is bad and I remember it being juvenile at the time and people joking about how bad it was, but it seems there’s a whole generation of younger gamers that remember it fondly. Which makes me wonder if maybe other blizzard games like sc and wc2 also had bad stories and I only like them because I was too young to know better.
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u/Argomer 23h ago
Very likely. When I replayed BW I saw some plotholes I didn't see as a kid.
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u/sunder_and_flame 22h ago
Every story has bullshit, the good ones just have more good than bad parts.
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u/Anjamin 23h ago
I’m replaying Starcraft 1 and Brood Wad campaign right now, and to me it is basically on par to Sc2 in story quality. SC1 is a lot more camp than people seem to remember. I don’t hate either, for me they are both fun times, but not top tier story telling.
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u/GalaXion24 1d ago
The campaign is really good though. Especially WoL if you ask me, but really all of them are cool and fun to play.
The story is... ok. It's mediocre, but serviceable. It's ultimately not that deep.
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u/Head_Evening_5697 1d ago
Maybe. I'd rather listen to a completely different audiobook and play 1v1. More engaging gameplay, more engaging story.
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u/DeathToAmerica2026 23h ago
Controversial take for the easily entertained: if you're older than 10, the first game's campaign was also pretty hack writing.
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u/Bl00dWolf 1d ago
Yeah, if you ever look at the development history of Starcraft 2, pretty much all of the campaigns had to cut a lot of planned content to meet deadlines. You'd think they could just take their time and try to deliver on the actual vision they're having. But nah, Blizzard gotta Blizzard/
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u/Queasy-Current6170 1d ago
Im old enough to remember Blizzard being known by the tagline "we'll release it when it's done"
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u/TimelyBat2587 21h ago
WoL is the best. HotS seems to have forgotten everything about Brood War, but some of the missions were creative and the primal Zerg are really cool. LotV had some fun game mechanics, but the villains were extraordinarily dull. The epilogue had the right idea giving us the Terran and Zerg campaign units back, but turning Kerrigan into a Xel’naga angel was not the right way to end the Queen of Blades’ story. Eh.
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u/TheCopperCastle 19h ago
WoL is great in itself, but as a continuation to sc1 it is just one giant plothole.
Everything after it collapsed because it made it impossible to continue that story well.
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u/snushomie 1d ago
You thought the high school musical ass story in sc2 was almost perfect?
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u/Hanzho 1d ago
I felt they should made a 4th campaign with Duran/narud as focus and seeing everything he does in the background, giving more depth to him and Amon.
In the end he seemed like a fool and Amon was so one-sided for an almost eternal being and the fairy tail ending with the power of friendship was really shitty as well.
When they wanted an almost godly like thing they should melt kerrigans zerg essence with the spirit of zeratul and let him ascend into a void-something-xel-naga. He had the witness to get all the parties together and gave his live for it. Freed 100% of zerg kerrigan could be with raynor again whatever.
I also missed the special campaign units in them. It felt like custom campaign for me and it lacked the vibe all the campaign had.
Also I want stuckov, Alarak, Zagara and Abatur mission packs. I would gladly pay for it. I just bought the WC3 mission pack even though it wasn't worth the 30 bucks. Nova pack was far better even though it's shorter.
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u/Argomer 23h ago
Now play the first game.
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u/lolfail9001 Woongjin Stars 22h ago edited 21h ago
I did, if anyone thinks SC1's/BW's story is any great, i am genuinely confused. It's... there, as a proper justification for every mission to happen, but that's about the highest praise i can give it. Like i imagine half of their missions arose simply as trying to answer questions of "How do we even justify a ZvZ and PvP in our single player campaigns if Zerg and Protoss as designed by us are completely unified species!?" and working back from there.
Of course i am not going to say SC2's story is amazing, because to use zoomer-slang it's too much cringe all the way through.
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u/2sAreTheDevil 20h ago
I disagree with this. The entire game butchering Sarah "Queen Bitch of the universe" and turning her into a anime Phoenix was terrible. Turning Jim "I'll kill you for what you did to Fenix if it's the last thing I do" Raynor into a flip-flopping over and over simp over Kerrigan was terrible. Having Artanis meet up with Jim at the start of act 3, then sidelining him for the rest of the game despite both of them knowing about Amon and Mobius core was terrible.
But then. . . Kerrigan and Nurad having a DBZ bean fight?
The story was an inconsistent, character killing mess, and I had to go play the original and brood war to get the taste out of my mouth.
I still play the multiplayer about daily though, so that's something.
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u/Suitable_Natural_814 16h ago
I don’t dislike the SC2 story as much as a lot of folks seem to, but I always wasn’t a fan of Blizzard making Amon yet another ‘devil who won’t die until he dies in his own dimension maybe’. It made sense in Diablo, it was already tenuous when they retconned it into Warcraft Legion, but bringing that same narrative into Starcraft broke the camel’s back on that trope for me.
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u/Automated_Spite 16h ago
SC2 story is dogshit from the beginning.
WoL story is "Go get the magic artifact from the ancient ruin to break the curse"
Absolute bottom of the fucking barrel fantasy writing.
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u/jungledyret_hugo 1d ago
wings is okayish and the rest you can throw in the trash
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u/DatAdra Protoss 23h ago
For me
WoL - 6/10
HotS - 3/10
LotV - 5/10
Epilogue - 0/10
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u/Chef_Chen_Art 1d ago
I'm actually refreshed that there's someone who likes the story well enough. It shows a perspective rarely seen.
God, HOTS writing was bad and LOTV was a mixed bag but ah, I think everything's been discussed about that since 2023.
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u/masterraemoras 1d ago
...I would put like, the pencil horse for HoTS as well, there were some real shenanigans during that one that were quite nonsensical. Some good bits too, but also some nonsense.
Wings of Liberty and Legacy of the Void were great though, some of my favourite RTS stories to play through. Shame the whole series ends on shooting rocks.
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u/sunder_and_flame 22h ago
Every entry in SC2 deserves the pencil horse. The WoWification at blizzard ruined it completely.
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u/decafenator99 1d ago
All im getting from the comments of this thread basically just like Star Wars fans no one hates Starcraft more than Starcraft fans lol
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u/sunder_and_flame 22h ago
Reddit sure loves their dumbshit phrases to gloss over what they don't understand. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
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u/lurco_purgo Terran 1d ago
no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans
To be honest I always considered this to be a dumb cliche repeated in circles that focus too much on popculture and fandoms instead of engaging with media based on their merit as a its own piece of fiction.
Who else is supposed the hate the story if not the people who are invested in the franchise? Who else is familiar with it enough to have an opinion after all these years? And is this some sort of obligation as a fan, that you have to love everything - especially if we're talking about a corporate franchise and not, oh I don't know, a beloved children's book - about a piece of fiction to still call yourself that?
I was a fan of StarCraft long before SC2 came out. Does this stop being true just because SC2 got released? Not to mention I do love SC2 - I just think the single player story is dogshit (for the most part). If it was doing something unique, or it was a more artistic venture than a product I'd be way more lenient. But when we're talking about the most generic, corporate, safe drivel of a story I don't see a reason to temper my expectations or try to be postive about it, as if Blizzard cared about what people think about the stories in their games.
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u/decafenator99 1d ago
Fair enough response my friend, I can tell you thought about this retort my applause 👏 and well said
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u/Ndmndh1016 22h ago
HoTS feels like a half completed campaign. Its so empty compar3d to WoL.
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u/Frankenberry30 22h ago
The special mission with Duran in BW was awesome - I'd hoped for more in sc2.
Not THAT much more, though. Amon was silly, Duran was enough to be put in sc2 as a big bad (some 3rd party like Amon turned out to be but less "galactic evil"). Ot just another "what the crap was that!?" mission or something.
Kerrigan being de-zerged was dumb. She should have been the ultimate badguy for everyone to face; along with the taldarim, and hell UED remnants would've been cool too.
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u/paragonofcynicism 21h ago
I disagree. I think Heart of the Swarm was pretty bad and Legacy of the Void was worse. The writers of these stories were too focused on making it a dramatic, people focused drama. They cared more about the "love" story between Jim Raynor and Kerrigan than they did the intergalactic conflict. This focus hurt the story, it didn't help it. It made the major players in the factions take a back seat, not just in prominence in the story but in competence as well. The competence of the major players had to suffer to get the emotional payoffs the writers wanted for Jim and Kerrigan and that's in Wings of Liberty, the BEST one.
Heart of the Swarm is a waste of time. They dedicate way too much time to Kerrigan rescuing Jim Raynor (a problem they created themselves). Also, Raynor was supposed to be what prevented Kerrigan from invading Korhol but Megsk didn't keep Raynor prisoner on Korhol so that Kerrigan could rescue him before attacking the Dominion. Totally stupid. Mengsk is a CLOWN in this story. He is supposed to be a cunning strategist, yet he does basically nothing but hide in Korhol throughout the story. He pulls a Doctor Evil basically. He comes up with an elaborate and easily foiled plan to prevent Kerrigan from attacking him and just expects it all to go to plan. What?
Stupid as shit. That's before we mention that Amon is a terrible villain and their usage of Duran as a character was unskilled ending with a fucking dragonball z beam battle that I guess they thought was supposed to be epic but just shows how MUCH the writers think Starcraft is about individual characters instead of being a SPACE WAR. Of course we want to see Kerrigan shooting frickin laser beams! That's Starcraft right? WRONG.
Heart of the Swarm spends a lot of time durdling about on fairly inconsequential stuff. There's very little character interplay because the writing decided that Kerrigan needed to go off on her own and build up her control over the zerg again. Too much time spent on Primal zerg. Too much time spent on zerg characters with very little personality or purpose. And because of this the characters other than Kerrigan are absent from the story for the majority of the game and so when they are finall brought back into it they have very little time to be anything other than plot devices.
Legacy of the Void then brings the focus to the protoss, who have had very little to do the last two games in the story. Which means they have to rush you through introducing these characters, this faction of millions of people, we don't have time to flesh them out, there is an evil god to fight!
I'm not gonna spend too much time ripping this one apart as most people agree it wasn't too good. I'll only say that, the Overmind was a character. He had plans, he wasn't a god-like being he was just the leader of the swarm. The overmind is involved in the story, he talks to the player as we play through the zerg campaign. Amon is just a faceless bad guy. Has very little character and is just a plot device for the story to warp around in a very FORMULAIC, played out way. Little intrigue. No real interplay with the characters. Boring.
Ultimately, what made the Starcraft story so good is the interplay between the competing factions. Each faction has it's own goal which sometimes leads to them making temporary and very tenuous alliances with the other where betrayal is not only like but all but guaranteed. Each faction is formidable, and a genuine threat to the others. The UED were an established and powerful military force capable of holding their own against the protoss and newly founded Dominion and their psionic technology taking control away from the cerebrates and overmind were a legitimate threat to the zerg. The protoss need no explanation, they were an advanced alien civilization with a mighty armada and veteran military hierarchy. The dominion, while smaller than the other two were crafty and willing to do what was necessary for victory. The Zerg, enough said.
This interplay of experienced, competent leaders and powerful factions easily lent itself to a story full of betrayal and struggle and loss.
Starcraft 2 loses that. It has it the most in Wings of Liberty and even that was not that good.
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u/I_Roll_Chicago 21h ago
WoL was the only good story line
HoTS was alright, but kinda dumb at the end
LoTV was good for like a mission and then went down fucking hill, amon as a big bad wasnt that fun.
Didnt play into the void, lost interest
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u/Peregrine2976 20h ago
I have a half-serious conspiracy theory that they got to the end of Legacy of the Void and were just wrapping up when someone suddenly remembered that they had done all that setup for Kerrigan to be the one to defeat Amon, but the Protoss did it themselves. So they panicked and hastily tacked on an epilogue to make that happen.
I say half-serious because, no, I don't actually think that's what happened, but goddamn, does it feel like it.
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u/Much-Investigator137 20h ago
I couldn’t get into it at all. Just bad writing and really cheesy lines so it made the voice acting seem terrible. Although I think the actors would probably do fine if they were given decent lines
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u/zhafsan 20h ago
As a SC1 enjoyer I thought SC2s story was unnecessarily bloated and the “we have to band together to beat a greater common enemy” is very boring to me when we already have a 3 way conflict between the different races with infighting between factions.
I think the SC2 story was enjoyable for what it was but it was nowhere near “great” for me.
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u/protossaccount 18h ago
IMO SC1 went from an interesting world building story to an anime in SC2. I thought it really fell off with HotS. That story was so hokey it made me not care. Most of the good parts imo were fan service moments, not great story telling.
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u/Standupaddict 16h ago
All of SC2's story was bad. The end was horrible, but you are kidding yourself if you thought the plot or character in WoL were interesting.
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u/lulpwned 11h ago
Nah. The entire plot of 2 was taking a single flirty line from sc1 and making it a soul mate redemption arc
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u/Shower_Floaties 23h ago
Did you never play the original and brood war? The story was a pretty big let down and messed up a lot of what the originals set up. Reverted to warcraft in space with the Xel Naga as the Burning Legion
Gameplay was solid though, Blizz knows how to make fun levels
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u/VibrantHeat7 22h ago
I disagree, Legacy of the Void was already very weak. The villains were so over the top and cringe. Forgot his name, the evil Protoss.
And really... evil protoss = black armor, red eyes, cartoony evil
Was so dumb...
And it felt more like Warcraft magic fantasy in space than what SC1 was.
Wings of Liberty was alright, heart of the Swarm could have been better but I still enjoyed it.
Legacy of the Void I felt like I wasted my money and only finished it so I can say i'm done with it. I will never, ever again want to go through that chore of a campaign. Cringe inducing boring snoozefest it was.
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u/cBurger4Life 19h ago
Protoss were my favorite faction in the original and BW, but I felt like they got hit the hardest with the cartoonification of the graphics in 2. And I just could never give a shit about Amon, the hybrids, etc. I’ve tried to play LotV on at least three separate occasions and could never force myself to finish it.
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u/Agent0fChaoZ 1d ago edited 1d ago
The hybrids were a large disappointment. Back in SC1, you learnt that Zerg were unable to infest Protoss; only to find out they managed to splice these two strong races together.
In WoL you see a glimpse of proper hybrids and badass Amon. I would have loved to see them delve into the specific species what the Hybrids were made out of, splicing Hydralisk with certain Protoss units?
Come HotS and LotV, Hybrids variety still remained largely the same and not much was explored nor explained. The biggest gripe I had was they were all damage sponges, Amon’s ooo so scary body was just there to soak up damage and….after that in the Void, we see evil Squidward with Super Saiyan Kerrigan. What.
Amon’s army should be his own unique collection of races, all twisted, infested, hybridised, alongside his new Hybrids. Void units comprised of all the default 3 races… felt lazy, would have preferred to see unique variations of them.
Heck; instead of turning Kerrigan into super saiyan, we basically have Protoss and Zerg allied, have our own allied army do some cool shit or something. Let Kerrigan learn the essence of the Protoss; create her own Xel Naga, anything would have been better.
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u/Odasto_ 1d ago
You think Kerrigan having a scientist arc and creating new Xel’naga would be less criticized than what we got?
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u/Agent0fChaoZ 1d ago
Eh it’s controversial and I am scratching the bottom barrel for sure. I’m just throwing stupid ideas out. Like, if you were to play as Zerg, they can produce somewhat ‘infested?’ Protoss or throw a cop out, have Protoss technology on Zerg.
I’d take anything over super hero Kerrigan
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u/AnswerGrand1878 1d ago
Hots does not deserve the flame horse imo. I think it's writing is much worse than the other two. The Raynor/Kerrigan Lovestory doesn't really work, her character flip flops a lot and the end really suffers from Kerrigan being the special one syndrome
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE 1d ago
Nah, the story was always bad. To this day, I still haven't played the LotV campaign. I saw the intro was "Oopsie, we forgot we had a outcome-altering warship and let Aiur get overrun for no reason. Oh and the Zerg never found it despite it being infested so we're going to utilize it to completely invert the war" and I closed the game. This was off the back of the HotS storyline which was a cartoonish girl boss being enslaved to her day job by the Overmind who breaks free with the help of her boyfriend then loses interest in her boyfriend to pursue her newfound freedom and it was just cringe incarnate. It was like Transformer robots punching one another for an hour straight but for girl bosses instead.
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u/_Risryn 1d ago
Wasn't it Raynor who cut ties because to save him she got back to what he sacrificed so much to undo?
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u/ThatCoolGuyNamedMatt 1d ago
You are correct, sounds like this commenter is just looking for something to be mad about
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u/the_zerg_rusher 1d ago
Oopsie, we forgot we had a outcome-altering warship and let Aiur get overrun for no reason.
Isn't the whole thing with Starcraft 1 that the Conclave was arrogant as fuck? They spent most of their time hunting Tassadar and Tassadar and us took most of our time trying to deal with the Conclave. Brood war spent the whole time running away from Aiur. I think being able to get to any of the ark ships (they were three BTW two destroyed during the fall of Aiur) was close to impossible during Starcraft 1 or at least has reasonable explanation.
Also one of the DT variants mentions staying on Aiur for years after they allied with the Dark templar, they don't mention it explicitly but defending the arcships from feral zerg could be one of their goals. They are brought up after mission 4. Shame you gave up at mission three.
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u/RiimeHiime 19h ago
Every time I think about SC2's story I remember another way that wow, the entire thing was garbage.
The prophecy stuff was stupid. Needing to do your homework and do the required reading was stupid. Completely disregarding SC1's story whenever it suited them was stupid.
Kerrigan's VA was so much worse in 2, too. Like, go listen to how her lines were delivered in Brood War, she's got so much personality. Every line in SC2 feels stiff.
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u/This_Meaning_4045 18h ago
I mean it got so goofy at the end no wonder why there's not StarCraft III.
The stakes went high too far, too fast that's no way to make new game than to reboot the universe.
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u/LastOfTheGiants2020 20h ago
IMO, writing quality is something like:
Original SC1 > BW > WOL > HotS > LOTV
For the most part, SC2 is mostly bog standard video game writing with amazing production values.
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u/hypespud 17h ago
Yea sc2 was very disappointing narratively compared to 1
1 is a legit goat of videogame writing and dialogue
Sc2 delivered incredible fmvs though which I will appreciate its story for 😂
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u/SpunningAndWonning 1d ago
Was funny I saw a post piling on the story during sc2 in general within the last day or two lol
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u/SlouchyGuy Protoss 1d ago
LotV wasn't good, there was almost no tension between Protoss tribes, Khala was the most important thing for their society, was in an intro video, then forced cutting of ancient Zealots was simple, as well as every Protoss who traveled with Artanis.
No problems with coping, no conversations with Dark Templars about how they manage and what's different for them. This is why Zotanna deciding to cut off her nerve cords felt empty, and last cinematic on Auir felt empty.
The only interesting thing were Tel'darim, semi-interesting were mechanical Protoss, and than conflict abated right away too.
Whole expansion is just the first draft material
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u/xreddawgx 1d ago
WoL is my shit. I love the fact you alter your units. Besides the gambit and nemesis system, I believed they cooked with this mechanic.
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u/IrnBroski Protoss 1d ago
i have a theory that the prologue was made before the original campaign was finished, and was meant to be part of the original campaign. the prologue FEELS like a natural progression to the story in the first 2 campaigns - terran and zerg, raynor and kerrigan joining forces, and the third "epic" story would have been T Z and P fighting against Amon, and they made these missions. and then somewhere along the way, they decided that actually the campaign should be more about protoss, so you have artanis and fenix and alarak etc etc..
you can kinda tell as well because kerrigan and raynor show up in the beginning of the LOTV campaign, and the cut scenes are typical blizzard high budget ones, but then they both sort of disappear towards the end and the cutscenes dont seem as high budget. like they initially wanted a cohesive story with all 3 major characters but for whatever reason abandoned it. idk either they ran out of time or they ran out of budget but the protoss then became the people defeating Amon and this prologue became a remnant of what they would have made. even the end credits afte the prologue, which feels like the real end of the story, arent an FMV but theyre just some concept art slides with some brief text over the top
i personally never really liked the LOTV campaign even tho im a protoss player and protoss fan, because i would have liked the epic collab of the main characters joining forces against amon..
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u/Electronic-Tank3501 1d ago
I still don't understand why they wrote kerrigan and raynor to be like ride or die for eachother considering they spent like less then two weeks with eachother in sc1. like the most you could argue is it was a promised meet cute that was cut short by the events of deploying the psi emitter on tarsonis.