Starcraft

Stasi said:
Artosis continues to be the DSP of Starcraft.
I actually kinda feel bad for him, reminds me of my one and only online game of Warcraft III where I got peon rushed in the first minute and decided competitive RTS wasn't for me.
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Not gonna lie, that's pretty fucking sad. I thought Artosis actually knew how to play, even if he wasn't a pro.
 
FreedomMussel said:
Yeah, all of this was the result of Metzen’s haphazard writing. Koprulu’s connection with Earth or lack thereof constantly flip-flopped thru development. First Koprulu was connected to Earth according to the website, then it was rewritten as cut off by a magical FTL malfunction and Earth was a shithole according to the SC1 game manual, then it was retconned that Earth had been magically spying for hundreds of years and then sent an invasion (forgetting that Earth was a shithole) in the BW game manual, then Heroes of the Storm bio for Stukov retcons it again that they were always in contact and Earth doesn’t seem to be a shithole.

(I say magical a few times because the logic just doesn’t work.)

So it was rewritten and retconned three times that we know of until it became exactly what it was the first time. Let that sink in for a moment. You can probably imagine my frustration with this franchise.

If I was in charge of creative direction, then I would have cut thru all the chaff and just made Earth the inciting incident of the franchise. Zerg invade Earth to experiment on terrans, Protoss incinerate Earth to stop zerg, a bazillion angry Terrans wage war on them in righteous vengeance. It’s that simple.
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I don't really remember that, or at least I completely missed it, which I'm happy is the case as from what I remember the Koprulu sector was basically a place they were sending a bunch of prison ships as a type of Australia situation. Something happened and the whole thing got fucked, so the Earth people just shrugged their shoulders and assumed everyone died and they had more important things to deal with as Koprulu was distant enough for it to be a hassle.

Though in reality the ships survived and they eventually turned into the Confederacy (using the old USA Confederate flag for some reason as seen in some cinematics). The UED was just the Earth finally getting around to sending a scouting party out there on a recon or even an archeological mission as they weren't sure what they'd find, if anything, after so long. The reasoning for the UED having the equipment they did was because they weren't really the top of the line and just a small chunk of Earth's actual forces, and is explained in one mission they were surprised what the Dominion had access to and had to essentially confiscate shipyards and other forces to establish a foothold and a lot of Dominion forces joined them simply because they were former Confederacy forces that didn't like Mengsk or simply thought the UED would be the winning side if push came to shove.

The only reason the UED didn't head back and get more of an army was because they had so much success early on, and by the time they turned back their forces were so crippled that the Zerg chased down what remained and the mission never reached Earth to warn it of the threat or send additional forces, so for all Earth knew the UED branch out there was still just exploring or got swallowed by the black hole the original prison ships ended up in.

FreedomMussel said:
Also, I don’t remember where I heard it, but during SC1’s development he was depressed about his junkie ex-girlfriend or something.
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That was SC2, that's why it went from a story about different factions to one about Kerrigan being the key to everything. It's also why Raynor went from wanting to kill Kerrigan after she murdered his bro for life Fenix to pining over her and wanting some Zerg pussy for no reason. In the extended universe which is no longer canon but came out between SC1 and SC2 Raynor had a wife and kids, because he really wasn't that amazingly close to Kerrigan, he just didn't like it that Megnsk would sacrifice his top soldiers like that which also included his then girlfriend Kerrigan, but he got over her by the end of Brood War.

You know, it's funny how Blizzard IP's keep getting ruined by dudes and their murder waifu's as first it was Kerrigan, and now it's Sylvannas.
 
Corn Flakes said:
That's why I find it hard to believe Blizzard HQ was an eternal frat party like the accusations made it sound like. These guys are fucking losers.
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I highly doubt it was anything like they described it to be. From what I heard the original guy who did Kael'thas had a ton of accusations that turned out to be completely false, and the biggest thing people throw around Afrasabi is that he would go up to women and say "in my culture it's ok to have multiple wives".

One other thing to point out, is they were changing weird shit years ago:
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Look at the date, they were changing bullshit to appease people ages ago. Just seems weird that it's this rapist patriarchy but freak outs about shit like this happen. I also remember reading some of the court documents and some of the pay disputes were absurd, one was that they pointed out a female Chief of something was paid less than 50% of the other Chief of something positions. I looked up the pay rates for things like COO, CEO, etc and her position was one of the more bullshit versions of those and it was universally paid in the same proportion as her pay to other chief positions.
 
Retink said:
I don't really remember that, or at least I completely missed it, which I'm happy is the case as from what I remember the Koprulu sector was basically a place they were sending a bunch of prison ships as a type of Australia situation. Something happened and the whole thing got fucked, so the Earth people just shrugged their shoulders and assumed everyone died and they had more important things to deal with as Koprulu was distant enough for it to be a hassle.

Though in reality the ships survived and they eventually turned into the Confederacy (using the old USA Confederate flag for some reason as seen in some cinematics). The UED was just the Earth finally getting around to sending a scouting party out there on a recon or even an archeological mission as they weren't sure what they'd find, if anything, after so long. The reasoning for the UED having the equipment they did was because they weren't really the top of the line and just a small chunk of Earth's actual forces, and is explained in one mission they were surprised what the Dominion had access to and had to essentially confiscate shipyards and other forces to establish a foothold and a lot of Dominion forces joined them simply because they were former Confederacy forces that didn't like Mengsk or simply thought the UED would be the winning side if push came to shove.

The only reason the UED didn't head back and get more of an army was because they had so much success early on, and by the time they turned back their forces were so crippled that the Zerg chased down what remained and the mission never reached Earth to warn it of the threat or send additional forces, so for all Earth knew the UED branch out there was still just exploring or got swallowed by the black hole the original prison ships ended up in.


That was SC2, that's why it went from a story about different factions to one about Kerrigan being the key to everything. It's also why Raynor went from wanting to kill Kerrigan after she murdered his bro for life Fenix to pining over her and wanting some Zerg pussy for no reason. In the extended universe which is no longer canon but came out between SC1 and SC2 Raynor had a wife and kids, because he really wasn't that amazingly close to Kerrigan, he just didn't like it that Megnsk would sacrifice his top soldiers like that which also included his then girlfriend Kerrigan, but he got over her by the end of Brood War.

You know, it's funny how Blizzard IP's keep getting ruined by dudes and their murder waifu's as first it was Kerrigan, and now it's Sylvannas.
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Your recall of UED lore is off, at least according to the wiki, but it’s Blizz lore so I can’t fault you for that.

Blizz lore is all kinds of screwed, and not even in excusable ways like the Warhammer sandbox lores. I don’t consider myself as having amazing taste. I just don’t like all the inconsistencies and lack of planning. I would have been perfectly satisfied with interstellar war where UED, Conclave, and Overmind duked it out for control over centuries. 40k lite would have been fine to me.

I’m astonished that Blizz couldn’t even get a simple interstellar war premise right
 
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Snekposter said:
Why? Its not like they've demonstrated any competence elsewhere with such small things as "basic premises".
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True. I find it extremely frustrating that SC has high production values everywhere except the writing and that there are too many people who will defend this bad writing to the death.

In general I find it frustrating and offensive that attempts by RTS writers to write interpersonal melodrama invariably deteriorate into fantasy Hitler romance fanfiction. It makes a complete mockery of the concept of war and the immense suffering it entails. I’ve become burned out on RTS in general as a result of this shitty offensive writing and I’m deeply worried that Frost Giant will make the exact same mistakes again.
 
Interesting interview, Pipkin Pipa talks to a dev who actually likes the titty art and was with Blizz since the 90's, he doesn't like that they fuck with the art, he drew a lot of the Zerg and Protoss stuff. Pipkin is also someone who reads the Farms:

@Corn Flakes On the topic of Blizz perverts, this guy sounds like a weirdo pervert but he mentions they weren't supportive of his edgy jokes. Weird that a pro rape company would chastise people for being edgy. He got in trouble for making a tranny joke in the early 2010's.
 
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Stasi said:
Artosis continues to be the DSP of Starcraft.
I actually kinda feel bad for him, reminds me of my one and only online game of Warcraft III where I got peon rushed in the first minute and decided competitive RTS wasn't for me.
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you hate to see it but he's the most reliable source possible if you want to have a laugh at some good old fashion nerd rage. I love this clip channel.
some of the meme edits too lmao
 
Corn Flakes said:
Oh, yeah. The story for Starcraft was always crap. Late 80s-early 90s sci-fi at its finest, with a dash of western for spice. It was entertaining, for sure, but it was crap.

You know what is the best piece of StarCraft story, IMO? The little demo campaign for StarCraft 1 where you play a nameless Lieutenant being sent to Chau Sara right at the start of the Zerg invasion. It's short, to the point, has StarCraft's trademark light camp played straight, and it's not trying to tell any grand overarching story. And they give the Science Vessel icon the most badass voice it's ever had.

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To be fair the purpose of Starcraft's story isn't to be good, it's to justify why every race can fight both itself and every other race at the drop of a hat, and provide an fun tutorial for the player.
 
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Jarolleon said:
To be fair the purpose of Starcraft's story isn't to be good, it's to justify why every race can fight both itself and every other race at the drop of a hat, and provide an fun tutorial for the player.
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Doing all those things and having a fun/interesting story aren't two mutually exclusive things, though. Not at all.
 
Corn Flakes said:
Doing all those things and having a fun/interesting story aren't two mutually exclusive things, though. Not at all.
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Exactly. IMO, it doesn't even need to be fun/interesting either. Just serviceable and not stupid. The Westwood RTS games have stories that exist as excuses and they still avoid all the issues that SC ran into.

The problem with SC is the characters. Not the fact that they're flat as cardboard, but the fact that the character motives and the setting's astropolitics are constantly fighting each other thus resulting in a meandering poorly paced story. E.g. there are two simultaneous apocalyptic alien invasions, but rather than focusing on the UED's attempts to save humanity from destruction we instead get the first order using the opportunity to destroy the republic and then the evil filthy aliens conveniently leave rather than using this opportunity to kill the survivors. Then, much like a power rangers or sailor moon villain arc, each installment starts with the introduction of a new villain who is destroyed by the end. But with much worse execution, somehow.

As I've said many times before, writing SC lore/plot shouldn't be difficult. You have the three races with their own cultures and moralities duking it out for control of space. The Terran Federation wants to defend humanity from the evil filthy aliens attacking them (so that they can strip-mine planets to enrich their coffers, heedless of the ecological consequences), the Protoss Empire wants to destroy threats to galactic peace (which may or may not include humanity because of their reckless strip-mining), and the Zerg Swarm wants to kill and eat everyone else in order to learn and evolve. That's a perfectly serviceable backdrop for any number of campaigns with self-contained stories that you can milk indefinitely. It's basically 40k lite, or alt Halo, or story-rich Helldivers, whatever.
 
FreedomMussel said:
Exactly. IMO, it doesn't even need to be fun/interesting either. Just serviceable and not stupid. The Westwood RTS games have stories that exist as excuses and they still avoid all the issues that SC ran into.

The problem with SC is the characters. Not the fact that they're flat as cardboard, but the fact that the character motives and the setting's astropolitics are constantly fighting each other thus resulting in a meandering poorly paced story. E.g. there are two simultaneous apocalyptic alien invasions, but rather than focusing on the UED's attempts to save humanity from destruction we instead get the first order using the opportunity to destroy the republic and then the evil filthy aliens conveniently leave rather than using this opportunity to kill the survivors. Then, much like a power rangers or sailor moon villain arc, each installment starts with the introduction of a new villain who is destroyed by the end. But with much worse execution, somehow.

As I've said many times before, writing SC lore/plot shouldn't be difficult. You have the three races with their own cultures and moralities duking it out for control of space. The Terran Federation wants to defend humanity from the evil filthy aliens attacking them (so that they can strip-mine planets to enrich their coffers, heedless of the ecological consequences), the Protoss Empire wants to destroy threats to galactic peace (which may or may not include humanity because of their reckless strip-mining), and the Zerg Swarm wants to kill and eat everyone else in order to learn and evolve. That's a perfectly serviceable backdrop for any number of campaigns with self-contained stories that you can milk indefinitely. It's basically 40k lite, or alt Halo, or story-rich Helldivers, whatever.
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I think the big misstep Starcraft (and really, all of Blizzard's writing), is that they try to make you care for the characters. It leads to some really goofy shit like Raynor inexplicably wanting to save muh Kerrigan, and Kerrigan later becoming Space Jesus. The characters basically suck the air in the room from all the potentially good shit in the setting. Especially the fucking cringe romance they attempted to write.

I'll contrast this now with Command & Conquer.
C&C GDI: You're this commander under General Mark Sheppard, and your job is to exterminate the NOD threat in Eastern Europe. Along the way, the GDI got embroiled in a scandal and you're forced to fend for yourself from the encroaching NOD forces. Later, you're informed it's actually a ruse and NOD got their shit pushed in, with you finishing the job.
C&C NOD: You're this commander under Seth. Your job is to exterminate the GDI presence from Africa. Halfway along the way Seth attempts to betray you and Kane terminates him. Now you answer to Kane and finish the job.

While campy, C&C never attempted to elevate itself or its characters as some sort of hero. Everything is in service to the geopolitics and war to let you order troops around to kill shit.

EDIT: It's noteworthy that in all of Westwood's and later, Petroglyph's games, romance never factored into anything. (C&C 4 doesn't count and the story there is already regarded as widely abysmal anyway.)
 
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Kane Lives said:
I think the big misstep Starcraft (and really, all of Blizzard's writing), is that they try to make you care for the characters. It leads to some really goofy shit like Raynor inexplicably wanting to save muh Kerrigan, and Kerrigan later becoming Space Jesus. The characters basically suck the air in the room from all the potentially good shit in the setting. Especially the fucking cringe romance they attempted to write.
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The funny thing is that they managed to make it work in SC1. Sure, Jim and Kerrigan had a thing for each other which ultimately made him turn on Mengsk, but it wasn't just that Kerrigan was in theory killed by Mengsk it was that Mengsk was willing to just leave loyal soldiers to die as a sacrifice that wasn't necessary. Then when Kerrigan returns there's this moment of shock where Jim realizes what actually happened to her, but the point isn't the romance it's to punctuate what the Zerg do to others.

Finally in SC: Brood War Jim leaves wanting to kill Kerrigan, because she used their uneasy alliance to assassinate Fenix and Duke, and that was the point Jim realized she couldn't be saved as it wasn't just Zerg corruption but she herself that had become something different. So yes, there was a romance in the story, but it wasn't what defined the story it just contributed to it, and at the end of the day it was still a set of factions fighting with one another. In the extended universe of the novels Jim even had a wife and family after the fact as he had moved on.

Then came SC2 and it was all about some retarded romance and how the Burning Legion was coming or something.
 
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Kane Lives said:
I think the big misstep Starcraft (and really, all of Blizzard's writing), is that they try to make you care for the characters. It leads to some really goofy shit like Raynor inexplicably wanting to save muh Kerrigan, and Kerrigan later becoming Space Jesus. The characters basically suck the air in the room from all the potentially good shit in the setting. Especially the fucking cringe romance they attempted to write.

I'll contrast this now with Command & Conquer.
C&C GDI: You're this commander under General Mark Sheppard, and your job is to exterminate the NOD threat in Eastern Europe. Along the way, the GDI got embroiled in a scandal and you're forced to fend for yourself from the encroaching NOD forces. Later, you're informed it's actually a ruse and NOD got their shit pushed in, with you finishing the job.
C&C NOD: You're this commander under Seth. Your job is to exterminate the GDI presence from Africa. Halfway along the way Seth attempts to betray you and Kane terminates him. Now you answer to Kane and finish the job.

While campy, C&C never attempted to elevate itself or its characters as some sort of hero. Everything is in service to the geopolitics and war to let you order troops around to kill shit.

EDIT: It's noteworthy that in all of Westwood's and later, Petroglyph's games, romance never factored into anything. (C&C 4 doesn't count and the story there is already regarded as widely abysmal anyway.)
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I'll narrow down your claim a bit.

Trying to make you care for characters is actually a good thing. It's what a good story should do. But it has to be in service to the game and not the other way around. World in Conflict had characters you very quickly got invested in, and its story was well written enough that it punched you in the gut pretty hard near the end. Starcraft 1's story was perfectly serviceable, and you cared for the characters because they all had interesting personalities that were pretty well-defined to begin with. Sure, they were cartoony (Mengsk future betrayal couldn't be more obvious if he wore a top hat and a spiky mustache) but the setting was never depicted as very serious. It was very much a post-apocalyptic space western.

The problem with Starcraft 2's story is twofold, IMO.

First, it got way too big for its britches. You could count the named Terran characters in Starcraft 1 in the fingers of one hand: Raynor, Kerrigan, Duke and Mengsk. If you stretch really hard you can fill that last spot with the Adjutant. Add another hand and you had all the characters from Brood War, too: DuGalle, Stukov and Duran (I know he's not technically Terran but he presented as Terran in BW). You had similar numbers for the Protoss, and the Zerg had like... five named characters total, and only Kerrigan and the Overmind weren't basically interchangeable.

The cast in SC1/BW was limited and the story was simple and told entirely through conversations in the briefing where you were very much present as an unnamed character, chunks of expositional text, or triggers in the missions themselves. It was a plot-driven story. Things were happening and you were along for the ride with Jim Raynor. The plots themselves were also not overwhelmingly huge or complicated. You're trying to overthrow the Confederacy by any means necessary. You're nurturing Kerrigan's power and eating Aiur. You're reconnecting with the Dark Templar and killing the Overmind. Each campaign has at most one plot twist, and you're moving along from event to event.

Starcraft 2 then massively increased the roster and tried to tell a more "complex", character-centric story with plenty of dialogue, plus a huge overarching and escalating plot with the Xel-Naga and Amon and the Primal Zerg and the Void and robot Protoss and etc., without actually making the writing any better. And then it hit the second problem:

Narrative agency. SC1 had a player character. You were referred to by title in every mission. You were a Terran Magistrate that defects to the Sons of Korhal. You were the Cerebrate the Overmind created to oversee Kerrigan's development. You were a young Protoss Executor (which they later retconned as Artanis). BW followed the same convention. You were a different Protoss Executor. You were a UED commander. You were a new Cerebrate freed from the Second Overmind's control by Kerrigan. The point is, you as the player were part of the story (something Command & Conquer also did a lot of, except in Tiberian Sun IIRC). The characters existed only to move the story forward. That all went away in SC2, the story of which basically happens entirely because Raynor wanted to crush some spacebug pussy.

So while in SC1 your character was along for the ride and assumed to agree with the objectives he was being asked to fulfill, in SC2 you're just a spectator. Raynor is the main character for Wings of Liberty and nothing happens without him. Kerrigan is the main character for Heart of the Swarm and an ungodly amount of time is spent trying to give her more depth than a puddle. Artanis is the main character for Heart of the Swarm and Blizzard couldn't make him any more generic if they tried. They're not good main characters. They would be great supporting characters if the player was part of the story, and Blizzard knew how to structure a story like that, but the player is just a third-person observer without any real bearing on the plot itself so the flaws in the story become even more obvious.

Long story short, they should have written a Saturday Morning Cartoon. That's what they were good at. Instead, they tried to write an Epic Space Opera and fell flat.

You can see the same thing happening between Warcraft 3 (relatively small stories for each campaign) and World of Warcraft's later expansions (huge ever-expanding plots with more and more powerful reality-rending enemies). They just couldn't help themselves.
 
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