Starcraft

[Overcast]

Jesus dude, you act like Metzen fucked your mom or something.

I’m fine you and I don’t share the same opinion on the game, but calm down.

Also, EN TARO TASSADAR!

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Also, EN TARO TASSADAR!

Tassadar's a shit commander. He couldn't defeat the Zerg on Char, even though they were led by a twat who wasn't even 30 years old, and he's half the reason why the Protoss Civil War lasted longer, and why it happened in the first place. He could have just returned home with the Templar and NOT brought the Dark Templar back to Aiur since he already knows the powers of the Dark Templar. He could have just killed a Cerebrate and that would have shocked the Conclave-enough so that they would accept help from the Dark Templar.

There isn’t. I’ve been looking for years without success.

Are you sure? There's lots of Aliens games. I even remember playing one on the Sega Saturn.

 

[FreedomMussel]

Are you sure? There's lots of Aliens games. I even remember playing one on the Sega Saturn.

They’re never depicted with personalities. Even in the AVP games where you can play one, they’re always depicted as animals.

The fanfics aren’t any better. The only stories that depict the aliens with personalities are pornos which turn them into friendly non-homicidal boyfriends.

20th Century Studios has pretty much driven Alien franchise into the ground. Supposedly the next planned movie is going to have a friendly alien. Ugh.

Every franchise I invest in eventually turns to crap. It’s just a matter of time. This is why I’ve stopped investing in other people’s stories and decided to write my own.

Jesus dude, you act like Metzen fucked your mom or something.

I’m fine you and I don’t share the same opinion on the game, but calm down.

Also, EN TARO TASSADAR!

Thanks. I need a bastion of sanity in this annoying clown world.

He could have just killed a Cerebrate and that would have shocked the Conclave-enough so that they would accept help from the Dark Templar.

You know, this entire subplot was horribly clunky. Blizz should have introduced the immortality first by showing it, and then have a new weapon developed to defeat it. Not develop the weapon first and then show what was it developed to stop.

Of course the entire concept is lazy space magic that the writers invented to pull themselves out of a corner. They made the zerg too powerful to defeat without a lazy space magic plot device by giving them infinite numbers and an invulnerable hierarchy. That’s so... boring. There’s no intelligence or finesse involved at all.

Then come SC2, the zerg are invincible even without the space magic immortality. Because fuck logic and self-consistency, I guess.

Ugh. I absolutely hate the entire plot of these games from start to finish. But then you knew that already.

I’m sorry that I’m wasting your time with these stupid rants. Ugh. I really need to shit out my own writing so that I’ll have something constructive to focus on.

 

[Overcast]

Loved the Carbot animations.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Going back to the SC1 Terran campaigns, there's a part where it's actually questionable whether or not Arcturus Mengsk told the truth about the PSI Emitters and the Confederacy's experiments with the Zerg. They were obviously gearing up to fight the Zerg, they even had an unfinished PSI Disruptor on Tarsonis that the UED eventually found. Plus, when you play the Precursor campaign, the first few levels of Rebel Yell are now seen in a new light. Especially the part where the Confederacy punishes Raynor and his men for burning down an infested Command Center-maybe they were studying how the Zerg acted with infested Terran buildings, and Raynor had you burn it down because he is a hothead.

Mengsk claims that the Confederacy uses PSI emitters to lure the Zerg into enemy worlds to destroy the beasts while only coming in to mop up the bugs so they can look like the saviors, but he also claimed that the Zerg were a secret weapon developed by the Confederacy, so he's far from trustworthy. And also, what enemy worlds were out there? Outside of the Umojans, there were only the Kel-Morians, who were already supplying the Confederacy with raw materials after it lost the Guild Wars. And yet the Zerg were only harassing Confederate worlds, which obviously meant that the Confederacy was either luring them to barren colony worlds or the Zerg just showed up there unannounced, looking for Terran psychics.

Yes, there's the fact that the Tarsonis Confederacy eradicated Mengsk's family and nuked his homeworld. Nasty, sure, but is it any different than what your average country does back in the old days? Or what your average banana republic dictatorship does to dissidents? Korhal was a wealthy and powerful planet that was openly revolting against the Confederacy. In other words, it was like Geonosis back in Star Wars; a heavily-industrialized world that was supporting insurrection against the government. In a universe where wealthy factions have access to battlecruisers and nukes, what was the Confederacy supposed to do? Fight a long and exhausting conventional war against Korhal after they just fought tooth and nail against the Kel-Morians? What the Confederacy did to Korhal was obviously monstrous, but it basically had the same effect that the eradication of Carthage had for the Romans; it allowed them to assert their dominance without having to constantly deal with a powerful threat in their borders.

And of course, the fact that the Sons of Korhal used PSI Emitters to lure Zerg into Tarsonis, only to leave a part of their own force and the Protoss holding the bag while the Zerg went OMNOMNOM on the entire planet proves that they're no better than the Confederacy. They're worse, even, since they allowed a human world to fall to alien powers, thereby strengthening their position in the galaxy, and they abandoned their own forces to die, including their own second-in-command, while at most, the Confederacy only allowed the Zerg to run amok on Mar Sara for a bit, while on Chau Sara, they eradicated the Zerg forces on the planet. (Which again, makes Tassadar an even bigger tool since his glassing of Chau Sara was unnecessary, as the Confederacy was already on its way to decimating the Zerg forces planetside.) Sure, Alpha Squadron was stuck fighting the Zerg on Antiga Prime, but had the Sons of Korhal not convinced them to defect, the Delta Squadron forces that eventually came in would have probably rescued them.

All in all, playing the Precursor Campaign right before Rebel Yell introduces more of a grey area concerning the Confederacy and Mengsk. The Confederates are no saints, obviously, but they may not be as evil as Mengsk claims them to be.

 

[FreedomMussel]

All in all, playing the Precursor Campaign right before Rebel Yell introduces more of a grey area concerning the Confederacy and Mengsk. The Confederates are no saints, obviously, but they may not be as evil as Mengsk claims them to be.

That’s an interesting analysis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tarsonian apologism before.

Too bad the franchise wasted any opportunity it had for political thriller elements. I think if the Confederacy were the main terran government rather than the Dominion, or better yet an actual confederation and not a totalitarian dictatorship, we could have had many more interesting stories than the Mengsk/Kerry drama.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

That’s an interesting analysis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tarsonian apologism before.

It's mostly because the technology the Confederacy developed allowed mankind to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Protoss and the Zerg. Both the UED and the Dominion were reliant on the tech developed by the Confederacy to stand even a ghost of a chance against the Protoss and the Zerg. The power armors, the starfighters and battlecruisers, the tanks and walkers, most of it came from Confederate technology, which is pretty darn effective. Without the Confederacy's science and technology, the humans would have been utterly screwed when the Zerg and the Protoss entered the scene. Sure, the authors imply that the UED has some special secret weapons they left back home, but we've never seen them, so as far as I can tell, that was just the authors passing gas.

Then I compared the Precursor and Rebel Yell campaigns again, and I got the feeling that the Confederacy was just Deep State America in Space. They're not the good guys, but they're not the kind of puppy-kicking monsters that Mengsk wanted to portray them as. Especially when he openly lied and said that the Zerg were a Confederate weapon without much evidence.

And compared to other human factions in sci-fi, like the Human Alliance in Mass Effect, the UNSC in Halo, the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek, and even the Imperium in 40K, they don't give as much tech or firepower for the average soldier as the Confederacy does.

The only two factions I can think of that got close was the Enclave from Fallout, and Star Wars' Galactic Empire. In the SW Original Trilogy era, some Stormtrooper captains and special units like the Phase Zero Dark Troopers did have power armor, and power armor was for sale in the private sector for rich mercenaries for thousands of years, while in the SW FPS game Dark Forces, the Imperials were planning to give each and every Stormtrooper a Phase III Dark Trooper power armor suit before the Rebel Alliance mercenary Kyle Katarn killed the Dark Trooper Project lead and sabotaged the project. Meanwhile, the Enclave in Fallout gives out power armor to its common recruits, down to the point where if you show up as a recruit in an Enclave base with no power armor, your drill instructor will yell at you to go get one and even blame you for losing a power armor suit.

I mean, shit, the 40K Imperium that served as the inspiration for the Terrans in Starcraft didn't give that much to their average soldier. They kept the power armor only for elite units, while for their regular goons, the Imperium just gave them a flak jacket and a laser flashlight and told them to go charge the enemy WW1-style. Whereas the Confederacy's attitude to their common soldier was like, "here, have a suit of power armor that most space-faring factions would only give to their elite troops, and here, have a gauss rifle that can fire depleted uranium rounds." Granted, the Confederacy also treated their goons like expendable chumps, (encouraging them to shoot up drugs with no medics onboard, LOL) but they gave them way more than what your average buzz-cut space marine in the average FPS game gets. The last time I played a shooter where the main character got that much firepower right off the bat, it was 40K: Space Marine.

Too bad the franchise wasted any opportunity it had for political thriller elements. I think if the Confederacy were the main terran government rather than the Dominion, or better yet an actual confederation and not a totalitarian dictatorship, we could have had many more interesting stories than the Mengsk/Kerry drama.

I actually do reintroduce that in my version of SC2 and the post-SC2 story.

Spoiler: My post-SC2 Story

Basically, I introduce a Protoss warlord (the "mystic" descended from Khas in my SC2 fix) whose forces were exploring the galaxy during the Golden Age of the Protoss Empire, until they eventually run across Earth after the Brood Wars. At first, this Protoss warlord helps Stukov and the Captain from the UED campaign (he managed to survive and get back home after picking up Stukov after Resurrection IV) win a civil war in the UED between UED loyalists and UPL hard-liners. He then has his forces help humanity advance in science and technology, giving them advanced cybernetics, having High Templars train their psychics, and giving the average human Protoss tech so they can teleport to work and have a better standard of living.

Then, when SC2 hits, the UED shows up to help the human colonists abandoned by the Dominion to the Zerg, while Stukov and Raynor work together to unravel the Hybrid problem while fighting Kerrigan. They team up with Valerian and Zeratul, de-infest and mind-wipe Kerrigan to revert her back to her good self back on Tarsonis, then when Raynor gets taken captive by the Dominion and pronounced dead, and Kerrigan gets help from this Protoss mystic as she reunites the swarms, deals with her darker side, and rescues Raynor and surprisingly, Mengsk, since Duran had been puppeting the Dominion throne for some time. They work together and defeat Duran and later, with Artanis' help, Amon's forces, with Kerrigan and the mystic purifying the Khala with help from Tassadar, freeing the Protoss who were enslaved by him.

This then goes over to what happens post-war. The Protoss mystic crowns himself Emperor of the Protoss and tries to rebuild the authority of the Protoss Conclave and Empire on Aiur, based on his ancestor Khas' vision. But Artanis and the Dark Templar do not want to be bound to a new Imperial government based on Aiur, and of course, this has the Protoss Emperor in a tizzy, since he wants to recreate the unified Protoss Empire, yet under Artanis, the Daelaam Protoss were beginning to reassert their tribal identities and act more like a confederacy of tribes. Basically, the Protoss mystic wants an Empire for the Protoss reminiscent of Earth's 16th-century Absolute Monarchies, whereas Artanis wants tribal confederacies like those in the great plains in the early United States.

Things get worse when Valerian Mengsk, having taken the crown from his father, begins supporting Artanis, as they both were wary of this Protoss Emperor and his control of Aiur, his massive Protoss fleet, and his influence over Kerrigan's Zerg and the UED, and of course, the fact that the Protoss Emperor is trying to solidify all his holdings into a single empire that controls the entire galaxy, which Artanis and Valerian oppose.

Then, to counter the power of the Dominion and the Daelaam, the Protoss Emperor and his Empire revives the Terran Confederacy on Tarsonis, terraforming the planet to fix it and inviting Terran colonists from the UED as well as Terran nations independent of the Dominion in the Koprulu Sector to join, such as the Umojans and the Kel-Morian Combine, giving these colonies representation in the new Confederate senate. The Protoss Emperor forms an alliance with the Precursor campaign's Cerberus Commander, who survived the events of SC1, and it was his advice that got the Protoss Emperor to support the rebuilding of the Terran Confederacy to act as a bulwark against the Dominion and the Daelaam.

While at the same time, the Protoss Emperor continues the hybrid project and even has crippled Protoss war veterans enhanced with Zerg DNA and uplifted into Hybrids, which causes the Tal'Darim to join the Protoss Emperor since he could make their dreams of becoming Hybrid come true. This then leads to rising tensions between the Dominion/Daelaam and the Protoss Empire/Confederacy/UED, with the Daelaam and the Dominion protesting the creation of new Hybrids, the Protoss Emperor arguing for a unified galactic state to keep the peace, and the Zerg under Kerrigan being pressured by both sides to join them.

On the one hand, Raynor supports the Daelaam, but on the other, the Protoss Emperor was there for Kerrigan when she needed help to find her way after she was de-infested. The choice between supporting old friends and new ones gets to Kerrigan, and she starts wondering what side she should be on.

 

[FreedomMussel]

the 40K Imperium that served as the inspiration for the Terrans in Starcraft

Arguably the Imperium inspired the protoss, not the terrans. The zealot is described not unlike an astartes (just one zealot can hold an entire planet), and their history involves a dark age caused by misuse of psychics that sent them back to the stone age.

---

On another note...

Hindsight is 20/20. If you could outright reboot StarCraft today, then what would you do?

I think I've already explained what I'd want to do. What would you do, if you could reboot everything and change anything you desired?

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Arguably the Imperium inspired the protoss, not the terrans. The zealot is described not unlike an astartes (just one zealot can hold an entire planet), and their history involves a dark age caused by misuse of psychics that sent them back to the stone age.

I wouldn't put it that way. One characteristic of Imperium civilization is that they were technologically regressive. They went from making massive warships to not even knowing how to fix the damn things. Meanwhile, the Protoss Empire is similarly as dogmatic as the Imperium was, yet their technology jumped leaps and bounds thanks to the communal link and unity that the Khala afforded them.

In 40K, religion stifled the Imperium's technological and social progress. In Starcraft, religion did the opposite for the Protoss: it gave them a sense of unity and communal harmony unmatched in their entire history, and they developed most of their tech in the golden age of the Protoss Empire when the Khala and the Conclave ruled supreme.

The latter was more realistic, as shits with heliocentrism and evolution aside, Christianity uplifted the barbarians who replaced Rome, and the civilization they built in Western Europe after the fall of Rome grew to be the most technologically advanced civilization on Earth by the 1900s, which is what allowed them to steamroll other nations on Earth, and they were flattening ancient empires even back when they were Bible-beaters.

---

On another note...

Hindsight is 20/20. If you could outright reboot StarCraft today, then what would you do?

I think I've already explained what I'd want to do. What would you do, if you could reboot everything and change anything you desired?

Nothing. I'd keep SC1 as is, but I'd implement my changes for SC2, and have the political battles post-SC2 to be the buildup for my SC3, where the Protoss Empire/Confederacy/UED fight against the Dominion/Daelaam, and I'd cross it over with Warcraft (they already imply it's a shared universe with some joke units, with Azeroth being in the Starcraft universe and the Confederacy supposedly enlisting Tauren to become marines) by having the Burning Legion becoming a third foe that butts in on that conflict.

 

[Corn Flakes]

You guys are thinking way too hard on how 40K inspired Starcraft. It's entirely a visual thing: very early on, the Terran Marines started out as Space Marine copycats, hence the big bulbous shoulderpads and huge greaves. The whole aesthetic of the world being dingy and everybody having big chunky cybernetic augments is also similar. But that's about where it ends. Thematically the two settings have never been all that similar.

 

[FreedomMussel]

I wouldn't put it that way. One characteristic of Imperium civilization is that they were technologically regressive. They went from making massive warships to not even knowing how to fix the damn things. Meanwhile, the Protoss Empire is similarly as dogmatic as the Imperium was, yet their technology jumped leaps and bounds thanks to the communal link and unity that the Khala afforded them.

In 40K, religion stifled the Imperium's technological and social progress. In Starcraft, religion did the opposite for the Protoss: it gave them a sense of unity and communal harmony unmatched in their entire history, and they developed most of their tech in the golden age of the Protoss Empire when the Khala and the Conclave ruled supreme.

That depends on what iteration of the lore you're working with. As of right now, the protoss prior to the age of strife had a galactic civilization with vastly more advanced tech derived directly from xel'naga tech taught to them by living xel'naga. Then they reduced themselves to the stone age and had to rebuilt from there by reverse-engineering technology leftover from their ancestors, which even to this day they don't seem to fully understand (e.g. once they lost the dragoon factories on Aiur they had no way to replace them). This is most similar to how the the Imperium techbase works.

At least, that's what the wiki seems to suggest. Judging by the inconsistencies between citations (which include wildly divergent sources like manuals, game scripts, interviews, multiplayer map descriptions, etc), Blizzard didn't seem to have any idea what their actual backstory was supposed to be. According to World of WarCraft Diary, Blizz never established lore bibles for any of their IPs: they just took binders and filled them with random ideas, most of which never got used.

Your analysis of the lore puts way more stock into it than Blizzard ever did. While I appreciate it, don't get me wrong, I am frustrated because I think your effort is wasted on Blizzard and you deserve a better IP to invest that effort in. The Blizz lore defies logical analysis, believe me.

You guys are thinking way too hard on how 40K inspired Starcraft. It's entirely a visual thing: very early on, the Terran Marines started out as Space Marine copycats, hence the big bulbous shoulderpads and huge greaves. The whole aesthetic of the world being dingy and everybody having big chunky cybernetic augments is also similar. But that's about where it ends. Thematically the two settings have never been all that similar.

Pretty much, yep. From what little we know of development, the earliest pitch for SC was a conflict between cyborgs, robots, and "space vampires." These became, respectively, the terrans, protoss, and zerg. The inspiration from 40k came later, and SC takes just as much inspiration from sources like Starship Troopers, Aliens versus Predator, and possibly even the Vang novels (which also inspired Halo at around the same time).

The three races went thru a fair amount of changes between the WC2-derived alpha and the gold game. For example, the Blizz website circa 1996 explained that the terrans (explained as a loosely affiliated confederation in contact with Earth and other sectors beyond Koprulu) and protoss were engaged in a cold war (e.g. some templar massacred civilians at Tau Ceti) until the zerg showed up out of nowhere to invade the galaxy. It's implied that the zerg were attracted from across the galaxy by the emanations the protoss psi matrix and that this wasn't their first invasion, with the protoss myths stating that something like the zerg had invaded in the distant past and killed the mysterious xel'naga who predated the protoss (it's not clear at this point whether the xel'naga were a separate species or genetic ancestors to the protoss). The zerg at this point seem to be entirely mindless and don't communicate at all with other species, and it's implied that the zerg may be acting under the direction of another unknown species rather than planning all this of their own accord.

Obviously, this doesn't line up with the manual... which doesn't line up with the game... which doesn't line up with the expansion pack... etc.

Interviews explain that they made up the campaigns as they went rather than planning ahead. Which seems pretty obvious in hindsight, since several key points feel shoehorned in or don't match up with later events. For example, the zerg were originally conceived of as unintelligent and thus a plot point like the psi-emitter attracting them would make sense. But in the next campaign the zerg are established as intelligent, so it doesn't make sense that they would mindlessly follow an emitter like their enemies would want. (Making Kerry into the bestest evah psychic demigoddess is a ridiculous explanation that belongs in bad fanfiction, not professional military scifi.)

SC lore/story is a complete mess. The writers clearly had no coherent vision in mind, made things up as they went, and didn't care about maintaining consistency.

Nothing. I'd keep SC1 as is, but I'd implement my changes for SC2, and have the political battles post-SC2 to be the buildup for my SC3, where the Protoss Empire/Confederacy/UED fight against the Dominion/Daelaam, and I'd cross it over with Warcraft (they already imply it's a shared universe with some joke units, with Azeroth being in the Starcraft universe and the Confederacy supposedly enlisting Tauren to become marines) by having the Burning Legion becoming a third foe that butts in on that conflict.

You seriously don't see anything wrong with the psi-emitter, or Kerry, or anything else?

Argh.

This is why I don't like the SC fandom anymore. Everything I liked has been scrubbed from canon, and you guys clearly don't share any of the same tastes that I do.

I wish Chris Metzen had been born a lesbian and twenty years earlier than in this timeline.

This stupid bullshit is why I have to resort to writing my own scifi when I shouldn't have to. I should be enjoying my life, not compelled to fix other people's shit.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

That depends on what iteration of the lore you're working with. As of right now, the protoss prior to the age of strife had a galactic civilization with vastly more advanced tech derived directly from xel'naga tech taught to them by living xel'naga. Then they reduced themselves to the stone age and had to rebuilt from there by reverse-engineering technology leftover from their ancestors, which even to this day they don't seem to fully understand (e.g. once they lost the dragoon factories on Aiur they had no way to replace them). This is most similar to how the the Imperium techbase works.

At least, that's what the wiki seems to suggest. Judging by the inconsistencies between citations (which include wildly divergent sources like manuals, game scripts, interviews, multiplayer map descriptions, etc), Blizzard didn't seem to have any idea what their actual backstory was supposed to be. According to World of WarCraft Diary, Blizz never established lore bibles for any of their IPs: they just took binders and filled them with random ideas, most of which never got used.

Your analysis of the lore puts way more stock into it than Blizzard ever did. While I appreciate it, don't get me wrong, I am frustrated because I think your effort is wasted on Blizzard and you deserve a better IP to invest that effort in. The Blizz lore defies logical analysis, believe me.

I don't give a flying shit about the retcons to the lore from SC2. As far as I'm concerned, they're not canon. I'm just going off the manual where again, the Protoss Empire under the Conclave was the Protoss at their finest.

You seriously don't see anything wrong with the psi-emitter, or Kerry, or anything else?

As I said before, I don't have much problems with SC1, and I only had some problems with Brood War. The Confederacy making psi-emitters makes sense as they were trying to find ways to deal with the Zerg, and Kerrigan was another part of that experiment. And of course, my versions of SC2 and SC3 fix any problems in my book.

 

[Had]

Played the second game back in 2010 on my shitty intel graphics laptop
10/10 It was my main game for ages as a kid

Came back and it's fun to make a buddy get the free version and do vs trying to remember what every character does again.
HuskyStarcraft

 

[FreedomMussel]

I don't give a flying shit about the retcons to the lore from SC2. As far as I'm concerned, they're not canon. I'm just going off the manual where again, the Protoss Empire under the Conclave was the Protoss at their finest.

Actually, the only retcon from SC2 is that they were cargo culting. Everything else came from the SC1 media.

The Empire in the manual is an interstellar empire that spans hundreds, perhaps thousands of worlds. They have fought numerous wars against xenomorphic threats, made numerous alliances with spacefaring civilizations, etc. And that's not counting the protoss tribes that left the empire. Not only that, but it's unknown how much of their first age tech they've rediscovered and they may very not even be close to rediscovering their ancient peak.

The zerg don't believe that they'd stand a chance against the protoss empire. They'd need to consume the entire human race and all the various mutations humans have developed, plus the later research and development, before they'd be able to fight on equal footing. Not superior footing, equal footing.

This is not what we see in the SC1 game script. In the SC1 game, the protoss seem to live entirely on two planets: Aiur and Shakuras. That's it. Those planets are so poorly defended that the zerg are able to crush their resistance with ease in a matter of days despite making no evolutionary advancements since before their invasion of humanity, even though the protoss have fleets of death stars.

There is a clear disconnect in the lore here.

As I said before, I don't have much problems with SC1,

I've pointed out the problems numerous times. You just dismiss them as irrelevant for reasons completely opaque to me.

Seriously, what do I have to do to get you to see things from my POV? What arguments do I need to exhaust to convince you I have a point?

The Confederacy making psi-emitters makes sense as they were trying to find ways to deal with the Zerg,

The way the psi-emitter is used is inconsistent.

The story can't decided whether the zerg are compelled to follow the emitter, or just did so opportunistically.

If the zerg are compelled to follow the emitter, then it's a viable weapon against them. You can lure them into traps. Plant an emitter near a black hole in such a way that any approaching zerg will be sucked in, activate it, watch them destroy themselves.

If the zerg aren't compelled, then why follow the emitter? They're clearly intelligent and should realize that it is a simple trap, as they've used the exact same ploy themselves in the manual. It would make far more sense for them to process population centers for people with latent and active psychic genes. Remember, many people with psychic genes don't demonstrate psychic powers and these can lay dormant for generations.

Before you answer "they were chasing Kerry," stop and think about it. What makes Kerry so special that she magically solves all problems? She can read human minds and create psionic storms, big whoop. Human psychic powers are not made equal. While we don't get a lot of details in the manual, it's implied to be something like an X-Men or Aeon Trinity Universe deal. Kerry carries only a tiny fraction of humanity's potential, and doesn't represent humanity as a whole. She can't predict the future, she can't teleport, she can't use telepathic warfare on zealots. Before you say "she can control zerg and manipulate Madame Raz," I need to point out that prior to SC2's retcons she still needed to extort a cerebrate to manage her armies and didn't appear to be able to control more than a handful of zerg at a time, and her manipulation of Raz relied on Raz's own senility to work as stated in Raz's bio (this plot point is also executed very poorly since Kerry is never shown to have adequate opportunity to make suggestions to Raz).

Oh, and she never went to Aiur like she was apparently supposed to. She stayed behind to fight the dark templar herself, as though she could individually contribute anything of value to that fight. Why did the zerg take her in the first place if they never needed her against the enemy she was supposed to fight? Why is she sent fight the dark templar instead when the zerg don't know much about the dark templar and haven't even done R&D yet to devise a weapon against them? What makes them think she'd be useful against them when she was chosen to fight a completely different enemy? I understand the dark templar are protoss, but they've been isolated so long that the same tactics won't work on them and the zerg should be able to easily determine this given that they've been spying on the protoss for millennia with deep space probes. Speaking of which, the subplot where Zeratul reveals the location of Aiur makes no sense since the zerg already know where it is according to the manual and according to basic logic because they have psychic radar that could see the psi matrix uniting protoss space in addition to other capabilities like deep space telemetry. (There are logical disconnects throughout that campaign that are clearly the result of hasty rewrites.)

Also, the zerg eat entire species and not single individuals. If they only needed single individuals to conduct R&D, then they wouldn't have burned a path thru the galaxy eating every planet in their path. They eat entire planets. Strip the biospheres, the oceans, the atmosphere, everything!

and Kerrigan was another part of that experiment.

Kerry is a mary sue. She's literally based on Metzen's girlfriend. She's the main zerg character because of haphazard writing. She's the bestest evah! according to the game and novels. It's obnoxious as hell. Her writing makes modern sues like Rey, Captain Marvel, and Michael Burnham look humble.

I don't understand how you can't see that it makes no sense for the zerg to treat her so highly when they've eaten countless biospheres and intelligent species. The zerg don't do things like heroes, they do mass production. She's only the main zerg character because Metzen had a boner for her. It's that simple.

Kerry's existence contradicts the zerg. She doesn't fit them at all. She's a human with human desires, they're inhuman monsters with very alien desires. Why would they keep a version of her consciousness around despite it providing no benefit and many drawbacks compared to a pure zerg personality? (e.g. she defies a direct order from the Overmind to kill her ex-boyfriend and his friends, which later comes back to bite her when Raynor teams up with the protoss; she threatens to kill Zasz and exhibits joy upon hearing news of his physical death, and exhibits zero remorse upon hearing that his consciousness was lost forever; she defies the second Overmind simply because she was feeling contrarian; she pretty much acts however the writers desire at the time; etc) Why did they never do that for any of the countless other intelligent species they ate? What makes Kerry such a special snowflake?

If you were writing a bug war setting from scratch where the bugs were trying to eat humanity to acquire various mutations like psychics and stuff, then would it make any sense for you to make them elevate any single human to messianic hero status? Does that make any thematic sense for inhuman bug monsters?

Does it make sense for the pseudo-arachnids, tyranids, necromorphs, flood, etc to do something like that? No, it doesn't make any sense.

So why do you think it makes sense for the zerg to do this? Because it already happened in canon? We've already established that the writers had no idea what they were doing. Game of Thrones season 8 is canon, the Star Wars prequels and sequels are canon, Captain Marvel is canon, Picard and Star Trek: Discovery is canon, but that doesn't make the writing good or the events believable or logically coherent.

The most logical thing for the zerg to do is kill her, as was originally planned for her character according to interviews, and use her genes to create armies of psychic terranlings or something. There is zero compelling reason for the zerg to keep a version of her consciousness intact when they only need her psychic genes.

Why would you ever think her character was a remotely good idea? If you were writing from scratch, then why would you add a character like that?

And of course, my versions of SC2 and SC3 fix any problems in my book.

If you still think that, then I encourage you to do a little thought experiment for me.

Make a bug war setting from scratch, critically think thru the plot points, and ask yourself whether it makes logical sense for events to unfold similar to how they did in StarCraft. What in-universe lines of logic justifies those things happening?

For example: I have hypothetically written a scifi setting where voracious space bugs know as the Narg are invading human space in order to abduct mutants for experimentation. They have consumed countless worlds and species, including spacefaring civilizations. They consider all other species to be food and hosts, not unlike how humans see domesticated and wild animals. Human lives and thoughts hold no intrinsic value to them. What kind of sense does it make for the Narg to follow random beacons on a wild goose chase across the stars when it would be more profitable to process population centers for what they're looking for? What kind of sense does it make for the Narg to kidnap the girlfriend of plucky space outlaw Bob Naylor and elevate her, with her consciousness intact, into an equal to their greatest leader creatures when they have absolutely no compelling reason to do anything like that?

I look forward to seeing your answers.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Actually, the only retcon from SC2 is that they were cargo culting. Everything else came from the SC1 media.

The Empire in the manual is an interstellar empire that spans hundreds, perhaps thousands of worlds. They have fought numerous wars against xenomorphic threats, made numerous alliances with spacefaring civilizations, etc. And that's not counting the protoss tribes that left the empire. Not only that, but it's unknown how much of their first age tech they've rediscovered and they may very not even be close to rediscovering their ancient peak.

The zerg don't believe that they'd stand a chance against the protoss empire. They'd need to consume the entire human race and all the various mutations humans have developed, plus the later research and development, before they'd be able to fight on equal footing. Not superior footing, equal footing.

This is not what we see in the SC1 game script. In the SC1 game, the protoss seem to live entirely on two planets: Aiur and Shakuras. That's it. Those planets are so poorly defended that the zerg are able to crush their resistance with ease in a matter of days despite making no evolutionary advancements since before their invasion of humanity, even though the protoss have fleets of death stars.

There is a clear disconnect in the lore here.


I've pointed out the problems numerous times. You just dismiss them as irrelevant for reasons completely opaque to me.

Seriously, what do I have to do to get you to see things from my POV? What arguments do I need to exhaust to convince you I have a point?


The way the psi-emitter is used is inconsistent.

The story can't decided whether the zerg are compelled to follow the emitter, or just did so opportunistically.

If the zerg are compelled to follow the emitter, then it's a viable weapon against them. You can lure them into traps. Plant an emitter near a black hole in such a way that any approaching zerg will be sucked in, activate it, watch them destroy themselves.

If the zerg aren't compelled, then why follow the emitter? They're clearly intelligent and should realize that it is a simple trap, as they've used the exact same ploy themselves in the manual. It would make far more sense for them to process population centers for people with latent and active psychic genes. Remember, many people with psychic genes don't demonstrate psychic powers and these can lay dormant for generations.

Before you answer "they were chasing Kerry," stop and think about it. What makes Kerry so special that she magically solves all problems? She can read human minds and create psionic storms, big whoop. Human psychic powers are not made equal. While we don't get a lot of details in the manual, it's implied to be something like an X-Men or Aeon Trinity Universe deal. Kerry carries only a tiny fraction of humanity's potential, and doesn't represent humanity as a whole. She can't predict the future, she can't teleport, she can't use telepathic warfare on zealots. Before you say "she can control zerg and manipulate Madame Raz," I need to point out that prior to SC2's retcons she still needed to extort a cerebrate to manage her armies and didn't appear to be able to control more than a handful of zerg at a time, and her manipulation of Raz relied on Raz's own senility to work as stated in Raz's bio (this plot point is also executed very poorly since Kerry is never shown to have adequate opportunity to make suggestions to Raz).

Oh, and she never went to Aiur like she was apparently supposed to. She stayed behind to fight the dark templar herself, as though she could individually contribute anything of value to that fight. Why did the zerg take her in the first place if they never needed her against the enemy she was supposed to fight? Why is she sent fight the dark templar instead when the zerg don't know much about the dark templar and haven't even done R&D yet to devise a weapon against them? What makes them think she'd be useful against them when she was chosen to fight a completely different enemy? I understand the dark templar are protoss, but they've been isolated so long that the same tactics won't work on them and the zerg should be able to easily determine this given that they've been spying on the protoss for millennia with deep space probes. Speaking of which, the subplot where Zeratul reveals the location of Aiur makes no sense since the zerg already know where it is according to the manual and according to basic logic because they have psychic radar that could see the psi matrix uniting protoss space in addition to other capabilities like deep space telemetry. (There are logical disconnects throughout that campaign that are clearly the result of hasty rewrites.)

Also, the zerg eat entire species and not single individuals. If they only needed single individuals to conduct R&D, then they wouldn't have burned a path thru the galaxy eating every planet in their path. They eat entire planets. Strip the biospheres, the oceans, the atmosphere, everything!


Kerry is a mary sue. She's literally based on Metzen's girlfriend. She's the main zerg character because of haphazard writing. She's the bestest evah! according to the game and novels. It's obnoxious as hell. Her writing makes modern sues like Rey, Captain Marvel, and Michael Burnham look humble.

I don't understand how you can't see that it makes no sense for the zerg to treat her so highly when they've eaten countless biospheres and intelligent species. The zerg don't do things like heroes, they do mass production. She's only the main zerg character because Metzen had a boner for her. It's that simple.

Kerry's existence contradicts the zerg. She doesn't fit them at all. She's a human with human desires, they're inhuman monsters with very alien desires. Why would they keep a version of her consciousness around despite it providing no benefit and many drawbacks compared to a pure zerg personality? (e.g. she defies a direct order from the Overmind to kill her ex-boyfriend and his friends, which later comes back to bite her when Raynor teams up with the protoss; she threatens to kill Zasz and exhibits joy upon hearing news of his physical death, and exhibits zero remorse upon hearing that his consciousness was lost forever; she defies the second Overmind simply because she was feeling contrarian; she pretty much acts however the writers desire at the time; etc) Why did they never do that for any of the countless other intelligent species they ate? What makes Kerry such a special snowflake?

If you were writing a bug war setting from scratch where the bugs were trying to eat humanity to acquire various mutations like psychics and stuff, then would it make any sense for you to make them elevate any single human to messianic hero status? Does that make any thematic sense for inhuman bug monsters?

Does it make sense for the pseudo-arachnids, tyranids, necromorphs, flood, etc to do something like that? No, it doesn't make any sense.

So why do you think it makes sense for the zerg to do this? Because it already happened in canon? We've already established that the writers had no idea what they were doing. Game of Thrones season 8 is canon, the Star Wars prequels and sequels are canon, Captain Marvel is canon, Picard and Star Trek: Discovery is canon, but that doesn't make the writing good or the events believable or logically coherent.

The most logical thing for the zerg to do is kill her, as was originally planned for her character according to interviews, and use her genes to create armies of psychic terranlings or something. There is zero compelling reason for the zerg to keep a version of her consciousness intact when they only need her psychic genes.

Why would you ever think her character was a remotely good idea? If you were writing from scratch, then why would you add a character like that?


If you still think that, then I encourage you to do a little thought experiment for me.

Make a bug war setting from scratch, critically think thru the plot points, and ask yourself whether it makes logical sense for events to unfold similar to how they did in StarCraft. What in-universe lines of logic justifies those things happening?

For example: I have hypothetically written a scifi setting where voracious space bugs know as the Narg are invading human space in order to abduct mutants for experimentation. They have consumed countless worlds and species, including spacefaring civilizations. They consider all other species to be food and hosts, not unlike how humans see domesticated and wild animals. Human lives and thoughts hold no intrinsic value to them. What kind of sense does it make for the Narg to follow random beacons on a wild goose chase across the stars when it would be more profitable to process population centers for what they're looking for? What kind of sense does it make for the Narg to kidnap the girlfriend of plucky space outlaw Bob Naylor and elevate her, with her consciousness intact, into an equal to their greatest leader creatures when they have absolutely no compelling reason to do anything like that?

I look forward to seeing your answers.

There really is no way to get people to see things the way you do.

You want Starship Troopers, not Starcraft. And I'm sure there's more than enough games out there where the bugs are just brainless beasts that you have to shoot. (Republic Commando lets you do that. All the aliens outside of the furball Wookiees are evil and you don't have to worry about humanizing or befriending them when blowing their brains out is your one and only concern.)

 

[Corn Flakes]

There really is no way to get people to see things the way you do.

You want Starship Troopers, not Starcraft. And I'm sure there's more than enough games out there where the bugs are just brainless beasts that you have to shoot. (Republic Commando lets you do that. All the aliens outside of the furball Wookiees are evil and you don't have to worry about humanizing or befriending them when blowing their brains out is your one and only concern.)

Honestly, it feels like he wants to play this instead of Starcraft:

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Honestly, it feels like he wants to play this instead of Starcraft:

It really does feel like it. I mean, if you can't even like the original series, maybe Starcraft isn't for you. Just as how someone who hates the Original Trilogy Star Wars really should just look someplace else other than Star Wars for entertainment.

And of course, if all you want is to blast mindless Zerg hordes with no story, then just go play the skirmish match custom games and just pile up the Zerg casualties.

 

[FreedomMussel]

It really does feel like it. I mean, if you can't even like the original series, maybe Starcraft isn't for you. Just as how someone who hates the Original Trilogy Star Wars really should just look someplace else other than Star Wars for entertainment.

And of course, if all you want is to blast mindless Zerg hordes with no story, then just go play the skirmish match custom games and just pile up the Zerg casualties.

You completely misunderstand my POV. Let me explain.

I love making the zerg intelligent. That makes them way more interesting than the arachnids or tyranids.

Starship Troopers bores me to death. You can’t play as the bugs, and any campaign would be boring as hell anyway. The tyranid campaign in Dawn of War 2: Retribution was hella boring as a result. I can’t get into

The Overmind and cerebrates introduced in SC1 OG are an amazing revolutionary concept that makes the voracious space bugs more interesting to explore, while still keeping them as inhuman alien creatures.

Where it gets stupid is when Kerry is introduced. The entire appeal of the zerg to me is that they’re inhuman monsters, not sexy succubi.

There’s no other games or fiction that has anything like the Overmind and cerebrates. I’ve looked for years without success.

Does that make sense? Does that affect your response to my complaint?

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

You completely misunderstand my POV. Let me explain.

I love making the zerg intelligent. That makes them way more interesting than the arachnids or tyranids.

Starship Troopers bores me to death. You can’t play as the bugs, and any campaign would be boring as hell anyway. The tyranid campaign in Dawn of War 2: Retribution was hella boring as a result. I can’t get into

The Overmind and cerebrates introduced in SC1 OG are an amazing revolutionary concept that makes the voracious space bugs more interesting to explore, while still keeping them as inhuman alien creatures.

Where it gets stupid is when Kerry is introduced. The entire appeal of the zerg to me is that they’re inhuman monsters, not sexy succubi.

There’s no other games or fiction that has anything like the Overmind and cerebrates. I’ve looked for years without success.

Does that make sense? Does that affect your response to my complaint?

No. Because Kerrigan as a Zerg was anything but a sexy succubi. She's an abomination that's infested to her core, who can't help but screw over and betray people to gain more power because that's how she was re-programmed as a Zerg. Kerrigan was an example of what the Zerg can do to humans; they took this cheery psychic girl who was just playing cops and robbers with Raynor against the Confederacy, and literally turned her into the series' Darth Vader. It showed how powerful the Overmind was, and how much of a threat he is, when he can take a human psychic and make something as threatening as the Queen of Blades.

Kerrigan is not meant to be a sex symbol; she's supposed to be an amalgamation of the worst aspects of the Terrans and Zerg rolled into one: she has the charisma and ruthlessness of someone like Mengsk, coupled with the power and megalomania of someone like the Overmind. She's practically Littlefinger from Game of Thrones with tits and a birth canal. She's powerful enough to be a threat in the same vein as the Chaos Gods, but she's still human enough to enjoy revenge. Compared to her, the Zerg Cerebrates are just generals following orders, while the Overmind made Kerrigan to be the most ruthless bitch this side of Tarsonis.

Also, there's plenty of fiction with entities like the Overmind and its Cerebrates. Quite literally, they're just talking brains giving marching orders to bugs-no different from the Geonosian Queen in Star Wars.

 

[FreedomMussel]

No. Because Kerrigan as a Zerg was anything but a sexy succubi. She's an abomination that's infested to her core, who can't help but screw over and betray people to gain more power because that's how she was re-programmed as a Zerg. Kerrigan was an example of what the Zerg can do to humans; they took this cheery psychic girl who was just playing cops and robbers with Raynor against the Confederacy, and literally turned her into the series' Darth Vader. It showed how powerful the Overmind was, and how much of a threat he is, when he can take a human psychic and make something as threatening as the Queen of Blades.

Kerrigan is not meant to be a sex symbol; she's supposed to be an amalgamation of the worst aspects of the Terrans and Zerg rolled into one: she has the charisma and ruthlessness of someone like Mengsk, coupled with the power and megalomania of someone like the Overmind. She's practically Littlefinger from Game of Thrones with tits and a birth canal. She's powerful enough to be a threat in the same vein as the Chaos Gods, but she's still human enough to enjoy revenge. Compared to her, the Zerg Cerebrates are just generals following orders, while the Overmind made Kerrigan to be the most ruthless bitch this side of Tarsonis.

Also, there's plenty of fiction with entities like the Overmind and its Cerebrates. Quite literally, they're just talking brains giving marching orders to bugs-no different from the Geonosian Queen in Star Wars.

Really? You really believe all that shit you just pulled out of your ass?

Metzen had little to no prior experience writing and threw the story together without critical thought. Kerry is literally based on his junkie ex-girlfriend and she’s a revolting mary sue. You put vastly more stock in this writing then it ever deserved, the equivalent of elevating Twilight or Eragon to the same level as Shakespeare or Tolkien.

Your ramblings are entertaining in their sheer absurdity, but also really frustrating because you’re clearly much smarter than this.