A few months later: what's the verdict on Starcraft 2's campaign? (Spoilers)

[ranger19]

I thought it was great, especially considering the people at Blizzcon that confirmed it's about to get a lot deeper and darker as the expansions come along. Apparently Wings of Liberty was 'a scratch in the surface' or somesuch.

Anyway, as I said, I thought it was great...BUT I have two complaints. First of all, it seems a lot of people liked the Protoss arc, but I personally thought it was the greatest low-point of the series. Prophecies, cheesey dialogue, (IMO) blatant soap-opera style character twists...everything about it I thought was done poorly, save some of the Zeratul gameplay. I honestly can't see why people would have liked it, and I'm worried that the third expansion will just be the same kind of stuff.

See, that's what I hate about preplanned sequels. I don't want my first game to "scratch the surface", I want it to be a full and deep and memorable experience on its own. But I guess it's different if you enjoyed the first game more. I wasn't thrilled with the Protoss part either - I wanted my upgraded Terran units! (Besides, I really didn't like the Protoss/Zerg combo units. They felt extremely cheesy for some reason.)

snip

Interesting that there's someone here now whose favorite missions are the ones the guy I just quoted enjoyed the least. Anyway, yeah - although I enjoyed the choices the game offered, I suppose it's a shame that they don't have much meaningful impact on the game. I mean ghost vs spectre had very little impact on the game gameplay wise. (Though the research choices felt meaningful to me.) And you're right: while the missions were well designed, it was a bit too obvious for my taste how you were supposed to use a single unit on each map. I would have enjoyed a sense of "there's more than one way to play this level". There certainly was always a different way, but the game always was wanting to force their way on you. More missions that did not introduce new units would have been enjoyable.

another snip

Yes, I recall Blizzard being hailed for their stories. Now of course, it's been far too long since I played the original game, and as someone shrewdly pointed out, it might have been simply "awesome to our twelve year-old selves" but always the quality of the current game. But I've never played WoW or any other Blizzard games so I can't compare.. the story is better in their other games you say?

 

[tzimize]

Yes, I recall Blizzard being hailed for their stories. Now of course, it's been far too long since I played the original game, and as someone shrewdly pointed out, it might have been simply "awesome to our twelve year-old selves" but always the quality of the current game. But I've never played WoW or any other Blizzard games so I can't compare.. the story is better in their other games you say?

I certainly think the story of the first starcraft was a lot better than Wings of Liberty. While its not on par with Mass Effect or Baldurs gate it was without a doubt the best story in an RTS that I can think of. Only rivalled by Warcraft.

And more importantly, it had a hell of a lot of interesting characters. There was not a single new interesting character introduced in the entirety of SC2, and we barely even saw any of the good old ones.

The reason I found the protoss missions good was

1: We got more insight into the Overminds motivations (which I found completely kick-ass)

2: We got to play Zeratul, which is one of my favorite characters in SC

3: We didnt have to listen to whiny-emo-semi alchoholic Raynor...I mean...he used to be so cool...what the hell did they do? :|

I find it amazing that a SINGLE arc in SC1 (the terran, protoss or zerg part) is more interesting than the entirety of SC2. Thankfully Heart of the Swarm will be about my favorite race, the Zerg...so I hope it will be better than this one.

 

[Rblade]

I think the fight against mengsk was well worked out. And his struggle to decide what to prioritize (and thus the scattered storyline switching between mengsk and Kerrigan was intended, it was intregal to the struggle and choise Rainor was facing). Missions like the once centred around the Odin and how some of the core characters personalities shines through in missions and cut scenes.

It's very important to see the end as a cliffhanger. I'm dying to find out how the kerrigan thing will play out, what her role in her current state is. How mengsk will retaliate and how the retreating zerg will respond to all this. Not unimporant who will lead the zerg. What agenda will they follow.

I think it's working towards a great crescendo and conclusion in the protoss campaign that will tie everything together.

in conculsion. view it as a intregal part of the series of 3 campaigns, and you find that the 2 (or maby 3) story lines that are forming are very well fleshed out. namely
-mengsk
-Kerrigan
-the Zel'naga

with the last 2 being very obviously tied through Zeratuls visions.

I don't see how this is any less interesting then the terran campaign in the original starcraft. and, infact, much larger and better worked out due to the larger number of missions and character forming cut scenes that really get you involved. sadly this required the game be split in 3, so be it I have no doubt blizzard will make the last 2 equally worth it because they always take great care to make their products full and complete in a way they would want to play it.

 

[ranger19]

snip

Fair enough. While I think the overmind is insanely cool/alien, I'm not sure how fun it is to know it was under someone else's control. That takes away from it's power a bit. *shurg* I think I need to go back and play the original SC.

I think the fight against mengsk was well worked out. And his struggle to decide what to prioritize (and thus the scattered storyline switching between mengsk and Kerrigan was intended, it was intregal to the struggle and choise Rainor was facing). Missions like the once centred around the Odin and how some of the core characters personalities shines through in missions and cut scenes.

It's very important to see the end as a cliffhanger. I'm dying to find out how the kerrigan thing will play out, what her role in her current state is. How mengsk will retaliate and how the retreating zerg will respond to all this. Not unimporant who will lead the zerg. What agenda will they follow.

I think it's working towards a great crescendo and conclusion in the protoss campaign that will tie everything together.

in conculsion. view it as a intregal part of the series of 3 campaigns, and you find that the 2 (or maybe 3) story lines that are forming are very well fleshed out. namely
-mengsk
-Kerrigan
-the Zel'naga

with the last 2 being very obviously tied through Zeratuls visions.

I don't see how this is any less interesting then the terran campaign in the original starcraft. and, infact, much larger and better worked out due to the larger number of missions and character forming cut scenes that really get you involved. sadly this required the game be split in 3, so be it I have no doubt blizzard will make the last 2 equally worth it because they always take great care to make their products full and complete in a way they would want to play it.

So here's what I will grant you: the storylines presented are quite interesting, and I look forward to seeing how they all come together. But I don't like the way they were presented, starting with one thread (Mengsk) then kind of dropping it for another (Kerrigan).

Also, I disagree about seeing the game as a cliffhanger. It should stand alone on its own, not feel like a preview of the really fun stuff that's to come. And while you could argue that SC2 does this properly, in the end I don't think it does: Raynor gets a minor victory against Mengsk but not satisfying conclusion, Kerrigan comes back but what about how she was supposed to be the savior of the zerg.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

I thought it was great, especially considering the people at Blizzcon that confirmed it's about to get a lot deeper and darker as the expansions come along. Apparently Wings of Liberty was 'a scratch in the surface' or somesuch.

Anyway, as I said, I thought it was great...BUT I have two complaints. First of all, it seems a lot of people liked the Protoss arc, but I personally thought it was the greatest low-point of the series. Prophecies, cheesey dialogue, (IMO) blatant soap-opera style character twists...everything about it I thought was done poorly, save some of the Zeratul gameplay. I honestly can't see why people would have liked it, and I'm worried that the third expansion will just be the same kind of stuff.

See, that's what I hate about preplanned sequels. I don't want my first game to "scratch the surface", I want it to be a full and deep and memorable experience on its own. But I guess it's different if you enjoyed the first game more. I wasn't thrilled with the Protoss part either - I wanted my upgraded Terran units! (Besides, I really didn't like the Protoss/Zerg combo units. They felt extremely cheesy for some reason.)

That's one of my complaints about that whole arc, it all seems like stuff you'd spot in a mediocre fan-fic. Lore-wise, the hybrids can't exist; Blizzard was called on this before when they tried to put infested-Protoss into the game. There was foreshadowing from Brood War, so it's not a huge departure, but they could have handled it much better. So far for explanation all we have is 'yeah we know hybridized proto-zerg makes no sense, but that's not what this is,' without elaborating. I suppose it could be explained and turned into some mind-boggling twist later on, but judging from this instalment alone, as you said, it comes off as extremely cheesy.

It's just...eh. I get that for some people it was the high-point of the game, but it's the opposite from my perspective.

EDIT: For the record though, I did otherwise enjoy the game. The multiplayer is great if you avoid occasional problems with the matchmaking, the gameplay was enjoyable, and the choices you made gave me much more pause than the majority of those in Mass Effect 2. So yes, I have my issues with the game, but it was still good.

 

[Canid117]

I thought it was a great game and a great campaign.

 

[veloper]

First of all, a game like SC2 doesn't need a good story. The gameplay can stand on it's own, as it should in a RTS.

That said, the dialogue and VO in SC2 was better than DArigins for example, a RPG that has to be driven by the story. SC2 is no VTM Bloodlines in the VO department, but then no other game is.
The plot itself ofcourse is irrelevant, because it's a game.

Overal the story in SC2 is good for what it is, just like the original SC. Nothing more you can ask for.

As a campaign, the scripted missions were a big improvement over SC1, which got repetative after a while. It's good.

 

[Internet Kraken]

The Zerg were never actually evil, they are just a Force of Nature. They don't care for your primitive morals or opinions, they just consume you and add your biological and technological distinctiveness to their own. Their only goal is perfection, to be reached via assimilation of everything into a universe-spanning swarm. And all of creation shall tremble before the burning standards of Zerg.

They are not good, they are not evil, they are outside the cycle.

Of course, the addition of Kerrigan to the swarm also added some vain humanity to it, making it weaker in the process - and now that she's out, the surviving cerebrates can start rebuilding. If there are any of them left, that is...

Well that kind of just proves my point doesn't it? If rogue Zerg are just hungry neutral, then their morality has to be dictated by the entity controlling them. In Starcraft, this was the Overmind Dark Voice due to shitty Blizzard retcons. In Brood War and Wings of Liberty, Kerrigan was in control of the Zerg. There was nobody forcing her to do the things she did. She choose to be an evil, manipulative being out of her own free will. If there's nothing inherently evil or good about the Zerg, then there's no excuse for Kerrigan's actions. She knew what she was doing. She wasn't forced to do it. She did it because she wanted to.

But according to Wings of Liberty, she wasn't in control. Not really. It was just evil Zerg infestation! At least, that's what the ending implies.

 

[nub the samurai]

I was having fun up till the last cut-scene. Then after Raynor shoots my favourite character in the face

Spoiler: Just gonna spoiler this to be safe

Agreed. I was pissed off when Raynor killed Tychus. Wanted to jump in the game and slap Raynor.

 

[Coldie]

Well that kind of just proves my point doesn't it? If rogue Zerg are just hungry neutral, then their morality has to be dictated by the entity controlling them. In Starcraft, this was the Overmind Dark Voice due to shitty Blizzard retcons. In Brood War and Wings of Liberty, Kerrigan was in control of the Zerg. There was nobody forcing her to do the things she did. She choose to be an evil, manipulative being out of her own free will. If there's nothing inherently evil or good about the Zerg, then there's no excuse for Kerrigan's actions. She knew what she was doing. She wasn't forced to do it. She did it because she wanted to.

But according to Wings of Liberty, she wasn't in control. Not really. It was just evil Zerg infestation! At least, that's what the ending implies.

I'm guessing that a lot of Kerrigan's evilness came from:
1. Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda neat though.
2. Mengsk's betrayal brings forth all the Vengeance craziness, which motivated a lot of Kerrigan's actions through most of her infested history.
She may have been in control, but with her general craziness and a couple whispers here and there, a suggestion or two could encourage her do stuff for species 8472, without making her suspect her own motivations.

Kerrigan's human mind gave the swarm a personality of sorts, goals that follow her will and not the Swarm's. That, coupled with the Old Gods' Whispers Dark Voice that drove the Swarm - against Protoss was it? - almost makes the Zerg into a victim in all this.

I'm very much looking forward to the Heart of the Swarm. Perhaps we'll even see the radio free zerg.

 

[Rack]

It was okay, unfortunately they trickled the new units to one per map, so far too many could be beaten by just spamming that unit. Starcraft 1 was much better because it introduced 2-3 new units per map so you had at least a few things going on. If SC2 had done that you could have had 15 or so missions with the full force which would have been really cool.

 

[Sephychu]

I loved it. It was immersive, it spiced things up, and it felt pleasant to wander through Jim's story.

The only thing I didn't like was how shockingly obvious it was that Tychus was not all he seemed. He actually tried to kill you at one point.
Then Jim seems so damned surprised that he tries to kill Kerrigan at the end.

 

[veloper]

snip

"A game like Starcraft 2" doesn't need story? Who said so?

Real gamers say so.

 

[ranger19]

First of all, let's get this out of the way: story is a perfectly acceptable basis for criticism for a game. Games don't "need" a story the same way it doesn't "need" good graphics or gameplay: you can still play it and have fun (usually it needs at least one of these to be fun), but it would be more fun with all of them. And when a AAA high budget game comes out, you better believe people will be expecting everything to be well done. Starcraft 2 can be fun with shoddy PS1 graphics, but not as fun as it is when crisp and aesthetically pleasing.

snippy snip

Ha wow, cool trailer.

OT a little bit: what is this burning legion people keep talking about? This must be a warcraft thing?