Shut up Zerg! A minor complaint about Heart of the Swarm.

[Veylon]

Okay, so I'm enjoying playing Heart of the Swarm.

But there's one thing that bugs me, plot-wise. It's the interminable conversations with Zerg, very few of which have any point.

Now, I've understood that the Zerg were something like the Borg; they're faceless, mindless monsters that obey the directives of an unknown, malign intelligence bent on the perversion or annihilation of all we hold dear. They're not supposed to be chatty.

Spoilered for people who haven't gotten a few planets in:

Spoiler

To be fair, I'm okay with Zagara talking. She's had reason to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to make conversations. It's all the rest, all of whom are completely unnecessary and serve no purpose. The Zerg don't need some weird pit master to evolve; as established in the previous game, they struggle for power and control right down to the cellular level. If we really need a face for Zerg evolution, Zagara can do it. Similarly, there's nothing that Izsha says that Kerrigan couldn't say for herself. Even more pointless is Dehaka, who just says weird, mystical things about evolution and essence in broken English. Least of all needing to talk are the Queens/Brood Mothers. Squeals and grunts got us by in the first Starcraft and there's no reason the same couldn't be done here. Ditto for the all the primordial Zerg, except the big, ancient one.

And if we really needed more talky bits in the game, would it have been that hard to keep Zeratuul around for a while?

Again, I am enjoying the game. But all this talking just bugs me coming from bugs.

 

[Zhukov]

Eh, I kind of liked the evolution pit guy with Steve Blum's voice.

I agree that Dehaka's conversation were completely pointless though. "Essence, essence, essence, I tell you!" The character does eventually serve a purpose though.

 

[Ryotknife]

The cast of HotS left something to be desired. hmm guess i better spoiler warn the next part

Spoiler

Stukov carried the game in my opinion. I am not a big fan of the new Kerrigan as for the most part all she shows is anger and rage. They basically turned her into a boring stereotypical male character whereas in previous games she was a bonafide bad a#$. It was only at the last 30 minutes of the game that you see anything different really.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Yeah, I thought it was kind of strange that there were so many talking Zerg. It used to be that the Overmind and the Cerebrates would communicate psionically, and only Kerrigan even had vocal chords, because she was originally a Terran. And why the Overmind would have bothered with evolving a creature like Izsha, I have no fucking idea. Same thing goes for evolution guy: the Overmind was a being of almost limitless intelligence, and I don't see it creating a single more creature with independent will than it absolutely has to, when it can do the job itself.

 

[Smooth Operator]

That is a pretty big problem I have with it, the insurmountable everlasting force that Zerg once were is now all emotional personality driven political nonsense that squishy hummies go by... it makes them rather lame.

Maybe the writers just watched too many cartoons.

 

[CorvusFerreum]

Now, I've understood that the Zerg were something like the Borg

I think you misspelled Tyranids there.

But in all seriousness, have you played the Zerg campaign in the original StarCraft? There Cerebrates, which are a basicly Zerg generals (or tyranid synapse creatures), had a lot of chit-chat with the Overmind and later with Kerrigan.

Spoiler

Before she killed them, that is.

The Overmind was quite the cool dude actually.

The existence of more sentinent Zerg has always been canon. And they were always somewhat chatty. With Kerrigan beeing the Zerg queen it isn't all that surprising that their communication is a bit more human-like.
The mayor part of the swarm is still a mindless hive.

Edit fixed spoiler, sorted thoughts

Also: I haven't played HotS yet. So I'm not sure how far they take it.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Well, I didn't mind because most of conversations made sense. Izsha is Kerrigan's hard drive of some sort and she have to talk to her in order to remember stuff about being Queen of Blades. And how could you even get mad at her when she's voiced by Karen Strassman, who is basically Aigis, and boy, do I love her sweet, calm and artificial voice.
Conversations with Abathur are also make sense, and he's usually not too chatty and always goes straight to the point. He's also voiced by Grunt (I can't remember VA's name) and he sounds just awesome.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I guess they had to have them saying something. It would have been pretty ridiculous if all they did was sit around in the ooze, squelching and squealing at one another.

KERRIGAN: I hate Mengsk.
ZERG: Blagrghshgssk
KERRIGAN: I really miss Jim.
ZERG: Aweeeoooooogrrsssp
KERRIGAN: I feel like you don't really listen to me.
ZERG: The hive cluster is under attack.

 

[TheProfessor234]

I really loved the Evolution Pit guy. I felt he had some personality, or rather the lack of which helped build him. But maybe I'm just easily satisfied.

Stukov was awesome too. I hope he keeps his role as someone prevalent. Hell, I'd play Heart of the Infected if it was his story.

 

[freakonaleash]

Abathur was pretty neat, but the robot sounding zerg was pretty pointless. Kerrigan herself was the most uninteresting though...

 

[AT God]

I liked that all the conversations were optional, and as someone who wants to get every bit of information I liked how many conversations there were.

One thing I didn't like, but probably had an option to disable, was Iszka chiming in all the time to tell me that I needed to mutate anti-air units every single time a ground only unit got attacked by an air unit. Being reminded EVERY ZERGLING RUSH is annoying. On normal it is fun to see how far you can get by sending thousands of zerglings ever level into bases.

And how bout that ending eh? Surprisingly good and not too cliffhangery. Really wish there would have been a nice make up scene, now we have to wait 3 more years to find out of I get the sappy happy-story ending I really want after being screwed over by Mass Effect and Half-Life

Also, the first cinematic still gives me chills when I watch it in HD. So awesome.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Eh, I kind of liked the evolution pit guy with Steve Blum's voice.

I agree that Dehaka's conversation were completely pointless though. "Essence, essence, essence, I tell you!" The character does eventually serve a purpose though.

Dammit there you go and blow my mind wide open whenever I hear Steve's voice I really either miss the voice or forget he voices for games these days.

He's got the biggest voice over roster than most VA's which still blows the mind.

Steve should just be in every game by law at this point.

 

[AT God]

Anyone else notice the massive shift and elimination of Cerebrates in exchange for Broodmothers? That can be open to A LOT of interpretation.

AS for the game, well honestly so far it's just like Warcraft 3 in terms of plot. Someone ends up dead, someone ends up dead, now let's all hold hands and work together and be happy destroying some grander evil while we justify the existence of a race and humanize them.

Cerebrates were the overmind's minions, without him they don't exist apparently.

And Warcraft 3 followed Starcraft 1's plotline exactly. Base game, first campaign a good guy turns bad, second campaign we play as the bad guy. Third campaign someone sacrifices their life to destroy the great evil.

Expansion pack-4th campaign, struggling remaining good guys flee from remaining evil. Campaign 5 contains new group of units from campaign 1. Campaign 6, the evil person from campaigns 1 and 2 complete their master plan and then retreat to seclusion.

I know Warcraft 3 had 4 campaigns each but they still follow Starcraft almost exactly.

 

[ultrabiome]

it could have been Kerrigan just standing around having 'psionic' conversations with the zerg and it would have either been the same conversations or just a whole lot of nothing.

i also really like abathur, especially

Spoiler

when you realize it was the being who experimented on Kerrigan the first time...

 

[Landis963]

I read somewhere that Izsha was an infested terran medic that Kerrigan brought in sometime during Brood War. Thus, she has vocal cords, and thus she can talk. It's a bit sad that she's essentially the Zerg adjutant, but there you are.

 

[MetalGenocide]

Abathur Hard-Carried the game. Both figuratively and literally.
Stukov was......tolerable...barely.
The others made my ears bleed. Dehaka made me want to kill babies, puppies, kittens and maybe turtles. "ESSENCE!!!!"
And Izsha didn't shut the fuck up during missions.
"Yo forses be gettin raped by air units yo! Call da hidras!"
"I'm ganna repeat da objective in case you can't read.......for the 115 time."

Good thing we got the Horner/Valerian mission to break up the dull....everything.
"Hey bro do you know her?"
"Yes"
"Is she your girlfriend? Wife?"
"HELL NO!"
"She sure looks like it."
"....."
"Yep, she's definitely your wife"
"You have 5 seconds to shut up before I shove your medals up your ass and shoot you out the air lock"

All in favor of more of that duo? *raises hand*
....
Don't leave me hangin'.

 

[Azo Galvat]

Izsha needs to shut her goddamn mouth, always telling me that "having more drones to mine stuff gets you minerals faster!" and "extractors work at maximum when you have drones working them!" Izsha, I am assaulting a super-psionic guy at a Xel'naga temple, having carved my way there with ten billion Zerg I made with all those minerals and gases. I KNOW HOW TO RUN MY BASE, THANKS.

I can buy that the Brood Mothers talk, as it seems like they're used the same way cerebrates were before. The primal Zerg talking is very weird, though. In fact, the primals as a whole bug me. The way the last game talked about it, I assumed Zerus was completely under the Overmind's control, and zerg there would look much like the zerg everywhere else.