/v/ - Video Games

Protoss are mammals too now apparently.

>>16015996

No.

I don't want to be reminded, but thanks anyways.

>>16016000

But are the girls cute, and fuckable?

>>16015996

everything you just said is wrong

>>16016010

Your company is dying blizzcuck.

>>16015996

The choice between Tosh and Nova was do you want ghosts or specters? However Nova does lie by saying Specters are all insane but it’s revealed later that Specters are no more prone to insanity than regular people.

>>16016019

>WE SPECTAHS BE DA FYUTCHA

Tosh actually says that exact line

>>16016019

They also used to be in a relationship but lol mind wiped

Didn't we have this exact thread with the exact same OP like a couple months ago?

>Tychus worked directly for Mengsk yet he was never used to reveal Raynors rebellion or even to capture Raynor

Pretty sure they withheld lots of information from Tychus for that reason, and also because it would be fucking foolish to use your only pawn against someone who's very skilled at evading your forces, and incredibly mobile. They had to deal with numerous problems such as the rapefugees and Kerrigan wrecking everyone's shit, and at the time Raynor was a flea to Mengsk until about midway through the campaign.

The fact that Mengsk let Raynor fix his mess or die trying was fine and effective for him, and he almost effectively would've won either way.

>>Raynor goes from vowing to kill Kerrigan to "shes mai waifu she didn't do no wrong"

He still wanted to kill her, but the prophecy bullshit is what had prevented him and only towards the end did he start getting those "feelings" bullshit back again, which is understandable since she was just cured. His feelings were very mixed and struggling, but if you want to blame someone for his unfortunate circumstances, blame the writers for the prophecy shit.

>>Gritty sci-fi setting turned into some typical chosen one bullshit with the expansions

This is accurate for HotS and LotV, yes.

>>Blizzard also likes to push Nova as a character when in reality shes a lying piece of shit who is constantly wind wiped

Wind wiped?

And yes, she's a liar. That's why she was a villain for most of the time she was on-screen.

>Certain choices are pants on head retarded especially between Nova and Tosh or the Protoss and Harrigon

Huh?

>>16016045

Actually, he did fucking win by the end of WoL. The Swarm was crushed, and Raynor was imprisoned shortly after and he quickly took control of the sector. He had an effective hostage and bargaining chip to prevent Kerrigan from taking any action against him.

Its only because of everything that happened in HotS (which was a load of bullshit lmao) that he finally lost, but overall he played his cards excellently for the most part

>>16016045

I was always annoyed at the choice between the protoss and doctor hansen.

>LOOK JIM I NEED LIKE 10 MINUTES AND I CAN MAKE THE ZERG INFESTATION CURE

>Uh doc im not sure the protoss and me are cool but we aren't that cool

>NOOOOO REEEE MY PEOPLE ARE ALL DEAD NOW

Even after you side with her wouldn't that zerg cure be extremely valuable? Its never brought up again.

>>16016064

It wasn't a zerg infestation cure iirc, it was a cure for that specific "zombie" type plague shit the zerg was spreading recently, that would be too easy goyim :^)

Anyways, as a friend of mine put it, that shit was pretty much just filler. I enjoyed the viking missions that involved it though.

>>16015996

HAHAHAHA

Played the beta. It was trash, through and through.

(((Blizz))) doxxed player's real names with Battle.net 2.0. They cut a deal with (((Zuckerberg))) as well.

>>16016142

Agree completely. Say what you will about the story, I feel it was reduced from a great space opera epic in SC1 to a cheesy action-movie-esque thing like Independence Day in WoL (and some contrived bullshit in HotS and LotV), but the missions were all fun and it was a great time overall.

WoL is one of my most replayed games, and I had a lot of fun with it

Don't forget that Blizzard completely annihilated the custom map scene with their intense Judaism. I bet they'll do it for Warcraft 3 Reforged too.

>>16015996

Who cares? It's a multiplayer game.

>>16016223

A dead one, yes.

>>16016045

> and only towards the end did he start getting those "feelings" bullshit back again

Not a chance. The first fucking cutscene has him grovelling over Kerrigan's picture instead of burning it.

Couldn't the Protoss do Jim a favor and get Tychus out of the locked suit? Raynor killing Tychus pisses me off still.

>>16016285

He was drunk, and the picture was of when Kerrigan was normal and he was in love with her, the entire place is filled with mementos of his past

>>16016408

Not without Tychus not knowing, because Mengsk had some way to know what was going on. I'm not sure if it was a video feed, or an audio feed only though.

>>16016211

Reforged is already fucking DOA.

>>16016741

I fucking hope so, I could only imagine how Blizzard could fuck it up before destroying the world forever with warcraft 4.

>>16016408

Couldn't they just put tychus in a room that blocks all outgoing signals of his bomb suit and take it off of him there?

>>16016773

Can't have that, we need that ebyn bitter sweet finale so strong woman can take the stage next campaign.

>>16016773

Maybe the bomb will go off if the signal is cut.

>>16016773

I'm pretty sure he couldn't remove his suit, period ,because of the triggers on his organs and health systems would go off if he tried removing it at all

>>16016783

>>16016793

>>16016795

Why didn't Raynor even ask why he was walking around in armor all the time

Why didn't he even tell Raynor "hey jimmy boy Narud put a fuckin live bomb in my suit when he let me out that could very well explode at any moment"

>>16016741

I saw the screenshots and it looks like it would be a pain in the ass to actually play.

>foliage everywhere

>every unit is ridiculously overdesigned and animated, can't see shit in a crowd

>shadows look inconsistent so rather than neat circles under everybody you just get black splotches that do nothing but tank the framerate

>>16016797

He did ask him, I forget the reason/excuse Tychus gave him though

Plus he couldn't tell him because of the audio feed (or something) from the suit

They found out a bit past the middle of the campaign that someone had him hostage, but they didn't know who because they believed his story of being bust out of prison by someone

>>16016806

>Plus he couldn't tell him because of the audio feed

Why didn't he just write it down then

This guy excusing SC2's writing has to be Metzen. Not like the guy has anything else to do after retiring.

>>16016810

Well that's just it, I don't know if it was only an audio feed, or if there was any more like a video feed

That's a fair point though I suppose

>>16016800

Everything looks out of place because they want to pander to both WoW and Diablo crowd while not giving a shit about Warcraft. There's 0 hope that anything ever Blizzard will make

from now on will be even remotely good.

>>16016817

Why didn't narud just blow him map when both he and Raynor found a knocked out Sarah at the end of WoL when he goes "she dies, I go free"?

Could've gotten three for one bomb

>>16016816

You know that's not an argument anon. Give an actual response and reply to me if you've got any balls instead of this passive-aggressive bullshit

>>16016822

I don't think there was a bomb in his suit, just his suit shutting down his internal organs. It was also mengsk that put the bomb in iirc, not narud

>Backstory

>Earth is kinda fucked, let's send three fuckhuge spaceships with cryo to the stars full of convicts

>Literally space colonial America

>But it worked fantastically

>Oh yeah everything got fucked and they went to the wrong place and had to basically rebuild society and space tech but they figured it out and then made a dozen rebel factions until the Zerg and Protoss showed up

>Holy shit humanity get your shit together there's a common enemy

I think the problem is they focused on the heroes instead of the setting

>>16016833

Good point but it is a lot easier to finish a story that way.

>>16016833

They do that kind of writing because all Blizzard voice acting directors are capable of handling is either "guy mumbling in a slightly threatening voice" or "woman trying to sound like a badass and failing horribly". Setting based storytelling would require them to have some kind of variety.

>>16016827

If Mengsk had signal from Tychus' suit all the way to Raynor's hiding place, why didn't he chase them down?

What if the suit ran out of power? Would the bomb go off automatically?

Why did they write Tychus into confronting Raynor over Sarah/freedom despite the two being best bros and fight to the end?

Will Mira ever get to jump Horner's bones?

In Sc1 you were a character and addressed directly. In Sc2 you are a disembodied spirit following and controlling the main characters. This is a problem because it takes away the sense of agency that the original had.

Sc1 was all about power-seeking and betrayal. Sc2 is some soap opera crap.

My understanding is that a lot of the core setting and initial script and plot was done by James Phinney; concepts like Ghosts and even Sarah Kerrigan's character arc are attributed directly to him by various sources, which may explain why Metzen has no fucking clue how to handle any of the more complex aspects of much of the game world.

Another example of his work is Sacrifice, which if you've played in depth should stand out as an obvious contender for best RTS story; the fact that it didn't spawn a franchise is honestly a travesty.

Brood War showed that Metzen could build on competently on the structures that were there, but the moment those fell away and he had to write something wholly new, he flopped hard and the game went from space opera to soap opera.

>>16016806

Tychus actually does tell him the he's locked in the suit to pay off a debt. He doesn't tell Raynor what the debt is or how he's going to pay it back, though.

>>16016849

>Spoiler

Mira and Horner get back together and are Co-Commanders for their Co-Op missions.

>>16017021

it's pretty simple actually

Metzen wanted to finish his retarded WC3 story, but got stopped by WoW, so he simply transferred it over to Starcraft and finished it there

>>16017168

>When you read a three year old screencap and realize its you.

>>16016045

The primary flaw and difference between SC1 and the SC2 campaign is that the first game had you jumping across various actors in a galactic war. You didn't get this soap opera bullshit where you just stay as one character throughout the entire journey. Raynor may have been one of the significant characters but other shit was going down.

I guess it's easier to say that Blizzard is so shit at writing they can't do multiple perspectives on a conflict anymore and it took all their effort and 3 expansions just to do the big three characters perspectives.

>>16016833

The setting was good. Overminds and cerebates were good. It wasn't a masterpiece but it was good. There are a lot of shit hit the fan moments in the game where you genuinely do feel a sigh of relief when allied forces spawn in to save your ass. Much better than whatever garbage cinematic Blizzard would shove in our faces now a days and with 1/100000th of the funding.

>>16017206

You're close, but you've missed the mark. You did follow one character the entire time for Starcraft and Brood War, you followed you, the commander, as a living, interacting entity. Sure you had no real agency in regards to the story, but you were there and people talked to you.

SC1

>protoss trying to contain the zerg

>they have technology that teleports dead protoss back so zerg cannot become psionic

>in come the humans who are becoming psi

>zerg now capture the strongest psyker and can evolve powers

Then they drop this whole next evolution of the zerg and how the shit is going to hit the fan to making SC2 all about kerrigan and the rest of their shit characters, just like everything after wow. They just don't care and have shit writers.

wait, So did they explained what happened to the Magistrate (Terran Commander in SC1 Episode 1) and UED Captain in Brood War?

>>16017406

Magistrate was the player in SC2.

>>16017344

If they can teleport their dead why not teleport them when they are just barely alive?

>>16017410

If they are, they do everything to avoid mentioning the fact. Nobody interacts with the player in SC2.

>>16017410

Raynor wasn't the Magistrate and he was a Seperate Entity

>>16017412

That is what happens. Some aren't so lucky.

>>16017406

No, they never touched on the MC for the Terran factions in SC1. Which is strange, because they went out of their way to retcon Artanis into the Protoss campaign, and at least provided a reason why Cerebrates do not exist in SC2.

>>16017511

Considering that Raynor talks directly to you in the first game it is pretty weird. They even made the Protoss one a character.

>>16017511

Read the Book, Queen of Blades The Cerebrates are gone due to Kerrigan Absorbing them as a contingency to make sure no one would backstab her including the Cerebrate in Episode VI while Episode II Cerebrate dies to Zeratul in the novel

>>16017564

>read the book

>to understand a video game sequel

No.

>>16017574

II is a sequel to the book, not Broodwar. if you wanna know why Metzan that's why.

>>16017564

I read it. Like I said, Blizzard actually provided a reason why the Cerebrates from SC1 aren't around anymore. That they left the Terran MC in such a weird limbo speaks of a deliberate decision to ignore the character.

>>16017574

To be fair anon, you don't need to know anything about the book to understand Episode IV. Kerrigan made it pretty clear you're her bitch from the first mission, and whether or not you're the same bitch as in Episode II wasn't really important.

>>16017681

Really Wish The UED Captain is not discarded too. I want a campaign where you try to unite surviving UED units across the Sector and kick Mengsks ass

>>16017681

>>16017713

SC2 ignores political intrigue at every chance they can. This most embarrassingly occurs between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.

Mengsk gets overthrown, then the Protoss roll up to get the artifact from Raynor, only to find the place is under attack. Rather than being some loyalist supporters to Mengsk, its Mobius Corp, and Raynor even states something akin to 'Yeah Valerian established peace and everything was all good, then these guys suddenly attacked'.

Like taking down a dictator immediately results in a peaceful transition.

I never got over them replacing Kerrigan's voice actress. That everything afterward sucked even more is vindicating in its way.

>>16015996

Raynor didn't realize he can have his waifu back, once he did, he decided that matters more to him.

Tychus hated Mengsk, he only did what he had to so that he doesn't have his prison-suit exploded on him. He also thought killing Kerrigan is a good idea anyway, and that Raynor would come around in the end. Raynor didn't, though.

Conversations - I always sucked at interpersonal relationships, I haven't noticed.

Kerrigan was a horrible monster murderer, but they needed her because it turned out only she can do the job. I see it as morally grey.

About Nova - again, morally grey. She may be a bad guy, but we follow her story and root for her, just like we root for Jaime Lannister even after he ****s his sister and tries to kill a child. He still saved King's Landing, after all.

>game about galactic warfare and battle for survival of 3 species

>make it about a love story and overpowered heroes

>write plotlines in books between games to glue the mess together

Metzen should just blow his brains out.

>>16017733

>dictator mean because he has power and statues

>wild ragtag group of ruffian bandits - good

The moral compass of many companies before and now.

>>16017805

We'll his brain's certainly on blow.

>>16017564

>Cerebates designed to control the swarm if the other commanding elements are even slightly too weak to withstand a backstab

>Kill them all

>Leave the swarm unattended for years at a time, never evolving them and in fact letting them deteriorate

What a joke

>>16017073

I miss the old style of the protoss in SC1. Frankly, the SC2 style I dont find it really bad and somewhat appalling, but possibly because its so generic & bland that i cant really hate it in its totality.

Also, not just did Blizzard fuck up the style, but also literally destroyed the Protoss soul itself.

>Protoss are a Caste-based society, which main society is based on the Khala(Collective-consciousness connection). This have worked very well for millenia, no, millions of years.

>Bad Xel,naga fuck ups the Khala, but once dead, Khala would still be useful; even if maybe should be more limited (Dark Templar having some points after all) just in case, right?

<Nope!, lets trash the Khala into the trash, screw logic, and history!

<And lets also completely destroy our Caste system society!

<Why? Because we once put a artisan as general, and because it went well, that means that always it will work efficiently, right?

<So lets destroy anything that made us special, and lets go full communism!

>>16017406

According to the novel, Magistrate just up and left some time before SC2.

>>16017073

The entire art style went to hell after Blizzard stopped using Starship Troopers and Alien for orientation.

Just look at the SC1 Terran design - ramshackle, bulky structures with grey, more grey, and lots of metallic plates holding she shit together. It was a dark, gritty sci-fi style whereas the stuff you see in SC2 always is neat, clean, tidy - and collectively looks like it's a fucking plastic toy.

>>16017511

I thought that the confederate commander from SC1 was Matt Horner.

>>16017713

The UED captain was presumed killed by Kerrigan at the end of BW. I hated that ending for the UED, I had hoped they would be the final winners.

>>16018425

nah, he was a novel character. I think it was Liberty's Crusade Novel

>>16018433

Oh, yeah, I think that's the only book I read. Anyway, I hope he just changed his name to Matt Horner afterwards.

>>16017681

>>16017511

The exclusion of the player as a player character is a big part of why SC2 was so schlocky. Many of Starcraft's concepts were generated by the interface of discrete ideas. The interface of "have a player character" means you have a contiguous campaign and a specific pov you're interacting with and that characters react to, which is the thing that gave it "episodes" in the first place, and the invention of cerebrates is a moderate departure from a standard hivemind that makes perfect sense- if you want to create a player character and let them fight enemies of the same faction.

By stripping the player's agency, continuity becomes redundant, because you're simply spectating the character's story, not a part of it. If you hop from the first few missions to the end, the characters views will be coherent and the fact that you don't understand why they believe or are doing those things is irrelevant. More importantly, there no longer needs to be any justification for their behavior. Much like a movie, you're watching the characters rocket down a predefined trajectory. Sure, SC did this too, but in that one you were tethered to the rocket and your participation was rationally justified every step of the way, as most videogame stories try to do.

i could care less about the campaign. it might have been shitty, but the shittiest part is the constant handholding and cutscene inserting into the game. starcraft one had none of that crap, you could actually play the game and not get constantly nagged by some arcade-y bs which is all common in pc games now. consoles ruined pc gaming and it's all your fault. you bought all the aidsstations and shitboxes and now we have nothing but crap and shitty ports. gg losers.

>>16017115

Brood War fucked some stuff up as well. There were plot devices that made no sense, the protoss trusting Kerrigan is questionable, etc. Protoss should be paranoid as fuck and working desperately colonizing new planets and just trying to survive.

>>16018430

That wasn't even the main UED fleet, apparently. SC2 should have been a clusterfuck, even if you ignore some of the issues with BW's plot. UED got fucked by Kerrigan and the Zerg, so why are they not invading as a separate human faction that has higher tech than the Terrans? Its dropped because that would require including a new faction and then coming up with new balance for them. Same for why the Protoss aren't multiple factions now.

>>16018652

Yes and no. The player technically plays as multiple characters, but the way that kind of thing works is pretty good in a campaign like Star Craft 1. The player is playing as someone who is simultaneously the most important to everyone else's plans, and the bitch that just takes orders. Without the player character, and their skill, the plot might not move in the direction it did. It works because the player is along for the ride, is a faceless protagonist so they don't have a stake or plot in the politics going on, and each character follows a thread that the player is likely going to agree with based on information they are presented with in the campaign.

The loss of the cerebrates still pisses me off. I liked them a lot. They were one of the reasons I liked the Zerg more than the Nids.

>>16017564

>replaces them with queens

>makes queens hyper independent

>queen literally revolts against her

>keeps her alive and encourages her to back stab her when she thinks she can take her on

I hated how the Zerg just "disappear" between the games. I'm sure somebody made a bullshit excuse in the books, but it's so dumb! Zerg don't get war fatigue, they just expand aggressively and continuously. I'd like to have played an SC2 where the UED Main Fleet is storming into a Zerg-controlled Koprulu Sector, where the ragtag groups of humans and protoss are getting hunted down. The protoss campaign would focus on guerrilla strikes, the zerg campaign about the arrival of the UED, and the human campaign about nuking the bugs from the face of the galaxy. Throw in political intrigue and a few ancient devices, and you've got a great setup.

>>16031026

In Brood War's epilogue it's said Kerrigan sensed there was a large looming threat incoming. The zerg retreated for this reason.

>>16031145

I suppose you're not wrong.

>>16015996

Campaign fags should never be listened to. It was those people who like the wings of liberty campaign, even if it shat on the lore and theme of starcraft.

Campaign fags are just not to be trusted.

>>16015996

I don't know how these people don't kill themselves over this betrayal. They've inflicted such despair on an entire generation. There's a billions of dollars wide void where heroic narratives should have been, at best. I think they went further with anti-christ meaningless muh dick trash that dims the light of whoever plays it.

>>16031239

>>16031325

Fuck off, enjoying the campaign of SC1 doesn't imply one can't discern the bad storytelling of SC2.

>>16016019

Heart of Swarm made canon staying with Tosh.

>>16031374

On the contrary. Many couldn't. Many enjoyed it even with the tons of non-rts mechanics in it.

>>16031412

>Picking Tosh is canon

So >>16016029 is correct, then.

>>16016045

Pretty sure Tychus worked for Mobius, who were supposedly allied with Mensk, but actually were entirely controlled by Amon, acting as his foothold in the dominion and the ones making hybrid. I recall this being a fallback after another attempt to create hybrid failed, but can't remember what that was.

My money is on Mensk not even knowing Tychus.

He was supposed to kill Kerrigan because, as Rayor's vision of Zeratul's vision of the Overminds's vision of the Protoss' fate fucking hell this sounds even more retarded when you type it has Amon conveniently telling the Overmind that Kerrigan's death fucks up everything. So natually, Amon has a certain interest in killing Kerrigan.

Justified, as the ending showed, as much as it sucked.

That said the Coop is nice even if I suck hard at rts and Tychus with his merry men is the only one I can pull off at brutal because the macro doesn't exist and I don't have to micro 7 control groups if I do something other than a raynor bioball.

>>16016064

Going full genocide is my headcannon. Dark as old starcraft. Reminds me of the purge from warcraft 3. That fucking cinematic ending was brutal.

>>16021463

>Its dropped because that would require including a new faction and then coming up with new balance for them. Same for why the Protoss aren't multiple factions now.

You could have them be campaign-only. Feels like they really failed to take full potential of the UED and the whole "old world invades" angle.

>>16031480

>You could have them be campaign-only.

The funny thing is that there were a bundle of campaign-only units as-is. It wouldn't even have been more work.

>>16031480

>>16031493

Yes, but you should try to minimize the amount of campaign only stuff.

>more women joined the dev team

>story becomes all about romance

Like clockwork

>>16018241

>>16018171

You're actually hitting on a greater flaw in SC2's design. In Brood War, all of the factions actually played competitively like they were designed.

>Terran are slow and defensive but can last off two bases for a long time. Their gameplay revolves around their ability to make efficient trades against the enemy and have the most defensive supporting abilities (except maybe dark swarm)

>Zerg are like bugs, weak alone but utilize their large numbers and expendable troops. Relies heavily on mass expansion and mobilizing large groups effectively. Overwhelming to play, overwhelming to play against. Has potential to be fairly tricky to boot.

>Protoss are strong and direct. Zealots and Dragoons never stop getting built in any match up, even when making carriers, even Reavers and Templars are still fairly direct

Meanwhile in SC2

>Terran are hit-and-run tactics with Reapers, Hellions, Medivacs and even campaign only tank-alternative the Diamond Back reflects this. Now the strongest early team due to Reapers forcing every opponent onto the defence

>Zerg are about the same

>Protoss are now more about trickery with blink, warp prism, adepts, immortal shields and in general not being able to walk into the enemy lines (especially Zerg)

>>16016005