In which I complain about Starcraft

[Leila Hann]

That sounds great. You do that. I will take a different path.

I do not like Kerry or Amon for several reasons: 1) they are too fantasy-esque and I prefer to write Starcraft as a gritty military scifi setting. 2) The Overmind (and the Confederacy, Conclave, etc) is pretty much the perfect villain already so I don't see the point of killing it off only to replace it right afterward.

The premise of the franchise is the three races fighting. The SC2 tutorial missions are THE perfect example of this. The backstory should be constructed to foster this. I imagine Starcraft universe as being a sandbox with every theatre of war having its own story within that greater context. In order to justify prolonged alien presence in Koprulu, I have to jump through a lot of hoops regarding logistics.

The zerg are the first movers of the conflict. They are a hierarchy of hive minds and genetic memories with the overarching goal to chase perfection by consuming the strongest species in the universe. They want to assimilate the protoss but need lots of counters to the protoss' reality-warping tech and powers (not to mention their galactic empire and fleets of death stars). So they are in Koprulu to harvest humans, since about two centuries prior the number of psychics was >0.1% but that has undoubtedly increased since the terrans practice all sorts of transhumanism. Not only that, psychic abilities are not made equal and thus the zerg need to cast a wide net.

For example, Maltair IV is the origin of a unique psychic ability "quiet voice" that allows the psychic to spoof zerg IFF signals to avoid notice. Clearly, this was used to develop the changeling seen in the SC2 zerg tech tree. (This isn't a canon connection, but it really should be.)

The assimilated terran breeds have huge room for imagination. They don't need to closely resemble human beings at all. One fanfic outline I read suggested zerg zealot counterparts, siamese triplet psychic creep colonies, and giant brains created from fusing hundreds or thousands of psychic human brains. I can imagine several more, such as floating artilery similar to the tyranid zoanthrope.

But I get ahead of myself. I'm still writing the antebellum period prior to the Battle of Chau Sara, which sets up a lot of the plot hooks in future scenarios. One of the oddities in canon is that this period is very poorly explained and sometimes contradictory. So I have my work cut out for me.

Writing the Khala with proper respect is very difficult. I can understand why Blizzard ignored it except as a ham fisted mind control plot device.

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Note that my Brood War + SC2 ideas are assuming that I need to use SC1 as it exists as a jumping off point. If I were to redo the entire thing from scratch, well...

I definitely would avoid the trap of having a small handful of named characters be the only ones who matter. At best, this growing tendency in the Starcraft series slowly warped it into a more heroic fantasy genre story as you said, and left the milsci premise behind. At worst, it got downright psychopathic with how the named characters - including ones meant to be heroic - became completely blase to the deaths of their own mooks (the worst example of this I can think of offhand was in Wings of Liberty, when Valerian let Raynor board his battlecruiser and let him fight and kill his way to the stateroom before telling him he came in peace, seemingly just for the lulz).

That said, I think I would still end the first game with the death of the Overmind. Perhaps just a temporary death in this case, but at the very least it should be a transformative event for the Overmind. It either learns a lesson from its defeat, or it comes back angrier, or its permadead and the zerg gain a new and different source of direction. I think that one decently long game should be enough screentime to explore the zerg in their original familial-theo-communist-maybe-utopian state of being, and major villains do need to be defeated from time to time in order to allow the story to progress and give meaning to the heroes' struggles.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Note that my Brood War + SC2 ideas are assuming that I need to use SC1 as it exists as a jumping off point. If I were to redo the entire thing from scratch, well...

I definitely would avoid the trap of having a small handful of named characters be the only ones who matter. At best, this growing tendency in the Starcraft series slowly warped it into a more heroic fantasy genre story as you said, and left the milsci premise behind. At worst, it got downright psychopathic with how the named characters - including ones meant to be heroic - became completely blase to the deaths of their own mooks (the worst example of this I can think of offhand was in Wings of Liberty, when Valerian let Raynor board his battlecruiser and let him fight and kill his way to the stateroom before telling him he came in peace, seemingly just for the lulz).

That said, I think I would still end the first game with the death of the Overmind. Perhaps just a temporary death in this case, but at the very least it should be a transformative event for the Overmind. It either learns a lesson from its defeat, or it comes back angrier, or its permadead and the zerg gain a new and different source of direction. I think that one decently long game should be enough screentime to explore the zerg in their original familial-theo-communist-maybe-utopian state of being, and major villains do need to be defeated from time to time in order to allow the story to progress and give meaning to the heroes' struggles.

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That is why I prefer not to treat the Overmind as a villain to fight. Originally the Overmind wasn't even a physical entity, it was rewritten as one when the protoss were rewritten as too weak to defeat the zerg conventionally.

I believe that you are falling into the trap of missing the scope and scale of the war. Whether the struggles matter depend on how the narrative frames it and if audience cares.

Apply the same thinking to the story of the World Wars. You are essentially saying that nobody's contributions matter unless they kill Hitler, but this forgets that the writer cannot continue the war if he dies.

Thus, I prefer to limit the scope of campaigns to single planets, star systems at largest, in order to give proper weight to the smaller scale sacrifices. For example, the battles in the Insurrection licensed campaign hold more weight in the ongoing narrative of Brontes than the canonical battles which were drops in the bucket. When Syndrea attacked Incubus' logistic operations, this nearly crippled the brood and forced them to infest terrans to replace the losses, which led directly to reinforcements being sent when this went wrong.

It is all a matter of scale. I prefer to use the cerebrates in the role the Overmind had in canon, because the scale is smaller and easier to comprehend.

 

[Leila Hann]

That is why I prefer not to treat the Overmind as a villain to fight. Originally the Overmind wasn't even a physical entity, it was rewritten as one when the protoss were rewritten as too weak to defeat the zerg conventionally.

I believe that you are falling into the trap of missing the scope and scale of the war. Whether the struggles matter depend on how the narrative frames it and if audience cares.

Apply the same thinking to the story of the World Wars. You are essentially saying that nobody's contributions matter unless they kill Hitler, but this forgets that the writer cannot continue the war if he dies.

Thus, I prefer to limit the scope of campaigns to single planets, star systems at largest, in order to give proper weight to the smaller scale sacrifices. For example, the battles in the Insurrection licensed campaign hold more weight in the ongoing narrative of Brontes than the canonical battles which were drops in the bucket. When Syndrea attacked Incubus' logistic operations, this nearly crippled the brood and forced them to infest terrans to replace the losses, which led directly to reinforcements being sent when this went wrong.

It is all a matter of scale. I prefer to use the cerebrates in the role the Overmind had in canon, because the scale is smaller and easier to comprehend.

Click to shrink...

Shrinking the scale of the campaigns and tackling the war one planet at a time is another approach. If nothing else, it better fits the gameplay aspect of small units of infantry being relevant.

I don't think that its the wisest approach if your intent is to capture the scope of the setting, though.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Shrinking the scale of the campaigns and tackling the war one planet at a time is another approach. If nothing else, it better fits the gameplay aspect of small units of infantry being relevant.

I don't think that its the wisest approach if your intent is to capture the scope of the setting, though.

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If I misunderstood your argument, then I am sorry. I agree with everything you said except for the part about the Overmind. My argument concerns the scaling of events. The Overmind is the God of the zerg, so killing it (even if it reforms later, being a non-physical entity and all) should be a galaxy-changing event, not a Koprulu specific events. Koprulu consists of, if I'm calculating right, over a dozen core worlds and numerous colonies. The Protoss Empire encompasses many hundreds or thousands of worlds across the Centaurus-Scutum Arm. So the Overmind should not be a target until well into the Galactic War, not the Koprulu War. Either of those wars could fuel an entire book series or more.

I don't think I can do a sector- or galaxy-wide war justice in a single book. Even a single planet could support a trilogy if, for example, each of the Insurrection campaigns were adapted into a book. Even a book series would be hard pressed to do a sector-wide war justice.

It's difficult for humans to conceive of and emphathize with huge scales. The often repeated quote "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." So I agree with you when you say that smaller scale is more appropriate for an RTS combat setting. Not that RTS mechanics are remotely realistic, as the Starcrafts youtube series shows. (Which is another thing I have to tackle by refering to realistic military logistics.)

As for providing a proper sense of scale... I cannot really do that justice as I said. It's difficult to wrap one's head around the huge numbers involved. All I can think of is having a meta-plot of major events in the background that ripple across the individual theatres being followed.

I mean, the last Protoss mission where the Overmind was physically assaulted and then had a ship crashed into it did not strike me as particularly realistic in scale since SC is a heavily abstracted macro/micro RTS rather than something with a huge scale like Supreme Commander. Not only that, but why did the Overmind create a giant target? What purpose does that serve? How do you make a bodiless hive mind into a physical being that can die? That's magic! If it's a super-cerebrate or something instead, why does killing it break the hive mind unity?

More importantly, there's no compelling reason for terrans to take part in the galactic war. It's too big and far away from them. Even if they did, they are too few to make a difference (the UED is a blatant retcon who defeat the entire purpose of being cut off from Earth). Since Starcraft is about the three races, the galactic war isn't a viable narrative choice in my opinion. Then again, I'm the sort of person who thinks it makes sense for the Koprulu War to last a century or more.

 

[Leila Hann]

If I misunderstood your argument, then I am sorry. I agree with everything you said except for the part about the Overmind. My argument concerns the scaling of events. The Overmind is the God of the zerg, so killing it (even if it reforms later, being a non-physical entity and all) should be a galaxy-changing event, not a Koprulu specific events. Koprulu consists of, if I'm calculating right, over a dozen core worlds and numerous colonies. The Protoss Empire encompasses many hundreds or thousands of worlds across the Centaurus-Scutum Arm. So the Overmind should not be a target until well into the Galactic War, not the Koprulu War. Either of those wars could fuel an entire book series or more.

I don't think I can do a sector- or galaxy-wide war justice in a single book. Even a single planet could support a trilogy if, for example, each of the Insurrection campaigns were adapted into a book. Even a book series would be hard pressed to do a sector-wide war justice.

It's difficult for humans to conceive of and emphathize with huge scales. The often repeated quote "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." So I agree with you when you say that smaller scale is more appropriate for an RTS combat setting. Not that RTS mechanics are remotely realistic, as the Starcrafts youtube series shows. (Which is another thing I have to tackle by refering to realistic military logistics.)

As for providing a proper sense of scale... I cannot really do that justice as I said. It's difficult to wrap one's head around the huge numbers involved. All I can think of is having a meta-plot of major events in the background that ripple across the individual theatres being followed.

I mean, the last Protoss mission where the Overmind was physically assaulted and then had a ship crashed into it did not strike me as particularly realistic in scale since SC is a heavily abstracted macro/micro RTS rather than something with a huge scale like Supreme Commander. Not only that, but why did the Overmind create a giant target? What purpose does that serve? How do you make a bodiless hive mind into a physical being that can die? That's magic! If it's a super-cerebrate or something instead, why does killing it break the hive mind unity?

More importantly, there's no compelling reason for terrans to take part in the galactic war. It's too big and far away from them. Even if they did, they are too few to make a difference (the UED is a blatant retcon who defeat the entire purpose of being cut off from Earth). Since Starcraft is about the three races, the galactic war isn't a viable narrative choice in my opinion. Then again, I'm the sort of person who thinks it makes sense for the Koprulu War to last a century or more.

Click to shrink...

Okay, your assertion that the overmind was originally bodiless isn't actually the only or even most obvious reading of the original manual that you claim to love so much.

The Overmind's genesis is described thusly:

The Xel'Naga, remembering all too well that their failure with the Protoss was a result of pushing the sentience of the fledgling species too quickly, decided to follow a different path with the burgeoning Zerg. Attempting to waylay the potential hazards of differing egos, the Xel'Naga structured the collective sentience of the Zerg into a unified, amalgamated 'Overmind'. The Overmind coalesced into a semi-sentient being that represented the primary drives and instincts of all of the Zerg strains. As time passed, the Overmind developed the rudiments of personality and advanced intellect.

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The talk of it being a coalescence of all the zerg species' sentience and drives does make it sound like this could be a distributed consciousness of some sort, but its not explicit. And just a few pages later we get this:

Tiamat is the largest and most powerful Brood within the extended Swarm. It is speculated that the Overmind itself is protected deep within the safety of this living fleet. The most advanced Overlords and Queens define the rigid infrastructure of Tiamat and help to drive the lesser Broods to total domination over their enemies. Tiamat excels at tactical space combat and only dispatches its ravenous surface attackers under the most dire of circumstances.

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"It is speculated" obviously means that this isn't neccessarily reliable, and the fact that the broods are being given names like "Tiamat" and "Jormungandr" indicate that this section is meant to be from an in-universe Terran perspective (somehow? How would Terrans know so much about the inner workings of the swarm?), but to me it reads much more like Word of God than anything else.

During the "Fall of Aiur" cinematic, we see the Overmind's physical form descend on Aiur as a compact, meteor-like object before unfolding its giant tentacles and taking the shape that later reappears ingame.

This suggests that the Overmind always had a physical body. It was spaceborne, and guarded at the center of the Tiamat Brood's fleet.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Okay, your assertion that the overmind was originally bodiless isn't actually the only or even most obvious reading of the original manual that you claim to love so much.

The Overmind's genesis is described thusly:



The talk of it being a coalescence of all the zerg species' sentience and drives does make it sound like this could be a distributed consciousness of some sort, but its not explicit. And just a few pages later we get this:



"It is speculated" obviously means that this isn't neccessarily reliable, and the fact that the broods are being given names like "Tiamat" and "Jormungandr" indicate that this section is meant to be from an in-universe Terran perspective (somehow? How would Terrans know so much about the inner workings of the swarm?), but to me it reads much more like Word of God than anything else.

During the "Fall of Aiur" cinematic, we see the Overmind's physical form descend on Aiur as a compact, meteor-like object before unfolding its giant tentacles and taking the shape that later reappears ingame.

This suggests that the Overmind always had a physical body. It was spaceborne, and guarded at the center of the Tiamat Brood's fleet.

Click to shrink...

The biography at the end of the manual explicitly states the Overmind is a "bodiless entity." This suggests that the manual is not consistent with itself due to writers changing their minds over the years and poor proofreading.

I don't love the manual, but it's honestly the last point in time that Starcraft tried to be any other than epic fantasy soap opera in space. So I suppose I do like it more than what came afterward.

Furthermore, the cinematics were created without fully consulting the writers and so the game script had to be rewritten to account for the cinematics. It is entirely possible that the cinematic did not even depict the Overmind specifically and this was decided after.

For example, Metzen admitted in one interview he had no idea why he killed off Tassadar. Since he couldn't remember that but could remember that Kerry was based on his ex-girlfriend, I am inclined to believe that Tassadar's death was phoned-in. I suspect a lot of the script was phoned-in considering how disjointed it feels. Insurrection clearly had zero budget and it felt vastly more cohesive.

In any case, the Overmind being physical does not translate to it being a slave master as the future games depict. It's described as the amalgamation of the instincts of the zerg as a whole, so it is entirely possible that it is the embodied higher brain functions of the zerg and may be easily replaced by ordering any larva to metamorphose into one. This ties nicely into WoL's science notes explicitly stating the Overmind's genetic code is present in every single larva, which contradicts the previously encountered difficulty involved in resurrecting it during BW. (BTW There's like two or three custom campaigns I can remember involving the Overmind being resurrected a third or fourth time. And at least two or three fanfics in which it is an immortal indestructible spiritual existence.)

From a writing standpoint the Overmind being physical was only necessary because the protoss could not defeat the zerg without a plot contrivance in the game. The manual originally contradicted this by suggesting the protoss would wipe the floor with them and even the determinant plot point was never a magic instant win button.

The canon is vague and contradictory. Trying to argue over it is pointless because it is not consistent. Blizzard doesn't care about things like that. For example, they made Tychus a co-op commander even though that violates canon. Heck, Heroes of the Storm suggests there's a whole multiverse full of identical Starcraft characters.

I don't really like Starcraft lore as actual lore. It's great for cherrypicking, but as a whole it has no real continuity due to its constantly tumultuous development. I cannot turn my brain off to ignore the plotholes so I cannot enjoy the story even as silly fun.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

But I digress. In my opinion, a bigger problem with the writing of Starcraft is that the villains are too often cartoony. What attracted to me to Starcraft was that most of the factions had reasonable, even sympathetic motivations. Mostly.

• The Confederacy is a shameless plutocracy and as such has no redeeming values. This is fairly realistic.
  • Mengsk is not a decent villain. He is a cartoony evil emperor. Even Trump doesn't act like that.
• The Overmind is alien yet understandable. Shame it got killed off.
  • Queen of Blades isn't even a character, but a plot device that behaves however the writer requires.
  • Amon is a snooze fest.
• The Conclave is a wasted opportunity. I understand they are supposed to be like the Pharisees, but they actually have a point. The Protoss Empire has fought xenomorphic threats in the past (though we receive little details) and the dark templar nearly destroyed their civilization once. The Conclave's behavior makes perfect sense given their circumstances. Or at least it would if the writer wasn't biased and wrote the zerg as curb stomping them. The existence of the Khala essentially forces the judicators to be sympathetic towards the population, rendering graft and corruption more or less impossible. The protoss make communism work because they don't have the monkeysphere limitation anymore.

I'm content with the Confederacy, Overmind and Conclave being the overarching antagonists of the setting indefinitely. They are not broken so they don't need fixing. It's a matter of scale, really. Starcraft is generally written with a nonsensical scale that treats the galaxy as essentially being analogous to a single country or group of countries, not interstellar polities. I said as much in the Starcraft fanfic discussion thread and this was one of my suggestions for how to structure a typical Starcraft campaign:

The first contact war begins when the zerg and protoss invade Koprulu, throwing the terran power blocs into chaos. This results in numerous smaller wars across the sector, which is like a lot just so you know. (I am ignoring the canon outcome because it really strangles creativity.)

In a Confederate system, let's call it New Houston, the New Houston Magistrate has her hands full with fighting off the zerg. Some friendly dark protoss appear led by Emo Goth Space Viking riding cyborg alien horses, claim to be enemies of the evil protoss empire that massacred Chau Sara, and offer assistance. Magistrate tentatively agrees after the aliens prove themselves by fighting off the invading zerg and helping evacuation efforts. However, Emo Goth Space Viking has an ulterior motive to form an alliance with humanity so they can fight the evil empire and reclaim their lost homeland.

Meanwhile, a fleet of the evil empire's expedition has arrived on the edge of the system. They are engaged by the forces of Epsilon Squadron headed by Nice Doctor of Chinese Background, which had several listening posts stationed in the system. When they detect the dark protoss, the Conscientious Family Person Executor of the fleet refuses to commit genocide. The Angry over Recent Divorce Judicator imprisons him for dereliction of duty and takes control of the fleet. This causes a schism as others in the fleet, such as Amazonian Warrior Princess, disagree and break off to form an insurrection.

Unbeknownst to them all but known to us, Project Bellwood (composed of Cerberus Program, Nova Squadron, et al) was secretly operating in the system under the orders of the Corrupt Vice General. They use psi-emitters to lure one of the nearby broods, Norse Beast One, and attempt to take control of it. This seemingly succeeds and the other brood in the system, Norse Beast Two, launches an assault. Project Bellwood loses control and Norse Beast One breaks free, unfortunately it goes rogue and starts spawning the renegade swarm Hive Fleet Norse Beasts to conquer the universe. Now Norse Beast Two must exterminate them before they spread, while also fending off the terrans and protoss.

Click to shrink...

 

[comradepitrovsky]

Even Trump doesn't act like that.

Click to shrink...

Yet.

Listen, Herr Presidente would throw the Zerg at the border, and we all know it.

 

[Leila Hann]

I'm content with the Confederacy, Overmind and Conclave being the overarching antagonists of the setting indefinitely. They are not broken so they don't need fixing. It's a matter of scale, really. Starcraft is generally written with a nonsensical scale that treats the galaxy as essentially being analogous to a single country or group of countries, not interstellar polities. I said as much in the Starcraft fanfic discussion thread and this was one of my suggestions for how to structure a typical Starcraft campaign:

Click to shrink...

Gonna have to disagree wholeheartedly about the Confederacy being an "indefinite" villain.

One of the things that the original Starcraft game DID do well was capture the feeling of a politically unstable region going through a series of messy regime changes. On top of that, if you're going to play up the concept of the Koprulu terrans being much smaller than the protoss with their giant star empire and the zerg with their endless swarm, its almost unavoidable that the preexisting Koprulu power structures are going to get rekt. Especially ones like the Confederacy, which was already unpopular just about everywhere besides Tarsonis and relying on the threat of force alone to keep the outer worlds as satellites.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Gonna have to disagree wholeheartedly about the Confederacy being an "indefinite" villain.

One of the things that the original Starcraft game DID do well was capture the feeling of a politically unstable region going through a series of messy regime changes. On top of that, if you're going to play up the concept of the Koprulu terrans being much smaller than the protoss with their giant star empire and the zerg with their endless swarm, its almost unavoidable that the preexisting Koprulu power structures are going to get rekt. Especially ones like the Confederacy, which was already unpopular just about everywhere besides Tarsonis and relying on the threat of force alone to keep the outer worlds as satellites.

Click to shrink...

I am not contesting that the sector and its politics would be redrawn by a sector-wide war. What I am contesting is that the political situation really ever changed: the Dominion is the Confederacy in all but name. It is the same generic evil empire that it always was. It makes no sense to trivially replace the Confederacy with the Dominion, as opposed to maintaining the Confederacy. Furthermore, Starcraft did nothing with the KMC and Umojans that it introduced ostensibly to include in the war. The writers either forgot what they wrote or the tumultuous development forced their hand. I can understand the Dominion forming to unite all the Koprulu governments against the alien threat (and facing conspiracies within its own ranks), or the Confederacy fragmenting back into the various nation states that formed it (as the title Confederacy implies). But the Confederacy trivially reforming into the Dominion, and the former SoK becoming Raynor's Raiders, with no real change is not satisfying at all.

Furthermore, the Confederacy is too big (and thus inefficient) for the SoK's coup to be believable, except perhaps as the farce I just criticized it for. In other words, the game only gave the illusion of unstable politics. The politics were not really unstable at all, the only thing that changed was the coronation of a new evil emperor. Furthermore, this was only possible through a series of plot contrivances that ignored logistics in favor of forcing the plot along as fast as possible. Realistically speaking you should require a flow chart to track the shifting political and logistical situation. That's part of the reason I prefer to focus on smaller scale narratives since they are much easier to write without turning into the small-minded political farce of canon.

Insurrection, again, executes this with a clearer intent. The political situation is closer to Game of Thrones, with the leadership of Brontes changing several times over the course of the campaign due to rebellions and betrayals. In fact, I give it extra credit for missions mentioning the problems of logistics and working it into the plot. And all of that happened on just one planet that we see (the other planets are not given screen time, but something probably happened there too).

 

[LordYam]

The reason Kerry/Raynor happened is because Chris Metzen has weird guilt issues over a drug addicted ex of his, and he twisted Raynor and Kerrigan into completely different characters in between the games so that he could use them as vessels for dealing with his personal shit.

No, seriously. He said this himself, albeit obviously phrased differently.

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Meh. Kerry's fall never really made that much sense (she goes from being appalled at unleashing the Zerg even on the people who wronged her to wanting revenge over trivial things, and even her going along with tarsonis was more misguided loyalty/things were already in motion.) and the overmind going to all the trouble of making her than leaving her on char even when the dark Templar's were on his door was a big plot hole.

It could have been handled better but the idea of her redemption want inherently bad (I saw it as the infestation suppressing her sense of compassion and empathy while amplifying her anger and rage). If I were doing hots I would have had more focus on her regret rather than her revenge.

 

[LordYam]

But I digress. In my opinion, a bigger problem with the writing of Starcraft is that the villains are too often cartoony. What attracted to me to Starcraft was that most of the factions had reasonable, even sympathetic motivations. Mostly.

• The Confederacy is a shameless plutocracy and as such has no redeeming values. This is fairly realistic.
  • Mengsk is not a decent villain. He is a cartoony evil emperor. Even Trump doesn't act like that.
• The Overmind is alien yet understandable. Shame it got killed off.
  • Queen of Blades isn't even a character, but a plot device that behaves however the writer requires.
  • Amon is a snooze fest.
• The Conclave is a wasted opportunity. I understand they are supposed to be like the Pharisees, but they actually have a point. The Protoss Empire has fought xenomorphic threats in the past (though we receive little details) and the dark templar nearly destroyed their civilization once. The Conclave's behavior makes perfect sense given their circumstances. Or at least it would if the writer wasn't biased and wrote the zerg as curb stomping them. The existence of the Khala essentially forces the judicators to be sympathetic towards the population, rendering graft and corruption more or less impossible. The protoss make communism work because they don't have the monkeysphere limitation anymore.

I'm content with the Confederacy, Overmind and Conclave being the overarching antagonists of the setting indefinitely. They are not broken so they don't need fixing. It's a matter of scale, really. Starcraft is generally written with a nonsensical scale that treats the galaxy as essentially being analogous to a single country or group of countries, not interstellar polities. I said as much in the Starcraft fanfic discussion thread and this was one of my suggestions for how to structure a typical Starcraft campaign:

Click to shrink...

Eh. Mengsk as a heartless monster makes sense, and we all knew a darkness was coming since Dark Origin. In any case LOTV was conclusive. The dark god falls, the heroes vanish into the light and everything's at peace

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Eh. Mengsk as a heartless monster makes sense, and we all knew a darkness was coming since Dark Origin. In any case LOTV was conclusive. The dark god falls, the heroes vanish into the light and everything's at peace

Click to shrink...

That is shlocky epic fantasy tropes that does not beling in serious military science fiction.

Mengsk was rewritten over the course of development (the '96 website's opening quote suggested he was a heroic activist), and him being generically evil is banality and writer's sloth at its finest.

Dark Origins was a blatant retcon that was only introduced because the writers were making it all up as they went along. They never had a real plan for continuing beyond the first game.

LotV was complete and utter garbage, aside from Alarak aka the only character with any kind of personality. Unhappy Anchovy's analysis tore the plot apart with apalling ease.

 

[Chumbeque]

That is shlocky epic fantasy tropes that does not beling in serious military science fiction.

Mengsk was rewritten over the course of development (the '96 website's opening quote suggested he was a heroic activist), and him being generically evil is banality and writer's sloth at its finest.

Click to shrink...

What do you mean? Mengsk was a consistent character through and through, of course the website said he was a heroic activist, what, you expected them to spoil the game to you?

The fact that he was just vying for power and used charisma and propaganda to reach his goal makes perfect sense as a character.

Fuck's sake man, don't take everything at face value.

I don't even get what's the problem with the Dominion replacing the Confederates in everything but name, that's about what normally happens with such a regime change IRL, if anything it makes it more realistic, it's like you've never studied an actual Banana Republic and what happens there.

 

[comradepitrovsky]

That is shlocky epic fantasy tropes that does not beling in serious military science fiction.

Click to shrink...

Have you considered that this is your problem? It isn't serious military science fiction. I mean, c'mon: a good chunk of the game is about Space Rednecks and a Space Cowboy fighting the bad guys from Starship Troopers.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

What do you mean? Mengsk was a consistent character through and through, of course the website said he was a heroic activist, what, you expected them to spoil the game to you?

The fact that he was just vying for power and used charisma and propaganda to reach his goal makes perfect sense as a character.

Fuck's sake man, don't take everything at face value.

I don't even get what's the problem with the Dominion replacing the Confederates in everything but name, that's about what normally happens with such a regime change IRL, if anything it makes it more realistic, it's like you've never studied an actual Banana Republic and what happens there.

Click to shrink...

The writing is terrible. It was clearly phoned-in, rushed, and subject to numerous rewrites. A good story would have portrayed Mengsk as a person with depth, not a flat unbelievable caricature. ("Mengsk did nothing wrong" is a meme!) A good story would never have introduced the Confederacy (nor the UED) if they were only ever intended to be a bizarre footnote in the first act. This is fiction and the point is to entertain, not to be arbitrarily realistic in some regards but not in others.

Have you considered that this is your problem? It isn't serious military science fiction. I mean, c'mon: a good chunk of the game is about Space Rednecks and a Space Cowboy fighting the bad guys from Starship Troopers.

Click to shrink...

I wish more people thought like you.

Have you played and listened to the hours and hours of terrible, immersion-breaking exposition? The story is extremely pretentious even though the writers clearly don't give a damn about basic logic or actually telling remotely decent stories.

The only joy I now derive from this franchise is trying to recapture my nostalgia is by writing alternate universe fanfiction which goes back to the basics to tell a decent story, a serious military scifi story. I received a lot of flak from extremely dismissive pretentious people who told me that I should give up on my dream and write canon-compliant stories even though the canon isn't remotely consistent.

For heaven's sake, Tychus and Zeratul officially survived in alternate timelines and more characters will probably follow because co-op commanders are profitable. Fans are already speculating on the resurrections of Tassadar, Overmind, Mengsk, Duke, etc.

I can see it all now...

Tassadar: In this alternate timeline, Tassadar survived by teleporting from the Gantrithor at the last second, allowing him to lead the offensive against the evil Kerrigan, UED, Mengsk, and Amon!

Overmind: The Overmind has returned from the dead once again, now free of Amon's taint. Secretly, it plots to take control of the hybrids and conquer the universe for the sake of its children.

Mengsk: Rather than killing Mengsk, Kerry decided to rape his mind and turn him back into the person she thought she knew. Now he has abdicated the throne and leads the reformed Sons of Korhal against the evil Amon!

Duke: In this alternate timeline, Duke survived by taking an escape pod. From the bridge of the Norad IV, he leads the assault on the evil Amon!

And so on and so forth. I always derided Blizzard for lacking continuity, but in this case it gives me ammunition to throw at the naysayers who were under the false impression that SC2 ever made a lick of sense.

 

[comradepitrovsky]

Canon isn't a real thing. Corporate colonization of creativity is a shame.

 

[Leila Hann]

The writing is terrible. It was clearly phoned-in, rushed, and subject to numerous rewrites. A good story would have portrayed Mengsk as a person with depth, not a flat unbelievable caricature. ("Mengsk did nothing wrong" is a meme!) A good story would never have introduced the Confederacy (nor the UED) if they were only ever intended to be a bizarre footnote in the first act. This is fiction and the point is to entertain, not to be arbitrarily realistic in some regards but not in others.

I wish more people thought like you.

Have you played and listened to the hours and hours of terrible, immersion-breaking exposition? The story is extremely pretentious even though the writers clearly don't give a damn about basic logic or actually telling remotely decent stories.

The only joy I now derive from this franchise is trying to recapture my nostalgia is by writing alternate universe fanfiction which goes back to the basics to tell a decent story, a serious military scifi story. I received a lot of flak from extremely dismissive pretentious people who told me that I should give up on my dream and write canon-compliant stories even though the canon isn't remotely consistent.

For heaven's sake, Tychus and Zeratul officially survived in alternate timelines and more characters will probably follow because co-op commanders are profitable. Fans are already speculating on the resurrections of Tassadar, Overmind, Mengsk, Duke, etc.

I can see it all now...

Tassadar: In this alternate timeline, Tassadar survived by teleporting from the Gantrithor at the last second, allowing him to lead the offensive against the evil Kerrigan, UED, Mengsk, and Amon!

Overmind: The Overmind has returned from the dead once again, now free of Amon's taint. Secretly, it plots to take control of the hybrids and conquer the universe for the sake of its children.

Mengsk: Rather than killing Mengsk, Kerry decided to rape his mind and turn him back into the person she thought she knew. Now he has abdicated the throne and leads the reformed Sons of Korhal against the evil Amon!

Duke: In this alternate timeline, Duke survived by taking an escape pod. From the bridge of the Norad IV, he leads the assault on the evil Amon!

And so on and so forth. I always derided Blizzard for lacking continuity, but in this case it gives me ammunition to throw at the naysayers who were under the false impression that SC2 ever made a lick of sense.

Click to shrink...

I haven't had a single good thing to say about Blizzard's storytelling in over a decade, but now you're just being ridiculous.

The co-op mode in Legacy of the Void is obviously not meant to have anything to do with the official continuity. Its meant to be an All Stars Arena type thing, with some tongue-in-cheek "what if" lore blurbs to give everyone an alternate backstory for this Excuse Plot spinoff. This is the equivalent of criticizing the Halo games for their multiplayer modes not fitting the story. They're very clearly not part of the story.

I was going to talk about some of your other points in this post, but at this point I think I might as well just get to the root of it.

You say that Blizzard's writing has gotten worse over time. This is true. You say that the original Starcraft manual's setting and apparent story premise were more interesting and better thought out than the actual game. This is also true. But.

Do you want a good word for the story and setting presented in that original manual? A word that accurately summarizes its creativity, complexity, and amount of potential to tell a compelling, high-brow science fiction story?

"Mediocre."

Its a highly derivative and trope-y science fantasy setting that doesn't do all that much to stand out from the many others that were created throughout the 1980's and 1990's, let alone afterward. We have psionics that are magic in all but name. We have a mysterious and poorly defined precursor race who created a bunch of weird shit for no readily apparent reason, and were subsequently destroyed by the weird shit in question. We have plucky, heroic space settlers resisting tyrannical space governments that embody the late twentieth century industrial military complex fears. We have a proud warrior race that lives for centuries and uses lightsabers. We have a hive mind of body horror insectoid gribblies. Aside from a few aesthetic details, like the Old West + Diesalpunk look for the Terrans, and a couple of surprise quirks, like the family-like nature of the zerg masterminds, there's nothing here that hadn't been done countless times by the time Starcraft came out.

The level of detail in the manual was also not anything to write home about. The given Koprulu terran history consists of "Earth turned to shit, and sent a bunch of undesirables off into space. They crashed on a bunch of planets and built new societies for themselves. One colony turned into a kleptocratic dictatorship that uses nukes to keep its colonies in line, one colony turned into a corporate dictatorship that stays independent by paying off the previous, and one of them is...kinda nice I guess, and has good technology. That's basically it. The protoss, as I already said, are pretty bare bones and poorly defined in the manual, with a long history that flies by in two sentences without us really learning anything about it. The zerg are a bit more detailed than the other two, but not that much more so.

The reason that Starcraft's setting as presented in that book seemed so interesting is because with few exceptions, games back then tended to have either extremely bad writing, or none at all. Compared to other games of that time, the Starcraft manual was a work of art. In the grand scheme of science fiction as a literary genre though? Meh.

Now, a good writer could have turned what was in that manual into something really good. A good enough writer can turn almost anything into a quality product. But if so, it would be a testament to the writer's skill, not to what they were given to work with. The originally presented Starcraft setting was a generic, shlocky soft scifi setting. Totally average. The kind of thing you'd expect from a so-so TV show or a series of B-movies. Which, again, makes it an incredible work of art by contemporary video game standards, but definitely not something worth the amount of angst you're sinking into it.

 

[Mechasaurian]

What I am contesting is that the political situation really ever changed: the Dominion is the Confederacy in all but name.

Click to shrink...

...yes?

I mean, this is the big plot twist of the Rebel Yell campaign. Among the chaos of the Zerg invasion and the revelation of the Confederacy's wrongdoings, Raynor and the Magistrate make an alliance with Mengsk and the Sons of Korhal and find themselves increasingly involved in his plan to topple the Confederacy. Only to find out that they have enabled a Full Circle Revolution and put a mass murderer on a throne at the cost of entire planets.

In this context, the fact that the Dominion is barely even a new coat of paint over the Confederacy is entirely appropiate, because it helps to sell the emotional gut-punch.

I will also have to contend your characterization of Mengsk as a "cartoony evil emperor." He is shallow as a person, but in very believable ways that contribute to his villainy. And his shallowness as a person does detract from his depth as a character. He was perhaps a genuine freedom fighter at one point, spurred by the atrocities of the Confederacy, only to end up wearing the skin of the monster he slayed. That's pretty compelling.

You complain that Rebel Yell did not substantially alter the political sphere. Fine. I could contend that the destruction of entire planets thanks to Mengsk's mad schemes and Tassadar's decision to rebel against the Conclave's glass-first-ask-questions-later orders were pretty significant shake ups...but I won't.

Instead, I will say that the Full Circle Revolution served the big plot twist of the SC Terran Campaign quite effectively, and thus was good storytelling. It's not Shakespeare, but I liked it.

************************************

@Leila Hann, I rather liked your rewrite of Brood War and the way it closed up the plot holes while hitting the same beats.

It makes me curious as to what your version of SC2 would have looked like (the Kerralisks aside, which I am admittedly not a big fan of). You seem like the sort to have some notes tucked away somewhere.

As for my own ideas...well, here's some spitballing on my part. Writing for the Terrans is the easiest part, since they give us the most material to work with - they remain a recipe for internicine fighting and some good old fashioned war, plotting, and skulduggery.

• The Confederacy/Dominion is well and truly in ashes. It's not going to turn up whole and powerful as if it wasn't ravaged by regime change, the Zerg, the UED, etc.
  
• The new villain Terran faction is the Kel-Morian Combine, which is now resurgent in the face of the death of the Confederacy/Dominion's death. They are an unpleasant sort, who are ruthlessly seizing and exploiting the Dominion's former holdings, turning lots of former Dominion civilians into debt slaves, wage slaves, and actual slaves to enrich their corporatocracy.
  
• The protagonist Terran faction is the Umojan Protectorate (the pragmatic democracy), who also happen to be quietly backing James Raynor and other groups resisting the Combine.
  
• The Dominion Remnants and the Ghost Academy (a quasi-independent branch of the Dominion, kind of like the CIA with psychics), inspired by the likes of Allen Schezar, have been working on controlling Zerg through their Ghosts. Their backers are Mengsk with what resources he has left to his name (because he is a persistent bastard if nothing else) and/or the Protectorate, because the Umojans have been scared by the sheer instability and chaos of the alien wars ravaging the sector, to the degree that they are willing to invest in mad science to tip the scales in their own favour.
  • The ultimate ambition of the Academy and their backers is the creation of a homegrown Queen of Blades - a human overmind loyal to themselves. Of course, Kerrigan would come down on them with the wrath of an angry godess if she ever found out...

There are a variety of possible Terran campaigns, and all them sort of write themselves. It's more difficult to put together the pieces together for the Zerg and Protoss, because there is less to work with.

Kerrigan is implied to have gained full control of the Zerg, though it is not impossible that there are other broods out there. Which leaves us with the question of what her defining goal even is now that she won the Brood War and become the dominant military power in the sector. Maintain her position? Become even stronker by snatching up the feral broods on Aiur? Not exactly the stuff of riveting character development.

And the Protoss are, as you have pointed out, rather bare-bones in their characterization - their main source of internal conflict was the tyrannical and self-defeating Conclave, but they are now dead. Their obvious course of action is to try to rebuild themselves on Shakuras and to orient their economy to more guns and less butter while hoping that Kerrigan doesn's come to finish them off...but that doesn't provide a compelling narrative either.

Oh, and I still don't know what "Dark Origin" should lead to. Sinister and horrifying though that mission was, it drew a lot of its strength from its sheer vagueness and uncertainty. I know that it shouldn't lead to an army of hybrids invading from offscreen to wipe out human and terran life in the name of a generic doomsday villain, but I don't know where it should lead. (Nor do I understand how Kerrigan is supposed to have inadverdantly sped up Duran's plans).

...I guess a Protoss campaign could revolve around Duran's efforts to further sow chaos and destruction in the Koprulu Sector, thus preparing things for whatever his plan is, and Zeratul's efforts to pursue and stop him? I'm frankly at a loss.

 

[ValhaHazred]

This reminds me of my reading of the Hexen 2 manual. The lore it presented seemed so fascinating and fresh at the time.

Later on when I got into D&D I realized, "hey! They totally just ripped off Spelljammer!"

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

I haven't had a single good thing to say about Blizzard's storytelling in over a decade, but now you're just being ridiculous.

The co-op mode in Legacy of the Void is obviously not meant to have anything to do with the official continuity. Its meant to be an All Stars Arena type thing, with some tongue-in-cheek "what if" lore blurbs to give everyone an alternate backstory for this Excuse Plot spinoff. This is the equivalent of criticizing the Halo games for their multiplayer modes not fitting the story. They're very clearly not part of the story.

I was going to talk about some of your other points in this post, but at this point I think I might as well just get to the root of it.

You say that Blizzard's writing has gotten worse over time. This is true. You say that the original Starcraft manual's setting and apparent story premise were more interesting and better thought out than the actual game. This is also true. But.

Do you want a good word for the story and setting presented in that original manual? A word that accurately summarizes its creativity, complexity, and amount of potential to tell a compelling, high-brow science fiction story?

"Mediocre."

Its a highly derivative and trope-y science fantasy setting that doesn't do all that much to stand out from the many others that were created throughout the 1980's and 1990's, let alone afterward. We have psionics that are magic in all but name. We have a mysterious and poorly defined precursor race who created a bunch of weird shit for no readily apparent reason, and were subsequently destroyed by the weird shit in question. We have plucky, heroic space settlers resisting tyrannical space governments that embody the late twentieth century industrial military complex fears. We have a proud warrior race that lives for centuries and uses lightsabers. We have a hive mind of body horror insectoid gribblies. Aside from a few aesthetic details, like the Old West + Diesalpunk look for the Terrans, and a couple of surprise quirks, like the family-like nature of the zerg masterminds, there's nothing here that hadn't been done countless times by the time Starcraft came out.

The level of detail in the manual was also not anything to write home about. The given Koprulu terran history consists of "Earth turned to shit, and sent a bunch of undesirables off into space. They crashed on a bunch of planets and built new societies for themselves. One colony turned into a kleptocratic dictatorship that uses nukes to keep its colonies in line, one colony turned into a corporate dictatorship that stays independent by paying off the previous, and one of them is...kinda nice I guess, and has good technology. That's basically it. The protoss, as I already said, are pretty bare bones and poorly defined in the manual, with a long history that flies by in two sentences without us really learning anything about it. The zerg are a bit more detailed than the other two, but not that much more so.

The reason that Starcraft's setting as presented in that book seemed so interesting is because with few exceptions, games back then tended to have either extremely bad writing, or none at all. Compared to other games of that time, the Starcraft manual was a work of art. In the grand scheme of science fiction as a literary genre though? Meh.

Now, a good writer could have turned what was in that manual into something really good. A good enough writer can turn almost anything into a quality product. But if so, it would be a testament to the writer's skill, not to what they were given to work with. The originally presented Starcraft setting was a generic, shlocky soft scifi setting. Totally average. The kind of thing you'd expect from a so-so TV show or a series of B-movies. Which, again, makes it an incredible work of art by contemporary video game standards, but definitely not something worth the amount of angst you're sinking into it.

Click to shrink...

I completely agree with everything you just said.

My angst comes from arguing with people who are completely oblivious to these facts. Whenever I point these facts out, those people say I am wrong and that the story is great (at least until the sequels to which ever game they played first). Whenever I mention some creative endeavor I am taking with the premise, those people tell me not to bother because they arbitrarily dislike anything which defies the canon (which has been rewritten to the point of incoherence).

...yes?

I mean, this is the big plot twist of the Rebel Yell campaign. Among the chaos of the Zerg invasion and the revelation of the Confederacy's wrongdoings, Raynor and the Magistrate make an alliance with Mengsk and the Sons of Korhal and find themselves increasingly involved in his plan to topple the Confederacy. Only to find out that they have enabled a Full Circle Revolution and put a mass murderer on a throne at the cost of entire planets.

In this context, the fact that the Dominion is barely even a new coat of paint over the Confederacy is appropiate, because it helps to sell the emotional gut-punch better.

I will also have to contend your characterization of Mengsk as a "cartoony evil emperor." He is shallow as a person, but in very believable ways that contribute to his villainy. And his shallowness as a person does detract from his depth as a character. He was perhaps a genuine freedom fighter at one point, spurred by the atrocities of the Confederacy, only to end up wearing the skin of the monster he slayed.

You complain that Rebel Yell did not substantially alter the political sphere. Fine. I could contend that the destruction of a couple of planets thanks to Mengsk's schemes and Tassadar's decision to go against the Conclave's glass-first-ask-questions-later orders were pretty significan shake ups...but I won't.

Instead, I will say that the Full Circle Revolution served the big plot twist of the SC Terran Campaign quite effectively, and thus was good storytelling. It's not Shakespeare, but I liked it.

Click to shrink...

The story is mediocre at best; Unhappy Anchovy already tore it apart if you want a detailed analysis. The plot isn't remotely organic and happens entirely as a result of writer fiat, ignoring logistics and previously established plot points. The manual sets up numerous plot hooks which were completely ignored or bulldozed. There are no consequences for anything: planets are razed and restored at whim, billions of people die and are replaced, new factions come out of the woodwork only to be trivially destroyed, etc.

If the Starcraft manual is a mediocre prospectus, then the game script is even more terrible fanfiction.

@Leila Hann, I rather liked your rewrite of Brood War and the way it closed up the plot holes while hitting the same beats.

It makes me curious as to what your version of SC2 would have looked like (the Kerralisks aside, which I am admittedly not a big fan of). You seem like the sort to have some notes tucked away somewhere.

As for my own ideas...well, here's some spitballing on my part. Writing for the Terrans is the easiest part, since they give us the most material to work with - they remain a recipe for internicine fighting and some good old fashioned war, plotting, and skulduggery.

• The Confederacy/Dominion is well and truly in ashes. It's not going to turn up whole and powerful as if it wasn't ravaged by regime change, the Zerg, the UED, etc.
  
• The new villain Terran faction is the Kel-Morian Combine, which is now resurgent in the face of the death of the Confederacy/Dominion's death. They are an unpleasant sort, who are ruthlessly seizing and exploiting the Dominion's former holdings, turning lots of former Dominion civilians into debt slaves, wage slaves, and actual slaves to enrich their corporatocracy.
  
• The protagonist Terran faction is the Umojan Protectorate (the pragmatic democracy), who also happen to be quietly backing James Raynor and other groups resisting the Combine.
  
• The Dominion Remnants and the Ghost Academy (a quasi-independent branch of the Dominion, kind of like the CIA with psychics), inspired by the likes of Allen Schezar, have been working on controlling Zerg through their Ghosts. Their backers are Mengsk with what resources he has left to his name (because he is a persistent bastard if nothing else) and/or the Protectorate, because the Umojans have been scared by the sheer instability and chaos of the alien wars ravaging the sector, to the degree that they are willing to invest in mad science to tip the scales in their own favour.
  • The ultimate ambition of the Academy and their backers is the creation of a homegrown Queen of Blades - a human overmind loyal to themselves. Of course, Kerrigan would come down on them with the wrath of an angry godess if she ever found out...

There are a variety of possible Terran campaigns, and all them sort of write themselves. It's more difficult to put together the pieces together for the Zerg and Protoss, because there is less to work with.

Kerrigan is implied to have gained full control of the Zerg, though it is not impossible that there are other broods out there. Which leaves us with the question of what her defining goal even is now that she won the Brood War and become the dominant military power in the sector. Maintain her position? Become even stronker by snatching up the feral broods on Aiur? Not exactly the stuff of riveting character development.

And the Protoss are, as you have pointed out, rather bare-bones in their characterization - their main source of internal conflict was the tyrannical and self-defeating Conclave, but they are now dead. Their obvious course of action is to try to rebuild themselves on Shakuras and to orient their economy to more guns and less butter while hoping that Kerrigan doesn's come to finish them off...but that doesn't provide a compelling narrative either.

Oh, and I still don't know what "Dark Origin" should lead to. Sinister and horrifying though that mission was, it drew a lot of its strength from its sheer vagueness and uncertainty. I know that it shouldn't lead to an army of hybrids invading from offscreen to wipe out human and terran life in the name of a generic doomsday villain, but I don't know where it should lead. (Nor do I understand how Kerrigan is supposed to have inadverdantly sped up Duran's plans).

...I guess a Protoss campaign could revolve around Duran's efforts to further sow chaos and destruction in the Koprulu Sector, thus preparing things for whatever his plan is, and Zeratul's efforts to pursue and stop him? I'm frankly at a loss.

Click to shrink...

If we're talking about rewrites of the canon campaign...

If I really cared to salvage the canon story, which I don't because I would essentially have to rewrite almost the whole thing, I would take Rebel Yell and then rewrite it so that it was set entirely on Mar Sara. I could list numerous problems with the canon writing, but the one I will focus on is that the writing has no sense of scale. The galaxy is a big place, much less the Koprulu sector alone, but the games treat it like a single country at the largest.

Of course you are probably asking why the zerg and protoss don't destroy the planet. That only happened in canon due to writer fiat and Mar Sara was magically restored by SC2 anyway so there's no point to glassing it ever. See, the original manual contrived the conflict to last as long as possible: the protoss expedition deliberately decided to stop glassing planets (of course the game ignored this) and because of logistics the zerg cannot arbitrarily steamroll opposition.

Anyway... during the defense of Mar Sara Tassadar shows up to offer his assistance, since according to the wiki he was fighting on the surface at the time (also according to the wiki, Mar Sara City was saved because someone activated a psi-emitter elsewhere on the planet and lured away a large contingent of zerg from the city). Then the Magistrate secedes from the Confederacy due to disagreements with their injustice and incompetence. Thus starts the Mara Saran Revolt. The rest of the campaign proceeds more or less identically, aside from the smaller scale which makes it more believable.

Mengsk does not leave Kerry and his men to die, but attempts to rescue them and fails. Raynor and Tassadar plead with him to stop using zerg terrorism due to irregularities in the zerg's behavior, but he ignores their advice and decides to keep doing it despite the losses he suffers and spin doctors the men he lost to this as martyrs for the cause.

I don't have any ideas for how to continue this but the following two campaigns would still be set on Mar Sara. At this point the rest of the canon is no longer useful for informing the plot.

 

[comradepitrovsky]

Then you're not writing Starcraft, though. Why not just cut off the labels and make your own thing?

 

[Mechasaurian]

The story is mediocre at best; Unhappy Anchovy already tore it apart if you want a detailed analysis.

Click to shrink...

I have read @Unhappy Anchovy's LP of SC/BW and SC2. While he gave SC2 a well deserved tearing apart, I remember him overall liking the campaigns and praising Rebel Yell, explaining (for example) the distincly logical and organic ways that Mengsk was able to convince Raynor, Kerrigan, and the Magistrate to follow him for as long as they did. That is only the beginning of a long list of good things he raises about the writing in the 1998 stories.

He did not give the campaigns a free pass on their plot holes, but he certainly liked them overall.

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, Anchovy.


EDIT:

the protoss expedition deliberately decided to stop glassing planets (of course the game ignored this)

Click to shrink...

I'm sorry, but this is a blatent falsehood. Tassadar's rebellion against the Conclave's orders was a big plot point.

 

[LordYam]

That is shlocky epic fantasy tropes that does not beling in serious military science fiction.

Mengsk was rewritten over the course of development (the '96 website's opening quote suggested he was a heroic activist), and him being generically evil is banality and writer's sloth at its finest.

Dark Origins was a blatant retcon that was only introduced because the writers were making it all up as they went along. They never had a real plan for continuing beyond the first game.

LotV was complete and utter garbage, aside from Alarak aka the only character with any kind of personality. Unhappy Anchovy's analysis tore the plot apart with apalling ease.

Click to shrink...

UA is a wanker. Also the thing is most villains aren't deep or complex. Generally most dictators are monsters who would let the world burn if they didn't have power. That's how it is.

Most of the time the "greater good" is a load of horseshit

 

[LordYam]

...yes?

I mean, this is the big plot twist of the Rebel Yell campaign. Among the chaos of the Zerg invasion and the revelation of the Confederacy's wrongdoings, Raynor and the Magistrate make an alliance with Mengsk and the Sons of Korhal and find themselves increasingly involved in his plan to topple the Confederacy. Only to find out that they have enabled a Full Circle Revolution and put a mass murderer on a throne at the cost of entire planets.

In this context, the fact that the Dominion is barely even a new coat of paint over the Confederacy is entirely appropiate, because it helps to sell the emotional gut-punch.

I will also have to contend your characterization of Mengsk as a "cartoony evil emperor." He is shallow as a person, but in very believable ways that contribute to his villainy. And his shallowness as a person does detract from his depth as a character. He was perhaps a genuine freedom fighter at one point, spurred by the atrocities of the Confederacy, only to end up wearing the skin of the monster he slayed. That's pretty compelling.

You complain that Rebel Yell did not substantially alter the political sphere. Fine. I could contend that the destruction of entire planets thanks to Mengsk's mad schemes and Tassadar's decision to rebel against the Conclave's glass-first-ask-questions-later orders were pretty significant shake ups...but I won't.

Instead, I will say that the Full Circle Revolution served the big plot twist of the SC Terran Campaign quite effectively, and thus was good storytelling. It's not Shakespeare, but I liked it.

************************************

@Leila Hann, I rather liked your rewrite of Brood War and the way it closed up the plot holes while hitting the same beats.

It makes me curious as to what your version of SC2 would have looked like (the Kerralisks aside, which I am admittedly not a big fan of). You seem like the sort to have some notes tucked away somewhere.

As for my own ideas...well, here's some spitballing on my part. Writing for the Terrans is the easiest part, since they give us the most material to work with - they remain a recipe for internicine fighting and some good old fashioned war, plotting, and skulduggery.

• The Confederacy/Dominion is well and truly in ashes. It's not going to turn up whole and powerful as if it wasn't ravaged by regime change, the Zerg, the UED, etc.
  
• The new villain Terran faction is the Kel-Morian Combine, which is now resurgent in the face of the death of the Confederacy/Dominion's death. They are an unpleasant sort, who are ruthlessly seizing and exploiting the Dominion's former holdings, turning lots of former Dominion civilians into debt slaves, wage slaves, and actual slaves to enrich their corporatocracy.
  
• The protagonist Terran faction is the Umojan Protectorate (the pragmatic democracy), who also happen to be quietly backing James Raynor and other groups resisting the Combine.
  
• The Dominion Remnants and the Ghost Academy (a quasi-independent branch of the Dominion, kind of like the CIA with psychics), inspired by the likes of Allen Schezar, have been working on controlling Zerg through their Ghosts. Their backers are Mengsk with what resources he has left to his name (because he is a persistent bastard if nothing else) and/or the Protectorate, because the Umojans have been scared by the sheer instability and chaos of the alien wars ravaging the sector, to the degree that they are willing to invest in mad science to tip the scales in their own favour.
  • The ultimate ambition of the Academy and their backers is the creation of a homegrown Queen of Blades - a human overmind loyal to themselves. Of course, Kerrigan would come down on them with the wrath of an angry godess if she ever found out...

There are a variety of possible Terran campaigns, and all them sort of write themselves. It's more difficult to put together the pieces together for the Zerg and Protoss, because there is less to work with.

Kerrigan is implied to have gained full control of the Zerg, though it is not impossible that there are other broods out there. Which leaves us with the question of what her defining goal even is now that she won the Brood War and become the dominant military power in the sector. Maintain her position? Become even stronker by snatching up the feral broods on Aiur? Not exactly the stuff of riveting character development.

And the Protoss are, as you have pointed out, rather bare-bones in their characterization - their main source of internal conflict was the tyrannical and self-defeating Conclave, but they are now dead. Their obvious course of action is to try to rebuild themselves on Shakuras and to orient their economy to more guns and less butter while hoping that Kerrigan doesn's come to finish them off...but that doesn't provide a compelling narrative either.

Oh, and I still don't know what "Dark Origin" should lead to. Sinister and horrifying though that mission was, it drew a lot of its strength from its sheer vagueness and uncertainty. I know that it shouldn't lead to an army of hybrids invading from offscreen to wipe out human and terran life in the name of a generic doomsday villain, but I don't know where it should lead. (Nor do I understand how Kerrigan is supposed to have inadverdantly sped up Duran's plans).

...I guess a Protoss campaign could revolve around Duran's efforts to further sow chaos and destruction in the Koprulu Sector, thus preparing things for whatever his plan is, and Zeratul's efforts to pursue and stop him? I'm frankly at a loss.

Click to shrink...

Amon could have worked given better writing. I came up with an outline for a guy who dislike sc2 and he liked it. I even get some of what they wanted with Amon. He wanted godhood but when he learned what responsibilities were involved he regretted it, became resentful of the mortals and than tried to destroy everything in anger (whereas Kerrigan ultimately accepts her destiny and responsibilities because it gives her a chance to start over).

I'll link my outline overall if you'd like