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StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

ALARAK.

Alarak leads from the front, as usual. Kit seems to be the same, except he seems to have a new ability similar to Rak'shir's empowerment (based on the visual effects, the circle around him and power flowing from his army).

Commander abilities adds an additional attack to buildings and calls in the Death Fleet, comprising of the Mothership and 8 Destroyers.

Tal'darim forces are all from the campaign, the Zealot seems to have been replaced with a short-ranged attacker similar to the Preserver models way back in WoL's Ihan Crystal mission.
 
Karuadin said:
ALARAK.

Alarak leads from the front, as usual. Kit seems to be the same, except he seems to have a new ability similar to Rak'shir's empowerment (based on the visual effects, the circle around him and power flowing from his army).

Commander abilities adds an additional attack to buildings and calls in the Death Fleet, comprising of the Mothership and 8 Destroyers.

Tal'darim forces are all from the campaign, the Zealot seems to have been replaced with a short-ranged attacker similar to the Preserver models way back in WoL's Ihan Crystal mission.
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HOLY CRAP FINALLY!
 
I want to bring this back because I had a chance to finish the campaign (on normal) and I really liked the gameplay.

The gameplay integrated well with the story, the mission objectives all made sense, the battles were all really cool, and the enemy was designed well enough that you couldn't just cheese them but with enough weaknesses that the game made them feel overwhelming enough that you felt smart when you beat the fuck out of them.

The ability to customize your units for differing missions, and the Tal'darim/Purifier/Dark Templar/Khala units all being drastically different in function even when they took identical roles was fun, and all the SP units were really fun in general.

So that's the good. Now for the bad. The story has gone so downhill that I am pretty sure Call of Duty, a series famed for having plots which are literally excuses to crib from action movies, has a better and more sensible plot than Starcraft 2. The writing of Starcraft 2 has gone downhill with every installment and Legacy of the Void was the worst. The whole thing basically stopped being sci-fi and became the kind of silly high fantasy which leads to people literally pulling plot-relevant deus ex machinas out of their bums.

Amon was completely and utterly laughable as an enemy, because his philosophy didn't work. The game couldn't decide if he was a nihilist trying to end life's suffering or a 90s saturday morning cartoon villain. The game basically used an excuse to instantly eliminate the Khala and... nothing changed about it. It was like, "hey dawg we're gonna all cut out our society and language like our leader was called SKULL FACE" and everyone was like "ok" and nothing at all changed. The Khala existed because of the Aeon of Strife, there was no indication of that. Stuff like the Purifiers were interesting, but they were glossed upon without really talking about their ramifications.

All in all, it was a very good game but it left a bitter aftertaste because the more I think about the exciting and cool moments of the campaign the more I think about everything else in there, and that just aggravates me.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
I want to bring this back because I had a chance to finish the campaign (on normal) and I really liked the gameplay.

The gameplay integrated well with the story, the mission objectives all made sense, the battles were all really cool, and the enemy was designed well enough that you couldn't just cheese them but with enough weaknesses that the game made them feel overwhelming enough that you felt smart when you beat the fuck out of them.

The ability to customize your units for differing missions, and the Tal'darim/Purifier/Dark Templar/Khala units all being drastically different in function even when they took identical roles was fun, and all the SP units were really fun in general.

So that's the good. Now for the bad. The story has gone so downhill that I am pretty sure Call of Duty, a series famed for having plots which are literally excuses to crib from action movies, has a better and more sensible plot than Starcraft 2. The writing of Starcraft 2 has gone downhill with every installment and Legacy of the Void was the worst. The whole thing basically stopped being sci-fi and became the kind of silly high fantasy which leads to people literally pulling plot-relevant deus ex machinas out of their bums.

Amon was completely and utterly laughable as an enemy, because his philosophy didn't work. The game couldn't decide if he was a nihilist trying to end life's suffering or a 90s saturday morning cartoon villain. The game basically used an excuse to instantly eliminate the Khala and... nothing changed about it. It was like, "hey dawg we're gonna all cut out our society and language like our leader was called SKULL FACE" and everyone was like "ok" and nothing at all changed. The Khala existed because of the Aeon of Strife, there was no indication of that. Stuff like the Purifiers were interesting, but they were glossed upon without really talking about their ramifications.

All in all, it was a very good game but it left a bitter aftertaste because the more I think about the exciting and cool moments of the campaign the more I think about everything else in there, and that just aggravates me.
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You don´t think Alarak was part of the good stuff? The guy was deliciously trollish.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
I want to bring this back because I had a chance to finish the campaign (on normal) and I really liked the gameplay.

The gameplay integrated well with the story, the mission objectives all made sense, the battles were all really cool, and the enemy was designed well enough that you couldn't just cheese them but with enough weaknesses that the game made them feel overwhelming enough that you felt smart when you beat the fuck out of them.

The ability to customize your units for differing missions, and the Tal'darim/Purifier/Dark Templar/Khala units all being drastically different in function even when they took identical roles was fun, and all the SP units were really fun in general.

So that's the good. Now for the bad. The story has gone so downhill that I am pretty sure Call of Duty, a series famed for having plots which are literally excuses to crib from action movies, has a better and more sensible plot than Starcraft 2. The writing of Starcraft 2 has gone downhill with every installment and Legacy of the Void was the worst. The whole thing basically stopped being sci-fi and became the kind of silly high fantasy which leads to people literally pulling plot-relevant deus ex machinas out of their bums.

Amon was completely and utterly laughable as an enemy, because his philosophy didn't work. The game couldn't decide if he was a nihilist trying to end life's suffering or a 90s saturday morning cartoon villain. The game basically used an excuse to instantly eliminate the Khala and... nothing changed about it. It was like, "hey dawg we're gonna all cut out our society and language like our leader was called SKULL FACE" and everyone was like "ok" and nothing at all changed. The Khala existed because of the Aeon of Strife, there was no indication of that. Stuff like the Purifiers were interesting, but they were glossed upon without really talking about their ramifications.

All in all, it was a very good game but it left a bitter aftertaste because the more I think about the exciting and cool moments of the campaign the more I think about everything else in there, and that just aggravates me.
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Ever since WoL I just appreciated the good gameplay and pretended the story was a spiritual successor to Starcraft, featuring the story of Jym Reinore and Sera Carrigan.
 
I haven't been willing to give Blizzard's writers the time of day since they had us pull off a covert infiltration of Mengsk's capital city that led to massive civil unrest and the weakening of his regime...using a guy who Mengsk had live feed and an exploding collar on.
 
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Leila Hann said:
I haven't been willing to give Blizzard's writers the time of day since they had us pull off a covert infiltration of Mengsk's capital city that led to massive civil unrest and the weakening of his regime...using a guy who Mengsk had live feed and an exploding collar on.
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Don't you go questioning Mengsk's Keikaku!
 
Deepmind, along with other AI researchers, will now be getting access to the Starcraft API in order to make new AI scripts to test against players.
EDIT: Also, Stukov is the newest Co-op Hero.
 
Maybe that means we'll finally get some decent SC2 Ai. As both Co-OP and every campaign show, SC2's AI is orders of magnitude worse than Broodwar's was.

Leila Hann said:
I haven't been willing to give Blizzard's writers the time of day since they had us pull off a covert infiltration of Mengsk's capital city that led to massive civil unrest and the weakening of his regime...using a guy who Mengsk had live feed and an exploding collar on.
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Not only that; but by that point Raynor had basically turned into Mengsk. For someone all about over throwing Tyranny, he sure seemed to kill a lot of civilians. I kept waiting for someone to call anyone out on that, but it never happened. Maybe in Covert Ops 3.
 
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StarCraft II's plot seems like Blizzard's writers read the Gnostic gospels and decided "Hey, how about we do that in our sci-fi universe despite that being a total shove-in and ultimately detracts from the plot?"

Like, great, you can rip off Gnosticism to make a plot. Get in line behind the Wachowski's and Gainax.
 
E73S said:
StarCraft II's plot seems like Blizzard's writers read the Gnostic gospels and decided "Hey, how about we do that in our sci-fi universe despite that being a total shove-in and ultimately detracts from the plot?"

Like, great, you can rip off Gnosticism to make a plot. Get in line behind the Wachowski's and Gainax.
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And Xenogears. And Xenosaga.
 
New Coop Commander.

Fenix (later known as Talandar) is a future commander in Co-op Missions. He will field a powerful Purifier army, with AI constructs of past protoss heroes available at his command. His army will consist of "shells" for these AIs to occupy
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Fenix himself will be able to switch between three forms, a Praetor form that can use an area of effect spin, a charge and a shield recharge, a solarite dragoon form with a powerful anti-ground line attack, an anti-air area-of-effect attack, and a solarite arbiter form with the ability to recall and stasis enemies. Fenix can swap between these forms at will, and the different forms will only regenerate energy while they are swapped out.
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Fenix's units include legionnaires, adepts, conservators, immortals, scouts, observers, disruptors, colossi, and carriers. Disruptors will function differently as they do in multiplayer, and will instantly deploy an energy spike at a target location, as well as have an auto attack. They will also gain the ability to permanently cloak. Adepts can generate shades that attack with them.
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Fenix has a variety of heroes he is able to research from the Purifier conclave structure. Once they are researched, the AI will jump into one Fenix's units on the map, augmenting their stats and granting them more powerful abilities. Once the body dies, they will jump to the nearest other unit, until all are dead.

The heroes include:

  • Kaldalis as the legionnaire hero. Kaldalis has the ability to leap at targets, and do a frontal cleave.
  • Talis as the adept hero. Talis has a bounce attack, which can be upgraded to debuff enemies.
  • Taldarin as the immortal hero. He possesses the ability to draw enemies closer to one another.
  • Mojo as the scout hero. He possesses an area of effect anti-air attack and stun.
  • Warbringer as the colossus hero. He possesses the ability to reduce enemy movement speed and attack speed, as well hit with a single target attack.
  • Clolarion as the carrier hero. He possesses the ability to build interdictors that bomb ground targets in an area of effect blast, and an auto attack that hits air units.
At Level 10, Fenix loses all tech restrictions on his buildings, as well all gas requirements on structures. All of Fenix's units and structures have unique Purifier skins
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Huh, didn't think we'd see Mojo or Taldarin outside of those non-canon bonus missions. And I guess we know what happened to Kaldalis, though one could probably have assumed his fall.
 
Huh. Looks neat.

It's kind of weird to see him go from assassin in Heroes to some sort of... kaiju themed commander, but hey, I'm willing to forgive a fair bit for a kaiju commander.
 
Sir Bill said:
Huh. Looks neat.

It's kind of weird to see him go from assassin in Heroes to some sort of... kaiju themed commander, but hey, I'm willing to forgive a fair bit for a kaiju commander.
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He is a kaiju equivalent of Jason Vorhees in HOTS, don't know how well that would translate to Starcraft 2.
 
You know, I actually thought he finally got that tiny arm back to normal size for a few seconds. Guess he had to start over if the stump is any indication.

And it's cool to see the primal zerg get to show up and do a bit more than act as alternate skins for their swarm counterparts (though I doubt there'd have been many objections to those being skins).
 
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