StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

[ArchAngel]

In Acti-Blizzard world everyone is a good guy it seems.

 

[Daedalos]

People keep bringing up Activision as if they have ANY say in the creative direction of Blizzard Entertainment products. They don't.

It's Blizzard's fault ENTIRELY, for fucking up their own franchise. If only we had any other people to blame for it, but sadly, it's our old beloved studio themselves that failed their fans.

 

[Maculo]

The problem was that Bliz went all koombayah and decided to try to make us sympathize with the Zerg. So now the Zerg became victims of a conspiracy and the zerglings turned into cute pets. The primal Zerg were a bunch of manga freaks and Kerrigan wouldn't stop bitching and whining. It was a hell of a letdown to have her turn back into a Zerg after the great ending of WoL. At the end of the day the Zerg are still a brood of cockroaches and I preferred Mengsk before them. I mean Mengsk was a dictator with a jolly attitude a penchant for backstabbing. That's not so bad! At least he was not a cockroach!

What's next, we ally with Diablo in D4 to defeat Satan? Give us a break.

The missions were also inferior to the ones in WoL. And fewer. The last mission felt way too easy. You could probably clear it solo with Kerrigan, she was so over-powered at the end.

Legacy of the Void better deliver.

Kerrigan definitely turned into a killing machine, even on Brutal. I think Blizzard tried to balance Kerrigan through timed missions/events to prevent players from soloing the map with just her.

I really did enjoy WoL, cheesiness and all. One aspect of the WoL campaign that I wish Blizzard did differently was the base building and unit production. Specifically, I wished that more missions gave the player just a finite amount of units to finish a mission. Before each mission, the player could purchase additional units to supplement the army or replace units that died in the previous mission. I think this type of system would have made Brutal far more interesting and also would make overall performance in the missions that much more important.

 

[ArchAngel]

People keep bringing up Activision as if they have ANY say in the creative direction of Blizzard Entertainment products. They don't.

It's Blizzard's fault ENTIRELY, for fucking up their own franchise. If only we had any other people to blame for it, but sadly, it's our old beloved studio themselves that failed their fans.

I think their rule of Profit > All said enough. Blizzard has casualized everything from then on. And made it more friendly for kids. My 4 year old is playing Diablo 3 by herself. I just need to read to her and translate from English into our language.

 

[rado907]

I decided to do this one before F4 and started the new campaign last night. The first five missions were excellent. Action from the get-go, drama, sacrifices, victories... Already three major events have transpired. The missions were both fun and challenging.

And you can use Dragoons if you want to! Man, I missed those suckers. Never got used to the Stalkers.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I admit that I cried some manly tears.

 

[rado907]

En taro Adun!
:mrpresident:

 

[kris]

It was a hell of a letdown to have her turn back into a Zerg after the great ending of WoL.

I guess there is one person liking everything in this world.

 

[Kane]

Once more into the trenches, comrades.

 

[Maculo]

Once I am back home I can finally start LotV. I have not played SC2 in almost a year and a half, and so I am rather excited to start the campaign on Brutal. One thing I noticed during the prologue missions was the music. SC2 did many things wrong, but I think the soundtrack is not one of them.

 

[Azarkon]

WoL Protoss armours weren't WoW fantasy shit enough, it seems.
Also @ Protoss giving motivational speech.
Triple @ dramatic prophecy narration: "zerg will arrive, protoss will rise to fight them". Bioware couldn't beat that shit if it sicced its whole tard squad of writers at it.

What you're not getting is that Chris Metzen figured this shit out long ago:

Xel'Naga = Titans
Amon = Sargeras
Protoss = Draenei in space
Zerg = Silithid controlled by Old Gods
Terran = Humans, obviously

It even works for characters:

Kerrigan = Sylvanas
Tassadar = Velen
Zeratul = Medivh
Jim Raynor = Varian

Thus:

Starcraft = Warcraft in space, not just in the game, but also in the lore

I'd say he's a genius, but for the fact that he stole that idea from Warhammer/Warhammer 40k, along with the rest of his ideas. Except for the Raynor-Kerrigan romance. That was all him.

 

[Azarkon]

There's a difference between cartoonish approach of SC1 and SC2.

The original had cartoonish elements and pop-culture references (from the Simpsons you mention, to the obvious Aliens and Starship Troopers). However, most of those were just flavour, in case you decide to click on a unit multiple times (something I always appreciated about Blizz games) - when it come to campaign-relevant, up-front goofiness, it was mostly reserved for Terrans, usually Marines (which somewhat serves to break the mold of WH40K Space Marines on which they were based), SCVs (stereotypical blue-collar redneck) and tanks, and again, it was there as a sort of flavor.
Other than that SC1 was a pretty serious, dark and violent game. Most Terrans, while not very deep, still rarely fall into the typical black-or-white character division (even Raynor, who is closest to a typical goody-two-shoes is an ex-criminal) - each having their own motivation and goal, and are often ruthless to achieve those - Mengsk, namely, who is intended to be a bad guy because of the stuff he has done, but it is shown that his regime is an improvement over the old government - or so I recall.
Protoss are shown to be the ones who bring order to Koprulu - a sort police of the galaxy - and a very brutal one. Noble as they are, they do not care if they commit a genocide of an entire planet due to a handful of Zerg being present on it, and they never show remorse for it (except for Tassadar, which is a major plot point). Other than that, Protoss are essentially as xenophobic as possible and don't care much about lives of those which they deem below them - like Eldar on which they were based.
Zerg, based on Tyranids, are beasts of war and carnage which survive on killing and assimilating other species. There is no morality to them, no remorse, nothing. They are pure engines of destruction. Kerrigan, who was a assassin-revolutionary with a murky past to begin with, fell from grace and became a "bitch-queen of universe", no less a monster than other zerg - just with human intelligence and cruelty. She is essentially evil incarnate - genocidal, cold, ruthless, manipulative and brutal.

So, in short, while SC1 does have a layer of cartoonishness to it, it is in its core a dark game. Not WH40K grim-dark, but still, there are very few positive things to find in this and its plot game, at least when it comes to the three main races. Most of the characters also have their bad sides shown, so there's that too. What's most important - the basic premise of the game is the struggle for power, survival and dominion in Koprulu - and absolute annihilation of anybody who opposes that.


SC2 took a full shit on all that.
Kerrigan is suddenly a good girl again, with a horrible past she can't account for. Terrans are full-on parody of what they were - the only logical thing to them is the fact that Raynor became an alcoholic. Protoss...well, we haven't seen much of them so far, but since they are working with Kerrigan and Terran against this bad ass Saturday morning cartoon evil guy who wants to destroy the universe™, I have no hope for them to be anything else but a joke of the original Protoss from SC1.


StarCraft was never a pinnacle of writing in video games, and had quite a few crimes to account for (UED for example), but SC2 is a whole level below it. From a relatively "adult" SF video game, it went to a cartoon for kids with an incredibly simplistic good against evil plot, cliche and flat characters. In fact, I'd say that the decline of SC's storyline started with some elements of Brood War (the mentioned UED and hybrids) - or at least, the shit that SC2 is evolved from BW's lowest points.

You're being a bit too generous on the original Starcraft. A poster above mentioned how the love story between Raynor and Kerrigan was a WoL creation. That's not the case at all. Raynor was hitting on Kerrigan the moment they met in Starcraft 1, and the romance was the driving force for Raynor in the Terran campaign after Mengsk "betrayed" Kerrigan. In fact, the whole story was melodramatically shallow because the story didn't present Mengski "betraying" Kerrigan very well. It took a lot of retconning afterward to flesh out his motivations for leaving Kerrigan to die, because at the time the player's only indication was Mengsk deciding to pull out due to billions of Zerg flying around, as any prudent military commander in his situation would have done. This is why the dramatic core of the story is hollow - Kerrigan going after Mengsk for making a rational tactical decision shows her to be a vindictive bitch, while Raynor going after Mengsk for the sake of avenging Kerrigan shows him to be an idiot.

The story only improved with Broodwar because the UED had practical motivations for bringing the Terrans back in line. We could cheer for the UED because they represent "us" to a degree, whilst the Terrans throughout the first game were just caricatures of Southern Confederacy goofballs. The UED were also quite sympathetic via the vice admiral, who was an actual decent, rational guy who we could identify with. We could also sympathize with Raynor's story in Broodwar over Kerrigan's betrayal, because this was an actual betrayal whereby evil Kerrigan manipulated Jim to achieve her goals. The Broodwar campaign's dramatic center was therefore sound, and its ending poignant in the sense of leading to the UED's tragic defeat.

The problem, however, is that after the UED was done for, the only narrative they had left going for them with WoL was the Kerrigan-Raynor-Mengsk hate triangle, and as mentioned before, this triangle is simply dramatically too shallow to sustain two fucking campaigns in SC 2. Kerrigan's hate for Mengsk was badly presented/motivated and we have a very hard time sympathizing with her to any degree because, holy fuck woman, you're the Zerg Queen of Blades and yet you care that much about Mengsk "abandoning" you in a tactically practical situation? Why? Wasn't that a blessing? Do you hate what you became that much, and in case you do, then why in the world did you go back to being the Queen of Blades in HoTS?

The above weakness of Kerrigan's personality, in turn, makes Raynor's love for her also unsympathetic. Because first of all, Raynor is supposed to HATE Kerrigan after Broodwar, yet at the end of WoL, he did a complete roundabout because, what, Kerrigan was corrupted by the Overmind? But he'd already known that in Broodwar, and yet that didn't make him hate her less, so why the 180? And then in HoTS, where they've love-love again, Kerrigan decides to go after Mengsk out of sheer vengeance and her own human volition, killing millions of Terran in the process, and Jim just shrugs it off as "meh, price of war"? How could these douchebags ever be sympathetic to the player?

In the end, it is the Protoss that is the most sympathetic in Starcraft 2 and that's in no small way because they retconned the original Protoss to become similar to how Tassadar was en masse. They could get away not having this in Starcraft 1, especially Broodwar, because they had other sympathetic characters. But in Starcraft 2, where all the Terran and Zerg characters are douchebag/SJW caricatures, there's no choice but to act as though the Protoss were the noble Draenei all along.

 

[ArchAngel]

Seems cracked version is not available yet
I need something fun to play while idiots are playing Fo4

 

[Deleted member 7219]

My copy arrived today.

Is it worth playing the prologue missions? I'm not a huge Starcraft nerd, but I played and enjoyed the previous games and I know who most of the characters are. I barely know any Protoss lore though, except for the fact that they seem awfully obsessed with killing Zerg, being rude to Terrans, finding Xel'naga artifacts and PROPHECY!

 

[Azalin]

I it, I played the prologue missions and the first two missions of the normal campaign and...

My life for Aiur

My copy arrived today.

Is it worth playing the prologue missions? I'm not a huge Starcraft nerd, but I played and enjoyed the previous games and I know who most of the characters are. I barely know any Protoss lore though, except for the fact that they seem awfully obsessed with killing Zerg, being rude to Terrans, finding Xel'naga artifacts and PROPHECY!

Eh they don't offer you any info about the past or the original SC they just tell you what Zeratul did between HotS and LotV,they are decent

 

[Maculo]

My copy arrived today.

Is it worth playing the prologue missions? I'm not a huge Starcraft nerd, but I played and enjoyed the previous games and I know who most of the characters are. I barely know any Protoss lore though, except for the fact that they seem awfully obsessed with killing Zerg, being rude to Terrans, finding Xel'naga artifacts and PROPHECY!

I thought the prologue was decent, but probably not 100% necessary for the main campaign.

There are three missions. I felt the first was hardest on Brutal, because you have to race against the Zerg to destroy targets. The second mission is more laid back and you can take your time. The third mission has you control a hero unit that can crush the majority of the mission by itself with enough patience.

As far as I know, only Zeratul has gone full-prophecy. Artanis hopefully should be less annoying and focus on getting shit done.

 

[Jaedar]

So, it seems this game is worth buying and not just trying?

 

[Azarkon]

Yeah that's what they do - playing it safe.

Although I wonder if they're running out of steam with that approach. Sure HS is a smash hit but it's the only bingo for Blizz in the last 10 years.

Heroes seem to be the Google+ of social networks, Overwatch is positively niche, SC and WC are dead with the rest of the genre and while Diablo 3 sold 30 fucking milion copies, RoS itself sold just a fraction, suggesting Diablo 4, if it ever comes which is highly doubtful, will sell nowhere near as well. As for WoW, it's still a cash cow but it's dropping subscribers by millions every year (44% in the last six months).

Blizzard still exudes the superstar aura but if you look at recent Activision's revenues by far the biggest earners are CoD, HS and Destiny. WoW and HS is gonna carry Blizz for a few more years but both will wear out eventually and I wonder if Blizz hasn't gotten too fat and complacent to recover when they do.

Overwatch is not at all designed to be niche. It is basically Blizzard's try at capitalizing on the FPS market without competing against CoD/Battlefield/TomClancy/CS:GO, against which they have no hope of competition because what the fuck does Blizzard know about military simulation shooters? The rest of the AAA industry revolves around dudebros these days and Blizzard's best shot at the market is to go the Destiny route, except with a younger audience and Pixar art-style so as to distinguish from Destiny and to try and draw in the nerds. They're hoping Overwatch is going to be the next Destiny and I'm pretty sure they canceled Titan because they saw the demise of MMOs and so decided to switch assets to Overwatch, which is basically Titan but without the MMO.

So in case Overwatch fails? Well then it's back to the drawing board for Blizzard and I've a feeling they're going to go for a safe choice - eg Warcraft 4, World of Warcraft expansion, Diablo 4, etc. - then.

 

[Maculo]

I am rather annoyed. I just checked my order of the box copy (yes, I got a box copy), and it set back the delivery date until December, even though I got fast shipping. I corrected it, but I am not sure what happened.

 

[rado907]

Great post, Azarkon! Raynor definitely comes off as a white knight moron loser by the end of HotS. And Kerrigan is just unbearable. Bliz tried to do the morally ambiguous thing and failed miserably.

 

[Azarkon]

It really depends on how much (commercially, not in terms of game design) Blizzard of today has learnt from Blizzard of yesterday. Blizzard made a fuckton of money by ignoring countless dictates of 'PC is dead', 'genre X is dead', 'competitive e-sport games is dead because they aren't casual', realising that all those dictates were from the developers and media down, instead of from the consumers up, and therefore bullshit. While all its competitors chased 'the next big thing' like an ADHD puppy, Blizz looked at the number of home PCs, worked out that if you designed your graphics so that they looked stylised but could run on cheap as shit computers, even downgrading their own working betas to ensure their games could run on non-gaming laptops (yeah, we bitch about the cartoon look now, because everyone copied it, but at the time WC3 and even vanilla WoW was a masterful illustration of good graphical design that could run on cheap as shit tech), and did the maths: 'all their competitors vacating the scene' + 'despite consoles, the number of households with PCs or laptops is growing' + 'graphics that look good enough, while running on crappy non-gaming laptops, hence ensuring that every single PC/laptop used to run Microsoft Office is part of their hardware base' = vast vast fields of glorious cash, all to them, all to them, to roll and play in while laughing at their former competitors scrapping for tiny shares of the console market.

That Blizzard would look at the declaration that RTS is dead and say: 'but...but...what are all these Koreans and Chinese customers, then?' They'd acknowledge that RTS is in decline, but would also note that SC2 sold fuckloads. And most importantly, they'd remember how much they benefited from being the last big fish in the PC pond, and would stick with RTS simply to ensure that they remain a major name in the massive Chinese and Korean markets. Even if their RTS products themselves don't sell that much outside of Korea and China, having that market presence is almost priceless for a Western company. Blizzard can introduce games to those markets that the local consumers aren't familiar with, and would reject outright if it came from any other Western company. That means that the next time Blizz has a major game to sell there, from a genre that isn't already well-represented in those markets, they have the opportunity to become the market leader in that new genre. The same way that they leveraged their RTS reputation into the success of WoW.

A problem with this analysis:

SC 2 sold shit in China and Korea.

SC 2 was, in fact, a flop not just in the West. Korean progamers might still be winning every tournament in SC 2, but that's because they're Korean progamers and not because the rest of Korea gives a fuck about SC 2.

Source: http://i.imgur.com/1lMUndT.jpg

Also, LoL is the biggest game in both China and Korea, by a very large margin. It is the equivalent of all of the FPS games in the West combined. Blizzard of yesteryear would look at this and think, "PC MOBAs = holy fuck." Problem is, Blizzard isn't the only one on that train these days.

 

[Dzupakazul]

You're being a bit too generous on the original Starcraft. A poster above mentioned how the love story between Raynor and Kerrigan was a WoL creation. That's not the case at all. Raynor was hitting on Kerrigan the moment they met in Starcraft 1, and the romance was the driving force for Raynor in the Terran campaign after Mengsk "betrayed" Kerrigan.

Raynor was openly imagining her naked. That was a small tidbit for comedy. Later he was tied into the plot, Kerrigan sent him visions of herself in the cocoon because he was the only comrade in arms she had. That Raynor is a simpleton who thinks with his penis at the start and then grows into this motherfucker who has to fight the Overmind is a given. Or did you take him seriously when he was calling her "darling", like he isn't a gung-ho cowboy with a silly attitude at times. Back in BW, Kerrigan wasn't manipulating him by saying that he's going to score some fresh Zerg pussy as soon as Korhal is "liberated".

In fact, the whole story was melodramatically shallow because the story didn't present Mengski "betraying" Kerrigan very well. It took a lot of retconning afterward to flesh out his motivations for leaving Kerrigan to die, because at the time the player's only indication was Mengsk deciding to pull out due to billions of Zerg flying around, as any prudent military commander in his situation would have done.

Mengsk presents himself as a revolutionary who will cripple the Confederacy, and who is just a peaceful, misunderstood ruler of Korhal. Then he sics the Zerg on an entire planet. Then he overextends really harshly - Raynor calls him out on that it's fucking retarded to be fighting the Protoss and Zerg on two fronts, and his only reason for issuing the "don't destroy Zerg buildings" order is that Confederates may escape, because he's already betraying that he's a sick, dictatorial fuck. The operation in New Gettysburg wasn't necessary if Mengsk only wanted to cripple the Confederacy and liberate lands like Korhal. He already had Norad II and the Confederacy's best general at his disposal, as well as a pretty fucking skilled Magistrate, what more could he want? Wars are over when one side decides that fighting isn't worth it anymore; the Confederacy lost their core world and was completely in shambles, with Zerg rampaging through their outlier words like Chau Sara and Mar Sara, and with the Protoss (seemingly) performing Exterminatus on everything. The point was that Mengsk was a total, power-hungry dick, and the New Gettysburg operation was a greedy move, and that if Kerrigan was to be treated like a pawn, there was no telling who would be screwed over next. Then Kerrigan shows up and Raynor's good reason for hating Mengsk is that he enabled the creation of a creature who is a murderous bitch. Why would Kerrigan hate Mengsk so? Because she's human, she has a grudge, and even if she likes being a Zerg, it doesn't mean that she wouldn't like to impale him on his claw and culminate making him realize, "in his most private moments", that he managed to create his own undoing. Because she's a villain.

The story only improved with Broodwar because the UED had practical motivations for bringing the Terrans back in line. We could cheer for the UED because they represent "us" to a degree, whilst the Terrans throughout the first game were just caricatures of Southern Confederacy goofballs. The UED were also quite sympathetic via the vice admiral, who was an actual decent, rational guy who we could identify with. We could also sympathize with Raynor's story in Broodwar over Kerrigan's betrayal, because this was an actual betrayal whereby evil Kerrigan manipulated Jim to achieve her goals. The Broodwar campaign's dramatic center was therefore sound, and its ending poignant in the sense of leading to the UED's tragic defeat.

They were Space Nazis who tried to enslave the Zerg simply to become new tyrants in the Sector - what Kerrigan told Raynor and Fenix was a half-truth, not an outright lie - they even had a huge Starship Troopers homage as their ending cinematic. The Admiral in charge was, again, overzealous, overambitious, and made a shitload of general mistakes. Brood War is a fun story, with lots of cool setups and upsets, but when you think about it, it's all about people acting like total and utter idiots just so Kerrigan and Duran can win. BW was something like FO2 in terms of worldbuilding and storytelling in many cases.

The problem, however, is that after the UED was done for, the only narrative they had left going for them with WoL was the Kerrigan-Raynor-Mengsk hate triangle

What about Duran's hybrids? What about the reconstruction of the Protoss? What about reclaiming Aiur? What if Kerrigan decided to continue Overmind's plan? What about her return? What if her hatred of humanity culminates in wanting to engulf it all for purely selfish reasons? What if SC2 becomes a story about insane Mengsk's dominion desperately clinging to power in spite of the Zerg's victory being absolutely certain somewhere down the line (sorta like WH40K lore, with Chaos inevitably winning at some point) and another unlikely Terran/Protoss alliance to get things into some managable status quo? What about some other third party? What about expanding roles of such factions as the Umojan Protectorate or Kel-Morian Combine, who don't seem to be associated with anyone?

The above weakness of Kerrigan's personality, in turn, makes Raynor's love for her also unsympathetic. Because first of all, Raynor is supposed to HATE Kerrigan after Broodwar, yet at the end of WoL, he did a complete roundabout because, what, Kerrigan was corrupted by the Overmind? But he'd already known that in Broodwar, and yet that didn't make him hate her less, so why the 180? And then in HoTS, where they've love-love again, Kerrigan decides to go after Mengsk out of sheer vengeance and her own human volition, killing millions of Terran in the process, and Jim just shrugs it off as "meh, price of war"? How could these douchebags ever be sympathetic to the player?

It gets even worse - Kerrigan actually motivates her cruel deeds throughout HotS, like murdering an entire peaceful Protoss ensemble, by saying something like "think of all the Zerg who suffered from your attacks". Fucking Zerg, who have a much lesser concept of individuality than a typical corgi. SC2's writing is all shit and it could all be subverted if the writers weren't completely hellbent on perpetuating Hollywood cliches.

In the end, it is the Protoss that is the most sympathetic in Starcraft 2 and that's in no small way because they retconned the original Protoss to become similar to how Tassadar was en masse. They could get away not having this in Starcraft 1, especially Broodwar, because they had other sympathetic characters. But in Starcraft 2, where all the Terran and Zerg characters are douchebag/SJW caricatures, there's no choice but to act as though the Protoss were the noble Draenei all along.

Aldaris was the best character who got shit done.

 

[Azarkon]

Great post, Azarkon! Raynor definitely comes off as a white knight moron loser by the end of HotS. And Kerrigan is just unbearable. Bliz tried to do the morally ambiguous thing and failed miserably.

The issue with Kerrigan's portrayal over the two games is that her character is not presented consistently/sympathetically.

When she transforms into the Queen of Blades in Starcraft 1, her entire personality changes into that of an evil douche. This is the classic damsel->witch transformation in literature and we could accept it as a product of the Zerg infestation. We could accept it as believable even though later on she appears to make her own decisions, and we could sympathize with Jim for wanting to "save" her, even though it cost him dearly in Broodwar, because he remembers the way she used to be.

But then you have Heart of the Swarm. Kerrigan is transformed back into a human, and ... she's still a douche. Except now she's a self-righteous douche, which is even worse. The old Kerrigan was never a douche, and though guided by a moral compass, she also wasn't self-righteous. Kerrigan in Starcraft 1 was a positive, at times naive, character, with a warm, carefree personality, an optimistic outlook, and a fierce loyalty to Mengsk. From IMDB:

Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: Captain Raynor, I've finished scouting out the area, and... you pig!
Jim Raynor: What! I haven't even said anything to you yet.
Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: Yeah, but you were thinking it.

Edmund Duke: This is Duke. The emitters are secured and online.
Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: Who authourized the use of Psi emitters?
Arcturus Mengsk: I did, Lieutenant.
Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: What? The Confederates on Antiga were bad enough but now you're going to use the Zerg against an entire planet? This is insane!

Jim Raynor: This is bullshit! Kerrigan, are you reading this?
Lt. Sarah Kerrigan: I've heard. I'm going down there. Arcturus knows what he's doing, I can't back out on him now.
Jim Raynor: Funny. I never though of you as anyone's martyr.

New Kerrigan is basically a completely different personality, voiced by a different voice actress, with a different look, and is driven by only two goals: vengeance against Mengsk and "freeing" the Zerg Swarm, which in the end just became her using them to kill a lot of Terran and Protoss.

This transformation defines the character in the sense that it makes us believe that Kerrigan was always, in fact, *that* Kerrigan in Broodwar. That the Overmind never did change her that much. That she was so devastated by Mengsk's "betrayal" that she did a 180 on her character. This is rather hard to believe - when people change, they don't just become the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what they were, and in fact, it's difficult to believe in the first place that the Starcraft 1 Kerrigan would internalize such a deep hatred of Mengsk. It is also difficult to believe that the old Kerrigan, who was disgusted at Mengsk using the Zerg as a weapon, would now do the exact same action and then justify it on the basis that the Zerg are these lovable creatures that deserve "freedom," which they most certainly never were. This is a problem of consistency.

The second problem is one of sympathy. Kerrigan in Starcraft 1 before the infestation was sympathetic because she was basically a nice girl caught in a bad situation. Raynor's reaction to Kerrigan's "death" therefore mirrored our own, as did his drive to "save" her. And in the end, even though Kerrigan's own motivation was shallow, we could sympathize with Jim's anger at being betrayed because we, as him, was under the impression that deep down, Kerrigan was still that self-sacrificing heroine who "died" on Tarsonis.

But the new Kerrigan is not sympathetic, and worse, she becomes even LESS sympathetic after the retcon where they indicate that Mengsk left her behind because she participated in the assassination of his family. In fact, that bit of retcon changes her character tremendously, because it shows that Kerrigan was a cold-blooded killer long before she was infested, which contradicts the personality she had in Starcraft 1. Regardless, it paints Mengsk in a sympathetic light and makes it difficult for us to engage with Kerrigan on any emotional level, as she had it coming after she killed Mengsk's father, mother, and sister.

Couple that with the fact that the new Kerrigan, regardless of whether she's in human/Zerg form, basically cares only about killing Mengsk, freeing the Zerg, and occasionally paying lip service to her love for Jim Raynor, and it's hard to see how Blizzard could ever imagine Kerrigan as a sympathetic character. She doesn't even think of herself as human, has no resemblance to the old Kerrigan that fans loved, and her quest to kill Mengsk doesn't remotely strike us as being all that well-motivated, considering she killed his entire family while he only "abandoned" her. So why should we care about Kerrigan?

Making Starcraft 2 all about Kerrigan, be it Raynor's quest to save her, else her quest to kill Mengsk, else her role in the new expansion, was the biggest mistake Blizzard ever made because she's just not a sympathetic/consistent character and the narrative core involving her, Mengsk, and Raynor is way too shallow, dramatically, to carry the story.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

What you're not getting is that Chris Metzen figured this shit out long ago:

Sargeras
Draenei
Silithid
Sylvanas
Velen
Medivh
Varian

I would've asked who all those people are, but boy am I glad not to "get" any of that shit.

 

[rado907]

When she transforms into the Queen of Blades in Starcraft 1, her entire personality changes into that of an evil douche. This is the classic damsel->witch transformation in literature and we could accept it as a product of the Zerg infestation.

Good catch! I have some thoughts along similar lines.
Raynor's archetype seems to be that of the rogue/trickster. Reminds me a lot of Han Solo in Star Wars.
Artanis is a warrior / paladin type like Luke Skywalker.
And Kerrigan is the mage who is ready to sell every - including her soul - for power (and revenge). She is like Darth Vader.

It also seems to me that the Terrans are space cowboy Americans, the Zerg are Sino-Russian commie swarms spreading their "creep" through the universe, and the Protoss are fanatical totalitarian Germans dreaming of warm fuzzy unity and hierarchy and unthinkingly following the rules no matter the consequences. So to speak.