the story is meh on its own and plain bad put in relation to starcraft before and after
SC has never had strong writing.
Compared to Starcraft 2, it's literally Citizen Kane and Shakespeare rolled into one.
I don't think so. It's more obvious in SC2 because it has much higher more modern production values due being released a decade afterward, and because the audience grew up while the story didn't, but
the script is of similar quality. The writers admit in interviews to making shit up as they went without regard for consistency or making sure there's enough solid material left for sequels, and it shows. To blame SC2 for being obviously bad just because you grew up while the story didn't is intellectually dishonest. If you didn't have childhood nostalgia for SC1, then would you still say it's better written and presented than SC2? SC1's writing is just as incoherent and poorly constructed as SC2, it's just less obvious because of nostalgia and the lower production values forcing you to use your imagination to fill the gaps and make it seem better than it actually is.
SC1 is interesting as a
pitch, but the execution leaves much to be desired. This can be said for whole swathes of fiction. Interesting ideas, crap execution. I'm not going to excuse the crap execution just because of potentially good ideas. That sort of toxically positive stupidity already poisons fandom enough.
Kerry Sue is just as stupid a villain as Amon is, we just give her a pass because of childhood nostalgia. Her entire motivation is to torture humanity because she was experimented on as a child and the rebellion betrayed her. Amon's motivation is to kill everyone and remake the universe in his image because becoming xel'naga wasn't good enough for him. They both suck ass compared to the Overmind, whose motivation was to eat the universe so the zerg can become perfect. It's a vague and alien motivation that's equally apocalyptic, but it doesn't stem from
hamfisted childhood trauma trying to force sympathy from the player. The Overmind is only vaguely sympathetic to zerg players because 1) it didn't genocide all those worlds out of simple sadism or emo, but because it's just that alien, 2) it praises the player character for a job well done like a father figure, and 3) playing as the zerg gives a healthy outlet for one's inner destructive impulses while layering on a thin veneer of pseudo-philosophy to their villainy.
Only a complete fucking idiot would think it's a good idea to replace Overmind with Kerry Sue, or even introduce the latter in the first place. Kerry Sue's entire characterization and aesthetic just doesn't make sense for the zerg at all and was only added because of sexism (cf. the Blizzard sex abuse scandals) and to force an unnecessary connection to the prior episode at the expense of the zerg. It makes no sense for the zerg to preserve her personality in any capacity, make her look sexy, treat her as an individual, nor give her a rank in their hierarchy. What makes sense for the zerg would be to
dissect her,
clone her for experimentation, and
breed new castes of zerg incorporating whatever was supposed to be useful about her psychic powers. Basically everything the Ghost Program did to her but a million times worse. The zerg are only interested in her genes and their potential to make better killing machines. Her body and soul are just detritus to be discarded.
The original human Kerry was vastly more interesting, if tropey as hell with the "getting revenge on the evil empire who abused her and countless others, but it's personal for her because she was experimented on as if we needed more reasons to oppose the
evil empire" backstory, and it's a pity that the sexist devs fridged her and replaced her with an evil succubus rather than exploring her with any level of depth. And this may sound like a contradiction, sorry, but I don't like the generic evil empire plot that starcraft went with. We already had the zerg as the galactic space monster, and we had the protoss as the questionably evil empire. We didn't need a human evil empire, and quite frankly making the human evil empire the focus sapped away resources from the aliens and resulted in their subsequent writing decay.
Arguing that "SC1 is less garbage than SC2 because muh nostalgia" misses the forest for the
leaves. Both scripts suck ass, sabotaged what few good ideas they had, don't deserve to be remembered except as textbook examples of what to
avoid, and took away attention and resources from potentially good uses of the IP for storytelling. Now the IP is irrevocably fucked, everyone with taste has left the fandom years ago, and the remaining toxically positive sycophants are just more of everything wrong with modern media and fandom.
I fully expect
Stormgate to continue this trend of stupid writing made by hacks for toxically positive sycophants. I would be pleasantly surprised if it wasn't, but after all the burnout I've suffered so far I'm not giving ex-Blizz devs the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to invest my limited time into ventures that actually look like they might respect my intelligence.
Gates of Pyre has publicly released a few chapters of its lorebook, which is a huge point in favor so I'm watchlisting it.
Silica doesn't have much lore to give any sense of what the storymode would do, but it has obvious influences from
Dune and
Command & Conquer which I loved so I'm watchlisting it.
I would prefer if video games didn't bother with story because they suck at it. Story in video games is about as important as story in porn, and just as badly written. I think it's a nice bonus to have basically competent writing that didn't give me a headache and would inspire fruitful discussions with other fans, but that's a luxury that very few games can afford. But if it has an actively bad story that only attracts toxically positive sycophants, then I'm not going to waste my time. I'm one of those 80 percenter weirdos who only plays PvE and if the story isn't at least basically competent and knowledgable about tropes then I'm not wasting my time. I'm already inundated with crappy stories in media, even in genres that have the space to focus on storytelling.
And before you tell me to go play 40k, I was a big fan of that in the 00s but lost interest because of all the ultrasmurf wank. Overmind's presentation spoiled me on aliens. I tried the tyranid campaigns in Dawn of War 2, Battlefleet Gothic Armada, and Gladius, and they bore me to death. "Om nom nom" just isn't interesting compared to infinitely quotable lines like "Awaken my child and embrace the glory that is your birthright." Overmind solved one of the omnipresent present problems with ravenous hive aliens in scifi: it made them more interesting and easier to use as a writing tool by giving them proximate objectives and so on, but without turning them into friendly formics like everywhere else. The zerg were aliens with alien morality that drove them to do stuff horrific and terrifying from a human perspective, but which made sense for them because it helped them. The faux old timey speechifying might come across as silly or corny, but would you ever argue that the "Om nom nom" briefings or David Attenborough pastiches in DoW2, BGA and Gladius are any improvement or remotely interesting by comparison?
