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FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Nah, I'm pretty sure she just ate a bad sandwich and was having trippy dreams of seizing that planet.

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habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.
I don't know why I never got around to playing HOTS, I enjoyed SC2's campaign enough. And I remember seeing this opening trailer! How could I forget that backtracking siege tank and the cool as poo poo Valk getting hosed up? It's cool as hell!

disposablewords
Sep 12, 2021


I feel like the invasion dream is more about still being haunted by the things she thought and did and wanted as the Queen of Blades, more than any (at the moment) revenge desire so great as to murder a planet.

gohuskies
Oct 23, 2010

I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.

disposablewords posted:

I feel like the invasion dream is more about still being haunted by the things she thought and did and wanted as the Queen of Blades, more than any (at the moment) revenge desire so great as to murder a planet.

I don't think the cinematic is saying that human Kerrigan still wants to conquer Korhal, but that some part of the Queen of Blades still lurks within her despite having been artifacted back to humanity.

kaosdrachen
Aug 15, 2011

gohuskies posted:

I don't think the cinematic is saying that human Kerrigan still wants to conquer Korhal, but that some part of the Queen of Blades still lurks within her despite having been artifacted back to humanity.

From the sound of it she's less about conquering Korhal and more about getting revenge on Mengsk (and not particularly caring how many of his troops she had to tear through to get to him).

Which, considering how badly he screwed her over, valid point.

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

Kerrigan counts wars instead of sheep when she's trying to sleep

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
I reject any reading that positions the Queen of Blades as a seperate entity, including any that may be explicit and textual.

Kerrigan is just dreaming of the day she finally gets to murder Mengsk, and hell, who can blame her?

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015
I think HotS has the worst gameplay from the three main campaigns. Most of the missions are easily trivialized and the upgrade system is the worst parts of WoL and LotV.

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Luckily, the Zerg are a very fun faction to play mechanically, so HotS is still a lot of fun just at the baseline of how you interact with the game.

Chillgamesh
Jul 29, 2014

Reading the thread title as a party member’s move in LaD

RevolverDivider
Nov 12, 2016

HotS also has a problem where it's the biggest drastic difference between how its campaign faction plays compared to the multiplayer. There's so many drastic differences between the campaign Zerg and multiplayer Zerg, particularly with queens, that you're not actually picking up a lot of the most important basics of playing the race.

MagusofStars
Mar 31, 2012



I enjoyed the main gimmick of HoTS' gameplay, but I can see why people don't. The "upgrade" system is simply so overpowering that it warps the entire game play to the extent the game (especially later in the campaign) feels way closer to an RPG-style custom campaign than a typical RTS mission. I personally really like those sorts of custom campaigns, so I liked HoTS, but it's certainly a divisive choice.

RevolverDivider posted:

HotS also has a problem where it's the biggest drastic difference between how its campaign faction plays compared to the multiplayer. There's so many drastic differences between the campaign Zerg and multiplayer Zerg, particularly with queens, that you're not actually picking up a lot of the most important basics of playing the race.
Personally, I never really consider this as a problem.

In my experience, whenever RTS games try to make the campaign some kind of training ground for multiplayer, it usually ends up limiting the campaign. I paid $60 for this single player campaign, I don't want the developers to be focused on "balance this for player-versus-player" because that's not the purpose of the single player campaign. Give me units which have a cool niche in single-player even if no sane multiplayer would use them, don't worry about what makes sense against another human in a reasonably balanced scenario, and use that 'sandbox' to make fun things without feeling constrained with what makes sense in player-vs-player.

BlazetheInferno
Jun 6, 2015
The most successful, beloved, breakout RTS games developed a single-player game first, and THEN created a multiplayer mode out of it.

Since I don't remember the details of Starcraft 2's development, I'll assume it broke that, and thus I'll call it the exception that proves the rule, simply because it only got away with it because of the Starcraft brand recognition.

Kith
Sep 17, 2009

You never learn anything
by doing it right.


Dawn of War II did multiplayer first as well, I believe.

RevolverDivider
Nov 12, 2016

I usually don’t mind at all and prefer the single player be developed to focus on single player, but between the main gimmick and the way Queens work campaign Zerg are just so far removed from multiplayer Zerg it’s kind of wild.

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

BlazetheInferno posted:

The most successful, beloved, breakout RTS games developed a single-player game first, and THEN created a multiplayer mode out of it.

Since I don't remember the details of Starcraft 2's development, I'll assume it broke that, and thus I'll call it the exception that proves the rule, simply because it only got away with it because of the Starcraft brand recognition.

Starcraft 2 went heavily on both. We've already seen that in WoL - half the units don't exist in the multiplayer at all, the mercenaries and research upgrades are campaign-only, the tech upgrade system is different to how it works in multiplayer and obviously the missions don't play out anything like multiplayer ones either. They did put a lot of focus on trying to make a worthy successor to Starcraft's multiplayer scene too, of course, but they very notably didn't let that limit the campaign design.

HotS goes off the chain even more in that regard, although there are some notable differences (primarily the way queens work) that are more because of major balance shake-ups that happened after the campaign released than a conscious departure from multiplayer.

Octatonic
Sep 7, 2010

I enjoyed the gameplay experiences of all the SCII campaigns, tbh. But, I'm not a skilled RTS player and I don't intend to be. But I like the way HoTS and LoTV especially accelerate the early game over time so that you can kind of have a roving, constantly growing death ball while you flit back and forth to your base and out-macro the map. It's sort of one or two steps more sophisticated than the childhood "turtle up then kill the map with a full stack of battlecruisers" strategy.

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

just you wait

I need a little time to prepare but I'm going to utterly skewer HotS for all time

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
You know, I think I'm okay with this cutscene for its own sake. Giant bugs eating fascists is the main reason I still play Dawn of War 2 and Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 every now and then, after all.

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


Kith posted:

Dawn of War II did multiplayer first as well, I believe.

Considering how different the multiplayer is to the single player in that game, and the fact that the multiplayer sucks to boot, makes this interesting to learn.

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
On the gameplay point of Hots.

Zerg are a fun race to play in Multiplayer.

In this campaign all the fun parts of Multiplayer are gone. Campaign Zerg are mechanically easy to play, with one trivial strategy that trumps absolutely everything else and that strategy will carry almost anyone through Brutal.

It's terrible, mission design does nothing to encourage any variance in play aside from solo character missions and so as an experienced player you spend your time inventing restrictions for yourself to make the game more fun.

As mentioned upthread, I'd never played starcraft before SC2 and the campaign there got me into the multiplayer, where I vibed super hard with Zerg. To get this piece of complete poo poo after that killed basically all interest I had in the game permanently, to the point that I never even bought Legacy of the Void.

BisbyWorl
Jan 12, 2019

Knowledge is pain plus observation.


Umoja 1: Lab Rat

Cinematic: Hopes and Fears + Video: Lab Rat


There's a bit of a gap between the end of Wings and the start of Heart, which Blizard was ever so kind enough to cover in Flashpoint, a side novel designed to wring a few more bucks from your pocket.

The spark notes version for stuff that's actually relevant here consists of:
  • Mengsk shows up shortly after Tychus failed and kicked everyone's poo poo in with his half of the Dominion's military. drat, who could have guessed.
  • Valerian ends up going on the run with Jim, since he was told about the prophecy and wants to keep Kerrigan alive at all costs.
  • Narud is revealed as eeeeeeeeeeeeevil. But not, like, the is-actually-Duran evil, just working for Mengsk but he also has hybrid on hand don't worry about it.
  • Narud yoinks the artifact.
  • Jim and Sarah's relationship was retconned into being romantic well before Tarsonis.







Jim is Not Happy.



















We're hiding out in some kind of science-y place.







And it looks like they've been running tests on Kerrigan.



















Various gizmos are pulled away from Kerrigan.



















And Kerrigan sums up her entire character here:



She wants Mengsk dead.



She really wants Mengsk dead.



In Wings of Liberty, James Raynor was a SAD MAN who MISSED HIS GIRLFRIEND.



Sarah Kerrigan is an ANGRY WOMAN who WANTS MENGSK'S HEAD ON A loving SPIKE.





Okay but, like, what's the alternative here? Mengsk isn't going to give up and let bygones be bygones if Kerrigan stays hidden for a few weeks. He ain't a loving GTA wanted level.



















This is super convenient. Both because it means Kerrigan has no knowledge, and thus no narrative culpability, for her myriad of crimes, and because it lets the writers not have to explain literally anything about what she was up to in Wings. Why was she so focused on getting the artifact? Why was she suddenly okay with the end of the universe in the Prophecy missions? The world will never know.







Now, instead of doing something sensible like, I dunno, a medical exam...



All the test subjects are in a secure environment.

Valerian's having Kerrigan play with the zerg.

No possible way this could go wrong.



I instantly grabbed the drone here, but there are a few lines that play if you don't do it for a while.

lines I skipped to avoid adding several minutes to my recording posted:


Are you able to control it?

*time passes*

Left-click the drone to select it.

*time passes*

Testing. No playback errors detected. Repeating instructions.

*instructions repeat three times*

Subject is unresponsive. Translating instructions into native language. (Zerg screeching)

*finally select the drone*

Yeah. I have it.

Okay. The next step: See if you can order the drone to mutate into a hatchery.



Heart has the most handholdy tutorial missions out of all of them.



The hatchery also produces larvae, which you use to morph into more drones or other zerg creatures. When you use larvae, the hatchery will replenish them over time.

This mission speeds up build times so you're not sitting around for a good while, but it'll go back to a more standard 100 seconds later.

There's more hidden lines here, this time if you cancel the Hatchery:

quote:

Kerrigan, why did you stop the hatchery from mutating?

*cancel a second hatchery*

Please cooperate, We have a short timetable.









Zerg macro is much the same as before. Larvae build up to a cap, so you have to keep units building so you don't waste time with max Larvae.



I need an overlord to morph anything else.

Do it then. One overlord shouldn't hurt.



There is one major change for the campaign, however.

See, much like how terrans had MULEs to help boost their macro, an early game zerg unit has an ability called Inject Larvae which spawns three extra Larvae after 30 seconds, and can used again the second those extra Larvae spawn. Inject Larvae micro is vital for maximizing unit production.

I guess the devs figured having to stay on top of Inject Larvae and use it every 30 seconds on every hatchery you make for the entire campaign would get a bit repetitive, so Inject Larvae has been completely removed. Hatcheries have a natural cap of 6 larvae to compensate, and the unit with Inject Larvae gets a new campaign-exclusive variant.



Your current supply maximum is displayed in the upper right corner of the screen along with how much supply you are currently using. If you do not have enough available supply, you will not be able to morph a unit.

Also there's still more hidden lines, again for canceling things early:

quote:

Again? We need to finish these tests and we don't have much time.

*cancel a second overlord*

I thought you said you needed an overlord to make more units?



There's the Overlord, but there's another objective to harvest 300 minerals.



Try mutating a drone into a spawning pool.

Valerian no.



The game is very specific about creating a Spawning Pool in this exact spot.



Despite the entire area being covered in creep, only that spot is flagged as buildable.

This also means I can't make a macro Hatchery for more Larvae.



Drones are directly used to make buildings, requiring more to be built to replace them. Same old, same old.



We have a controlled environment.

You guessed it, more lines for canceling!

quote:

Kerrigan, the spawning pool didn't finish mutating. Did you tell it to stop?

*cancel a second spawning pool*

Kerrigan, this isn't funny.

*cancel a third spawning pool*

You've already demonstrated that the zerg can be ordered to stop mutating. This isn't a game.



Ah, I can see just fine from up here, thanks. I think that's all we need today, Kerrigan. Great work.

Kerrigan is absolutely done with Valerian's poo poo.





Hey, quick question. What's two times six?



Putting your controlled environment to the test.











Now, yes, Valerian is being a smarmy gently caress and should probably be taken down a peg or two.



But Kerrigan immediately jumps to just...



Causing massive property damage.

Does Valerian really have no contingencies for this? Not so much as a single knockout gas nozzle in Kerrigan's cell?



Oh, and despite Valerian freaking out and ordering a lockdown.



The door out of here just... opens.

drat this environment do be controlled.





The Sentry Bots are tiny non-threats that deal a piddly 5 damage a shot.



Oh, and the place is packed with feral zerg for Kerrigan to hijack.

Valerian's a loving idiot, is what I'm getting at here.





The bonus for this mission gets me even more free Zerglings.







It never is with the zerg.

Another hidden line. Reaching this point with an army of Drones will change this conversation to:

quote:

Kerrigan, call off your... drones? You're attacking with drones?



There's a factory here that'll constantly pump out more sentry bots, forcing to take the time to destroy it so reinforcements don't get caught by them.



Speaking of, using reinforcements here is a pain in the rear end. Can you tell why?



Because they removed my loving army hotkey, since it was a new feature for Heart so they wanted to save it for a dramatic moment! It got backported into Wings later!

Despite being available in Wings from the very start now, they never changed it here and I'm just arbitrarily locked out of a button I had for all of the previous game until the devs let me have it back.

Considering all I can make are the famously fragile Zerglings so I can't even rally to a unit and call it a day, this is really drat annoying.



Keep in mind that the Umojans are putting their asses on the line here. The second Mengsk is able to track Kerrigan down, he will be sending in a cleanup crew to kill everyone in the facility. Hell, he'll probably use it as an excuse to really put the screws to Umoja afterwards, declaring that they're harboring enemies of the state!

So on top of the god knows how much money worth of stuff Kerrigan is trashing, she's also traumatizing the people trying to keep her hidden from Mengsk! What a loving class act, that Sarah Kerrigan!





It's all... out of control.



Automated gas defense activated.

That containment door won't open until I destroy those turrets!

The gas will slowly damage my Zerglings.



But not that quickly.

You know what the funny thing is?



Just like Kerrigan said, the doors automatically open the second all three are destroyed!

'Controlled environment' my rear end!



Second pen.







And third pen.





Not yet I haven't. I'm still in your containment cell.



The Eradicator is a bigger sentry bot with 1000 HP and 10 damage a shot.



60+ Zerglings are more than enough to deal with it.















And perhaps next time you can make your point without destroying half the facility?

The opening mission in Wings had you fighting against the Dominion and inspiring the common folk to fight back.



Here, the opening mission consists of Kerrigan throwing all the good will the Umojans are showing her back in their faces by trashing their place just to prove a point.

Welcome to Heart of the Swarm.



New game means new results screen. And while it is pretty, it also cuts the achievement descriptions and forces you to mouse over them to show their requirement.

I'll just write them down just to be thorough.

Lab Rat - Complete the "Lab Rat" mission in the Heart of the Swarm campaign.

Mighty Mouse - Destroy 35 Sentry Bots in the "Lab Rat" mission.

Rat Race - Complete the "Lab Rat" mission in less than 10 minutes on Normal difficulty.


There's a bit of a change in achievement design from Wings. Instead of beat mission, do thing on Normal, and do thing on Hard, regular achievements instead cap out at Normal. To make up for this, each mission has a fourth Mastery achievement that requires playing on Hard.

Mad Dash - Destroy 3 Factories in the "Lab Rat" mission in less then 10 minutes on Hard difficulty.

Eradicator? Eradicated! - Destroy the Eradicator in the "Lab Rat" mission in less than 8 minutes on Normal difficulty.

BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Feb 6, 2024

Kith
Sep 17, 2009

You never learn anything
by doing it right.


Lord_Magmar posted:

Considering how different the multiplayer is to the single player in that game, and the fact that the multiplayer sucks to boot, makes this interesting to learn.

The campaign was them realizing that the multiplayer wasn't going to hold up without other players because optimal multiplayer performance is a half-hour of finicky grab-rear end that AI makes even more miserable, so they were like "What are the most popular parts of our multiplayer? Hero Units? But focusing on that turns the game into an ARPG instead of an RTS! gently caress it, toss in Diablo-style loot and hope for the best."

And then they did, and then pretty much no other game has managed to capture the same magic as the DOW2 campaigns.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

To be fair to Kerrigan, she saw what happened when the UED attempted to control the Zerg (dumb lines about her not remembering being the Queen of Blades aside), and the Umojans and/or Valerian had a LOT of live specimens stashed away in there. If there's even a chance the kid was thinking about trying to make his own private swarm from what he'd learned studying Kerrigan's physiology, I'd say it was a worthwhile effort to smash as much of the lab as possible and put the fear of god into as many scientists as possible so long as she didn't kill anybody. We didn't learn very much about Valerian as a character in WoL, and we don't have any particular reason to trust that he has noble motives if he's telling Kerrigan to spawn Zerg base structures just because. It's not like these are Joe Average Umojans, this is a black site being privately funded by the heir to the Dominion on a distant, uncharted planet that doesn't even have a proper name.

What confuses me a lot more is Jimmy telling Kerrigan that she should be running away with him instead of going after Mengsk. I mean, the later part is fine, his whole arc was about giving up his need to get revenge on Mengsk, he SHOULD be encouraging Kerrigan to do the same for consistency's sake. But he also knows that she's needed to save the universe from the Hybrids. He can't run away from that, and he shouldn't be trying, especially when his big final speech in WoL was about reaffirming his commitment to fighting for higher ideals and the preservation of the galaxy.

If anything, Kerrigan should be trying to run away from it all. Jim should be trying to convince her that she's the key to saving everybody and that she has to embrace that while she should want to find some quiet hole to disappear into with the man she loves. Getting back into the fight means possibly losing her second chance to walk away from the endless violence, the most precious gift ANYONE has ever given her since she'd been forced to be a weapon by everyone since practically her birth. Make Mengsk force her hand, cut off all her avenues to avoid going back on the war path and make it clear that the Dominion under his control cannot be allowed to endure or it will be the doom of them all. Don't have her start off ready to die for nothing but payback.

Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Dec 17, 2023

Kith
Sep 17, 2009

You never learn anything
by doing it right.


I've never bothered to try, is it possible to kill any scientists with sufficient amounts of tricky micro? I remember that you can kill Infested Colonists with absolutely zero consequences, but it'd be really funny if you could chow down on some labcoats even though there's a line about "nobody getting hurt".

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

more like Fart of the Swarm

gottem

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
There is very little about the writing for HotS I respect, but I am on board with Jim's whole fantasy of rescuing the princess and living happily ever after being dashed the second Kerrigan gets to display any agency. Plus doing a bit of proper damage to whatever black site poo poo Mengsk Junior is up to, nothing wrong with that.

Those scientists were running tests on her children, they deserve a li'l fright.

E: Kerrigan's convenient plot amnesia is total bullshit, though. I'd like to believe that she's lying about that bit and just holding her cards close, but we'll soon learn that that kind of subtlety does not exist in HotS.

Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Dec 17, 2023

Psion
Dec 13, 2002

eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS

Chillgamesh posted:

Reading the thread title as a party member’s move in LaD

Just wait until we unlock Essence of Butt Breaking

SoundwaveAU
Apr 17, 2018

There's a hotkey annoyance with me too. I bound control group 8 (and all associated hotkeys, so ctrl and shift variants) to W and put all my hatcheries on it. In this campaign, a certain important unit has critical abilities on W. Had to rebind that spell to something stupid. :P

Omobono
Feb 19, 2013

That's it! No more hiding in tomato crates! It's time to show that idiota Germany how a real nation fights!

For pasta~! CHARGE!

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

E: Kerrigan's convenient plot amnesia is total bullshit, though. I'd like to believe that she's lying about that bit and just holding her cards close, but we'll soon learn that that kind of subtlety does not exist in HotS.

:agreed:
The text doesn't not support this reading* and you might notice Kerrigan picking up Zerg control here like riding a bicycle. But there's also no direct support for it and HotS writers clearly think subtlety is for cowards.
If this was the intended reading I don't think the writers could have resisted adding a line like (negative spoilers, nothing like the following is in the game to my best knowledge) "dammit Jim, I backstabbed and killed your best friend and I enjoyed it, why are you so" for some cheap Jim/Kerri drama.

*"the artifact gave Kerrigan some of her conscience back so she really, really doesn't want to talk or even think about her Queen of Blades years because the guilt is already bad enough"

bladededge
Sep 17, 2017

im sorry every one. the throne of heroes ran out of new heroic spirits so the grail had to summon existing ones in swimsuits instead

BisbyWorl posted:


In Wings of Liberty, James Raynor was a SAD MAN who MISSED HIS GIRLFRIEND.



Sarah Kerrigan is an ANGRY WOMAN who WANTS MENGSK'S HEAD ON A loving SPIKE.


SC1 Raynor:It may not be tomorrow, darlin'. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day.

SC2 Raynor:SARAH LET'S BE GIRLFRIEND AND BOYFRIEND.

Bisby's done an excellent explanation of why removing Kerrigan's agency for the backstabbin' and mur-diddilly-urderin' sabotages her character, and there's going to be a lot more upcoming material on that topic, but let's not forget how Activision did J. Eugene Raynor dirty too.

I'd also argue that the obsession with Mengsk doesn't really make sense either what with her handily destroying his last bits of an army and sort of laughing him off like he didn't matter any more at the end of BW.

SirSamVimes
Jul 21, 2008

~* Challenge *~


I actually like how this mission sells the idea of the Zerg as at threat. Valerian gives Kerrigan access to a few drones and a mineral pile and she is able to turn that into an army that completely overruns the lab level.

BisbyWorl
Jan 12, 2019

Knowledge is pain plus observation.


bladededge posted:

I'd also argue that the obsession with Mengsk doesn't really make sense either what with her handily destroying his last bits of an army and sort of laughing him off like he didn't matter any more at the end of BW.

I mean in her defense that wasn't her anymore, now that she was just Corrupted.

She got hung out to dry by Mengsk, only to wake up several years later with the blood of billions on her hands.

Felinoid
Mar 8, 2009

Marginally better than Shepard's dancing. 2/10
I was going to make a joke about her saying that she didn't remember being the Queen of Blades and then immediately going "let me show you all the stuff I remember", but...

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

E: Kerrigan's convenient plot amnesia is total bullshit, though. I'd like to believe that she's lying about that bit and just holding her cards close, but we'll soon learn that that kind of subtlety does not exist in HotS.

Omobono posted:

:agreed:
The text doesn't not support this reading* and you might notice Kerrigan picking up Zerg control here like riding a bicycle. But there's also no direct support for it and HotS writers clearly think subtlety is for cowards.
If this was the intended reading I don't think the writers could have resisted adding a line like (negative spoilers, nothing like the following is in the game to my best knowledge) "dammit Jim, I backstabbed and killed your best friend and I enjoyed it, why are you so" for some cheap Jim/Kerri drama.

*"the artifact gave Kerrigan some of her conscience back so she really, really doesn't want to talk or even think about her Queen of Blades years because the guilt is already bad enough"

SIGH. :ignorance: Guess I better fuckin' buckle up for this trainwreck.

E: Also gently caress Valerian. I'd have put a zergling's claw on his throat before I stopped.

Felinoid fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Dec 17, 2023

megane
Jun 20, 2008



I don’t know if assuming Kerrigan’s amnesia to be a lie makes Heart’s plot make more sense, or less.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
does pissing in the ocean make it more or less salty?

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

bladededge posted:

SC1 Raynor:It may not be tomorrow, darlin'. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day.

SC2 Raynor:SARAH LET'S BE GIRLFRIEND AND BOYFRIEND.

Bisby's done an excellent explanation of why removing Kerrigan's agency for the backstabbin' and mur-diddilly-urderin' sabotages her character, and there's going to be a lot more upcoming material on that topic, but let's not forget how Activision did J. Eugene Raynor dirty too.

I'd also argue that the obsession with Mengsk doesn't really make sense either what with her handily destroying his last bits of an army and sort of laughing him off like he didn't matter any more at the end of BW.

I wrote a bunch at the start of the thread about how Jim not really holding onto that promise to avenge Fenix didn't bother me. Half of the conversations in Wings of Liberty feel like they're designed to make Raynor feel burned out and non-committal about everything he's doing, and I really latched onto that. Humanity's greatest hero who helped the Protoss defeat the Overmind was so broken by the Brood Wars that he collapsed back into petty grudges and politics, spending years fighting useless battles on the fringes of human space and chasing revenge against a man who couldn't even be bothered to assassinate him.

Of course, the OTHER half of the conversations in Wings of Liberty undermine that and paint Jim as a decisive leader who's legitimately committed to his crusade, and the only question is whether he's made the fight too personal to the point of placing the higher goal of ending tyranny at risk. But we don't need to get back into all that. The point is that I never felt like Raynor letting his venom for Kerrigan bleed out in the years between BW and SC2 was a betrayal of his character. I would have preferred the game address that change more directly and substantially, have him EARN letting go of that grudge like he did with his grudge toward Mengsk, but having it happen at all doesn't bother me.

That other bit DOES bother me though. Kerrigan had moved beyond Mengsk in Brood War. He was beneath her, and she told him as much. There's no good reason she couldn't have kept that attitude going into this game. They've made it very clear in these introductory scenes that she loves Raynor and the fact that he overcame impossible odds to save her (including his own reasons to let her die) means the world to her. Why have her BEGIN with this obsession? Why not have Mengsk push her back to this hateful, bloodthirsty place?

He could even throw her past mockery back in her face when he came to ruin her chance to leave it all behind and live peacefully with Jim. "Oh, you thought DUKE was the threat Kerrigan? Look at all I've accomplished without him! You stripped me to the bone, took everything from me, and I rebuilt it all stronger than ever because you were arrogant enough to decide I was inconsequential. You're the inconsequential one, Kerrigan. You always were, whether you were my lapdog in the Sons of Korhol or crowning yourself "Bitch Queen of the Universe." You never had the wits to see what I was, what I was capable of. This time I'll make sure you learn."

It's not like Mengsk did much to establish his villain chops in the first game. Give him a big moment right at the start, make us despise him, on-board us to that Zerg RIP AND TEAR mindset so when Kerrigan starts doing what she does in this game we're eager to ride with her. If you want the Zerg to be on the heroes' side, give them a villain worth fighting.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
Well, sure, but that was the Queen of Blades at the end of Brood War, not Sarah Kerrigan. We've conveniently wiped all events between Mengsk's betrayal and right now from the record, so we can let her be the hero of this story without having to answer any hard questions about the billions of people she sorta needlessly killed in the background of the previous campaign. Turns out that kind of limits the options for motivations, but hey, everyone can get on board with a revenge story.

GodFish
Oct 10, 2012

We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.

BisbyWorl posted:

Mastery Achievements
Mad Dash - Destroy 3 Factories in the "Lab Rat" mission in less then 10 minutes on Hard difficulty.

I've been starting my first replay of HotS since the game released and oof, these are nasty. They might get easier further in the game, but zerglings are so weak at this point that it took me 3 or 4 tries to get this in under the timer. Second one was alright, and I don't know how you could possibly do the 3rd one stuck with just zerglings and queens.

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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Ah, yes, Zerglings. On Normal they're really the only unit you need after a few upgrades.

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