WUB WUB WUB (aka: HotS Spoiler Thread)

Post Reply
User avatar
Lavarinth
Xel'naga Administrator
Xel'naga Administrator
Posts: 6539
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:21 pm
Location: His Ashworld Planet

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Lavarinth »

RazorclawX wrote:
Falchion wrote:
RazorclawX wrote:This is clearly done on the premise that Starcraft 2 is a love story.

Too bad most people don't agree with that.
Dude, the very first Starcraft was never intended to be a love story.
I must be dreaming. This is the second time this week someone replied to a post I made where somebody didn't bother to read what I wrote.
Don't worry, we are both dreaming of the same person.
- - Lavarinth
Campaign Creations Administrator
User avatar
Hercanic
Protoss Stargate Concierge
Protoss Stargate Concierge
Posts: 1286
Joined: Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:11 am
Contact:

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Hercanic »

IskatuMesk wrote:Happens all the time on Team Liquid. You kind of get used to it after a while.
Yeah, but you're wrong. You DO get used to it after a while.

=oP
User avatar
RazorclawX
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 2078
Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:19 pm

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by RazorclawX »

The cinematics for Heart of the Swarm are posted on Youtube.


Pertaining to the ending:
Spoiler
The leaked animatic is the ending, for the most part. It's obviously different here and there, but the gist of it is the same.

Had this strong feeling about it since they showed Mengsk's office blow up in the Vengeance trailer that wasn't part of the opening movie. That was one of the differences, incidentally... and I don't think that made any sense either.

Pertaining to some fanservice:
Spoiler
Raynor yells at Kerrigan about Fenix. Yeah, sounds like they threw a bone to people.
Image
-- Razorclaw X
Creator of Wanderers of Sorceria and Vision of the Future
User avatar
Laconius
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 240
Joined: Thu Apr 16, 2009 10:36 am

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Laconius »

RazorclawX wrote:The cinematics for Heart of the Swarm are posted on Youtube.


Pertaining to the ending:
Spoiler
The leaked animatic is the ending, for the most part. It's obviously different here and there, but the gist of it is the same.

Had this strong feeling about it since they showed Mengsk's office blow up in the Vengeance trailer that wasn't part of the opening movie. That was one of the differences, incidentally... and I don't think that made any sense either.

Pertaining to some fanservice:
Spoiler
Raynor yells at Kerrigan about Fenix. Yeah, sounds like they threw a bone to people.
Spoiler
Lol, so Kerrigan's appendages now magically give her the power to fly? That scene near the end just looked outright silly.

Also, they have finally succeeded in turning Zeratul into a complete and utter pussy. He doesn't even fight back.

Watching the HotS cutscene montage on youtube > Wasting $40
Ours is a thought-tormented age.
User avatar
wibod
Zerg Creep Colony Landscaper
Zerg Creep Colony Landscaper
Posts: 428
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 7:55 am

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by wibod »

I personally liked when Kerrigan pulled the mag out of the Ghost's rifle, reinserted it and then pulled the charging handle, some elite operator. Also her rifle having a fucking laser sight on the scope, which completely defeats the point of having a tacticool laser pointer.

Kerrigan has the hots for Raynor for no real reason, and has ridiculous psychic powers. Why the fuck is Zeratul a bitch?

Lol primal Zerg makes no sense by and large. Also Blizzard doesn't understand the definition the evolution. And now she has tentacles after a few days chilling in a purple egg. Lol Duran, that voice filter is fucking awful. THE END OF ALL THINGS! Starcraft just went full DBZ. Kerrigan impaling herself was fucking pointless considering the range of motion of her tentacles.

Emo Zerg Kerrigan is fucking retarded, and loves Jim so I'm guessing that will create a shit ton of rule 34.

Mengsk is apparently Emperor Palpatine.

HAHAHAHAHA flying, and Raynor now loves his waifu again after she just slaughtered a planet.
Image
User avatar
Falchion
Zerg Hydralisk Nail Stylist
Zerg Hydralisk Nail Stylist
Posts: 593
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 4:32 pm
Location: Bragança Paulista, Brazil (Da most borin' place in the world)
Contact:

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Falchion »

Man... I... don't... how?

Oh, well, after the spoilers, I point out the simplest of conclusions:

The greatest service Metzen could ever do to writing community these days... is stop writing.
How I became a troll in a single post (And you can too!!! :D ): link

Image
User avatar
mark_009_vn
Zerg Drone Masseur
Zerg Drone Masseur
Posts: 356
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:56 am
Location: [[THIS USER, HE IS A CHAR]]

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by mark_009_vn »

wibod wrote:...tacticool laser pointer...Zeratul a bitch....tentacles....fucking....THE END OF ALL THINGS!...DBZ... Kerrigan...fucking...tentacles....Emo Zerg Kerrigan....fucking retarded...rule 34...Emperor Palpatine....HAHAHAHAHA....waifu....planet.
Woah... Looks like I missed quite a show...
Image

"I'm begging you, let me work!" - Osamu Tezuka
User avatar
Ricky_Honejasi
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Posts: 2011
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:50 pm

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Now I am wondering if some people will have trouble to even get their WoL client usable when HotS releases.

See, SC2 wants to be "optimize" again and it requires me a free 50 GB to do so this time. That's very ridiculous and it's annoying for someone like me who tend to near-full my main hard drive. At 2.0.4, it was only a 15 GB free requirement so it was any half-reasonable considering WoL's 15 GB of dependancy data + updates.
User avatar
Falchion
Zerg Hydralisk Nail Stylist
Zerg Hydralisk Nail Stylist
Posts: 593
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 4:32 pm
Location: Bragança Paulista, Brazil (Da most borin' place in the world)
Contact:

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Falchion »

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:Now I am wondering if some people will have trouble to even get their WoL client usable when HotS releases.

See, SC2 wants to be "optimize" again and it requires me a free 50 GB to do so this time. That's very ridiculous and it's annoying for someone like me who tend to near-full my main hard drive. At 2.0.4, it was only a 15 GB free requirement so it was any half-reasonable considering WoL's 15 GB of dependancy data + updates.
Fifty GIGAS? For HotS? I thought it'd be close to 10, given it's just an expo...

I wonder why would Blizzard take a man's quarter of an HD for...
How I became a troll in a single post (And you can too!!! :D ): link

Image
User avatar
Ricky_Honejasi
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Posts: 2011
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:50 pm

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Falchion wrote:Fifty GIGAS? For HotS? I thought it'd be close to 10, given it's just an expo...
I didn't buy HotS yet and I still had to free up 50 GB to get through said "optimization" phase.

But the truly worst is being forced to use an additional 30 GB (15 GB to 45 GB) for your SC2 installation. About 10 GB for HotS dependencies ... and about 20 GB for having every asset in EVERY language possible.

10 GB for HotS was to be expected. However, the second part really irks me since most people only know up to 3 languages maximum yet you are forced to install Korean, SEA and other language assets at absolutely no benefit to you whatsoever.

The only required things were language TEXT files in every language which could be useful for map authors for translating yet would be tiny drops in the water filesize-wise.

If they wanted to support multiple language assets, they should only do it on a need-basis for the players wanting it. Thus even them would only increase their total dependency filesize by 3-6 GB or so for that extra language or two.
User avatar
Ricky_Honejasi
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Posts: 2011
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:50 pm

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

I dig deeper with a MPQ Editor and for the most part, what take that much space are the damned campaign video files for all languages. About 17-20 GB alone are used just to have WoL and HotS campaign videos for all languages.

However, I do remember that the predownloader for HotS files had a total of about 5-8 GB or so. You can't magically fit 30 GB into 5-8 GB when you factor 20 GB of pre-compressed videos. In addition, the MPQ Editor considers pretty much all my non-English dependencies as "incomplete" and unreadable short of supposedly seeing files as existent yet unextractable. Meanwhile, I can extract my English language dependencies just fine.

Thus, my biggest fear is they bloated the filesize 100% pointlessly as it seems extremely unlikely they even contain the real files. Like if Blizzard decided to reserve 20 GB for whatever language files you might need in the future.
User avatar
RazorclawX
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 2078
Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:19 pm

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by RazorclawX »

I had absolutely no trouble downloading/optimizing... it only took about 20 minutes.
Image
-- Razorclaw X
Creator of Wanderers of Sorceria and Vision of the Future
User avatar
Lavarinth
Xel'naga Administrator
Xel'naga Administrator
Posts: 6539
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:21 pm
Location: His Ashworld Planet

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Lavarinth »

Game was ready for me in a few minutes as well.

I noticed no dramatic 20gb loss of harddrive space.
- - Lavarinth
Campaign Creations Administrator
User avatar
Ricky_Honejasi
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Xel'naga Solar Moderator
Posts: 2011
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:50 pm

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Lavarinth wrote:I noticed no dramatic 20gb loss of harddrive space.
Odd.

Closest possible justification I could find is me checking on all languages' text in the Editor for the Warlords and Merchants map in specific. It could act as a possible trigger for what happened to me.

I tend to do that to ensure my Warlords & Merchants has its proper English text instead of "Param\Something\Something" as text for every dialog label for non-English SC2 clients which looks ungodly ugly. That and actually having unit tooltips and such.

Then SC2 might somehow detect that and decide to "prepare" *all* my language assets.
User avatar
IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 8328
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:40 pm
Location: M͈̙̞͍͞ͅE̹H̨͇̰͈͕͇̫Ì̩̳CO̼̩̤͖͘ జ్ఞ‌ా

Re: WUB WUB WUB

Post by IskatuMesk »

I can't believe I did this. This was by far one of the worst gaming experiences I've had in a long time. Hots is a conan-level bad game.

Spoilers etc

This campaign is dull. If you look past the juvenile and painful dialogue you end up with a lot of recycled overprocessed garbage and no content. Once again Blizzard forgets their campaign AI in WoL didn't have a defend function and it still doesn't defend in hots. So they forcefeed more triggered events and spawned waves instead of making real B&D maps.

This campaign is brutal. Brutally easy. Half of my reloads were due to being entirely clumsy, especially in the areas where I wasn't able to actually see enemy units because all of the disproportionate shapes kind of meshed together with the terrain objects rather easily. Sc2's washed out, ugly graphics really played against it when there was anything involving terran or zerg (aka everywhere).

There are four RPG bosses largely built on the telegraphed attack design(the archangel doesn't count to me, it was far too generic and easy). I felt the first one, the penis, was a fairly decent boss fight. The second one was untested - burrowing your roaches causes the boss to attack them instead of Kerrigan, making him even more of a joke. The third boss is a bit gimmicky, all you need to do is dash around and chisel him away. If you run out of mana you're dead, though, should you get caught. Not too bad, but not as good of a fight as the first guy.

The fourth boss, Zurven, seems to give some casuals on TL a lot of problems. He took me around a half dozen or more tries, probably the most difficult thing of the entire game. What made it hard for me was that the collision indicators for the tentacles were kind of inaccurate and a bit lagged. That and I found it impossible to manage more than kerrigan on those fights, probably because I haven't played any sc2 in well over a year.

I don't really have any predisposed opinion on the lore butchering like Primal zerg or stukov. I have no attachment to starcraft and I think Blizzard can do whatever the fuck they want with it. After all, the Primal zerg have banelings, roaches, and other things they should never have had since the zerg didn't start with it. But, hell, Auir had Stalkers trapped on it from the overmind battle and colossi in the lake right beside the overmind, so at this point those wounds don't have nerves anymore.

Narud was portrayed incredibly poorly. The mission was of the more challenging sort, as I had to reload once due to accidentally pushing stukov onto a platform before I was ready, and at least twice more for semi-related fuckups I think. The CGI was horrible. Great, you threw some money at some high schoolers. Psionic battles shouldn't just be about people throwing each other into walls ad infinitum. Kerrigan falls for the stupidest, dumbest "trick" in the book like a sad sack of dead puppies. What a fucking joke. Every time Narud opened his mouth I felt I was 10 watching some Saturday cartoon. Oh, wait, the cartoons I watched still had better writing.

The campaign was very much casualified. Infestors instant mind control everything. Overpowered beyond words, of course. So many indicators for things the dialogue is already telling you about. I especially did not like the indicators in the boss fights. I think arbitrary red circles for "run away" should be avoided at every possible costs. They break the immersion. Have shadows for missiles/tentacles, etc. Even if the shadows are a bit unrealistic, that is literally a thousand times better than "lol! Red indicator! Walk away from here!"

The campaign's gameplay felt like some random wc3 campaign from sear.ch. Amateur, improperly balanced. Some maps had interesting ideas, but were very poorly executed because they relied so much on triggered events. Unbelievably, the very same problem that plagues the FPS genre has come to the RTS genre.

Where would we look to find a more suitable reflection for a campaign? Probably Exigo, minus RPG maps. I don't like RPG maps. I'm glad sc2 kept those boss centric but they were still a trial of patience. Personal preference there, by the way. I realize everyone is bad at melee and wants every map to be a attack-move raynor the marine through hours of endless installation corridors. I'm glad Blizzard showed restraint. The RPG missions gave me the most trouble, though.

I was sincerely hoping for genuine multi-base gameplay and not "expand here and defend against automated waves" or "no you will never have enough money for some big 200/200 fighting". The enemies have these huge bases and don't make any effort to defend themselves. Most of the last map is just trudging through wall after wall of hero units and bunkers right next to all of their production you just nigh-effortlessly blew up. WoL was like this, too, but the mission design felt more... tested. Dehaka's grab doesn't aggro enemies. I stood in front of a pack of guys grabbing them one by one with zero response. I'm sure that's a data editor flag. Interns.

The game has both ingame cinema and ingame cinema that they frapsed and then encoded with very bad quality. Just like WoL and diablo 3, their cinematics have macroblocking up the alley and a lot of bad colorspacing due to low bitrates. They didn't bother to fraps high-quality cinematics, the Zerus forest cinematic is easily one of the worst pre-rendered videos I've seen in the last decade, with aliasing and blurry textures everywhere. What a fucking mess. The background for Zeratul is a blurry disaster because of the skybox depth of field bug. The textures everywhere look like they came out of the n64. Holy fuck that entire string of scenes was like goff puking rainbows. I am astonished that got past even Blizzard's non-existent QA. How can anyone live with themselves after releasing something that busted? I know I couldn't.

The main reason I got hots is just to bypass any difficulty getting the assets. The campaign was the price I paid for that. I felt obligated to play it after WoL being my very first LP. It's not an experience I care to ever have again. Are there useful assets? Yes. There's some decent new doodads, including what I believed to be a new space platform pipe asset that could replace all of those disgustingly badly animated cables from WoL. The ice tileset looked decent and a lot of the new protoss assets would look pretty cool once I reskin them. The primal zerg were a huge disappointment, all based on the same base models and hideously badly animated. Some nice new Terran stuff. Can't win them all, I guess, but there's definitely some cool things custom content producers can make use of.

All in all, HoTS continues down the downwards spiral diablo 2 set up that wings of liberty bottomed out in. Some day they'll reach Hell, and form a pact with apple. Then, and only then, can Titan be released.

I'll post my audio review for this here soon.

/edit

Here, I recorded this when I was really tired and had just finished it last night.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/hotsreviewp1.mp3
Post Reply