I'd like to write an argument about how Bioware at least switches things up abit, but I think it's more fair to say that Blizzard's Favourite Plot simply dominates the story and cast more. While the Baldur's Gate PC, the two NWN1 PCs, KotOR PC, Shepherd and The Warden are all some variation of The Chosen One/Last of their Kind/Sole Survivor they do find themselves facing very different foes and situations. Seravok, Irenicus, The Five, Mellisan, Mephistopheles, Darth Malek, Seran, Sovereign, Loghain and the Archdemon are all very different villains in terms of plans, goals and threat level. Meanwhile, it's far to easy to compare the Xel'naga to the Titans and The Fallen One to Sargeras and the Hybrids to the Burning Legion. Heck, I'm pretty dang sure that The Fallen One is also one of Sargeras' titles too.
I really think that's what annoys me the most about SC2's story: they've decided to throw away their alraedy established villains in favour of what basically amounts to Space Sargeras.
Switching the villains is a given, but that's not enough considering if we compare the two companies; one is making games that are putting gameplay first, multiplayer second, story third (and there's no way you are telling me the melee is worse off than the story itself) versus a company that prioritizes graphics first, story second, gameplay 10th, and no such thing as multiplayer.
f you took away how great DAO/ME looked I guarantee none of you would have been claimed it was remotely good at storytelling because face it, it's the engine that powers the artistic design of Bioware's creations to life and that is why they are graphics dependent. Baldur's Gate and KOTOR and all that old stuff was relatively good looking for it's time and for sure starting from KOTOR their products were meant for higher grade computers so there's no merit in pulling that stuff out either.
Also note that I only emphasised the graphical section. The engines for Bioware games are incredibly lackluster when it actually comes to "realism", specially DAO where instead of opting to do the WoW thing and let character models mesh into each other for the sake of gameplay, we get gigantic hitbox circles where if I enter into your space with daggers instead of getting the advantage over your claymore I actually have to stop attacking and slowly back away like an idiot so you can hit me; just so I can hit you. And obviously there's no jumping which only leaves the relatively boring climb/cover in ME.
Point is, Blizzard gets a slightly bigger leeway because they give us a wider multiplayer experience whereas the only thing you can do in current Bioware games is learn to cheese harder and harder until you are soloing through with a stick naked. And while WoW does stick a lot of text in their quest logs it's not like the game was majorly voice acted anyway whereas ME/DAO love to boast about their voiceovers except 80% of their "lore" comes from codexes that require manual eye movement. The concept isn't wrong but it's clearly misdirection marketing.
Or do people actually care how stupid their weekly Lich King raid goes story wise rather than who gets the next Shadowmourne or who wiped the damn raid despite having 30% buff?
Modding capabilities if we look at their respective games it is roughly the same so I won't go there.
I agree. Perhaps I came off harsh about Bioware, it's just that they should be held in disdain for blatantly repeating the same plot elements, but that's not to say their writing and execution isn't any good for each instance that it occurs (Their games are RPGs - the plot is even more essential to keep the player interested).
Ironically enough while I felt that everything up to TFT had better voice acting than DAO/ME1-2, SC2 jobbed hard. It's not like SC2 campaign had the choice dialogue lines either, but it sure felt like it given how bad it was.
In SC it seems to just be that Mengsk, Kerrigan and the Overmind (albeit with the ambition of reaching perfection) are after power for the sake of power.
Mengks went from revenge to power. Same with Kerrigan. Overmind went from doing it's job, to denying it's destiny. However the execution basically made it the way you put it. Doesn't help that most of the characters have to be fleshed out in novels and 3rd party crap approved by Blizzard which most of us will never touch, though apparently most novels actually do a decent job of story telling, something I can't say for Blizzard games.
That said, the only villains I know in Blizz verse that pretty much flat out says I AM EVIL CAUSE YA KNOW I AM EVIL and have been fleshed out is Diablo, and even then we find out Mephy was banging one of Tyrael's cousins or something. Now that's wrong. On the plus side like Mesk always says Diablo is currently the only lore left that still has it's eerie feel and really the only tidbits of lore put out there (GAME WISE mostly) isn't enough to fuck up anyone's nostalgic trip from the past but honestly that's just because D2 nor D1 never had so much as a story as it did a really awesome atmosphere, specially D1. To this day it's damn clear the most memorable Blizzard track is Tristram.
The editor has a "Donny Vermillion death" unit where he's a busted robot. Maybe they decided that was just too silly.
Or maybe they are saving it up for a patch content or HotS. His exit wasn't exactly verifiable you know? That "brother" could just be plugged in memory or even a robotic brother. But yeah chances are it's scrapped.
