StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[Marco]

There no where near as bad as the Star Wars universe.  I swear, the time period between 'A New Hope' and 'Empire Strikes Back' is so fucking cluttered right now, I don't think anyone knows WTF really happened then.  Hah, saying that makes me feel like such a geek.  I haven't said something geeky like that in months. 

[DrumsofWar]

There no where near as bad as the Star Wars universe.  I swear, the time period between 'A New Hope' and 'Empire Strikes Back' is so fucking cluttered right now, I don't think anyone knows WTF really happened then.

You think that's bad, it literally says that in the Star Wars Chronology book for this time period.

[thebrowncloud]

If it were "save this character" or "get minerals" it'd be funny if that character died even if you chose that mission.

Ultimately they won't have the diversity of say a Bioware game where the outcome of your every choice affects the storyline.  They do after all have to have some kind of canon for future games, books, mmorpgs, etc. 

Considering that Blizzard has proven themselves willing to retcon the bajeebers out of anything for almost any reason, I don't think they're too worried about that being a problem.  SC2 will be canon only until the SC2: Wings of Liberty novelization comes out, which will then be overridden by whatever Blizzard decides works best for SC3 or Galaxy of StarCraft's storyline.

I'm confused. What do you mean by "retcon the bajeebers"? StarCraft has only ever gotten three officially confirmed retcons:
1. Artanis' position as Executor starting right before Episode III and ending as late as his inaugeration as Hierarch.
2. The original 13 worlds that made up the Confederacy were actually just the core worlds, making their domain much larger with the outlying colonies/fringe worlds.
3. The Battle of New Gettysburg now takes place on the surface of Tarsonis, not the orbital space platform as shown in the game.

The rest of the alleged "retcons," as of now, are merely unclear inconsistencies. But that can happen when the universe and list of characters you have to work with aren't infinitely large. Star Wars, as far as I know, has no retcons or inconsistencies because they can just make up new characters, races, planets, and galaxies whenever they want to add anything new to the series. Because of the vastness of their universe, events hold significantly less magnitude when they occur because there are always so many places that will be completely unaffected by them. I'm no expert with WarCraft either, but that series has gotten pretty much infinitely large by now as well. Not as bad as Star Wars, but you know it's big when medievaldragon's interviews with the Blizz lore people very rarely mention any characters from WarCraft 3 or earlier (especialy considering that is all he ever wants to talk with them about, too).  :P

I was actually typing this up and about to post when I noticed Desler brought up Star Wars, too. Oh well, it's still a valid point.

[Thalraxal]

If it were "save this character" or "get minerals" it'd be funny if that character died even if you chose that mission.

Ultimately they won't have the diversity of say a Bioware game where the outcome of your every choice affects the storyline.  They do after all have to have some kind of canon for future games, books, mmorpgs, etc. 

Considering that Blizzard has proven themselves willing to retcon the bajeebers out of anything for almost any reason, I don't think they're too worried about that being a problem.  SC2 will be canon only until the SC2: Wings of Liberty novelization comes out, which will then be overridden by whatever Blizzard decides works best for SC3 or Galaxy of StarCraft's storyline.

I'm confused. What do you mean by "retcon the bajeebers"? StarCraft has only ever gotten three officially confirmed retcons:
1. Artanis' position as Executor starting right before Episode III and ending as late as his inaugeration as Hierarch.
2. The original 13 worlds that made up the Confederacy were actually just the core worlds, making their domain much larger with the outlying colonies/fringe worlds.
3. The Battle of New Gettysburg now takes place on the surface of Tarsonis, not the orbital space platform as shown in the game.

The rest of the alleged "retcons," as of now, are merely unclear inconsistencies. But that can happen when the universe and list of characters you have to work with aren't infinitely large. Star Wars, as far as I know, has no retcons or inconsistencies because they can just make up new characters, races, planets, and galaxies whenever they want to add anything new to the series. Because of the vastness of their universe, events hold significantly less magnitude when they occur because there are always so many places that will be completely unaffected by them. I'm no expert with WarCraft either, but that series has gotten pretty much infinitely large by now as well. Not as bad as Star Wars, but you know it's big when medievaldragon's interviews with the Blizz lore people very rarely mention any characters from WarCraft 3 or earlier (especialy considering that is all he ever wants to talk with them about, too).  :P

I was actually typing this up and about to post when I noticed Desler brought up Star Wars, too. Oh well, it's still a valid point.

I'm mostly saying this in regards to WarCraft.  In the WC3/WoW era, they've had some pretty big, messy retcons (Draenei and the Eredar, the shifting timeframe between the opening of the Dark Portal and the start of the First War, Garona's heritage and more!).  If they're willing to do that with what's their currently most profitable franchise, they're going to be willing to do the same with StarCraft.

There's some stuff that makes sense, like defining who the Player Characters in SC1 are (The Magistrate, The Cerebrate, The Executor and The Captain).  So as much as Artanis annoyed me in Brood War, making him The Executor makes sense.  It's the same thing they had to do with the WarCraft I and WarCraft II storylines on a smaller scale, since in those cases they had two parallel campaigns resulting in total victory for one faction.  They're retcons, but they're good retcons.  But then there's things like General Duke being a Colonel before defecting to the Sons of Korhal that just seems silly.

Blizzard favours a loose canon.  I like to believe it's just a bad habit they fell into during their WarCraft I, WarCraft II and WC2: Beyond the Dark Portal days when it was necessary.

[IskatuMesk]

Honestly the whole mothership and colossus thing was the straw that broke the camel's back for me and SC's story. Those are just absolutely ridiculous and make not a shred of sense. Not that I ever really cared for SC's universe that much to begin with, but it's really silly how they try to justify these kind of things.

[DrumsofWar]

Well, they never did say what unit the planet killer in SC1 was.

[IskatuMesk]

No, they just showed it in a cinematic.

Not that it would make any remote sense for it to be a mothership in the first place.

[thebrowncloud]

Well, they never did say what unit the planet killer in SC1 was.

It's actually still not officially confirmed that the mothership will be filling that role, as planet cracker has been an ability that has come and gone a few times during its development. However, Blizzard has officially stated that the protoss ships responsible for incinerating the early planets (Chau Sara from the opening video, Mar Sara, and Antiga Prime) were not motherships. Those ships served as the "conceptual anchor" for the mothership in early development.

[DrumsofWar]

I guess we can consider the planetcrackers in SC1 as prototypes developed by the Protoss that eventually became the motherships, or something.  Besides, it's logical that they only had 1 of those things and it was destroyed or they'd be able to just vape Char easily.

[thebrowncloud]

I guess we can consider the planetcrackers in SC1 as prototypes developed by the Protoss that eventually became the motherships, or something.  Besides, it's logical that they only had 1 of those things and it was destroyed or they'd be able to just vape Char easily.

Your guess is as good as mine on that one. The opening cinematic is the only time we ever see it and the Fleet of the Executor incinerated Chau Sara, Mar Sara, and Antiga Prime during their campaign, so they likely used exactly the same ship(s). Artanis was responsible for destroying Braxis, but there is no telling what kind of ship(s) he used for that either. In the comic, however, the protoss (assumingly holding allegiance to the Hierarchy) incinerated Urona Sigma with at least 15 ships that look very much like carriers.

[imgwh 640x640]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/starc ... Comic1.jpg[/imgwh]

EDIT: Actually, the mothership has existed for several hundred (if not over a thousand) years prior to StarCraft 2. They were part of the fleets involved in the protoss Golden Age of Exploration, a period where the protoss traveled space and began to claim worlds that were once held by the xel'naga. The motherships, after the end of the Age, were stationed at the borders of protoss space as a statement of how far they have reached. Once they were called back into service for StarCraft 2, they may have gotten their planetcracker weapons. All I know is that the original planetcracker from the opening cinematic and the mothership were around at the same time.

[IskatuMesk]

Those are carriers.

http://starcraft2.com/features/protoss/carrier.xml

They were part of the fleets involved in the protoss Golden Age of Exploration, a period where the protoss traveled space and began to claim worlds that were once held by the xel'naga. The motherships, after the end of the Age, were stationed at the borders of protoss space as a statement of how far they have reached.

And this is why it doesn't make a lick of sense that it would be a mothership, a rare and highly prized vessel, doing menial tasks like exterminatus and putting itself in potential danger. Especially in consideration of this text,

After the loss of Aiur, however, the motherships were called back into service from the far corners of the galaxy. Now they are crewed not with mystics and historians, but with warriors.

This suggests that Motherships were originally for exploration, research, stuff like that, never intended to be just wandering the vicinity doing whatever. Why would they pull back something this big and valuable just to squelch random infestations during a period that they don't even know what the Zerg are, and for the most part, don't care?

What also doesn't make sense is why they didn't call them back during the siege of Auir. The protoss have advanced warp technology and psionics, ffs they can create artificial wormholes, they could pull Colossi or Motherships to aid in an instant if they so desired.

It's like, "Ah, we don't need motherships to deal with this. Oh, hey, our homeworld is being eaten alive, millions have died, our race is on the verge of extinction. Let'see, run away and abandon our world and the thousands still left on it, or bring in our best weapons to fight off the invasion. Hmm..."

This is a weirdness further compounded by the fact that the protoss are fanatics. Religious fanatics, at that. And many of them despise the Dark Templar, right? So why would they want to run to Shakuras? Most wouldn't. It isn't unreasonable to consider that someone would try to contact or pull in these weapons from afar simply out of desperation, but it would seem more likely that Tassadar, who we hope isn't emo and really wanted to get offed, would try every possible option to save his beloved world, people, and holy land. Not to mention the other guys. I can't remember if Aldaris dies or not during SC's vanilla campaign. He came off as the kind of guy who would do that when faced with utter annihilation.

Either the Protoss are total morons or Blizzard didn't put any effort into considering how silly that sounds.

But then again, all of SC is pretty silly. Only a few people take writing and lore very seriously, and they don't work at Blizzard.

[DrumsofWar]

I think the writing canon for SC1 before they introduced all the retcons of SC2 was very well done.  It came down a choice between creating a gameplay balance that exactly matched the SC1 canon or what they thought would bring in millions of gamers and Blizzard, as well as anyone who wants to not eat dog food, chose the option that let them expand the lake of flowing money.

[IskatuMesk]

Retcons are just an insult to the original writing and shows that the company has no respect for the former works. Starcraft is a multi-billion dollar franchise and they just throw in whatever the hell they feel like because "ROBOTS ARE COOL" instead of thinking, "Well, why not have the Colossus be a new invention, a robotic drone created to replace dwindling reserves of Protoss warriors?" No, everything has to be some ANCIENT WEAPON. Tropes and cliches alike are butchered into a fine paste with Blizzard.

You can achieve what they will achieve with Sc2 without just plowing through the lore with a bulldozer. Other companies do it all the time.

And the gameplay has absolutely nothing to do with the story in that regard.

[thebrowncloud]

Those are carriers.

http://starcraft2.com/features/protoss/carrier.xml

I was pretty sure they were carriers, but they looked a little different in this art style so I didn't want to assume.

They were part of the fleets involved in the protoss Golden Age of Exploration, a period where the protoss traveled space and began to claim worlds that were once held by the xel'naga. The motherships, after the end of the Age, were stationed at the borders of protoss space as a statement of how far they have reached.

And this is why it doesn't make a lick of sense that it would be a mothership, a rare and highly prized vessel, doing menial tasks like exterminatus and putting itself in potential danger. Especially in consideration of this text,

After the loss of Aiur, however, the motherships were called back into service from the far corners of the galaxy. Now they are crewed not with mystics and historians, but with warriors.

This suggests that Motherships were originally for exploration, research, stuff like that, never intended to be just wandering the vicinity doing whatever. Why would they pull back something this big and valuable just to squelch random infestations during a period that they don't even know what the Zerg are, and for the most part, don't care?

A good point. These vessels were used to study and observe the new planets and species that they were discovering, not to destroy them. The power that the ships held was for the benefit of protoss learning, not the destruction of worlds.

What also doesn't make sense is why they didn't call them back during the siege of Auir. The protoss have advanced warp technology and psionics, ffs they can create artificial wormholes, they could pull Colossi or Motherships to aid in an instant if they so desired.

It's like, "Ah, we don't need motherships to deal with this. Oh, hey, our homeworld is being eaten alive, millions have died, our race is on the verge of extinction. Let'see, run away and abandon our world and the thousands still left on it, or bring in our best weapons to fight off the invasion. Hmm..."

The reason for this is actually because of the last part of the quote that you provided. The motherships’ crew consisted of mystics and historians, not warriors. It is part of protoss culture that you choose your role in society early; either a life of war and creation (the Khalai Caste) or one of war and destruction (the Templar Caste). The Judicator Caste falls somewhere in between, but that’s not important. The sort of protoss that were on the motherships at the time were not warriors. They didn’t use the powers of their ships for combat and destruction; in fact, it was against their moral code as explorers to do so (a direct result of the Kalath Intercession incident with the colossi). In order for the motherships to become battle-worthy with a full crew ready to kill would take months, if not years, of training. And considering that the events from the beginning of the Invasion of Aiur to the evacuation all transpired in less than a year, it’s, imo, sensible that the motherships didn’t make it in time.

It’s also worthy of note that there were several other protoss worlds nearby that were in much better positions to aid Aiur, yet they didn’t. Each protoss has their own world they hail from and, depending on how long they have lived there, they may value it over the homeworld. It’s a similar case with the mothership crew. Most of them have known the mothership to be their home for the majority of their lives. Some protoss just legitimately don’t care about Aiur all that much.

This is a weirdness further compounded by the fact that the protoss are fanatics. Religious fanatics, at that. And many of them despise the Dark Templar, right? So why would they want to run to Shakuras? Most wouldn't. It isn't unreasonable to consider that someone would try to contact or pull in these weapons from afar simply out of desperation, but it would seem more likely that Tassadar, who we hope isn't emo and really wanted to get offed, would try every possible option to save his beloved world, people, and holy land. Not to mention the other guys. I can't remember if Aldaris dies or not during SC's vanilla campaign. He came off as the kind of guy who would do that when faced with utter annihilation.

Either the Protoss are total morons or Blizzard didn't put any effort into considering how silly that sounds.

But then again, all of SC is pretty silly. Only a few people take writing and lore very seriously, and they don't work at Blizzard.

Most of the protoss actually didn’t want to leave Aiur to its fate. Aldaris was among them and Artanis was reluctant to, but Zeratul saw it as the only way and Fenix, from that little that we saw him during that time, didn’t appear to object. Many protoss did end up staying behind and nearly all of them died for it. Some of them found refuge in their own small bands of survivors, others went underground and ended up falling under the influence of Ulrezaj when he returned.

Tassadar knew that what he did was the only way to destroy the Overmind given the short amount of time he had. His goal wasn’t to save Aiur from the zerg, but to prevent a far more grim future. If you recall, the Overmind’s goal for going to Aiur was to use the energies at the xel’naga landing site to help create his own zerg/protoss hybrid that would be under his own control. Chances are, he would have failed to make anything intelligent because of the various obstacles that stand in the way of creating a sentient anything via with the zerg gene, let alone a protoss. But the threat of his success still loomed and Tassadar knew that the hybrid would be the destruction of everything, not just Aiur. Aldaris didn’t look this far into the future, but it’s debatable as to whether or not he even considered why the zerg came to Aiur other than to destroy the protoss, which isn’t entirely the case.

I would probably go with the “protoss are morons” option, but “nearsighted” is probably the term I’d use. Very few of them look ahead at what is to come. They are mostly a species that lives in the past and present.

[Lavarinth]

I have to agree, ultimately with Isk.

They had any option to their disposal, as creators of the original lore and now the sequel- So why opt to retcon when they can simply work around? And to add to this- I understand it's a heavy-duty-do-it-all ship.. But why call it a Mothership or even have the relations to that of a mother ship, why not allow it to be something unique and an almost "ultra" looking ship designed FOR combat.