Campaign Creations

Saint_Kerrigan wrote:Making Kerrigan a good guy is the second worst decision they made, and I swear if they don't make Kerrigan backstab everyone in the next game...

Meh, considering the Hybrid plot that started up in Brood War, we always knew that Kerrigan would end up being the lesser of two evils. It was just a matter of how they'd sell her alliance with Team Good Guy, or if they'd instead have Kerrigan's chronic backstabbing disorder from Brood War catch up with her.

Speaking of the Hybrids, am I the only one disappointed with Blizzard's portrayal of them? Maar's a pushover, and the ones at the End of the Universe are just cannon fodder. The only remotely cool one is the Hybrid Reaver on Castanaar, but he's entirely optional and most players won't even get a chance to meet him.

For perfected alien race.. They sure are somewhat pathetic.

The Hybrids were indeed totally uninteresting. They are inded portrayed like just stronger diablo mooks or something. I wuld have prefered they had gone the HL2's Combine Advisor route, with having the not bothering to speaking the lesser creatures, and each of them was like a massive force of destruction. They should have been even stornger than Kerrigan, except perhaps on controlling zerg.

Alevice wrote:The Hybrids were indeed totally uninteresting. They are inded portrayed like just stronger diablo mooks or something. I wuld have prefered they had gone the HL2's Combine Advisor route, with having the not bothering to speaking the lesser creatures, and each of them was like a massive force of destruction. They should have been even stornger than Kerrigan, except perhaps on controlling zerg.

That's what I liked about the Hybrid Reaver on Castanaar. It doesn't care about you, Jim or the Dominion, it's just smashing its way out of the lab and you happen to be in its way. You can't kill it, you can't even hurt it. All you can do is run away.

Maar, meanwhile, is nothing but a Torrasque clone, without the features that make the Torrasque fun/terrifying. The Torrasques (Enslavers 1 and Brood War, Episode V) are an extension of the Cerebrates you're fighting. They're a symptom, not the source of the problem. Maar, meanwhile, is the source of the problem and keeps on trying to wander into your base and getting killed. Getting killed fifteen times in a row and respawning on the other side of the map and doing it all over again when you're supposed to be an evil mastermind does not make you a badass. I wouldn't mind his chattiness if Blizzard was better at writing taunts, or if Maar was a bit easier to understand.

That said though, Maar's the first Hybrid players will encounter, he should have been a better demonstration of just how dangerous they are. I can think of at least a half a dozen different ways they could have made Maar a better introduction for the Hybrids. Heck, even if they played up the things he'd done prior to Zeratul's arrival on Zhakul abit more (corrupting the Protoss there, capturing and draining energy from the Preservers), they would have been successful.

The thing is, the Torrasque was neither fun nor terrifying to start with. It was nothing more than an Ultralisk with double the hitpoints and damage. To add to the insult, SC1's Ultralisks didn't have splash damage, so the worse it could do to any decent player was wrecking a bunker or two before biting the dust. Nothing a good bunker/siege tanks couldn't handle.

It'd of been nice to see these "enhanced" creatures visually in SC2, as in appearing differently in cinematics than the normal units, such as Kerrigan's hydralisks.

In my mind, the hybrid reaver on Castanaar is the only hybrid that appears in SC2.

All the others... were just a poorly written nightmare.

Both Krazy and Archangel covered the ground on how crappy the writing was, but it may be worse than we all think. There were a few hints that the Burning Horde and the Hybrids are one and the same big baddie, as evidenced by Metzen having his hands in both stories and the prominence of the name Naga in both. (That both stories are the same one-dimensional linear cliche is also a yellow flag.)

Hopefully, there isn't some overlapping story in the future. Rise of Legends showed that while having scifi vs. fantasy is a nice idea, it doesn't translate to gameplay well (and RoL's writer was better than Metzen).

As for the campaign, I tried a Hard run with Vehicles only and you still can't beat just massing Marines and plowing the map. Going Air is even worse unless you can micro Vikings well as you'll be stuck in the mission for a while, which is terrible considering the time limits on many of them.

DrumsofWar wrote:Both Krazy and Archangel covered the ground on how crappy the writing was, but it may be worse than we all think. There were a few hints that the Burning Horde and the Hybrids are one and the same big baddie, as evidenced by Metzen having his hands in both stories and the prominence of the name Naga in both. (That both stories are the same one-dimensional linear cliche is also a yellow flag.)

Okay, that's just stupid. You do know Naga are an existing mythological creature?

Ok, guess this is the right thread to post this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E95k-Gajk1E
There are 4 parts. It's basically a rant about SC2's storyline fail ^^

Lwerewolf wrote:Ok, guess this is the right thread to post this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E95k-Gajk1E
There are 4 parts. It's basically a rant about SC2's storyline fail ^^

Mildly entertaining, and he does brings up a few interesting points, some connections I didn't notice before, and he's read the novels where I haven't.

Medivh as the Overmind! Surprised I didn't notice that before, but it's there. Dang.

He's also suceeded in making me really annoyed about how dumb they made Zeratul in SC2. "Who could have created such a thing!" indeed.

And wait. Seriously? They made the Xel'Naga into a good guy version of Mass Effect's Reapers? Uhg. Is this for real? I liked it better when the Xel'naga were all dead.

Plus, how will they balance the Xel'Naga against the other 3 races? There's a reason they copped out of making the Murlocks or Burning Legion playable beyond a map or two in Warcraft 3.

DrumsofWar wrote:Plus, how will they balance the Xel'Naga against the other 3 races? There's a reason they copped out of making the Murlocks or Burning Legion playable beyond a map or two in Warcraft 3.

They would make it the most micro heavy race ever.

They would spawn mini ravens that would shoot 15 damage seeker missiles at 15 energy a pop that would cost 100 minerals.

The koreans would love it.