Campaign Creations

Would've been extremely fun if you were able to bring the Odin to bear in the Char missions.

As for the WoL lack-of-order missions it would've been much more of a relief if they were arranged so that only a few missions at a time could be done, with the artifact and rebellion ones at the end of each set. Something like this:
- Agria, Redstone
- Tarsonis, Bel'shir, Meinhoff
- Monlyth

A rough idea and a piece of what I figured would've worked out well story-wise. At least they're the ones that feel like they're the appropriate order, personal opinion-wise.

Thalraxal wrote:
Diablo's always had a heavier emphasis on atmosphere than plot. If anything, its plot lightness works to its benefit. It's Dark Fantasy, that's a genre all about mortals taking on the forces of evil and darkness and losing. All the gains you make in Diablo 1 and 2 only buy humanity a short term reprieve at best and often ends up helping the forces of evil in the long run. I think if Diablo was plot heavy, it's story would be a whole lot less satisfying than it is.

As I said, while the plot is sort of simple, it does work, mainly because the villain outwits and outpowers everyone all throughout.

I agree that the atmosphere was its main strength, as with some of the games I mentioned, like Out of this World and Super Metroid: the ambience and the sense that you're struggling to survive. Diablo 1 and 2, the former more than the latter, had very dark ambient and a sense of hopelessness and of being surrounded by an unfathomable evil from ancient times (/lovecraft) that few other games had. The second game successfully managed to keep this - the jungles of Kurast being an epithome of dark ambience IMO - and change the setting to a far more epic one, like in Act 5.

Like all ambience-based games, it would suffer from more plot, indeed. If you look at it, Silent Hill 2 had very few dialogues but the atmosphere was so overwhelming, and the overall theme so disturbing, that you're left in the end with the sensation that you've played a masterpiece.

While D3's gameplay seems to be cool, it does look far less scary than its predecessors from the trailers I've seen so far. I wonder if it's falling into the "generic mainstream fantasy" genre at last. :/

Blizzard's graphics style isn't so much a style as it is an excuse for being extremely lazy.

I went with Selendis because I figured Protoss was the only species of female Raynor hadn't been with and his character would want to score. (I'm basing this on the retcon that Raynor and Kerrigan were lovers as opposed to just casually flirting in Starcraft 1.)

Lavarinth wrote:Yes. Tired, underpaid, volunteers with low morale facing an almost impossible task and a commander who can't keep his priorities straight. No one has ever mutinied under those kinds of conditions.

Underpaid volunteers, now that's a new one. Speaking of volunteers, the way Blizzard depicted Raynor's crew in WoL, it was pretty clear that people could leave the Raiders anytime they want if they weren't happy.

Theia_Loki wrote:Would've been extremely fun if you were able to bring the Odin to bear in the Char missions.

As for the WoL lack-of-order missions it would've been much more of a relief if they were arranged so that only a few missions at a time could be done, with the artifact and rebellion ones at the end of each set. Something like this:
- Agria, Redstone
- Tarsonis, Bel'shir, Meinhoff
- Monlyth

It's already like that. You have to do a few missions before unlocking new ones.

While I do agree that it was disappointing to not have the Odin on Char (just like not having Tosh/Nova helping you in Belly of the Beast), I kinda understand Blizzard's decision: having to watch over both that big slow and cumbersome unit and the Artifact would have made All-In even more frustrating. Especially considering the fact that Kerrigan can pretty much kill anything with one shot...

For my part the "structure" of the story wasn't that bad, my biggest gripe was them going from Kerrigan being "Evil Queen btch of universe" and EVERYone hating her guts, to Raynor suddenly pinning over her and obssesing about saving her.

The kick of it, is that Blizz could have easily kept things true to Broodwars without changing virtually any of how the levels were actually played.

You would still have them finding the artifact, you could still hint that Kerrigan is somehow important. But instead of Raynor out to save her, you have him gathering the bits to put her down. Shoot you could still keep the exact same ending, they activate the artifact, thinking it kills her, then surprise surprise it re-humanfys her.

Nothing in terms of game play needs to be changed at ALL and it would fix this silly notion that after Kerrigan decimated whole plants, killed his friends, and stabbed him in the back, TWICE, that he is all soppy over her.

It'd have been a much better cliffhanger ending, indeed. "Yes, that bitch's finally paid for all the suffering she's caused. Now go in boys, I want her head in a spike so we can exhibit it all over the Kopru-- oh shit."

*Screen shows Kerrigan alive and in human form; slowly, Raynor and Tychus look at each other*

*fade out*

Yeah, that'd have caused much more speculation as to what'll go on during HotS, what Raynor, Tychus, Valerian and Mengsk would do next and so on. I'd have enjoyed it far more than the ending we were given.

Blizzard does get a raging hardon over redemption storys, they even want to resurrect Illidan.

DrumsofWar wrote:I went with Selendis because I figured Protoss was the only species of female Raynor hadn't been with and his character would want to score. (I'm basing this on the retcon that Raynor and Kerrigan were lovers as opposed to just casually flirting in Starcraft 1.)

AHAHAHAHA

I'm terrified that we thought the same thing

Meta wrote:Yeah, that'd have caused much more speculation as to what'll go on during HotS, what Raynor, Tychus, Valerian and Mengsk would do next and so on. I'd have enjoyed it far more than the ending we were given.

No, you wouldn't. You would have instead complained that the ending was too "predictable", because you would have seen it coming anyway and it would have played out exactly the way what you expected. How's that for a twist?

It's easy in retrospective to say "ah, if they had do Y instead of X, I would have been more surprised/pleased".

there's no recovering sc2 now just get over it bro, with Metzen valiantly charging his legion of washed up sots across the field of woe there can be no hope

I'm apparently not the one who can't get over it, "bro".

I can't get over the fact that there's a troll so dedicated as you bro it brings a tear to my eye but you ain't foolin' ne1 ~_^

Hunter_Killers wrote:Blizzard does get a raging hardon over redemption storys, they even want to resurrect Illidan.

knowing blizzard, there's going to be like a "League of Infesteds" with all the characters in BW that died and you have to fight them.

Meta wrote:It'd have been a much better cliffhanger ending, indeed. "Yes, that bitch's finally paid for all the suffering she's caused. Now go in boys, I want her head in a spike so we can exhibit it all over the Kopru-- oh shit."

*Screen shows Kerrigan alive and in human form; slowly, Raynor and Tychus look at each other*

*fade out*

Yeah, that'd have caused much more speculation as to what'll go on during HotS, what Raynor, Tychus, Valerian and Mengsk would do next and so on. I'd have enjoyed it far more than the ending we were given.

If they'd ended the campaign a minute earlier, or an hour later, I think it would have been a lot better. I would have accepted a "We're going to kill Kerrigan, we're going to kill Kerrigan, wait- WHAT?" alot better than the "We're going to mope around about Kerrigan, Kerrigan is the Galaxy's only hope! We're going redeem Kerrigan, Kerrigan is magically sufficiently advanced technologied good again! Yay!" ending that we got. Even seeing some of the fallout (of the negative kind) from Jim's choice would have gone a long way I think.