This critic was especially written to talk about HotS and it's lack of sense in most things. It's not mentioned to offend anyone or being understood as a 'whining rant for not being what I expected/wanted to be'.
Every game has it's fanboys and it's haters, some more fanatic than others. Was like that with StarCraft, was like that with Dawn of War, was like that with Command & Conquer and is or will be with every game, RTS or not. In the case of haters, with the exception of some people like myself, with their unbiased ranting and senseless maddening rage, they would normally be ignored in the case of Starcraft. For Heart of the Swarm, unfortunately, I'll have to defend them: It's by far the worse story EVER told by Blizzard, one that even makes the cheesy plot of Wings of Liberty forgivable.
And no, it's not only the leaked content cinematics from Team Liquid that prove how terrible the story is. If you play the campaign like I did, you'll find virtually everything is wrong with the story: The dialog, the flow, the characters' portraying, the non-sense situations and decisions, the unforgivable retcons... I'll write them down in topics, explaining the why and how they hurt the story.
Actually, there were things I didn't like in Wings of Liberty as a whole. Things like the story centering the Hybrids and the idea Raynor, that promised to kill Kerrigan after Brood War, now depart to rescue her like if nothing happened four years ago. From things like this, I could summarize the story for Heart of the Swarm wouldn't go any better than Wings, but I never expected Blizzard would literally go to lengths worse than they already have had in Diablo III. From Blizzard, after Starcraft II, I say the story doesn't have to be insanely good, but it has to be one who doesn't insult people's intelligence and memories of good times, when the plot twists didn't suck. It's what HotS does, and it's the reason I came to despise it more than WoL. It even makes want to call WoL a masterpiece, compared to HotS.
The Raynor-Kerrigan relationship.
Yeah, I know what you're gonna say, for me to not compare any of it with Twilight. In the romance itself, true, I can't compare it, but you can't also leave the rotten things behind. Because, if you look well at it, the relationship between the cowboy and the Zerg-Terran woman is like a marble slab sitting upon an outdated and already cracked pillar, so much itching to crumble.
In StarCraft, the very first StarCraft, the relationship started as professional, a joint work to make some people revolt in Antiga Prime, but then, by the ninth Terran mission (New Gettysburg), you could see that a bit of a relationship grew up between missions, one that allowed imagination while the Commander was busy doing his stuff. Then, we see Mengsk leaving her to die and the eventual infestation that turns Kerrigan what she is now. After that, we can see in Raynor that the relationship vaporized, as he knows he'll have to fight her, because she's now a part of the enemy he's killing, and he'll have to kill her. In Brood War, the eventual fact turns to a goal with her backstabbing and killing Fenix, as Raynor knows she's beyond redemption and the murder killed whatever lingering remainder of trust he had on her.
Then, we come to Wings of Liberty, four years passed. Raynor, suddenly and out nowhere, seems forgetful of the revenge oath he made on her, and it complete wanes away with the appearance of Zeratul's prophecy. What he sees, along with the complete absence of Fenix in the whole story or anything Kerrigan's done in Brood War, makes him forget the grudge in an unexcusable way, one that doesn't make sense, not even to his crew. Then comes the Xel'Naga artifact to blow it all to hell, even more when it does what Raynor wanted, making Kerrigan human again.
Now, in Heart of the Swarm, any sense goes to hell. First we see Raynor wanting to forget his revenge on Mengsk and get Kerrigan away, but after the first mission, we see an obsession on her for Raynor and wanting to get payback on Mengsk after the fake news of his death. An obsession that's just as forgettable as the rest of the story. Then she finds out Raynor is alive after she infested herself again, she goes to rescue him, like if Raynor's a dude in distress. Raynor doesn't like what he sees and just cuts the relationship. Even when Kerrigan offers him a chance to end her, he just doesn't do it, again reminding how he forgot the revenge he sweared on her for Brood War. Then Kerrigan attacks Korhal and Raynor joins her, even helping her against Mengsk, like nothing ever happened. This particular one was the WTF moment. It's a relationship that doesn't make any sense and it's the most unstable I've ever seen, and, believe me, I've seen worse.
But, even still, the relationship thing is the MINOR problem compared to the rest of things in Heart of the Swarm. Yeah, compared to the other insane and insulting factors, this one is the most sane as it can get.
Narud/Duran and his nonsense behaviour
Ever since I heard the Narud name in Wings, I confess it took me a while to realize it was Duran spelled the other way around. Everyone who played Brood War can't just not remember Duran and what he did. Firstly, you believe he's a former Confederate wanting revenge for Mengsk bringing down the military and he joins the UED expedition because he sees them fighting the Dominion and you think he's thinking 'Hell, they're killing Mengsk's henchmen and want to bring him down, so, why not?'. Of course, I confess I was a little dumbstruck when suddenly he betrays the UED out of nowhere in the final Terran missions in Brood War and joins Kerrigan. Of course, that was all before the secret Zeratul mission, in which the Hybrids are revealed and Duran reveals himself as a different type of player, one that can play at any side and you don't even know if he'll stay on your side and for how long.
I'm not complaining he's the mastermind turned a pawn in Heart of the Swarm, he admits in Brood War that he's 'a servant of a far greater power' (Which I'll comment shortly), but the way he acts makes it quite clear he's a capable manipulator, able to put people where and how he wants, as well as how's that according to his master's wishes and plans. You can see, even in Wings of Liberty, the shroud of mystery as, when he's helping Jim Raynor get the artifacts, even killing Tal'Darim loyal to Narud, that's nothing but a part of a bigger plan, where sacrifices are welcome and sometimes paramount.
In Heart of the Swarm, it's all gone in a poof. Narud stops being the smart manipulator and double-sider we love and becomes nothing more than a bootlick shapeshifter for his master and a dumb person who stays to fight Kerrigan, when he could've run off, speaking one-liners worthy of a Joel Schumacher movie and dependant on the local Protoss while he fights Kerrigan with his death beam, in the worst Harry Potter/Japanese cartoon style you can ever imagine. Except, even the Japanese cartoons and Harry Potter (The movies, not the books) are more appealing than this fight in Heart of the Swarm, they make more sense compared to this. Then the cutscene where he fights and dies and accepts to die to see his master revived... it insulted my intelligence. Honestly.
Because Duran/Narud could've ran off. He could've eluded Kerrigan and the Swarm with a weak, but acceptable line of 'Our fight will still occur, but not here, not now'. He could've triggered the platform or the Xel'Naga complex to explode, even running away like a dork as he fooled Kerrigan. He could've done everything. Instead he chose to stay, fight and die like a dumb person, unlike the smart guy we came to know him for. It doesn't make the slightest sense, as his master would want him alive, as living people are more useful to villains, after all.
Zerus, the Hybrids and Amon
Firstly, when I heard in a Blizzard video that Heart of the Swarm would take the player to Zerus, the birth world of the Zerg, I became intrigued, but I came to accept it, as in Wings, hell, Raynor learned the prophecy of 'the end of all things' through a crystal, it'd make more sense for Kerrigan to explore Zerus and uncover the sordid past and schemes of the race who made the Zerg what they are now. While in the way, Kerrigan would find out about the prophecy and even assimilate some of the Zerged life to make the Swarm stronger and meaner when they invaded Korhal (Yeah, even though I was firstly against it, I realized there was no other final part to Heart of the Swarm).
Heart of the Swarm disappointed me yet again. Instead of the exploration and mysterious part, Zerus instead is a safari run to collect more Zerg DNA and make Kerrigan a Zerg again. The same Zerg from Brood War, but this time with purplish psychic bits. Of course, this time I'd have liked an entirely different Zerg design than the one we've seen in Wings, that'd demonstrate the clear difference between the Queen of before and the Queen she is now. Not to mention Zerus had primal Roach, Hydralisk and Zerglings that it should never have, as the Overmind assimilated them, but never returned to Zerus and dropped them there. Especially the Roach, which is an excluse to the Zerg of the Koprulu Sector in Wings.
But the worse comes when Zurvan, the big-ass Primal Zerg, comes into scene and reveals the identity of Amon, AKA The Dark Voice in Wings of Liberty, and what he is. Suddenly, all sense of mystery and the fun of it dies in an instant. Yes, this is what it happens when you know who your enemy is and what he wants, but Blizzard takes the misery to a different level. A level where dreams are simply crushed and the nightmare of facing Armageddon is simply traded by another. One of pure lack of imagination and preserving this same imagination. I, myself, believed that the identity would be revealed in the closing stages of Legacy of the Void, in the cheesy classic 'Okay, this is the villain, he'll end the world because he wants to, so let's all band up and stop him, La La La'. Instead, it was revealed in Heart of the Swarm, in the practically 50% of the course (Provided you played the first missions, then Char, then Kaldir. It makes practically 9 missions out of 20, so, almost 50%). And, though the damage is the same, the fact it was revealed way earlier is what gives the bonus to make the story even more forgetful. If combined with the Narud fact I wrote above, then, it's catastrophic.
But what's done to Amon is nothing compared to his kids, the Hybrids. In Wings of Liberty, Hybrids made a bit of sense if you played first through the Castanar mission, then the 'end of the universe' mission. In the former, the Hybrids are simply impervious to anything, even Zerg and the weakened Protoss, then, when you played the Zeratul mission, it kinda made sense, because most of the Protoss were spending all the psionics they could get just to harm the Hybrids. Heart of the Swarm makes them fall down to hell just by making them vulnerable to the Zerg, where brute force can't simply be applied to a force where tank shells and bullet rounds wouldn't do anything. Again, it's typical Blizzard write-off retcon, where, if they can't put what they want, they cut corners in hopes people will forget it, but it makes a messy business out of the misery. No. Misery is putting Psi-storms for one of the hybrids in the second Narud mission. Plain and simple misery that adds to the tragedy of bearing this story more than I should have.
Mengsk, the cunningless dictator.
When you first see Arcturus Mengsk in StarCraft, you see him with an air of admiration and awe. You see him as a sinister and cunning leader who wouldn't stop at any lengths to get what he wanted. But also a person that wasn't as stubborn and stupid as he is right now, in Heart of the Swarm AND Wings of Liberty. Amongst other qualities, his voicing was firm but seductive, authoritarian but inspiring, villainous, but charming. At least he was to me, when I first played StarCraft, and I was only 10 years old at the time.
In Brood War, to be lenient, Mengsk did screw up when he took down the Confederacy and installed the Dominion. He firstly underestimated the UED and the capacity of their commanders during the invasion of Korhal, then he underestimated Kerrigan, confident that she wouldn't take her revenge while she fought the Earth expedition. In the end, he fell more times than he'd care to remember, but his charm allowed him to get a fleet to fight Kerrigan on Char, only to be defeated again.
His death didn't begin in Heart of the Swarm, but in Wings of Liberty. Instead of becoming that villain you'd like to hate but also follow to the depths of hell, Mengsk in StarCraft II is just a douchebag and imbecile Emperor who can't seem to even tie his shoes without help from his equally incompetent commanders. He relies on media alone to keep his Dominion stable and utilizing force to contain revolts like your traditional Middle East dictator, in the most Khadaffi as it can get. He doesn't demonstrate other political ability in StarCraft II than just bullying his people in following his will and he has no alternatives to sending more people directly to the meat grinder, even when there's a huge mech, that he made to kill Zerg, crushing and blowing stuff through the downtown of his city.
In StarCraft II, I honestly expected a more sneaky Mengsk, one whose cunning grew over the years and where not even the revelation that he used the Zerg to throw the Confederacy down would be enough to damage his reputation. I expected to see a Mengsk where, when he died, he wouldn't be remembered as a villain, but a 'contributer to the safety of mankind', backlashing Raynor's revenge and making the poor cowboy a villain in the public eye. Instead, we got this disaster. And no, the excuse that four years have let him grow relaxed will not apply, must not apply and cannot apply to my intelligence.
Infested Stukov
Before, in Brood War, there is this alternative mission called Resurrection, which sounds, looks and feels non-canon, just a downloadable bonus map to entertain people while they passed on playing Brood War, and one who didn't even have the dialogue or voice acting. Here was where Duran/Narud infested Stukov, dead in the final of the Terran campaign, for his own personal purposes. Of course, at the time, Blizzard and everyone else considered this non-canon and should not even be taken seriously.
Blizzard either lied, suffered amnesia or they went out of their minds when they integrated it in Heart of the Swarm.
Once again, it's another one of the Blizzard's scandalous set of retcons that kills any serious feeling one once had with StarCraft. Of course, it's for the sake of resurrecting characters they killed in the past, like it usually happens in Warcraft. Of course, this couldn't be applied to StarCraft, as StarCraft has little to no magic, and the magic is alien and it makes some degree of sense.
Not only the retcon makes this the most insulting topic, in my opinion. It's also the origins practically remain the same, but they are not explained and even Kerrigan doesn't have ANY suspicion because he's an Infested Terran, there's not even questions of: How did you get infested? If Narud made you, how did you escape his grasp? Why bothering to disturb the Swarm with this particular matter?
Stukov, along with Duran/Narud, is what it kills any interest either concerning Xel'Naga, the Hybrids, or the characters themselves.
Do I need to explain more?
The other characters
As far as I'm concerned on story, given I like to write attempts at fan fiction, it's not only the primary characters whom drive the story, but how the secondary ones come to carry it. On this criteria, StarCraft, at the time of Brood War, didn't use many secondary characters other than Aldaris and Raszagal, most of them were primary and related to story.
In these terms, I can safely declare Wings of Liberty performed quite well in this matter. Apart from a few poor developed characters (i.e. Stetmann, Warfield and the Protoss heroes in the final Zeratul mission.), the secondary characters were quite appealing to me in Wings of Liberty. Even the most irritating of them, Ariel Hanson, filled her role nicely, although there could be more. The only problem is that the characters of WoL were just... too many and there was little to no time to develop them all between missions.
Heart of the Swarm tries to fix this problem by adding few secondary characters this time, but the problem here seems there was lack of effort concerning development. They're too simplistic and don't add to the story as they should. Za'gara, the Brood Mother Kerrigan faces on the first Char mission, is a clear example. At first, while she's a character too afraid to defy Kerrigan and trying to learn on how did she beat her, she becomes more and more empty with the passing of time, speaking one-liners and forgettable dialogues. The same can be applied to practically every other Zerg character. But, on the damaging criteria, I have a special list, and believe me when I say that the most hurt of these characters wasn't Abathur or Lessara, but Izsha. I won't even talk about Stukov or Dehaka, because I feel they are merely characters out of place that, if Blizzard took it's story development to a degree, wouldn't have a place in Heart of the Swarm. And I'll only spare Zurvan, because he's a character that fits according to story and according to design.
Yes, IMO, Izsha was a character that, by her looks, had an enormous potential. I have to agree I wasn't to invested on her other than her seemingly-malefic, yet human look, but that was before Blizzard announced they'd change her original backstory, from an Infested Adjutant, to an actual infested Terran named Amanda Haley, from one of it's short stories involving infested Terrans and Kerrigan. From then, I expected some sort of character development and potential emotional development, as Kerrigan would have to face the consequences of her actions as the Queen of Blades. Besides, her Machiavellian body and facial expression, combined with the uncomfortable voice tone that curiously fits her character right, would make her way of thinking look akin to the infamous advisors of royal families at the time, like Grigori Rasputin or Sir Francis Walsingham, which would suggest she could try a coup d'etat at any time, maybe for power lust or revenge for what Kerrigan did to her. Unfortunately, Blizzard did virtually nothing, still sticking with the empty advisor part, emotionless and void, and leaving an interesting background to rot.
Then, there's Abathur, literally the Rory Swann for Kerrigan's battleship. In Heart of the Swarm, since conception, he was projected as a walking computer capable of developing mutations and evolutions for existing Zerg minion strains or even making new strains based on the genetic material Kerrigan found. As curious as it may sound, Abathur, for me, is a 'close shot, but still not there' situation. That's because of his cyborg-esque voice and dialog. Yes, I know, he WAS projected to be a walking computer, but, as far as you can imagine, Zerg are practically evolved in everything. So, it was expected that Abathur had indeed a bit more of constructed dialogue and with some capacity for argument and questioning on it, but with the minimum of emotion as possible. Instead, Blizzard preferred to take the 'computer' part to the max, with 'Collect. Will evolve.' dialogues. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not good either. Honestly, I'd think Abathur is the LEAST damaged compared to others...
Finally, Lessara. At first, years ago, I was intrigued when I saw a Protoss figure aboard the Zerg Leviathan in an IGN screenshot, either because it was a guest or was making a visit or was a prisoner. This, like the case with Izsha, had an emotional potential that could add to a story which wasn't already reliable because of the Zeratul Arc in Wings of Liberty. Like Gradius and others in SCLegacy pointed out, she could be the potential redeeming point for Kerrigan, as she'd convince the Protoss lady in the end that she's truly changed and that she's only using the Swarm for revenge purposes against Mengsk. Thus, Lassara, though it'd be declared insane by her unforgiving people, would try to convince others of Kerrigan's change. At least that's what I had in mind.
However, Blizzard does it AGAIN. This time, they make Lessara a time bomb aboard the vessel the Protoss used to get to Kaldir. Then the larva bursting out of the Protoss chick becomes a Brood Mother and goes on just killing Protoss. I must confess that I didn't like neither the story nor the mission, for me, the mission wasn't fun, because it started with an interesting stealth mission then went on to spamming Zerglings and killing Protoss. Also, the Niadra character, both in writing and voice... Oh, god... At least they could've added an anti-climatic ending, like Niadra being suddenly caught in agony and we finding out it's Lessara who took charge and vows revenge for what Kerrigan has done. No, not the idea of an Infested Protoss, but rather a Possessed Zerg, instead... Of course, she only loses to Izsha because Lessara only comes and goes for a while, Izsha is virtually Kerrigan's Matt Horner, where she stays for the course of the entire campaign.
Kerrigan's bipolar decisions and unbiased victories
In Heart of the Swarm, when Browder stated that the campaign would be about 'Fury, Revenge, Hatred', it was obvious it was going to be a campaign against Mengsk with a structure somewhat similar to Wings of Liberty, although it would change worlds and story a little bit. But I also honestly thought it was going to be about Kerrigan's character development and her change compared to her Brood War infestation, that she tries to redeem herself but is forced to take the reigns of the Swarm, not for revenge against Mengsk, but to prevent others from abusing the power of the Zerg, like The Dark Voice pretends to.
Instead, we have a mess that Blizzard's done with the secondary character, ranging between non-sense decisions (Like the Lessara drama or the idea of sparing Dominion escapees after killing Warfield without a flicker of remorse), an infinite drowning of self-pity (Like she usually talks to Izsha some times), and unexplained bursts of anger that would make Jim Raynor look like a balanced person. If Gradius in SCLegacy says Jim Raynor suffers from Schizophrenia, then Kerrigan has serious temper and control issues unfit for an assassin. Assassins, I believe, undergo a severe conditioning training all to just balance their emotions and null them at the time the killing assignment comes. Unless in extreme situations, assassins rarely break down like Kerrigan does.
The only thing she did that would make any sense is consulting twice with Valerian concerning advancing on Korhal and risk civilian losses, but then the character fault isn't Kerrigan's, but Valerian's, as he was poorly developed on that matter. Simply accepting his father is beyond redemption is both faulty, cheesy and complicated, and there would have to be a VERY good reason for Valerian to want that, other than the fact his father didn't treat him well for a son. Other than this, Kerrigan's decisions are as nonsense and as flawed as the rest of the campaign and story is.
Not to mention that what carries Kerrigan's victories, as Gradius well pointed too, is the enemies' incompetence. In StarCraft II, so much in Wings as in Heart, Blizzard designed it's enemies to not proceed according to what could happen, but to avoid players from losing or suffering any consequences whatsoever. The most clear example is the Protoss, which can unleash their entire potential but only do so in pockets, be they from Shakuras or the Tal'Darim. The only exception I ought to defy Gradius on is in Korhal, as I agree it was a surprise attack and Mengsk would never expect an audacity from Raynor in plain Korhal downtown. But, other than that, it's designed like if the enemies are too shy and too afraid to scare casual players, who NEED to learn some defeat and adapt if they ever expect to transition to the multi-player matches.
Conclusion
The people of Kotaku, when they released their critic, said 'the story is one you can't take too seriously'. I'd like to reply that one thing is to not take a story too seriously, but an entirely another, as I said, is to write a story which insults people's intelligence and memories. This latter is what EXACTLY applies to Heart of the Swarm, and it's an example to how to NOT tell a story. Because the story makes more than add a cheesy planning and execution, it adds things that don't make any flicker of sense, it makes plot twists that are regrettable and no attachment to any characters at all, be they primary or secondary. At least, in this final requisite, I think Wings of Liberty did it's homework. If you compare StarCraft II to Michael Bay's Transformers, you can easily declare Heart of the Swarm is 'Revenge of the Fallen'. Compared to Heart of the Swarm, Wings of Liberty is more complete and makes more sense.
And my motive for such disappointment and anger isn't for the story itself, but the fact that Blizzard, after the ending leaked on Kotaku two years ago, had all that time to change and rethink the story. Instead, they preferred to 'stay the course', like if Chris Metzen himself said to the company 'I don't care if it got leaked or not, we'll release it either way. People won't like it, screw them, they are all whiners anyway.'. This is something that makes both newcomers scream 'WTF' for eons on end and makes old fans abandon Blizzard, disgusted at their stubborn decision.
The worse of it is that Legacy of the Void, if I imagine what I think it will be, will be the simple 'find Amon and kill him, everyone becomes friends, let's make an MMO', only spiced with traditional plot twists and the usual stuff. I won't expect it to be any better anymore, not after Heart of the Swarm. And even worse is that people won't care, either because they'll have gotten used to what happened here, today, or because they're fan boys too blind and too lazy to say something about it.
On another topic, I'll talk about the game itself. If you feel you don't like HotS too or want to talk back something about it, feel free to comment. Not that wouldn't do much anyways...
Why would they change it only because it got leaked? Anyone who reads those leaks makes a consious decision to spoil themselves. I did not read them (I didn't even know they existed until now), I did not even watch the cinematic trailer/intro until the game was installed. I watched only the ingame teasers.
As for the storyline itself. Yep, it does have its weird moments (Stukov's sudden appearance, Kerrigan's strange moral, Narud's willingness to fight). But my real cristicism is towards the bleak characters and lack of surprises. I also found it strange that the prime Zerg would be conscious beings with the ability to speak. It started really well with Nova, Horner, Valerian, Raynor and Kerrigan and I had hoped they would get more screen time. It also sucked how little we got to see from Protoss except for Zeratul and the boring Tal'Darim. I still think it's far superior to Wings of Liberty. The dialogue is better, character interaction is better, and the stuff that you do actually has meaning (unlikee Raynor trying to dethrone Mengsk with the recording).
If i had to rate the games storylines from 1-10 it would go like this:
SC1: 8
SCBW: 9
WoL: 6
HotS: 7
I hope LotV can build on the strengths of HotS while having more missions.
edit: Btw. you say they had two years to change the storyline and make it sound like it was plenty of time. You should take into consideration how many things depend on the storyline. Level design (and with that editor features), art, cinematics, sound effects, casting choices, units, doodads. Anything that isn't multiplayer balance.
Some of the critic isn't well researched, as you did in fact not take into account that Blizzard has this wonderful stupid idea of telling half their plots and lore in books, which answers a lot of the problems of HotS. What we can blame them for though if bad writing there, because they did not even once bring this up at all in any detail, so if you didn't read the specific books, you don't get jack shit.
But even if you do, the writing is awful and incohesive. This is the same Blizzard that actually went and made their Panda aprils joke into a race for WoW. Nothing is holy anymore there. I suspect anyone with some kind of work ethic either left years ago, sold them for the millions they make or is on Titan with some luck. While the campaign itself was pretty good gameplay wise and I felt quite a bit sad for poor Sarah when she can't reach Jim, I also pretty much could see the entire plot unfold. Blizzard doesn't kill their Main Characters anymore. Not since Grom. Okay, this did kill off whatshisface Cairne in WoW after he became forgotten by everyone, but still. The only way to get yourself killed in a Blizz game is to become corrupted and the evil guy.
Mengsk was the one cunning bastard they had left of all their antagonists and they went and wrote him so badly compared to books like "I, Mengsk" that it's just awful. Though he did prepare Korhal quite a bit for the Zerg, but Blizz had to Plotarmor the Swarm due to Primals.
Overall Blizzard was never really good at writing. If you go back to WC3 or SC1, you will notice the same cheesy stuff. I think the problem is that Blizz hasn't grown out of their bad writing as others did and we are just used to better written plots at our current ages.
Duran's end makes somewhat sense, since there is a entire ZERG FLEET in orbit. Seriously, even that guy can't fight of a couple of thousand mutalisks (oh btw anyone else noticed that in SC1 any zerg air unit was in space, in HotS it suddenly is just the Leviathan). So there is some sense there. Aaaaaand Blizz thought he served his purpose with the book before HotS.
Amon always makes me think of this. And I personally never cared for the big evil megadude in the back. This Amon/Dark Voice smells so much of Sargeras it's not even funny.
There is other things I could comment on, but basically while I was somewhat emotional about Kerrigan and clapped my hands in joy when I infested a Protoss Ship, I didn't feel it did the game series any justice.
Warcraft - dead, Diablo - dead, Starcraft - nearly burried, add some LotV sand to finish.
Let's hope Titan isn't a mess. But it probably will be.
Obviously did read the books; But the problem is there is virtually little to no explanation through out the campaign, which seems like 'It's there because we want that to be there'. Explanations not only makes the story have it's sense (as twisted as it can sound) and even increase people's interest in these books.
The idea of doing such unexplained acts in favor of selling books so people can read it and then 'Uh, okay then.' it is what actually offends me. It's practically the same as calling people stupid.
edit: Btw. you say they had two years to change the storyline and make it sound like it was plenty of time. You should take into consideration how many things depend on the storyline. Level design (and with that editor features), art, cinematics, sound effects, casting choices, units, doodads. Anything that isn't multiplayer balance.
Only for fleshing out the gameplay style, I could take a day or three, and using notepad. And I'm talking about a campaign with no CG cinematics at all, like my project. And, given the power of Blizzard's rendering farms, they could make a simple cinematic in a month.
Tight deadline is not the issue here, it's effort. They could remake the entire thing in these two years while fleshing out the multi-player, but they chose not to do it. When one of them said months ago HotS was 90%, I immediately got worried. As well as an idea of how the story would run.
However, before Existor datamined the dependencies, I had no idea the story run would be THAT bad.
@DeltaCadimus: Go
I think the reason we didn't see more fancy CGI is because of BlizzCon this year. I suspect since SC2 now can do in-game cutscenes that look pretty good, they cut down a bit on the CGI for HotS and used more of it for other project. After all they no longer have 10 years, but 2 years between stuff for the most part. I suspect they finally unveil Titan at BC2013 with a really long and fancy CGI trailer. Or they should at least, because people stop caring about their expansion packs.
So I guess they invested more time into finishing that to blow people away.
you did in fact not take into account that Blizzard has this wonderful stupid idea of telling half their plots and lore in books, which answers a lot of the problems of HotS.
Not really. Reading Flashpoint only pissed me off more when you get to the Mira Han mission and she decides to fight you for no reason, despite being your friend and ally in the book.
Btw, one of the biggest "Fuck you´s" for me in the entire campaign was the extremly retarded portrayel of the protoss. What the fuck. Seriously, they freeze like idiots? Did they do that every 5 minutes all the time when they were on the planet before the zerg arrived? Shouldnt their Shields easily protect them from that? How can a single zerg take out an entire protoss ship? That queen should have been ripped apart by just a few of them.
Btw, one of the biggest "Fuck you´s" for me in the entire campaign was the extremly retarded portrayel of the protoss. What the fuck. Seriously, they freeze like idiots? Did they do that every 5 minutes all the time when they were on the planet before the zerg arrived? Shouldnt their Shields easily protect them from that? How can a single zerg take out an entire protoss ship? That queen should have been ripped apart by just a few of them.
Protoss have been getting shafted since day 1. Even when you play as them, you still lose.
Zeratul Mission 1: Run away like a coward as hundreds of your brethren fight for you.
Zeratul Mission 2: A single hybrid mind-controlled an entire protoss colony and you have to hack your way through them. What. The. Hell.
Zeratul Mission 3: You "beat" a foe that was already supposed to be dead.
Zeratul Mission 4: Your entire race gets destroyed.
Don't even get me started on Raynor's merry band of rebels taking down Selendis and the Fleet of the Executor. <_<
Well actually Stukov wasn't dead at the end of Ressurection IV just got a serum wich paused his infestation for a short time (he lost the conenction with the "new swarm" and he was angry about it but couldn't do anything) the pause was temporary not final. And i think Abathur was cool in a way like this. I loved how he was without any emotions only concentrating to his purpose to make the swarm better. In other topics i can agree mostly.
Yeah fuck you Blizzard for making the Protoss the comic relief of SC2.
As a protoss fan, no single protoss unit have been shown in either cinematics or in-game cutscenes apart from heros like Zeratul. And by that I mean no probe, no nexus, no zealots, no inner seeing into the protss society... The only protoss thing that has been shown in a cinematics is a lone Zeratul. I'm not sure if they can do it justice for Protoss in LotV, considering it has to feature both 3 races in a final battle of some sort
Well actually Stukov wasn't dead at the end of Ressurection IV just got a serum wich paused his infestation for a short time (he lost the conenction with the "new swarm" and he was angry about it but couldn't do anything) the pause was temporary not final. And i think Abathur was cool in a way like this. I loved how he was without any emotions only concentrating to his purpose to make the swarm better. In other topics i can agree mostly.
Ressurection IV, as I said, was considered non-canon, i.e. not to related to the story and not to be taken seriously. And I never implied Stukov died in that mission.
Also, concerning Abathur, I didn't said he needed emotions, but instead make a more sound organic computer than the paused cyborg-esque lines he spews. Still, it's not bad if you compare it to Brood Mothers like Niadra and Naktul... oh, God.
OK I think I understand a little of why HOTS story failed in some ways upon further analysis...
One thing I noticed on a second play through was that the story itself is not so terrible but the problem is that it suffers greatly because Blizzard is trying to tell too much story within too short of game. They are trying to communicate to much information to the audience at once because the game is to short to allow for the audience to experience the scope of the story. This result in characters having to use overly obvious dialog and basically tell us what is happening because there just isn't enough time to develop a love story and the quest for revenge and a mission to save the universe and a secret plot to reawaken a dead god. I mean Blizzard just tried to cram way to much story into a very small game, and they didn't really develop just one theme and stick with it, instead they tried to develop everything and it resulted in nothing being developed great, but rather everything felt forced because it was forced because the story didn't have time to move at it's own pace.
My best alternate example of a story that suffered because someone tried to tell it in to short of time was Akira the Movie vs the Comic. Now you might like the movie but if you read the comic you would realize that the comic was over 2000 pages ( http://www.mangareader.net/101-2004-1/akira/chapter-1.html ) and the movie attempted to tell me the entire story in 2 hours. The result was that a million plot holes manifested themselves in the movie even though it was based on a very well written story, the reason is because you just can't tell a giant story in a little bit of space, there will be plot holes because there isn't the time necessary to fill them in.
The only difference was that the movie Akira got away with all it's plot holes because it was very original and people were just in shock because they had never seen that type of movie before. Starcraft HOTS doesn't get away with anything because it's very non-original and we tend to compare non-original stories to better examples of the same story.
A good counter example would be Lord of the Rings, people complain about the length but at the same time the length allowed the story to be told at it's own pace and there is so much story to tell that the entire length of the movie was used in order to make sure to fill in all the little plot holes.
Now as far a video games go, the best video games are the ones that usually can't be made into movies, why? because the stories are kept very simple and focus more on the internal development and feeling of a character as opposed to a soap Opera. I actually feel that after playing HOTS it would have made a better movie than video game for the reason that it would have allowed the story to develop at a slower pace and all the soapy drama could have been developed instead of forced.
So in conclusion I now feel after a second play through that HOTS was a good story that is told badly because of being forced and rushed.
But after reading your post I feel like you really hit the nail on the head, still I feel that one of the primary reasons the story suffered was because Blizzard cropped out a lot of character development for the sake of keeping the story to under 30 missions. It's true though they made poor choices with the dialog and characters that they did have. But honestly I just feel like I saw moments where Blizzard was just being lazy, Kerrigan coming back looking exactly the same is a good example. The story really suffered because I feel like Blizzard wanted to take the easy way out and sacrificed story for the sake of time and budget.
Btw, one of the biggest "Fuck you´s" for me in the entire campaign was the extremly retarded portrayel of the protoss. What the fuck. Seriously, they freeze like idiots? Did they do that every 5 minutes all the time when they were on the planet before the zerg arrived? Shouldn't their Shields easily protect them from that? How can a single zerg take out an entire protoss ship? That queen should have been ripped apart by just a few of them.
That is 100% what I was thinking when I played the level. Protoss have really just not been made to look good. Even their technology seems great but they way they use it is stupid. A prime example would be why the hell that big warp way connector was so far from their base? Why would you build 4 of them and keep them so far from your base. It makes no sense. Not to mention the fact that Zeratual comes from no where with some Super important knowledge about Zerus. Where the Fuck did that come from? He just came from no where told her about it and then left with nothing else. No explanation of how he knew about this or anything like that.
A pretty much good example, were not for the fact Blizzard was trying to mix this thing (The second Kaldir mission, if we're talking the same language), kitbashing the Tosh terrazine mission and the train mission in one map. Realistically, all the shuttles needed to do was head to orbit and dock on the ship they used, but then that'd kill a Blizzard mission... figures.
This critic was especially written to talk about HotS and it's lack of sense in most things. It's not mentioned to offend anyone or being understood as a 'whining rant for not being what I expected/wanted to be'.
Every game has it's fanboys and it's haters, some more fanatic than others. Was like that with StarCraft, was like that with Dawn of War, was like that with Command & Conquer and is or will be with every game, RTS or not. In the case of haters, with the exception of some people like myself, with their unbiased ranting and senseless maddening rage, they would normally be ignored in the case of Starcraft. For Heart of the Swarm, unfortunately, I'll have to defend them: It's by far the worse story EVER told by Blizzard, one that even makes the cheesy plot of Wings of Liberty forgivable.
And no, it's not only the leaked content cinematics from Team Liquid that prove how terrible the story is. If you play the campaign like I did, you'll find virtually everything is wrong with the story: The dialog, the flow, the characters' portraying, the non-sense situations and decisions, the unforgivable retcons... I'll write them down in topics, explaining the why and how they hurt the story.
Actually, there were things I didn't like in Wings of Liberty as a whole. Things like the story centering the Hybrids and the idea Raynor, that promised to kill Kerrigan after Brood War, now depart to rescue her like if nothing happened four years ago. From things like this, I could summarize the story for Heart of the Swarm wouldn't go any better than Wings, but I never expected Blizzard would literally go to lengths worse than they already have had in Diablo III. From Blizzard, after Starcraft II, I say the story doesn't have to be insanely good, but it has to be one who doesn't insult people's intelligence and memories of good times, when the plot twists didn't suck. It's what HotS does, and it's the reason I came to despise it more than WoL. It even makes want to call WoL a masterpiece, compared to HotS.
The Raynor-Kerrigan relationship.
Yeah, I know what you're gonna say, for me to not compare any of it with Twilight. In the romance itself, true, I can't compare it, but you can't also leave the rotten things behind. Because, if you look well at it, the relationship between the cowboy and the Zerg-Terran woman is like a marble slab sitting upon an outdated and already cracked pillar, so much itching to crumble.
In StarCraft, the very first StarCraft, the relationship started as professional, a joint work to make some people revolt in Antiga Prime, but then, by the ninth Terran mission (New Gettysburg), you could see that a bit of a relationship grew up between missions, one that allowed imagination while the Commander was busy doing his stuff. Then, we see Mengsk leaving her to die and the eventual infestation that turns Kerrigan what she is now. After that, we can see in Raynor that the relationship vaporized, as he knows he'll have to fight her, because she's now a part of the enemy he's killing, and he'll have to kill her. In Brood War, the eventual fact turns to a goal with her backstabbing and killing Fenix, as Raynor knows she's beyond redemption and the murder killed whatever lingering remainder of trust he had on her.
Then, we come to Wings of Liberty, four years passed. Raynor, suddenly and out nowhere, seems forgetful of the revenge oath he made on her, and it complete wanes away with the appearance of Zeratul's prophecy. What he sees, along with the complete absence of Fenix in the whole story or anything Kerrigan's done in Brood War, makes him forget the grudge in an unexcusable way, one that doesn't make sense, not even to his crew. Then comes the Xel'Naga artifact to blow it all to hell, even more when it does what Raynor wanted, making Kerrigan human again.
Now, in Heart of the Swarm, any sense goes to hell. First we see Raynor wanting to forget his revenge on Mengsk and get Kerrigan away, but after the first mission, we see an obsession on her for Raynor and wanting to get payback on Mengsk after the fake news of his death. An obsession that's just as forgettable as the rest of the story. Then she finds out Raynor is alive after she infested herself again, she goes to rescue him, like if Raynor's a dude in distress. Raynor doesn't like what he sees and just cuts the relationship. Even when Kerrigan offers him a chance to end her, he just doesn't do it, again reminding how he forgot the revenge he sweared on her for Brood War. Then Kerrigan attacks Korhal and Raynor joins her, even helping her against Mengsk, like nothing ever happened. This particular one was the WTF moment. It's a relationship that doesn't make any sense and it's the most unstable I've ever seen, and, believe me, I've seen worse.
But, even still, the relationship thing is the MINOR problem compared to the rest of things in Heart of the Swarm. Yeah, compared to the other insane and insulting factors, this one is the most sane as it can get.
Narud/Duran and his nonsense behaviour
Ever since I heard the Narud name in Wings, I confess it took me a while to realize it was Duran spelled the other way around. Everyone who played Brood War can't just not remember Duran and what he did. Firstly, you believe he's a former Confederate wanting revenge for Mengsk bringing down the military and he joins the UED expedition because he sees them fighting the Dominion and you think he's thinking 'Hell, they're killing Mengsk's henchmen and want to bring him down, so, why not?'. Of course, I confess I was a little dumbstruck when suddenly he betrays the UED out of nowhere in the final Terran missions in Brood War and joins Kerrigan. Of course, that was all before the secret Zeratul mission, in which the Hybrids are revealed and Duran reveals himself as a different type of player, one that can play at any side and you don't even know if he'll stay on your side and for how long.
I'm not complaining he's the mastermind turned a pawn in Heart of the Swarm, he admits in Brood War that he's 'a servant of a far greater power' (Which I'll comment shortly), but the way he acts makes it quite clear he's a capable manipulator, able to put people where and how he wants, as well as how's that according to his master's wishes and plans. You can see, even in Wings of Liberty, the shroud of mystery as, when he's helping Jim Raynor get the artifacts, even killing Tal'Darim loyal to Narud, that's nothing but a part of a bigger plan, where sacrifices are welcome and sometimes paramount.
In Heart of the Swarm, it's all gone in a poof. Narud stops being the smart manipulator and double-sider we love and becomes nothing more than a bootlick shapeshifter for his master and a dumb person who stays to fight Kerrigan, when he could've run off, speaking one-liners worthy of a Joel Schumacher movie and dependant on the local Protoss while he fights Kerrigan with his death beam, in the worst Harry Potter/Japanese cartoon style you can ever imagine. Except, even the Japanese cartoons and Harry Potter (The movies, not the books) are more appealing than this fight in Heart of the Swarm, they make more sense compared to this. Then the cutscene where he fights and dies and accepts to die to see his master revived... it insulted my intelligence. Honestly.
Because Duran/Narud could've ran off. He could've eluded Kerrigan and the Swarm with a weak, but acceptable line of 'Our fight will still occur, but not here, not now'. He could've triggered the platform or the Xel'Naga complex to explode, even running away like a dork as he fooled Kerrigan. He could've done everything. Instead he chose to stay, fight and die like a dumb person, unlike the smart guy we came to know him for. It doesn't make the slightest sense, as his master would want him alive, as living people are more useful to villains, after all.
Zerus, the Hybrids and Amon
Firstly, when I heard in a Blizzard video that Heart of the Swarm would take the player to Zerus, the birth world of the Zerg, I became intrigued, but I came to accept it, as in Wings, hell, Raynor learned the prophecy of 'the end of all things' through a crystal, it'd make more sense for Kerrigan to explore Zerus and uncover the sordid past and schemes of the race who made the Zerg what they are now. While in the way, Kerrigan would find out about the prophecy and even assimilate some of the Zerged life to make the Swarm stronger and meaner when they invaded Korhal (Yeah, even though I was firstly against it, I realized there was no other final part to Heart of the Swarm).
Heart of the Swarm disappointed me yet again. Instead of the exploration and mysterious part, Zerus instead is a safari run to collect more Zerg DNA and make Kerrigan a Zerg again. The same Zerg from Brood War, but this time with purplish psychic bits. Of course, this time I'd have liked an entirely different Zerg design than the one we've seen in Wings, that'd demonstrate the clear difference between the Queen of before and the Queen she is now. Not to mention Zerus had primal Roach, Hydralisk and Zerglings that it should never have, as the Overmind assimilated them, but never returned to Zerus and dropped them there. Especially the Roach, which is an excluse to the Zerg of the Koprulu Sector in Wings.
But the worse comes when Zurvan, the big-ass Primal Zerg, comes into scene and reveals the identity of Amon, AKA The Dark Voice in Wings of Liberty, and what he is. Suddenly, all sense of mystery and the fun of it dies in an instant. Yes, this is what it happens when you know who your enemy is and what he wants, but Blizzard takes the misery to a different level. A level where dreams are simply crushed and the nightmare of facing Armageddon is simply traded by another. One of pure lack of imagination and preserving this same imagination. I, myself, believed that the identity would be revealed in the closing stages of Legacy of the Void, in the cheesy classic 'Okay, this is the villain, he'll end the world because he wants to, so let's all band up and stop him, La La La'. Instead, it was revealed in Heart of the Swarm, in the practically 50% of the course (Provided you played the first missions, then Char, then Kaldir. It makes practically 9 missions out of 20, so, almost 50%). And, though the damage is the same, the fact it was revealed way earlier is what gives the bonus to make the story even more forgetful. If combined with the Narud fact I wrote above, then, it's catastrophic.
But what's done to Amon is nothing compared to his kids, the Hybrids. In Wings of Liberty, Hybrids made a bit of sense if you played first through the Castanar mission, then the 'end of the universe' mission. In the former, the Hybrids are simply impervious to anything, even Zerg and the weakened Protoss, then, when you played the Zeratul mission, it kinda made sense, because most of the Protoss were spending all the psionics they could get just to harm the Hybrids. Heart of the Swarm makes them fall down to hell just by making them vulnerable to the Zerg, where brute force can't simply be applied to a force where tank shells and bullet rounds wouldn't do anything. Again, it's typical Blizzard write-off retcon, where, if they can't put what they want, they cut corners in hopes people will forget it, but it makes a messy business out of the misery. No. Misery is putting Psi-storms for one of the hybrids in the second Narud mission. Plain and simple misery that adds to the tragedy of bearing this story more than I should have.
Mengsk, the cunningless dictator.
When you first see Arcturus Mengsk in StarCraft, you see him with an air of admiration and awe. You see him as a sinister and cunning leader who wouldn't stop at any lengths to get what he wanted. But also a person that wasn't as stubborn and stupid as he is right now, in Heart of the Swarm AND Wings of Liberty. Amongst other qualities, his voicing was firm but seductive, authoritarian but inspiring, villainous, but charming. At least he was to me, when I first played StarCraft, and I was only 10 years old at the time.
In Brood War, to be lenient, Mengsk did screw up when he took down the Confederacy and installed the Dominion. He firstly underestimated the UED and the capacity of their commanders during the invasion of Korhal, then he underestimated Kerrigan, confident that she wouldn't take her revenge while she fought the Earth expedition. In the end, he fell more times than he'd care to remember, but his charm allowed him to get a fleet to fight Kerrigan on Char, only to be defeated again.
His death didn't begin in Heart of the Swarm, but in Wings of Liberty. Instead of becoming that villain you'd like to hate but also follow to the depths of hell, Mengsk in StarCraft II is just a douchebag and imbecile Emperor who can't seem to even tie his shoes without help from his equally incompetent commanders. He relies on media alone to keep his Dominion stable and utilizing force to contain revolts like your traditional Middle East dictator, in the most Khadaffi as it can get. He doesn't demonstrate other political ability in StarCraft II than just bullying his people in following his will and he has no alternatives to sending more people directly to the meat grinder, even when there's a huge mech, that he made to kill Zerg, crushing and blowing stuff through the downtown of his city.
In StarCraft II, I honestly expected a more sneaky Mengsk, one whose cunning grew over the years and where not even the revelation that he used the Zerg to throw the Confederacy down would be enough to damage his reputation. I expected to see a Mengsk where, when he died, he wouldn't be remembered as a villain, but a 'contributer to the safety of mankind', backlashing Raynor's revenge and making the poor cowboy a villain in the public eye. Instead, we got this disaster. And no, the excuse that four years have let him grow relaxed will not apply, must not apply and cannot apply to my intelligence.
Infested Stukov
Before, in Brood War, there is this alternative mission called Resurrection, which sounds, looks and feels non-canon, just a downloadable bonus map to entertain people while they passed on playing Brood War, and one who didn't even have the dialogue or voice acting. Here was where Duran/Narud infested Stukov, dead in the final of the Terran campaign, for his own personal purposes. Of course, at the time, Blizzard and everyone else considered this non-canon and should not even be taken seriously.
Blizzard either lied, suffered amnesia or they went out of their minds when they integrated it in Heart of the Swarm.
Once again, it's another one of the Blizzard's scandalous set of retcons that kills any serious feeling one once had with StarCraft. Of course, it's for the sake of resurrecting characters they killed in the past, like it usually happens in Warcraft. Of course, this couldn't be applied to StarCraft, as StarCraft has little to no magic, and the magic is alien and it makes some degree of sense.
Not only the retcon makes this the most insulting topic, in my opinion. It's also the origins practically remain the same, but they are not explained and even Kerrigan doesn't have ANY suspicion because he's an Infested Terran, there's not even questions of: How did you get infested? If Narud made you, how did you escape his grasp? Why bothering to disturb the Swarm with this particular matter?
Stukov, along with Duran/Narud, is what it kills any interest either concerning Xel'Naga, the Hybrids, or the characters themselves.
Do I need to explain more?
The other characters
As far as I'm concerned on story, given I like to write attempts at fan fiction, it's not only the primary characters whom drive the story, but how the secondary ones come to carry it. On this criteria, StarCraft, at the time of Brood War, didn't use many secondary characters other than Aldaris and Raszagal, most of them were primary and related to story.
In these terms, I can safely declare Wings of Liberty performed quite well in this matter. Apart from a few poor developed characters (i.e. Stetmann, Warfield and the Protoss heroes in the final Zeratul mission.), the secondary characters were quite appealing to me in Wings of Liberty. Even the most irritating of them, Ariel Hanson, filled her role nicely, although there could be more. The only problem is that the characters of WoL were just... too many and there was little to no time to develop them all between missions.
Heart of the Swarm tries to fix this problem by adding few secondary characters this time, but the problem here seems there was lack of effort concerning development. They're too simplistic and don't add to the story as they should. Za'gara, the Brood Mother Kerrigan faces on the first Char mission, is a clear example. At first, while she's a character too afraid to defy Kerrigan and trying to learn on how did she beat her, she becomes more and more empty with the passing of time, speaking one-liners and forgettable dialogues. The same can be applied to practically every other Zerg character. But, on the damaging criteria, I have a special list, and believe me when I say that the most hurt of these characters wasn't Abathur or Lessara, but Izsha. I won't even talk about Stukov or Dehaka, because I feel they are merely characters out of place that, if Blizzard took it's story development to a degree, wouldn't have a place in Heart of the Swarm. And I'll only spare Zurvan, because he's a character that fits according to story and according to design.
Yes, IMO, Izsha was a character that, by her looks, had an enormous potential. I have to agree I wasn't to invested on her other than her seemingly-malefic, yet human look, but that was before Blizzard announced they'd change her original backstory, from an Infested Adjutant, to an actual infested Terran named Amanda Haley, from one of it's short stories involving infested Terrans and Kerrigan. From then, I expected some sort of character development and potential emotional development, as Kerrigan would have to face the consequences of her actions as the Queen of Blades. Besides, her Machiavellian body and facial expression, combined with the uncomfortable voice tone that curiously fits her character right, would make her way of thinking look akin to the infamous advisors of royal families at the time, like Grigori Rasputin or Sir Francis Walsingham, which would suggest she could try a coup d'etat at any time, maybe for power lust or revenge for what Kerrigan did to her. Unfortunately, Blizzard did virtually nothing, still sticking with the empty advisor part, emotionless and void, and leaving an interesting background to rot.
Then, there's Abathur, literally the Rory Swann for Kerrigan's battleship. In Heart of the Swarm, since conception, he was projected as a walking computer capable of developing mutations and evolutions for existing Zerg minion strains or even making new strains based on the genetic material Kerrigan found. As curious as it may sound, Abathur, for me, is a 'close shot, but still not there' situation. That's because of his cyborg-esque voice and dialog. Yes, I know, he WAS projected to be a walking computer, but, as far as you can imagine, Zerg are practically evolved in everything. So, it was expected that Abathur had indeed a bit more of constructed dialogue and with some capacity for argument and questioning on it, but with the minimum of emotion as possible. Instead, Blizzard preferred to take the 'computer' part to the max, with 'Collect. Will evolve.' dialogues. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not good either. Honestly, I'd think Abathur is the LEAST damaged compared to others...
Finally, Lessara. At first, years ago, I was intrigued when I saw a Protoss figure aboard the Zerg Leviathan in an IGN screenshot, either because it was a guest or was making a visit or was a prisoner. This, like the case with Izsha, had an emotional potential that could add to a story which wasn't already reliable because of the Zeratul Arc in Wings of Liberty. Like Gradius and others in SCLegacy pointed out, she could be the potential redeeming point for Kerrigan, as she'd convince the Protoss lady in the end that she's truly changed and that she's only using the Swarm for revenge purposes against Mengsk. Thus, Lassara, though it'd be declared insane by her unforgiving people, would try to convince others of Kerrigan's change. At least that's what I had in mind.
However, Blizzard does it AGAIN. This time, they make Lessara a time bomb aboard the vessel the Protoss used to get to Kaldir. Then the larva bursting out of the Protoss chick becomes a Brood Mother and goes on just killing Protoss. I must confess that I didn't like neither the story nor the mission, for me, the mission wasn't fun, because it started with an interesting stealth mission then went on to spamming Zerglings and killing Protoss. Also, the Niadra character, both in writing and voice... Oh, god... At least they could've added an anti-climatic ending, like Niadra being suddenly caught in agony and we finding out it's Lessara who took charge and vows revenge for what Kerrigan has done. No, not the idea of an Infested Protoss, but rather a Possessed Zerg, instead... Of course, she only loses to Izsha because Lessara only comes and goes for a while, Izsha is virtually Kerrigan's Matt Horner, where she stays for the course of the entire campaign.
Kerrigan's bipolar decisions and unbiased victories
In Heart of the Swarm, when Browder stated that the campaign would be about 'Fury, Revenge, Hatred', it was obvious it was going to be a campaign against Mengsk with a structure somewhat similar to Wings of Liberty, although it would change worlds and story a little bit. But I also honestly thought it was going to be about Kerrigan's character development and her change compared to her Brood War infestation, that she tries to redeem herself but is forced to take the reigns of the Swarm, not for revenge against Mengsk, but to prevent others from abusing the power of the Zerg, like The Dark Voice pretends to.
Instead, we have a mess that Blizzard's done with the secondary character, ranging between non-sense decisions (Like the Lessara drama or the idea of sparing Dominion escapees after killing Warfield without a flicker of remorse), an infinite drowning of self-pity (Like she usually talks to Izsha some times), and unexplained bursts of anger that would make Jim Raynor look like a balanced person. If Gradius in SCLegacy says Jim Raynor suffers from Schizophrenia, then Kerrigan has serious temper and control issues unfit for an assassin. Assassins, I believe, undergo a severe conditioning training all to just balance their emotions and null them at the time the killing assignment comes. Unless in extreme situations, assassins rarely break down like Kerrigan does.
The only thing she did that would make any sense is consulting twice with Valerian concerning advancing on Korhal and risk civilian losses, but then the character fault isn't Kerrigan's, but Valerian's, as he was poorly developed on that matter. Simply accepting his father is beyond redemption is both faulty, cheesy and complicated, and there would have to be a VERY good reason for Valerian to want that, other than the fact his father didn't treat him well for a son. Other than this, Kerrigan's decisions are as nonsense and as flawed as the rest of the campaign and story is.
Not to mention that what carries Kerrigan's victories, as Gradius well pointed too, is the enemies' incompetence. In StarCraft II, so much in Wings as in Heart, Blizzard designed it's enemies to not proceed according to what could happen, but to avoid players from losing or suffering any consequences whatsoever. The most clear example is the Protoss, which can unleash their entire potential but only do so in pockets, be they from Shakuras or the Tal'Darim. The only exception I ought to defy Gradius on is in Korhal, as I agree it was a surprise attack and Mengsk would never expect an audacity from Raynor in plain Korhal downtown. But, other than that, it's designed like if the enemies are too shy and too afraid to scare casual players, who NEED to learn some defeat and adapt if they ever expect to transition to the multi-player matches.
Conclusion
The people of Kotaku, when they released their critic, said 'the story is one you can't take too seriously'. I'd like to reply that one thing is to not take a story too seriously, but an entirely another, as I said, is to write a story which insults people's intelligence and memories. This latter is what EXACTLY applies to Heart of the Swarm, and it's an example to how to NOT tell a story. Because the story makes more than add a cheesy planning and execution, it adds things that don't make any flicker of sense, it makes plot twists that are regrettable and no attachment to any characters at all, be they primary or secondary. At least, in this final requisite, I think Wings of Liberty did it's homework. If you compare StarCraft II to Michael Bay's Transformers, you can easily declare Heart of the Swarm is 'Revenge of the Fallen'. Compared to Heart of the Swarm, Wings of Liberty is more complete and makes more sense.
And my motive for such disappointment and anger isn't for the story itself, but the fact that Blizzard, after the ending leaked on Kotaku two years ago, had all that time to change and rethink the story. Instead, they preferred to 'stay the course', like if Chris Metzen himself said to the company 'I don't care if it got leaked or not, we'll release it either way. People won't like it, screw them, they are all whiners anyway.'. This is something that makes both newcomers scream 'WTF' for eons on end and makes old fans abandon Blizzard, disgusted at their stubborn decision.
The worse of it is that Legacy of the Void, if I imagine what I think it will be, will be the simple 'find Amon and kill him, everyone becomes friends, let's make an MMO', only spiced with traditional plot twists and the usual stuff. I won't expect it to be any better anymore, not after Heart of the Swarm. And even worse is that people won't care, either because they'll have gotten used to what happened here, today, or because they're fan boys too blind and too lazy to say something about it.
On another topic, I'll talk about the game itself. If you feel you don't like HotS too or want to talk back something about it, feel free to comment. Not that wouldn't do much anyways...
Why would they change it only because it got leaked? Anyone who reads those leaks makes a consious decision to spoil themselves. I did not read them (I didn't even know they existed until now), I did not even watch the cinematic trailer/intro until the game was installed. I watched only the ingame teasers.
As for the storyline itself. Yep, it does have its weird moments (Stukov's sudden appearance, Kerrigan's strange moral, Narud's willingness to fight). But my real cristicism is towards the bleak characters and lack of surprises. I also found it strange that the prime Zerg would be conscious beings with the ability to speak. It started really well with Nova, Horner, Valerian, Raynor and Kerrigan and I had hoped they would get more screen time. It also sucked how little we got to see from Protoss except for Zeratul and the boring Tal'Darim. I still think it's far superior to Wings of Liberty. The dialogue is better, character interaction is better, and the stuff that you do actually has meaning (unlikee Raynor trying to dethrone Mengsk with the recording).
If i had to rate the games storylines from 1-10 it would go like this:
SC1: 8
SCBW: 9
WoL: 6
HotS: 7
I hope LotV can build on the strengths of HotS while having more missions.
edit: Btw. you say they had two years to change the storyline and make it sound like it was plenty of time. You should take into consideration how many things depend on the storyline. Level design (and with that editor features), art, cinematics, sound effects, casting choices, units, doodads. Anything that isn't multiplayer balance.
Some of the critic isn't well researched, as you did in fact not take into account that Blizzard has this wonderful stupid idea of telling half their plots and lore in books, which answers a lot of the problems of HotS. What we can blame them for though if bad writing there, because they did not even once bring this up at all in any detail, so if you didn't read the specific books, you don't get jack shit.
But even if you do, the writing is awful and incohesive. This is the same Blizzard that actually went and made their Panda aprils joke into a race for WoW. Nothing is holy anymore there. I suspect anyone with some kind of work ethic either left years ago, sold them for the millions they make or is on Titan with some luck. While the campaign itself was pretty good gameplay wise and I felt quite a bit sad for poor Sarah when she can't reach Jim, I also pretty much could see the entire plot unfold. Blizzard doesn't kill their Main Characters anymore. Not since Grom. Okay, this did kill off whatshisface Cairne in WoW after he became forgotten by everyone, but still. The only way to get yourself killed in a Blizz game is to become corrupted and the evil guy.
Mengsk was the one cunning bastard they had left of all their antagonists and they went and wrote him so badly compared to books like "I, Mengsk" that it's just awful. Though he did prepare Korhal quite a bit for the Zerg, but Blizz had to Plotarmor the Swarm due to Primals.
Overall Blizzard was never really good at writing. If you go back to WC3 or SC1, you will notice the same cheesy stuff. I think the problem is that Blizz hasn't grown out of their bad writing as others did and we are just used to better written plots at our current ages.
Duran's end makes somewhat sense, since there is a entire ZERG FLEET in orbit. Seriously, even that guy can't fight of a couple of thousand mutalisks (oh btw anyone else noticed that in SC1 any zerg air unit was in space, in HotS it suddenly is just the Leviathan). So there is some sense there. Aaaaaand Blizz thought he served his purpose with the book before HotS.
Amon always makes me think of this. And I personally never cared for the big evil megadude in the back. This Amon/Dark Voice smells so much of Sargeras it's not even funny.
There is other things I could comment on, but basically while I was somewhat emotional about Kerrigan and clapped my hands in joy when I infested a Protoss Ship, I didn't feel it did the game series any justice.
Warcraft - dead, Diablo - dead, Starcraft - nearly burried, add some LotV sand to finish.
Let's hope Titan isn't a mess. But it probably will be.
@Gorandor: Go
Obviously did read the books; But the problem is there is virtually little to no explanation through out the campaign, which seems like 'It's there because we want that to be there'. Explanations not only makes the story have it's sense (as twisted as it can sound) and even increase people's interest in these books.
The idea of doing such unexplained acts in favor of selling books so people can read it and then 'Uh, okay then.' it is what actually offends me. It's practically the same as calling people stupid.
Only for fleshing out the gameplay style, I could take a day or three, and using notepad. And I'm talking about a campaign with no CG cinematics at all, like my project. And, given the power of Blizzard's rendering farms, they could make a simple cinematic in a month.
Tight deadline is not the issue here, it's effort. They could remake the entire thing in these two years while fleshing out the multi-player, but they chose not to do it. When one of them said months ago HotS was 90%, I immediately got worried. As well as an idea of how the story would run.
However, before Existor datamined the dependencies, I had no idea the story run would be THAT bad.
@DeltaCadimus: Go I think the reason we didn't see more fancy CGI is because of BlizzCon this year. I suspect since SC2 now can do in-game cutscenes that look pretty good, they cut down a bit on the CGI for HotS and used more of it for other project. After all they no longer have 10 years, but 2 years between stuff for the most part. I suspect they finally unveil Titan at BC2013 with a really long and fancy CGI trailer. Or they should at least, because people stop caring about their expansion packs.
So I guess they invested more time into finishing that to blow people away.
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Curse PremiumNot really. Reading Flashpoint only pissed me off more when you get to the Mira Han mission and she decides to fight you for no reason, despite being your friend and ally in the book.
@Gradius12: Go I said a lot, not all of them.
Blizzard has become genius at telling stories that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Seriously, try it out yourself, its really not easy.
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Curse PremiumCan you name some? I don't doubt you, I'm just curious what specifically you're thinking of.
Btw, one of the biggest "Fuck you´s" for me in the entire campaign was the extremly retarded portrayel of the protoss. What the fuck. Seriously, they freeze like idiots? Did they do that every 5 minutes all the time when they were on the planet before the zerg arrived? Shouldnt their Shields easily protect them from that? How can a single zerg take out an entire protoss ship? That queen should have been ripped apart by just a few of them.
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Curse PremiumProtoss have been getting shafted since day 1. Even when you play as them, you still lose.
Zeratul Mission 1: Run away like a coward as hundreds of your brethren fight for you.
Zeratul Mission 2: A single hybrid mind-controlled an entire protoss colony and you have to hack your way through them. What. The. Hell.
Zeratul Mission 3: You "beat" a foe that was already supposed to be dead.
Zeratul Mission 4: Your entire race gets destroyed.
Don't even get me started on Raynor's merry band of rebels taking down Selendis and the Fleet of the Executor. <_<
@DeltaCadimus: Go
Well actually Stukov wasn't dead at the end of Ressurection IV just got a serum wich paused his infestation for a short time (he lost the conenction with the "new swarm" and he was angry about it but couldn't do anything) the pause was temporary not final. And i think Abathur was cool in a way like this. I loved how he was without any emotions only concentrating to his purpose to make the swarm better. In other topics i can agree mostly.
And they got Transformers in order to do that :-(
Yeah fuck you Blizzard for making the Protoss the comic relief of SC2.
As a protoss fan, no single protoss unit have been shown in either cinematics or in-game cutscenes apart from heros like Zeratul. And by that I mean no probe, no nexus, no zealots, no inner seeing into the protss society... The only protoss thing that has been shown in a cinematics is a lone Zeratul. I'm not sure if they can do it justice for Protoss in LotV, considering it has to feature both 3 races in a final battle of some sort
@Gorandor: Go
Ressurection IV, as I said, was considered non-canon, i.e. not to related to the story and not to be taken seriously. And I never implied Stukov died in that mission.
Also, concerning Abathur, I didn't said he needed emotions, but instead make a more sound organic computer than the paused cyborg-esque lines he spews. Still, it's not bad if you compare it to Brood Mothers like Niadra and Naktul... oh, God.
I will post my post from the other thread here...
But after reading your post I feel like you really hit the nail on the head, still I feel that one of the primary reasons the story suffered was because Blizzard cropped out a lot of character development for the sake of keeping the story to under 30 missions. It's true though they made poor choices with the dialog and characters that they did have. But honestly I just feel like I saw moments where Blizzard was just being lazy, Kerrigan coming back looking exactly the same is a good example. The story really suffered because I feel like Blizzard wanted to take the easy way out and sacrificed story for the sake of time and budget.
@progammer: Go
What about that new protoss chick who got captured? But other then that the protoss really have been made to look like idiots.
That is 100% what I was thinking when I played the level. Protoss have really just not been made to look good. Even their technology seems great but they way they use it is stupid. A prime example would be why the hell that big warp way connector was so far from their base? Why would you build 4 of them and keep them so far from your base. It makes no sense. Not to mention the fact that Zeratual comes from no where with some Super important knowledge about Zerus. Where the Fuck did that come from? He just came from no where told her about it and then left with nothing else. No explanation of how he knew about this or anything like that.
@JacktheArcher: Go
A pretty much good example, were not for the fact Blizzard was trying to mix this thing (The second Kaldir mission, if we're talking the same language), kitbashing the Tosh terrazine mission and the train mission in one map. Realistically, all the shuttles needed to do was head to orbit and dock on the ship they used, but then that'd kill a Blizzard mission... figures.
Flash Freezes disappear after 1 mission as well. Funny. It's like we switched planets there.