LogFAQs > #956083969

Oh man, I didn't expect that post I made ten years ago to ever get unearthed, but here we are.

SCII's story is balls. Just truncating what I wrote a decade ago,
1. Kerrigan is retconned so that she didn't willingly embrace being infested and the Infested Kerrigan you knew wasn't really her, so basically that character, the interesting 'queen ***** of the universe,' dies quickly in SC2 and is replaced by the original Kerrigan, who then gets infested again because it's clear the writers didn't plan things ahead. There were multiple times in the second and third campaign that something from the first campaign gets contradicted, which was weird if they really envisioned this game as three games.
2. The story now revolves around ancient prophecies and omnipotent space gods, which is terrible. Ancient prophecies and space never mix, just ask Star Wars. The original game was just about the space marines from Aliens meeting the Tyranids and Eldar from Warhammer 40K and seeing where things went from there.
3. People talk about how the Terran campaign is the best one, and they're right, but nothing in it actually matters. Half the campaign is about redeeming Kerrigan, who immediately reinfests herself in the next campaign, and the other half is about proving Mengsk is evil to his people, which is never brought up again in later campaigns, and everyone still acts like he's the legitimate ruler of the Terrans. It's all incredibly sloppily-written.
4. An entire campaign is dedicated to Kerrigan trying to kill Mengsk, and it's like... First, it feels like the queen of the Zerg should be able to kill him much more easily than she does, but more importantly, the idea that Kerrigan is so filled with vengeance over him betraying her years ago is so dumb, especially after she willingly infests herself again. Mengsk himself is a lot less charismatic than he was in the first game, now he's just a dime-a-dozen South American dictator. I do enjoy how that campaign ends with Kerrigan flying into the sky Poochie-style, though.
5. I was willing to work with the Protoss campaign, I was willing to give it some slack, but then the story ends with Kerrigan turning into an omnipotent giant fire angel (???) who shoots DBZ laser beams at Cthulhus. That's the canon ending of Starcraft.
6. I actually didn't mind some of the side characters, like Raynor's XO and the pink-haired mechanic girl, but most don't really stay around long enough to matter. The only ones who are around long enough to matter are Stukov and the Zerg genetic engineer, which, fine. I remember specifically that they hyped up this purple Protoss lady as a major new character, then she's in the game for five minutes, gets mind-controlled, and does nothing.
7. One thing I noticed, and this shocked me, is that SC2 really doesn't throw around retcons for the first game like WoW does for WC3. I don't know what to make of that.

Wings of Liberty: 5/10
Heart of the Swarm: 2/10
Legacy of the Void: 4/10
Overall: 4/10
I'm probably being a little generous to the Protoss campaign, but it's okay.

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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005