Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 46: Starcraft II

(+) Yeah! (+)

So today like with Fire Emblem Fates we will be rating the individual components of Starcraft II and giving an overall score, so something like this:

Wings of Liberty - #/10
Heart of the Swarm - #/10
Legacy of the Void - #/10
Overall - #/10

You dont need to rate all of them. The overall score is not necessarily an average. Have fun! I will be away until Saturday so this will (probably) be the last topic until then, keep this one going for the week!

Previous Results:
Outer Wilds - 9.63 (20 votes)
Omori - 9.6 (5 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (33 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.72 (9 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.55 (26 votes)
Undertale - 8.53 (40 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.38 (54 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.13 (39 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.1 (34 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.92 (19 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (30 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.9 (23 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.67 (27 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Celeste - 7.52 (24 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (23 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7 (20 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (20 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.69 (16 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.66 (30 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.6 (27 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.25 (12 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.1 (13 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.91 (11 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.91 (27 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.39 (14 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.64 (14 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.45 (10 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.38 (8 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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Nominate Dissidia: Final Fantasy

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Nominate Final Fantasy X-2

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Wings of Liberty: 6/10
serviceable
Heart of the Swarm: 5.5/10
serviceable, but with unneeded Raynor angst

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Bump.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)

Huh? I thought Fallout 3 was supposed to be a seminal game in VG storytelling or something.

Fallout 3s strengths are more in the exploration and systems than in the plotting and narrative.

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Fallout 3: 6


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Wings of Libery: 7.5

I thought it was pretty enjoyable, might try out the other two campaigns one day.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Fallout 3s strengths are more in the exploration and systems than in the plotting and narrative.

Yep, but when rating F3, it gets interesting if you consider exploration as part of "story." Discovering and entering a Vault is one of the most compelling parts of the game IMO--so much mystery and suspense in those scenarios.

One of the things I've learned from these topics is that sometimes it's difficult to divorce a story from the overall game.

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I think Starcraft II might be a wash. Putting a game with 2-3 ratings on the leaderboard seems kinda sus

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Well good news no new topic until Saturday so lots of time for ratings!

@Nanis23 get in here, you nominated this one.

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Oh yes finally

Yeah I know this wouldn't get a lot of votes but I had to nominate this shit because this is the only one out of two games I want to give a 1

Will be writing my review shortly

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OK so
There are two games that I played which are story-centric games and I can give them a rating of 1/10. Final Fantasy IV (which I already gave a 1/10 to) and this garbage, which I wish I could have given it a 0.

You see, Starcraft II might be the game with the worst story ever made in a video game (that has a story more than "the princess is in another castle"). It isn't just bad, which is something I could maybe forgive, but it also ruins the beautiful story that the previous games had. It takes everything good that the two first games did, and completely shit on them.

But the absolute worst of the worst? they also took what was known as "the best female villain in video games", "the queen bitch of the universe", Sarah Kerrigan, and turned her from a fantastic character to a generic superhero. Yes, a hero. What was supposed to be the main antagonist of Starcraft is now the hero of the universe.
Kerrigan was fine in Starcraft. But they turned her into a manipulative genius bitch that no one dare to step in her way. She befriends you then backstab the fuck out of you. She pretends to be controlled only to backstab the Overmind and every single Cerebrate. The human fleet that dared to attack her and failed and began to escape was chased down and destroyed until no one was left alive.

And then comes Starcraft 2. Kerrigan is no longer a villain. She is a poor girl that needs rescuing because it turns out she is still under control and not really herself.
And then Raynor save her and now she is suddenly the saviour of the universe, turns into Super Saiyan and saves the world. What is this garbage? I am so glad Missile beat the fuck out of her (by the way Missile is a legit great character)
This is a meme I made a few years ago that explain my problem with SC2 Kerrigan-
https://i.imgur.com/tcfbkkz.png
(edit - if the text is too small then this is the picture in the right - https://i.imgur.com/e5nulYn.jpg )

I can't think about any other video game character that was ruined as much as she did. DmC Dante is not the same Dante as the regular one so it doesn't count. Hobonix maybe? eh, I liked him. And then he redeemed himself and Ace Attorney 5 and 6. So no, I can't think of any other character like Kerrigan. She was ruined the most

There were also other """"minor"""" complaints I had.
I remember BW Raynor telling Kerrigan that no matter what - he will be the person that will kill her someday. He was totally over her. He wanted revenge. He was out for blood. And I quote-
"It may not be tomorow, darlin', it may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured; I'm the man who's gonna kill you one day. I'll be seeing you."
But come SC2? suddenly he wants to save her no matter what. What the fuck :|

Dark Origin was my favorite mission in Starcraft. Everything about it and the hybrid was hype. I was so excited for Starcraft 2 to see what the hybrids are and how they fit into the story.
But come Starcraft 2 and the hybrids are just...I dunno, boring? all the mystery that Dark Origin had...I felt like it was for nothing

So yeah
Wings of Liberty - 1
Heart of the Swarm - 1
Legacy of the Void - 1
Total - 1

Bad story is bad. Fire that writer

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Wings of Liberty - 2
Heart of the Swarm - 2.5
Legacy of the Void - 1.5
Overall - 1

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Well good news no new topic until Saturday so lots of time for ratings!

You deserve a break. Thanks for all you do with these topics. I look forward to them every night.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Wings of Liberty - 3/10
Heart of the Swarm - 3/10
Legacy of the Void - 4/10
Overall - 8/10

3/3/4 but 8 overall?

UltimaterializerX posted...

Damn I actually liked Kerrigan in this game.

Whaaat why
Also it's kind of surprising you don't hate it considering it's a Blizzard game released after Blizzard went to shit

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Guys please vote I nominiated this and it feels awkward :(

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I haven't played it, enjoyed your write-up though!

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Kenri posted...

I haven't played it, enjoyed your write-up though!

Yay thank you

The thing is - I don't hate SC II at all! I only despise the story. The campaign is good fun and very underrated. Every mission is unique and has a special gimmick. Letting you choose power ups between missions is cool. Playing it on hard is challenging, rewarding and rarely felt unfair. Getting the achievements in every mission was also pretty fun

Also while searching the Internet for more "SC II Kerrigan sucks" I found..this
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/939643-starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty/55929447

@Anagram get in here and post your review

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I only played Wings of Liberty, but I give it a 1 for Nanis reasons. It's such a disservice to what they had built in StarCraft: Brood War. I was very confused when the game opened with Raynor trying to convert her and extremely pissed by the end when he succeeded. The Brood War quote where he claims he's gonna be the one to kill her is one of my favorites and to act like he never even said that was offensive to me.

Kerrigan should be irredeemable. But from what I know about the rest of the story, she becomes the savior of the universe. Fuck that noise.

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Wings of Liberty: 7/10
Heart of the Swarm: 3/10
Legacy of the Void: 3/10
Overall: 3/10

WoL was disappointing as a follow-up to Brood War, but if you ignore that and just judge it on its own I think it's decent. The Kerrigan stuff isn't great, but I enjoyed the Mengsk and Tychus stuff.

Then HotS and LotV decide to drop basically everything that was interesting about WoL to go all-in on Kerrigan and the apocalypse prophecy nonsense. At least some of the cinematics were cool, though?

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Since we don't have any new topics till Saturday, I want to discuss this:

Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)

I wasn't here when FF4 got rated. I always believed FF4 had one of the best pre-PS1 storylines in gaming. It's fast-paced, full of twists, and boasts one of the best protagonists in the series.

Why such a low score from Board 8?

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The steam of bad fake out sacrifices.

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plasmabeam posted...

best pre-PS1 storylines in gaming

This isn't a very high bar to clear.

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plasmabeam posted...

Since we don't have any new topics till Saturday, I want to discuss this:

Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)

I wasn't here when FF4 got rated. I always believed FF4 had one of the best pre-PS1 storylines in gaming. It's fast-paced, full of twists, and boasts one of the best protagonists in the series.

Why such a low score from Board 8?

Well, most of the twists are fake outs and Cecil is a bottom tier protagonist for the series.

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FFDragon posted...

The steam of bad fake out sacrifices.

Leonhart4 posted...

Well, most of the twists are fake outs and Cecil is a bottom tier protagonist for the series.

Eh, disliking the fake-outs is fair. Disagree on Cecil though.

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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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SC2's story was so bad. So many dumb retcons mostly because they didnt want to exterminate the Zerg. Again the blizzard story of the "big threat that you have no attachment because you don't play as them in the game". LotV gets a little bit of love because while the epilogue was piss, the concept of Artanis reuniting the Protoss was at least kinda cool

WoL: 2/10
HotS: 1/10
LotV: 4/10

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Bump

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Wings of Liberty: 9/10

Didn't see anything wrong with the story tbh.

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Nominate:

Final Fantasy X-2
Final Fantasy XV

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Nominate Skyward Sword

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Bump City

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Gonna actually do the next one tomorrow but earlier in the day!

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