HotS & LotV Chronological Order

Campaign Discussion
21

That’s kind of a strawman. Artanis’s duty isn’t towards the Dominion or Kerrigan’s swarm. It’s for his people who are under threat.

He’s surprised that things are that bad when he gets there, sure, but he can’t be surprised that they’re there in the first place if he feared Amon’s armies reaching them first before he ever left. He directly states that.

You’ve also ignored Bifrost’s point that the keystone can be retrieved at any time whereas people are irreplacable (Kerrigan’s rant about vision comes to mind here, except that a protoss’s life is worth far more than a zerg).

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22

Not to mention his personality type.

Artanis doesn’t shy from tough decisions, but he always puts his primary focus on his people.

Even on Aiur, he went out there with his option of purging Amon from Khala instead of going with Alarak’s callous, yet pretty reasonable option.

He’s just not that kind of person.
Neither if he chooses according to his Honor or Reason.

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23

@Gradius and @Bifrost

We’ve debated in the past Korhal vs Shakuras and the points around each in detail (including the point you’re claiming I’m ignoring). You disagree with me, and I disagree with you, and we’re not going to convince the other. The only way to move forward there would be for Blizzard Entertainment to release the canonical order.

I’ve posted here only to correct @Bifrost’s comment about Artanis knowing how horribly bad things are on Shakuras before going there. He does not. This is fact as per the game itself.

24

Thing is, that while I can agree with your general logic that someone might prefer Korhal over Shakuras, I don’t see how it applies to Artanis.

Not one bit.

25

After the massive Zerg casualties from the invasion of Aiur, it seems building up another 1.5 billion Zerg would take more time than immediately proceeding the hijacking of the GA

26

As far as it goes, I still don’t see any actual compelling reason to jump on the Keystone, coming straight out of Aiur. As far as Artanis is aware, its in the hands of a friend and not on track to be moved. While Amon is threatening to the terrans in the abstract, Artanis knows that he has forces actively attempting to destroy the Protoss, and almost certainly already has forces on Shakuras, since its highly unlikely the entire Khalai population were hanging out with the Golden Armada watching the invasion of Aiur from orbit.

27

So, that’s like a fourth different approach why Shakuras > Korhal.

28

That’s cool.

Again, I’ve gone over my reasons in the past and I believe they’re sound and in-character, however unless Blizzard Entertainment tells us, we won’t know the canonical path and are just going to go around in circles.

Thankfully, the game let’s you choose the path you believe to be best.

29

The “canon” order of both HotS and LotV can be found by opening a brand new account and looking at the order of the mastery achievements.

It is as follows:
HotS: Char-Kaldir-Zerus-Skyger-Space-Korhal
LotV: Korhal-Shakuras-Glacius-Ulnar-Endion-Mobius-Slayn-Aiur

The fact that Korhal comes first is a little ridiculous for many reasons mentioned above, but it is also stated as the first place the Protoss go after Auir in the campaign sneak peak released early in the LotV beta.

30

Problem is we have an actual contradiction concerning the HotS mission order in the comics. So it is proven false once it doesn’t seem reliable. And I don’t think the writers were in charge of the ordering of the mastery achievements.

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31

I mean, my experience with LotV was also that the difficulty of levels somewhat reflected that order. Except the temple on Shakuras, that was hard.

In terms of logically trying to break down the order of HotS, the idea that Kaldir game after Char offends me, and that it came after Zerus offends me again. And then the idea that you get mutas and swarm hosts before roaches is all kinds of unthinkable for me.

If Kerrigan goes the Kaldir first, her beating up on the Protoss makes total sense. The closest she ever came to being friendly with the Protoss was while being the queen of blades, which is not very friendly, so she would have zero issue batting them aside to get some better Zerg.

However, if she goes to Char first we see multiple problems. Firstly, Zagara has hydras, so for Kerrigan to not have hydras and Abathur to not be able to make hydras after reclaiming Zagara doesn’t really make sense. Though, she also has mutas too so to be fair, that would almost put her on char last of the 3. Further, if we are to assume Warfield’s speech had any effect on Kerrigan whatsoever (it looks like we are to assume that from how she reacts), it does not make sense for her to suddenly be genocidal with the Protoss. And finally, if Kerrigan goes to Char first, that means she killed all the Protoss on Kaldir AFTER meeting with Zeratul. There is no more claim of non-collaboration here.

And then after all that, going to Zerus first makes it even worse. Now she worked with Zeratul, going along with him. Now for her to kill the Kaldir Protoss? No way. Also, it makes interaction on Zerus cease to be logical: Abathur gets mad at the primal Zerg for stealing his Hydralisk strain after the swarm was on Zerus for a few hours. However, if you haven’t been to Kaldir yet, you don’t HAVE hydralisk genetic material to steal. It’s not available on the leviathan at all, unless we now go back and start counting Zagara’s hydras now, awful convenient we didn’t before. And if Kerrigan is now the primal queen of blades, her fear of the Golden Armada no longer befits her. She is too arrogant and self confident to fear the Golden Armada once she has a chance of fighting back. We know this. And also, it makes leviathan interactions on Kaldir make less sense. When Kerrigan complains to Abathur about how she thought he made her swarm stronger than this with the swarm being so crippled by the cold. If she just took command over the swarm, this complaint makes sense. But if she has already taken back char and conquered Zerus, and now she’s still complaining? That no longer fits.

There is so much wrong with going to Kaldir last, if that is really the canon order than I lose all faith in blizzard story writing, and HotS was already weak at the best of times.

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32

We all feel the same way, buddy…

33

Your claims make sense, my playthroughs usually go the exact same way, because it appeals both to my lore and gameplay philosophy, but…

Niadra’s comic is canon. And Niadra remembers PQoB.

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34

When I first played “Heart of the Swarm,” I went to Kaldir first simply because it was the choice that made sense to me. I also assumed the Zerg would once again take Char as their primary location, and with it being Dominion occupied, I wanted more than Zerglings and Queens to assault the world with.

However, we do know that Kaldir is not the first world canonically.

I think we’ve also all learned that just because something is canonical, doesn’t mean it’s the most logical.

35

Looking at Safe Haven with disgust

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36

I agree that from a Gameplay PoV, going to Kaldir first is the most sensible choice given what units are given during the missions.

But from a lore PoV, Char is the most plausible first choice :

-Kerrigan at first did not thought about rebuilding the Swarm, she just wanted to pick them and go straight to Korhal. With such a mindset, the best place to go in is the planet where you’d be sure to find Zerg like Char.

-Abathur mentions that at some point Zagara tried to take control of him before going to the Leviathan, so it was around Char at some point after WoL and had little reason to move around after that.

-This is a freeze-frame bonus, but if you watch the cinematic announcing Raynor’s “death”, the planet Kerrigan is selecting has the number 91% as an attribute. If you look at Char’s characteristics, it has a 0.91 for its gravity, while Kaldir has a 0.92, which implies that Kerrigan did chose Char as her first planet.

-If Char is the first planet, then Zerus is the logical second, since at this point Zeratul would visit her, and it’s highly unlikely he would sit through the slaughter of many Protoss, whereas after Zerus he wouldn’t be there to witness it.

Now the Space mission before the Skygeirr one isn’t logical in my book, since doing so would make Kerrigan’s reaction to Narud’s shapeshifting odd, and I found that having the Mira mission after Skygeirr is a nice way to make Kerrigan recover from her battle with Narud, whereas going to Skygeirr last would make her wounds less meaningful that they actually were.

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37

I mean the Zeratul argument gives a really good support to Zerus being before Kaldir.

Although I still gotta say, that going for Kaldir because it’s a smaller fight makes sense.

But hey you made sense out of canon, so good job.

Did not think* not thought^

I get Space as the first choice, because Kerrigan sees Jimmy alive ergo she goes full Aggression/Panic mode.

38

I never really thought about it, but both decisions to decide what to go to first don’t really make sense in the long run. You’d think Kerrigan would choose Space first to get Raynor back asap given how attached she is to him, but as others have said, Skygirr going second makes the Narud fight really awkward. There’s no point transforming into Raynor to try to psychologically mess with Kerrigan when he’s already been rescued.

I really don’t know at this point. Both decisions are %#$*ed.

39

Wouldn’t that be the reverse? It doesn’t make sense for her to co-operate with Zeratul and then casually slaughter countless Protoss.

40

But Kerrigan wasn’t going to either of those planets at first for a fight, that’s the point. All she wanted was to pick up Zergs then make a beeline for Augustgrad. Izsha has to tell her the Swarm won’t answer to her without some buildup.

I personally see the reverse. Kerrigan knows how valuable Raynor is as a bargaining tool for Mengsk, so as long as she doesn’t attack Mengsk directly nothing would happen to him, otherwise she wouldn’t attack any industrial worlds before his release.