God, don’t get me started on SC2 implementing stuff into SC/BW locations that results in plot-holes as to why they weren’t used to begin with. Colossi turning out to be stored within the crust of Aiur is all kinds of stupid. Where the heck were these things while the Overmind’s invasion of Aiur was going on?
So, I recently finished the mod StarCraft Mass Recall, which marks the first time I’ve played through the entire original campaign in over ten years. After replaying the original campaigns with their plots, characterizations, dialogues, and settings, as cliche as it is to say, it’s boggling how superior the original story was compared to SCII’s.
That said, it’s far from the holy grail of sci-fi, military, space operas. I have my critiques about it, but for every critique I always try to suggest an alternative so as not to devolve into just complaining. So, a couple things I would’ve changed or added:
Rebel Yell
- Just before the New Gettysburg mission, to try to convince Kerrigan not to go through the plan, Raynor said “I’ve saved you plenty of times”, but that’s never actually seen (unless through some player/playstyle contrivance). Raynor barely helps her at all, at least from what’s seen in the game, so that line would’ve gone a lot farther if we actually saw how he saved her “plenty of times”. Maybe within the mission “The Trump Card” have Raynor need to get Kerrigan out of the enemy base after implanting the psi emitter.
- Original (as in the truly original) really should’ve kept the mission “Biting the Bullet”, wherein Tassadar comes in to help Raynor and Duke at the last moment to save them from the zerg.
Overmind:
- Daggoth was criminally underutilized; he was basically just a copy of the Overmind in terms of purpose and personality. Although it was fine in vanilla SC, in BW it becomes an issue, and I would’ve liked to see him have a more distinct personality (a little more on that later).
- The player cerebrate was clearly stated to have been made to watch over Kerrigan, yet by the end it was part of the Invasion of Aiur without her? If this cerebrate’s entire purpose was entwined with Kerrigan, it’s presence on Aiur, even with the excuse of the Overmind bringing “the full might of the swarm”, raises questions. The easy thing would’ve just had Kerrigan come along with the rest of the swarm. Or the Overmind, to prepare for its toughest battle, modify existing cerebrates including you to better deal with the protoss.
The Fall:
Honestly, I don’t really have anything but personal nitpicks about this episode, and even those nitpicks don’t concern any plotholes or contrivances in the story itself. Maybe more interaction with Duke apart as a last-minute enemy during “Choosing Sides”, but even then the story did great as it was.
The Stand:
- The whole Uraj and Khalis schtick felt rather lazy. The fact that one of those crystals was on Char the entire time was just awkward. It’s also bothersome that they’re never brought up again in the game. The entire premise of scouring the zerg from Shakuras was fine, but the literal deus ex machina of doing it through the Xel’Naga temple felt far too simplistic. I would’ve liked to see the Khalai and Nerazim actually have to work together on a more practical means, like finding a way to shut down the warp gate or finding & dismantling the zerg command structure on Shakuras.
- I’m not sure how Raszagal fell under Kerrigan’s sway. If anything, how did Kerrigan even know about or get to Shakuras. It seemed the zerg there were remnants from the Aiur invasion force and they just stumbled onto Shakuras when they followed the protoss through the warp gate. When did Kerrigan even find the time to figure out who Raszagal is, locate her, psychically control (?) her, and somehow do it without anyone else knowing? If Kerrigan had come with the rest of the swarm to Aiur, it could at least be deduced she snuck through the warp gates and infiltrated Nerazim society while the rest of the zerg distracted the protoss. But as it stands, I’m really not sure how to reconcile this point.
- I despise how Daggoth didn’t even have a speaking role. It would’ve been great to see his opposition to Kerrigan, which in turn could’ve made Artanis and Zeratul’s trusting of her more convincing (a blatant zerg aggressor versus one who could potentially rein them in).
The Iron Fist:
- Again, an opportunity to characterize Daggoth in opposing the UED trying to enslave his new Overmind, but nah, just reduce the entire zerg race to little more than animals to domesticate, cerebrates and Overmind included. The fact that the zerg had so little agency of their own, despite them being part of the “big three” in the Koprulu Sector, was a major knock when going through the Brood War campaign. If Daggoth became the new voice of the renegade swarm and openly defied Kerrigan and the UED during the missions, it would’ve made the zerg feel like a legitimate power rather than a mere story element.
- It fascinates me that the UED, who were away from the Koprulu Sector and only “dissect[ed] dead zerg” (that I presume were just lowly zerglings or hydralisks, nothing of the higher command strains) could concoct a serum capable of pacifying the Overmind. And beyond that, somehow manipulate it to control the broods. Perhaps some explanation about how they were able to do this (like through the ending cinematic for that episode) would alleviate this.
- DuGalle trusting Duran over Stukov is ludicrous. “We’ve been friends since before you were born”, yet he allows the same guy to go ahead and assassinate his friend. I really can’t think of a way to justify this existing other than making this episode much longer to actually show the gradual degradation of DuGalle’s trust in Stukov while Duran spreads his influence over them.
Queen of Blades:
- I’ve no idea how Duran convinced Kerrigan of his allegiance, why Kerrigan would just trust this guy seemingly out of nowhere, if they met prior, etc. “Infested” Duran just felt like a rushed choice to give the zerg another voice. I would’ve had Kerrigan introduce the player cerebrate to Duran (“This is Duran. He’s…”), to explain his role and why she has him around and why we, the cerebrate, should also trust him.
- If Kerrigan could sever the connection of one cerebrate (the player) from the New Overmind, what prevented her from doing that to others to bring more zerg under her control? Although I know cerebrates can’t exist without an Overmind, it also would’ve been more compelling to have the player character join Kerrigan of their own volition (perhaps believing the QoB was the Overmind’s successor or opposing Daggoth’s position or escaping the UED’s enslavement), rather than they’re just kind of adopted.
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In the Overmind campaign there were 2 cerebrates. The 1 that was created to watch over Kerrigan was killed by Tassadar in the book Queen of Blades, while the cerebrate that was leading the invasion of Aiur was a completely different one.
I wouldn’t call “Tassadar leaving out important information on how to kill a Cerebrate” in Mission 2 a nitpick. There’s no in-game justification for why he held off providing this information until the briefing before Mission 5, which in my opinion, is a plot-hole.
If I rewrote StarCraft’s story, I would definitely ignore books (just make confusion and retconning worst). May as well say that since it’s very on topic.
Fair reply, and I admit my knowledge of the StarCraft expanded universe is far from complete. However, there is something to be said about dividing information across multiple platforms.
If something as important as the player’s character being killed, and then assuming the identity of a completely different character, happened, then that should’ve been made clear in the game itself. Going through all the in-game dialogue, there was no indication within episode 2 that any other cerebrate apart from Zasz was slain. If multiple cerebrates were being killed, that’s a pretty big deal considering this is their first confrontation with permanent death, and that should’ve reflected in the game.
Do you know how how long ago this book was published from when the game was released? If this book came afterwards, then this point right here just sounds like, for lack of better terms, lazy retconning to explain away this inconsistency.
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That’s actually a really good point.
I guess because one of the very first things we hear in the Protoss campaign was that the Conclave lost their trust in Tassadar, that Tassadar himself knew they would immediately shut down any idea of his, especially since it involved the Nerazim whom they were so prejudiced against so he intentionally left that part out so that they would at least have a chance of listening to him.
But yes, the dialogue could’ve been tighter, perhaps with Tassadar instead saying there was a way to kill the cerebrates but telling Aldaris that the Conclave wasn’t going to like it, instead of just leaving it at “strike down the cerebrate, and swarms will surely fall”.
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@Brother Bifrost
Is three days considered a Necro? If not how long does it have to be?
Can they? I would imagine that activating the Spear of Adun would require some form of authorization and whatnot. Thing that Artanis didn’t have access to at the moment.
A better question would be ‘Why the heck were they still fighting in a civil war while the Overmind’s invasion of Aiur was going on?’
I’m not saying that you’re being illogical, but if the Protoss can’t overlook the taboo about the Nerazim, I don’t see any reason why they would overlook the taboo about those super weapons.
They’re stupid, but at least, they’re consistently stupid within their frame of mind.
The Conclave, sure, but Artanis’s forces aren’t that close-minded 
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Can Artanis break the taboo? I assume there must be some kind of scurity system that prevent unauthorized personel from doing those smart move.
No, it is not. 202020
Yeah I was with the UED having drugs to pacify Daggoth (calling him the Overmind is an insult to the real Overmind). But having the ability to command the zerg’s every step does work for me.
I think perhaps the combination of psi emitters, and neuro toxins can perhaps mobilize and move the zerg to a given given location. But having the Zerg fighting side by side with the UED and attacking your forces and not the UED’s doesn’t make sense. At best the UED would be able to mobilize Zerg to a given area but they would be volatile and unpredictable once they got there.
Off topic. I always wondered how the Raiders felt fighting side by side with Kerrigan’s Zerg on Korhal.
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Currently in the middle of playing the BW Protoss campaign in SC remastered on my new PC.
I realized it’s kind of an Artanis and Zeratul buddy cop movie.
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Those Colossus were awoken by simply activating a Nexus, and Zeratul wasn’t even aware of them. Ain’t that hard to activate.
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I’ve said it before. One simple fix would have been to make waking up the Aiur Colossi a micro mission where you go underground, and you have to solve some sort of complex puzzle lock while fighting off the Zerg in order to locate some Colossi in storage. At least then, it would have been somewhat believable as to why no one would have had the time to awaken the Colossi during the Overmind’s invasion of Aiur.
But ya, like Mar said, the Colossi showing up from Zeratul touching a simple Nexus beacon…right next to the Overmind carcass…was really dumb.
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Maybe the Colossi had to be powered up/ have their batteries charged so to speak?
So the zerg invading triggered the Colossi to start powering up, but it takes a while. After they are powered up, they then needed to be called up.
So awakening has to 2 parts:
- The zerg invasion triggering a power Up
- Called Up
Okay this argument is grasping at straws but wanted to play devil’s advocate here.
Can protoss robotics units really actually run out power, or do they have some sort of self sustaining source of power?
There is so many problems with that instance as an example for this argument. For one thing, how can there be any Protoss’ base right next to the Overmind?
Moreover, I know that the Protoss isn’t the sharpest, but are you telling me that anybody could just accidentally activate the weapon forbidden by the Conclave? It’s like the Conclave just order ‘Do not push this Button’ and that’s it, nobody touch the Button?
Lastly, if it’s just two Colossi, I can somewhat believe that’s how the Protoss operate, but you can warp in more. That doesn’t make any sense from your stance. Especially considering that short story about the Protoss retrieving the Colossi. There was no Colossi in the Warp-In Network.
Now I don’t know what happened between the event of Brood War and Wing of Liberty (maybe TheFalcon is right), but it’s clear that those base and the Colossi became available sometime after the Zerg gone berserk.
I’d like to think this was abandoned from the last mission of vanilla Starcraft .
I was thinking about the following the other day:
They should have put the protoss base in Echoes of the Future in bottom right, and the infested terran structures in the top left (where Raynor was in the mission).
Even if protoss base in bottom left was an expo from that mission, the terran structures should not be in the bottom right (Southeast) corner, that is where the original protoss base was, Raynor could have take any expansion with that.
The map layout from echoes of the future actually isn’t too different from eye of the storm, and they could have easily matched it up, as an Easter egg for SC1 players.
Honestly I don’t like the idea of protoss base being on bottom left because in all my SC1 and mass recall playthroughs I never expand to the bottom left.
My go to in that mission is to expand top middle with Raynor, and expand up whole right side (East) of the map with protoss. I don’t expand down the left side.
Nah I’m grasping at straws in an effort to explain the unexplainable
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You’ve made a bad assumption here. You think that the upper part of this map is the same as the Brood War. It’s likely that the map is rotated by π/4 radian.
Secondly, you’re assuming that the map is of same scaling. I believe that the map in ‘Echo of the Future’ is much smaller.
Anyway, I think this base was established well after the event of Brood War. Someone made it long after the Zerg rampaged across Aiur and settled down.
That’s the name of the game here. We’re all grasping at straws. Analyze and think about stuff that the developers probably never even think about…
I don’t have any investment in the characters, so this post is going to speak in broad generalities regarding the setting rather than specific characters.
I guess I’d focus on fleshing out the Confederacy colonies, Overmind swarms, and Conclave tribes empires. Make these factions into characters in their own right that players can invest in.
I wouldn’t have superheroes or special heroes that universe revolves around. The characters would be representatives of their respective factions, and their personal soap opera dramas wouldn’t take precedence over the motives of their factions.
I’d have the three races fight each other and make that the main conflict of the franchise. They wouldn’t team up against an external force because that defeats the premise. Instead, each faction would have an exclusive ending where they exterminate the other two sides and take over the galaxy like the exclusive endings in WC1/2.
If terrans win, then they lobotomize all the zergs into cyborg zombie slaves and plunder all protoss tech for themselves. They proceed to strip mine the galaxy and turn it into a lifeless polluted wasteland, then move on to the next galaxy.
If the protoss win, then they exterminate the zerg and teach the terrans how to become hippies in harmony with nature. Thru mind control implants if necessary.
If the zerg win, then they eat everyone else and move on to the next galaxy.
Or I guess I’d defer to whatever Project Hydra is doing with its custom campaign.
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