I'm 3 missions away from finishing HotS. What is LotV like?

Campaign Discussion
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I think I’ve answered this but I’m going to do it again. Yes, it does bother me. Although she was cleansed from Amon’s influence completely in WoL, I think there may still be a trace of evil inside her, perhaps not related to Amon, which explains why in the early missions she admits to herself “Jim was right, there’s something dark inside me”, while still in the human form.

Kerrigan is a controversial character. She went from wanting to dominate and conquer the entire Universe to facing her true enemies, while still aware of her past, what she did and the decisions she’s made.

I think Kerrigan could be split in three different ways:

“The good Kerrigan”
“The original, evil Queen of Blades which is gone at the end of WoL”
“The primal, cleansed Queen of Blades”

The primal Queen of Blades seems to be aware of who she is, regrets what she did in the past, and yet still wants the best for her Swarm and would go out of her way to make sacrifices. I don’t know her completely since I haven’t played LotV yet and so I don’t know what behaviour she will exhibit in LotV.

She decided to take revenge and in order to do so she went and obtained the primal Zerg form, which makes her more powerful than before. Perhaps if she never went to Zerus and if she never got the primal powers and remained human forever, she’d have eventually been killed perhaps by Arcturus and the fate of the entire Universe would be in the hands of the Xel’Naga. Remember the vision that Raynor was having back in WoL, if Kerrigan dies, it’s all over. And Zeratul knows that, and Raynor knows that. They’re probably the only ones who know that.

Regarding the civilian planets of innocent people, yes it does seem a bit odd since she spared a few innocent people on Char and the ones that Valerian was talking about. But when it comes to the Swarm, she’s making decisions in a way that would benefit the Swarm. And the essence collected on all those planets really helped with the evolution of her Swarm. One could conclude that she sacrificed those innocent civilians for the sake of the evolution of her Swarm. Selfish decision? Perhaps.

The story can be viewed from so many angles.

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I don’t think its a trace of evil in her rather that she isn’t a very good person at heart, but a monster willing to kill everyone in her way to get what she wants.

Valerian knows as well (he refuses to hand her over to his father for that reason) and I’m pretty sure there are quiet a few people I’m forgetting.

“Some of you may die but that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make” Reading your text brings that quote to mind for me. She doesn’t care if the dead are human and protoss and only cares about the zerg and is willing to enact petty revenge on anyone who threatens her pets. See what happens on kaldir, she had the option to run away and seek out what she needed elsewhere but she doesn’t she makes out to kill every last protoss on kaldir.

She spares civilians every time the word raynor gets thrown her way. Any other time she doesn’t care.

More like needlessly brutal I would say and its not only the evolution missions but the tasks she gives her broodmothers as well.

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65

Well, that may be the case in Brood War. Though I’d have to say that if she was as evil as you say Raynor wouldn’t have fallen for her romantically. Otherwise the whole romance between them doesn’t make much sense. I think Raynor senses a good side in her, not only bad. Unless you think Raynor is also another monster and they’re just two monsters who have fallen for each other.

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Understatement of the century. She engaged in total war against humanity with the most dangerous biological weapon in the universe, to the point of crippling the entire Dominion war machine and destroying/displacing several planets worth of populations.

Even in BW where she was supposed to be evil she did not go to such gratuitous measures, opting to instead just raze the targets she wanted, which is what she should have done to Mengsk or Augustgrad if leaving the sector or attempting assassination wasn’t an option (even though it was).

I like the Doylist angle: the writers didn’t think through the ramifications of giving Kerrigan her humanity back and forgot that a zerg campaign is all about destroying planets. Oops. We accidentally got space Hitler and the only people that seem to care are Kerrigan’s victims.

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Fair enough. It’s all a matter of how each person experiences the story. Where some people may see a flaw in the story someone else may see another way of interpreting the story. Again, I appreciate the game for what it is and I’m not thinking of other ways it could have been if things were different. Instead, I’m looking at what it’s done and making my own conclusions about the story, regardless if those conclusions are consistent with the entirety of the story.

There’s no perfect story. Even without Kerrigan in the Zerg campaign. Even with her in the human form. It’s just ways of interpreting it.

In my eyes, I see a Kerrigan that was freed from an ancient dark influence, and now another Kerrigan who accepts herself, who is aware of her past, and who sometimes feels trapped inside her own world. It seems like her human nature is at conflict with her Swarm nature. It’s not the Queen of Blades the one that loves Raynor, it’s Sarah Kerrigan. And it’s not the Queen of Blades the woman that Jim Raynor fell for, it’s Sarah Kerrigan. Jim seems to love and hate Kerrigan at the same time which is all valid, since she has two natures in her (The human one, and the Swarm one, the dark one is known as gone)

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68

She should be, but I don’t think the writers meant her to be. There are only a handful of characters you can call controversial in StarCraft 2. Imma say Tychus and Alarak ade great examples, while Mengsk and Kerrigan are the bad examples. Mengsk is clearly evil which makes Kerrigan clearly good. Supposedly and among other things (including the raging R-action of the writer team). The fact she occasionally says stuff like “Oh I’m so bad” (obviously not this exactly) don’t mame her deep. I mean look at the _________________________________________. You’ll get it in LotV.

Anyhoo… enjoy the story and don’t listen to noone.

Ain’t that pretty?

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No in brood war you can at least bring the tainted by amon argument though that doesn’t hold up for long with how the overmind planned it. As for Raynor

Raynor fell for her back in the sons of korhal days. And he clings to her worse then he clings to the wife he had a child with. I would even go as far that raynor is no longer able to make sound decisions what kerrigan is concerned. Not to mention that after the wars he’s seen he is probably no longer psychologically stable.

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While I like the character as you know, I’ve openly said on many occasions that she’s:

a) not a good person
b) seriously messed up

Because she is. Kerrigan is my favourite character in the franchise, and she’s had a lot of bad things done to her, but she’s done truly and horrible awful things as well.

In “Heart of the Swarm,” she’s the protagonist as the player character, and she’s doing everything for pure, selfish revenge. She says so herself multiple times through the Campaign. She wants Mengsk dead, and anything or anyone that gets in the way of that, innocent, guilty, civilian, military, etc. losses. Period.

She’s very consistent with this and it makes complete sense given the character’s state at this point.

That doesn’t make it right or justifiable.

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Why are people such as the OP (among others) interpreting her as the designated hero then? Is it not possible that the writing failed at any level? :thinking:

She was an assassin who killed people for a living. Probably not a stellar individual but at least she tried. And yes, from the context of the horrors she went through, she did end up pretty good.

“I just don’t think anyone deserves to have the zerg unleashed on them.”
~Kerrigan in SC1 with what is now the most ironic quote in the whole franchise

What gets me is that the nightmare she has at the start of the game implies that she fears going back into her old mass-murdery ways, as that would confirm that she really is a monster after all.

And what does she do? Go back to her mass murdery ways.

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I believe the infestation just reveal and emphasize what is already there. Contrary to what most people believe nobody is perfect evil or good. So an evil character can have some ‘good’ in her. She only cares about innocent civilians when it was bashed to her face or ‘Raynor’ word was used. However, a truly heartless person wouldn’t be swayed or capable of love.

She does have a passionate moment here and there, but it’s not enough to off set her bad deed. She murdered the whole Protoss’ colony and destroyed billion of life.

But, really, you don’t need to care about my personal interpretation. Just enjoy the campaign!

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74

Because a lot of people struggle to differentiate “protagonist” with “hero”?

You can keep calling it mass murder, but theres still no indication that she was deliberately targeting civilians or that any exceptional amount was getting caught in the crossfire except for an extremely overly literal reading of the planets being covered in creep.

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75

Including the writers? Is that why there’s no dialog in the games of people calling out Kerrigan (aside from her victims)?

Cocooned colonist doodads. Apartment buildings in rubble. Protoss subjected to weapons’ experiments. Kerrigan arguing with Valerian against sparing civilians, twice. Saying there’s “no indication” is a straight up lie and you know it.

Deliberately targeting? No. Killing them anyway and not really caring? Yes.

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Because antagonizing a nominal ally who could easily crush you without breaking a sweat is a bad idea?

Yeah, ok, that puts her on like with… literally every other terran military commander in the games, ever, except for (somewhat ironically) Warfield.

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77

I don’t know why you keep interpreting that statement as “to her face”. There’s dozens of way they can show that “protagonist” =/= “hero”, yet they deliberately went out of their way to put Kerrigan on a pedestal and not call attention to the fact that she regressed to being a mass murderer.

Maybe the common denominator isn’t a bunch of people that aren’t you misinterpreting the game. Maybe the common denominator is crappy writing. Is that a possibility?

No, it puts her on par with Mengsk who’s willing to unleash zerg on a whole planet just to hit a few targets. Are you gonna defend him just because he wasn’t explicitly aiming for civilians?

Only she did it on a far larger scale. Gave multiple planets the death sentence just to kill one man.

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Literally every single other terran commander except for Warfield knowingly and deliberately picks fights in urban environments, with civilian casualties. You cant just have a double standard like that and expect me to take your argument seriously.

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79

How else to explain this.

Abortion? = Bad.
Hitler? = Bad.

Is it a double standard to say one is worse than the matter? Do magnitude and scale matter? If so, Kerrigan eclipsed the scale of Mengsk’s war-crime several fold, yet Raynor freaks out on Mengsk yet falls in love with Kerrigan. Please explain.

Context matters too. They’re soldiers fighting in a war, they didn’t start the war. And the war they’re fighting in has a noble cause instead of “revenge against one guy”. In the examples of “urban environments” you brought up in our previous debate, they all happened to be on planets already infested by zerg. On Antiga, we were fighting with the populace.

Evidence also matters. SC1 didn’t have any evidence that any civilians were harmed during Rebel Yell; I recall you had to miracle up some science vessel lore and assume we used it on civilians, even though it says that the irradiate is limited to a localized radius just around the specific target. HotS on the other hand has plenty of evidence that we killed civilians.

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Uh, what? So when Raynor literally says that he’s fighting for revenge against mengsk, your takeaway was that it wasn’t about revenge?

There is literally a unit called “terran civilian” that you kill in multiple missions.

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81

I never said Raynor was a good dude in WoL. He shot his best friend, robbed a protoss faction of their religious valuables for cash, was a pirate/thief, etc. Still not a mass murderer on Kerrigan’s scale though.

Fixed.

What’s your point though? You think Raynor purposefully shot a random civilian dude for no reason when he was raiding the Jacob’s installation?

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When did purposefully enter into the equation? Civilians died, period, due to Raynor’s actions. You can go on about how “technically” you can play the game without killing them, but the clear intent is that they die, both in SC1 and in Wings when you do things like trample them with the Odin when they are ordinarily untargetable. To say nothing of all the civilian deaths that Raynor causes when he incites riots, and that violence, at least, was specifically his intended result.

Wake up and smell the U-238 rounds.

Unrelated, it amuses me that Mengsk’s calldown abilities and unit spells are able to kill the civilians on the Vermillion Problem coop mission. They keep forgetting to fix that bug.

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That’s a stretch. I believe Tychus crushed some civilians, yes. But you think Raynor splattered a civilian’s brains on the wall for no apparent reason when he was raiding an installation? Why?