Anyway, on your topic about no civilian casualty. Normally, I don’t like Doylist argument, but I think you don’t see any because the game was incapable of showing it.
Also, I think the only difference between Kerrigan and other war criminal is that she command the most dangerous bio-weapon in existence. She is not going out of her way to kill any innocent, but she is not actively trying to cull them, either. This makes her on par with Tychus for me. The scale of their equipment and its consequences has no bearing on their character.
I never said there were no civilian casualties in Rebel Yell. I just think they did a way better job of keeping it to a minimum than Kerrigan who appears to have destroyed planets wholesale.
Hitler and Stalin were both evil and had similar character. Stalin killed more people therefore most people would consider him more evil and consider his crimes worse.
Raynor probably killed civilians during Rebel Yell. Mengsk killed all the civilians on Tarsonis in Rebel Yell, therefore everyone in StarCraft that knows this considers him worse. Scale matters.
Tychus might rob a train, blow up some guys, etc. But declare total war on humanity? That’s a stretch. I don’t buy it.
Won’t? Or simply incapable of? The scale does matter, but in my opinion not as much as yours. (I know I walk into the ‘that’s just your opinion, man’ territory, but bare with me.) If a guy go rampage with a knife and didn’t do anything more than a few injuries while the other went on rampage with a gun and end up murder a couple of people; in term of character which is the worst? I don’t know for sure. What if the first guy tried very hard, but can’t find a gun because he live in say not-America. Whilst the other guy grab the first weapon in sight and since he live in America? What if the first guy won’t use a gun even if it shove in his/her hand? We simply don’t know. The scale is important, but it should be considered compares to the mean. It shouldn’t be just the gross the number, but the number compares to potential death toll.
Tychus could easily walk slower or just move his foot a bit to the left. Kerrigan could, well, you’re the expert here. So for me both are about as bad. They both give zero F@$& about innocent bystanders. The only difference is one commands the Odin while the other commands the Swarm.
If this falls too much into your annoying territory just discard it. I don’t have other argument.
Why is Raynor cool with working with Tychus or Kerrigan then, but not Mengsk? Since you’re saying they’re all the same, where does he draw the line?
Surely Mengsk being careless with the citizens of Tarsonis is the same thing as Tychus being careless with civilians during one of his raids, yes? Someone should explain that to Raynor.
Because that’s a thing that happens in war, and Raynor is pissed off at Mengsk on a personal level, whatever he may tell to Ariel. He flat out tells Matt as much.
Judge one by their actions. Tychus for what it’s worth probably wouldn’t start a war for revenge. I’m of course judging by what I saw in WoL since I have no other knowledge on him. He don’t seem petty. Hot-headed and cold-blooded, yes, but I don’t see him as a character who’d go balls to the walls for revenge. Not that it would make him any less in my mind, I think revenge is a good if too often used plot.
Actually, there is a comic takes place between Flashpoint and Heart of the Swarm featuring her family. You might want to check it out, although I’m not sure how.
First thing first. As you well know I am an avid follower of the Death of the Author concept. The developers Q&A holds value to me as much as your opinion or anyone else in this forum. If the developers want something, they should have put it in game. So I don’t care about Raynor being the last good guy. I don’t really see that in game, so I don’t give it much value.
Secondly… Seriously? Raynor? His sanity is still up for debate, isn’t it? Regardless, if there is a line to be drawn here, I think it should be intention. Both Kerrigan and Tychus commit their crime out of negligence. Mengsk, on the other hand, deliberately unleashed the Zerg on population center. Moreover, he betrayed his comrade. For me betrayal is a much worst crime. And this is purely my opinion, it doesn’t have to be right, I think murdering an entire planet of innocent civilians is better than betraying one of your subordinate. Provide that those civilians are of the other size.
Lastly, I thought in term of death toll; Kerrigan’s is the largest, follows by Mengsk. So if Raynor is to be believed as a gold moral standard, it hurts your case more than mine, don’t you think?
My point is that we don’t have enough information to judge this fully. So, Tychus might not do it. He might become more careful given the power of the Swarm, we don’t know for sure. But for what is known, they’re both causing a number of dead simply because they could care.
Then he shouldn’t be mad that Mengsk finished what him and Raynor started, according to you guys.
Sure, but he also tells Ariel the revolution started because Mengsk murdered a whole planet.
Saying that Raynor only gave a crap about the deaths of billions because Kerrigan was one of them is doing him a disservice. There were plenty of Raiders that weren’t in love with Kerrigan who rebelled all the same.
That’s because the writing failed to convey what Metzen wanted.
That’s literally what Kerrigan did during HotS.
Betrayal might be more personal, but it’s not worse.
Uhm, that’s the very thing that I’m arguing. That him being in love with Kerrigan doesn’t make sense when he freaked out on Mengsk for less.
As for him being a decent person, that’s the opinion of the writer that created him (which trumps your opinions) and it’s proven by multiple examples of him rescuing colonies, rescuing Swann, rebelling against Mengsk for mass murder, wanting folks to “live free”, etc. etc. I don’t know what game you played, but Raynor was clearly not meant to be portrayed as a psychopath. If he was, you and Kelthar would have provided some examples of his crew calling him out for that by now.
He tries to do the right thing even though he’s a tortured character who’s led men to their deaths and is driven by revenge.
I agree with most of what you said here. I think Raynor is meant to be the “little guy” of the universe, somebody who is not fully good, definitely not fully bad, but just… decent. A man of his own code and honor who cares not about power, but generally the people caught between the giants fighting for power. He’s kinda one of them.
That having been said this implication (so far this is what I got from SC 2 and SC 1’s Rebel Yell only reinforced me in my belief of this being true) was dwarfed and mostly tossed out the window by his increasingly more radical and I’d say irrational (to the point of unbelieveable) need for Kerrigan. Them two don’t mix well. Jimbo is shown to care about da peepul but when Kerrigan slaughters a few planetloads he is mad for ten minutes and then it’s his pleasure. In fact always was. Gimme a break.
Brother, I ain’t doubting that Tychus is a bad man. Nobody does. He is the perfect specimen for a selfish, self-centered and morally gray character that fights for survival. The fact he is portrayed with lil’ glimpses of humanity is what makes him such a fantastic character. The moment where you see him struggle, when you see him care. It’s great.
I love Tychus because he is great anti-hero material. Could be protagonist, could be antagonist. Kerrigan… well she mostly just appears as the hero of the story with all the traits and moves of an antagonist.
Well yeah, because saying “Our revolution started that day. The day he murdered my prospective girlfriend for no reason.” sounds silly and petty in a way even he couldn’t wriggle out of. And a lot of the raiders, Matt included, did join up because of Tarsonis, or other similar events. It just wasn’t Raynor’s biggest motivation at the time.
Granted it bothered him, but it evidently did not bother him enough to make him leave until Kerrigan was thrown to the zerg.
the idea behind Death of the Author specifically means that this isn’t true. The idea is that once a work is published, an author’s opinion is exactly as meaningful as any other reader’s, and not an ounce more or less.
“Youd be throwing all our lives away just to get your girlfriend back!”
Matt specifically does call Raynor out, to his face, on how his actions look. Kachinsky and others also had deep concerns about his motives. Tychus, of all people, also expresses concern about his motives, although he was clearly trying to warn Raynor away from this to avoid conflict between the two of them rather than any actual animosity towards Kerrigan.
Yeah, but all we see there is Raynor being too stubborn to relay his message through. We don’t know why, otherwise he seems pretty well-spoken if headstrong.
The others don’t have a problem with Kerrigan there, they don’t want to work with Valerian and the Dominion because they look at it as betraying the cause they work for.
None of this makes Jimbo a psycopath. Those are usually highly intelligent. He’s just a poor, ill-written character.
So we know that Raynor knows that mass murder is wrong. I don’t buy this argument that he’s actually supposed to be a scumbag.
He was waiting for Arcturus to “come around” and “do something about the zerg” like Kerrigan said, who knows him better. Raynor left when it became clear that wasn’t happening.
That’s fine, but on one hand we have a bunch of Raynor, man of the people acts, such as rescuing colonies, rebelling against Mengsk for mass murder, fighting against tyranny, leading his crew to save the universe on Aiur, save the sector from the swarm by going to Char, etc. etc. This is consistent with what Metzen wanted.
On the other hand, we have an instance that doesn’t line up where Raynor is in love with a mass murderer. Why should this one thing outweigh the former? Can’t we just admit that it’s poor writing?
And that was great, but it lasted all of 5 seconds until Raynor clarified that their war has always been about saving lives.
“Now that’s the commander I’ve been waiting on!”
They were mad that we were working for the Dominion. So then when we start working with Kerrigan in HoTS, who’s even worse, that goes against everything the Raiders believe in and shouldn’t have been a thing especially if their war is about “saving lives”.
Sure, you can try to explain away Raynor who’s such a cuck that all his previous standards & morals have now gone out the window because he’s in love, but you can’t explain the complete lack of dialog that addresses this elephant in the room.
Raynor left because he was pissed off about Kerrigan. He says as much to the player. I don’t know why you keep insisting this isn’t the case when all evidence points to it being true.
Perhaps its because youre the only one who acts like theres no middle ground between “saint” and “literally Hitler”.
Having characters with nuance, flaws and multiple dimensions is usually regarded as good writing. Just because youre offended by it doesn’t make it objectively bad.
Youre making assumptions that Kerrigan is out there slaughtering civilian populations wholesale for no reason, something the game has no evidence to support, and then complaining that it doesn’t make sense. The solution here is to correct your assumptions, not yell at the game.
Yes, I’ve said that’s the thing he was most focused on since it’s personal. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have done the same thing if Kerrigan was never left down there.
You guys are the ones making excuses for why he’s in love with and condones a mass murderer. I’m merely asking why it’s ok for it to be Kerrigan yet not Mengsk. Just because he’s in love? Really? This is supposed to be good writing with nuance and multiple dimensions?
It’s not good writing when you gloss over something important and fail to address the ramifications. Raynor abandoning all his standards and his crew just carrying on like we’re not working with a mass murderer is inconsistent and lazy writing.
You’re denying evidence that we see planets get covered in creep and that we see cocooned colonist doodads and destroyed apartment buildings. Kerrigan’s stance on moving her armies around civilians became abundantly clear when Valerian asked her to do just that and she argued with him, twice. Clearly she didn’t afford other planets that luxury the rest of her campaign and only did it this time because Raynor was in the background.
I don’t think he says that. He says Kerrigan is slaughtering civilians as colleteral damage while she’s on her quest of killing Mengsk and crippling his military. We saw what happened when she went after Moebius, I don’t find it hard to believe that similar things transpired on them planets that got covered with creep.
And he is taking offense - again, I assume this is what he means, might not be the case - with literally everybody not giving two figs about this later and the story showing it as some sort of a redemption.
Mengsk was targeting Confederate old families and military targets when he unleashed the zerg on Tarsonis, but he disregarded the billions of civilians on the planet. Kerrigan might only be after military targets and Mengsk, but she disregarded all the civilians that died as a result.
The fact that they didn’t set their targets explicitly on innocent civilians isn’t any kind of defense.
To which I point out that Raynor has done the same thing, and that Mengsk did the same thing during the Sons of Korhal days, and so did every other terran commander. And his response is that its different with Kerrigan because it just is somehow. Why should Raynor be bothered by collateral damage now when he hasn’t been before?
I think a lot of military outposts, staging areas, warehouses and the factories that produce their weaponry and armor, their vehicles etc. are in cities or close to them. Just going by the trend I see in Europe at least. I find it unlikely that the Zerg led by a Queen cared much.
When did Raynor kill civilians? I only see him wanting to save them. He turned on the Confederacy because he wanted to save people he wasn’t authorized to save.
I’m recalling Jimbo being not so fine with that. One of the reasons he joined the SoK is because he believed they care about da peepul while the Confederates disregard them and don’t care.
There’s only so long a good man can walk onna dark path and eventually Jimmy snapped and left.
As I pointed out earlier, there are specifically units called “terran civilian” that belong to a hostile faction that Raynor kills.
Beyond that, he fought in combat in urban areas, on Antiga and Tarsonis. Liberty’s Crusade specifically points out all the destruction that the Sons of Korhal have brought to the city, and mentions that Liberty doesn’t want to examine the charred corpses of the civilians because he might know some of them.
He was bothered by Mengsk unleashing the zerg on Tarsonis indiscriminately. When the terran soldiers killed civilians and fought in urban areas, theres no indication he cares.
I mean exactly what I said. Every named terran military commander in the series has fought in urban areas over military goals, exactly the way that Gradius is chewing out Kerrigan for doing.
