Kerrigan is dead (Theroycraft)

Campaign Discussion
1

Hello there fellow forumites, in this episode of TBO does pointless theorycrafting about Starcraft lore we are going to be talking about the SC2 epilogue and beyond. As you can see in the thread title, the premise here is that Sarah Kerrigan, semi-reformed Queen B!tch of the Universe actually died in her final climactic face off against the Dark god Amon.

But wait TBO, you say, don’t we see Kerrigan after that? Doesn’t her being alive throw a not insignificant wrench into your whole “Kerrigan is dead.” Theory.

Well not so fast there I’ll reply, for I too have had this thought, and I have devised a solution. His name is Samir Duran.

Now I’m well aware that we saw him get killed, but let’s take a step forward here and remember that we are later told that only a Xel’naga can kill another Xel’naga. A contradiction with what we just saw is it not. Now I know there are ways to explain this one away (Thanks Kelthar.) but for the sake of argument we are going to take this at face value, or at least that Xel’naga are really freaking hard to kill.

Duran didn’t die, master manipulator that he is, he sees the writing on the wall, and allows the allied forces to “kill” him.

How does this lead back into Kerrigan being dead? Well in the final epilogue mission it becomes clear that she is going to sacrifice herself in order to make sure Amon dies. Let’s take this at face value as well, if she’s dead then who appears to Jimity Raynor and Zagara afterwards?

Why a certain shapeshifter of course. Duran appears to Raynor lures him away and kills him, a final act of revenge towards the man that ruined his best laid plans.

He tells Zagara to go tomb raiding for Xel’naga essence and make What basically amount to Birthing chambers for the strange Xel’naga creature he tells her to produce. This is supposedly peaceful, but nobody really knows what exactly they are going to do when mature. Thier true nature could be far more sinister.

So there you have it, TBO resolves lore contradictions and sets Duran up as the big bad of the setting.

3 Likes
2

This is a cool theory. Based on how Blizzard Entertainment does story telling though, I doubt this is the case, but a cool read non-the-less.

7 Likes
3

All this time, I never caught on that Narud’s Xel’Naga death is quite wonky.

If the rule really is that “only a Xel’naga can kill another Xel’naga,” then why was Stukov able to perform the killing blow on Narud? I guess now, there’s a legitimate out if Blizzard ever wanted to bring back Narud/Duran as a villain.

5 Likes
4

Plot twist: Stukov wasn’t turned into an Infested Terran by Duran, but a Xel’Naga/Terran Hyrbid, thus the reason his “fiery” face looks different than other Infested Terrans.

6 Likes
5

This thread is better than Heart of the Swarm.

2 Likes
6

I still really like “Heart of the Swarm.” I think I’m the only one here who does :stuck_out_tongue:

4 Likes
7

It has easy and unoriginal gameplay, while having a story with the least amount of highpoints.

1 Like
8

I found if you don’t do a power Kerrigan Build, the gameplay is a lot more challenging and fun. If you go optimal, then yes, it’s a cake-walk.

For the Story, I really enjoyed it and thought it had a lot of cool moments.

2 Likes
9

You know… for all its flaws I do love WoL. Tosh arc is arguably one of the strongest in SC2, Colonist arc is nigh perfect if you go non-canon and characters feel real flawed. You at least have a semblance of obstacles. HotS doesn’t offer you that.

You going out of your way to get challenge out or campaign doesn’t really paint good picture of the devs.

1 Like
10

To be fair, I think HotS achieved what it wanted to, making the Swarm and Kerrigan out to be an unstoppable tidal wave of death and bodies. Its just, we really needed more to the story than that. HotS was filler in a lot of ways, used to get Kerrigan from “helpless terran” back to “Ruler of the Swarm” and pointed at Amon for LoV. So to that end, it worked, but people didn’t really want a filler season, so to speak.

4 Likes
11

When the main goal of a Zerg campaign is to kill a Terran that you humiliated in the previous campaign on top of all the defeats he had in Sc1, it should raise a big red flag.

Seriously, Arcturus Mengsk should have been dealt with in WoL if he had to die as a Big Bad. Or if he had to die in HotS it should have been at best a mid-tier boss.

2 Likes
12

I don’t mind him being the last thing Kerrigan takes care of in HotS, but they really oversold his significance to her at that point. There should have been more development of Amon as a danger than just the Stukov missions, so that it really does feel like dealing with Mengsk is Kerrigan settling her affairs before she moves on, rather than a sector-defining showdown (which it was not).

13

@Bifrost I actually think, despite it’s flaws, “Wings of Liberty” has the best story in StarCraft II and has the closest feel to the original game. Generally, I think the franchise’s story gets a bit lesser each title. Having said that, “Heart of the Swarm” was my favourite.

The arcs you point to though weren’t exactly hard gameplay-wise though. They’re design was cool. I found “Heart of the Swarm” similar, but briefer, in that regard.

Story-wise, it was more all about Kerrigan herself, and the shifts in her, the compromises she’d make, the extremes she’d do/justify, and the fact that she had nothing left at all. She’s just a ruined, sad, awful, and miserable person.

Remember, not only did she start (mostly) de-infested, but Raynor convinced her to leave with him and she agreed. Then he “died” and she went single-minded on revenge.

For the gameplay, it’s not going out of the way to challenge yourself, it’s simply not choosing all the super overpowered abilities. You can if you want, but you don’t have to and it’s harder for it. Just like choosing the Psi Disruptor instead of Hive Mind Emulator. Or Ravens instead of Science Vessels, etc.

@Kelthar I agree, it was far less narrative heavy than “Wings of Liberty” or “Legacy of the Void,” though I’m not sure if filler is the right term. It does fit into, and works with the core trilogy. It feels like it flows from the previous game, but it’s a perspective shift and it is more simplified, but it still fits. “Legacy of Void” felt way more out there to me and was the odd story out in the trilogy. For “Nova Covert Ops,” I actually never know what to think of it. It was good, but it’s the one that felt like filler to me.

14

Covert Ops is its own story, and I think it benefits from that. Let the sector be bigger than Amon and whatever reality threatening force has shown up this week.

15

It’s not that it didn’t focus on the core story of the trilogy, as that story arc was concluded, so moving on makes sense.

It’s that the story itself just seemed really out there, and ultimately forgettable to me. We have this new enemy Terran faction with the big villain reveal who ends up being a new character and having no impact at all. There was no shock re: Davis, and I doubt anyone cares that the character is dead.

Nova going rogue actually seemed out of character to me, based on how they established her in the StarCraft: Ghost novels and even earlier in “Wings of Liberty” and even “Covert Ops” itself. I get why they did it, but Nova was always a very, very loyal character even when her personal emotions urged her otherwise. What she does at the end is not outside the realm of possibility, of course, but it didn’t feel consistent to me.

There being such a vast feral Zerg faction left in Koprulu after Kerrigan essentially reclaimed the Swarm also seemed odd to me.

16

People here are claiming that HotS was filler when that’s how I felt about WoL.

  • Nothing about the Hanson and Tosh arcs mattered in the long run.
  • Matt’s arc where he started up a rebellion on Korhal amounted to jack shyt.
  • The prophecy missions was just one long 4-mission slog simply to warn the world that doomsday is coming if Kerrigan dies.
  • The artifact missions repeated the same “grab fragment from enemy” 5 times.

I’d say maybe about 30% of WoL actually mattered. And that’s being generous.

2 Likes
17

Something something Journey not Destination.

They mattered because Raynor cared and the player (theoretically) cared about what happened to these characters. The scattered mission order was rather too ambitious, but to say they didn’t matter implies that the campaign was exclusively the journey to put Raynor on Char with the Artifact, and anything that didn’t directly lead to that goal was time wasted.

HotS doesn’t have that though because Kerrigan’s goals are significantly more basic, and she’s the only character actually emotionally invested in any of these events, except for Stukov during his trio of missions, and even that is mostly at a basic “means to an end” level.

2 Likes
18

HoTS was completely ruined by the idea that Kerrigan has her humanity back yet we still need to go on a planet destroying rampage with zerg because it’s a zerg campaign.

There was no point in doing that anyway since she just reinfests herself of her own free. Could have just had the artifact free her from Amon’s mind control instead of robbing her of all her agency in Brood war and deciding that none of those atrocities were actually her fault. But these new atrocities in HoTS still are.

It’s like the writers had a massive brain fart when deciding this part of the story.

That being said, I think WoL is the worst of all of them because all of that was technically set up by WoL and it’s the first game that completely retconned & ruined the direction of Starcraft. Don’t care how good any future writers are, there’s not much they could have done for HoTS or LoTV that wouldn’t have some elements of being dog$hit.

I can count on one hand the few nice moments WoL had, but if you ask me it just wasn’t a story worth telling.

1 Like
19

I mean, the point, albeit badly made, of HotS and BW was that the bad parts of Kerrigan came from her humanity, not her infestation. Before Kerrigan, the Zerg didn’t hold grudges, they didn’t do hate or revenge, it wasn’t ever personal, it was just something they saw as an inevitable necessity. Kerrigan humanized the swarm in a very real and literal sense.

20

@Juxtapose

You’re not the only one; I like HotS, too. The mission really help selling the idea that we’re the Swarm for me. And yes, it’s quite easy with Kerrigan, but she is the Queen of Blade! Of course, she would be in the front line. And of course, all kind of obstacle that can be solved by killing a ton of people, will be easily dealt with. If anything I want to feel even more powerful using her. I think the problem with HotS is that it’s too short and feel too contained. As Brother Marsaro, the blasphemer, typed our dear holy emperor should be killed and deal with much sooner. Preferably as a side mission.

1 Like