I completed the LotV campaign relatively shortly after release, but never bothered to discuss it with anyone back then for some reason…
Recently looking back into it and watching plenty of cutscenes on youtube, and looking at the wiki and so forth.
I just realised how ambiguous the ending actually was/is with that bar scene on Mar Sara with Raynor and Kerrigan.
I was wondering what are peoples takes on what’s actually going on there…
Was that actually Kerrigan that met Raynor at the end?
If it was… is she Human again, having expended her powers destroying Amon? Or just in some sort of de-powered non-glowy form (base)?
“surely she doesn’t actually look like the fleshy slug monster xel’naga’s right??”
The other prospect is incredibly dark, either Raynor is hallucinating because of being in a drunken depressed stupor. Or he’s actually dead, and that’s him passing on or something.
I prefer to think it was actually Kerrigan, but if it was… where had she been for 2 years??
Im pretty sure they deliberately left it vague so that everybody would form their own interpretation.
To that end, my read is that she turned herself fully human again, gave up being a big cosmic power, and simply chose to be with Jim for her remaining life.
I like to think that to, it’s a lot happier, put it that way.
What do you think was the purpose of the whole “2 years later” was, why did it take that long for Kerrigan to come back?
I guess it’s possible to think of a number of explanations…
According to the developer commentary the intention was meant to be “dreamlike,” largely why the wiki doesn’t assume much of the fates of characters based off of it.
I personally take it at face value that Kerrigan is now a shapeshifter like the other xel’naga, and took Raynor with her now that she doesn’t plan to continue the cycle. But I’ve seen other theories as well.
Also “two years later” was changed with the published timeline. Now both the epilogue campaign AND Raynor’s disappearance occur two years after the main LotV campaign, so the gap is between Amon being banished and the Battle in the Void.
Yup exactly. A bit of an odd change but I personally like it, it means that the various factions have a chance to rebuild a bit from the devastation before being called to Ulnar.
Granted I’ve been trying to find whether this was an intentional change or not and their reasoning for it. Maybe someday I’ll corner the story group.
Yeah, my personal ending is that Kerrigan either with or without her xel’naga powers, (since we don’t know the details of her final-clash with Amon), is now in human form and went on to live a normal life with Jim, since as we know, it states Jim is not seen/heard from again.
Hopefully the two of them simply went and settled somewhere far away from the bullcrap of the Koprulu sector, and had the happy ending they deserved.
I don’t care for those dark ideas for the ending… far too depressing for me haha.
It’s a war story. What about the millions of people Kerrigan killed in Heart of the Swarm for her petty revenge quest? Where’s their fairy tale Disney ending?
Kerrigan not living in eternal matrimonial paradise with Raynor isn’t depressing. What’s depressing is that she never went on trial for all her crimes and executed as a war criminal, but instead rewarded and given more power.
For me, if a novel and the game has a conflict, I go with the game as the franchise’s primary medium. So I look at the timeline change here as an error unless the game is updated to reflect it, or a sequel goes off of said timeline.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgement. For even the very wise can not see all ends.” Gandalf
Tried to post a link to a .gif of that, but I always forget this silly new forum format doesn’t permit me to post links.
And as we’ve been over before, putting one of the most powerful characters in the franchise on trial isn’t very realistic for the Dominion or Daelaam, or possible unless she herself decides to submit and go along with it. And submission like that isn’t in the character. And this was all before she became Xel’Naga.
Not the worst perspective, but Blizzard has had books trump games before (Colonel Duke, Artanis as Executor, New Gettysburg as a city). So for the sake of tracking things, we usually go with harder dates and then note the contradiction between the two, at least until it’s been commented on. Lets the user decide, but given their published timelines have served as “definitive” timelines before I tend to go with them.
Well the Dominion was sure trying to take Kerrigan out, but she was too strong for them. Then she ended up helping with a Dominion change in management.
For me, while I enjoyed Starcraft: Liberty’s Crusade, it did away with the player-character completely, had a completely new protagonist who was not present during any game ever (outside of a very brief cameo in the sequel that’s not even mandatory for the player to see), and fully removed the final mission of the Terran Campaign. Those are pretty glaring differences, and an excellent example of why I go game>book when there’s a conflict.
In-game, New Gettysburg is talked about as if it is a city, but the map tileset was set as Space. Whether that was a design over site or a change in the story after the map was made, I can not say, but it’s a change that a) makes sense and b) is reflected later in the actual games and thus is properly proven to be canon.
There’s no conflict I’m aware of between game and book with Artanis being the player-character of the Protoss campaign.
The problem is (especially with SCR) New Gettysburg is explicitly referred to as a space port rather than a city, especially in doodads. This gets weird as well as previously unreadable signs on maps like the Dylarian Shipyards now also announce how you’re at New Gettysburg.
In Artanis’s case, the manual talks about how he’s the youngest praetor in Brood War, but it’s superfluous if he was also Executor. Also as mentioned Praetor is a step down. This also gets weird since he introduces himself to everyone as “recently appointed praetor” and how you can trust him in his duties, which you’d think he wouldn’t have to do as the hero who just commanded the assault that defeated the Overmind. Not irreconcilable but it does not mesh super well with the games.
Liberty’s a bit of a weird one since the book does mention the Magistrate, and up until Tarsonis Liberty’s not in any place where he’d see the Magistrate, but it does fall apart near the end. But they’ve used him in other placed too, he was pretty key to the prelaunch event they did for Nova Covert Ops as well. Still somewhat a “game.”
It all depends, I just tend to treat games as harder canon, but when the games don’t go deep in and the books do go with the books. Queen of Blades being a good example of this in practice with the game sequence of events being the more “canon” one, but smaller events still being signifiant.
35% of me thinks Kerrigan from the Void saw a girl flirting with Jimmy at the bar. Jimmy didn’t go for it but Kerrigan still got jealous, and absorbed Jimmy’s essence like a psycho girlfriend .
10% of me thinks Jim was drunk, and hallucinated the whole thing, and died wandering the Mar Sara wasteland .
welcome to the real world bad boys are not punished, and a story is not a moral treatise, kerrigan’s fate was a roulette she was already beaten if being guilty being a puppet all her life and becoming a goddess is not a prize if not a ballast
yes things go ambiguously well the final but in the course kerrigan divinity is not a benefit, Amon is developed under trope " Living Forever Is No Big Deal"or" Who Wants to Live Forever?"to put the perspective that kerrigan getting away from the normality that she desire.
For some people it is to imagine that a simple life is a prize (there are people who can see death the desired break) and the melacolic ending rests in which Kerrigan abandoned his normal life with Jim, and hence the ambiguous happy ending, in contrast Amon He loses all his life as a mortal because he was promoted, and I could assume through the kerrigan dialogues there is a certain loss and individuality by absorbing the essence of a xelnaga as if adding the consciousness of an infinite cycle
When Kerrigan won in BW people weren’t happy about it. At least it was consistent. I hate how SC2 treats her like the good guy. See this thread for more info: Kerrigan Thread #9023
