Ah thank you! And let us know what you think of the original game when you play it; it’s such a fantastic classic.
Oh I will. If there is one thing I love more than playing games it’s sharing my opinions on it.
1 Like
While SC1 may have been mature in tone, the plot structure isn’t particularly mature. It relies extensively on lazy plot devices, no sense of scale, blatant author favoritism, Great Man history exaggerated to Total War: Three Kingdoms levels of unreality, and rushes through decades’ worth of interstellar war politics in a few missions, which destroys its believability as far as military scifi stories go. I think the manual was written by a different person, as it introduces numerous and perhaps more grounded plot hooks that never go anywhere.
We shouldn’t put SC1 on a pedestal.
bUt wHaT aBoUt tHe mAnUaL?
The manual is barebones at best. It is no story itself, but a setting pitch and a setup for stories. Most fans don’t know it ever existed.
Im deeply curious as to what, exactly, you think you’ve been missing out on in the politics? And what is so unbelievable about it? You use terms like “lazy plot device” a lot, but never seem to be able to articulate what is actually bad about these things.
1 Like
I tried to in the past but you always argue that I am always wrong so I give up on trying to argue my position. If you do not want to recognize any of the many problems with the writing, then it is not my job to try fruitlessly to convince you.
I mean, you are frequently, factually wrong. You base your claims on misunderstandings and outright incorrect information all the time. You say X happened, but it didn’t actually. I don’t intend to try and force you to like the story, but you should at least make sure you have a solid understanding of whats happening before you criticize it.
1 Like
That he does, very frequently, but you also frequently misunderstand our arguments. Case in point, this thread. This is why you think our arguments are silly/wrong/incorrect virtually all the time.
It’s possible to come to an adequate resolution in a debate and still disagree, which pretty much never happens here.
1 Like
Yours, maybe (although given how frequently your claims boil down to “I think X is stupid” without any other support, I dispute that) but everybody and their cat, including yourself, has agreed with me in the past that his arguments are all too off base to even address.
Analyzing individual story beats is missing the point anyway. Let’s try this from a different angle.
Do you personally find the story of SC1 believable? Because I certainly don’t. It feels like it was written with only a superficial understanding of things like logistics, politics, history, psychology, etc. It isn’t in the same league as any serious military scifi.
I actually don’t recall who TrickyHunter is and what his points of view are.
For the original game, I think it’s the best overall story in the franchise. It does indeed have it’s own flaws, but I think it has a great sci-fi backstory and very cool execution, as well as wonderful characters.
Without specific examples, theres nothing to discuss, literally. You need to give me something to work with here besides “the story”. In what way do you find the logistics flawed? Or the politics? Or the history, of all things.
Psychic brain aliens? Planet destroying bug monsters? Archons? Telepaths? No, I don’t find it believable.
I am typing on my phone and providing a decent analysis answering you would require several hours even days typing and revising on a desktop. Even so, I doubt a full-blown literature paper would convince you of anything.
The flaws of Starcraft should become obvious once you start analyzing it critically. As a serious military scifi story, do any of the events seem believable to you? Does it feel like a living breathing world? Can you imagine any of it happening outside of Metzen’s imagination?
I said believable, not realistic. Let’s suspend our disbelief like we do for other great scifi like Asimov and Herbert. Otherwise this exercise is pointless.
What do YOU think are the flaws in SC1’s storytelling?
Is this really going to turn into another back-and-forth about the amount of storytelling flaws SC1/BW has compared to SC2? Cause that’s what it’s looking like.
3 Likes
Hey man, I haven’t the foggiest notion of who you are so humor me with your story. I’m not the most open-minded person, but I’ll try to be fair so I won’t note that it looks like you are dodging the answer for our good friend Kelthar.
I am reasonably certain that you can point to an example without spending hours typing up a college essay on why, exactly, its a problem.
There’s things I would have done differently but there’s nothing overly egregious in SC vanilla. Pretty much all the plot points are within the realm of suspension of disbelief. BW on the other hand lost James Phinney as a writer and is a different story.
I’m currently writing a detailed analysis of the psi-emitter, but if you want the gist then here goes. I’ll be mentioning Doylist and Watsonian POVs here.
The emitter is basically zerg catnip. From a Watsonian POV, this is a shortcut so Metzen can have Mengsk use zerg terrorism to take over with ease.
As a Watsonian critique, I think that’s a waste of story. We’ve already established the Confederate politics in the lore, why are you (Metzen) throwing that away so you can make Raynor the main character of the entire universe? Just make Mengsk the villain from the start like you did in SC2, because that obviously the story you wanted to tell all along. Don’t create the Confederacy at all if you never wanted them in the first place.
There isn’t a clear Doylist explanation for why the zerg follow the emitters. I’ve seen you (Kelthar) personally claim that the zerg just inherently follow emitters, while others have claimed the zerg were deliberately following them to acquire psychics.
Both explanations have pretty big holes. Even ignoring all the retcons that render the story nonsensical.
Anyway, If the zerg are deliberately following the emitters, then that’s a poor way to achieve their goal of acquiring psychics. At least 0.1% of the population is psychic, and the number of terrans total is arbitrarily high, so from a purely practical perspective it makes more sense for the zerg to harvest population centers. Their shtick is that they eat whole species anyhow. They used psychic beacons as traps in their own lore, so their equivalent of intelligence operatives should realize the emitters are a trap quickly.
If the zerg are attracted just because, and this fact only ever comes up rarely for the occasional zerg terrorism plot and is never really analyzed by the characters, then that’s extremely lazy storytelling. How do the zerg perceive this rather glaring flaw in their telepathy? Why have they never once noticed it? Wouldn’t they want to fix it?
You’ll probably dismiss my critique entirely so rather than wait I’ll just concede that you win now because I don’t have any desire to fight with you. I don’t know what you think of the story, but I find it lazy and a waste of the premise.
SC1 has so much room for improvement, I think.
I’d completely rewrite the plot. Especially with the benefit of hindsight. If the point is to have the three races fight for however long the franchise lasts, then I’d write the campaigns as tiny vignettes within a much larger universe. I would not start the franchise by systematically destroying all the world building I previously established for the sake of cheap drama.