Kerrigan Thread #9023

I think you mean Doyalist here. From a watsonian perspective, having picked a fight with the protagonists is enough.

Not really the point I was trying to make, but yes.

It’s a way to engage with canon.

Watsonian = in-universe perspective
Doylist = writer’s perspective

Why is Kerrigan mass murdering everyone even though her humanity’s back?
Watsonian perspective = the loss of Jim broke her and she went insane.
Doylist perspective = having a zerg campaign without destroying any planets would be no fun.

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It’s the reverse actually. An in-universe explanation is Watsonian and an out of universe one is Doylist. Remember that Watson is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle, hence the names.

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Oops, you’re right. I must have dyslexia. Fixed it.

I think you mean to say that I have standards. Video game stories on average are mediocre and Starcraft is no exception. I have discussed this with several other critics and writers on writing/critique forums for military history, and we all agree that Starcraft story is garbage. It’s so uninteresting that I’m pretty much the only person in that forum who cares about it at all. My peers are all interested in more interesting stories like Stargate, Star Trek, Warhammer, and Game of Thrones.

Think about it this way: if Starcraft was adapted into a movie, it would be terrible.

I knew that. She ruined the zerg. Now that she’s out of the story for good, hopefully SC3 can start the long and painful process of fleshing out the zerg as their own entity. Though I doubt it.

As I expected, you dismissed my concerns entirely.

The plot of SC1 is arbitrary. Metzen made it up. It’s awful. Every experienced critic and writer I talked to agrees. It’s a terrible execution of the premise. It completely wastes its world building potential for the sake of cheap drama. It’s devoid of author introspection. It’s no better than a children’s cartoon from a first time showrunner like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

No it didn’t. Metzen arbitrary decided Mengsk would take over as an evil tyrant. There are countless other plots Metzen could have told. Mengsk could have failed or formed a petty state separate from the greater Confederacy.

It’s crappy world building. Have you read the manual or any of the advertisements for SC1? The pages and pages of writing made the Confederacy out as a permanent setting fixture locked in conflict with the Umojans, KMC, rebels, zerg, and protoss. Then Metzen flushed all that effort down the toilet for the sake of cheap drama.

It would be like if Star Wars erased the Jedi and Sith sides from existence, only to replace them with the Dustmen side and the Mercykiller side. (Kudos if you get that reference.)

In fact, the exact same thing happens to the Overmind and Conclave. Long colorful history, teased as setting fixtures waiting to be explored, casually killed off in first game of series. Their replacements receive plot armor by comparison, and are much crappier in writing quality.

Gradius proposed that all the good ideas in SC1 came from co-writer James Phinney. Considering that Metzen didn’t similarly kill and replace the Alliance and Horde in Warcraft, I do suspect that Phinney invented all the factions that Metzen killed and replaced with inferior versions.

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I think Metzen’s plot is a terrible execution of the premise. This franchise had so much more potential in terms of storytelling, but instead we got tons of schlock.

If you guys actually like the schlock, then more power to you. I have standards of quality when it comes to story and thus find Starcraft to be full of wasted potential. The initial lore obviously written by Phinney, as barebones and cliche as it stands (I’m not gonna put it on a pedestal, it’s not that great), is far more interesting in concept and I think it’s a pity we never got to see it explored.

If by “dismissed” you mean "examined them and asked for clarification, then I guess? You raised concerns, I pointed out how the story addresses them. The correct response at that point is to either acknowledge that you misjudged the story or further elaborate on why these parts of the story don’t address your concerns the way you want. Im trying to engage you in a dialogue here, but if youre going to call that “dismissing” you, then be prepared to be that guy that nobody listens to or thinks has anything worthwhile to bring to a discussion.

You’re using in-universe justifications, when I’m criticizing these for being arbitrary choices made by Metzen that result in a much more boring and schlocky story than otherwise possible.

The psi-emitter is stupid lazy writing, because Metzen is a terrible writer. What would be more interesting is if the zerg were waging war across the sector, Harvesting humans to use for research, etc.

Basically just go read ToxicDefiler’s pitch for reboot. It’s more interesting than Metzen’s plot.

Yes, im using things that exist within the story to counter the idea that such things don’t exist within the story. That’s how arguments work.

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I’m criticizing that story as inherently stupid compared to other possibilities. Metzen constantly made stupid decisions that resulted in a stupid story.

Do you have any experience with writing or understand how to do good plotting? Metzen certainly didn’t.

Every justification you provided was an excuse to maintain an uninteresting story when defying your excuses would result in a more interesting story.

This isn’t legitimate criticism. I cant force you to like it, but just calling it “stupid” in lieu of actually doing any sort of critical examination of what actually makes it bad is lazy and intellectually dishonest. If this is the sort of critique your allegedly professional friends are giving, I have to question if you haven’t been lied to about what they actually do.

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I think you misunderstand me. You see I read this paragraph of yours

And I got confused how this is a Watsonian POV when it’s clearly a Doylist. I was trying to dispute your point. I wasn’t even express my disagreement. I just read your comment; notice how much you like to mention Watsonian v. Doylist and feel off that you don’t make any point from a Watsonian POV. It’s all seem like a Doylist to me.

No, that could never be what I meant. Literature is as subjective as it gets. And everyone trying to establish ‘a standard’ in a subjective matter is drawing a line in a sand at best.

Seriously, screw all the professional and standard, just consume whatever you like and suit your taste.

This is quite the argument here. “The story is bad because it could’ve been better” seems to be a core part of it. I also think looking at things purely from an in-universe or out-of-universe view is quite stupid. Of course the writer wants something, ghat’s why he’s writing it. Doesn’t mean the story is nonsensical.
“He could’ve done this or that” is also a weak argument. Luke could’ve just ditch Kenobi, grab the droids and take the now ownerless Jawa sandcrawler but he didn’t because a.) the writers did not want a story like that and b.) the story established him different.

Here the Confederacy is shown ignorant, aggressive, corrupt and greedy where most fringe worlds are antagonized and looked down upon. It’s obvious them colonies will revolt if they have a chance. As far as Mengsk goes, he is established as someone who wants to deatroy the Confederacy and that’s what he does. You see him do things to save people, so people will give him support. He is not going to form a separate state because his goal is to destroy the Confederates. That just makes sense.

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My guess is it’s easier to criticize that way. “Oh, the writer CLEARLY just wanted this to happen, it could’ve been much more complex and better.” Then the opposition has to defend the story and prove it’s not bad - in theory.

Honestly, I don’t see the point of Doylist here. It would be useful if you want to study literature as a subject and such. However, most of the time when we discuss the story, it should be Watsonian that matters. As long as it makes sense lore wise, why would you critic the writer for writing his story the way he/she want?

At least, for our story forum, anyway. Unless, I miss something and TrickyHunter is analyzes the story from a totally different angle.

A Doyalist perspective can be useful when, for example, examining video game plots with the understanding that the story needs to be written in such a way that the gameplay can still occur. What makes for a better story doesn’t necessarily make for a better campaign, so it tends to give in the direction of the latter. If they wanted a story separate from the game, they would have written a book.

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It’s used here all the time to explain crappy writing.

I mean, I am kinda mad that I forgot to mention it in my thread. But sometimes it is valid to use this approach.

Example

Why wasn’t Zeratul on Zhakul? Because it’d be hard to balance his interactions with Maar and Preservers. Even now, cheesing the mission with DTs is a good strategy.

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While you asked this of @BartFitz, I’m generally curious: how many bestselling novels and/or stories have you published? How many reviews and critiques have you published?

And I don’t mean on a forum or simple blog, I mean professional publications?

For a video game, gameplay>plot since the primary purpose of a game is to play it. So if they need to make a choice to further gameplay over story most developers will.

If StarCraft were turned into a feature film, many of the key plot points could indeed still be hit, but greater character development and focus on certain story points would need to be done to adapt it to what is an extremely different medium.

Most video games turned into movies are usually quite poor because they style or storytelling is different for each.

I’m also curious, since you obviously don’t like the StarCraft storyline at all, which game or games do you believe have excellent stories?

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I would’ve felt bad asking back, props for doing it, brother.

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AoE 2 has the best story.

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction needs to make sense.

Tom Clancy