Love the campaign but why are there so many potholes?

The title pretty much says it… there are so many things that just don’t fit right.
Is it maybe because there’s so much time between SC and SC2?
SPOILER! CAREFUL!:

Like the Keystone per example being gathered in SC 2 Campaign…all a plot by Narud (Mobius Corp.) to resurrect, his leader" Amon. He, cleverly" plays all the factions (Mobius, Valerian, Jim the zerg…).

Weaves them into A PLAAAAN…TOOO…get the key fragments to resurrect Amon BY FORCE!..FROOOOM…AMONS MOST DEVOTE FOLLOWERS(TAL’Darim)that are in LITERAL UNITY with him through Terazine…huh?^.-

BUUUT WAIT… there’s MOOORE. In the end, we find out in SC HotS THAT AMON’S Hybrids ARE MADE EXACTLY THERE…WHICH MEANS NARUD AAAAND THE TAL’DARIM ARE ALREADY WORKING TOGETHER…

We even see a hybrid on the TAL’Darim homeworld watching over the Battle Between Alarak and the other one…

So they in fact stand IN DIRECT CONTACT this WHOLE TIME. But the keystones, of course, have to , cleanse" The queen of blades for the campaign to work…SOOOO…THIS…-.-

and there’s a few of these REALLY REALLY plot breaking writing errors.
But for me this one is the most Story Breaking one…it sadly destroyed the LotV a little for me :frowning:

STILL, I love the Campaigns and story of SC on a whole level. And i mean you have to let slip some of these errors if you want to enjoy their idea it just never sat right with me the whole Tal’Darim story in LotV was not needed AND if left out the WHOLE PROBLEM/PLOTHOLE would have been inexistent.

Which ones Broke the Plot most for you? im sure I totally oversaw many of them in favor of enjoying their fantastical work…but id still likes to see. :slight_smile:

1 Like

My favorite plot hole is Arcturus indirectly financing Raynor’s violent acts of terror against himself.

10 Likes

My favorite is Narud paying Raynor to steal Artifact fragments from the Tal’darim in WoL only for HotS to show that the Tal’darim supports Narud anyway. It was an obvious attempt by Blizzard to fix the fact that they made Raynor look like a shythead killing and stealing artifacts from the Tal’darim for no reason other than needing money, yet they end up breaking the story even worse.

Another honorable mention that’s a favorite of mine is the Heir Apparent cinematic. Gotta love how Valerian’s soldiers are firing upon Raynor and Tychus when the entire point of Valerian meeting them is to form an alliance.

Dominion being all powerful again at the start of WoL despite supposedly being in complete ruins by the end of Brood War. It’s not really a plot-hole, but more a huge jump in logic that’s only hand-waved because you’re supposed to believe that a 4-year time jump is enough to justify a rebuild and somehow becoming even stronger than the Dominion was previously. It’s stupid.

Another painful one that’s not really a plothole, but is more just a case of making a character look completely retarded, is how Arcturus Mengsk handled blowing up Raynor’s prison ship in HotS. Instead of putting the bomb around Raynor’s prison cell to make sure that his important captive stays dead…he blows up a different section of the ship no where near the captive, which allows for Kerrigan to rescue Raynor. Again, it’s stupid.

8 Likes

For the Tal’darim, there are two possibilities:

  1. Nyon’s Tal’darim forces are rogue and insane, and thus not working for Narud.

  2. Narud is sacrificing Tal’darim for the appearance of resistance in his manipulation of Mengsk and Raynor.

Narud couldn’t get close to Kerrigan himself, Amon was influencing her but not controlling her, and he’s also using Mengsk and the Dominion and their resources to create the Hyrbid army.

Mengsk of course wanted Kerrigan and Raynor dead, so Narud, seeing an opportunity, convinced Mengsk that the Artifact could de-infest Kerrigan and thus allow her to be neutralized. One artifact piece was on Mar Sara, a Dominion world, but the rest were guarded by Tal’darim.

Since Raynor was the best shot at getting to Kerrigan alive, Mengsk and Narud used him to gather and assemble the Artifact, and the Tal’darim were used as token resistance to justify Moebius hiring and financing Raynor to recover the Artifact pieces.

Based on how the overall plot goes, I think the second option, though more convoluted, is the correct one.

The part that “broke” the plot for me was right at the beginning when you see you’re on Mar Sara and it’s completely as if the world had never been glassed by the Protoss. At that point I realized we were in for a story that’s less serious and more nostalgia-focused.

8 Likes

Narud needed the Artifact to be charged with Kerrigan’s Zerg Essence in order to resserect Amon.

2 Likes

Still better than Last Jedi because it has gameplay. Heh.

Focusing on the game part initially protects me from the plotholes, but then… yeah.

Probably the complete lack of logic when it comes to P and T (Dominion) population.

4 Likes

Plot holes created by the evolution of the taldarim within the story.

They were pretty clearly supposed to be random mooks that only existed to enable a greater number TvP missions in WoL. They also clearly worshipped the Xel’naga plural, not Amon, not “the dark god” but the Xel’naga.

In HotS they appear again as random grunts, this time working for Narud and specifically worshiping Amon, this serves a dual purpose of giving us additional ZvP content and retroactively making Raynor less of a jerk when he defiled thier sacred sites and religious artifacts for cash.

It’s not till LotV when blizzard decides to flesh them out beyond generic grunts, and naturally giving fleshed out lore to a faction that was clearly never intended to have any created some not insignificant contradictions.

Frankly I’d just prefer it if they canonized the WoL and HotS Taldarim as completely separate organizations, as what the Taldarim end up as in lotv clearly has little to no relation to the plot irrelevant filler antagonists they were in the first two installments.

11 Likes

That’s not a plot hole, Valerian was doing it on purpose. Arcturus was simply not bothered enough to stop it, especially since Raynor wasn’t actually seeing massive monetary windfalls from it since he never handed in the darn things until Valerian brought him into the invasion plot.

2 Likes

@Juxtapose

yeah but the point is this see:

we see a Hybrid in the MIDDLE of all the tel darim in the mission…that means they are under his control…because the hybrid are able to influence the protoss or rather take over their minds remember? And the whole point of ALARAK’s quest line in LotV is that THEY ARE indeed following Amon AND NARUD that’s why alarak tries to rise up in the first place because of the hybrids coming from narud taking over…and he sees this as proof of the deception of amon on his people. That there is no Ascension since they are now being consumed.

THATS the whole point of his quest and at the end when he wins the fight you even see the hybrids have dissapeared killed by the tel’darim. So either way it make no sense.

EITHER he can just COMMAND THEM to give him the fragments…OR he can COMMAND THE HYBRIDS to GET THEM…there just is no explanation for Raynor being involved EXCEPT of course…he has to for the plot.

Well sure, if Narud just needed the artifact as is, that would be one thing, but he needs Char invaded so he can blast Kerrigan with it, and to do that he needs an army. If he just handed over the completed artifact to Valerian or Arcturus out of the blue, that would lead to some very uncomfortable questions being asked, especially since at least one would have required an extensive dig on Mar Sara.

The Tal’darim may or may not have been able to invade Char like that, but given their performance against the Dominion Fleet in covert ops, im going to go with “they would die horribly and painfully” instead.

3 Likes

exactly! thats what i thought too…had they just left it alone with the telDarim and the whole alarak quest line everything would have just made sense on its own…XD

I mean, I guess technically it’s not. It’s more so funny and makes Arcturus look dumb, even though he’s supposed to be a genius.

“Thank you for your violent act of sedition. Here’s some cash so you can do it again.”

Eh? He does get paid for each artifact. That’s how he affords to upgrade his army to raid Korhal later on and make Mengsk look like an @sshole for not saving colonists.

The very first artifact mission consisted of Raynor trashing a Dominion base after he turned the planet against them. Then the Dominion later pays him for it via Moebius. :joy::rofl::sob::joy:

1 Like

Raynor complains a few times to Tychus about not having handed the artifacts over to Moebius yet, and especially after Redstone its commented that they were working with about as much cash as the average college student until they got paid by Tosh.

Heck, according to the beginning of Flashpoint, Raynor still hasn’t been paid for them by the Assault on Char, since he hasn’t been able to pay his men full wages for a while.

2 Likes

Did anyone else realize the title says “potholes” instead of “plotholes” :joy:

3 Likes

He’s getting paid incrementally but didn’t receive the full amount. Swann complains about the lack of funds in the beginning of the game, and it’s not an issue later on. Tychus talks about “easy money” from some of the artifact missions. How exactly do you think Raynor afforded to pay for everything? He’s got his own battlecruisers towards the end of the game. It all came from Tosh? Really?

He wants the artifacts off his ship because they’re an alien powerhouse that’s affecting the psyches of his crewmembers.

Raynor is taking other jobs on the side. We see a few of them. The raid on Tarsonis started as one such job, planning on stealing resources and valuables from the Dominion. Tosh, naturally, is paying for all of his drugs. I assume even the Agria colonists donate what they can spare to keep the Raiders in action. The artifacts are not the alpha and the omega of Raynor’s financial situation, and Swann even announces skepticism that they will get paid for them at all.

And those battlecruisers are Valerian’s. He says as much at the beginning of the mission.

2 Likes

Well, regardless, we do get paid from the missions in the game. I can’t fathom why Raynor would take on such a Herculean project without getting a shred of compensation at all, or how that’s even possible. He’s going up against Protoss the majority of the time, and he has pretty much nothing at the start of the game.

The Raiders have their own ships:

Swann: “Oh, and our new best friend Prince Charming came through with some upgraded battlecruiser schematics. I been working on some… interesting modifications for our ships.”

And the ones above New Folsom after it’s broken open are Raynor’s as well according to some people.

1 Like

At first, for the promise of compensation and trust in tychus. Eventually, because he genuinely wants to see it work. Tychus’ pay is on the line too, and Tychus is generally pretty good at looking out for his own interests, so its not like its completely unreasonable to expect a big payday at the end of it all.

I’m super skeptical about New Folsom, and while the Raiders do have other ships besides just the Hyperion, they don’t have an armada or anything, and their personal numbers are still limited. Furthermore, Raynor evidently did not bring any of his other battlecruisers to Char, so its entirely possible that he doesn’t have enough people to actually crew them while also maintaining a ground presence until Valerian and his people fully join Raynor.

Another questionable plot-hole that I’ve repeated many times here is how Colossi have apparently been sleeping beneath the crust of Aiur this entire time, which really brings to question where the heck these things were when the Overmind’s Zerg Swarm was destroying Aiur. If you want to say that the Conclave were too stubborn to rely on such technology, then fine. I accept that. On the other hand, the Tassadar/Executor side are the kind of people that would gladly take the opportunity to add the Colossi into their ranks if it means that they will have another means of trying to save Aiur.

Overall, I’d find this forgivable if the steps to awakening the Colossi was hard as hell to pull off, and there just wasn’t enough time to awaken them while a planet wide Zerg invasion was going on. However, the sight of 2 Colossi casually walking out of a pond after Zeratul simply steps on a Nexus beacon was pathetic. That alone cements this as a plot-hole. If it was that easy to wake up the Aiur Colossi, then where the hell were they during the Overmind invasion?

2 Likes

On various space-rocks and otherwise scattered in prisons throughout the sector. Most of them were not kept on Aiur. Its also quite likely that Tassadar did not actually know where the colossi were hidden, so aside from the two stashed near the Overmind, they aren’t really available for him to use.

3 Likes