Yet here we stand, with a game that sold millions of copies, and a story that millions of people loved, despite its retcons.
If you have one story that stays very consistent with its worldbuilding and is always careful not to retcon anything, and another that’s willing to bend some of the details within the canon to create a more exciting and interesting story, the latter wins out every time.
You risk writing yourself into a corner if you adhere religiously to the existing worldbuilding, as you run out of ways to keep the story moving or create interesting character moments.
A worldbuilding decision you made ages ago might come back to haunt you, and if you obsess over trying to do worldbuilding that won’t come back to haunt you later, you’re never going to be able to finish writing the first book.
A narrative by definition is supposed to be a connected series of events. A therefore B therefore C. A story that can’t even get its own facts straight is barely a story. It might get popular but it’s not going to be good.
StarCraft 2 sold a bunch of copies, but it was for the e-sports and game itself, not the story. The narrative has been consistently trashed by critical reviewers. There are no professional reviews that I know of that dive into the story at anything more than a superficial level and still give it an overall good rating.
Fact is, plots are pretty malleable and interchangeable. You rarely have to sacrifice worldbuilding for plot or have to end up writing yourself into a corner. I remember in an interview Blizzard was going to use special zerg that Kerrigan created to work without a hive mind, instead of the primals. Either way, the planet didn’t have to be Zerus. There were dozens of ways to tell a story that would have been virtually the same without butchering the lore. I have no clue what StarCraft 2’s retcons actually added of value to the story.
It’s not really a matter of waiting, it’s a matter of he accomplished nothing of value in 3000 years. Time is not going to flow slower for him just because he’s a Xel’Naga with a long lifespan.
Setting up Taldarim culture for example. Really? They already worship Amon, that’s why they came with them. There’s nothing about their culture that looks like it required work on the part of Duran.
Well, I don’t really know what Duran did during those time. My guess is that he is weakened and pretty much can’t do anything more than shapeshifting. I might have a lot of technological know how, but without industrial infrastructure he can’t do anything. I’m sure you know how the world advanced significantly these past few centuries. It’s like being a Physicist in the Stone Age.
As for life span. It’s not only making the wait viable option; it also effect his perspective on span of time. Asking why he didn’t do anything for the last five millennia is like asking why you don’t do anything these past couple of day. With the answer being ‘wait for the necessary machines to be delivered. It kind of silly to ask why don’t you just make one while waiting.
But how else would you get knockoff Jurassic Park vibes otherwise?
How do the Zerg reshape a planet? Can they control plant life?
And those were the days…
It ain’t StarCraft 2’s achievement, getting all the fame. It stood on the shoulder of the original StarCraft and the growing fame of Blizzard. The campaign of SC2 is very often debated upon, disliked and thought to be inferior to the original or BW. A lot of people - not all of them, but a good portion - didn’t even play the original before the second (myself included) and thus did not mind the difference in tone, the inconsistencies and generally the meh writing. I wasn’t happy with it.
Well, it’s the home planet of the Zerg. Presumably, a lot of things on the planet (Including the plant life) would have similar traits and capabilities to the Zerg. Such as the ability to flourish in even the harshest environments.
Even so, the game wasn’t poorly-received by any means. You can look at videos like this:
And you see plenty of praise for it, even years later. 23,000,000 views, 150,000 likes, and the top comment is “I would pay tons of money to see a movie of this caliber. Tons. Of. Money.”
Yes, Blizzard is known for doing amazing cinematics. You look at… really, any of them and people ask for a movie or praise the game. A lot of these games get both positive and negative feedback, StarCraft 2 gets probably the most constructive and level-headed of them all.
Also, while views are a decent indicator of popularity, many games get great amounts of views and mostly positive ratings on their trailers so it’s not exactly an argument on point.
Rogue protoss scientists on planet X have finally started experimenting with attacking the zerg hive mind. Unfortunately, the zerg have adapted by no longer being connected to the hive mind. They’ve taken over the planet and conglomerated into packs, fighting for survival.
There we go, the Zerus arc that can have the same exact plot and characters but doesn’t require traveling to a planet that’s so far away we shouldn’t be able to get to it in the first place and making lava doodads for the sake of pretending it was an ashworld 3000 years ago. There’s nothing in the Zerus arc that’s so awesome that makes retconning a bunch of background worth it.
Ok. I’ll give him 3 years to recover.
There’s plenty of infrastructure. Ulnar. Giant caverns of Xel’Naga tech that run underneath Aiur for miles. Derelict worldships. Etc.
Sure, but what did he do to advance industry/knowledge? Absolutely nothing. The Tal’Darim are still behind the Khalai and have to steal their designs, despite the Khalai warring for 3000 years.
I can kinda see that. However, I can’t see why it still looks like he’s accomplished jack squat for 3000 years despite being a god of our universe.
Youre using the term “god” overly generously here methinks. He’s powerful, but hardly omnipotent. Yeah, technically he’s worshipped, but he cant just create something from nothing out of idleness or anything like that.
My headcannon : the Hybrid plan only hatched after Amon’s defeat above Zerus. Because he could just move the Tal’darim on Zerus prior to that and start making Hybrids from that point on if he wanted to. There wouldn’t even be a need for an Overmind : just keep some Zergs in cage for experiment .
Also, the Overmind was able to leave Zerus almost by accident since a spacefaring specy just came close to him right before everything went south.
I don’t think it’s something he can recover from by himself. I think he might need to siphon psionic energy from other life form or something.
Remember his appearance in chronicle order. Back in Brood War, he was clear the weakest. There is a lot of stuff that he could’ve done differently if he is as strong as we saw him in HotS. In Flashpoint, he could easily kill newly deinfested Kerrigan and Raynor and just took the Artefact. He didn’t.
I think it wasn’t until Amon is revive and Hybrid’s program in full swing that his full recovery is achieved.
This actually bothered me a well, however someone on this forum a year or so back, and I can’t remember who now, linked to a real world pic of jungle surrounding a volcano and volcanic activity, pointing out how much it looked like the depiction of Zerus in “Heart of the Swarm.”
So something like that is, evidently, real and possible.
Skehan says that you’re right, and volcanic land is incredibly fertile. As far as I know this is true, though frequent lava eruptions would probably still be somewhat of a detriment to forests.
I can buy that part for sure, it’s just weird how the zerg lived on it for centuries and it was still ashworld when they left. Should have been a jungle already.
I saw somebody’s headcanon once that the Xel’naga worldships the zerg took out over Zerus crashed onto the planet and residual technology dramatically accelerated the rate at which the jungle developed. Alternatively, at least some of the plant life appears to actually be a form of primal zerg, although who knows how that would have come to pass.
Yeah, I hear that. Interestingly, stuff like Zerus being jungle when I expected an ashworld, and Mar Sara being whole and unglassed when I expected it to be, well, glassed, sticks in my craw more than even the Overmind retcons.
I get (even if I don’t always agree with) character retcons, but you’d think actual mud and dirt can stay mud and dirt.
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