SPOILERS: Tosh and Nova

I have not done a Wings of Liberty run since 2012. I am revisiting and what I noticed is that I don’t understand their decision then and comparing it to now. It seems like Raynor SHOULD have picked Tosh over Nova, given that Nova lied about everything and Raynor’s personal vendetta against Mengsk. Tosh is never seen again but Nova gets her own campaign. Like, what on Earth was Blizzard thinking? It’s like they do this all the time with pivotal story points. Example? Broodwar. Raynor vows to kill Kerrigan. He kills Tycus for attempting to kill Kerrigan. Why all of this terrible back pedaling?
Unless I am wrong, please tell me (and why, hopefully).

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Yeah pretty much. It sucks being a StarCraft lore fan because everything usually gets retconned or ignored.

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Raynor picked Tosh according to canon.

It’s just that Blizzard tried to do Mass Effect branching in WoL and failed.

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This. The attempt at ME-style choices is pretty blatant since WoL came out around the time when Mass Effect was at the height of its popularity. Hell, the Hanson and Tosh’s filler arcs you could argue share similarities to how Shepard went about recruiting teammates and gaining their loyalty throughout ME2.

Maybe it could have had potential if it actually went through with branching paths, but the way HotS went about it was easily one of the most pathetic attempts I’ve ever seen when it comes to choice mechanics in video-games.

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Frankly, I think they could have pulled it off if they didn’t have such a wildly varying mission order. Make it mostly linear, and then come the Char invasion have different characters in the missions depending on who you sided with. Maybe Tosh hangs around with you in Belly of the Beast if you side with him, while ghosts provide tactical support if you side with nova, stuff like that.

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Tosh is a fantastic character, and I wish they would have done more with him.

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Nova was supposed to have her own game, not some campaign within Starcraft 2. Her character has been created long before Starcraft 2. So, yeah, to Blizzard at least, she is much more valuable character than Tosh who just appeared out of nowhere in WoL.
As for killing Kerrigan, Zeratul pretty much convinced Raynor not to do it.

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He already didn’t want to though. Over the four years from Fenix’s death to the start of the Second Great War, Raynor sunk into depression and alcoholism over regret for not being able to save her in the original game, and also for feeling responsible as a result for all the deaths she caused.

He convinced himself out of it.

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Every military guy experiences alcoholism.

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That depends on the fiction.

I am afraid he was talking about reality.

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Besides Zeratul convinced him that kerrigan must live through the Ihan Crystal missions

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I am still saying that the Ihan crystal convincing is extremely shady. We’re suddenly trusting Overmind?

An alcoholic trusting a hobo he hasn’t seen in 4 years who is trusting a ghost telling him the thoughts of a giant eyeball. A normal day in Koprulu !

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It’s a justification from a trusted friend to do a thing he seems to actually want to do

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Not the overmind but the prophecies and Tassadar’s shadow imposter who we learnt to be Ouros the last xelnaga alive

The point is we’re trusting something that looks like Tassadar that Overmind had a vision that he trusts.

I don’t exactly consider Ouros good or trustworthy anyway. Just his goals aligned with ours.

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Raynor was never going to kill Kerrigan anyways, it’s obvious from the first time you click on her photo on Mar Sara.

Zeratul just gives him a convenient out to justify it to everyone else.

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I don’t know. I think if the artifact hadn’t worked, but rather had just incapacitated her, Raynor would have spent his Justice bullet on Kerrigan then and there. A significant part of his guilt was that he felt responsible for all the damage Kerrigan had caused due to his failure to save her, and he would certainly rather see her dead than going around killing people more. Raynor is a soldier, he believes that there is such a thing as a mercy kill.

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Agreed, but did you at any point believe in in incapacitation? Truth to be told, this option never appeared to me during playthrough.