TIL: The Starcraft universe has a planet colonized by Mormons

The planet Bountiful, https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Bountiful

The name of the planet itself is a reference to the Land of Bountiful, which was a territory described in The Book of Mormon (Which is also the name of a city in Utah)

The only named city on the planet is the Helaman Township, named after a prophet in the aforementioned scripture, and the Zarahemla Starport located in Helaman is named after a Nephite city.

The planet is known for its farming, and its scientific and religious studies, all things the church traditionally emphasises.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints myself, it was neat to find this little gem, as well as evidence that religion in general isn’t completely gone just because it’s The Future™

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Plenty of religion in Starcraft.

  • Church of Besainted Pelagius.
  • The Khala
  • Amon who is literally a god and has worshippers
  • Tosh’s voodoo
  • All the references to Norse mythology
  • Christianity in general is prevalent in the fringe worlds

Also the not yet recognized Church of Mengsk but we’re working on it.

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I maybe jumping a bit.

But with all respect I see a connection between your religion and your dislike (or even disgust) towards darker sci-fi or fantasy.

Oh no, those are unrelated.

I’m just sick of everything having to be edgy for the sake of the edge.

I can agree with that sentiment, we just seem to have different measures for that.

It’s not for the sake of edge, it’s for believability & verisimilitude, which you need a little bit of especially in a setting with psychic brain aliens and bug monsters. I know it’s hard to accept, but war IS dark. People die and lose limbs. Trivializing it and making a joke out of it the way SC2 does is both disgraceful and crappy writing.

Why though? We have psychic brain Aliens and bug monsters, what about that says “this needs to be supper gritty and realistic” ?

Your issue is you’re anti-fun. People enjoying themselves when you think something should be serious business upsets you. And that’s fine and all, but how serious Starcraft takes itself is up to Blizzard’s sole discretion, not yours.

And you’re anti good writing. If you’re a writer and you remotely care about immersion you’re going to put effort into it to make it believable. Just because there’s psychic brain aliens isn’t an excuse to half @ss the rest of the story, especially since that’s never been the tone of starcraft.

Sure, you can choose to do none of the above and treat it like a joke but at that point there’s nothing that differentiates it from a children’s cartoon.

And how’s that working out? The story is universally lampooned and mocked, even by its own fans. Blizzard doesn’t take it seriously and now neither does anyone else.

They wanted to go more mainstream, they wrote SC2. I mean look at the story, it’s laughable at best. An evil god trying to murder everybody, redeeming unredeemable characters, morally just characters mixing with their polar opposites. It’s madness.

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And who says a children’s cartoon can’t have good writing?

You’re whole stance is “Edge = better story” which is in fact edge for the sake of edge.

Gradius isn’t anti-fun.

He loves Spongebob and Transformers.

I think he could get behind the idea that Avatar:TLA or Justice League Unlimited are great works despite being marketed for children.

Just because something is children oriented doesn’t mean it is bad, yes. But oftentimes it can be a whole lot worse than if it was matured a bit. And let us be real here, the grittiness of StarCraft wasn’t edgy for the sake of being edgy. The characters were striving to survive and if they manage that, prosper. How you go ahead and make a light hearted soap-opera story out of that in a sequel is beyond me.

And now I care even less about what his idea of good writing is.

And what’s beyond me is how all the struggling to survive in SC2 is somehow invalidated because the characters aren’t doom and gloom at all times.

He doesn’t claim it’s good writing.

Making fun of the story IS my fun. Phlynch needs to stop being such a party pooper.

Nobody. Even Harry Potter & Avatar have dark moments.

I’m saying war stories are going to be inherently dark by nature…because that’s what war is, not just because for the hell of it and because it’s trendy which is what you seem to think is the case.

War is kind of the opposite of a lighthearted children’s cartoon by definition. I’m sorry that that’s a challenging concept.

Why the spongebob hate? I thought you liked childish storytelling.

There is no storytelling in Spongebob. Just idiotic gags strung together.

Also, lighthearted storytelling and childish storytelling are not the same thing.

Oh you mean how literally nobody except Mengsk struggles to survive in the entire WoL and HotS campaign? Kerrigan’s personality is basically just saying ‘I gotta do this, I know it’s bad but I will only answer consequences once I’m done’ every now and then.

Jimbo and the Hyperion crew has no trouble surviving at all against you know, the entire Zerg threat and the Dominion hating on them but it’s cool.

Im not sure what you mean by that. Raynor spends 90% of the campaign very carefully avoiding actually engaging either of those groups directly. He’s always harassing fringe forces or otherwise avoiding direct fights. So yeah, to the extent that space is big and Raynor isn’t an overconfident idiot he’s fine, but neither do we really see anything like what the Sons of Korhal pull off in Rebel Yell, directly conquering the entire military garrison of Tarsonis or leading direct strikes against zerg hives and confederate military camps.

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I don’t know man, it kinda feels like whatever they do there is no consequence of it. The Dominion is shown as a fairly incompetent military force, and Arcturus Mengsk is like Skeletor. Big talk but nothing to back it up with.

Even the invasion of Char is shown this way. The entire Dominion force present gets shredded but Jimmy saves the day and has a laugh and that cheesy speech.