The thing about such a format is that it doesnt allow for any sort of dynamism on the main plot. An example is Shakuras. No matter at what time you travel to it, the zerg never overrun it. There is never a tangible sense of stakes, because everything stands still until you interact with it. Contrast with the more linear and focused Broodwar or, on the other side of the coin, the hard choices in XCOM. SC2 storytelling method works well for a more sandbox esque narrative, but LotV states that you are short on time as amon is aggressively invading all the sector, which is why you dont do any sort of sidequests, and yet they allow it to pick the order you want to address the invasion.
No, that's only seemingly true. There is a scale from 'linear' to 'open' which any narrative can be placed on. Fully linear stories are found in some games, but mainly in books or movies, while fully 'open' games are sandboxes in which the player creates their own story, like Minecraft. Anything in between could be called 'interactive', in that the player makes decisions which somewhat impact the way the story plays out. This scale is solely a measurement of how much impact a player has on the events that happen, and how linear or open a narrative for a game is made is purely a stylistic choice (that is also bound by time and effort constraints). It's not true that a more open game is inherently detrimental to 'dynamism on the main plot'; take a look at The Walking Dead or Life is Strange if you want some examples on how a plot can be very suspenseful while still giving the player heaps of choice.
The issue is that it's just not necessarily approached well in LotV. I don't think it's done in a terrible fashion, really - there is still a sense of urgency through the campaign, even if you choose which hurdles to tackle before heading to Amon. That said, I'll give you that it could have done better. That doesn't mean it inherently couldn't work, at all, though. All the Shakuras arc needed was a couple of pointers by sidekicks saying "Shakuras are streaming into Zerg as we speak!", or even just an "Executor, the portal to Aiur has re-opened a couple of hours ago!" at the start of the Shakuras missions to explain why the planet isn't being swarmed while you do the other missions.
That's really mostly semantics. The planet branching in HotS has more or less the same effect as the mission branching in WoL, with the exception of "one secondary character being around or not" for one of the choices made in WoL. In both games the choices impact gameplay, story and characters by an equally small amount.
Because... it's fun? And because Blizzard was experimenting with the concept of choices in video games. It's also relatively easy to still have a main storyline with interesting twists - it's more that the cast of secondary characters you end up in those twists with differs because of the choice in side missions. Like whether you have Tosh hanging around on-board or not, and what happens to Hansen. The mini-arcs really do not need to have any big influence on the main storyline for them to be 'worth it', 'useful' or 'fun': I enjoyed being able to choose for sticking it to Selendis in WoL, for example.
So... that means that Kerrigan is the one to possess both 'purity of form' and 'purity of essence' because of her Psionic-Terran and Zerg 'heritage', respectively? Is that correct? 'Cause if it is, that's fine with me: my issue is that we didn't get a scene laying this down in some detail. The campaign just throws the terms around and then we're sort of asked to assume that Kerrigan's the one who possesses these things.
What they should have done is just activate the temple like normal and purge all the zerg. :P
There is a bit of a paradoxal inconsistency in the Blizz lore here, but I would say that if they had purged all the Zerg, more would've simply come through the portal. It seems reasonable to assume the temple has at least some sort of 'cooldown period', so even assuming that the temple also destroys hybrids (which I actually figured would remain after a 'zerg purge'), they wouldn't be able to do it more than once before being overrun again. That said, the paradox is in the fact that Artanis "intends to bleed the Zerg": in which case he should've done exactly this. Then again, it may be the case that after a 'Zerg purge', the cooldown also prevents the temple from overloading, meaning they would've had no back-up: if the Zerg purge went through but the temple got captured afterwards, Shakuras would simply stay inexistence but be overrun completely.
Rohana can't possibly be the only protoss in the galaxy who didn't sever her nerve cords. I thought the artifact itself banished him to the void, not the act of protoss cutting their cords.
Anyway, this is an entire people's' memory we're talking about. It'd be foolish and disappointing to lose valuable science, engineering and history. It wouldn't be that hard to just lock her up. And the Khala isn't necessarily gone forever. Protoss can still be born with nerve cords.
The way I gathered it, Amon has two ways of existing: a physical body and a mental 'presence'. His physical body is the one he posseses in the void, and it cannot leave the void. The presence is basically his 'telepathic influence', so to speak, which only exists within the Khala. The reason this grew throughout WoL and HotS would be because Amon had managed to get one Protoss corrupted (through Narud's efforts) and then snuck into the Khala through that. Look at it like a digital virus, which, once implanted in one PC, spreads itself around and can only properly be destroyed if there is no more hardware for it to operate on. The body he attempts to create on Aiur would be a physical being to serve as sort of a 'power redirector' for his mental presence; i.e. it would just be like a really powerful Zerg unit that he has full control over. Basically a robot for the virus to sit on and control. If you follow these concepts, then basically the only way to fully kill Amon is to A) destroy his physical body (in the void, as done in the epilogue) and B) destroy his mental presence. The latter would be only done by ensuring that there are no Protoss left within the Khala, which is why practically all of them sever their nerve cords, and why I think Rohana severed hers. Surely there will still be some fringe groups and Tal'darim around who retain them, but with his physical body destroyed Amon 'as a whole' may be so weak that he can't even manage to corrupt one of those anymore.
I'm sorry you feel that something as important as the origins of both races are insignificant, but a "deviation from one line"? No, just no. Try reading the manual and you'll notice very little now about Xel'Naga makes sense anymore considering all their work was the actions of one rogue, and not the rest of the race (who were supposed to be merely scientists) like we've been told all along. Also, LoTV itself flip flops on whether the cycle itself is broken or still going. I'd be surprised if somebody could form a cohesive theory for how it all works.
I don't think the origins of races are insignificant, I think what it written in a 17 year old game manual is so irrelevant I can't really hold it as canon. If the games themselves work within those constraints, great, but if a couple of them are somewhat broken, I really don't mind. That said: yeah, the prophecy and the cycle and the whole purity of form/essence thing still makes no sense whatsoever to me;
Not all Protoss rely on the Khala, which Terrans aren't even capable of doing anyway. Also, I think you have it backwards. Zerg are the ones that are pure of essence. Form refers to a powerful psionic species capable of housing the Xel'Naga.
Also, the zerg already assimilated the Xel'Naga in the SC1 manual. So they should have godhood status already and/or nor be able to do it in the first place.
And other Protoss like Tassadar were even more powerful. That was the entire point of combining the two races' purity of form and essence. You'd get something a lot more devastating than a mere infested Terran. Now Blizzard comes in and says "just kidding, anyone can do it now."
You say I have it backwards, but that's exactly my point: 'purity of form' and 'purity of essence' are so incredibly ill-defined that they could refer to anything. I could claim some Terran possess either of those as much as I could claim the same for some Zerg or some Protoss. It's not set in stone at all. I never had a clear moment of "Ah, so race A possesses purity of B because they are all about C, while race D possesses purity of E because they are all about F: now it makes sense that character G, who is connected to both races, possesses both, and can thus ascend as a Xel'Naga". Imagine if Blizzard said something like: "Look, Zerg have purity of form 'cause of assimilation, Terran have purity of essence through psionics (and not the Protoss like everyone thought, plot twist, they rely on the Khala and it isn't pure!), which means that Kerrigan - as a non-infested Zerg/Psionic Terran - possesses both". Then everything would've made sense to me. Now I'm just being asked to accept that Kerrigan has 'purity of essence' and 'purity of form' without any pointers to what either of these mean. How come the Protoss, as the firstborn, do not possess purity of form? Or what about the Terrans, who were created after the firstborn which were regarded as failures? And why is it not the Protoss who possess purity of essence?
Regarding the purity of essence and purity of form:
Zerg never had purity of form. Zerg have purity of essence, and Protoss have purity of form. For this theory to be correct, it would mean that Terrans, rather than Protoss, have purity of form, which makes no sense to me, as Terrans are much weaker and scrawnier than the Protoss.
But that's the issue. Why would Zerg have purity of essence? What the fuck does essence even refer to in this context? And why do Protoss have purity of form? What is form? I can't remember anything concrete from the campaign that really elucidates this, and I could make just as strong arguments for it to be the other way around: Zerg have perfected 'form' through constant assimilation and improvement of bodies, meaning Zerg bodies are now perfect in how they're formed, and Protoss are the first born with the purest thoughts and psionic potential, thus having a purity of the essence of life (thought).
It's just one vague mess to me, and 'the prophecy' feels too much like a Delphi Oracle-style 'self-fulfilling' one: "If you attack his kingdom, a great army will fall". No shit, that'll always happen. That's not a prophecy, that's just intentional vague wording of something obvious to make it seem like your prediction is genius.
- Zeratul just randomly turns into dust when he dies. What?
While we can only hazard guesses at explanations for this, it didn't really bug me. Narrative-technically it was obviously done just to make sure he was really dead, so nobody would expect a Zeratul-dragoon or something like that.
- The artifact probably has to be the biggest Deus Ex Machina in all of video games. Turns out it only does everything. Transmutes matter, and energy and essence and back again, and imprisons Amon, etc. etc.
This, and the other thing you mention furtheron, about the vagueness of 'the void' being an alternate dimension and "Amon existing without having a host body and controlling ghostlike units or some shit and the insanely vague prophecy requiring someone with purity of form and essence to kill him" are my main gripes with the game.
- I feel like the protoss losing the Khala shouldn't be remotely feasible. Isn't it established that mastering any one of those arts takes decades/centuries of training? Artanis literally picks up the void in like 30 minutes. Then all the zealots in the arcship do the same. None of the khalai protoss should even be able to use psionics at this point. Yet Artanis and other units still clearly use powers that require the Khala (his warp blades are blue/green to show off his twilight nature). How does this make any sense?
Who says warp blades 'require' the Khala? The way I see it, the term has been intentionally left rather vague all through SC just so something like this would be possible later on. All I can find about this in the Wiki is that 'psionic storm requires the Khala' (which is a direct inconsistence, no argument there), and that the Khala 'grants the Protoss an enormous amount of psionic energy'. I'll agree that what happens does not seem to be 100% kosher, but the lore isn't specific enough for it for me to really view this as a huge retcon or even so inconsistent I cannot take it seriously.
- Can't help but feel that Zeratul has been abused in every way possible. Turned from an ninja alien badass sage in SC1 to a doomsaying old man in SC2. And now that the prophecy nonsense is over, Blizzard has no more use for him as a character, and killed him. Talk about character assassination.
No, I disagree. Zeratul had more or less run his time anyway. While I don't think Blizz should kill off old characters for the sake of killing old characters, Zeratul, Raynor and Kerrigan were really the only three real 'old-timers' left and it was becoming unbelievable (especially for Raynor) that they would just hang around to move the plot forward for so long. Zeratul moving the plot forward with his death... that worked for me.
- Destroying Shakuras was a ballsy move on the part of the writers as well. Kudos. However, I'd say many of these events move way too fast. I don't know if this is at all believable given the whole point of the protoss is their antagonism towards change.
I've seen people say this in multiple reviews, but... I dunno. It felt a little bit off to me when I played it, but it was more of an 'eh, weird, but ok' moment and nothing more than that. I thought they did a well enough job with Vorazun being so steadfast in wanting this; it seems overly radical, but it does put her down as a character with a very strong will and severity. "I do not see a way to save my planet and as such I would rather destroy it completely than see the Zerg take it over. I know it sounds radical, but it is what I believe in".
- Fenix. Yet another character revival. But at least this has a plausible sci-fi explanation, so I'm not too broke up about it. Also, at least they somewhat tried with his voice. Love his side stories though! Some actual worldbuilding!
I have to admit, when he first popped up it felt terrible. Even though they explain he is a 'machine with the memories of' in the first lines, I really felt like they were going full retcon ham and planned on ressurrecting the dude in some kind of weird way - maybe even by having a direct clone of him walking around that literally would become the new Fenix. As I got into it, though, I became very happy that the exact opposite was the case and that Blizzard basically set a bit of a video game precedent here by retconning(-but-not-really) a dead character in a way that was actually acceptable and interesting.
- I guess preservers don't exist anymore and all their stored memories are gone? Rohana honestly shouldn't have cut her nerve cords. Just keep her in stasis and preserve the memories of all your people. Small price to pay...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but how would that have helped? It would've A) given Amon a place of refuge, or rather 'a place to exist' for as far as it made sense to me, and B) not done anything for the now Khala-less Protoss. The way I see it, Rohanna would just become possessed by Amon forever and since the Protoss no longer have the Khala they wouldn't be able to retrieve the memories from Rohana anyway. So really, they'd just be keeping Amon prisoner needlessly.
- The Xel'Naga never uplifted the protoss, Amon did. Another blatant SC1 manual retcon. Destroys the whole thing about the Xel'Naga being scientists.
This is the kind of stuff I was expecting to see way more off (in general), and it just makes me roll my eyes. You call a deviation from one line in a fucking manual of a 17 year old game a 'blatant retcon'? How do you even care? Not to mention the fact that the whole 'uplifting' this was, I believe, mentioned once in the campaign. Just take it as a 'oh what he's saying is not technically correct but I guess it's a manner-of-speaking' and move on if it's that important to you.
- Ouros tricked Zeratul into thinking he was Tassadar? Now THAT is a twist I didn't see coming. Almost feels like a response to the critics. Like SC2's version of ME3's indoctrination theory, but actually in the game.
While not that special in terms of how it's constructed, this is one of the better ways I've seen a twist set up in modern media recently. Reminds me of Snape from Harry Potter: it makes a lot of sense after the fact, but there's enough reason to think something else is up for you not to really look very strongly in this direction. Was quite happy with this one.
- The epilogue. What the hell happened? We had a semi-decent ending with the main campaign where we didn't have the cliche 3 races team up to fight Amon ending (psych!). Kerrigan ascends to godhood, the one person who's been shown to be the least responsible and judicious with her use of power. Why her? She's terran/zerg. Why not Artanis? Why not require one of each? The entire buildup of combining purity of form and essence to continue the cycle has been demolished. It's not supposed to be a Terran hybrid who becomes the next generation of Xel'Naga! Why couldn't we have gotten an epilogue that actually took us back to what StarCraft is supposed to be about: galactic domination and politics? Extremely disappointing. And I'm sorry, but entirely different universes shouldn't even be mentioned or even be in the scope of StarCraft.
The purity of essence and purity of form thing was an interesting approach, but what I think missed was a scene that made it clear that after all this time, the ones 'purest of essence' are in fact psionic Terrans rather than Protoss, who rely on an 'artifical' Khala for their shit. A 'pure essence' Terran combined with the Zerg's 'purity of form' (yet devoid of the corruption that comes with being infested) would thus be the real savior. That's what I felt I needed to kind of provide closure to the whole prophecy thing. Instead, they set the prophecy up to be so incredibly fucking vague that it just didn't make any sense to me. Even in the lore as it is: what is purity of essence and purity of form? How does Kerrigan have these? Both these terms could apply to any individual from all three races in my book - I thought Protoss has 'purity of essence' with their psionic capabilities but then I've also seen people say that they were the 'purity of form' instead because they were the firstborn? Or something? I just don't know. I need an explanation of what these tow terms concretely entail and why Kerrigan possesses them both.
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No, that's only seemingly true. There is a scale from 'linear' to 'open' which any narrative can be placed on. Fully linear stories are found in some games, but mainly in books or movies, while fully 'open' games are sandboxes in which the player creates their own story, like Minecraft. Anything in between could be called 'interactive', in that the player makes decisions which somewhat impact the way the story plays out. This scale is solely a measurement of how much impact a player has on the events that happen, and how linear or open a narrative for a game is made is purely a stylistic choice (that is also bound by time and effort constraints). It's not true that a more open game is inherently detrimental to 'dynamism on the main plot'; take a look at The Walking Dead or Life is Strange if you want some examples on how a plot can be very suspenseful while still giving the player heaps of choice.
The issue is that it's just not necessarily approached well in LotV. I don't think it's done in a terrible fashion, really - there is still a sense of urgency through the campaign, even if you choose which hurdles to tackle before heading to Amon. That said, I'll give you that it could have done better. That doesn't mean it inherently couldn't work, at all, though. All the Shakuras arc needed was a couple of pointers by sidekicks saying "Shakuras are streaming into Zerg as we speak!", or even just an "Executor, the portal to Aiur has re-opened a couple of hours ago!" at the start of the Shakuras missions to explain why the planet isn't being swarmed while you do the other missions.
@Alevice: Go
That's really mostly semantics. The planet branching in HotS has more or less the same effect as the mission branching in WoL, with the exception of "one secondary character being around or not" for one of the choices made in WoL. In both games the choices impact gameplay, story and characters by an equally small amount.
@MaskedImposter: Go
Because... it's fun? And because Blizzard was experimenting with the concept of choices in video games. It's also relatively easy to still have a main storyline with interesting twists - it's more that the cast of secondary characters you end up in those twists with differs because of the choice in side missions. Like whether you have Tosh hanging around on-board or not, and what happens to Hansen. The mini-arcs really do not need to have any big influence on the main storyline for them to be 'worth it', 'useful' or 'fun': I enjoyed being able to choose for sticking it to Selendis in WoL, for example.
So... that means that Kerrigan is the one to possess both 'purity of form' and 'purity of essence' because of her Psionic-Terran and Zerg 'heritage', respectively? Is that correct? 'Cause if it is, that's fine with me: my issue is that we didn't get a scene laying this down in some detail. The campaign just throws the terms around and then we're sort of asked to assume that Kerrigan's the one who possesses these things.
There is a bit of a paradoxal inconsistency in the Blizz lore here, but I would say that if they had purged all the Zerg, more would've simply come through the portal. It seems reasonable to assume the temple has at least some sort of 'cooldown period', so even assuming that the temple also destroys hybrids (which I actually figured would remain after a 'zerg purge'), they wouldn't be able to do it more than once before being overrun again. That said, the paradox is in the fact that Artanis "intends to bleed the Zerg": in which case he should've done exactly this. Then again, it may be the case that after a 'Zerg purge', the cooldown also prevents the temple from overloading, meaning they would've had no back-up: if the Zerg purge went through but the temple got captured afterwards, Shakuras would simply stay inexistence but be overrun completely.
The way I gathered it, Amon has two ways of existing: a physical body and a mental 'presence'. His physical body is the one he posseses in the void, and it cannot leave the void. The presence is basically his 'telepathic influence', so to speak, which only exists within the Khala. The reason this grew throughout WoL and HotS would be because Amon had managed to get one Protoss corrupted (through Narud's efforts) and then snuck into the Khala through that. Look at it like a digital virus, which, once implanted in one PC, spreads itself around and can only properly be destroyed if there is no more hardware for it to operate on. The body he attempts to create on Aiur would be a physical being to serve as sort of a 'power redirector' for his mental presence; i.e. it would just be like a really powerful Zerg unit that he has full control over. Basically a robot for the virus to sit on and control. If you follow these concepts, then basically the only way to fully kill Amon is to A) destroy his physical body (in the void, as done in the epilogue) and B) destroy his mental presence. The latter would be only done by ensuring that there are no Protoss left within the Khala, which is why practically all of them sever their nerve cords, and why I think Rohana severed hers. Surely there will still be some fringe groups and Tal'darim around who retain them, but with his physical body destroyed Amon 'as a whole' may be so weak that he can't even manage to corrupt one of those anymore.
It's all a bit hazy, though.
I don't think the origins of races are insignificant, I think what it written in a 17 year old game manual is so irrelevant I can't really hold it as canon. If the games themselves work within those constraints, great, but if a couple of them are somewhat broken, I really don't mind. That said: yeah, the prophecy and the cycle and the whole purity of form/essence thing still makes no sense whatsoever to me;
You say I have it backwards, but that's exactly my point: 'purity of form' and 'purity of essence' are so incredibly ill-defined that they could refer to anything. I could claim some Terran possess either of those as much as I could claim the same for some Zerg or some Protoss. It's not set in stone at all. I never had a clear moment of "Ah, so race A possesses purity of B because they are all about C, while race D possesses purity of E because they are all about F: now it makes sense that character G, who is connected to both races, possesses both, and can thus ascend as a Xel'Naga". Imagine if Blizzard said something like: "Look, Zerg have purity of form 'cause of assimilation, Terran have purity of essence through psionics (and not the Protoss like everyone thought, plot twist, they rely on the Khala and it isn't pure!), which means that Kerrigan - as a non-infested Zerg/Psionic Terran - possesses both". Then everything would've made sense to me. Now I'm just being asked to accept that Kerrigan has 'purity of essence' and 'purity of form' without any pointers to what either of these mean. How come the Protoss, as the firstborn, do not possess purity of form? Or what about the Terrans, who were created after the firstborn which were regarded as failures? And why is it not the Protoss who possess purity of essence?
But that's the issue. Why would Zerg have purity of essence? What the fuck does essence even refer to in this context? And why do Protoss have purity of form? What is form? I can't remember anything concrete from the campaign that really elucidates this, and I could make just as strong arguments for it to be the other way around: Zerg have perfected 'form' through constant assimilation and improvement of bodies, meaning Zerg bodies are now perfect in how they're formed, and Protoss are the first born with the purest thoughts and psionic potential, thus having a purity of the essence of life (thought).
It's just one vague mess to me, and 'the prophecy' feels too much like a Delphi Oracle-style 'self-fulfilling' one: "If you attack his kingdom, a great army will fall". No shit, that'll always happen. That's not a prophecy, that's just intentional vague wording of something obvious to make it seem like your prediction is genius.
This post has enough list to make Buzzfeed jealous. Couple of things I wanted to comment on:
While we can only hazard guesses at explanations for this, it didn't really bug me. Narrative-technically it was obviously done just to make sure he was really dead, so nobody would expect a Zeratul-dragoon or something like that.
This, and the other thing you mention furtheron, about the vagueness of 'the void' being an alternate dimension and "Amon existing without having a host body and controlling ghostlike units or some shit and the insanely vague prophecy requiring someone with purity of form and essence to kill him" are my main gripes with the game.
Who says warp blades 'require' the Khala? The way I see it, the term has been intentionally left rather vague all through SC just so something like this would be possible later on. All I can find about this in the Wiki is that 'psionic storm requires the Khala' (which is a direct inconsistence, no argument there), and that the Khala 'grants the Protoss an enormous amount of psionic energy'. I'll agree that what happens does not seem to be 100% kosher, but the lore isn't specific enough for it for me to really view this as a huge retcon or even so inconsistent I cannot take it seriously.
No, I disagree. Zeratul had more or less run his time anyway. While I don't think Blizz should kill off old characters for the sake of killing old characters, Zeratul, Raynor and Kerrigan were really the only three real 'old-timers' left and it was becoming unbelievable (especially for Raynor) that they would just hang around to move the plot forward for so long. Zeratul moving the plot forward with his death... that worked for me.
I've seen people say this in multiple reviews, but... I dunno. It felt a little bit off to me when I played it, but it was more of an 'eh, weird, but ok' moment and nothing more than that. I thought they did a well enough job with Vorazun being so steadfast in wanting this; it seems overly radical, but it does put her down as a character with a very strong will and severity. "I do not see a way to save my planet and as such I would rather destroy it completely than see the Zerg take it over. I know it sounds radical, but it is what I believe in".
I have to admit, when he first popped up it felt terrible. Even though they explain he is a 'machine with the memories of' in the first lines, I really felt like they were going full retcon ham and planned on ressurrecting the dude in some kind of weird way - maybe even by having a direct clone of him walking around that literally would become the new Fenix. As I got into it, though, I became very happy that the exact opposite was the case and that Blizzard basically set a bit of a video game precedent here by retconning(-but-not-really) a dead character in a way that was actually acceptable and interesting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but how would that have helped? It would've A) given Amon a place of refuge, or rather 'a place to exist' for as far as it made sense to me, and B) not done anything for the now Khala-less Protoss. The way I see it, Rohanna would just become possessed by Amon forever and since the Protoss no longer have the Khala they wouldn't be able to retrieve the memories from Rohana anyway. So really, they'd just be keeping Amon prisoner needlessly.
This is the kind of stuff I was expecting to see way more off (in general), and it just makes me roll my eyes. You call a deviation from one line in a fucking manual of a 17 year old game a 'blatant retcon'? How do you even care? Not to mention the fact that the whole 'uplifting' this was, I believe, mentioned once in the campaign. Just take it as a 'oh what he's saying is not technically correct but I guess it's a manner-of-speaking' and move on if it's that important to you.
It's undisputedly cliché, but I think it worked with Raynor purely due to the fact that it fits with Artanis' whole theme of changing from traditions. It had a place that way and wasn't just my little pony style circlejerking.
While not that special in terms of how it's constructed, this is one of the better ways I've seen a twist set up in modern media recently. Reminds me of Snape from Harry Potter: it makes a lot of sense after the fact, but there's enough reason to think something else is up for you not to really look very strongly in this direction. Was quite happy with this one.
The purity of essence and purity of form thing was an interesting approach, but what I think missed was a scene that made it clear that after all this time, the ones 'purest of essence' are in fact psionic Terrans rather than Protoss, who rely on an 'artifical' Khala for their shit. A 'pure essence' Terran combined with the Zerg's 'purity of form' (yet devoid of the corruption that comes with being infested) would thus be the real savior. That's what I felt I needed to kind of provide closure to the whole prophecy thing. Instead, they set the prophecy up to be so incredibly fucking vague that it just didn't make any sense to me. Even in the lore as it is: what is purity of essence and purity of form? How does Kerrigan have these? Both these terms could apply to any individual from all three races in my book - I thought Protoss has 'purity of essence' with their psionic capabilities but then I've also seen people say that they were the 'purity of form' instead because they were the firstborn? Or something? I just don't know. I need an explanation of what these tow terms concretely entail and why Kerrigan possesses them both.