Bit late-ish, but I felt like responding to some of Gradius' review. Overall I agree - you did a way better job than me at explaining why some parts of the story felt 'lame', though I can specify my opinion on some of the things you said.
Evidence that Kerrigan is good again in HoTS:
The artifact removed the zerg mutagen from her system and allowed her to revert back to human form.
She claims, multiple times, that after this is all over, she will have to "atone".
She lets Valerian evacuate the citizenry in the attack on Korhal.
Evidence that Kerrigan is still evil in HoTS:
Attacks terran and protoss worlds in the evolution missions.
Destroys the protoss colony on Kal'Dir instead of letting them leave. Infects Lessara with a chestburster.
Kills and abandons Warfield, a good guy who was just trying to defend his people.
Instead of apologizing to Zeratul for the myriad crimes she inflicted upon him, she instead tries to kill him and tells him afterward "what are you doing here? I don't even need your help."
Make no mistake, the above is not evidence of a "conflicted" or "interesting" character, only the writers' lack of vision (a concept that Kerrigan failed to explain to Zagarra and the audience nevertheless). Heart of the Swarm is supposed to be an examination of Sarah Kerrigan's character, and yet it remains the story's largest failure. The writers wanted Kerrigan to be sympathetic and human, and they also wanted to use the "revenge" and "taking over planets" themes that fit in with a zerg campaign. They just proved that you cannot have both.
Just had to quote this for truth. I don't think Kerrigan's character as a whole is as 'bad' as you make it out to be, but you point out nicely why some of her decisions just feel odd and completely out of place. I can even deal with some 'oddballing' between good and bad, but the whole Kaldir arc just felt poorly executed and the cinematic with Zeratul was mind-blowingly terrible.
Zerus Arc
Holy retcon batman! First off, the premise that Zerus is right next door and Kerrigan can travel there at a drop of a hat is utter nonsense. Zerus is located in the galactic core, 50000 light years away from the K-sector. It took the Overmind 60 years to reach the Koprulu sector when he discovered the terrans, and there is zero reason to assume that zerg FTL travel has improved under Kerrigan, who was an inferior geneticist to the Overmind. In a setting where it can take weeks to travel to another planet, the fact that you basically teleport across the galaxy at a whim totally breaks the setting and immersion. The only other time this has happened was in Brood War, where the UED came all the way from Earth. However, they pulled some crazy crap to get this done, having to put everyone into cryogenic cold-sleep, and the writers made sure you knew how amazing their journey was. Duke said "You mean to tell me you came all the way from Earth?". Zeratul said "these humans have come a long way to make war upon us". So it was more believable, and not just because they had more time to travel. In Heart of the Swarm, the writers don't recognize this issue, so they'll probably save it for a future QA.
I can cope with a lot more of this than you apparently can. I usually just shrug at people saying stuff like "But the StarCraft 1 manual said Zerus was a barren wasteland!!! OMG!!!". I mean, who cares? So they changed the setting of a planet in such a way that it's more aesthetically pleasing to play through and they're contradicting some random lore tidbit an extra wrote up to fill a page in a 10-year old manual. Big deal.
Still, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you're saying. I think the story-arc on Zerus 'by itself' isn't bad. I enjoyed the idea of the primal Zerg being solitary/pack creatures without a hive mind, all struggling to be the best. But this feeling that comes through in the gameplay can really only distract me from the nagging question of "why and how are we here to begin with?". I have known for ages a planet named 'Zerus' was in the campaign, though I never actually realized this was THE Zerus until I actually played HotS myself. I immediately had to call bullshit.
I always felt that 'THE' Zerus was some kind of really special and interesting place. While it may be accessible within the timespan of a campaign, it'd better force a DAMN tough journey on the traveling character. There needs to be a GOOD reason to go through the effort, and it needs to show on all characters involved. What I got was Zeratul saying "hey you should check out Zerus" and Kerrigan's Leviathan quite literally blinking to the planet. Wat? This is literally the equivalent to Frodo teleporting from Osgiliath to mount Doom at the start of the third Lord of the Rings film and no one acting like anything out of the ordinary happened. Oh, and he's also put on the ring to become powerful enough to kill the Ringwraiths, but no one cares about that either.
Space Arc
I have to admit I enjoyed commanding the Hyperion in a space battle. Unfortunately I could not stomach the premise of having to fight Mira Han, a known ally and friend. "She's a merc" is not a valid excuse, sorry. This scene basically deconstructs itself, so I won't really go into it, suffice to say that even Valerian knew this was total BS. Another clever and entertaining mission overshadowed by incompetent writing.
Quoted for truth. Even assuming Mira Han is actually this stupid, why was NO ONE smart enough to shake her up and say "HELLO? We are IN THE HYPERION, Raynor's Ship. You have probably HEARD he's been CAPTURED. The reason we need Orlan to begin with IS TO FREE HIM. Come with us, keep an eye on Orlan and you can even witness all of this. It's kind of a big deal, thank you!".
However, I'd like to give a shout-out to Abathur, who is basically Mordin from Mass Effect 3, but still feels like the only true zerg character in this game. Anyway, I am glad that Raynor was able to participate in Mengsk's downfall, but now that Raynor and Kerrigan's arcs are concluded, it seems that LoTV will be a bit disjointed from the rest of the trilogy. Nevertheless, the story still represents an improvement over Wings of Liberty, and for that the writers are to be congratulated.
There are more issues with HotS than just lore problems. The expansion is plagued all over the place by relatively small but really annoying unfinished/'lazy' details.
To name an easy example, I just realized that nearly all the relatively easy but supposedly hard "Mastery" achievements simply amount to "complete the mission within X minutes". I was mentally preparing to set out to get these achievements, but now I simply might not bother. In WoL, I wanted to get crazy ass achievements like destroying 4 Hatcheries in the Mar Sara hold-out mission that force the player to think outside the box and do weird shit. I don't mind a couple 'do this really fast' achievements and will power through them for the sake of completion, but they never make me feel as if I've genuinely accomplished something interesting within the game. I just "macro'd really well", which isn't much of an achievement in itself.
This kind of stuff makes me wonder 'what happened to Blizzard'. It wasn't too long ago that I was standing at Falcon Watch outpost in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion, looking out from on top of a fence and realizing that the freaking fence posts had small Blood Elf crests on them. Back then I marvelled at the sight and thought to myself that the reason that Blizzard games were so damn good was because they make sure EVERY LITTLE DETAIL is fucking PERFECT - not a stone in a world such as the one of WarCraft isn't thought about. HotS is for me the first definite proof that the company has stopped living up to it's reputation. It's still worth my money because it's still a really good game, but it is no longer perfect - I'm annoyed even by small things like those 'mastery' achievements.
Even so, I keep asking myself why you repeatedly say HotS is an improvement over WoL. I assume you're talking purely in the story department, but even just there I'd have to disagree with you? HotS has so many things that don't make sense or just feel "eh". Wings of Liberty, to me, had a GREAT feeling. The whole 'walk around your ship' thing coupled with the dark corridors and such you actually saw in cinematics like the Zeratul one REALLY made me feel like some kind of discarded rebel, far away from home in the cold reaches of space. The missions only added to that feeling by making me go to all sorts of random places where nobody in particular seemed to be around. HotS, to me, is more of a comfortable golden necklace roughly hooked together with ugly iron rings in several places. It's like several very interesting and well set-up short-stories that catch my interest well when presented alone but make me laugh at the clunkiness of the combination when presented together. WoL really felt like you were Jim, HotS felt like 'doing random semi-interesting crap while playing as Zerg'.
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Bit late-ish, but I felt like responding to some of Gradius' review. Overall I agree - you did a way better job than me at explaining why some parts of the story felt 'lame', though I can specify my opinion on some of the things you said.
Just had to quote this for truth. I don't think Kerrigan's character as a whole is as 'bad' as you make it out to be, but you point out nicely why some of her decisions just feel odd and completely out of place. I can even deal with some 'oddballing' between good and bad, but the whole Kaldir arc just felt poorly executed and the cinematic with Zeratul was mind-blowingly terrible.
I can cope with a lot more of this than you apparently can. I usually just shrug at people saying stuff like "But the StarCraft 1 manual said Zerus was a barren wasteland!!! OMG!!!". I mean, who cares? So they changed the setting of a planet in such a way that it's more aesthetically pleasing to play through and they're contradicting some random lore tidbit an extra wrote up to fill a page in a 10-year old manual. Big deal.
Still, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you're saying. I think the story-arc on Zerus 'by itself' isn't bad. I enjoyed the idea of the primal Zerg being solitary/pack creatures without a hive mind, all struggling to be the best. But this feeling that comes through in the gameplay can really only distract me from the nagging question of "why and how are we here to begin with?". I have known for ages a planet named 'Zerus' was in the campaign, though I never actually realized this was THE Zerus until I actually played HotS myself. I immediately had to call bullshit.
I always felt that 'THE' Zerus was some kind of really special and interesting place. While it may be accessible within the timespan of a campaign, it'd better force a DAMN tough journey on the traveling character. There needs to be a GOOD reason to go through the effort, and it needs to show on all characters involved. What I got was Zeratul saying "hey you should check out Zerus" and Kerrigan's Leviathan quite literally blinking to the planet. Wat? This is literally the equivalent to Frodo teleporting from Osgiliath to mount Doom at the start of the third Lord of the Rings film and no one acting like anything out of the ordinary happened. Oh, and he's also put on the ring to become powerful enough to kill the Ringwraiths, but no one cares about that either.
Quoted for truth. Even assuming Mira Han is actually this stupid, why was NO ONE smart enough to shake her up and say "HELLO? We are IN THE HYPERION, Raynor's Ship. You have probably HEARD he's been CAPTURED. The reason we need Orlan to begin with IS TO FREE HIM. Come with us, keep an eye on Orlan and you can even witness all of this. It's kind of a big deal, thank you!".
There are more issues with HotS than just lore problems. The expansion is plagued all over the place by relatively small but really annoying unfinished/'lazy' details.
To name an easy example, I just realized that nearly all the relatively easy but supposedly hard "Mastery" achievements simply amount to "complete the mission within X minutes". I was mentally preparing to set out to get these achievements, but now I simply might not bother. In WoL, I wanted to get crazy ass achievements like destroying 4 Hatcheries in the Mar Sara hold-out mission that force the player to think outside the box and do weird shit. I don't mind a couple 'do this really fast' achievements and will power through them for the sake of completion, but they never make me feel as if I've genuinely accomplished something interesting within the game. I just "macro'd really well", which isn't much of an achievement in itself.
This kind of stuff makes me wonder 'what happened to Blizzard'. It wasn't too long ago that I was standing at Falcon Watch outpost in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion, looking out from on top of a fence and realizing that the freaking fence posts had small Blood Elf crests on them. Back then I marvelled at the sight and thought to myself that the reason that Blizzard games were so damn good was because they make sure EVERY LITTLE DETAIL is fucking PERFECT - not a stone in a world such as the one of WarCraft isn't thought about. HotS is for me the first definite proof that the company has stopped living up to it's reputation. It's still worth my money because it's still a really good game, but it is no longer perfect - I'm annoyed even by small things like those 'mastery' achievements.
Even so, I keep asking myself why you repeatedly say HotS is an improvement over WoL. I assume you're talking purely in the story department, but even just there I'd have to disagree with you? HotS has so many things that don't make sense or just feel "eh". Wings of Liberty, to me, had a GREAT feeling. The whole 'walk around your ship' thing coupled with the dark corridors and such you actually saw in cinematics like the Zeratul one REALLY made me feel like some kind of discarded rebel, far away from home in the cold reaches of space. The missions only added to that feeling by making me go to all sorts of random places where nobody in particular seemed to be around. HotS, to me, is more of a comfortable golden necklace roughly hooked together with ugly iron rings in several places. It's like several very interesting and well set-up short-stories that catch my interest well when presented alone but make me laugh at the clunkiness of the combination when presented together. WoL really felt like you were Jim, HotS felt like 'doing random semi-interesting crap while playing as Zerg'.