SC2Mapster

Real question is... Who would actually be interested in playing it?

It's DBZ, I wouldn't worry about not having people to play it ;D

Just go for it and do it is the advice I'd give.

 :0

That mutalisk looks like some sort of a vampire bat. Exactly what I needed :D

Worked perfectly, tyvm!

Played it on normal, lost when reached 1st base because I ordered all units to storm it and there was a reaver. On 2nd playtrough every time I saw a structure I'd send out DTs to stasis detection (cannons) -> stasis pylon powering detection and kill everything.

One possibility of mitigating reaver deadliness on easy and normal difficulties is giving players vision of outposts when they approach them. That way they know that there are such and such units there and can have easy time to plan accordingly.

Overall difficulty seemed okay, nothing relevant stood out in a bad way.

Okay, so I played it around 6-8 times, at first a bit in single player to get a grip of what's going on.

After being utterly murdered in singleplayer I decided that it would be better to try it with full house after all. After getting utterly murdered in public fullhouse games I made a private party including a guy who played previous versions before, so he knew more than I did. We beat it in 20-ish minutes on our second try.

So, first out the technical stuff:

- Loading screen is mean towards non-widescreen monitor users (https://snag.gy/hQbpzX.jpg). I think one of editors settings allows you to scale loading screen properly for any resolution;

- Patch notes are a mess. First thing the guy I brought in said was: "You sure it's the right version? It hasn't been updated since the middle of last year";

- No menu button. One of the games a guy had a panic attack because he had to leave the game and he couldn't. I tried telling him the hotkeys but he said he was on mac laptop and he didn't have them. We decided to kill everything and trigger defeat so that the guy could leave;

-The chat bar misplacement. This alongside with the above points makes map feel technically broken;

- Timer overflow, I've built a rescue beacon 40 seconds before time and this is the result https://snag.gy/goUsG7.jpg (needing to wait 291 hours for rescue)

- Tesla Coil build button's description said it can attack ground and air units - it attacked only air. I felt very cheated that the iconic Red Alert tesla coil couldn't zap ground units t_t

- Harvest minerals objective also counts minerals from kills. I know what you mean, but it still stood out in a weird way;

-My SC2 hanged on indefinitely when I left games as last remaining player?

New player experience improvement suggestions:

- Make supply pickups semi-shared, e.g. when one player picks a supply crate (+4) all others get +1. This way new players who stay in base to repair ship don't get screwed over as much when someone who knows what to do goes out and takes all nearby supplies.

-Make repair free. You can already heal buildings for energy which is free, as a new player it felt dirt-cheap that I had ran out of my very sparse resources by trying to be helpful and just automatically repairing stuff. You can turn down repair rate to compensate. If you wish to have a quicker emergency repair you can add extra ability that restores buildings/units life in bulk for a portion of it's cost (can be done trough dummy ability + triggers).

Now, for subjective feedback:

It's obvious that you love the map the way it is. These are just my observations after half a day of playing it.

I think the map is a great hybrid of gathering, exploration and defense, at least initially.

Once mules kick in, everything changes. With them in play you mine out entire screens worth of minerals within less than a day cycle. This boosts your economy to insane levels, pretty much surrendering the pace of the game to players. You're either so good it's boring, or you're a newbie and the game kills you cause you built barricades and didn't explore the map from day 0.

Maybe it's the kind of gameplay that Krydon players appreciate, I wouldn't know, wipe out screen from enemies, then under 30 seconds plunder all resources, and then repeat the cycle all the while fortifying your ever invincible fortress. It's an ok gameplay. But for an outsider like me the gap between early, middle and lategame and how quickly it occurred left me feeling somesort of dissonance.

It's as if at some point players were given powerful tools and then in return enemies got buffed, but because pacing is so dependent on player skill it's impossible to balance the game.

And it's not just gathering element being made redundant by mules, exploration also takes a hit from sensor towers. Where once you needed to scout, now you can just scan entire map with a few scan towers in a little under 5 minutes. This surrenders to players even more control and power.

So I imagine if one wanted to normalize the pace, one could do something like:

- Remove mule (or limit it to 1), instead add upgrades for survivor to increase gathering rate (some other upgrades like attack/defense could be neat too). Perhaps a tech research/unlock for a building that slowly mines nearby fields (to process minerals inside base while you explore). Can even be a drone/ability that is released from survivor. (This idea is probably unviable due to current balancing of the game as I imagine it takes into account that at some point players start to gain income in massive chunks).

- Remove scan tower, if pinpointing tech location is an issue then perhaps make a sensor tower that only shows locations of buildings as red dots on minimap, so that players still need to head into unknown, just now they know in which direction to go.

But then again, this map has been around for quite a while, so I imagine that exploring such changes would be out of place.

Regardless, hope you manage to sort out all the technical issues bringing the map down so that more like-minded new and veteran players can appreciate the experience.

Have a nice day~

Quote from R0binicus >>

So what happens if I get no feedback?

Hey, I've got a project I'd like to share, which greatly streamlines the process of writing layouts for SC2.

Visual Studio Code extension introducing support for SC2Layout language.

More about its feature set: 

Github: https://github.com/Talv/sc2-layouts

VSC marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=talv.sc2layouts

FAQ.

1. Is Visual Studio Code free?

Yes, it's completely free and open source. It should not be mistaken with Microsoft Visual Studio which is entirely different product.

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs

2. How long does initial setup take?

About 5 minutes, maybe less :)

- Install VSCode from https://code.visualstudio.com/

- Install SC2Layout extension from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=talv.sc2layouts

- Save your map files as ".SC2Components".

- Open map folder in editor as new workspace.

- You're set!

Why would they want to do such thing?

Because half the reason a lot of people cannot play HotS in the USA is because of so many people streaming that it is overloading some internet nodes causing them to drop packets. Under current regulations all packets have to be dropped and delayed equally, even if that packet is 1 of several megabytes worth per second used for a 4k HD stream that no one would care is dropped, or is a few kilobytes per second of game command packets that is extremely latency critical and dropping it will cause the player to experience lag due to retransmission. Technically under the new regulations internet companies could offer cheaper low priority bandwidth for streaming companies where latency is unimportant but quantity is while offering game servers more expensive high priority bandwidth where latency is extremely important but quantity is small.

Sounds good and sensible right? Well the problem, and reason why the previous regulation existed to stop this, is human greed. Instead of offering sensible QoS levels at sensible prices targeting different practical applications. They will use QoS to blackmail content providers into having to buy the most expensive "premium" QoS level to even stand a chance of having their packets delivered. Once everyone is subscribing to this premium QoS and the internet starts to behave like it does currently due to too much data and too little infrastructure they will then introduce a new "ultra premium" QoS level that is above "premium" with a larger cost. The black mail cycle will repeat with normal premium customers not being able to reliably deliver content unless they subscribe to the new ultra premium service. During this cycle no one bothers to invest in new infrastructure as you can just charge infinitely more for existing infrastructure by inventing new "extra ultra premium" QoS levels for it to sell.

Mostly when they want to sell you a service and there is a free alternative out there, without net neutrality they can just block all access to it to users using their internet. It also enables them selling limited internet where you can only access certain things, which might not be terrible on individual level (as you chose to pay less) but is a bad thing on a bigger scale.

The average private internet consumer will probably not notice the change at all, even to their internet bill, as there is no real way or point to meter them. It is the content providers who will be paying for the QoS, and that QoS can apply both ways (so they can pay for priority incoming and outgoing traffic). This is why Facebook, Google, etc are all against it since they will be the ones having to pay.

What the average private internet consumer will notice is that the QoS of the sites they visit and services they use will change, for better or worse. In the case of games, if the game company subscribes to a higher end QoS connection then their players might have a better play experience as connections that lagged before start to work with low ping. On the other hand if the game company goes with the cheapest QoS they can find the opposite can happen and where as before players could play with low ping suddenly the game becomes unplayable. This can only be made worse if huge bandwidth intensive content providers such as Netflix or Google use high end QoS to deliver their streaming services as although their streaming performance might improve slightly, it will totally trash peoples ability to play online games unless the companies use the same or better QoS in which case it becomes nothing better than it is now but costing more.

This is why "net neutrality" is important. This is why most sensible countries enforce it.

Introduction

Do you want to create a new unit or structure with a new model, but don't know how to create a wireframe image for it? Never fear, for here is a tutorial on how to do just that!

Those of you who don't want to spend money on Photoshop, you're in luck! This tutorial uses Paint.net instead.

Video Tutorial

Note: This video has no commentary (my voice sucks). It's meant to be watched after reading the written tutorial, so you can understand each step better.

1. Prepare The Model In The Cutscene Editor

First-up, open the editor and go to the model you wish to create a wireframe image for it. Click on “View In Cutscene Editor” to load the model inside the cutscene editor.

Angle

The wireframe should make it clear at first glance what type of unit the player is using. Therefore, you should use either the idle stand animation or attack animation.

For today’s tutorial, we’ll create a new wireframe for the marine unit while he’s standing still (Blizzard uses his attack animation as a wireframe).

Once you’ve got the pose you wish to use for the wireframe, you have to adjust the camera angle as well as the background color.

Using “Front” camera view, then rotate the model by 45° to the right, is a good starting point. Then hold CTRL and the Left Mouse Button to rotate the model.

Lighting

Change the lighting used by the texture set of the map to “Default Lighting”. This way the lighting in the cutscene editor will change as well, as it uses the map texture’s lighting as well.

Once that’s done, select the Default Light entry and change the angle from which the light comes from (Key category).

For a wireframe, a clear contrast and clearly-recognizable shapes are more important than the level of detail. Therefore, make sure that the light will make most of the unit bright, will still having a touch of shadow to make it look more realistic.

Last but not least, change the team color to white for the best possible contrast.

2. Take A Screenshot Of Your Model

Create a screenshot of your unit model inside the cinematic editor and paste it in your image program of choice. You might have to try out different zoom levels until you find something that is the right size.

Btw, you can also create a unit icon image at this point.

Image Sizes

Wireframes are 140 by 140 in size. Unit icons are 76 by 76 in size.

For unit icons, there must be a border of at least 5 pixels, so your screenshotted model shouldn’t be larger than 71 pixels.

Remove and/or recolor a few pixels if necessary to make the image look smooth from up close, and make the background image transparent.

Next, turn the image from color to black and white (also known as grayscale). If the image looks dark in some parts and has some deep black spots, change the gamma levels to make it brighter.

Remember, the wireframe will be colored to green, yellow, red etc., so the brighter the image is, the more clearly-recognizable the colors will be in-game.

Save this image as “Marine – Base”. In case something goes wrong, you can use this image as a backup.

3. Creating Outlines

The last thing to do is to create an outline for the unit. Other programs like Photoshop have their own way of doing this, but I’ve found a good alternative with Paint.net and the “Outline Object” plug-in made by pyrochild.

In Paint.net, go to “Effects → Object → Outline Object”.

For the default outline every wireframe has, set the width to 1 and softness to 254. Also, change the color to white (255, 255, 255).

Now you have a finished wireframe image. Save this one as “wireframe-marine-new”.

4. (Optional) Create Shield Wireframe Images

If your unit or structure uses shields, then you can create outlines for shields as well. Be warned, however, that it requires a bit more effort.

Step 1

First-off, open the “Base” image we created earlier.

For the shields, we’re gonna need a silhouette of your unit. Create a new layer that will become the background. Fill it with a color and put it under the layer of your unit wireframe image.

Merge the layers, use the magic wand tool and invert selection. Now fill the wireframe image with another color, preferably something other than black.

Make the background color transparent and save this image as “Marine – Silhouette”.

Now use the outline tool again. Set the width to 3 and the softness to 240. Color is white as always.

Use the magic wand to select the silhouette and delete it. Now save that image as “wireframe-marine-new-shield01”. (I'll refer to these images as "shield01" and the like from now on out).

Repeat this process, but change the width to 6 and 9 respectively.

Step 2

What you have to do next is to edit the "shield02" and "shield03" images so that they overlap well with shield01 as well as each other.

Open “shield01”, add a new layer and fill it with a color. Put the layer below the white outline. Merge the layers, then use the magic wand and select the background.

Be sure to set the threshold to 0%, as we want to select everything from "shield01", including the pixels with very low opacity.

Invert the selection and fill out the outline with another color. Make the background transparent and save this image as “Marine - Shield01 Silhouette”. Close this image now.

Step 3

Next, open “shield02” and import (or copy&paste) the “Marine - Shield01 Silhouette” image from before. Use the magic wand to select the silhouette, then change the layer to shield02, and press delete.

The “shield02” outline should now have its inner part removed, so it doesn’t overlap with the base wireframe image or “shield01”. However, there still are some spots which don’t overlap properly with “shield01”.

Remove the silhouette and add the original “shield01”. You will see the spots which aren't 100% white between "shield01" and "shield02". Those are the spots that need to be filled with white on the “shield02” layer.

Use the pencil tool to add the white pixels. Once that’s done, remove the “shield01” layer as well as the background, and save “shield02” once more.

Repeat step 2 and 3 the for “shield03”.

Step 4

One last thing is to change the opacity of “shield02” and “shield03”. Open these two images, double-click on their layer and change the opacity to 155(60%) for “shield02” and 77(30%) for “shield03".

5. Import Images

All that is left to do is to convert the images (I use Aorta for this), import them into the map or mod, and add the wireframes to your unit.

This is it, now you’ve got a new set of wireframes for your own unit!

Heres all of co-op maps if anyone is curious how something was done.

Link Removed: http://www.mediafire.com/file/gul5a8cakatsnw8/COOP_Maps.rar

Link Removed: https://www.mediafire.com/file/0ks4d9wvodox4gd/Allied Commanders.SC2Map

Link Removed: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2656w73r8llwa68/Dead_of_Night.rar

Link Removed: https://www.mediafire.com/?4nj891g56s3uidc

Link Removed: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2o3bjlnaqkolp7p/Malwarfare.SC2Map

-  Link Removed: http://www.mediafire.com/file/1wdyz1u7kdmv89v/Part_and_Parcel.SC2Map

Introduction

It’s now been 7 years since StarCraft 2 was released. In that time, we’ve had one game, two expansion packs, as well as a DLC that seems to have wrapped up the story (for the time being, anyway). It took even longer—a whopping 12 years—for Blizzard to follow up Brood War with a sequel. In the meantime, they released a spiritual sequel (WarCraft 3) as well what would become their most popular game (World of WarCraft).

Though Wings of Liberty was met with critical acclaim in 2010, there were few who would defend its story (I should know, as I frequented the forums quite a bit in those days, and I rarely saw a positive review). Heart of the Swarm came out in 2013, doing little to remedy the damage, while Legacy of the Void came out in 2015, and is generally seen as having the best story.

I was one of the few who didn’t much mind the story of WOL. I didn’t necessarily disagree with all the arguments that were made against it, but I enjoyed the game, and felt a need to be honest about my feelings. However, with the release of HOTS, I finally succumbed to the band wagon, realizing that the story I wanted wasn’t the one I had gotten. I had expected the dark middle chapter, but got a story that doubled down on WOL’s most ludicrious parts. In fact, I would argue that the damage HOTS did was so large, that it retroactively reduced the quality of WOL in my eyes.

Like others, I share the opinion that LOTV is the best of the bunch. Its story is more engaging than the last two, and it is a sort-of-fitting coda to the trilogy. However, I suspect the reason I say this is because by the time LOTV was released, I had settled with the fact that Blizzard wasn’t going to change their tune. That is not insignificant. LOTV ends with the very “all races team up to fight the ultimate evil” plot point that everyone was fearing, but because we had been given five years to grapple with the fact that there was no way around it, enjoying it for what it was becoming easier.

Despite that, there is no point denying that Blizzard took their shot at the story and missed. This doesn’t even seem a case of majority opinion overwhelming the minority. Hardly anyone seems that willing to defend the story. And as I’ll argue in this essay, they are justified in doing so.

My Theory on Why the Story Failed

There are many arguments on why SC2’s story failed to engage its audience: the story was clichéd and “Hollywoodized”, there was too much emphasis on prophecies, there were too many plot holes, and so on. While I don’t disagree with these arguments, I don’t think they can fully explain why the story failed. To do that, we must dig deeper, explaining how the clichés turned up in the first place, as well as why the plot holes emerged.

There are two explanations that, in my eyes, help explain most of the criticism levied at the story. The first of this is that Blizzard took a deeply cynical story and forced it to become idealistic. The second is that Blizzard simply didn’t put up enough legwork into crafting a complex story, which resulted in not only plot holes, but strange contradictions and retcons as well. More on that after the jump.

From Cynicism to Idealism

The original StarCraft is deeply cynical. In Episode I, we play as a group of rebels lead by a man who turns out to be just as bad (if not worse) than the ones we are trying to overthrow. Victory is bittersweet, because while the heroes technically succeed in their mission (to destroy the Confederacy), nothing really seems to have been won. The system hasn’t changed, Kerrigan is (presumably dead), and Raynor has gone from being a marshal to a branded criminal (as well as a man with little reason to live).

In Episode II, we play as the Zerg, who are basically pure evil, which means they actually achieve their goal (for a time being, anyway): Kerrigan comes back infested, and the Overmind’s invasion of Aiur is successful (as we complete the campaign with its body fully integrated into the surface of the Protoss homeworld). Finally, in episode III, we play as the Protoss, who do defeat the Overmind, but not after a bitter civil war that nearly destroys them all. To pour salt in the wound, the victory turns out to be bittersweet, as the Protoss must flee Aiur from the remaining feral Zerg.

Things become even worse in Brood War, in ways I don’t I need to repeat. It’s a story populated by heroes that are hopelessly outmatched by the villains, time and time again. Even before Kerrigan wins at the end of the game, the UED—another foe—gets to have their victory too. That’s two villain factions winning for one hero faction winning (the Protoss does actually succeed in reclaiming Shakurs in Episode IV, though obviously not without some losses).

The story of StarCraft is deeply cynical, and the story of its sequel is not. Now, it should be mentioned there is nothing inherently superior about cynicism than idealism. The point that I’m trying to make is not that SC2 crashed because of idealism, but rather because it changed the core worldview of the story, and for no good discernable reason. Chris Metzen has claimed he was an angrier man back in the 90s than he is now, which explains why the worldview of the story changed, though not why it had to.

It is possible to create a story that starts out dark and then becomes lighter. It is, after all, the standard recipe for storytelling. First, there must be a conflict, and only after can the heroes succeed. But the change from cynicism to idealism is too abrupt in StarCraft to be believable, having only occurred because the writers wanted it, and not because the characters achieved it. It is telling that the change occurs between the first and second game too. Already from the get-go, SC2 was a different beast than its predecessor.

It didn’t seem so, though. When the story of WOL begins, everything looks incredibly hopeless: Raynor is fighting a seemingly unwinnable fight against Arcturus Mengsk, and only after three missions, Kerrigan arrives once more, threatening to “finish the job”. True, there is a short moment of Raynor gazing longingly at a picture of Kerrigan (a hint of where the story will go), but apart from that, the beginning of WOL’s story doesn’t much contradict where BW left off.

In fact, part of the reason I think I responded so well to WOL (despite its many shortcomings), is that, for the most part, it fits the original game’s cynical worldview. Raynor is an alchoholic who has given up hope, the colonists on Agria are being ignored by the Dominion, and Raynor’s new allies—Tychus and Tosh, specifically—are a traitor criminal and an unstable soldier who only wants defeat Mengsk and have no hope that a positive change is possible (Dr. Hanson is an exception, though her becoming infested is obviously not very idealistic).

It is really only when the larger story starts to creep in that the problems begin to emerge. Yes, I could make some points about how the non-linear storytelling all but killed the pacing of the second act, but that is only a minor complaint. The major issue is still the direction the writers decided to go with Kerrigan. Now, there are two problems here. The first is that Blizzard decided that Raynor loves Kerrigan and wants to save her instead of killing her, which totally negates their last encounter in Brood War (True Colors, to be more specific). The second is that Kerrigan is now destined to be a savior. Now, that could have been a great source of dramatic tension. After all, the trope where the enemy is the key to victory is what Blizzard did in Episode III with the Dark Templar. But Blizzard squanders the potential of this opportunity completely, by essentially whitewashing Kerrigan. Instead of being a necessary evil, Kerrigan is just... forgiven.

There are major problems with this. While I agree that Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades have never been the same person (the change in personality in Episode II is too strong and abrupt for that), there is something deeply troubling with Blizzard not only forgetting how many Kerrigan have killed, but also that one of them (Fenix) was a dear friend to Raynor. In fact, this is something practically everyone who played the campaign managed to notice, while Blizzard didn’t. This point is proven when Raynor finally mentions Fenix in HOTS, no doubt because Blizzard read the criticism of WOL and realized their error only too late.

There is nothing wrong with changing past errors. After all, this sort of flexibility is one of the reasons LOTV is the best part of the trilogy. The problem is that these errors occur because Blizzard essentially forced a change in worldview in the story. By essentially wanting the story to be idealistic, Blizzard has to ignore common logic, meaning Raynor not only goes from wanting to kill Kerrigan to kiss her, but casually forgets the death of his friend in the process. It’s not that Blizzard doesn’t understand Raynor, it’s just that they want him to be someone he’s not.

There are other examples in the story that shows how the changed worldview has dire consequences (the Protoss being more united than ever is one of them), but this is the most significant. The whitewashing of Kerrigan ripples out throughout the rest of the story, with HOTS becoming her redemption arc, and LOTV becoming what we were essentially promised in the first place: the three races uniting together against a common enemy to defeat Amon, with Kerrigan dealing the final blow.

A Decline in Complexity

In this second part of the article, I will argue that SC2 is a less complex game than its predecessor, not necessarily in terms of thematic depth, but rather in the structure of the story. I argue that Blizzard put a lot of thought into small details in the first game, and less so in the sequel, and that this had an impact on the quality of the story.

The Problem With Blizzard’s RTS Story Structure

One of the hardest things about telling a campaign in a Blizzard RTS is their one-race-at-a-time structure. Now, it’s not hard to see why they do it this way. After all, changing perspectives mid-story has a serious impact on the gameplay, as we have to begin to learn a new race just as we started to get the hang of another (essentially creating the longest training arc ever, instead of splitting them into pieces). It’s also more natural for non-interactive stories to have changing perspectives. Games (particularly ones where you control entire races, and not just single characters) require a different kind of immersion, one where the focus is sharper. In other words: doing one race at the time is probably the optimal choice.

However, there is an inherent flaw in this design, which is that, while events in one part of the story is happening, other events are happening in the background. And by constraining the player’s perspective, we either have to be given hints of the background events, or we have to retroactively explain them at a later point. Both of these alternatives are fickle. Giving proper hints without intruding on the focus is difficult, and explaining stuff that has already happened often just ends up being clunky, and with the pacing practically dying in the process as the player is bogged down in exposition.

Despite this, the original SC handles the problems of this structure rather well. In fact, what many people forget, is how many of the story’s key moments happens off-stage. Case-in-point: the psi emitters. In Episode I, we are told these devices have the power to attract Zerg, something Mengsk exploits for his own gain. However, there are hints that this is not quite a precise explanation. In Episode II we learn (though never told out right) that the psi emitters don’t force the Zerg’s movement, but rather attracts them because the Overmind is interested in the psionic power of Terrans. Once they gain control of Kerrigan, the Zerg leave the Terran worlds for Char, as their mission is complete. This is a very subtle point that isn’t really explained, probably because the Overmind has no motive to tell us why we had to go to the Terran worlds after we left them.

A lot of people misunderstand this point, still believing the psi emitters are capable of steering Zerg all right (if they did, it’s a wonder they weren’t used even more). Even Blizzard themselves misunderstand it, as evidenced in the Brood War mission “Reign of Fire”, as well as the “Nova: Covert Ops” campaign. What is important to understand here, is that things are happening in the background of one story that have important ramifications in another. Whereas we in Episode I think the psi emitters are a device to attract Zerg, we learn in Episode II that the truth is more complex.

There is more. After Kerrigan’s infestation, she calls out to Mengsk and Raynor, with the former sending Duke, and the latter going himself. On the surface, this looks to be a superficial detail, seemingly existing only to give Kerrigan some enemies to fight on Char. And while the arrival of Duke really does just serve that point, the arrival of Raynor is more important. After all, if Raynor isn’t called to Char, he doesn’t meet Tassadar, and therefore doesn’t fight alongside them in the final mission on Aiur. In other words: if Kerrigan hadn’t called out to Raynor, the Overmind might not have been defeated, and Raynor might never have become an ally of the Protoss. Significant, indeed.

In the Protoss campaign, we get a retroactive explanation of Episode I: Tassadar was sent to burn the Terran worlds not because of the Terrans themselves, but because of the Zerg. And the reason why he deployed ground troops in the “New Gettysburg” was that he wanted to spare the Terrans. Again, things were happening in the background that become significant later. On one hand, Tassadar's intervention essentially helped Mengsk, as he could now sell himself as a protector against both the Zerg and Protoss. On the other, it ensured Kerrigan's infestation. Lastly, it forced Tassadar to go to Char, as well as splitting with the Conclave.

This same level of subtle complexity can be found in Brood War as well. In Episode IV, we encounter the UED, and while it’s a superficial clash, it does introduce the story’s new villains. But more importantly, we have that Raynor and Fenix stay behind on Aiur, which means that Kerrigan is able to get a hold of them while Zeratul and the rest are busy on Shakurus. She might have done so even if Raynor and Fenix had come to Shakuras, but there are hints that Kerrigan contacting people separately is a key to her victory. All of this remains unexplained until Episode VI, of course, where we learn that Kerrigan reached out to Raynor and Fenix to help her kidnap Mengsk (which happens in V).

This level of complexity doesn’t exist in SC2. Yes, we know what the Zerg are up to in WOL (collecting artifacts), but what about the Protoss? The truth is, apart from a few glimpses of the Daelaam, we don’t really encounter Artanis until LOTV! Yes, Selendis shows up at one point, and Zeratul has a small, but very significant arc, but other than that, there’s really not much hint that a lot of things are happening in the background.

We later learn that the Protoss have been building up their forces to invade Aiur, but that is not that interesting. It's not good storytelling either. After all, this renders one of the game’s main three races passive until the last third of the story, when they should be an active participant from the get-go (firstly because of Kerrigan returning, and secondly because of Amon’s ascension). While I do understand that Zeratul can only be at one time in one place, I find it hard to believe that he chose to contact the Protoss last. He should have made them an active presence much earlier. And don’t give me that “exile” crap as an excuse for why he waited either. Zeratul’s exile was self-imposed after he killed Raszagal, and there’s never been any hints that his reveal of Aiur to the Overmind cost him any allies among the Khalai. So there's little reason for why he should have waited until LOTV to contact Artanis (the real reason is that Zeratul is contacting people according to the race structure of the story).

Overall, the complexity of SC2 is a shadow of the original game, with Blizzard not seeming to have much of a plan for the full story, nor a solution of what to do with the Protoss until they arrived in LOTV. Compare that the original game, where they were only seen for one mission in Episode I and yet were a terrible presence, as they fuckin’ burned entire planets from space.

How the Tal’darim Reveal Blizzard’s Lack of Care for Story

Speaking of the Protoss: let’s discuss the Tal’darim. Originally introduced in the Dark Templar Trilogy, this faction has changed more than probably any other in the story, and not for good. In WOL, they are tribe that blatantly only exists to give Raynor some Protoss to fight against (he is usually their friend, after all). That is not bad in itself (all races should fight each other in all campaigns, in my opinion). The problem is rather that they are introduced as fanatics that worship the Xel’Naga, and essentially guard the artifacts that Raynor needs.

Here’s the thing: Raynor is gathering these artifacts on behalf of Tychus, who is gathering them on behalf on Moebius, which is run by Narud (who is secretly Duran, as well as a partner-in-crime with Arcturus Mengsk), and owned by Valerian Mengsk (who does not work with his father). Phew! Yeah, that never made much sense to me. Now consider this: in HOTS, we learn that the Tal’darim are Narud’s elite force, which begs the consider: why didn’t they just give them to them?

This is, obviously, a gigantic plot hole. Maybe there is some explanation of this somewhere, but I doubt it’s anything but convoluted, which is a good sign that Blizzard really didn’t have control of their own story. Now, I personally don’t mind plot holes that much, as I think stories can survive with them. However, when there are too many of them and they grow too large, there seems to be a larger problem: the storytellers aren’t really involved in the story, nor do they know it well enough (never a good sign).

There are, as many have pointed out before me, other plot holes too. How, for instance, could Mengsk order Tychus to kill Kerrigan after she was deinfested if he didn’t know that she would be deinfested (nor that Raynor was going to Char in the first place)? How could Tychus be the pilot in the Thor while also being a mole for Mengsk? I’m sure there are more, but I wanted to specifically focus on the Tal’darim because they exemplify just how little Blizzard had planned ahead. What’s worse is that, once Blizzard realized the Tal’darim weren’t as well-received as they thought they would be (which is an forgivable sin), they simply changed them, continuity be damned (which is less forgivable).

I will admit I very much like what Blizzard did with the Tal’darim in LOTV, not only fleshing them out, but also explaining them better, as well as giving them a show-stealing character in Alarak. What I do mind is how Blizzard has such a casual approach to the story that they’re unable to plan ahead, and simply don’t care whether anything makes sense or not when they make changes. Changing the Tal’darim isn’t that big a deal in itself, but it’s one symptom out of many, all of which exist because Blizzard didn’t invest enough care into the story. And that is problematic.

Conclusion

The story of SC2 has a lot of problems, but I’ve argued that most of them stems from two core issues: forcing a shift in the story’s worldview from cynicism to idealism, and not putting in the proper legwork into creating a solid story. The first problem explains the game's clichéd dialogue and the romance-based storyline between Kerrigan and Raynor (whenever has a male audience asked for that?), while the latter explains the plot holes and the inconsistencies. Both of them explain the many retcons. The worldview change explains the whitewashing of Kerrigan, as well as the prophecy storyline, while the lack of complexity explain some of the smaller retcons, most significantly the Tal’darim.