It's played like it's general "Freedom". I guess I'll blame the writer for not communicating it in a more understandable way.
This is also not the first game to have this story. Final Fantasy 10 has pretty much the exact same story as Lotv. FF10 pulled it off aside from the ending going off the rails a bit. But here's the problem Starcraft is not Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is a long ass game that can take it's time to take on big ideas and develop them properly. A starcraft campaign is too small to try to reform an entire race without leaving the audience to try to fill in all the plot holes themselves. There just isn't enough time to try to bite off such a giant preachy message. It also just feels weird in the Starcraft series, I mean, the entire Starcraft 2 story just reminds me of the Starwars Prequels which is not good. But Lotv's feels even more out of place, it's like it's trying to rewrite the entire Starcraft story.
Ironically I would say the story is really a metaphor for itself. The Xel'naga created the original Starcraft 1 story and it was awesome, then Blizzard (Aka Amon) came in and wanted to destroy that story completely. In the end the message is really trying to tell us to accept this new Starcraft 2 story and that changing the story is a good thing. But the problem is that it's just a piss poor story that I've seen before done in better ways.
You forgot the power of the Khala. All the protoss who were just freed from Amons rage would be terrified of going back to that. So when they felt (via the Khala) the feelings Selendis has when she made the decision to actually cut her cords, it would pushed them to follow. As those who were with her and you see in the cinematic cut their cords, the feeling of the certainty of such a decision would roll through the Khala and convince the rest to follow through.
Also, change was NOT easy, they had to collectively go insane first, and such a traumatic experience can provide the force for change. You will notice that no one immediately cut their cords, they all hesitated, and only once Selendis cut hers, did anyone else follow through.
But there is also the idea that some Protoss might in fact want to side with Amon even to their own doom. I don't get the impression that Protoss are a race that fears death. Plenty of religious people are willing to do crazy things for their god even murder and die, even if they saw that Amon was evil they might follow their lord to their own destruction.
It's to bad Amon ain't that smart, he could have just tricked them into doing his bidding like he had done all along, but I guess he got bored and decided to go with a totally new aggressive approach.
"Fuck You! Ima do what I want cause I'm free and I like my fancy hair I ain't cuttin' dat off."
That would have ruined Artanis' whole plan, I mean what would he have done? Would he have forcibly cut off his hair? Would he kill him? Neither of those options sound like freedom. Luckily Artanis conveniently wasn't put in that position cause everyone is so ready to obey him without question, kinda like how people obey a dictator. So the entire message I'm getting from this is not really about freedom but about how your leader always has your best interest in mind but your god is an asshole, it;s ok to be free from god but make sure to to what your president tells you if you want to live.
Everyone is just like, "Ah fuck our heritage, change is easy!" I just can't help but feel that Blizzard tried to hamfist a giant story with a big preachy messages into a small little campaign and it didn't work cause it doesn't feel realistic. I can't believe that an entire race would change so easy, and everyone is so agreeable they don't ask questions they act like servents when Artanis says cut off an appendage they obey without hesitation. Ironically this story is about freedom but in the end obeying your leader without question is what saves the day.
It's a good thing everything worked out so conveniently for Artanis... It's almost like some god (aka the Writer) had his fate all planned out neatly for him.
I'm not entirely sure what you guys are planning to do as far as music but I did find a site that has tones of music licensed under the Creative Commons, might be worth checking out.
Not sure is serious or trolling... But here's a video that might help you understand what makes or breaks a story, it's about how the Star Wars prequels messed up in every way and I find that it generally explains not what to do when telling a story.
OK I think I understand a little of why HOTS story failed in some ways upon further analysis...
One thing I noticed on a second play through was that the story itself is not so terrible but the problem is that it suffers greatly because Blizzard is trying to tell too much story within too short of game. They are trying to communicate to much information to the audience at once because the game is to short to allow for the audience to experience the scope of the story. This result in characters having to use overly obvious dialog and basically tell us what is happening because there just isn't enough time to develop a love story and the quest for revenge and a mission to save the universe and a secret plot to reawaken a dead god. I mean Blizzard just tried to cram way to much story into a very small game, and they didn't really develop just one theme and stick with it, instead they tried to develop everything and it resulted in nothing being developed great, but rather everything felt forced because it was forced because the story didn't have time to move at it's own pace.
My best alternate example of a story that suffered because someone tried to tell it in to short of time was Akira the Movie vs the Comic. Now you might like the movie but if you read the comic you would realize that the comic was over 2000 pages ( http://www.mangareader.net/101-2004-1/akira/chapter-1.html ) and the movie attempted to tell me the entire story in 2 hours. The result was that a million plot holes manifested themselves in the movie even though it was based on a very well written story, the reason is because you just can't tell a giant story in a little bit of space, there will be plot holes because there isn't the time necessary to fill them in.
The only difference was that the movie Akira got away with all it's plot holes because it was very original and people were just in shock because they had never seen that type of movie before. Starcraft HOTS doesn't get away with anything because it's very non-original and we tend to compare non-original stories to better examples of the same story.
A good counter example would be Lord of the Rings, people complain about the length but at the same time the length allowed the story to be told at it's own pace and there is so much story to tell that the entire length of the movie was used in order to make sure to fill in all the little plot holes.
Now as far a video games go, the best video games are the ones that usually can't be made into movies, why? because the stories are kept very simple and focus more on the internal development and feeling of a character as opposed to a soap Opera. I actually feel that after playing HOTS it would have made a better movie than video game for the reason that it would have allowed the story to develop at a slower pace and all the soapy drama could have been developed instead of forced.
So in conclusion I now feel after a second play through that HOTS was a good story that is told badly because of being forced and rushed.
But after reading your post I feel like you really hit the nail on the head, still I feel that one of the primary reasons the story suffered was because Blizzard cropped out a lot of character development for the sake of keeping the story to under 30 missions. It's true though they made poor choices with the dialog and characters that they did have. But honestly I just feel like I saw moments where Blizzard was just being lazy, Kerrigan coming back looking exactly the same is a good example. The story really suffered because I feel like Blizzard wanted to take the easy way out and sacrificed story for the sake of time and budget.
Umm... What in-between scenes? There is absolutely no reason Kerrigan would go out of her way to get Jim's gun. It was magically given to Jim by Blizz in order to create a memorable scene.
While you might personally like her character, this doesn't mean that she was written well. As regards to good vs evil heroes, ever since the suggestion of a prophesy Blizzard has been trying to set Kerrigan up as a sort of space Jesus, this is a very common story telling device but is also very overused. It also just feels too forced but I think this is result of what I explained in my other post about the story just being smashed into to small of space and rushed. But what is strange about the entire way Kerrigan is written is that Blizzard is trying very hard to excuse Kerrigan from the evil things she's done, even in little things like when she talks to Abither about human experimentation and how she won't be doing that anymore, this was only mentioned for the purpose of proving to the audience that Kerrigan has changed.
Now the problem with this is that Blizzard is trying to tell me something about the character rather than have me actually see a change in the character by their actions. For every evil thing Kerrigan does Blizzard just assumes they can provide me with a quick line of dialog to cover Kerrigan's butt in proving that she is still noble, another example when Kerrigan shows concern over how the Protoss died after brutally murdering her. The reality is that Blizzard is trying too hard to make me like Kerrigan and feel like she's a good guy just misunderstood.
On the other hand they tried very hard to make you hate Mengsk to the point where it becomes obvious. There was no depth of redeeming quality about Mengsk that would have made his character more interesting because, and I will give Blizz the benefit of the doubt, there just wasn't enough time to tell the story. It also makes me assume that Blizzard believes their audience is stupid and will not recognize the good guys vs the bad guys unless they make sure to include dialog that makes you hate or love certain characters. So essentially I will say once again that the problem is most likely that there wasn't enough time to tell the story at it's own pace and Kerrigan didn't have time to evolve as a character but rather was suddenly shoehorned into a role that was premature.
The reality is that Kerrigan's past gives her every reason in the world to hate humanity and hate humans. After killing her mother by making "Her head come apart" then making her father suffer extreme brain damage, Kerrigan was handed over to a lab and tortured. Also while in the lab they made several implants into her brain in order to control her. The overmind actually removes those implants and this brings up an interesting question... Was Kerrigan just under Mengsk's control before and upon the removal of those implants she was finally able to unleash all of the suppressed hate and anger onto the world?
In this story Kerrigan is written inconsistently, sometimes she is evil, sometimes she is noble, kinda depends on her mood I guess. But it's also the result of writing for convenience because it's much easier to write your characters into whatever role you need them to play at the moment rather than write them consistently. Jim Raynor is also written inconsistent, first her swears to kill Kerrigan after she kills his friend, then he kills his own friend to protect Kerrigan, then he brings up the entire Fenix thing again and throws a little fit.
It's just the result of sloppy writing and more than that probably a result of the original Starcraft story being written by someone else with an entirely different vision for how they wanted to see the story unfold. But more than that it is because Blizzard figured that Kerrigan is their most iconic character and therefore must become the hero because that is what will sell. They are right is this respect but the problem is that they didn't have to make her noble in order to make her a hero, the reason we liked Kerrigan before was because she was an evil, badass, bitch, with a temper like a fire cracker! Kerrigan loses this very important quality for really no apparent reason besides that Blizzard wants to make her the hero and they feel like only good people can be heroes.
OK I think I understand a little of why HOTS story failed in some ways upon further analysis...
One thing I noticed on a second play through was that the story itself is not so terrible but the problem is that it suffers greatly because Blizzard is trying to tell too much story within too short of game. They are trying to communicate to much information to the audience at once because the game is to short to allow for the audience to experience the scope of the story. This result in characters having to use overly obvious dialog and basically tell us what is happening because there just isn't enough time to develop a love story and the quest for revenge and a mission to save the universe and a secret plot to reawaken a dead god. I mean Blizzard just tried to cram way to much story into a very small game, and they didn't really develop just one theme and stick with it, instead they tried to develop everything and it resulted in nothing being developed great, but rather everything felt forced because it was forced because the story didn't have time to move at it's own pace.
My best alternate example of a story that suffered because someone tried to tell it in to short of time was Akira the Movie vs the Comic. Now you might like the movie but if you read the comic you would realize that the comic was over 2000 pages ( http://www.mangareader.net/101-2004-1/akira/chapter-1.html ) and the movie attempted to tell me the entire story in 2 hours. The result was that a million plot holes manifested themselves in the movie even though it was based on a very well written story, the reason is because you just can't tell a giant story in a little bit of space, there will be plot holes because there isn't the time necessary to fill them in.
The only difference was that the movie Akira got away with all it's plot holes because it was very original and people were just in shock because they had never seen that type of movie before. Starcraft HOTS doesn't get away with anything because it's very non-original and we tend to compare non-original stories to better examples of the same story.
A good counter example would be Lord of the Rings, people complain about the length but at the same time the length allowed the story to be told at it's own pace and there is so much story to tell that the entire length of the movie was used in order to make sure to fill in all the little plot holes.
Now as far a video games go, the best video games are the ones that usually can't be made into movies, why? because the stories are kept very simple and focus more on the internal development and feeling of a character as opposed to a soap Opera. I actually feel that after playing HOTS it would have made a better movie than video game for the reason that it would have allowed the story to develop at a slower pace and all the soapy drama could have been developed instead of forced.
So in conclusion I now feel after a second play through that HOTS was a good story that is told badly because of being forced and rushed.
@LitePollution9: Go No, don't hate to say that, Super Metroid rules.
Super Metroid does indeed rule, I'm just saying that I hate to say that HOTS should have had at least some suspense being that you are on an alien world where everything wants to kill you.
0
I wanted to stop in and let everyone know that the map has been open sourced and is no available for modding and forking at:
https://github.com/ElectricPrism/Risk_Action_Edition_II
Bugs, and development coordination can go on over there.
0
@OutsiderXE: Go
It's played like it's general "Freedom". I guess I'll blame the writer for not communicating it in a more understandable way.
This is also not the first game to have this story. Final Fantasy 10 has pretty much the exact same story as Lotv. FF10 pulled it off aside from the ending going off the rails a bit. But here's the problem Starcraft is not Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is a long ass game that can take it's time to take on big ideas and develop them properly. A starcraft campaign is too small to try to reform an entire race without leaving the audience to try to fill in all the plot holes themselves. There just isn't enough time to try to bite off such a giant preachy message. It also just feels weird in the Starcraft series, I mean, the entire Starcraft 2 story just reminds me of the Starwars Prequels which is not good. But Lotv's feels even more out of place, it's like it's trying to rewrite the entire Starcraft story.
Ironically I would say the story is really a metaphor for itself. The Xel'naga created the original Starcraft 1 story and it was awesome, then Blizzard (Aka Amon) came in and wanted to destroy that story completely. In the end the message is really trying to tell us to accept this new Starcraft 2 story and that changing the story is a good thing. But the problem is that it's just a piss poor story that I've seen before done in better ways.
0
But there is also the idea that some Protoss might in fact want to side with Amon even to their own doom. I don't get the impression that Protoss are a race that fears death. Plenty of religious people are willing to do crazy things for their god even murder and die, even if they saw that Amon was evil they might follow their lord to their own destruction.
It's to bad Amon ain't that smart, he could have just tricked them into doing his bidding like he had done all along, but I guess he got bored and decided to go with a totally new aggressive approach.
0
So at the end of LOTV
Imagine if one protoss was like...
"Fuck You! Ima do what I want cause I'm free and I like my fancy hair I ain't cuttin' dat off."
That would have ruined Artanis' whole plan, I mean what would he have done? Would he have forcibly cut off his hair? Would he kill him? Neither of those options sound like freedom. Luckily Artanis conveniently wasn't put in that position cause everyone is so ready to obey him without question, kinda like how people obey a dictator. So the entire message I'm getting from this is not really about freedom but about how your leader always has your best interest in mind but your god is an asshole, it;s ok to be free from god but make sure to to what your president tells you if you want to live.
Everyone is just like, "Ah fuck our heritage, change is easy!" I just can't help but feel that Blizzard tried to hamfist a giant story with a big preachy messages into a small little campaign and it didn't work cause it doesn't feel realistic. I can't believe that an entire race would change so easy, and everyone is so agreeable they don't ask questions they act like servents when Artanis says cut off an appendage they obey without hesitation. Ironically this story is about freedom but in the end obeying your leader without question is what saves the day.
It's a good thing everything worked out so conveniently for Artanis... It's almost like some god (aka the Writer) had his fate all planned out neatly for him.
0
I'm not entirely sure what you guys are planning to do as far as music but I did find a site that has tones of music licensed under the Creative Commons, might be worth checking out.
//opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&field_art_type_tid" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">http://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&field_art_type_tid[0]=12&&field_art_tags_tid_op=and&field_art_tags_tid=&name=&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC&items_per_page=24&collection=&page=2">http://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&field_art_type_tid[0]=12&&field_art_tags_tid_op=and&field_art_tags_tid=&name=&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC&items_per_page=24&collection=&page=2
0
@Photoloss: Go
My good sir... I don't know if the internet is the right place for you...
0
@Photoloss: Go
Not sure is serious or trolling... But here's a video that might help you understand what makes or breaks a story, it's about how the Star Wars prequels messed up in every way and I find that it generally explains not what to do when telling a story.
0
I will post my post from the other thread here...
But after reading your post I feel like you really hit the nail on the head, still I feel that one of the primary reasons the story suffered was because Blizzard cropped out a lot of character development for the sake of keeping the story to under 30 missions. It's true though they made poor choices with the dialog and characters that they did have. But honestly I just feel like I saw moments where Blizzard was just being lazy, Kerrigan coming back looking exactly the same is a good example. The story really suffered because I feel like Blizzard wanted to take the easy way out and sacrificed story for the sake of time and budget.
0
@Taintedwisp: Go
Umm... What in-between scenes? There is absolutely no reason Kerrigan would go out of her way to get Jim's gun. It was magically given to Jim by Blizz in order to create a memorable scene.
0
@Taintedwisp: Go
I'm just starting to wonder where Jim had to hide that gun in order to get it into that prison cell...
0
@EternalWraith: Go
While you might personally like her character, this doesn't mean that she was written well. As regards to good vs evil heroes, ever since the suggestion of a prophesy Blizzard has been trying to set Kerrigan up as a sort of space Jesus, this is a very common story telling device but is also very overused. It also just feels too forced but I think this is result of what I explained in my other post about the story just being smashed into to small of space and rushed. But what is strange about the entire way Kerrigan is written is that Blizzard is trying very hard to excuse Kerrigan from the evil things she's done, even in little things like when she talks to Abither about human experimentation and how she won't be doing that anymore, this was only mentioned for the purpose of proving to the audience that Kerrigan has changed.
Now the problem with this is that Blizzard is trying to tell me something about the character rather than have me actually see a change in the character by their actions. For every evil thing Kerrigan does Blizzard just assumes they can provide me with a quick line of dialog to cover Kerrigan's butt in proving that she is still noble, another example when Kerrigan shows concern over how the Protoss died after brutally murdering her. The reality is that Blizzard is trying too hard to make me like Kerrigan and feel like she's a good guy just misunderstood.
On the other hand they tried very hard to make you hate Mengsk to the point where it becomes obvious. There was no depth of redeeming quality about Mengsk that would have made his character more interesting because, and I will give Blizz the benefit of the doubt, there just wasn't enough time to tell the story. It also makes me assume that Blizzard believes their audience is stupid and will not recognize the good guys vs the bad guys unless they make sure to include dialog that makes you hate or love certain characters. So essentially I will say once again that the problem is most likely that there wasn't enough time to tell the story at it's own pace and Kerrigan didn't have time to evolve as a character but rather was suddenly shoehorned into a role that was premature.
0
@Chiquihuite: Go
The reality is that Kerrigan's past gives her every reason in the world to hate humanity and hate humans. After killing her mother by making "Her head come apart" then making her father suffer extreme brain damage, Kerrigan was handed over to a lab and tortured. Also while in the lab they made several implants into her brain in order to control her. The overmind actually removes those implants and this brings up an interesting question... Was Kerrigan just under Mengsk's control before and upon the removal of those implants she was finally able to unleash all of the suppressed hate and anger onto the world?
In this story Kerrigan is written inconsistently, sometimes she is evil, sometimes she is noble, kinda depends on her mood I guess. But it's also the result of writing for convenience because it's much easier to write your characters into whatever role you need them to play at the moment rather than write them consistently. Jim Raynor is also written inconsistent, first her swears to kill Kerrigan after she kills his friend, then he kills his own friend to protect Kerrigan, then he brings up the entire Fenix thing again and throws a little fit.
It's just the result of sloppy writing and more than that probably a result of the original Starcraft story being written by someone else with an entirely different vision for how they wanted to see the story unfold. But more than that it is because Blizzard figured that Kerrigan is their most iconic character and therefore must become the hero because that is what will sell. They are right is this respect but the problem is that they didn't have to make her noble in order to make her a hero, the reason we liked Kerrigan before was because she was an evil, badass, bitch, with a temper like a fire cracker! Kerrigan loses this very important quality for really no apparent reason besides that Blizzard wants to make her the hero and they feel like only good people can be heroes.
0
I always listen to DnB and I always go to this Youtube Chanel to get it...
https://www.youtube.com/user/liquicity
0
OK I think I understand a little of why HOTS story failed in some ways upon further analysis...
One thing I noticed on a second play through was that the story itself is not so terrible but the problem is that it suffers greatly because Blizzard is trying to tell too much story within too short of game. They are trying to communicate to much information to the audience at once because the game is to short to allow for the audience to experience the scope of the story. This result in characters having to use overly obvious dialog and basically tell us what is happening because there just isn't enough time to develop a love story and the quest for revenge and a mission to save the universe and a secret plot to reawaken a dead god. I mean Blizzard just tried to cram way to much story into a very small game, and they didn't really develop just one theme and stick with it, instead they tried to develop everything and it resulted in nothing being developed great, but rather everything felt forced because it was forced because the story didn't have time to move at it's own pace.
My best alternate example of a story that suffered because someone tried to tell it in to short of time was Akira the Movie vs the Comic. Now you might like the movie but if you read the comic you would realize that the comic was over 2000 pages ( http://www.mangareader.net/101-2004-1/akira/chapter-1.html ) and the movie attempted to tell me the entire story in 2 hours. The result was that a million plot holes manifested themselves in the movie even though it was based on a very well written story, the reason is because you just can't tell a giant story in a little bit of space, there will be plot holes because there isn't the time necessary to fill them in.
The only difference was that the movie Akira got away with all it's plot holes because it was very original and people were just in shock because they had never seen that type of movie before. Starcraft HOTS doesn't get away with anything because it's very non-original and we tend to compare non-original stories to better examples of the same story.
A good counter example would be Lord of the Rings, people complain about the length but at the same time the length allowed the story to be told at it's own pace and there is so much story to tell that the entire length of the movie was used in order to make sure to fill in all the little plot holes.
Now as far a video games go, the best video games are the ones that usually can't be made into movies, why? because the stories are kept very simple and focus more on the internal development and feeling of a character as opposed to a soap Opera. I actually feel that after playing HOTS it would have made a better movie than video game for the reason that it would have allowed the story to develop at a slower pace and all the soapy drama could have been developed instead of forced.
So in conclusion I now feel after a second play through that HOTS was a good story that is told badly because of being forced and rushed.
0
Super Metroid does indeed rule, I'm just saying that I hate to say that HOTS should have had at least some suspense being that you are on an alien world where everything wants to kill you.