Starcraft -

[Watcher]

I noticed we currently lack a Starcraft thread. I don't know how popular Starcraft is with kiwis but I know for sure @Glaive has played it.

Discuss the series here. I just now finally got Starcraft 1 running at a proper framerate. It had been capped at 30 FPS for the longest time til I downloaded a DDraw emulator wrapper.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

I got the game on my laptop when it came out for free a while back and have started to design some maps.
Oh, and got through a few story missions.

 

[Overcast]

Played the game for the first time when it became free and LOVED it.

Campaign was pretty damn amazing all the way through. Plus the competitive scene is fun as hell to watch.

 

[Bob Page]

Man, I remember playing the original back then. I really enjoyed the story and the plotlines of Khalai and Dark Templar feud because the latter didn't like the concept of the khala and the story of the United Earth Directorate which had that starship troopers feel to it.

My favorite character has to be Jim Raynor. I found him to be the more relatable because he's this one optimistic person that tries to do what is right, even turning against Arcturus Mengsk when he became power hungry and left Kerrigan to die.

Btw, If you guys want to play some custom campaigns, try Legacy of the Confederation. It's difficult, but the story is pretty good and the design pushed the engine to the limit.

 

[FreedomMussel]

Does anybody still pay attention to this franchise?

 

[FreedomMussel]

Okay, so this thread doesn't seem to be getting much interest so I'm just gonna drop a bombshell to get us going.

Man, I remember playing the original back then. I really enjoyed the story and the plotlines of Khalai and Dark Templar feud because the latter didn't like the concept of the khala and the story of the United Earth Directorate which had that starship troopers feel to it.

My favorite character has to be Jim Raynor. I found him to be the more relatable because he's this one optimistic person that tries to do what is right, even turning against Arcturus Mengsk when he became power hungry and left Kerrigan to die.

Btw, If you guys want to play some custom campaigns, try Legacy of the Confederation. It's difficult, but the story is pretty good and the design pushed the engine to the limit.

Uh huh. I remember playing the original too. I’m going to say something potentially controversial now: I think the plot was, um, awful?

There’s this plot analysis of SC2 that just tears it apart:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcD6TKn5OgZfJLZj6ATU1ZtJCr5a4qTOD

It doesn’t seem to get any long-form criticism, but I think SC1 was pretty bad too. It has some interesting ideas and the manual while clearly in need of proofreading definitely painted an interesting picture (tho I preferred the contemporary website’s description of the terrans as factious colonies jockeying for power Game of Thrones-style), but the game plot feels like huge waste of the premise. Don't get me wrong, the art direction and general atmosphere is great, and the gameplay is amazing as ever, but the actual writing is just bad.

Probably the single biggest criticism I can levy is that the premise is about the three races fighting each other, but the plot of the campaign doesn’t actually do much with that. In fact, they all team up at the end to fight the real big bad. Every time.

Spoiler: spoilered for big ass wall of text

In the terran campaign you’d expect the two simultaneous alien invasions to take up the main plot, but instead they’re relegated to background plot devices while the main plot concerns some rebels committing planet-scale genocide multiple times using another plot device before the rebel leader takes the villain ball and arbitrarily betrays the hero’s girlfriend because the story needed some drama. The hero then only makes cameos afterward, and ultimately teams up with the genocidal racist prophecy elves that incinerated his home planet. The evil bug aliens that tried to devour the galaxy change midway thru to the mindless slaves of the hero’s girlfriend after she undergoes an evil makeover into a sexy succubus, because that totally makes sense and doesn’t reek of mary sue shenanigans. The racist prophecy elves, who are only really detailed in the manual btw, have a poorly-explained magic empathy field that clashes with their authoritarian social structure: authoritarian systems only arise to suppress dissent, which shouldn’t exist under the empathy field. The game paints the racist prophecy elves as irrationally hateful of the innocent dark elves, but the manual explains that the dark elves caused an apocalypse so the distrust seems entirely justified. They make peace at the end, but only because of yet another magic plot device that was clumsily setup in the preceding campaign rather than because of any philosophical reconciliation. At this point, they've run through every single plot point setup in the manual which could have easily lasted for years in capable hands, so the expansion has to make stuff up including several huge retcons that completely rewrite the lore introduced in the manual. So much for consistency! Earth shows up in the expansion pack only to get shanked by the end and never mentioned again, which is probably because Earth's arrival was a last minute change because the website at the time provides a completely different plot tease. There's this weird secret subplot where a new villain is trying to make bug/elf hybrids to take over the universe. The plot of the expansion bends over backwards to ensure that the hero’s girlfriend takes over the galaxy even though this causes the characters to act in unbelievable and idiotic ways to ensure that nothing delays her. Blah blah blah. I don't expect anybody to read this far, but I hope you got my point. It is extremely obvious that the writer was making things up as he went without regard for thematic consistency.

This isn’t great storytelling. It’s not just because the game came out in 1998, either. Planescape: Torment came out in 1999. Blood Omen came out in 1996. I know the RTS genre isn’t known for its storytelling, but Blizzard RTS is apparently the most story-driven yet it seems extremely overrated to me.

The closest comparison I can think of, though quite far from a good one, for how Blizzard mishandled the writing would be NuShe-Ra. Because, like NuRa, I thought SC's writing had potential and I got pretty bummed that it went in the direction it did.

But as always, YMMV. Feel free to contest, corroborate, whatever.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Oh, yeah. The story for Starcraft was always crap. Late 80s-early 90s sci-fi at its finest, with a dash of western for spice. It was entertaining, for sure, but it was crap.

You know what is the best piece of StarCraft story, IMO? The little demo campaign for StarCraft 1 where you play a nameless Lieutenant being sent to Chau Sara right at the start of the Zerg invasion. It's short, to the point, has StarCraft's trademark light camp played straight, and it's not trying to tell any grand overarching story. And they give the Science Vessel icon the most badass voice it's ever had.

 

[FreedomMussel]

You know what is the best piece of StarCraft story, IMO? The little demo campaign for StarCraft 1 where you play a nameless Lieutenant being sent to Chau Sara right at the start of the Zerg invasion. It's short, to the point, has StarCraft's trademark light camp played straight, and it's not trying to tell any grand overarching story. And they give the Science Vessel icon the most badass voice it's ever had.

Yeah. In my experience, the best stories in SC have always been the self-contained licensed fiction. That doesn't mean they're great writing, but they at least don't sap my IQ points like the main plot does. The Insurrection licensed campaign had really lulzy writing and voice acting. You get the impression that the writer really cared about carefully crafting the plot, but didn't have enough budget and mastery of the editor to fully realize their vision.

 

[Snekposter]

There's a reason people don't talk much about the main SC1 plot but fellate Brood War's. That and Sarah Kerrigan was the original monster mommy waifu.

 

[Mist3]

SC1 was fun playing that 8 player map and seeing all the massive battles that took place in mid.

I can’t get into SC2. I tried multiplayer but between build orders, macroing and idle workers, it’s just too hectic for me.

 

[FreedomMussel]

There's a reason people don't talk much about the main SC1 plot but fellate Brood War's.

Which is?

fellate Brood War's.

I can't imagine why. SC1 isn't well-written, sure, but BW is even worse.

Sarah Kerrigan was the original monster mommy waifu.

I can understand the sex appeal, because that's nothing if not predictable, but nothing else. From a story perspective she's a blatant mary sue who doesn't even make sense in her own universe (not that the SC universe really makes sense to begin with). Why would the zerg, whose whole shtick is eating worlds and spawning innumerable armies of mass produced clones, need to deploy a single space wizard jesus to accomplish anything? What writer would take something like the tyranid/borg expy that the zerg were and then twist them 180 degrees into the slave army of some psychotic chick with boyfriend issues?

She reads like bad 40k self-insert fanfiction.

Spoiler: spoilered for big ass wall of text again

There was so much you could have done with the concept of the zerg. For one thing they would be excellent as villains who were simultaneously completely inhuman and horrifying in their basic behaviors yet disturbingly understandable even vaguely sympathetic in their motives to devour the universe in pursuit of fabled perfection. Instead we got the worst possible execution of the all-consuming space bug swarm tropes ever put to fiction.

That frustrates me because my years of searching there's pretty much no fictional all-consuming bug swarm that captures the same appeal as the non-Kerry zerg. The tyranids from 40k and arachnids from SST EU and so forth are simply faceless forces of nature and have zero in the way of characterization, even though they otherwise share every other trait of the zerg like the evolution fixation and brain/synapse bugs. The gravemind from Halo is simply an undead lunatic with no higher goal than causing pain and suffering. The necromorphs from Dead Space and necrophages from Endless Legend are driven entirely by hunger and reproduction and have no higher goals than that. The pandoravirus from Phoenix Point is a complete enigma. The vang from the Starhammer books have some characterization to distinguish them from the various other devouring swarms but we only ever get introduced to brief incursions that are quickly purged by the heroes and never see them at the height of their power, not to mention they seemingly lack the borg-esque evolution fixation that defined the zerg.

The fanfiction scene (which is the biggest of any RTS besides WarCraft) is a total bust too, since apparently nobody seems interested in actual exploring the zerg as the horrible tyranid/borg expy they started out as but instead all the fanfics I find depict them as either sycophants to Kerry or a self-insert, perpetual pawns of the xel'naga schemes (dear god, I hate the xel'naga), or as peaceful space hippies. And don't get me started on how the terrans and protoss are treated, they have zero characterization beyond endless rehash of the same dozen canon characters. The terrans are nothing more than sychophants to either Raynor or Mengsk, when you could've easily written them as factious colonies jockeying for power like Game of Thrones in space. The protoss are damsels in distress chasing phantoms, dying space elves trying desperately to stay relevant, when you could have easily written them as the Old/High Republic from Star Wars or the Altean Empire from the Voltron mirror universe or whatever. The universe feels like the size of a small town for all the creativity it inspires.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Yeah, StarCraft 1's storyline was nothing to write home about, but Brood War was actually worse. They expanded in some interesting directions but in general I'm pretty sure people are more fond of BW's storyline because they played through it a lot more times, and it was a great Starship Troopers pastiche.

I did read the Dark Templar saga, though. It wasn't the best series I've ever read, but as far as game fiction went it was fairly enjoyable. Of course, I've always been a sucker for stories that show their worlds from a more bottom-up perspective.

She reads like bad 40k self-insert fanfiction.

Makes sense to me, considering where StarCraft came from...

 

[FreedomMussel]

it was a great Starship Troopers pastiche.

I didn't get that impression at all. Then again, I think the SST movies were shit and vastly prefer the Roughnecks cartoon. It's the highest rated entry in the SST EU beside the book. It's formulaic but pretty fun to watch. I only wish SC had been like that.

Yeah, StarCraft 1's storyline was nothing to write home about, but Brood War was actually worse.

I could always ignore that stuff, but the shills make it impossible for me to feel comfortable in the SC fandom. Everybody with taste left years ago, so the people left are the sorts of people who suffer apoplexy if you say you think SC is less than perfection. Again, a lot like nuShe-Ra fans. Worse, even. I've talked to nuRa fans who acknowledge the show's many flaws but say that it "validating" their identities counterbalances.

 

[Corn Flakes]

You telling me this wasn't a SST reference?

Anyway, I would love to play an RPG set in the pre-Zerg invasion Terran Confederacy. SC1's manual, the demo campaign and the first few Terran missions are just dripping with flavor that sadly goes mostly unexplored. The Terran Dominion is a fun saturday morning cartoon villain, but even its villainy comes from the Confederacy. They were the ones brain-stapling convicts to use as Marines, they were the ones running the Ghost program, and they were the ones who had the idea to experiment on the Zerg in the first place. Sad Blizzard can't pull their heads out of their asses and release anything new, because a StarCraft prequel could be lots of fun.

 

[Watcher]

This isn’t great storytelling. It’s not just because the game came out in 1998, either. Planescape: Torment came out in 1999. Blood Omen came out in 1996. I know the RTS genre isn’t known for its storytelling, but Blizzard RTS is apparently the most story-driven yet it seems extremely overrated to me.

The comparison isn't that valid since at this time the RTS genre had no storytelling to speak of. At this time the genre was well known for very disconnected storytelling where other characters made decisions outside of your direct control. Such as in Warcraft 2.

Spoiler

Starcraft was one of the first (if not the first I can't think of any at this time that tried) to try producing a campaign where the story developed in real time in-front of you as opposed to being a passive bystander. In-fact Starcraft's biggest competitor was Total Annihilation and this was all of the story that game had.

It's easy to criticize the game now divorced from this context but at this time they were trying something you only saw in other genres. Half-Life was praised in 1998 for trying to deliver story to a previously story vacant genre. As was Starcraft. It wasn't really until Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun we saw another RTS try something like this.

Probably the single biggest criticism I can levy is that the premise is about the three races fighting each other, but the plot of the campaign doesn’t actually do much with that. In fact, they all team up at the end to fight the real big bad. Every time.

You can say this about Planescape Torment and Blood Omen they both feature a somewhat basic premise and end with a "real big bad" at the end (The Transcendent One, The Hylden Lord/The Unspoken). The plot to Starcraft isn't about "three races fighting each other". That's a very loose summary of events. Rather it's about Jim Raynor standing up to the Terran confederacy for its first act before being betrayed, the Zerg beginning to become a threat and the Protoss having to join forces with the Terrans to stop it. The Protoss aren't actually fought in the Terran campaign until the second to last mission and it's entirely to prevent them from destroying a planet that the Zerg are on, since they did that previously to Mar Sara.

The Zerg for example have a character arc where they go from being not even named in the first few missions to becoming a massive threat toward the end. It's not even revealed what they are until the Zerg campaign when the Overmind provides some worldbuilding.

There's a lot of really interesting worldbuilding throughout Starcraft's campaign which is only really implied. Like how the Terrans are in reality bands of former criminals from Earth exiled into space, the Protoss are effectively rejected prototypes from their ancient precursor race that want to exterminate the Zerg partially out of jealousy and partially because the Zerg want to consume them to achieve a supposed perfection.

The characters in Starcraft also have arcs, like Jim Raynor goes from a local police officer to a war hero, to a failed revolutionary who has to band together with a group of aliens to unite against a common threat. Partially because he has been exiled from his people and has nowhere else to turn to. Sarah Kerrigan goes from a failed science experiment turned soldier into an alien dictator who is empowered to take revenge on Arcturus Mensgk. (Which she eventually acquires in the expansion). Arcturus Mensgk goes from a revolutionary to a dictator who has a somewhat noticeable amount of nuance since the Confederacy didn't have to deal with fighting aliens they mostly fought humans prior to the events of the game. So his rise to power is also on the backdrop of creating a "Terran Dominion" to united humanity against a common threat. Which is a realistic way dictators create power for themselves. That sort of thing.

I'm not sure why any of this constitutes bad storytelling a great portion of video games back then (and even in Blizzard's catalogue) didn't have storytelling beyond "there's a big race of alien/cyborg/mutant bad guys you have to kill, go deal with it."

 

[Snekposter]

You can say this about Planescape Torment and Blood Omen they both feature a somewhat basic premise and end with a "real big bad" at the end (The Transcendent One, The Hylden Lord/The Unspoken). The plot to Starcraft isn't about "three races fighting each other". That's a very loose summary of events. Rather it's about Jim Raynor standing up to the Terran confederacy for its first act before being betrayed, the Zerg beginning to become a threat and the Protoss having to join forces with the Terrans to stop it. The Protoss aren't actually fought in the Terran campaign until the second to last mission and it's entirely to prevent them from destroying a planet that the Zerg are on, since they did that previously to Mar Sara.

The Zerg for example have a character arc where they go from being not even named in the first few missions to becoming a massive threat toward the end. It's not even revealed what they are until the Zerg campaign when the Overmind provides some worldbuilding.

There's a lot of really interesting worldbuilding throughout Starcraft's campaign which is only really implied. Like how the Terrans are in reality bands of former criminals from Earth exiled into space, the Protoss are effectively rejected prototypes from their ancient precursor race that want to exterminate the Zerg partially out of jealousy and partially because the Zerg want to consume them to achieve a supposed perfection.

The characters in Starcraft also have arcs, like Jim Raynor goes from a local police officer to a war hero, to a failed revolutionary who has to band together with a group of aliens to unite against a common threat. Partially because he has been exiled from his people and has nowhere else to turn to. Sarah Kerrigan goes from a failed science experiment turned soldier into an alien dictator who is empowered to take revenge on Arcturus Mensgk. (Which she eventually acquires in the expansion). Arcturus Mensgk goes from a revolutionary to a dictator who has a somewhat noticeable amount of nuance since the Confederacy didn't have to deal with fighting aliens they mostly fought humans prior to the events of the game. So his rise to power is also on the backdrop of creating a "Terran Dominion" to united humanity against a common threat. Which is a realistic way dictators create power for themselves. That sort of thing.

I'm not sure why any of this constitutes bad storytelling a great portion of video games back then (and even in Blizzard's catalogue) didn't have storytelling beyond "there's a big race of alien/cyborg/mutant bad guys you have to kill, go deal with it."

Pretty much this as to why people really like SC1's story. It actually had one, and the worldbuilding behind it was both plausible and internally consistent. We also had actual characters in our RTS campaigns with Raynor, Fenix, Kerrigan, and the others like Tassadar getting actual time on-screen so to speak. It wasn't just a set-piece for massive battles but instead it was an actual living world we were battling across.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Pretty much this as to why people really like SC1's story. It actually had one, and the worldbuilding behind it was both plausible and internally consistent. We also had actual characters in our RTS campaigns with Raynor, Fenix, Kerrigan, and the others like Tassadar getting actual time on-screen so to speak. It wasn't just a set-piece for massive battles but instead it was an actual living world we were battling across.

That's true, but it doesn't make SC1's story good.

I rather enjoyed it (again, I love the grimy, heavy look of the setting), it's my kind of silly shit, but I recognize the writing is... well... SyFi Original Production-tier in places. It actually got worse in SC2. With the higher budget and better graphics they decided they'd actually try telling an epic story... without having any real writers on board. It was like trying to follow the story in World of Warcraft all over again.

 

[Snekposter]

I don't know how anyone can call the SC2 story good. Wings of Liberty is mediocre at best averaging terrible, and as far as I've heard (not played the other two) quality only goes down from there.

That's true, but it doesn't make SC1's story good.

By the standards of video games it certainly is. While overall it may only be average, how many video games that aren't RPG's have truly good storytelling, especially RTS games? Homeworld is just as cliched in terms of story, selling itself entirely on atmosphere through music and voice acting. Story-wise its BSG warmed-over mixed with the plucky underdog tale. Hell, even as far as (Western) RPG's go their story quality has absolutely plummeted with disasters like FO4, BioWare, Assassin's Creed, etc.

 

[Corn Flakes]

By the standards of video games it certainly is. While overall it may only be average, how many video games that aren't RPG's have truly good storytelling, especially RTS games? Homeworld is just as cliched in terms of story, selling itself entirely on atmosphere through music and voice acting. Story-wise its BSG warmed-over mixed with the plucky underdog tale. Hell, even as far as (Western) RPG's go their story quality has absolutely plummeted with disasters like FO4, BioWare, Assassin's Creed, etc.

I think this is all part of the issue. StarCraft was a big innovation in actually putting more narrative into a genre that really didn't have it before. So it's remembered fondly because by contrast with anything that existed at the time it was amazing. But much like Half-Life 1 is considered a classic that's revolutionized how you tell stories in shooters... when you look back at it 20 years later, with a more objective view... it's really nothing special.

Of course, since the genre is pretty much dead these days, it's hard to compare to current offerings. I wonder if any of the people claiming Starcraft's story (1 or 2) is "grrrrreat!" have ever played World in Conflict...

God damn it, Bannon... Why'd you have to do that...

 

[Snekposter]

God damn it, Bannon... Why'd you have to do that...

As someone who's also played that game: you know why. He was gonna do right.

Now that that's done with, let us laugh at an arrogant Frenchie getting put in his place by a French-speaking American.