[iM tgun]

Originally Posted by ToRTazerenix

For some actual story discussion:

Jesus ******* Christ blizzard.

Did anyone else feel pretty cheated by the seriously anticlimactic death of Narud? It's obvious he is Duran who played a pivotal role in broodwar and was incredibly mysterious, and we went from not know who Narud was to getting a hint he is Duran to killing him in 3 missions. No build up over the whole campaign, no hints dropped throughout the campaign; An entire storyline destroyed in 3 missions. How boring..

Also the Jim/Kerrigan relationship is so abusive. Jim needs to kill that bitch and be done with it christ..

There was a hint or two that Narud was Duran in the WoL campaign also.

On the topic of the campaign, it was lacluster and way, way too easy.. :|

Quick Comments

ToRGreenArchon:

Narud=duran backwards.... easy hint hehehe

[FSDarkNemesis]

I ran through my entire run on Normal.
Finally done with the campaign. Hopefully Multiplayer Ladder is a lot noob friendly.

At Least towards the end of the campaign, Kerrigan was beginning to act more like a good guy.

[x5_Namakaye]

I went cray cray when i found out stukov was alive, I thought he'd died in SC1 lol

[FSDarkNemesis]

Yea, but after that he was infested then cured before getting infested again.

I actually was pleasantly surprised that Alexei came back kicking ass and finally, HE IS PLAYABLE!!!!

[Daboo]

About the overall ending of the game..

+ Show +

I just wanted to know if the leaked one was true..apparently it is. Wow..wonder what happened to the guy who leaked it

[iM tgun]

Stukov being alive is awesome and stupid as hell.

Awesome in that he's Stukov, damnit.

Stupid as hell in that he was killed, revived, infected, cured.
Seriously.. :|

Quick Comments

	mGGPrometheus:	Maybe they altered some parts of the canon and removed him getting cured
	JoFritzMD:	love me some retcon

[syfSoundwave]

I thought it was pretty easy. Story was completely meh. I enjoyed the WoL campaign quite a bit more.

Stukov made me do a double take, as I thought his weird obscure infestation storyline was non-canon.

I wish Raynor had been the one to finish Mengsk. Now he'll never get to use the one bullet in his pistol.

[BaKaiNu]

Okay... who in the right mind thought that belial boss fight in Diablo 3 was fun, and brought it to SC2!

Overall, I was really disappointed with the whole Duran/Narud storyline, pretty shit in my opinion, so anti-climatic. I was hoping for something far more epic that goes through till LotV. Sigh...

Typical storyline otherwise...

Also, is it just me, or does HotS feels like it's lacking cool CGI cutscenes. It's abundant at the start, but almost nothing in the middle. :/

Quick Comments

Malice:

Ugh. Belial was impossible for my demon hunter on inferno >.<

[mGGPrometheus]

I thought the story was alright, I personally preferred it to Wings of Liberty. In Wings you were just going on random quests/finding random artifacts most of the time, and then the invasion of char is the only substantial thing that happens. I felt like the HotS story-line had a lot more momentum and there were a lot more important plot points. The cinematics were also really nice.

Great to see stukov back, I guess I was a little bummed out that nothing was mentioned of the connection between Duran and Narud but I think we can all assume they were the same person anyway. HotS seemed mainly about Kerrigan's quest for vengeance so we'll just have to wait for LotV to see where this goes.

I didn't like the evolution missions, they were a waste of time, and my biggest gripe with the campaign.

By the way Wild Mutation is probably the most broken spell in the game. I was able to steamroll through most of the game with just 235 hp superstimmed reaper zerglings + muta support.

Also I spotted Lord Diablo in the mission where you infest the protoss ship :P

[eCKo`Tazerenix]

I hope you spend all of LotV fighting Amon and then he ******* crushes everyone and the bad guys win...

[mGGPrometheus]

I swear at times Warcraft music was playing. What do you guys think?

Here's the segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alpHVD-Vrtk&t=2m

[Insom]

Originally Posted by mGGTitan

I didn't like the evolution missions, they were a waste of time, and my biggest gripe with the campaign.

Considering most of the game is "noob friendly" its just an easy way for blizzard to show you the skills/mutations and choose what you want based on that.

[Benji]

Originally Posted by ETL.Soundwave

I thought it was pretty easy. Story was completely meh. I enjoyed the WoL campaign quite a bit more.

Stukov made me do a double take, as I thought his weird obscure infestation storyline was non-canon.

I wish Raynor had been the one to finish Mengsk. Now he'll never get to use the one bullet in his pistol.

He used it on Tycus

[Zanderax]

I think Blizzard missed the point of making a Real Time STRATEGY game. I feel like I am just moving zerg around exactly how the game wants me to. There feels like very little strategy.

Sure I have the choice between different strains (which makes no sense because why not just create two new units and I can create both) but I have to be able to win with both so it's really not much of a choice at all.

I think a risk like gameplay mechanic would do wonders. I worked in Dawn of War.

[Snx.Mufasa]

Originally Posted by BaKaiNu

Okay... who in the right mind thought that belial boss fight in Diablo 3 was fun, and brought it to SC2!

lol'd sooo hard when this happened xD

[ROOT`iaguz]

I could go through this game with a big ****** meat cleaver but it would deserve it's own post so tldr version ahead

GOOD:

Game feels like you're using a swarm, not a group of yokel pirates.
Kerrigan is pleasantly different. Boss fights do feel a bit Dawn of War 2 though, but w/e.
Good amount of options in game. Game very focused around letting you decide which units are fun then making a ton of them.

BAD:

Writing.
Too easy on brutal.
Level design doesn't promote new units like Wings did (or at least attempted to, if we assume stim marines are not a thing)

WORSE:

Evolution missions.

[FSJhedjuka]

MAJOR SPOILERS incoming. If you haven't finished the campaign yet then DON'T read this post!

As far as difficulty goes, I didn't start my Brutal run yet, but when most missions could be CRUSHED on Normal with nexus wars swarmlings, and mutas, then swarmlings and torrasque ultras on a rallied 1-A there's something wrong with the game. At no point did I feel that it would be possible to lose the game. Game-play wise it felt like a combination of Diablo 3 and Warcraft 3. It had a fresh feel to it, though some of Kerrigan's abilities once unlocked are UTTERLY BROKEN and make a normal play of the game laughable. I have already decided which upgrades to pursue for my Brutal run and I imagine it will not feel as difficult as Wings did. After I've played hard and brutal I can comment better.

Evolution missions ... these were a PERFECT chance to test players on usage of the new units. Why not make it a limited resource micro mission with a lot more depth, and BOTH unit types that need to be used in conjunction to complete the level. Overall I was bitterly disappointed at the wasted potential.

With regards to the story, I like some parts, hate others. I like that overall the story has a sense of direction to it, even though it does feel quite stagnant and linear at times. From Raynors Execution, Reuniting the broods, Primal evolution, Rescuing Jim, to Killing Narud, and Invading Korhal the game has a bit of a rigidity in it's transitions ... frankly, it could have done with being longer given several of the "missions" you complete are actually evolution missions that offer little to no challenge at all.

Raynors Execution. This was good storytelling. The referral of Nova to whichever choice you made in the WoL campaign was also nice, though I think it doesn't really alter anything. Kerrigan's decision to embrace the swarm following the news broadcast gave a strong direction to the plot however and made me INSTANTLY want to know what comes next.

Primal arc. This was a cool idea and added a nice tactical element that was completely ignored to the invasion of Augustgrad. Had that mission involved multiple bases it would have made for a better challenge and better management of resources.

The inclusion of Stutkov I REALLY liked given I got to play the Resurrection IV map on Nintendo 64 though I wish they'd given more consideration to his appearance than they did. Just appearing in the leviathan was anti-climactic and rang kind of hollow. He warranted a better back story explanation especially given the fact he will likely have a MAJOR role to play in Void.

Duran/Narud could/should have been the final point of this game ... From the time his character gets introduced, until when you kill him it's 3 missions. This is a tough pill to swallow as his character and legacy has much more of an epic feel to it. Primal or otherwise, Kerrigan should have had a harder time to finish him than "Kill all the shrines". This man is supposed to rival than the old queen of blades in terms of power and cunning, killing him as a prelude to the anticlimactic leaked ending to the game just feels wrong. Given BLizzard were aware that their ending was leaked a long time ago I hoped they would have done something to alter the storyline.

I feel that moving the actual ending of Swarm to the beginning of Void, and making the pursuit of Narud and prevention of the resurrection of Amon the key focus of Swarm would have been better.

Overall I'm ambivalent about the game. It had a lot of nice throwbacks to older game mechanics, but wasn't challenging enough, and in terms of storytelling it both had some epic moments, and some disappointments regarding plot points. To summarize it in terms of movies, this is Matrix 2, but instead of leaving everything open, it tried to close too many plot points, and ultimately suffered for it. Leave Raynor dead and Mensk alive until Void, and make naruD the main focus of Swarm, and I feel it would have had a better feel to it.

Quick Comments

Cyanide:

+1 for spelling "climactic" right. =X

[Cyanide]

Originally Posted by FSJhedjuka

some of Kerrigan's abilities once unlocked are UTTERLY BROKEN and make a normal play of the game laughable.

I guess there is good and bad to this. I remember people complaining that they do not feel powerful at all in a certain RPG game where you need to kill hordes and hordes of demons. So this RPG element had to make you feel like the badass QoB that she is.

I HATED the evolution missions. Waste of time. Abathur felt like a car salesman.

A few of you have already touched on the Narud/Duran plotline, and I won't talk about it much I guess.
Other than the fact that it has always been pretty obvious they are the same person. =X Using the name "Narud" was just an easy (albeit lame) way for Blizzard to tell us "THIS GUY IS SAMIR DURAN!!!"

What are your thoughts on making Kerrigan the anti-hero?

Personally, I think it was justifiable. You can argue that the first QoB was a product of Amon's influence.
Correct me if i'm wrong on this. The overmind created the QoB to try and break away from Amon's grip?
The Xel' Naga artifact cleansed Kerrigan of that influence, and gave back her human qualities.
Anti-hero born.

Abathur disliked Terran/Human strains because to him it was "messy". My take on this was it meant "emotions". Something which Kerrigan has begun to teach to her broodmothers (Za'gara).

Zeratul has a lot of explaining to do to the Protoss in LotV. Lol...

[Seffy]

Originally Posted by Cyanide

Zeratul has a lot of explaining to do to the Protoss in LotV. Lol...

Oh yeah he does..

Has anyone noticed how Abathur the Zerg Scientist sounds like the same guy that says stuff like "Evolution Complete" when an upgrade finishes in SC/SCBW? (Seriously forgot what to call them, Adjutant I guess?)

[Dingobloo]

I was really enjoying the direction the story was taking, and then.. ancient aliens. I hate ancient aliens. Maybe I went through it too fast, but the switch over from a cured Kerrigan reluctant to become the queen of blades again to primal Kerrigan felt far too short, and cured Kerrigan was a much more interesting character, we're now just somewhat back to where we left off, with Kerrigan as leader of the swarm with a little bit more free will, seems like a bit of a cop-out.

Gameplay wise the first half was better than the last half and I'll take evolution missions over anything involving primarily Kerrigan + a small group of units, she's just so strong that my other units felt irrelevant on most missions. Worst part in the game for me was trying to break entrenched positions on certain missions, everything else felt like a cake walk but there were times when multiple timers were running out and I didn't feel like I had the right compositions to break through which them left me with a reverse snowball of not having enough to break the location for the next timer. Swarm hosts in the campaign were also super akward to use but the creep teleportation is amazing.

Overall I liked the story better than Wings because at least Kerrigan feels motivated to some end even if I didn't like where it went with it it's a big improvement over Raynor who just seems to stumble upon the artifact while doing mercenary stuff and it ends up solving all his problems. I thought the missions generally felt more active as well though there were definitely some duds.