Wait, really? That's stupid.Just beat it, overall was a fun game, but I am really disappointing that they didn't even try to spring for an ending cinematic. This was the culmination of three games, and the only cinematic it had that didn't use the in-game engine was the opening one. Seriously Blizzard, that is fucking bonkers considering you have great pre-rendered cinematics closing out the other two campaigns.
Errr...I don't know what version you've played, but I'm only on the second planet and I've seen 3 videos not in-engineJust beat it, overall was a fun game, but I am really disappointing that they didn't even try to spring for an ending cinematic. This was the culmination of three games, and the only cinematic it had that didn't use the in-game engine was the opening one. Seriously Blizzard, that is fucking bonkers considering you have great pre-rendered cinematics closing out the other two campaigns.
Going back, you are right in that regard. I guess I was so caught up with the story I didn't even realize a whole lot of the "story scenes" were pre-rendered, like the start of the Auir invasion, Artanis and Zeratul on Auir, and what happened to Shakuras, etc. I think part of the reason I didn't notice is because the gap between the game models and the pre-rendered models is a bit less noticeable when it comes to the Protoss, (Kerrigan is like night and day, but Artanis looks almost exactly the same in-game and cinematic form) and the styling was trying very hard to feel like they fit in the game compared to what happens in the opening cinematic, which was going more for grand scale. They feel a little "cheaper", if that makes sense, compared to pre-rendered cinematics opening and closing the other two expansions, which makes sense since there is a lot more of them in this instance.Errr...I don't know what version you've played, but I'm only on the second planet and I've seen 3 videos not in-engine
Well, yes, I'm not there yet, but if that's all we get, I'm a bit underwhelmed, too.So yes, I stand corrected, though I still do wish we had a bigger ending cinematic. The quick headshot leading into final epilogue and ending with a "And then they..." slideshow was a bit underwhelming.
Well the funny thing is the "ending" isn't really the Protoss ending. The Protoss have their own ending at the end of their campaign, and then you go into the epilogue missions for the real ending, which forces all the races together for the final stand, making you play each of them one after the other. You start with Protoss, then Terran, and finally end the whole thing with the Zerg.Well, yes, I'm not there yet, but if that's all we get, I'm a bit underwhelmed, too.
Of course, I've never been a Protoss fan anyway, I disliked having to end with them in SC, in BW, and now again....
Wait... that was Q... oh man, i knew he sounded vaguely familiar...Man, I never realized John de Lancie could sound so menacing. The way he inflects while Alarak walks around just gives the character such gravity. I guess I am just so used to him as Q.
Well, you can always argue thatArtanis is a Templar. They are in the middle of a war, so Templar-skills ARE pretty relevant. But I thought it was great - accurate - how casually Artanis assumes that eliminating the Caste system will mean HIS people remain culturally supreme.
StarCraft Ending. (Spoilers)
I think Legacy of the Void was a draft or two away from being a great story - there's a lot of latent stuff there, which I can't tell whether the authors intended. I'm not even sure if it should be more *explicit* (I like the subtlety), just examined a little more.
I ended writing a crazy long review of the plot.
...
LoV is the story of the Protoss being forced to give up everything that made up their identify. They are forced at gun-point to give up the psychic connection they share, allowing them to feel each others thoughts and emotions. They are forced to abandon their culture's caste system. There is a growing realization that, as they become more of a melting pot, a lot of their traditions will fade and change.
This all plays out more or less the way I'd expect it to. The characters start making post-hoc rationalizations as to how this is all a good thing that they're totally fine with. (Some of these rationalizations are true, others less so)
I don't think this should have been more *explicit* (I liked how subtle it was) but I wish it felt there was a little more sense of the internal conflict driving the Sour Grapes.
FREEDOM!!!
Their relationship with Freedom™ is also interesting. They give up the hyper-strict traditions/literal-mind-sharing that gave them their strong unity... and the result is that there is LESS civil war, more openmindedness, MORE cultures brought into the fold, which allows them to build an even stronger, galaxy-spanning melting-pot utopia.
This feels vaguely analogous to the rise of the United States. I wish it included hints of how that melting-pot-utopia hasn't always gone the way we liked.
The Caste System / Cultural Supremacy
If you've read Plato's Republic, you probably noticed that the Protoss are modeled after it. Their society has three castes - the Templar (warriors), Khalai (craftsman), and Judicator (philosopher kings).
There's a character, Karax, a crafstman, working to build new tools to help his leaders. There's a really great scene where Shit Hits the Fan, and his leader Artanis suddenly puts him in command of a battalion and given a crucially important military task, and told by his leader "I believe in you. You got this."
The expression on Karax's face is great there - Protoss basically don't even have faces, but he manages to convey how much fear he has of this. "I can't do this. I'm going to fail and my friend/mentor/leader is going to be so disappointed in me and my people are going to be destroyed." But after giving himself a moment to feel scared and sorry for himself, he gets to work.
He does a great job. He returns to the base and receives an impromptu ceremony recognizing him as a Templar Warrior.
Then Artanis (the leader) says something gloriously Trying-To-Be-Progressive-But-CHRIST. "The age of the Caste system is over. Now, we are all Templar."
Artanis is a Templar. They are in the middle of a war, so Templar-skills ARE pretty relevant. But I thought it was great - accurate - how casually Artanis assumes that eliminating the Caste system will mean HIS people remain culturally supreme.
In particular, at the end of the game, the age of the Templar seems mostly-over. They aren't at war. They're building a peaceful society now. It's Karax's skills, not Artanis', which are going to define the future.
If this had been briefly addressed in the final Protoss cinematic - if Karax had narrated instead of Artanis, or if we had gotten a relationship-culminating scene where Artanis tries to do something but sort of stumbles and it's Karax who helps him, that would have made this genuinely poignant.
The Writers?
As is, I can't tell if any of this was intentional, or if the writers honestly believe the speeches they wrote for Artanis.
Jim/Kerrigan
After the Protoss Campaign is an epilogue. All the races work together to defeat a Negative Utilitarian God. Kerrigan ascends to Godhood herself.
I'm surprised they totally skipped over the implications there (rather, the implications are all there, but StarCraft is usually NOT subtle about this sort of thing). This whole time, we've been told that a race with Purity of Form (and psionic power), and a race with a Purity of Essence (capable of great change in the face of adversity) will combine to become the perfect creation. The Protoss and Zerg were created to be those races.
Except, apparently, it's an essential part of the cycle that the races NOT be created artificially, which the Zerg and Protoss were.
It's Kerrigan who is the perfect creation. And I *think* it's implied that both her psionic potential and her adaptability are purely human traits - that have nothing to do with her become Part-Zerg - that's a choice she made for herself as PART of her human adaptability.
I liked that.
I loved the scene of her ascension - of her final moments saying goodbye to Jim.
I SUPER loved the final scene, after everything is over - Negative Utilitarian God is defeated, the Protoss and Terrans are off building flourishing societies, Kerrigan has disappeared off to wherever Alien Gods go after they ascend.
...and Jim, rugged cowboy adventurer who helped save the universe, is sitting by himself in a bar, drinking. All his friends have moved on and found new ways to be useful. Jim is now irrelevant.
I love how long they lingered on this scene - I felt a strong sense that they could have ended there. The last scene from StarCraft, ever, *could* have been a happy
Galaxy with one man sitting alone by himself, because rugged-loner-cowboys don't actually have much to do when the war's over and it's pretty sad.
But after lingering on that scene long enough to showcase it COULD end there, they give us the happy ending Jim deserves. And maybe the universe doesn't really give people what they deserve... but... know what? I'm cool with that. Jim and Kerrigan have been through hell and back for each other multiple times, and at the end of the day StarCraft is an escapist power fantasy, not a depressing Oscar Bait movie, and that's fine.
"Hell, it's about time", was a perfect line to end on, and I cried.
Well, you can always argue thatthey're a warrior culture after all (remember that before the Zerg came they had no one to fight really), so it makes sense that equality = everyone is a warrior (the Dark Templar didn't call themselves that for nothing).
You can argue that and it's a reasonable interpretation, but it always seemed to me that the history books (and, the manual for the game, which is rooted in warfare) were written by Templar who had their own biases about this.
To be fair, I don't think the French Revolution or the communists or pretty much anyone else ever said "we'll all be equal! We'll all be poor peasants!". "We'll all live like kings/royalty/nobility/free men" is slightly more rousing.
Interesting point.About Kerrigan
I don't think any of that can really totally count as a "retcon" though. It was hinted at a lot in the novels that Kerrigan and Raynor had a "thing" going on between them before she was taken by the Zerg, it was just never presented very heavily in the game campaign since it was a pretty basic form of storytelling. You have to realize when Jim said he would find her and kill her (which was actually referenced in SC2 between the two characters) it was just after Fenix was killed, and likely said under anger and duress. He had a lot of time to cool off since then once Kerrigan went dark.
Anyone remember that one mission when she becomes the Queen of Blades? She corners and defeats Jim, and Jim makes mention that he was having dreams about her. She confirms that she was telepathically sending messages to him (and Mengsk) before she emerged from the chrysalis as a complete Zerg. She then had every chance to kill him at that point, but instead claims he isn't a threat and lets him go free. The subtext there is that she still had some sort of positive feeling towards Jim, since it would have been easy to just kill him and move on with her new life, but she didn't. He had to mean something to her for him to be let go like that (and technically she did the same thing in Brood War)
Going back to SC2, it was revealed very early on in WoL that her will was being influenced by Amon. Similar to how he took over the Protoss through the Khala, feeding them negative rage and emotions, turning them into sadistic and brutal killers, so too was he doing through Kerrigan and the hive mind. All of her hate and "evilness" was being fed to her by Amon's own will, and that was what turned her into the Queen of Blades we all saw in Brood War. The act of being purged from the Zerg restored her to her original pre-zerg personality, and later she reclaimed her power as a "free-willed" Primal Zerg.
Thus it's more an evolution of the story rather then a retcon.
I realize that's the direction they took the story. I just think it's dumb.About Kerrigan
I don't think any of that can really totally count as a "retcon" though. It was hinted at a lot in the novels that Kerrigan and Raynor had a "thing" going on between them before she was taken by the Zerg, it was just never presented very heavily in the game campaign since it was a pretty basic form of storytelling. You have to realize when Jim said he would find her and kill her (which was actually referenced in SC2 between the two characters) it was just after Fenix was killed, and likely said under anger and duress. He had a lot of time to cool off since then once Kerrigan went dark.
Anyone remember that one mission when she becomes the Queen of Blades? She corners and defeats Jim, and Jim makes mention that he was having dreams about her. She confirms that she was telepathically sending messages to him (and Mengsk) before she emerged from the chrysalis as a complete Zerg. She then had every chance to kill him at that point, but instead claims he isn't a threat and lets him go free. The subtext there is that she still had some sort of positive feeling towards Jim, since it would have been easy to just kill him and move on with her new life, but she didn't. He had to mean something to her for him to be let go like that (and technically she did the same thing in Brood War)
Going back to SC2, it was revealed very early on in WoL that her will was being influenced by Amon. Similar to how he took over the Protoss through the Khala, feeding them negative rage and emotions, turning them into sadistic and brutal killers, so too was he doing through Kerrigan and the hive mind. All of her hate and "evilness" was being fed to her by Amon's own will, and that was what turned her into the Queen of Blades we all saw in Brood War. The act of being purged from the Zerg restored her to her original pre-zerg personality, and later she reclaimed her power as a "free-willed" Primal Zerg.
Thus it's more an evolution of the story rather then a retcon. The Queen of Blades in Brood War still exists as she was, but new information has revealed that all her motivations were not necessarily her own.
I think the problem is that Kerrigan became the face of the franchise. No one really cares about Jim, he's just a backwoods cowboy. The protoss that people might have all cared about from the original games are all dead. Zeratul is left, but he's really best as a side character. And no one is going to give a shit about Artanis. So you get what they did, and... yeah.Thumbs up times a million. I couldn't stop laughing at how silly the end of that games was.
Did....did anyone ever give a rat's ass about any of the Protoss? I mean, as individuals, besides Zeratul? jim was too generic a Space Cowboy/Marine, certainly in WoL. I liked Stukov, but....well....Yeah ,the half-alien-half-redhead became the face. Not surprising, really.I think the problem is that Kerrigan became the face of the franchise. No one really cares about Jim, he's just a backwoods cowboy. The protoss that people might have all cared about from the original games are all dead. Zeratul is left, but he's really best as a side character. And no one is going to give a shit about Artanis. So you get what they did, and... yeah.
Tassadar and Fenix were pretty popular.Did....did anyone ever give a rat's ass about any of the Protoss? I mean, as individuals, besides Zeratul? jim was too generic a Space Cowboy/Marine, certainly in WoL. I liked Stukov, but....well....Yeah ,the half-alien-half-redhead became the face. Not surprising, really.
Tassadar and Fenix were pretty popular.
You can argue that and it's a reasonable interpretation, but it always seemed to me that the history books (and, the manual for the game, which is rooted in warfare) were written by Templar who had their own biases about this.
No, the problem was that they assumed her becoming the face of the franchise meant she had to be a good guy, when she because the face while being the Queen Bitch of the Universe.I think the problem is that Kerrigan became the face of the franchise.
Considering humans were a vector for the zerg to propagate and such, not to mention the fact that it's REALLY F-IN' HARD to get rid of a zerg infestation, that was probably the right call. I still view it as less a tactical decision than a cost/benefit analysis gone mad though.I'd argue that the Judicators where hardly less warlike... they did order Tassadar to simply wipe out infested planets with no regards for non-zerg organisms (aka humans) that lived there.[DOUBLEPOST=1452960071,1452959853][/DOUBLEPOST]
Zerg seem to propagate just fine using just minerals and gas.Considering humans were a vector for the zerg to propagate and such, not to mention the fact that it's REALLY F-IN' HARD to get rid of a zerg infestation, that was probably the right call.