An unconsolidated thought · 2:16pm Feb 10th, 2016
The next chapter of Washed Up will be available tonight or - failing that - tommorow.
On to idle words:
A thought that I've had bouncing around for a time was to compare the stories of Starcraft 1 and 2. Ever since I first glanced a sunken colony over our korean exhcnage student's shoulder, I was enamoured with the korpulu sector.
Hell, I wrote a bunch of pony words about it (Not that I am continuing that in the foreseeable future). including a probably-better-than-my-loathing-gives-it-credit-for-but-still-not-very-good 100k incomplete zerg infestation of Everfree that none of you has or will see. Actually, the Rainbow Dash/Fluttershy flying wagon with Twilight frantically turning aside hydra/muta shots on a daring Zecora drop-ship-rescue bid was pretty good...
Point is - I like stories, and the science-art of story-telling. I'm not good at them myself. I'm not bad. I try, and do alright. Anyway, I've found myself, in seperate occasions, in seperate venues, arguing that the story of 2 (Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void) is substantially weaker than that of 1 (Starcraft, Starcraft: Brood War).
What I wanted to do, then, was to be able to argue why this was so. Was it just rose-tinted glasses and an 'everything new is bad' mentality? Some suggested to me that it was.
Not in this instance.
So, being in a writey mood and having meant to jot this down for a while now, here's my case as to what the difference is, why it matters, and what it means to many, many more stories than just that of this shot-to-stardom game of a now-senescent genre
There's no relenting with the spoilers from here on in, folks. Also, going entirely on my own memory, kind of just to see how much I've retained over the years.
First - let's establish some key fundamentals universal to both storylines. There are plucky, gritty, swaggering-shit-kicker humans (terrans). It started out as a Confederacy and became a Dominion, and they were both bad but then the D got good. These guys mostly are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, on a cosmic scale. There's also the UED (more on them later) the Kel-Morian Combine and the something-something Protectorate, but they're bit players.
There are space bugs of zerg-rush fame. They're Overmind was a literal total boss of the likes we shan't see again.
Just check out it's very first appearance -
Their goal is to nomnom the third race, using humans as a an appertif/stepping stone don't-fill-up-on-the-bread to do so.
The third race are Proud Warrior Race Guys who have hyper-advanced technology and still decide, when orbital sterilization is an option, to run headlong against any and all entrenched positions with admittedly badass meelee weapons. The resultant casualties are fitted into life-support machines with legs and cannons so they can do it again. They share in the Khala - a telepathic/empathy link with one another, and are powerful psychics. There's also the Dark Templar, who we'll be hearing more about presently.
There's also godly figures, aka Xel'Naga (
)
SO, that establshed, let's throw some events down. EDIT: I was originally thinking to go through the entire story, but that'd be a bit much, I think, to write as me and to read as you, so I will keep myself to a limited, sizeable sample size.
SC1 -
(Prehistoric) - The Xel'naga create two opposing races, then vanish from the universe, leaving behind curioso and artifacts aplenty.
(Prehistoric) - The zerg get it in their heads that Protoss casserole is a great idea. Sadly, they A) - don't know where the toss live and B) don't have the means to overpower them, yet.
(Recent History) - The humans of earth decide to do what Great Britain did to Australia and send a great many of their drunk and disorderlies out to the far reaches of space. They pick what they thought was a nice, quiet galactic neighberhood.
(Recent History) - The Terrans (humans of Korpulu sector) eventually organize and form the Confederacy (American Civil War connotations intentional).
(Pre gameplay) - The dastardly wily Confeds first encounter the zerg, and, not recognizing the threat, decide these little babbies would make excellent bio-weapons. Genetic testing begins in secret.
(The exact same event again) - The dastardlier, wilier zerg first encounter the Terrans, gleefully taking the oppurtunity to gain some interesting genetics and that surprisingly useful human genome. (Plot point: The zerg need/use the latent human pyschic (psionic) potential to evolve a resistance to the protoss. (Trivia: The crackling upgrade, canonically, is from the human adrenal gland iirc)
(Pre gameplay) - The protoss, now aware of the zerg, decide for the smart alien option and start glassing planets where infestations are detected. Pop goes Chau Sara.
(Gameplay!) - The zerg shrug off their confederate hosts and start the buffet. Our Boy Jimmy (the hero) chooses to go against the ignore&deny policy of his bosses and help out the innocent tasty space folk. (Trivia: the very first instance of the name "zerg" in gameplay is when you rescue those SCV's from that bunker in that silly map with the long left corridor and oddly distant vespene. I once checked 
)
(At the same time!) - Tassadar (Protoss? More like BROtoss) decides that crispy-izing innocent humans isn't cool, and chooses to forgo the effective if mercicless overkill policy as set by his bosses.
("This is Jimmy") Very quickly losing ground and getting no help from the Confeds, Jim Jim the Rayn manmakes a choice and calls in the terrorist group Sons of Korhal to evac the populace. This really cool guy called Arcturus Mensk shows up to save the day.Jimmy gets fired. Also branded a terrorist. He decides to take on with them.
Everyone agrees that the Confederacy has got to go. In a number of surgical strikes, we meet Sarah Kerrigan, psychic 'ghost' operative in Mensk's employ. Herself and Jimmy play together nicely (she calls him a pig, but sort of wryly, too). The team learn of a special weapon developed by the confeds - the psi emitter - and steal it. It's the ultimate moth-to-a-flame lure, except the moths are screaming voracious space monsters.
(Critical Plot Mission!) Taking the war to the heart of the Confederacy - Tarsonis - Mensk plans to overpower the might of the confederacy with their own zerg-luring weapon. Planting it deep in the capital, Kerrigan is deployed the safeguard the device and the fledging hive cluster from the Protoss strike force (who are still, under Tassadar, attempting to avoid human-genocide via orbital laser).
Like that one time those dudes created Mewtwo... she succeeded. ( I recommend clicking the video! The first half is original SC1 gameplay, the second is the cinematic as made some years later for SC2)
Screams of the betrayed and the dying. Congratulations! You are Victorious!
Jimmy, sufficed to say, breaks from the Sons of Korhal with little to show for it but hurt, betrayal and finding himself where he started - under the boot of a tyrannical regime... one he helped lay the foundations for.
And Mensk, his plans a total success, moves the new government, the Dominion, of which he is self-crowned Empreror, to Korhal.
The Protoss retreat to regroup, and the zerg, now rampant, squirrel away their prize.
~*Close Campaign one (terran) SC1*~
A pleasing abridged summary of important events :
...okay, I'm going to change the pace again, and just get to the point. Nominally, I was going to ramble on for oodles of time, and eventually, gradually, that was going to boil down to a concise point that answers my very original statement - that there's a tangible, cogent reason why the 1 is better than the 2 with regards to storytelling.
But I don't feel like summarizing the 2. (Also I got stuff I sort of should do in the next while).
Sufficed to say - the word's 'prophecy' and 'destiny' get thrown around a lot.
...let's just get to the point, actually.
Starcraft 1 is a darker, grittier story. That's not always better in story telling, but in this instance, it certainly is. Everytime you could have saved the world, you were playing the bad guy. Sometimes (as seen above) 'Victory!' is watching your forces be annihlated. Sometimes 'Victory!' is fleeing for your life, watching your rearguard do whatever they can just to buy some time before they fall. When you do control hero units - they are powerful fighters, but they can - and will - die if you don't carefully watch over them.
Despite that, it's never a nihilistic pity-party. Those who fight for hope and betterment - Jimmy, Tassadar, Zeratul, Artanis - have a chance. They lick their wounds. They get battered - sometimes critically - but that spark of chance and hope is never fully extinguished in them. It's a long, long struggle to Earn their happy ending, one with no clear end in sight.
The story is (and this is the crux of my argument) driven by character choices. Jimmy chose to get help despite orders. Tassadar chose to spare human lives rather than sterilize entire worlds.
And these choices - being good and noble themselves - invariably enabled Mensk to make the choice to commit genocide via zerg and abandon Kerrigan to said swarm.
And so: Good choices sometimes have evil consequence. Evil choices can pay off. As said before - when you could have saved the world, you were playing the bad guy. And there's a dark thrill in doing just that, so part of you doesn't want at all to save anything or anyone.
The point is - the drivng force of the story is choice - with its flaws, far-reaching and unpredictable consequences included, and the reward of choice? Another choice. It's a story with examples across the board of heroism, villiany, wisdom, idiocy, faith and betrayal.
We are, after all, made by our choices.
...
so where does that leave, SC2? Well, it uses a lot of 'Destiny' and 'Prophecy', and those, I argue, are the antithesis of a choice driven narrative. In SC1 - Zeratul choose to lead his people to Aiur's aid - knowing full-well the hatred and bigtory of the Conclave, and it was Tassadar who choose to break from dogma, open his eyes and seek the Dark Templar out. That's what makes it horrifying and tragic when he must strike down his beloved matriarch, Raszagal. Infested and made Kerrigan's puppet, the choice is out of his hands.
In SC2, Zeratul is, in every of his missions, seeking out pieces of prophecy. He directs Jim to save Kerrigan. Why? Because Prophecy dictates. Prophecy both summarizes the events that have happened (cheapening the weight of every choice made and every struggle therein) and says, "this is what's going to be, so poo on you and your piddling choices.."
A quick list of the dead characters from SC1, in no particular order, as I recall:
General Duke
Aldaris
Fenix
Stukov
Tassadar
Razsagal
Overmind
various Cerebrates
Gerard Dugalle
A quick list of the dead characters from SC2, as I recall:
what's-her-name-honey-trap doctor (optional, non-canon)
Gabriel Tosh (optional, canon)
Arcturus Mensk
Tychus Findly
Zeratul
Narud
Amon (I think?)
In SC 1, you play across the moral spectrum.
In SC 2, there's never a time where you're not the Plot-assigned, plucky under-dog hero, despite always being against the odds, you always win, relatively unscathed.
A brief list of ressurrections SC2 decided to mar SC1 with -
Stukov was ressurrected a la zerg.
Fenix was ressurreccted a la purifier program (sort of, eventually he decides he's trans-Talandar ((sorry, that's mean)))
Tassadar was never actually dead, because he was Xel'Naga all along. BLIZZARD I SPECIFICALLY SAID ONE THING, I SAID ONE THING NOT TO SCREW UP WITH TASSADAR AND 
... you had one job... 
AS SUCH - In SC1, death had weight and resonance. Anyone could. A lot of them did. In SC2, death is a chance to step into the wardrobe for a quick change. A few characters are given perma-death, but these are either the assigned ranting villians (the sort that constantly insult your ability, spouting how beating them is impossible while refusing to acknowledge the steady and progressive gains you are making against them. They keep exactly one per campaign - (WoL Kerrigan, HotS Mensk, LotV Amon.) Tosh and Findly are a little better, but - not being sparkly good-guys, are destined (there's that word again) for the axe.
I know it's a long rambling post that's really more for me than for ye, but even so -
Legacy of the Void had some of the best SC2 storytelling moments (relatively speaking). It also had the worst (which is saying a lot)
The good -
-The death of Zeratul, who has been for years a power-house of SC second only to Kerrigan for popularity. (He choose to give his life to free Artanis. Artanis, for his part, had no conscious choice in the struggle, being under Amon's control.)
-The breaking of the Khala. The rejection of the Khala was what schism'd Protoss society originaly, into the majority who favour unity of thought and purpose and the minority who value individual iniative and expression (dark templar). The fact that they had to give this up (cutting their nerve-cords, like DT's do) was a bold move for a storyline which defaults to fixing problems by throwing ancient relics at it. It wasn't exactly a choice, the alternative being eternal mind-slavery to the emo dark god, but it nonetheless has a lasting, irrevocable
impact on the development of lore. The end of the Khala progresses the story.
The bad...and downright ugly.
- Tassadar was a Xel'Naga all along (I simply refuse to retcon this onto SC1 memories). As such, he never actually died when sacrificed himself (in a fantastic literal example of true harmony; combining the Khala and Dark Templar energies within himself to strike a death blow to the Overmind). Being a silly Xelly also steals all the weight from his choice to break rank and seek out Zeratul to begin with (because as a Xelly he'd just know these things anyway, 'cause destiny)
-Kerrigan becomes a god. Or something. I don't know. What else do you call it when you turn 80 feet tall, naked, glow with a celestia light and step in and out of reality? I mostly dgaf at that late point, but confess to being a little more wounded than I enjoy admitting.
They do a nice little book-ends thing though with the final credits, I suppose. I'm resigined to it's alrgithness.
IF YOU'RE SKIPPING AHEAD, YOU'VE ARRIVED:
ABSOLUTE FINAL SUMMARY -
My argument:
Narrative is given strength and impact when characters act by choice, and are forced to confront the squirming barrell of snakes that is consequence for their choices. When good actions and good characters don't always win, and evil actions and evil characters often do, it adds real struggle, both to the immediate challenge and to the very soul of the characters we at heart are most supposed to root for, while also being shamelessly enamoured with the evil majesty of villians going from strength to strength.
When Prophecy and Destiny become leading elements of a story, narrative is weakened because the characters can no longer make meaningful choices, and the consequences of the choices they make are no longer their's to own. Both the actions - and the reactions, whatever they may be - belong to destiny. People become props.
This same destiny allows us, the audience, to move through only what I think of as the 'allowed' characters - the archtypical heroes, and we see the result of this in SC2 with a lighter, less consistent, at times even silly tone. To accomplish this, otherwise evil characters are shunted awkwardly into heroic roles (Kerrigan). Missteps on these characters parts are simply dismissed to maintain their proper, 'destined' image.
Examples:
-The time Raynor killed a bunch of Daalaem protoss because their idealogies clashed (purify the infected vs fighting to cure them) It wasn't that either was in the purely evil role here, but rather that the incident is never mentioned again, and they're as much bro's as ever. (canon half of the choice mission)
-The time Raynor teamed up with Mensk (his ghost operative, Kerrigan 2.0 Nova) to teamkill Jimmy's own ally, Gabriel Tosh, because, well, because he's spooky and black and spectres are psychotic (unlike ghosts, who are regular community volunteers and marines, who foster three legged one-eyed kittens every other weekend) (canon half of the choice mission; I always choose the opposite, because I AIN'TN'T NO TEAMKILLER)
-95% of everything Kerrigan's done, after she's brought back into the fold. Also, whatever happened to that ship with the brood solely directed to destroy protoss cast adrift? Are they just chillin? Did Blizzard just forget about them?
All this, I argue, is why SC1 storytelling is superior.
holy shit
Maybe that was confirmed elsewhere, but my interpretation of that bit at the end of SC2 was that it was just the 'Tassadar' sending the visions that was a Xel'Naga, not the actual Tassadar who died way back when.
Yeah, Star Craft 2 was not very impressive as far as writing goes.
You've reminded me how much I miss the Overmind. He was a cool boss.
3745183 um, yay?
3745375 That does make some sense, but it does raise the question as to why it'd bother pretending a to be Tassadar at all in the first place. Contact, anyone? Same question as to why Samir Duran - only dude to successfully punk OG Kerrigan and not die went white and nerdy, and swapped his name around vampire-style as if none of us would notice.
Also, I vaguely recall Xelly there saying something to the effect of "it was I who originally went seeking for the DT's to set this all in motion", thus being a bona fide retcon but I could totally be wrong. Funnily, despite being my most recent experience, the late-game LotV and LotV epilogue are kind of vague in memory.
Remember that time we had the ultimate threat of a material-universe host body for Amon - that also looked suspiciously like a Marauder - but then blew it up before it ever actually did anything?
3745465 I'm not sure if it's a general trend in modern media to give the short-straw to plot and character, or if we get better and higher standards for this sort of thing, or if there's a combination of the two going on. In any case, that ending did get - and I lack any better word here - went very anime in nature. Not that I hate anime, but bigod it has some glaring and chronic flaws
3745530
I don't know, didn't Blizzard undergo a number of changes between Starcraft 1 and 2 (and between Diablo 2 and 3) that reduced their writing abilities? Like merging with Activision and throwing increased focus into keeping World of Warcraft going?
I don't think the decrease was part of an overall cultural trend.
3745910 They did indeed - it's now 'Activision Blizzard' - but I'm not sure why that'd cut down they're writing capabilities. I mean, it takes essentially the same amount of stuff to build a game around a bad story as a good one, so shouldn't one might as well choose the good story option? It seems more like it doesn't matter to them, rather than it being beyond their abilities to conjure.
I think there is, to an extent, an industry idea at the moment that we see made exemplar (as opposed to dark exemplar
)in James Cameron's Avatar: Lot's of flash, billion-dollar tech-work, mediocre story, almost like it were an afterthought. Maybe there's a reason for that. I don't know.
3745947
That's not entirely true. It's often faster to bang out a bad story, but more importantly Activision has been known for not putting as much effort into their writing as Blizzard before the merger, so seeing Blizzard put less into theirs after is not so surprising.
Style over substance is not a new industry idea. There have been people trying to do things that way since we had movies (and games). We've got games with good writing still coming out, too. It's always easier to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses because you forget all the old mediocre stuff but the new mediocre stuff is fresh in your memory.
3745530
Sorry, it's just... a lot of stuff you wrote. @_@ I'm intimidated.