Starcraft II had all the makings of an earnest plot, but I can only assume that Metzen et al. dropped the ball on this one. Brood War was by no means a majesty of plot and characterization, but consider the robust cast of characters that it brought to the fore. In contrast, SC2 produces only a few new movers-and-shakers (Valerian, Warfield, and Tychus), and even they are given rather insignificant roles. Lastly, what few plot developments Blizzard managed to produce seem shamefully upbeat and clumsy when compared to the dour atmosphere of previous installments; those who have completed the Protoss mini-campaign or the entire Terran campaign will know to what I refer.

TL;DR – SC2′s plot is dreadful. Blizz should make the campaign more linear, like Brood War’s.

And I guess if I played the game wrong, then several million players also did–the Korean pros, the USA pros, and the dozens of us kids who wanted to be pro or admired the movement (I was decent, but not good enough to ever attempt to be pro).

My very definition of units would be strategy. You micro them in ways to minimize losses and control a point. If that isn’t detached, and if that isn’t STRATEGICAL, then I don’t know what is.

Really, I get it. I played the game differently from you. But that doesn’t mean I played it wrong–just like how the few people who really played it solely for story weren’t wrong, either. People enjoy different things or play for different reasons. Much like how opinion pieces are, well, opinion pieces…meaning my opinion probably won’t match yours.

I have no problem with dissent, but dissent that misses the mark will make me laugh. Saying I played it wrong indeed (and unfortunately) misses the mark. Try next time, if you want to make a point someone will listen to, saying I may have missed how deep it can be when I went straight into the strategy side.

You feel that units are expendable and that you are merely striving for high APM in order to win matches, but you are missing the point of it being a strategy game. The game is challenging, fun, not repetitive, and most of all it’s Starcraft. I’m sorry that you had such a disconnected experience with the RTS genre, but but I think you constructed the problem when you misplayed the game.

I completely agree that the connections with the new characters were forced. Character development was superficial and uninteresting. Mission-by-mission selection stymied the flow and coherence of a single storyline. Achievements, albeit fun for a completionist, really detractet attention from the plot.

By the end of the campaign, I have to say, that I did not feel I experienced a story that was as deep as in Brood War. My biggest gripe is the lack of meaningful dialogue. No one spoke much about anything. There were random times in the game where arguments would ensue but felt awkwardly implemented as if the writers/directors said, “ok, we need some form of argument here” and it was thus inserted.

I believe the game would have been a lot better if it was all centred around the very last 4-5 missions of the campaign, and they fleshed that part out. =(

Now we have leveling up in our FPS games thanks to Infinity Ward. Instead of an arena you can test their tools against other people, essentially gaining skill instead of levels, we know have a reward system based on hours played and time spent. That is an RPG.

I’m all for narrative. In fact, most of the games I keep in my library are single player and I come back to them for the story. But first you’ve said SC would be better as an RPG, now you’re saying FPS games are better as RPGs. Go play RPGs! Or read a book. Diversity in a medium is a good thing.

As an article that came out before the game did, I think you’re on to something. As a commenter who’s seen the final cinematic on SC2, I think Blizzard thought along the same lines as you did, and it didn’t work out.

Something that Blizzard must have learned from SC1 is that you have to take into account the gameplay when you are trying to present something compelling. I definitely agree with your remark that the story is better on a Wiki; when they pitched the idea I’m certain it was on paper. I’ve briefed a lot of fellow gamers who are jumping into this universe with SC2 and it sounds amazing because you get to gloss over the talking heads and the long periods of gameplay between developments in the narrative. An FPS gets you much closer, it lets YOU affect the story, instead of you telling someone else to do it. You can see Blizzard struggled with that by having you play a nameless lieutenant instead of a character. And they fix that in SC2. You play as Raynor in Wings of Liberty, you get to make choices outside of the game, explore the character’s relationships, the environment, etc.

So is SC2 a step forward in terms of narrative? I’m going to say no, it didn’t. My biggest complaint is that they learned too MUCH from their previous successes. I’m not about to post anything plot specific three days after release, but it feels a LOT like Warcraft until very much later in the game. Zeratul might as well be a Night Elf in Azeroth.

So now you get to play as Raynor (sort’ve.) Unfortunately, this develops him into exactly what you’d expect from a backwater marshal. All you get to deal with in SC1 is his passion for human life. There isn’t a lot of dialog, and what there is short and sweet. You can’t have drivel if you’ve only got 20 seconds before a mission loads. Now we get the glory of 3D drivel between every mission, and frankly, there’s not a lot under the hood. Another flaw with this is that it appears it’s just one crew fighting the Dominion and then fighting the rest of the universe. “Raynor’s Raiders” sounds like a clan of teen agers on Bnet, not a force for justice in the cold world of Starcraft.

The thought “if only it was an RPG” bugs me. Yes, the closer you get to the game the easier it is to connect with the story. And yes, as a story being told through a game and not a novel, there are certain levels of connection that interactivity affords you which should be embraced if you are going for a compelling work. Obviously, if we had a game where you literally experienced a different world through a different body, where you you just had to think for there to be action, where the line between reality and game disappeared, then we’d have reached the perfect connection between game and player. But we don’t have this yet, and, more importantly, that game would not be an RTS. SC2 forgot that. Besides the fan favourites from the first go, I couldn’t care less about anyone else. We’re either told we have a connection to them or they don’t stick around for long. If the only connection we had with them was as a faceless commander, I wouldn’t care. But we’re given this whole new way of meeting people and it comes off less than when they were just heads. I’d rather think of Raynor as an idealistic commander, detached from everyone so he can get the job done, working to get back the one person he got close to. In SC2 I’m not even sure WHY he’s going after Kerrigan. To get back at Mengsk? Does he still love and miss her? Or does he just want to fix a mistake? Or is he just guilty? I knew the answer after the first game and now I don’t know.

Well this has obviously gone on long enough. Maybe it was because I played the first game when I was in elementary school and the second one in the last leg of university, but I thought the story in the first game was miles a head of this one. Granted, it’s only a third of the story, merely a set up for what is next, so I hesitate to pass judgement. And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy the story. I definitely cheered a few times and the ending surprised me, but only because I was already a bit wary of the story so far. It’s on par with what you’d expect from Blizzard. These guys aren’t narrative geniuses, they make games. In terms of gameplay I think they moved mountains in the campaign. The story was just over where my non-excited expectations set it and I am definitely looking forward to how the story will unfold from here. But at the end of the day, I’d prefer the way SC1 was done. Yes it was limited by the genre, but those limits shaped the story. They tried to make it into an RPG but they will of course never succeed with that as long as it’s an RTS. Embrace those limits and run with them, don’t do a half assed job.

Blizzard meant Diablo to me, then Diablo 2 and later still World of Warcraft.

The RTS genre, in my little world, was defined by Westwood Studios. I was a C&C nerd. Local multiplayer only, typically, but maybe that actually helped color my experience.

Maybe it was the cheesy live-action numbers. Maybe it was Tim Curry. Whatever it was, something about Red Alert 2 always spoke to me.

Then again, maybe it was Yuri.

I played through the campaign, both sides, multiple times and then played Yuri’s Revenge over and over. To me, it wasn’t just the scenes with the live actors that sold it. It helped, of course, that Tanya resembled the Tanya unit, but it was just as important that they had the same voice actor even when she was just running around on the map.

The little things that the units would say are probably what sealed the deal for me and made the whole ridiculous thing work. Sometimes when I think about it, my immediate thought is “I’m gone…” with a certain inflection.

But that follows to the Chronosphere, to Einstein, to Yuri and the whole narrative surrounding the game.

I’d say that’s the definition of a success.