Yes, I do. No, seriously, I’m not trolling. I’m daring to challenge the concept that Starcraft 2 isn’t the amazing, eagerly-awaited godgame that Blizzard and the game news wants us to think it is.
It’s not Starcraft 2. It’s Starcraft 1.666666666666667, because it’s only the terran campaign. Apparently, I was the only one who thought of that as a bad thing or took it as a sign.
Second, the main plot is the same as the terran campaign from the first game, only this time it’s “the Dominion” instead of “the Confederacy” with a bit of archaeological relic hunting on the side until you finally(spoiler alert) take your ass to the Zerg homeworld, put the big, fancy deus ex machina together and use it to “cure” Kerrigan. “WUTZ WRONG WIT TAHT?” I hear someone saying. Allow me to make a list:
- Several missions in the game prior to this deal with infested humans. Despite one character’s constant work towards a cure, it’s been established strongly at this point that there is no cure for infestation and it just has to be dealt with.
- Why did it only cure Kerrigan and not the guaranteed thousands upon thousands of other infested humans on the planet? Or did we just not see them get cured? If so, why was that not mentioned at all? That seems like just as big of a victory.
- Kerrigan’s hair is still the same. Why? Does that mean it didn’t actually work or does she just need a hair cut? If it didn’t work then what was the fucking point?
These questions require answers, Blizzard. I know you got bought out by Activision, but that’s no fucking excuse.
And you know something else? The four protoss missions(spoilers) were way more compelling to me than the terrain missions, even if it was just Jim Raynor looking at a crystal and seeing memories instead of the clearly injured Zeratul hanging out on the Hyperion while he recovered and orally(telepathically?) sharing all the relevant information with Jim instead of his token, two minute appearance where he shows up out of nowhere, throws a macguffin at the protagonist and disappears. It’s like he knew he was in a disappointing sequel. Granted, it still works as a framing device, but it just pisses me off. This is fucking Zeratul we’re talking about here! He’s over 600 years old! He taught Tassadar how to use Void energies and kill the Overmind! He’s slain cerebrates, felled countless zerg, and delivered one of the best verbal smackdowns in this game or the first!
“You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities… Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you’ve built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream. A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare.”
Bitch.
The subplots have some pretty big holes in them as well.
We never find out if the Spectre, Gabriel Tosh, is actually a dangerous psychopath or the eccentric victim of a mind-altering experiment that was forced upon him by the Dominion who’s fighting back in the only way he knows how. Yeah, if you side against him in the end, he tried to torture Raynor with a voodoo doll, but considering you just killed a bunch of his friends and completely decimated years of planning and effort towards revenge, I’d say a sane person with psychic powers might just be inclined to do the same.
And then the colonial refugees subplot where Dr. Hanson gets infested if(and only if) you side with the Protoss makes no sense as well. How did she get infested? Did she lock herself in the lab and use some prototype cure on herself that didn’t work? Why? She was distraught, not crazy. Was she infested from the start? If so, then the refugees on Haven are still completely and totally fucked because she leaves the ship to help start the new colony. Nice job breaking it, Jim.
Which leads to my final issue. All of the characters in this story are morons.
Especially this guy. Valerian Mengsk. Son of Arcturus Mengsk. The guy who’s been secretly paying Jim to gather up all the pieces of the DEM Machine for most of the game. And when you have all but the last piece, how does he greet Jim? By dropping out of warp with several Dominion battlecruisers, one of which being his father’s personal flagship. Yeah, that’s not gonna get him jumpy. What ends up happening is a shoot-out on the flagship that puts countless bullet holes in the corridors and kills at the very least a half dozen Dominion soldiers. Yeah, real fucking subtle Valerian. No way your dad will find out about this. Also, this idiot owns and runs the “Moebius Foundation” from which Jim’s outlaws have been getting paid by for collecting the pieces. How does this keep Arcturus from knowing what you’re doing, again? Yeah. Idiot. That or he’s in league with his dad, but it’s never addressed or hunted at, so one has to assume he’s just an idiot.
And if ol’ Arcturus here doesn’t know what his kid is up to, they’ve not only turned him into an idiot, they’ve completely assassinated the character of Arcturus Mengsk that made him such a fun-to-hate slimeball. But worst of all…
They’ve turned Jim fucking Raynor into a blind, dipshit, nancy-boy. First off, how many times did trusted friend Matt Horner(the only character in the game who isn’t an idiot)…
…try to warn him about Tychus’ suspicious behavior?
Which included breaking into their records to look up information and video about Kerrigan and the transponder in his armor(which he is sealed into) that would shut down all his vital organs from a remote location? And where was Tychus supposed to be when he was fighting with the Raiders? Oh yeah, in a maximum security prison in cryo-stasis. He gets out after eight while they’re(conveniently) transporting him to another prison? Sounds fishy, doesn’t it? I’m sure you all recall the rastafarian up the page a little ways, Mr. Gabriel Tosh? Well, y’see, he’s a psychic and if you side with him instead of against him at the end of his subplot, he stays on with you and you can talk to him about recent events. He tells you that he knows someone on this ship is working for Mengsk. He can’t say exactly who because of all the thoughtstreams on the ship he picks up at once(which makes sense, this is a capital-class battlecruiser. Between crew, military personnel and any civilians you might have saved, that’s thousands of individual minds at once in a relatively enclosed space), but he’s here. Later, he’ll say Tychus is “wrestling with something he doesn’t want to do”. Hmm, let’s see…he conveniently breaks out of maximum security prison, goes and finds his old buddy, Jim Raynor, is sealed in his suit which has a killswitch installed inside of it and the psychic says he’s dealing with something he’d rather not do…and someone here is working for…
Oh, you crafty son of a bitch! Now that’s the Arcturus Mengsk we all love to hate! You underhanded, slimy, manipulative, double-speaking, power-hungry magnificent bastard, you! I’ll kill you! I’ll choke the life out of you! I will shove your head into a bucket of lye, you piece of-!
Wait, you mean Jim doesn’t figure it out?
…
Only one explanation. Idiot. Anyone with half a brain would immediately shove the muzzle of one of those big-ass fucking rifles up Tychus’ nose. Jim? Nah. He doesn’t figure it out until the very last cutscene.
But even worse than that is what they did to him in regards to Kerrigan. After four years of hiding under a rock and inside of a bottle of whiskey, he suddenly turns into a lovesick puppy who just wants to GIT HIS GURL BAK. …I submit the following exchange:
Jim Raynor: Fenix! No!
Kerrigan: What are you worried about, Jim? He died the way all Protoss hope to: in combat.
Jim Raynor: He died because you betrayed him. How many more noble souls do you need to consume before you’re satisfied? How many more innocent people have to die before you realize what you’ve become?
Kerrigan: You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Jim!
Jim Raynor: Don’t I? I’ll see you dead for this, Kerrigan! For Fenix, and all the others who got caught between you and your mad quest for power!
Kerrigan: Tough talk, Jimmy, but I don’t think you have what it takes to be a killer.
Jim Raynor: It may not be tomorow, darlin’, it may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured; I’m the man who’s gonna kill you one day. I’ll be seeing you.
Yeah. That sounds like a guy who just wants to suck face with his old high-school sweetheart again, not a guy who had his trust stomped all over by a lying, heartless bitch who fucked all of his friends behind his back.
Yeah, the game still felt like Starcraft. Yeah, the missions were based around clear objectives and not just “go here and kill everything”. Yeah, I’m sure the multiplayer is fun and well-balanced, but frankly, I don’t care enough about multiplayer to count it. Few games ever have a lasting, well-populated online multiplayer base and while Starcraft 2 is already an exception to that, it’s still not enough to save this crap.
The story is disappointing, shoddily written, full of plot holes and it turns several of the franchise’s core characters into shells of their former selves full of cliches and fail.
Fuck this game.
