Criticism of RTS Storytelling

The Ruin are a concept I developed as a result of my consistent frustration with the writing of space bug hordes in Halo, Starcraft, 40k, Starship Troopers, etc. The Ruin are an invasive sentient ecosystem that have consumed countless worlds and civilizations. They incorporate the biological, technological, and even cultural distinctiveness in themselves. Their infrastructure is alive and every member is a drone engineered to kill or maintain the war machine. They do this in the pursuit of perfection, seeking to consume the universe in order to become omnipotent.  Unlike other space bugs that are depicted as faceless forces of nature, the Ruin have characters in order to make their perspective interesting to a human audience. What makes these characters fundamentally different from humans is that they aren’t motivated by petty selfish desires like greed, vengeance, love, liberty or whatever other trivialities motivate humans. They have no internal strife because they share a single...

I’ve long since gotten tired of criticizing Blizzard’s writing. The original teams who made their games dissolved multiple times years ago. It’s impossible to convince certain diehard fans that the writing has flaws in its basic structure. So I’ve decided to work on my own original scifi universe inspired by Starcraft, Halo, 40k, etc while addressing their shortcomings. I’ve actually been doing this in fits and starts for years in private, but now I’m gonna be posting my ideas on this blog. One of my inspirations is this old article titled  “The Celestial, Terrestrial, and the Diabolic” . It lays out a common triad structure underlying many popular fantasy and scifi settings. The Celestial is inspired by the Roman Empire and represents an ideal, seen in Tolkien’s Elves, Babylon 5’s Vorlons, 40k’s Aeldari, Halo’s Covenant, Starcraft’s Protoss, etc. The Infernal is inspired by the popular (though inaccurate) stereotype of Mongol hordes and represents our fears and projections, seen i...

Credit to ARM3481 on the Scrolls of Lore discord for the following analysis: Admittedly in-universe it makes sense for the world to continue blaming Arthas, so from that context it's not hard to understand why some people just latch onto that incomplete view of things.  Especially depending upon their experience playing and familiarity with his pre-WoW development. But really from an informed "reader" PoV, you're correct that while it's Arthas' fault for things getting to the point that he picked up Frostmourne, after that choice he's basically no longer that Arthas any more.  The creature he became at that point was the worst of himself magnified by the influence of Frostmourne, which then became even further removed from his old self once he deliberately extracted whatever lingering vestiges of his humanity remained after his battle with Illidan. Arguably the Arthas that went to the Maw would be whatever was left by his death at the end of WotLK, which m...

In the opening cinematic of Warcraft 3, Medivh barges into King Terenas’ court, tells them to evacuate the continent, and then acts surprised when nobody takes him seriously. What was he expecting? This is a stereotypical cliché loony prophet trope. I know it’s meant to be mysterious for the audience’s benefit, but in-character it makes no sense. If he wants anyone to believe him, then he should be putting on a powerpoint presentation explaining the Legion’s plans and formulating a counterattack. But he doesn’t, because that would break the plot. This is just sloppy writing, and I’m not the first  to think so .

I know this blog was originally about Starcraft 1, but I've gotten bored of that and want to move on to other topics. Such as bad writing in Warcraft 3! (Terrible joke, I know). For example, Arthas' fall to darkness doesn't sit well with me. Ignoring all the hot takes about "he was a born sociopath" from Sylvanas stans, in the original game his arc is obviously intended to be a tragedy where a well-meaning hero is tortured and gaslit by the villains until he goes crazy and joins them. The problem is that key parts of this narrative undermine the emotional arc. When Arthas culls Stratholme, Uther and Jaina just leave rather than try and stop him. This goes against their personalities! But the writer forces them to act this way because it would break the plot. This is bad writing. (BTW, Stratholme was supposed to be an impossible situation. There was literally nothing Arthas could've done that would've made any difference. I have problem with how this makes ...

SC1 opens with a cinematic where the protoss incinerate Chau Sara. Throughout episode 1 the protoss pose an ever-present danger of planetary incineration. Several planets including Mar Sara and Antiga Prime are incinerated. After episode 1, however, the protoss seemed to forget they had planet glassing  lasers . They never use the lasers in later episodes where they would be convenient. Tassadar never tries to laser zerg positions on Char. The protoss never laser zerg positions on Aiur in the middle of an invasion. Tassadar kamikazes his carrier into Overmind rather than using the laser. They never explain why they cannot, either. Altho the lasers are used for destroying whole planets, we usually see this being done by dozens of carriers at a time. It is reasonable to deduce that the damage is proportional to the duration of the firing and the number of lasers used. So it could work as an orbital canon to strike strategically viable positions. The starcraft story was  develope...