Criticism of RTS Storytelling

One of the frustrating aspects of SC1's scripts are how juvenile they are in places, especially compared to the somewhat more nuanced take in the manual and other supplemental materials. Hard to believe these were apparently written by the same writer. Anyway, in the protoss backstory the ancestors of the nerazim are explained as causing the apocalypse with the reckless use of their powers and provoking the khalai to fight back in self-defense. So it is entirely reasonable for the khalai to have a negative view of the nerazim.  In the scripts for Episodes 3 and 4, during the protoss civil war , none of this is ever brought up and the judicators are framed as irrational idiotic bigots being mean to the innocent nerazim who just want to help. The judicator's suspicion is completely reasonable: the nerazim caused the apocalypse in the past and now they came back claiming they only want to use their powers to help. How are the judicator supposed to know that the nerazim are tellin...

In the StarCraft games, the protoss are just a generic race of dying space elves chasing prophecies in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. They get their asses handed to them in every conflict and the only way they ever win anything at all is by cheating and using plot devices to defeat otherwise invincible enemies. What if I told you that the original conception of the protoss was closer to the role of vulcans in Star Trek 's Federation or the prophets in Halo 's Covenant? Hard to believe, right? That really was their original backstory according to the wiki . Materials outside of the games explain they had a huge interstellar civilization with numerous clients and allies of other species. In the games, they have one or two planets and are easily conquered. I find this very frustrating. Imagine how much cooler the franchise would have been if the protoss had been this huge interstellar empire that easily rival or overshadow the other races? Hundreds of worlds to explore, n...

So I am sure most people reading this are aware of the storytelling issues in Heart of the Swarm . For example, there is a huge disconnect between the zerg's whole spiel about "purity of essence", evolution, predation, etc and Kerry's stated goal of getting revenge on her ex-boss Mengsk. ("Kerry" is my nickname for Sarah Kerrigan because it is quicker to type.) Why are these horrific alien monsters working with this chick who just wants revenge on her ex and does not actually care one whiff about the zerg's motives, even threating to exterminate them herself on at least one occasion? Why is Kerry working with these horrific alien monsters that do not value any of the human desires she experiences every moment of her life? Why are the zerg placed in the good guy role when they would clearly be much better as the villains? You can read about the zerg's backstory on the fandom wiki . One thing you may notice is that absolutely everything about them is h...

I am sure everyone is aware by now of the writing issues in the hugely profitable StarCraft II campaigns. There are whole blogs and vlogs dedicated to explaining it.  But there are no blogs dedicated to criticizing the writing in StarCraft the first. Now you may tell me "but SC1 is perfect and flawless, so it doesn't need criticizing." It may come as a shock for me to say it to you, but the script isn't perfect and flawless. It has no shortage of its own issues. What surprises me is that no one has written articles criticizing it, except this one 2014 post pointing out plot holes in Brood War . When I tried to share my observations with others, I was met with disbelief and in some cases outright scorn. I had to explain myself over and over through inconvenient formats like forum posts and chat messages. Now I have decided to make a blog to give myself sufficient space to criticize the writing and refer back to whenever I need to explain this to people. Wish me lu...