Criticism of RTS Storytelling

Although Arcturus Mengsk is depicted as the generic Saturday morning cartoon villain of the franchise (aside from... all the others), his actual backstory is that of a sympathetic hero up until the actual events of the game. In the game he starts off as a heroic rebel leader, then becomes increasingly morally ambiguous until he becomes a villain at the climax by betraying his loyal subordinate Kerry. There's no logical reason for him to do this besides personally insulting the player by killing off a likable character, since none of his other criminal actions are sufficient to make him a villain apparently (which reflects really poorly on Kerry and Raynor... but I digress). The "official" in-universe reason is twofold: firstly, he was tired of her developing a conscience that would lead to her leaving him as she planned to, and secondly,  she murdered his family while brainwashed . Oh my. Yeah, Mengsk's backstory is super dark. He was the scion of a rich politician f...

The character Aldaris is more or less an idiot villain in the protoss campaigns whose sole purpose is to cause conflict to drive the missions. The frustrating part is that he is written horribly. He always has a good point, but the narrative either unfairly punishes him or gives him the idiot ball for it. During the protoss civil war, he was suspicious of the nerazim and his reasons for being suspicious are completely reasonable considering that the nerazim caused the apocalypse the last time they were on the planet. You would only know this from reading the manual, as it is never brought up in the game script so Aldaris gets framed as an ignorant bigot standing in the way of victory. Then he just forgives the nerazim and says he was wrong, without providing any explanation for why he thinks so beyond "the narrative says I should admit I was wrong." In the next campaign, he starts a terrorist uprising. His reasoning for this is that the nerazim matriarch has been compromised...

Most of the obvious bad writing in the first StarCraft is concentrated in the Brood War expansion, but that does not mean the original game is devoid of bad writing. It has no shortage of its own. In the plot of  Episode 1 , a key plot device is the psi-emitter . Its purpose is to lure zerg, which it does very well: countless zerg from light years away will converge on it when you turn it on. Those who are familiar with the replicators from Stargate SG-1 may recognize this plot device, as a similar one was used to lure the replicators into a trap. The psi-emitter is never used against the zerg to lure them into traps, despite the fact that they seem compelled to follow it even if that interferes with their own plans. The idea is just never brought up even once, even though it is blindingly obvious. It is just used to lure the zerg so they can kill Mengsk's enemies for him. Considering that the plot is already about a civil war between the terran colonies while two simultaneous ...