Criticism of RTS Storytelling

Someone shared with me a good analysis of the inconsistencies in the way psi-emitters are used, so I am sharing that here for archiving. Credits to “ARM3481” for this. The psi emitters were always a problem because we, the players, knew that the zerg were driven by a complex intelligence with an agenda, while the terrans at the time thought the zerg were basically just animalistic and cunning. For the psi emitters to actually have worked, the Overmind and its Cerebrates should have been freaking about their entire broods running off to invade planets without being ordered to do so.  That not being the case, it only made sense for the psi emitters "working" to be a misunderstanding whereby the Swarm's intelligent leadership were mistaking them for exceptionally powerful human psionics while the terrans were assuming that their devices were working as intended. Brood War and subsequent portrayals exacerbated the problem by applying both standards to the behavior of everyone...

I think it makes more sense for Tassadar’s character to propose an alliance with the terrans to prevent further losses and glassing. This is at odds with the game canon, but that’s what this blog is all about. We know from the tie-in short story “ Revelations ” (written by the same author as StarCraft ) that Tassadar and his forces were on the surface of Mar Sara during the battle, fighting off zerg and rescuing civilians and marines. Why did Tassadar never hail the Magistrate of Mar Sara and offer an alliance to repel the zerg? He hailed the Sons of Korhal in a  cut mission  on Antiga (which is apparently still canon?), so it would be in-character for him. In the manual, after the glassing of Chau Sara Tassadar promises himself that he will never glass another planet and will  find some way to rescue the terrans . But in the game he goes on to glass more planets. He completely fails to prevent the zerg from decimating the terrans. Why have him make this promise if he can...

In case you aren't familiar with the plot of the protoss campaign in Brood War, here is a script commentary . While the protoss are evacuating to Shakuras and repelling the zerg that somehow arrived before they did (I can't even pretend this timeline makes sense), QoB appears (having somehow traveled there from Char just in the nick of time like a character in the later crappier seasons of Game of Thrones ) and explains that she is free of zerg control and she can offer the protoss assistance. This is very obviously a ploy that no sane military commander would take remotely seriously. It's the middle of the apocalypse and suddenly a known enemy agent appears claiming to have the solution to their problems? This is just painfully transparent. All of the protoss hold the idiot ball and take her claims at face value, while only Aldaris points out that they have absolutely no reason to trust her and every reason not to. Naturally, nobody listens to him because, as if it wasn...