Criticism of RTS Storytelling

 The UED were introduced via retcon in BW, and were not originally planned as part of the franchise. The BW website at the time of release made no mention of the UED, but only stated that "Terran Emperor Mengsk I...must now turn his attention to...a conspiracy deep within his own ranks."  In order to explain why the UED wasn't mentioned in the SC1 manual or OG campaigns, the BW manual states that  the UPL secretly spied on Koprulu for centuries and then reformed as the UED when they saw the protoss and zerg ravage Koprulu. There are several problems with this retcon. How did the UPL secretly spy on Koprulu for centuries and without being discovered? In order for this to work, they would need human agents to infiltrate the colonies and remain both loyal and undetected over multiple generations. This is simply unbelievable, but it gets even more unbelievable from there. The UPL decided not only to secretly spy on Koprulu, but to keep Earth's and Koprulu's existence...

The Overmind and cerebrates are explained as being effectively immortal. Unless killed using void powers they will instantly "reincarnate" their body. There are a few problems with this plot device. Firstly, it's a lazy plot device and was obviously shoehorned in later in development. Tassadar wasn't initially intended to divebomb Overmind, this was suggested by the design team to add an epic climax to the script. I can't be sure, but I suspect the vulnerability to void power was added as part of this because the presentation is clunky (see my second point). The SC1 manual never once implies that the Overmind or cerebrates were immortal or could only be killed by void powers. Secondly, the introduction of this plot point is very clunky and involves characters reading ahead in the script rather than coming to reasonable conclusions. In order: Overmind tells us that cerebrates are immortal Zeratul permakills Zasz Overmind says only dark templar can kill cerebrates ...

While the zerg were originally introduced as apocalyptic villains bent on devouring the galaxy and so on, after the first game (SC1 OG campaigns) they were reduced to a plot device for human and protoss characters to fight over. This reaches a peak in BW, where the plot centers around a war for control of the zerg. There are some plot holes here that should be pointed out, particularly with regard to how easy it is for random characters to enslave zerg. I’ll go thru it chronologically: The Confederacy experiments with weaponizing zerg for a decade without any apparent success (the zerg arrived in 2487 , the Battle of Chau Sara occurred in 2499 ), aside from the psi-emitter and psi-disruptor tech. The psi-emitter is created for false flag ops but backfires because the zerg are too powerful. The space pirate Schezar raids Aiur for crystals that he uses to enslave a cerebrate with the help of rogue ghosts in a few days or so. He tries and fails to enslave Overmind. No explanation how h...

To follow my prior post about how Tassadar's actions during episode 1 are questionable, here's a post pointing out his blatant hypocrisy in episode 3 . At the end of mission 7, Aldaris chastises Tassadar for refusing to destroy the terran worlds. Aldaris is technically incorrect here: Tassadar delayed destroying terran worlds, but he still destroyed them.  Tassadar retorts and says he doesn't regret his actions and would've made the exact same decisions again. So he doesn't think in retrospect that it would've made more sense to ally with the terrans at the earliest opportunity instead of incinerating planets? He genuinely thinks his actions were the best he could've taken? It's even worse when you remember that he originally promised himself he wouldn't destroy any more planets after Chau Sara. Did he forget his promise? I get that the writers are trying to make him look like a strong hero here, but he come across like a sanctimonious moron who refu...

 The UED campaign relies on DuGalle and Stukov making inconsistent idiotic nonsensical decisions, otherwise Duran's plan would have failed much earlier. When DuGalle and Duran meet for the first time, DuGalle admonishes him as an untrustworthy traitor. In every subsequent conversation DuGalle hangs on to Duran's every word and always takes his advice against that of DuGalle's childhood friend Stukov. When Stukov suggests keeping the psi disruptor around as an anti-zerg weapon, Durans counters and says that would interfere with their plan to enslave the zerg and so it must be destroyed. DuGalle trusts Duran over Stukov, despite stating earlier he holds only contempt for the former and the latter being his childhood friend who is obviously completely trustworthy.  Stukov's plan obviously makes much more sense: in the event that anything goes wrong with the plan (which is especially likely since it's a completely untested plan and the zerg are already known to evolve...

The behavior of feral zerg is inconsistent between different games, depending on the plot the writer is trying to tell at the time. There isn’t any way to reconcile these different depictions because the writers change the rules for each one. In one Loomings mission, zerglings are smart and dexterous enough to hotwire security systems so that they attack Confederate marines sent to investigate. Presumably this was done to explain why the turret doodad was attacking, since there's no other plausible reason beyond hacking and only the zerg would be motivated to hack it. But it does imply that the seemingly feral zerg are much smarter than depicted in later entries, creating an inconsistency. In StarCraft OG , if a cerebrate is killed then their brood goes into a killing frenzy and cannot be reclaimed. This is presumably to justify the ZvZ mission, since otherwise it would end immediately because the player character would just take control of the feral zerg. It does create a huge i...

What makes the zerg zerg is their " purity of essence ." This means they're driven to constantly pursue perfection, which they do by consuming all species in their path and using what they learn to create new engineered organisms and alter themselves to become ever more efficient. They're comparable to the Borg  or tyranids , who also seek perfection by consuming the species in their path. Where the writing screws up is that it adds Queen of Blades, who doesn't demonstrate purity of essence at all. In her original appearance in episode 2 she acts absolutely nothing like her original personality so you wouldn't know they were ever the same character if the script didn't tell you (not even an evil version of Kerry, QoB is a spoiled brat who speaks in faux Shakespeare ), she is whiny and argumentative, she is vain and spoiled and selfish (in direct contrast to the other zerg characters who always act calm and collected even under extreme stress), constantly...