Why does DuGalle suddenly trust known traitor Duran over his childhood friend Stukov?

 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 countermeasures against their enemies), then the disruptor can be used as a failsafe. The zerg are obviously too dangerous to keep around indefinitely, so it would make the most sense to keep them contained and exterminate them when it's convenient.

Duran later betrays Stukov. Not only does Stukov not tell DuGalle about this, but nobody else notices either. There must be thousands of personnel involved and not one of them overheard the transmission or noticed anything strange about Duran's behavior? It doesn't make any sense unless the writer forgot that the main character are not the only people who exist in the universe.

When the now alerted Stukov disobeys orders and takes the disruptor anyway (while strangely not alerting DuGalle or any other personnel to the betrayal he witnessed), Duran suggests assassinating him because he is obviously untrustworthy and out to get DuGalle. This is stupid on its face: Stukov's actions conform to his stated beliefs and while he disobeyed orders it's obvious he's doing so because he believes it serves humanity's best interest, not because he wants to betray his childhood friend. DuGalle, rather than sending a strongly worded letter of disappointment and calling in Stukov for a court martial like a sane commander, immediately sends assassins to kill Stukov.

As Stukov lays dying, he tells DuGalle that Duran betrayed them with his dying breath. Because I guess the assassins carry speakerphones with them? After hearing this, then DuGalle immediately distrusts Duran and decides to go through with Stukov's plan. Ignoring the fact that this treachery should have come to his attention much earlier, why does he now believe Stukov over Duran after trusting Duran the whole time?

Saying that Duran used mind control (the evidence being that his voice distorts one time) doesn't make sense. Why doesn't the mind control affect Stukov? Why does the mind control suddenly wear off when Stukov gives his dramatic dying speech? If it is mind control, then it operates based on the needs of the plot rather than on any consistent rules.

The script is full of holes and feels rushed and lazy. I can understand why fans like the UED because they're the only terran characters with any consistent ideology and their actions are motivated by preserving their own species (as opposed to Mengsk being a powerhungry psychopath and Raynor doing whatever other characters tell him to do), but I don't get why these obvious plot holes are so overlooked.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Raynor was always directionless

One of the common criticisms of SC2 is that it alternately removes Raynor’s agency by making reliant on Tychus to tell him what to do and makes his few independent decisions driven by idiotic sociopathic horniness for Kerry. Thing is, this is also true of his character in SC1 OG and BW. It’s not a new thing. Raynor is passive, reactive, callous, sociopathic, and lacking in coherent motives or values. He’s pulled along by the plot, rarely makes independent decisions when given a choice, and his few independent decisions are usually nonsensical to drive the plot forward. Despite this, the writers expect us to think he’s the hero of the story (nevermind that he appears inconsistently across campaigns). Examples: In Raynor’s first appearance, he makes the decision to help Magistrate clear out the zerg. He doesn’t really have a choice, given that it’s a genocidal alien invasion. But it establishes he’s willing to put his life on the line for the greater good.  Later, Raynor is forced to...
Read more

Arthas, Sylvanas and the nature of self

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...
Read more

Aldaris did nothing wrong... except everything

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...
Read more