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:

1. 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. 
2. Later, Raynor is forced to help the Sons of Korhal in order to escape from an unjust prison sentence, and is subsequently forced to work for them because “Confederacy evil!” I guess. Nevermind that the genocidal aliens are obviously a much bigger problem. It’s never explained why a random marshal joins the SoK inner circle so quickly, but since he’s supposedly the main character then he gets to cheat I guess.
3. Raynor’s first interaction with Kerry is pissing her off by mentally objectifying her. None of the other characters ever do this, so he’s established as more horny than anyone else. This planted the brain bug that eventually grew into the abominable Raynor/Kerry romance.
4. Raynor has little problem helping Mengsk carry out multiple acts of zerg terrorism, even after seeing the consequences multiple times (as the Confederacy accidentally started the invasion by attempting zerg terrorism themselves). Sure, he pays lip service to “and that’s terrible!” but the most he does is conspire with Kerry to run away and do… something? He clearly had no plan, not even to rebel against Mengsk (yet) when it’s clear he’s no better than the feds.
5. The breaking point for Raynor is when Mengsk betrays Kerry, because obviously none of the other people who Mengsk got killed matter to Raynor. So Raynor takes those loyal to him (because obviously he has legions of fanatically loyal followers now) and defects.
6. Rather than trying to stop Mengsk, Raynor decides to follow psychic dreams to a zerg hive planet. Since he’s the main character, all his followers mindlessly go along with it.
7. Raynor joins Tassadar offscreen, ignoring that Tassadar glassed several planets including his home planet. Raynor never once expresses resentment toward the protoss, because nobody he personally cared about died I guess. Raynor has absolutely no reason to help the protoss and his contribution is also questionable, but he’s supposed to be the main character so has to be shoehorned in.
8. When the UED show up, Raynor just takes QoB’s unconvincing offer of alliance at face value and joins his hated enemy Mengsk, even though the UED are obviously the lesser evil of the three. QoB’s statement of UPL doing bad stuff in the past ignores how UED is clearly a different culture.
9. Raynor says he doesn’t trust QoB, then proceeds to trust her anyway and acts surprised when she betrays the alliance. Telegraphing that Raynor doesn’t trust her only works if he actually acts on that distrust. Otherwise it’s pure idiocy and inconsistent characterization.

Even in the original six episodes, Raynor comes across as a callous dependent idiot who occasionally does the right thing. If this was the intent, then that would be fine. But we’re expected to find him unambiguously heroic. This is blatant narrative dissonance.