Criticism of RTS Storytelling

I know this blog was originally about Starcraft 1, but I've gotten bored of that and want to move on to other topics. Such as bad writing in Warcraft 3! (Terrible joke, I know). For example, Arthas' fall to darkness doesn't sit well with me. Ignoring all the hot takes about "he was a born sociopath" from Sylvanas stans, in the original game his arc is obviously intended to be a tragedy where a well-meaning hero is tortured and gaslit by the villains until he goes crazy and joins them. The problem is that key parts of this narrative undermine the emotional arc. When Arthas culls Stratholme, Uther and Jaina just leave rather than try and stop him. This goes against their personalities! But the writer forces them to act this way because it would break the plot. This is bad writing. (BTW, Stratholme was supposed to be an impossible situation. There was literally nothing Arthas could've done that would've made any difference. I have problem with how this makes ...

To follow my older post about how the protoss had no reason to listen to Kerry, here’s some reasons why Kerry had no reason to help them either. Ignoring the nonsense logistics of how Kerry found Shakuras, got there in record time, compromised Raz before she arrived, and already knew about the relevance of the Khalis… Kerry had no reason to help the protoss refugees in the first place. What does she do? Tell them the location of Khalis. That’s all she does. What does she gain from this? Nothing. The protoss never actually trust her at any point. (I made the mistake of saying they “trusted” her before, but they really keep her at arm’s length. All Raz does is let her speak.) She burns any chance of building a bridge by publicly murdering Aldaris. The protoss benefit by activating the plot device temple. But Kerry doesn’t gain anything. The protoss don’t kill the second overmind for her. She doesn’t gain their trust. They only let her go free because of plot-induced stupidity, but even t...

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 ...