Criticism of RTS Storytelling

In the opening cinematic of Warcraft 3, Medivh barges into King Terenas’ court, tells them to evacuate the continent, and then acts surprised when nobody takes him seriously. What was he expecting? This is a stereotypical cliché loony prophet trope. I know it’s meant to be mysterious for the audience’s benefit, but in-character it makes no sense. If he wants anyone to believe him, then he should be putting on a powerpoint presentation explaining the Legion’s plans and formulating a counterattack. But he doesn’t, because that would break the plot. This is just sloppy writing, and I’m not the first  to think so .

SC1 opens with a cinematic where the protoss incinerate Chau Sara. Throughout episode 1 the protoss pose an ever-present danger of planetary incineration. Several planets including Mar Sara and Antiga Prime are incinerated. After episode 1, however, the protoss seemed to forget they had planet glassing  lasers . They never use the lasers in later episodes where they would be convenient. Tassadar never tries to laser zerg positions on Char. The protoss never laser zerg positions on Aiur in the middle of an invasion. Tassadar kamikazes his carrier into Overmind rather than using the laser. They never explain why they cannot, either. Altho the lasers are used for destroying whole planets, we usually see this being done by dozens of carriers at a time. It is reasonable to deduce that the damage is proportional to the duration of the firing and the number of lasers used. So it could work as an orbital canon to strike strategically viable positions. The starcraft story was  develope...

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...

 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...

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...

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...