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 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...

Although Arcturus Mengsk is depicted as the generic Saturday morning cartoon villain of the franchise (aside from... all the others), his actual backstory is that of a sympathetic hero up until the actual events of the game. In the game he starts off as a heroic rebel leader, then becomes increasingly morally ambiguous until he becomes a villain at the climax by betraying his loyal subordinate Kerry. There's no logical reason for him to do this besides personally insulting the player by killing off a likable character, since none of his other criminal actions are sufficient to make him a villain apparently (which reflects really poorly on Kerry and Raynor... but I digress). The "official" in-universe reason is twofold: firstly, he was tired of her developing a conscience that would lead to her leaving him as she planned to, and secondly,  she murdered his family while brainwashed . Oh my. Yeah, Mengsk's backstory is super dark. He was the scion of a rich politician f...

In the StarCraft games, the protoss are just a generic race of dying space elves chasing prophecies in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. They get their asses handed to them in every conflict and the only way they ever win anything at all is by cheating and using plot devices to defeat otherwise invincible enemies. What if I told you that the original conception of the protoss was closer to the role of vulcans in Star Trek 's Federation or the prophets in Halo 's Covenant? Hard to believe, right? That really was their original backstory according to the wiki . Materials outside of the games explain they had a huge interstellar civilization with numerous clients and allies of other species. In the games, they have one or two planets and are easily conquered. I find this very frustrating. Imagine how much cooler the franchise would have been if the protoss had been this huge interstellar empire that easily rival or overshadow the other races? Hundreds of worlds to explore, n...

So I am sure most people reading this are aware of the storytelling issues in Heart of the Swarm . For example, there is a huge disconnect between the zerg's whole spiel about "purity of essence", evolution, predation, etc and Kerry's stated goal of getting revenge on her ex-boss Mengsk. ("Kerry" is my nickname for Sarah Kerrigan because it is quicker to type.) Why are these horrific alien monsters working with this chick who just wants revenge on her ex and does not actually care one whiff about the zerg's motives, even threating to exterminate them herself on at least one occasion? Why is Kerry working with these horrific alien monsters that do not value any of the human desires she experiences every moment of her life? Why are the zerg placed in the good guy role when they would clearly be much better as the villains? You can read about the zerg's backstory on the fandom wiki . One thing you may notice is that absolutely everything about them is h...