Criticism of RTS Storytelling

Despite its godawful map design and hilarious low budget voice acting, I think the actual plot of StarCraft: Insurrection is surprisingly good and in some ways superior to the original game. Bear with me… A key problem with the original game campaigns is their inconsistency. Characters will flip 180 between scenes in order to force the plot towards a particular direction, even though it makes no sense to behave this way. The world around them bends over backwards to enable them even if realistically they should not get away with any of this. For example, as I have complained about in other posts, Tassadar claims to be helping the terrans but in actuality incinerates inhabited planets rather than working towards a real solution. He constantly abandons his duty to do weird random acts to force the plot forward. He abandons the terrans to their fate in order to visit Char. He allies with Raynor despite having no reason to. He surrenders to the Conclave to halt the bloodshed, then congrat...

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...

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...

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 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 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 ...

While the zerg were originally introduced as apocalyptic villains bent on devouring the galaxy and so on, after the first game (SC1 OG campaigns) they were reduced to a plot device for human and protoss characters to fight over. This reaches a peak in BW, where the plot centers around a war for control of the zerg. There are some plot holes here that should be pointed out, particularly with regard to how easy it is for random characters to enslave zerg. I’ll go thru it chronologically: The Confederacy experiments with weaponizing zerg for a decade without any apparent success (the zerg arrived in 2487 , the Battle of Chau Sara occurred in 2499 ), aside from the psi-emitter and psi-disruptor tech. The psi-emitter is created for false flag ops but backfires because the zerg are too powerful. The space pirate Schezar raids Aiur for crystals that he uses to enslave a cerebrate with the help of rogue ghosts in a few days or so. He tries and fails to enslave Overmind. No explanation how h...

To follow my prior post about how Tassadar's actions during episode 1 are questionable, here's a post pointing out his blatant hypocrisy in episode 3 . At the end of mission 7, Aldaris chastises Tassadar for refusing to destroy the terran worlds. Aldaris is technically incorrect here: Tassadar delayed destroying terran worlds, but he still destroyed them.  Tassadar retorts and says he doesn't regret his actions and would've made the exact same decisions again. So he doesn't think in retrospect that it would've made more sense to ally with the terrans at the earliest opportunity instead of incinerating planets? He genuinely thinks his actions were the best he could've taken? It's even worse when you remember that he originally promised himself he wouldn't destroy any more planets after Chau Sara. Did he forget his promise? I get that the writers are trying to make him look like a strong hero here, but he come across like a sanctimonious moron who refu...

 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...

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...

Someone shared with me a good analysis of the inconsistencies in the way psi-emitters are used, so I am sharing that here for archiving. Credits to “ARM3481” for this. The psi emitters were always a problem because we, the players, knew that the zerg were driven by a complex intelligence with an agenda, while the terrans at the time thought the zerg were basically just animalistic and cunning. For the psi emitters to actually have worked, the Overmind and its Cerebrates should have been freaking about their entire broods running off to invade planets without being ordered to do so.  That not being the case, it only made sense for the psi emitters "working" to be a misunderstanding whereby the Swarm's intelligent leadership were mistaking them for exceptionally powerful human psionics while the terrans were assuming that their devices were working as intended. Brood War and subsequent portrayals exacerbated the problem by applying both standards to the behavior of everyone...

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...

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...

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...

Most of the obvious bad writing in the first StarCraft is concentrated in the Brood War expansion, but that does not mean the original game is devoid of bad writing. It has no shortage of its own. In the plot of  Episode 1 , a key plot device is the psi-emitter . Its purpose is to lure zerg, which it does very well: countless zerg from light years away will converge on it when you turn it on. Those who are familiar with the replicators from Stargate SG-1 may recognize this plot device, as a similar one was used to lure the replicators into a trap. The psi-emitter is never used against the zerg to lure them into traps, despite the fact that they seem compelled to follow it even if that interferes with their own plans. The idea is just never brought up even once, even though it is blindingly obvious. It is just used to lure the zerg so they can kill Mengsk's enemies for him. Considering that the plot is already about a civil war between the terran colonies while two simultaneous ...

One of the frustrating aspects of SC1's scripts are how juvenile they are in places, especially compared to the somewhat more nuanced take in the manual and other supplemental materials. Hard to believe these were apparently written by the same writer. Anyway, in the protoss backstory the ancestors of the nerazim are explained as causing the apocalypse with the reckless use of their powers and provoking the khalai to fight back in self-defense. So it is entirely reasonable for the khalai to have a negative view of the nerazim.  In the scripts for Episodes 3 and 4, during the protoss civil war , none of this is ever brought up and the judicators are framed as irrational idiotic bigots being mean to the innocent nerazim who just want to help. The judicator's suspicion is completely reasonable: the nerazim caused the apocalypse in the past and now they came back claiming they only want to use their powers to help. How are the judicator supposed to know that the nerazim are tellin...

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...