[StarSlayer]

Sarah Kerrigan decides to mete out psionic beat downs and roaring rampages of revenge.

[NGTM-1R]

Not as good as the trailer for the first one. (And wow do the units look cheesy compared to the improving CGI quality.)

After the last SCII though it's gonna take a lot to convince me. Sorry Blizzard.

[Ghostavo]

It's not that the units are bad looking, it's just that Blizzard's CGI is a few levels above Pixar.

Still, bought the last one, and will probably buy this one.

[MP-Ryan]

Hrmm.  Well, after the ending of Wings of Liberty I feared Blizzard might just eliminate everything interesting they've done with Kerrigan, but it would appear that perhaps her conversion back to mostly-human won't be a complete tragedy after all.  Maybe.

Hopefully there are still some Protoss-linked missions in this one.  I don't really play multi (except coop) so I haven't had my Protoss fix yet.

[General Battuta]

There's an incremental chance here the story will be less awful than Wings of Liberty, but the leaked ending cinematic suggests Blizzard's writers are still as ****awful as they've been since Warcraft 3.

I've mostly spent time with the competitive multiplayer. The new Zerg units look great, the new Terran units look, uh, nonessential (farewell Thor though), and hahahahahahaha the new Protoss units

hi Protoss

we heard you were really struggling as a race with your complete lack of harass, map control, and effective low tier units

so we gave you a giant phoenix, the overseer, and a unit that lets you pretend you're terran

On the other hand, moving Mass Recall to the nexus sounds really, really powerful. RIP carriers and mothership though, you will be missed

[MP-Ryan]

On the other hand, moving Mass Recall to the nexus sounds really, really powerful. RIP carriers though, you will be missed

To be fair, SC2 carriers were so badly nerfed that most people stuck with void rays en masse anyway.  Mothership's gone though?  Where's the fleet-cloaking ability been moved to?  (And do not tell me that's gone too, I'll cry).  I'm sad to hear that Protoss still hasn't been properly balanced though.

But I take it from your post that you have access to a beta?  Colour me jealous.

[General Battuta]

No beta access, just been following reports from people who played it at BlizzCon.

Protoss isn't exactly...underpowered, I guess? At least not at lower levels of play (like where I play). But they're a very frustrating race to play, because they combine a total lack of map control with the need to get vespene-hungry T3 units to counter the other races' T1 unit swarms.

In practice this means you spend most of the match huddling in your 1/2 bases desperately trying to build enough colossi to have a chance, waiting to be steamrolled by a Terran bioball or a Zerg who's covered half the map in creep and bases. I had so much more fun once I switched to Zerg.

In high-level play Protoss is actually underpowered, the scene's completely dominated by Terrans and the imba imba imba MULE

And yeah, carriers sucked. At least in the Blizzcon build the Mothership was gone -- but all of this will change vastly before release, I'm sure, so let's see what happens.

e: these new Protoss units don't look quite as silly I guess? mostly the Oracle looks useful

[Firstdragon34]

I watched the Heart of the Swarm trailer at least three times before watching some Blizzcon '011 unit demostrations. Looks like Valerian is going to get his sly manner wiped clean by Kerrigan! 

[G0atmaster]

I thought the Swarm was obliterated by the weapon that de-zergified Kerrigan. I think it's silly that they tried to incorporate characters from Starcraft Ghost, which got scrubbed. Part of the trailer makes it seem almost FPSish.  I'm curious how much of Kerrigan's humanity has returned, and if/how she's maintained control of the zerg. And does human Kerrigan have the ability to turn back the hybrids.  I thought the Zerg part of her was vital to that. Or maybe losing the zerg part made her more suited for that purpose. Can she still go back to Raynor?

[StarSlayer]

**** you Harmony Gold, we'll get Unseen one way or another

[NGTM-1R]

It IS a little Archer-y now that you mention it...

[Kolgena]

[Dark Hunter]

I thought the Swarm was obliterated by the weapon that de-zergified Kerrigan. I think it's silly that they tried to incorporate characters from Starcraft Ghost, which got scrubbed. Part of the trailer makes it seem almost FPSish.  I'm curious how much of Kerrigan's humanity has returned, and if/how she's maintained control of the zerg. And does human Kerrigan have the ability to turn back the hybrids.  I thought the Zerg part of her was vital to that. Or maybe losing the zerg part made her more suited for that purpose. Can she still go back to Raynor?

I hardly think the entire Swarm was on Charr when that Xel'Naga weapon went off.

Also, she's obviously not completely-dezerged. Her hair, for instance, is still spiny and weird-looking. Probably her ability to control Zerg is more localized, and she can't keep control of the entire Swarm at once. In any case, she's still Zerg enough to combat the Hybrids (I'm assuming) and now that she's gotten some measure of humanity back she'll probably be slightly more open to cooperating with the Protoss and Terrans-who-are-not-Mengsk.

Who else is hoping Mengsk will finally die now? He really deserves whatever ass-kicking Kerrigan has in mind for him, if you ask me.

[Nuke]

i suspect that she will still have considerable control over the swarm. here real power was her psionic capabilities. most of the genetic traits she inherited from the zerg are probably gone (excluding bug hair of course). and i bet she will be halfway between the queen of blades and her old self with a severe case of the locutus complex and a hefty desire for revenge.

[Mikes]

Can anyone please elaborate on the horribleness of Wings of Liberty's story as mentioned by Battuta and NGTM-1R?

Having not bought it out of principle...  any report of it sucking of course fills me with glee

[G0atmaster]

I actually thought it would have been a good followup - IF the prelude to its story didn't lie in an often-overlooked bonus campaign level in Broodwar.

[General Battuta]

Who else is hoping Mengsk will finally die now? He really deserves whatever ass-kicking Kerrigan has in mind for him, if you ask me.

Leaked ending says Kerrigan kills Mengsk after an awful ****ty line.

Can anyone please elaborate on the horribleness of Wings of Liberty's story as mentioned by Battuta and NGTM-1R?

ugh where do I begin

Campaign is about 30 missions. The story starts at mission 25. In the 25 missions before that:

1. You do side quests
2. Your buddy Tychus helps you out
3. People constantly warn you that someone on the ship is working for the Dominion and Mengsk has a gun to his/her head
4. Your buddy Tychus was mysteriously released from prison and is locked inside his suit and his suit is receiving mysterious signals
5. Raynor is puzzled about who could possibly be working for the Dominion.

Okay, I lied, there's a bit of macroplot:

1. Kerrigan invades the Dominion. This kills billions of people, is seen entirely off-screen, causes no particular panic or alarm in the characters, and is never really mentioned
2. Raynor takes missions to grab a few Xel'naga artifacts. It turns out Kerrigan is after them too. She races you to catch them by doing devastatingly clever things like

searching apartment buildings one by one

saying 'I'll get you next time, Jimmy!'

In mission 25 Raynor teams up with Valerian Mengsk to assemble the artifacts and attack Char. It turns out the artifacts build a miraculous Xel'naga Kerrigan-deinfesting machine. With just one push of the button, it can reverse Kerrigan's arc from Brood War!

(remember that great moment in brood war when jimmy was all 'you're beyond redemption, kerrigan, next time, for fenix, i'm going to kill you?' yeah that doesn't matter any more)

A chunk of the Dominion fleet and Raynor's one battlecruiser attack Char.

Remember, this is Char, where the whole Swarm has been holed up, evolving, since the end of Brood War.

The end of Brood War where Kerrigan wiped out a coordinated attack by the Dominion, UED, and Protoss.

Naturally, a much smaller Terran-only force does perfectly fine, lands on Char, never faces any serious problems because Jimmy's here, don't worry, and de-infests Kerrigan.

Tychus' big secret turns out to have been that he was working with Mengsk and he's supposed to kill Kerrigan.

Wow, Mengsk, nice planning. You let Tychus run rampant and help out in missions that nearly brought down your government, you didn't use him to track Raynor or anything like that - you just counted on the contrived long odds that at some point he'd be in shooting range of a helpless Queen of Blades. Sure.

But Raynor kills Tychus, fin

****ty ****ty piece of ****, also i failed to describe how all the writing was terrible because IT'S TIME TO KICK THIS REVOLUTION

INTO OVERDRIVE

e: oh there's an even more ****awful part

In a series of side missions Zeratul gives you via a psychic dream crystal, you learn about THE PROPHECY and THE CHOSEN ONE who is the only one who can stop THE DARKNESS

Zeratul has learned that a mysterious force named THE FALLEN O

sorry I had to stop to puke

THE FALLEN ONE has been manipulating events for eons! He corrupted the Zerg into ravenous beasts focused on destroying the Protoss! Fortunately, the well-meaning, good-hearted Overmind (i'm serious, the overmind was just 'manipulated') created Kerrigan to lead the swarm against DIABL no wait SARGER no hang on THE FALLEN ONE and his evil army of Protoss-Zerg hybrids!

In a vision of the distant future we see the Protoss race being wiped out because Kerrigan was killed and couldn't fulfill her destiny and now THE FALLEN ONE will plunge the whole universe into utter darkness

oh and tassadar isn't dead, he struck himself down but became powerful than you can imagine, now he hangs out with the spirit of the brovermind

welp

[General Battuta]

And I'm not gonna lie, they could salvage at least some of this by revealing that Duran manipulated it all to take Kerrigan out of the picture (he did, thus 'Dr. Narud') and that Kerrigan's still queen ***** of the universe and Jimmy's a dumb**** and Kerrigan betrays and kills him and everyone else.

On the other hand, the leaked Heart of the Swarm ending has Kerrigan and Jimmy watching spiraling Mutalisks fly up into the great light in the sky while Kerrigan says "They're free now, Jimmy...free to find their own path in the universe...free to be a force for death, or for life.."

blizzarddddddd

[NGTM-1R]

I will attempt to present a slightly more concise version.

First, the writing: execrable work. Watching Kerrigan and Zeratul throw down should not leave me asking what bad fantasy novel they have animated. I never thought I'd say this either, but losing the original voice of Kerrigan for the dulcet dark menace of Number Six was also a giant ****ing mistake because it made them think Kerrigan could be used just talking rather than acting. The pacing is exceptionally bad and the game never manages to summon a real sense of urgency.

The Protoss were said in the previous materials to have become less...spiritual, and more focused on the grim business of surviving and killing the **** out of Tyranids Zerg. This is a lie. The Protoss have stopped being treated as a clearly technological civilization making use of Clarke's Third Law and instead become your average fantasy elves. I would dearly love to be making this up but I'm not.

The Zerg? I don't even know how they're characterizing the Zerg in Wings of Liberty, because they're not ****ing characterized at all! SC1 and Brood War worked hard to build them up as the Great Devourer all-devouring tide of scuttling death and used many, many cutscenes to establish them as menacing and scary. Wings of Liberty doesn't bother. The Zerg are simply there and you will kill them in such numbers and with such contemptuous ease that their menace is utterly lost. Kerrigan, as Battman noted, does nothing of interest the whole game besides causing your adjutant to utter "Class Twelve Psionic booty Waveform Detetcted" a few times.

All problems in Wings of Liberty can be solved by the Triple M. In the campaign, this means Marines, Marauders, and Medics. In multi, that's Marines, Marauders, and Medivacs. Granted there are a few places where the Triple M is not an optimal solution, but of the many new units you will be introduced to over the course of the campaign, only the missions that introduce the Battlecruiser and the Viking are actually difficult to complete without the new unit (and in the case of the Viking, only if you give a **** about your secondary objectives).

[LordPomposity]

i suspect that she will still have considerable control over the swarm. here real power was her psionic capabilities. most of the genetic traits she inherited from the zerg are probably gone (excluding bug hair of course). and i bet she will be halfway between the queen of blades and her old self with a severe case of the locutus complex and a hefty desire for revenge JUSTIIIIIIIICE

Fixed.