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Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on November 13, 2015, 10:38:07 pm

Title: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: General Battuta on November 13, 2015, 10:38:07 pm
The STARCRAFT CREATIVE TEAM gathers around the table. At each chair is a tiny PYLON made of CRYSTAL METH

CINEMATICS LEAD: We don't, uh, we're not sure how to characterize the, uh, the villain. We need a signature visual to show that he's, uh, a villain.

IDEA MAN: I have an idea. He should crackle with red lightning.

IDEA MAN 2: He should shoot the red lightning

IDEA MAN 3: Red lightning

EVERYONE: Red lightning

The meeting ADJOURNS.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: General Battuta on November 13, 2015, 10:40:08 pm
What this story needs is some....
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: General Battuta on November 13, 2015, 10:41:29 pm
...corruption.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 13, 2015, 11:20:36 pm
Amon is like the average sunday morning cartoon villain.
They don't waste a single moment to show you just how bad and evil he is.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 13, 2015, 11:23:01 pm
Just in case the average player doesn't get how evil he is, he has to do the most dastardly things to rub in how much evil he really is, you can't really miss it.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 13, 2015, 11:25:19 pm
It's kind of a nice comparison to current blizzard game design, nothing too subtle, lowest entry point for every person out there. Gotta make sure even the most simple person *gets it*.
Just in case you didn't catch it the first time Amon has spoken about how you all have to become very dead, or his eternal slave. Don't worry, he'll repeat it a few times more.

Kind of like Blizzard game design.
Oh wait, I already said that.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 14, 2015, 03:35:58 am
Also the Protoss Executor that was made in 5 minutes in 3DS Max can't decide whether the Templars you're rescuing from Amon are actually Zealots or Templars (prologue)
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 14, 2015, 03:36:44 am
Let us not forget Kerrigan getting in his way for... no reason and generally being a stupid idot
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 14, 2015, 03:37:32 am
Oh yeah also random Dominion soldiers laughing and generally just being so evil like Saturday morning cartoon villains except without the justification of being a Saturday morning cartoon villain (or Amon)

Blizzard's latest installment of Saturday Cartoon 2 has proven that they are brilliant writers, able to completely reverse previous characterization and development by pretending that neither concept are things or never happened.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 14, 2015, 06:41:23 am
Also the Protoss Executor that was made in 5 minutes in 3DS Max can't decide whether the Templars you're rescuing from Amon are actually Zealots or Templars (prologue)
Hades, you nerde.
We've been over this. Templar is a generic warrior caste term and does not specificially refer to the high templar or dark templars. They're using templar like that throughout the whole campaign.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 14, 2015, 07:34:46 am
Even if that's true (I don't remember anything in the games to support such a theory) then it's still silly that they jump between Zealot and Templar in the same sentence, let alone several times in the same thought.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 14, 2015, 07:42:03 am
It's not a theory, they explicitly say that there is a protoss caste system, and templars being the warrior caste. There is one 'fate smith' character in the campaign that has to lead a mission once and he gets uplifted to Templar after, despite being a craftsman his whole life.
Stuff.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: General Battuta on November 14, 2015, 08:11:52 am
Yeah the castes are straight from the second-greatest piece of StarCraft canon, the SC1 manual. They also pop up a lot in the story, it's why you get factional warfare against the Judicators and stuff.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 14, 2015, 08:24:50 am
I see. It's still weird they use a unit name for that though and it's also still weird that it bounces from Templar to Zealot and back again a few times regardless.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: crizza on November 14, 2015, 10:03:35 am
Is it Phase smith or fate smith?
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 14, 2015, 10:51:26 am
Is it Phase smith or fate smith?
That is a good question
I kept hearing it as 'face smith', so I figured it would probably be fate smith, but it could be phase smith!

One wiki search later; it's actually phasesmith
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: crizza on November 15, 2015, 06:54:24 am
Hm, why did they kill Zeratul? Because he would otherwise feature too much in the campaign?
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 15, 2015, 07:05:21 am
Zeratul decided he had enough of the terrible Starcraft 2 games and told Blizzard to write in a death scene like Leonard Nimoy did in The Wrath of Khan in order to get out of the series
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: mjn.mixael on November 16, 2015, 08:52:43 am
And yet... Somehow we all paid for another round of this storytelling.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: General Battuta on November 16, 2015, 09:01:29 am
I don't think we did, YouTube is pretty great.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 16, 2015, 09:54:35 am
And yet... Somehow we all paid for another round of this storytelling.

Don't know about you, but that's what video let's plays are for.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on November 16, 2015, 10:02:10 am
Yeah, the last blizzard game I bought was Warcraft 3 + Frozen Throne. I've got plenty of friends that play SC2 online, so they've let me borrow their account to allow me play the single player campaigns some time after the games came out.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Spoon on November 16, 2015, 10:48:57 am
And yet... Somehow we all paid for another round of this storytelling.
I had mad fun with the campaign though
And archon mode with a friend is jolly good times too
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: mjn.mixael on November 16, 2015, 10:50:57 pm
The Protoss campaign was ok. A lot of it felt like they just kinda had to come up with something because everyone expected a Protoss campaign. In fact, as far as Starcraft 2 goes, Wings of Liberty, IMO, is probably the most interesting campaign from a story perspective. Hell... take out all the Zeratul/prophecy crap and it becomes a decent enough conclusion in it's own right. The ending scene with Raynor and Sara was very strong... but then, thanks to the prophecy stuff and Heart of the Swarm that all gets abandoned pretty quickly and suddenly SC2 ends as a half-hearted epic.

Wings of Liberty - Rescue story
Heart of the Swarm - Revenge story
Legacy of the Void - Forced story
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Turambar on November 17, 2015, 12:50:17 pm
And yet... Somehow we all paid for another round of this storytelling.

Don't know about you, but that's what video let's plays are for.

Yeah I figured out the story was done after i played SC2 and it turns out the bad guy is the Space Devil all along.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Phantom Hoover on November 17, 2015, 01:19:57 pm
Quote from: Starcraft wiki
Blizzard has clarified that the Voice in the Darkness is a different entity and not the same thing as the Dark Voice.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Snarks on November 19, 2015, 03:44:31 pm
And yet... Somehow we all paid for another round of this storytelling.

Well, it's oddly charming. SC2 is so bad and ridiculous that it's worth playing, maybe not at full price but still quite the paradox. If Legacy of the Void can top Heart of the Swarm's ridiculousness, then I can expect to see more ridicule threads, which are all so fun to read.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: General Battuta on November 19, 2015, 03:50:13 pm
SC1: characters turn on each other due to conflicting motives, leading to tragic deaths and a cycle of violence

SC2: characters turn on each other due to red lightning. everybody comes back to life
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: AtomicClucker on November 20, 2015, 01:07:21 am
Well, seeing how the story crafting of Blizzards major IPs has gone downhill, the degradation seen in the latest SC2 release isn't surprising. But oh boy is it cringeworthy that it actually worth to see.

Hell, just look at the expansions to World of Warcraft post-Wrath of the Lich King. Anything afterwards has been... well laughable.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 20, 2015, 02:02:28 pm
SC2: characters turn on each other due to red lightning. everybody comes back to life
It's like a bad episode of Star Trek without the prospect of them releasing a good episode afterwards.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 20, 2015, 04:06:07 pm
It's like a bad episode of Star Trek without the prospect of them releasing a good episode afterwards.

Dramatis Personae, Masks, or I'm sure Voyager did an episode on that theme but idgaf to look up which one it was?
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 20, 2015, 07:07:16 pm
I'm pretty sure there's at least four or five Voyager episodes that at least has the whole crew dying to come back due to space magic, and I'm not one to discriminate based on color of space magic
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 20, 2015, 10:12:27 pm
I'm pretty sure there's at least four or five Voyager episodes that at least has the whole crew dying to come back due to space magic, and I'm not one to discriminate based on color of space magic

It's the turning on each other part I was really having trouble hitting.
Title: Re: INT — BLIZZARD HQ
Post by: Hades on November 21, 2015, 10:22:38 am
That's true. I don't know Voyager well enough to really say, though I think Twisted hits some qualifiers for this offhand.