see i think easily blaming metzen is one of the traps people fall into regarding judging the blizzard storylines. he wasn't even the lead writer on Heart of the Swarm, which was the worst-written of all the SC2s! that "honor" goes to brian kindregan. and even then we don't know how much dialogue he's responsible for and how much he just signed off on. even the worst plotting can be enjoyable with interesting characters, but HotS gave us such classics as An Adjutant But For The Zerg and "Power Is A Proper Noun That Can Be Meaningfully Measured And Acquired" Dehaka and The Calmest Man In The Universe About Being Tortured For Years And Wanting Revenge Stukov.
WoL and HotS blend together for me, and the main story beats mirror those of WC3 so much, it's almost comical
And afaik Metzen is still the head of the department? Either way, he obviously raised a bunch of Metzen Jrs around him.
They couldn't even keep the in-game continuity straight, like, take Mohandar, supposed Protoss hero we see in WoL (who seemed cool, btw) - not even mentioned in LotV. Eh. Just eh.
Following clues is one thing but those buttons, the tree button in particular, are just crazy.
I wonder how many hours they wasted trying to solve the puzzle before realizing that there must be another button hidden on the map somewhere.
Actually, looking it up I see that the game has been out for over 2 years, so it'd be interesting to see the overall timeline of events (ie. from noticing the skull all the way up to unlocking the reward).
Following clues is one thing but those buttons, the tree button in particular, are just crazy.
I wonder how many hours they wasted trying to solve the puzzle before realizing that there must be another button hidden on the map somewhere.
Actually, looking it up I see that the game has been out for over 2 years, so it'd be interesting to see the overall timeline of events (ie. from noticing the skull all the way up to unlocking the reward).
That map actually only came out a week ago, it's crazy how fast people got this done.
Anyway now that I have proclaimed myself arrogant enough to suggest that there is even remotely an academic critique of starcraft 2's story, here's the next level of arrogance: how I would fix it
get rid of the prophecy. Prophecies are bad writing. They're like writing the synopsis of the story into the story. Even worse than a prophecy (whose origin and source are not explained it just Exists) is a prophecy you just fulfill to the letter. That's not interesting. "Someone predicted how things would happen and then they happen that way". There's no drama no tension, just players filling the role in the story you wrote them to have - which is a greater problem with the overall narrative. Characters don't seem to act in service to their motivations: they act in service to the plot.
WoL:
Why are we supposed to care about Tychus? This is important, this is like the KEY TENSION of WoL: Allegedly, Tychus is from Raynor's old days (but not our old days). We are told that Raynor has some camraderie with him, but he never seems to actually trust Tychus. We, the audience, know that Tychus is working for Mengsk already. So we have two directions we can go in here: we can ask whether raynor is going to side with Tychus or Kerrigan, or we can ask whether Tychus is going to side with Mengsk or Raynor. The game goes in neither direction, and just makes it obvious Tychus is untrustworthy and shady and then at the end of the game he's untrustworthy and Raynor shoots him. Wow. Great character development.
Give Tychus and Raynor some more personal scenes. Let them talk to each other in private more often. Don't have them just spill their hearts out, of course - use what they don't say as much as what they say. Utilize this to illustrate the conflict they're both experiencing. Raynor should hate both Kerrigan and Mengsk, but also blame himself for their current situations. It's fine for Raynor to latch onto the idea that Kerrigan could actually be saved, because he is looking to redeem himself. WoL rushes ahead and makes it seem as though he's only interested because he loves her, removing much of the conflict. Tychus, meanwhile, should at least be written in a way that makes us believe he might side with Raynor against Mengsk, even if he never actually is. We've already fucked up by making Tychus and Raynor's relationship predicated entirely on events that we are only told about and which we do not see, but we can still show their relationship now.
It might also be worth it to bring Nova into the story more, primarily to flesh her character out. She kind of just seems like the parallel to Kerrigan for Raynor, unearned. Ultimately though fleshing her out is not necessary when you could just give more focus and better writing to Raynor's conflicted opinions about Kerrigan.
HotS:
Kerrigan should probably not be so stupid that she is immediately convinced by fascist propaganda from a lying liar that she hates that Raynor is dead. What would be better is for someone she feels is more reliable to tell her that Raynor is dead. Someone like our new character: Infested Tychus.
Almost all of the characters in HotS are bad. Your dumb replacement Adjutant is bad. Dehaka is bad. Stukov is bad. Zagara is boring. Abathur's great! But when you are surrounded by these bad and boring characters, you don't get interesting conversations or meaningful character development. You know who makes good conversations? Scenery-chewing Tychus. In addition, Tychus has the advantage of being a character who knows Raynor. Kerrigan has absolutely no one to talk about Raynor right now, which makes it confusing and stupid to see her pine for him. Kerrigan is functionally an entirely new character in this game, remember. She's got an entirely new personality. And all we know about her feelings for Raynor is that she likes Raynor because...? Because they flirted a little in a mission briefing in '98? Giving Kerrigan someone to talk to who actually knows Raynor allows us to actually see her work through her feelings and why she's doing what she's doing. Making it Tychus also lets Tychus talk about Raynor, and let us develop that relationship further - especially in light of the fact that Raynor shot him. Now that Tychus gets to explain what his relationship with Raynor was to someone who wasn't there, we have an actual excuse for being told their relationship instead of shown. Anyway Tychus is being a manipulative shit to try and get revenge on Mengsk and later Kerrigan can get really mad and try to kill him because she's been manipulated again. This desire to not be manipulated can assist in her decision to become Zerg again, which should probably happen much later in the plot than it does.
Combine Dr Narud and his previous body Samir Duran into one character, named Samir Duran. There is absolutely no reason to make him a cosmic shapeshifter who shoots DBZ energy beams. It is the most baffling payoff to the mystery lasting over a decade of what Duran's deal is. There's also no reason to make Mengsk more evil by tying him in to the hybrid plot. There are plenty of reasons to want to kill Mengsk beyond cosmic drama. The reveal for Samir Duran can be that he's working for Amon, not that he is a secret superalien. You know, a restrained reveal. You can even make him a powerful psychic who can project hallucinations if you still want to have the bad scene where Kerrigan fights a shapeshifter.
Don't have Kerrigan float into space at the end. There is no way to make that scene good. Also don't keep referring to power as a proper noun and a real thing that can be physically measured. It is embarrassing.
LotV:
The problem with the Protoss is that they are a generic, one-note race. They're super noble, and sometimes that nobility is evil. It is also difficult to communicate their emotions due to their facial design. In addition, the villain Amon is a boring villain whose character traits are that he is the bad guy of the story.
The solution to these problems are of course introducing Tychus. In LotV he has become the replacement for Duran for Amon, the human overseeing everything. Now instead of Amon's embarrassing badguy speeches, messages can be delivered through Tychus and Tychus' personality (This is an improvement). Instead of Amon being an evil Xel'naga when all the good Xel'naga are dead, make him just be a Xel'naga. Preferably the last. He is near the end of his life and needs to reincarnate within a new race, which is why he is hybridizing protoss and zerg. By making Tychus the voice of the bad guy, now we both A) have a personality to interact with and have someone for the protoss to talk to that isn't just another straight man. The protoss writing in LotV isn't even that bad, but they have literally no one to play off of except very similar characters. Personality diversity is important to entertaining schlock.
Once the protoss are free from Amon's control at the end of the game, in a moment of crisis and panic Amon should bond with Tychus. Yes, this is ripping off the end of Frozen Throne. This is a good thing though, because Tychus is a good character. But also it adds a more personal touch for the Zerg and Terran to fight him at the end of the game. The Protoss don't really need a reason to go fuck Amon up - he just had them as a slave race for most of the game. But the other two guys are kind of just there because "Well, he's going to destroy the universe, and I uh I live in the universe, so". That's not an unjustified reason to be a hero, but it's not a very interesting one either. It makes their presence very rote and by the numbers, everyone's all cheery good friends even though, you know, this is the universe where the Protoss purged entire Terran planets because there was a zergling on it, and the Zerg occupied the Protoss homeworld for the majority of the game. It again is fine for people to put differences aside for a larger threat, but making the threat have a more personal angle helps the narrative and gives characters more to say.
Then at the end instead of having Kerrigan become The Phoenix and shoot a laser beam at Amon's face which kills him, you have a more personal fight between them and Tychus. Then he's about to kill Raynor and Kerrigan kills him. It's an inverse of the situation at WoL. It's like poetry, it rhymes. Then instead of pining over Kerrigan Raynor looks at her covered in blood and accepts that maybe they're two different people who have come a long way since they were first crushing on each other and they both move on with their lives.
Instead of leaving a bar with Kerrigan at the end, Raynor kicks back in a spaceship and goes on space adventures with Zeratul (Also Zeratul doesn't die, because death of a mentor as a motivation for a protagonist is super trite and boring). Raynor puts on some music. Zeratul doesn't like it. Hilarious! This terran cowboy country music plays over the credits. The end.
Talos Principle seemed pretty cool, but the humour was a huge part of why I love the Portal games so much. TP (teehee) doesn't have that, so I only played an hour or two.
Also it kind of outstays it's welcome if you try to 100% it, IMO. Once you get enough scrap to get your vehicle how you want it, I'd recommend finishing the game there rather than tracking down every last scrap location on the map.
I'm still trying to scratch this third-person action adventure game itch.
How was the Mad Max game? Is it worth $30?
I loved it. It kind of depends on what sort of completionist you are (if at all). If you feel the need to do/collect eeeeeeeeverything, you might not like it. If you're cool with ignoring scrap (money in the game) that's marked all over the map and just doing the stuff to free a territory, you'll probably have a much better time. I really wish it hadn't released the same day as MGS so more people would have played it.
Posts
As a lover of bad films, I am very used to the "This is so dumb" "I know its great!" discussions
I think both camps are equally right. It's a fantaocity.
see i think easily blaming metzen is one of the traps people fall into regarding judging the blizzard storylines. he wasn't even the lead writer on Heart of the Swarm, which was the worst-written of all the SC2s! that "honor" goes to brian kindregan. and even then we don't know how much dialogue he's responsible for and how much he just signed off on. even the worst plotting can be enjoyable with interesting characters, but HotS gave us such classics as An Adjutant But For The Zerg and "Power Is A Proper Noun That Can Be Meaningfully Measured And Acquired" Dehaka and The Calmest Man In The Universe About Being Tortured For Years And Wanting Revenge Stukov.
And afaik Metzen is still the head of the department? Either way, he obviously raised a bunch of Metzen Jrs around him.
They couldn't even keep the in-game continuity straight, like, take Mohandar, supposed Protoss hero we see in WoL (who seemed cool, btw) - not even mentioned in LotV. Eh. Just eh.
wow
how the hell did they even start looking for that thing
Read Only Memories (50% off), Darkest Dungeon (50% off), Homeworld Remastered (65% off), and Undertale (20% Off)
Going to grab either Total War Rome II or Total War Attila as well, but not sure which.
I cant decide between Rome II or Atilla either
On one hand barbarians, the other Romans to a man!
I wonder how many hours they wasted trying to solve the puzzle before realizing that there must be another button hidden on the map somewhere.
Actually, looking it up I see that the game has been out for over 2 years, so it'd be interesting to see the overall timeline of events (ie. from noticing the skull all the way up to unlocking the reward).
That map actually only came out a week ago, it's crazy how fast people got this done.
Mouse and keyboard or controller games?
maybe one or two other things
might gift somebody Certified Best Game Of All Time (As Voted By GameFAQs) Undertale
it's only ever that high in the tutorial area
that game is pretty fun to just... walk around in and take photos and stuff
WoL:
Why are we supposed to care about Tychus? This is important, this is like the KEY TENSION of WoL: Allegedly, Tychus is from Raynor's old days (but not our old days). We are told that Raynor has some camraderie with him, but he never seems to actually trust Tychus. We, the audience, know that Tychus is working for Mengsk already. So we have two directions we can go in here: we can ask whether raynor is going to side with Tychus or Kerrigan, or we can ask whether Tychus is going to side with Mengsk or Raynor. The game goes in neither direction, and just makes it obvious Tychus is untrustworthy and shady and then at the end of the game he's untrustworthy and Raynor shoots him. Wow. Great character development.
Give Tychus and Raynor some more personal scenes. Let them talk to each other in private more often. Don't have them just spill their hearts out, of course - use what they don't say as much as what they say. Utilize this to illustrate the conflict they're both experiencing. Raynor should hate both Kerrigan and Mengsk, but also blame himself for their current situations. It's fine for Raynor to latch onto the idea that Kerrigan could actually be saved, because he is looking to redeem himself. WoL rushes ahead and makes it seem as though he's only interested because he loves her, removing much of the conflict. Tychus, meanwhile, should at least be written in a way that makes us believe he might side with Raynor against Mengsk, even if he never actually is. We've already fucked up by making Tychus and Raynor's relationship predicated entirely on events that we are only told about and which we do not see, but we can still show their relationship now.
It might also be worth it to bring Nova into the story more, primarily to flesh her character out. She kind of just seems like the parallel to Kerrigan for Raynor, unearned. Ultimately though fleshing her out is not necessary when you could just give more focus and better writing to Raynor's conflicted opinions about Kerrigan.
HotS:
Kerrigan should probably not be so stupid that she is immediately convinced by fascist propaganda from a lying liar that she hates that Raynor is dead. What would be better is for someone she feels is more reliable to tell her that Raynor is dead. Someone like our new character: Infested Tychus.
Almost all of the characters in HotS are bad. Your dumb replacement Adjutant is bad. Dehaka is bad. Stukov is bad. Zagara is boring. Abathur's great! But when you are surrounded by these bad and boring characters, you don't get interesting conversations or meaningful character development. You know who makes good conversations? Scenery-chewing Tychus. In addition, Tychus has the advantage of being a character who knows Raynor. Kerrigan has absolutely no one to talk about Raynor right now, which makes it confusing and stupid to see her pine for him. Kerrigan is functionally an entirely new character in this game, remember. She's got an entirely new personality. And all we know about her feelings for Raynor is that she likes Raynor because...? Because they flirted a little in a mission briefing in '98? Giving Kerrigan someone to talk to who actually knows Raynor allows us to actually see her work through her feelings and why she's doing what she's doing. Making it Tychus also lets Tychus talk about Raynor, and let us develop that relationship further - especially in light of the fact that Raynor shot him. Now that Tychus gets to explain what his relationship with Raynor was to someone who wasn't there, we have an actual excuse for being told their relationship instead of shown. Anyway Tychus is being a manipulative shit to try and get revenge on Mengsk and later Kerrigan can get really mad and try to kill him because she's been manipulated again. This desire to not be manipulated can assist in her decision to become Zerg again, which should probably happen much later in the plot than it does.
Combine Dr Narud and his previous body Samir Duran into one character, named Samir Duran. There is absolutely no reason to make him a cosmic shapeshifter who shoots DBZ energy beams. It is the most baffling payoff to the mystery lasting over a decade of what Duran's deal is. There's also no reason to make Mengsk more evil by tying him in to the hybrid plot. There are plenty of reasons to want to kill Mengsk beyond cosmic drama. The reveal for Samir Duran can be that he's working for Amon, not that he is a secret superalien. You know, a restrained reveal. You can even make him a powerful psychic who can project hallucinations if you still want to have the bad scene where Kerrigan fights a shapeshifter.
Don't have Kerrigan float into space at the end. There is no way to make that scene good. Also don't keep referring to power as a proper noun and a real thing that can be physically measured. It is embarrassing.
LotV:
The problem with the Protoss is that they are a generic, one-note race. They're super noble, and sometimes that nobility is evil. It is also difficult to communicate their emotions due to their facial design. In addition, the villain Amon is a boring villain whose character traits are that he is the bad guy of the story.
The solution to these problems are of course introducing Tychus. In LotV he has become the replacement for Duran for Amon, the human overseeing everything. Now instead of Amon's embarrassing badguy speeches, messages can be delivered through Tychus and Tychus' personality (This is an improvement). Instead of Amon being an evil Xel'naga when all the good Xel'naga are dead, make him just be a Xel'naga. Preferably the last. He is near the end of his life and needs to reincarnate within a new race, which is why he is hybridizing protoss and zerg. By making Tychus the voice of the bad guy, now we both A) have a personality to interact with and
Once the protoss are free from Amon's control at the end of the game, in a moment of crisis and panic Amon should bond with Tychus. Yes, this is ripping off the end of Frozen Throne. This is a good thing though, because Tychus is a good character. But also it adds a more personal touch for the Zerg and Terran to fight him at the end of the game. The Protoss don't really need a reason to go fuck Amon up - he just had them as a slave race for most of the game. But the other two guys are kind of just there because "Well, he's going to destroy the universe, and I uh I live in the universe, so". That's not an unjustified reason to be a hero, but it's not a very interesting one either. It makes their presence very rote and by the numbers, everyone's all cheery good friends even though, you know, this is the universe where the Protoss purged entire Terran planets because there was a zergling on it, and the Zerg occupied the Protoss homeworld for the majority of the game. It again is fine for people to put differences aside for a larger threat, but making the threat have a more personal angle helps the narrative and gives characters more to say.
Then at the end instead of having Kerrigan become The Phoenix and shoot a laser beam at Amon's face which kills him, you have a more personal fight between them and Tychus. Then he's about to kill Raynor and Kerrigan kills him. It's an inverse of the situation at WoL. It's like poetry, it rhymes. Then instead of pining over Kerrigan Raynor looks at her covered in blood and accepts that maybe they're two different people who have come a long way since they were first crushing on each other and they both move on with their lives.
Instead of leaving a bar with Kerrigan at the end, Raynor kicks back in a spaceship and goes on space adventures with Zeratul (Also Zeratul doesn't die, because death of a mentor as a motivation for a protagonist is super trite and boring). Raynor puts on some music. Zeratul doesn't like it. Hilarious! This terran cowboy country music plays over the credits. The end.
It works just fine with a controller. I'd advise remapping the buttons so they make sense to you before you start, though.
Darkest Dungeon the only other tempter atm. Others I've been waiting on don't seem to have hit big yet this sale, only 10-15% off so safe on those.
I think it's out next month? So you might want to take advantage of the discount while it lasts. I heard great things!
Ori and the Blind Forest and Never Alone also got good discounts atm.
Time for some eyegasm gorgeous platforming too I guess!
Talos Principle was my favorite puzzle game since Portal.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
How was the Mad Max game? Is it worth $30?
Steam ID - VeldrinD | SS Post | Wishlist
I loved it. It kind of depends on what sort of completionist you are (if at all). If you feel the need to do/collect eeeeeeeeverything, you might not like it. If you're cool with ignoring scrap (money in the game) that's marked all over the map and just doing the stuff to free a territory, you'll probably have a much better time. I really wish it hadn't released the same day as MGS so more people would have played it.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing