StarCraft 2 Heart Of The Swarm Retrospective: The "WoWification" Of The Franchise

The campaign would have been far better if infested Stukov met Kerrigan earlier in the campaign.

You didn't do the secret mission in WOL and I'm so sad 😢sets up the hybrid and everything

Personally i thought the narrative was a little sad puppy but was still good. I liked how Zerg the Zerg characters are but yeah they are pretty one dimensional. Overall was very happy with this one

Imagine starting genocidal war because of one news story

I just realised, I would prefer totalitarian government over some unknown outer space hive mind species destroying human worlds. Raynor is a traitor of the human race.

I am almost the exact opposite of you. I was so upset that Kerrigan ended up being a human character in this expansion. Since she was healed, I was hoping this champaign would feel like playing Tyranids. Just an all consuming, no emotions swarm.

oh good I thought it started to get too warcrafty too. Especially with the character models, Raynor looks like someone blew him up like a balloon

There were unfortunatly some duds in the story. But overall the story of blind revenge seems justified from her perspective. They should have went full hog and made her and jim full on enemies

Witing was wierd, but I loved the gameplay and music :D

Heart of the Swarm, aka the character assassination of Sarah Kerrigan. To be fair it begun in Wings of Liberty with the terrible concept of the Mobius Foundation and how Kerrigan can be turned from human to Zerg than back to human and ultimately back to Zerg so willy nilly. Who is Kerrigan even supposed to be in HotS? Ghost Kerrigan? Queen of Blades Kerrigan? Before or after all the trauma she went through and than inflicted unto the rest of the galaxy? I feel that the writing started on a bad note because Blizzard had no idea who Kerrigan was even supposed to be. One day she's full psycho, the next day she's a love struck puppy again. One day she's a brilliant strategist, the next day she throws all tactical sense out the window to preserve some human lives, lives she order to be annihilated just the day before.

The best way I can describe Kerrigan in HotS is a person suffering from a severe multiple personality disorder, as each time it's like she's a completely different person. Ironically enough this can actually make sense, if we are to understand that all the trauma Kerrigan went through simply broke her psyche, which in turn shattered into all these different personalities as a way to protect what was left of her mind. However it is painfully clear this isn't at all what the writers had in mind and that they simply had no coherent plan for her. Nor for the other characters in her story: Raynor and Valerian, as they too clearly had no idea how to deal with Kerrigan. I mean I get it, every time it's a completely different Kerrigan, what are they supposed to think? But the writers didn't even lean into this at all, they simply never put any thought into the story they were writing so it ended up an incoherent mess.

I am watching SC2 retrospectives in reverse order. No it wasn't intentional.

To me, it would have been so much better to watch Kerrigan struggle with her need for vengence vs her holding on to her humanity. This could have been a process where she chips away at her values, trading it for more and more power and by the time she gets her revenge she realizes the total cost: spitting in the face of the only person that still believes in her and wanted to save her. It would have been a reflection of Jimmy sacrificing everything in order to accomplish his goals as well, and, in the end, invalidating it all.

Her gradually changing would feed into the prophecy angle as well. That she was always meant to be the Queen of Blades. Jim means it when he says he is done. When they meet again to kill Mengsk, he begrudgingly teams to saying he still has a job to do. After killing Mengsk, Jim sticks to his word and leaves without her, hopefully giving Kerrigan a chance to fully realize what she has done and gives her an emotional reason to justify an atonement through deep sacrifice of some sort.
The writers had some of these ideas but just kind of lampshade them and blast right through them

One thing I do like about heart of the swarm is that it starts out simple but once you reach the final level, its balls to the walls nuts.
Though there were some indevelopment images where heart of the swarm was gonna be something like a mixture of conquest, IE, you play a series of minimissions, conquering planets as various queens with major plot important planets.

However one thing I do like is that in the third to last mission, with the psy disruptor it was called? the primal zerg drop ability will drop primal zergs that aren't harmed by the death field which is a nice attention to detail.

Being Zerg my favorite faction I kinda hate this campaign: 40% of the missions are not even macro engine, which defines Zerg as the race. Macro, mass units, spellcasters, carnivore party. It does not matter here, because Kerrigan OP. macro: No injects, larva spawns infinite and barely missions with more than 2 bases.

I think that the Zerg getting Brood War Kerrigan campaign has got enough of good campaigns.

Ok so your complaint about Jim in the beginning. Imagin you sacrafice so much to turn the queen of blades, she has been responsable fo billions if not trillions of deaths, has manipulated all her allies, only to just turn around and be reinfested. From his inital perspective she turned herself back into that monster. If i were jum id be pissed too. And were not talking some petty oh i bought you lunch now date me shit, were talking thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people dying to bring kerragan back to being human.

Man, this was a game I loved from a gameplay perspective. The customizable units, more varied missions and bosses and such. But it also completely checked me out of the story. The romance being so central and bad was a turn off and it generally didn’t feel like the story was going places.

I don't understand your complaints, at least not entirely.
Heart of the Swarm feels like the story of someone uninterested in redemption. Someone coming to master their traumas, their scars.
Having their first transformation forced upon her, feeling abandoned by those they trusted most.
Being able to choose to embrace what had been forced upon them, especially as a means of conquering the one who enabled your trauma, is phenomenal to me.

My problem with kerrigan return to the mutated form is that is visually boring. The same (ugly) design from the previous game with s skin-swap. They should have shown us something radically different to give us the visual context of her being something new.

I honestly thought at the end Raynor would just join Kerrigan. Since she's such a genetic queen with the Zerg she can just shift her outward body to be Human and Raynor will be there for temperance. Meh, they didn't even went all out in their dribble.

I did like the game, and was shocked at the whole death of Raynor but knew it had to be lie. But i hated the reckon of the Zerg history with the primal zerg, plus they seemed to forget the fact that Kerrigan knew of Amon or at least his threat, she knew he was out there and spent the entire of the broodwars getting the swam to the point were they could stand up to him, Hell Even the queen of blades was a last ditch effort by the Overmind to thawte Amons attempts to control the swam, If i remember right, Kerrigan could even refuse to follow the Overminds orders such was the free will it granted her and when questioned on this by Daggoth the Overmind told it not to worry as she was bound to it as tightly as any other cerebrate, in that she could defy him but never turn again him

My guess is the writers forgot the law or were not involved in the 1st SC/BW since the original's came out so long ago, they likely just winged it to reach the final point of the story

Honestly they really couldve killed Jim Raynor in HoTS he really doesnt do anything relevant in this or LoTV.

Like have a Ned Stark type scene whete it cuts to a TV broadcast with Raynor getting actually executed, better way for us to understand what Kerrigan is feeling and all.

Biggest loss would be the Artanis and Jim conversation in LOTV wich is good but idk it feels weird that Mengsk doesnt just immediately execute Raynor.

Im gonna defend the tutorial, Zerg isnt as intuitive as Terran. Besides they taught everything you need to know in 1 mission.

Kerrigan suffers from being too much of a protagonist

Personally im ok with re-zergfying Kerrigan, sure the first game was about de-zerging her but the most important thing is that her mind isnt Zerg not her body. Like sure she is a bad person but not because of zergification its just how she is.

The opening cinematic made really wanna feel what it be like in either a 3rd person or 1st person shooter to be attacked by the searm

You called Kerrigan letting the wounded go on Char nuance, its character inconsistency. She just got off the back of slaughtering protoss without remorce and is about to slaughter scientists at Skygeirr.

Also ot makes no sense for Char to be a major Zerg world (basically homeworld. The reason the Zerg were there in sc1 is because it was in the middle of nowhere with no resources. They wanted somewhere to lay low to birth Kerrigan. Once that is done they would have moved on.

You also glossed over her sending that brood mother to the ship production world, she said nothing anout civilian casualties and told her to destroy the world. So shes irredeemable at this point.

Also missed the introduction of Hybrid being able to psychicly attack and kill other psionic users from long distance within minutes, which had never come up before and never comes up after Skygeirr. This is a major issue because literally all of the protoss are psionic. So this should definitely come up in LotV.

Now that i think about it, the only campaign in starcraft II where one hero unit is front and center in-game and it thematically doesn't fit is heart of the Swarm. It doesn't really fit the Zerg to have a one man army like kerrigan in most missions.

why did they let jimmy keep his gun on the prison?

During the Warfield scene this could have been Kerrigan's lowest point of really losing her humanity, she pulls the swarms back from finishing off the humans. This is when she has absolute control over the swarm and when she actually starts to learn to get control of herself instead of Force-Crushing anyone that is a Protoss or Terran who disagree with her. We had infested Stukov but not Warfield? Stukov was deep inside a facility that made it hard for Zerg to communicate or do anything. But they decided to save Stukov? Okay... Warfield at least came from these games and he's right there on Char. Stukov isn't an asset for the remaining story - he's UED. Infest Warfield could be useful against Mengsk.

Instead of going for a great story with great moments, they went for shock and drama that just doesn't hold up.

Normally, a Starcraft campaign centers around a race. During SC1, the Zerg campaign had almost no heroes, except for above-average stat nameless zerg and when Kerrigan does hatch. I never thought of this as a downside - the Zerg still overhear and talk to the other races. In BW especially, Kerrigan is playing all the other factions off each other so as you said before we learn about her and the Zerg via her interactions with people that push back, don't trust her, or have to.

One-note Zerg 'characters' defeat the idea of the Zerg. Brood mothers have to now be named characters like the Cerebrates? They need to be upgraded?

You could honestly replace all Zerg dialogue in HotS with snarls and growls and the impact on the player would be the same.

Okay for the zerg advisors I like aburthur and zaguar. For aburthur its intriguing to see his insight on the zerg, how methodical and cold he is and the his tangents on how to improve the zerg is really cool, also the little character moments where he gets frustrated by the primal zerg ability to steal his work or his intense desire to know more of kerrgians new form until she forces him away gives him a lot of character in my opinion.

As for zagara i love how at first she questions kerrigan not understanding a lot of her perspective, and i like how Kerrigan teaches her it, and makes her go to aburthur to undergo evolution to get smarter and more independent. So its really neat to see zagara at the end who seems to better understand Kerrigan and seems more like her own person with perspective of her own, i like that progession.

Now the rest of them are pretty bland, izsha is the most boring character ever with nothing notable or interesting just spouting generic lines, dehaka just constantly spouts about wanting essance very one note character which gets boring, stukov... well i just dont him being alive and is just felt more like fanservice plus i dont really buy he would want to join the queen of blades of all people he wasnt bad but i would prefer if they didnt bring him back. So yeah i dont like much of the zerg advisors but i will totally defend zagara and aburthur.

Oh and kerrigan having seemly no problem turning back into the queen of blades is ridiculous and a huge character regression seeing that she was seemly haunted by her past and worried that she might turn back into a monster.. and then just does it with little hesitation in the moment is pretty lazy writing. Before she underwent that transformation she needed to really show hesitancy or something to show it was a tough decision or better yet, have it be necessary! Like for example maybe the zurvan have her gain essance or whatever and he becomes a supremely powerful being and begins to control all the primal zerg, he is able to start dominating kerrigan forces and she is facing complete destruction she now only has one choice undergo the transformation back to the queen of blades or fail her goal, boom! Now you have tension and a tough decision, which is a lot more cool and more natural than just her going "oh yeah ill become the queen of blades again why not lol! Revenge is all that matters"

I just dont like how Kerrigan is so inconsistent, sometimes she is regret of her past and worried of what she might become and the next is spouting the most evil lines, destroying escaping terran and protoss with barely a care, and whole planets with barely any remorse. Its like they couldn't decide to make her a monster or a sympathetic hero and it's just bad lol!

The Primal Zerg thing was a retcon, right? I thought I remembered that the original Zerg species were these tiny little guys that resembled modern Zerg larvae, and everything else is based on some other species they assimilated later.

I feel like Kerrigan said the line "losing a friend" in regards to Raynor, was more of for Iszhas sake. The zerg, as you said yourself, don't really know what empathy is. So something like love is truly nonexistent for them.
So she said "friend", because that is as close for understanding she could do for Zerg to understand.
Like, in the custscene with Zerathul, Kerrigan sits alone with the zergling as a pet. No one to consult with or converse with. Because most if not all Zerg have one simple purpose and nothing else. Free will and understanding the feelings of fragile humans is not among them and is probably deemed as unnecessary.
Thats how i understood it, but ofcourse, could be wrong anyway. :D

I find the Zerg characters interesting because it gives you an insight into their Alien mindset, they are obsessed with perfection and their primary function because that is what they were born for. Though I will admit it can get tiresome, especially when they start rambling about "essence" whatever that is.

Ok but like, if Jimmy was a close friend and not a love interest, he could have played a similar role on the story. That much ticks me off the most. The writing in general is blegh, but that just feels worse to me.

Dunno where they got that "now Im free of Amons corruption" bs, one of the plans of the Overmind with her was that she would be free of his and celebrates overriding direcrive, even her 1st freakin mission after her initial transformation was an act of her own free will...to go and find her psi powers or some bs....they played the dumb sylvanas "no me no my problem" and failed again, because in TFT sylvanas was loosen of the lk control and even told us "my will is my own once again"....brainless zug zug excuse is so invalid for these two disgusting, hypocritical characters.....

Starcraft 1's prevailing theme presented a gray world where whatever you try to do to make a difference, you end up just tagging along for the ride. This, symbolized by Raynor's bike, and his quote "ride on". The only real positive change will come slowly, through calm and concerted effort instead of blazes of glory. Even kerrigan's victory is sort of a return to miserable normalcy.

Starcraft 2 threw that out for a black and white high fantasy story, that felt unoriginal.

"There's a lot of hard work that went into this."
It's a corporation. Do you think one animator did all that? It was probably like 50 guys and girls, and they were tasked out. Yes, they had crunch time, but I think construction workers and nurses actually work harder.

Oh there is a funny voice line if you drone rush the whole facility in the opening tutorial.

I am happy to take a contrary view. Raynor's hero story of rescuing Kerrigan was needed to develop the character. Kerrigan's transformation was needed to complete the broader story. I also don't mind the creation of new characters. Raynor and Zeratul are involved enough to move the story along. All in all, the story was okay. Not much to complain about. Because, while we can explain things from a rational standpoint, let's be honest, humans are not rational. We do contradictory and stupid crap all the time. People kill millions and yet love at the same time. It is the human condition.

I mean, if you want more dialogue or explanation, that's fair, though I will say the backstory already established of Raynor hating Mengsk and loving Kerrigan means I would have found the exposition pointless and unnecessary. I mean you complain you don't want stuff spoon-fed to you then complain it is not spoon-fed to you. It is not hard to see how emotionally invested characters make decisions and then change their opinions.

I played SC 1 as a child, like 9 years old, and didn’t really pay attention to the story, then I played SC2 at like 13, and completely bought into the Jim and Kerrigan love story and suddenly thought it was a big thing in the original game. Even now when I replay the original StarCraft I defenitly make their story bigger than it actually was