Grant on Mission 1: "We'll be doing speedrunning of this campaign!" Grant on Mission 4: "What interesting team composition we can choose for this mission?" Never change, Grant!
Small correction. Orlan is even more useless in HotS swarm. He is just a popsicle Mira Han keeps in her fridge for Jimmy. She refuses to give him to Horner so they have a marital spat. Orlan doesn't get any on screen time outside of Cutthroat Long story short he would be perfect for a campaign. He is a blank slate protagonist and gives room for actual villains to play off, kinda like in Starcraft 1. 😂
Tbf what little we do know of him is actually pretty cool. Expert Confederate codebreaker means he's a pain in the ass for the Dominion who still use Confederate encryption just by existing. The only reason we're able to capture him on Cutthroat is because Mira is the perfect combo of rich, crazy, and enamoured with Matt Horner. Tho he could also be fun as an incompetent antagonist in a Jinara/Team Rocket kind of way.
Orlan does get screentime in a mini cutscene in HotS which consists of Matt pressuring him to work on finding jim, with the threat of handing him back over to Mira if he doesn't cooperate. Now I want a campaign about what it was like for Orlan, and him being stuck in the midst of some crazy, terrifying adventures Mira has. Something that feels like slice of life.
Worst custom campaign would be "Don't go up that road" Civilian and the whole thing is just trying to micro your way through the battlefields of other missions with a single civilian that can't attack.
So more a stealth puzzle version of the campaign As you play delivered guy to a ai ally Something like . Your the one delivering the guns and tanks to your ally. All while trying to avoid the battles and enemy's . With the option to send better stuff to your ally or upgrade your own gear. Like buy your self grenades, or do you upgrade the allys wepons so they can clear
Campaign ideas centred on side characters: Hill prequel that shows how he got to know all those mercenaries Abathur, but during his mindless beast years The ghost of Fenix develops time travel technology and so teams up with Zealot Fenix, Dragoon Fenix and Purifier Fenix. I call it Fournix.
Guys… it’s so obvious, these are good ideas. But what about Niadra? Her one goal was kill the protosss, should be another sort of brood-war thing where she leads raids against Protoss. Daelamn, taldarim, whichever. Sort of like how there was a custom campaign about a brood mother named Rethara who fought mainly UED. Separate broodmother stories is easy content farm. Especially if done right, could be thousands maybe millions of dollars idea. Or like even a campaign where it jumps around to the different broodmothers. The idea of simply the other factions, or the other part of this faction that you don’t see in the official campaigns, that’s what you need to think about.
@@altucrix6959 if/when starcraft 3 comes: Niadra fights against Zaggy whilst a zerg civil war comes cause of Abather. UED returns Protoss trying to remake the khala/the mecha protoss.
@@TheProcessEngineeratLarge I don't know who Zaggy is, am uncultured. UED returns is a must, especially since it's been hinted at a lot in conversation between Kerrigan and Stukov when discussing why she won't let him go back to earth, and that she had been preparing for their return to cause... all kinds of chaos for her at the very least. (Haven't played much of SC1 or Broodwar so again, uncultured) Also I don't get the Abathur bit, due to the fact he stated he "isn't zerg unless under someone's control" that means that the Zerg Civil war would simply be if someone had a problem with ZAGARA, as explored by the swarm's control custom Campaign, where Rethara kills a rouge broodmother. (Again, uncultured so please correct me if I'm wrong.) And as for your protoss thing, definitely. Though it would probably go wrong again. And if that were the case it'd put more pressure on Artanis for his ideas of "Unity." Though honestly for protoss campaign I'm really more about focusing on Tal'Darim honestly, where is Alarak now? Was never confirmed he knew of Amon's death (From what I've seen) all that. Especially because a lot of people like him, me included.
I really wish it had been "one hour" and had the inverse push. You start with the whole map controlled, and the zerg hit really hard, then the hyperion arrives, clears the map of zerg and you get to go relax with slow attacks while you wait for everybody to board the hyperion.
What you're referring to Grant is a doorhead ant. They are a specialized form of leaf cutter soldier that is purely designed to block the entrances to the nest when an army ant raid comes by. They live for the choke point
Or he could be refering to Trapdoor Ants who has two types of majors, the ones with the thicker exoskeleton that are better for combat and the ones with the enlarged head that is good for blocking entrances to satalite nurseries and the main hive in case of emergency.
The Orlan campaign would unironically be great. I remember an archives video one time where the idea of "bootleg" versions of all the Terran units came up - Orlan gets a really janky discount Terran army that's incredibly cheap to spam but never works right. Now, the *worst* character to base a campaign around... ...I mean, the meme answer is Ariel Hanson, but personally I don't understand the Hanson hate and I think her campaign would have interesting opportunities for new mechanics around infestation and research into fighting the Zerg virus. I think the two top contenders are actually Izsha and Nyon. Izsha has a bland personality and she doesn't really have any good reason to get interesting new units or mechanics. She'd just have Kerrigan's Zerg faction, minus Kerrigan, probably minus some of the more interesting mutations. She doesn't really have any unique abilities or skills, other than acting as Kerrigan's office assistant. Nyon, meanwhile, is Tal'darim but doesn't get any of their cool units and powers. He uses *Scouts*, for Adun's sake. I mean, he gets warp-in Colossi, but that's old news in the world of custom factions and campaigns. His personality is based entirely around causing Jim problems and getting annoyed at people who try to touch his stuff. That's not a lot to work with. Clolarion would just be a Purifier campaign, which isn't *bad* but I don't think he gives us much that Fenix doesn't. Likewise for Brakk, Yagdra, Kraith and Slivan; a Primal campaign is a fine idea but none of the pack leaders give you anything that you couldn't get from Dehaka or Zurvan. Ji'nara similarly brings very little to the table that distinguishes her from Alarak. Mechanically you can kinda say the same for Valerian or Warfield, but they at least have the personality to carry an interesting story. Unexpectedly, I think Kate Lockwell would probably be one of the worst choices, unless you can swing a genre shift. It's narratively hard to justify putting her in charge of an army and I'm not sure what mechanics she could possibly have. You'd have to do a lot of work to build her as a character independent of her role as a "straight man" to Donny Vermillion (because if he's around, it will inevitably become "the Donny Vermillion campaign," not "the Kate Lockwell campaign"). I don't want to write her off completely, though - she could totally be the lead in a campaign that de-emphasised RTS base-building in favour of more RPG, MOBA or Roguelike mechanics. And for an honourable mention - Lasarra seems like a *terrible* choice at first glance. She's dead and she's a non-combatant Khalai civilian. But if you're willing to do a moderately silly deus-ex-machina on her death... have her somehow "come back wrong" (but *not* truly infested, because Protoss can't be infested) after being killed by Kerrigan's parasite, then either escape the doomed Protoss colony ship or retake it from Niadra... She could build a weird, fucked-up new faction that focused on combining the native animals of different planets with both Protoss technology and Zerg mutations. Is it a *good* idea? No. But it's surprising that it doesn't feel like the *worst* idea.
With Nyon you could make a campain about him and his crazed followers taking control of the places we visit (dig, BC mission, etc.) before wol. And with Izsha - base menagement a la fallout shelter or X-com with upgrading units at Abatur's, sending them to semi automated missions and tasks from Zagara or Kerrigan.
@@krismal1300 Yeah, maybe? Build out the non-Amon-follower version of the Tal'darim faction, have them fight the Mobius Foundation, maybe work in some weird Xel'naga stuff on the worldship? I think the best angle there is to focus on how stretched thin the Tal'darim must be, trying to claim and protect all those Xel'naga sites on different planets around the sector. Maybe have some mechanics about shuffling your limited forces from one planet to another on a galaxy map and trying to balance which sites are most important vs. which ones are in the most immediate danger. I still don't know if I'm seeing the Izsha one, honestly. I do think that's the right direction to go with her if you *wanted* to do an Izsha campaign, but I'm not sure the "disposable" nature of individual Zerg works well with that style of management game, and I feel like Abathur would still be a more interesting character to focus on.
Reporter: "Sources say that king of Raynor's Raiders is in fact leading Hyperion!" Isha: "What does he want?" Sarrah: "He returned to finish the job!" *dramatic music plays, screen fades to black*
Gods i still love the accidental conversations between grant and the AI. Grant as civilian:"What are we standing in line for? Is there icecream?" Kerrigan: "The swarm hungers."
4 days for an entire campaign? Good eating in the GiantMeatGames community! Battlecruisers also do the fire animation, as well as colussus. Another animation is the 'sliced' one that's most noticeable on marauders killed by zealots, DTs or sword Nova
The Orlan campaign would involve the heavy use of hacking, mercs, and contracts and be very cutthroat. Also it would involve more of Mira Han. No, the worst custom campaign would be about Hanson
The most obscure named character to make a campaign around might be Nafash, the Zerg Queen that's dead in a corner on Kaldir. Least favorite for me would probably be Cpl Faraday from the Rifts to Korhal coop mission, I hate every word that comes out of his mouth^^
I never realized until now that a zergling is as big as a dog no wonder Kerrigan consider one as a pet far more cuddly than a hydralisk 😂😂😂😂😂😂 hoping to see a memes of the swarm someday too
Canon from the original Starcraft 1 terran campaign cinematics no less! It’s a zergling, smaller type o zerg. But they ain’t been seen out this far yet…
Acid deaths are just fire deaths with changed color. But did you notice how cool zealot and dark templar kills look? Pay attention when you have opportunity. The look sick.
Obviously this is the universe where Kerrigan actually keeps here humanity, while commanding the Zerg, and thus getting help from various Terran commanders
To be honest, a Colonel Orlan campaign in the vein of the WC3 Garithos Campaign would be fire. The person least suited to actually achieve anything bumbling their way into success in what is the most satire manner possible, probably taking over the Dominion in the process and courting a random Swarm Queen (Naktul?) who ends up leading the entire swarm as his ally somehow beating Amon without any Xel'Naga powers involved
I’ll be honest, I don’t think Orlan would actually be the worst custom campaign character. He’s got literally any personality in his one mission, and a decent set of grudges to take care of. As well as a pretty unique potential theme with the whole “scrapper army” thing. In my opinion, the worst character to make a custom campaign with would be the engineer guy from Nova Covert Ops because it would just be an even shittier version of something that already exists.
this makes me think how I would have liked to see HoTS explore a "good" swarm. Ya know, not having her go straight back to mass murder ya know? For example the Ice planet in HoTS. She *had* the hydras and the brood, there was no reason to kill the protoss, she could have been gone by the time the Armada showed up.
Honestly I don't get why she goes back to char. Like there some zerg there, cool. But like it has little actually strategic value by the looks of things.
Blizzard: "But we must show how GREAT Kerrigan is by having her be smarter than Protoss! To prove that, Protoss will fall for incredibly stupid Kerrigan ploy that REALLY shouldn't have worked! And then everyone can talk about how GREAT and SMART Kerrigan is and how the Protoss are dumb doodoo heads who aren't as GREAT and SMART as Kerrigan!" Sorry, I have SERIOUS hatred for SC2 Kerrigan. Pretty much all the worst parts of every SC2 Campaign are the ones involving her.
There is actually support in the editor for custom death models of many kinds, but obviously fire and disintegrate (aka dissolving in acid) are the most commonly used ones. Other death types like "Silent Kill" (used iirc for snipe deaths or whatever) tend to be animations baked in the vanilla death model
I feel like I just did Archipelago: Anti-zerg edition. A full grid, about 2 dozen missions... and the only zerg units I unlocked were the mutalisk and the infested siege tank.
Not really, by building it he also created the choke points which benefit the lurkers a lot. This map is super open and honestly I hope we got the swarm host instead
Re: Fire and Acid death animations I think I might have also seen enemies burn to death when they're killed by the Battle Cruiser's laser weapons Isn't there also unique death animations for Nova's Swords of having bodies just fall apart. I THINK it might be also used for Dark Templar, but I'm very unsure.
One thing to note is that the availability of specific death animations also depends on the target. There are quite a few units which can proc them (mutas use acid, mommaships use fire) but for the most part only non-protoss infantry units and some core zerg units actually have those distinct death animations. Also pretty much no air units have any, and most missions where you face primarily bio or ladder zerg don't give you access to much unit variety.
The "sliced apart" death anim is used for zealots and DTs so you see it frequently vs toss. The biggest unit to use unique death anims is the ultralisk, though only for fire/acid, not slashing.
may I put forth the Dr Hansen campaign, where you only choose dialogue options with the goal to romance Jim. This goal will always fail, the only event you can change is whether Haven gets purified or not.
Yeah, I've been asking for this playthrough. 10:53 Class 12 Psionic Grip detected. 13:43 That guy's a legend. He willingy charged a herd of Ultralisks for the first ATV, and a group of Hybrids including 2 Hybrid Dominators for the second one. 23:48 Niadra or Naktul campaign is good and all, but the worshipers demand the glorious return of Dowadiru. 24:14 Orlan would the worst, because after you upgrade his army, he just betrays you just before the final mission. 54:10 The raptors saw the forcefields and decided they should practice hurdling. 59:01 The awkward silence after Kerrigan's response, it hurts... 1:08:53 Synergy's mindset during the creation of this mod: Is it evil? If so, do it.
I actually think this is one of the first where Synergy gave the bonus objectives real worth. See, you're getting units every time you unlock one. In WoL Protoss there was just no benefit to getting them at all, it was weird.
Note: you do regenerate an hp 'intantly' in terms of practical macro gameplay. Actually, it takes 1/16 (0.0625) seconds if I remember correctly. Also, it isn't a full hp, but a fraction of it, but given that damage goes in natural numbers of, rarely, halves, so that 0.1 or whatever hp is practically indistinguishable from a full one and is displayed in interface as such.
Eventually, once they finish Memes of the Swarm (or Heart of Memes), you will need to go full circle and speed run Wings of Liberty using the MEME version of the Zerg.
I'm actually super excited for the mod I'm involved with now which is basically race swapped campaigns but making better use of the CCM's strengths and actually making the lore make sense of it.
C10 canister rifle does the same damage as Force™ Ligtning. In D&D, Eldritch Blast and a hand Crossbow both do 1d10 damage. The crossbow is also 10 gold. Therefore, your warlock's soul is worth 10 gold...
27:00 kerrigan arriving with zergs to defend the colony against the zergs that attack due to kerrigan's orders is the least schizo moment in kerrigan's multiverse of contradictory personalities
There is one other acid death animation, but one you wouldn't expect: Mutalisks. Any creature killed with their Glaive Wurm will disintegrate into an acid death. Also on Welcome to the Jungle, I find it funny that you are rescuing frozen Hydras in the middle of a tropical jungle.
GiantGrantGames creep spread is my favorite thing. I just love watching it spread efficiently and quickly across the map, giving him vision and increased move speed 😍
I think that part of the Reason the C-10 Canister Rifle does the same Damage as Lightning Hands, is that Ghosts psionically charge their Bullets. Kerrigan ran out of bullets, and just started smacking enemies with her Annoyance at their continued existence directly.
This is the continuity where Jim got Kerrigan out in Broodwar and then got captured, so now Sarah's taking up Jim's obligations while scheming against Mengsk
No, those are COMPLETELY ABSURD. Not the visuals themselves, but the fact that the unit performing them is both stunlocked and COMPLETELY INVULNERABLE during the animation. Granted, that does fit the WH40K franchise.
Tbh sometimes the invulnerablity during the animation gets absurd, like with Big Mek (who has high melee dmg, so if you send him into a group of, say, IGs, 90% of the time he will be cleaning someone's clock with that can opener of his while being invulnerable).
Ariel Hanson campaign was my first thought but I actually think that would be quite fun. You'd be the underdog all the time, desperately defending civilians against infestation, protoss and terran politics
Uh. I was writing a comment about how an Amon campaign would be worse than an Orlan campaign, but Grant pre-emptively read my mind and dropped some THICC LORE.
Grant straight up panicking as he learned the infested were detectors on Outbreak and instantly pulling all his lurkers into a ball in his base is hilarious. They 2-shot the infested, so 2 in each choke to one side, pulling them in a line would be enough. Add in maybe 1-2 extra in each choke and not even the infested terrans are a real problem.
Honestly a Hanson custom campaign could be pretty cool if you leaned very heavily into the "what could've been" aspects of her character that were hinted at in dialogue, concept arts, etc., and by taking some creative liberties. Like a mixture of improvised civilian/colonists weaponry, repurposed/scrapped tools that were left behind by the dominion (or other factions really), unethical experimentations/researches and medical procedures, maybe involving Zerg and terran infestation (lightly hinted at by Tosh dialogue). It could have like a neat mechanic where you could switch between a terran composition and zerg-ish composition mid-mission on a cooldown, and it just globally switches all your units and structures to an infested variant or back to terran. Could probably make all the structures generate creep to varying degrees when switched to infested so they don't just die when off-creep, could also give buffs like regular creep. Maybe going infested could let you build timed pure zerg units (which would instantly die when switching back to terran). It could have Terran be focused on defense or sieging and Infested on offense and fast counterattacking, and have the missions be themed around having to swap between them to best utilize your tools (like switching to Terran for big enemy attack waves, and then switching to Infested to attack while the enemies have to rebuild or smth like that). Inversely it could also allow the missions to be more lax with their design as players would have the tools to decide how they wanna approach things based on personal preference and playstyle. You could have like a skill/research tree where you choose between terran vs zerg focused upgrades, or just 2 separate research trees for terran/infested separately (though preferably you could switch reasearches between missions freely). It would obviously be far from canon Hanson, but it could be a pretty cool idea
I mean, on one hand, you're right in that Naktul was just a throwaway character that we only saw once, but Niadra was no different on HoTS release. Maybe we *should* get to learn about what exactly Naktul was doing in those caves. Custom cave campaign.
24:30 The campaign for Orlan would be about protecting your damn adjutant, and preventing Orlan from telling people to take their damn adjutant. Your bonus objectives would give you another damn adjutant which you could spend on things- like solarite, except it's damn adjutants.
my answer for the custom campaign would be urun he was an pheonix admiral who appears in the final protoss mission of WoL i just like him for some reason i think hes pretty cool with his uniqeu model
I always appreciate how silly the puns and obscure the discussion points get on Zero Hour as we wait for anything to happen. Blizzard was truly looking out of content creators with that map.
Might be because of the video runtime or HOTS unit composition but Kerrigan was extremely rude today, almost every 2nd sentence of Grant she hits him with the "Who asked?"
I can't wait for some of Grant's comments here to make it into Heart of the Memes when it finally gets made. On that topic, since crabs are obviously the pinnacle of evolution, I really hope the Infestor becomes a crab that turns other units into crabs.
I would make an investment if Devs or some Custom Campaing Dev guy make the Egon Stetmann backstory from how he falls into a Terrazine adiction and gets gary.
Great. Now I want to see a campaign where they swap the race of the ENEMY factions. So Korhal is just a zerg infestation. Maar and his pear are surrounded by Terrains and siege tanks. etc.
Speedrunning a campaign with zerg? Now that's an idea I can get behind.
It sounds like quite a novel concept, weird how no one has ever done it before, especially not while racing another speedrunner.
They should run this idea on GDQ
didnt he speedrun for socks charity or some? or did i loose my mind
100% I love this format
@@chrisk3824 Grant Done Quick?
I don't know if that one's going to be safe for YT...
Grant on Mission 1: "We'll be doing speedrunning of this campaign!"
Grant on Mission 4: "What interesting team composition we can choose for this mission?"
Never change, Grant!
Small correction. Orlan is even more useless in HotS swarm. He is just a popsicle Mira Han keeps in her fridge for Jimmy. She refuses to give him to Horner so they have a marital spat. Orlan doesn't get any on screen time outside of Cutthroat
Long story short he would be perfect for a campaign. He is a blank slate protagonist and gives room for actual villains to play off, kinda like in Starcraft 1. 😂
Tbf what little we do know of him is actually pretty cool. Expert Confederate codebreaker means he's a pain in the ass for the Dominion who still use Confederate encryption just by existing. The only reason we're able to capture him on Cutthroat is because Mira is the perfect combo of rich, crazy, and enamoured with Matt Horner. Tho he could also be fun as an incompetent antagonist in a Jinara/Team Rocket kind of way.
I'm reminded of Allen Schezar. Assuming I spelt his name right
Orlan does get screentime in a mini cutscene in HotS which consists of Matt pressuring him to work on finding jim, with the threat of handing him back over to Mira if he doesn't cooperate.
Now I want a campaign about what it was like for Orlan, and him being stuck in the midst of some crazy, terrifying adventures Mira has. Something that feels like slice of life.
Imagine Grant doing a whole campaign centring around Dr Hansen.
Was thinking the same thing lol, 9 missions of moving colonists to new homes
@@danielgibson3422 colonist management sound too good
Counterpoint, Infested Dr. Hansen campaign. Brood war Kerrigan but with none of the charisma
@@greatmightypanda kinda infested stukov 2, but without charisma, maybe that will work out
I wanna see the opposite too. A Kenny from Southpark style one where she d_es in unique ways every mission.
Worst custom campaign would be "Don't go up that road" Civilian and the whole thing is just trying to micro your way through the battlefields of other missions with a single civilian that can't attack.
So more a stealth puzzle version of the campaign
As you play delivered guy to a ai ally
Something like . Your the one delivering the guns and tanks to your ally. All while trying to avoid the battles and enemy's .
With the option to send better stuff to your ally or upgrade your own gear. Like buy your self grenades, or do you upgrade the allys wepons so they can clear
Crossy road, the campaign
Campaign ideas centred on side characters:
Hill prequel that shows how he got to know all those mercenaries
Abathur, but during his mindless beast years
The ghost of Fenix develops time travel technology and so teams up with Zealot Fenix, Dragoon Fenix and Purifier Fenix. I call it Fournix.
An old April Fools game from Blizzard was a Queen of Blades called Queen's Quest.
I'm sure an Abathur one would be the same.
I would unironically love playing Fournix!
Guys… it’s so obvious, these are good ideas. But what about Niadra? Her one goal was kill the protosss, should be another sort of brood-war thing where she leads raids against Protoss. Daelamn, taldarim, whichever. Sort of like how there was a custom campaign about a brood mother named Rethara who fought mainly UED. Separate broodmother stories is easy content farm. Especially if done right, could be thousands maybe millions of dollars idea. Or like even a campaign where it jumps around to the different broodmothers. The idea of simply the other factions, or the other part of this faction that you don’t see in the official campaigns, that’s what you need to think about.
@@altucrix6959 if/when starcraft 3 comes:
Niadra fights against Zaggy whilst a zerg civil war comes cause of Abather.
UED returns
Protoss trying to remake the khala/the mecha protoss.
@@TheProcessEngineeratLarge I don't know who Zaggy is, am uncultured. UED returns is a must, especially since it's been hinted at a lot in conversation between Kerrigan and Stukov when discussing why she won't let him go back to earth, and that she had been preparing for their return to cause... all kinds of chaos for her at the very least. (Haven't played much of SC1 or Broodwar so again, uncultured)
Also I don't get the Abathur bit, due to the fact he stated he "isn't zerg unless under someone's control" that means that the Zerg Civil war would simply be if someone had a problem with ZAGARA, as explored by the swarm's control custom Campaign, where Rethara kills a rouge broodmother. (Again, uncultured so please correct me if I'm wrong.)
And as for your protoss thing, definitely. Though it would probably go wrong again. And if that were the case it'd put more pressure on Artanis for his ideas of "Unity." Though honestly for protoss campaign I'm really more about focusing on Tal'Darim honestly, where is Alarak now? Was never confirmed he knew of Amon's death (From what I've seen) all that. Especially because a lot of people like him, me included.
You can't fool me Grant, I've watched Memes of LIberty, Zero Hour is a one minute long mission.
I really wish it had been "one hour" and had the inverse push. You start with the whole map controlled, and the zerg hit really hard, then the hyperion arrives, clears the map of zerg and you get to go relax with slow attacks while you wait for everybody to board the hyperion.
Well at least the mission name isn't a lie. There are exactly zero hours within a minute.
What you're referring to Grant is a doorhead ant. They are a specialized form of leaf cutter soldier that is purely designed to block the entrances to the nest when an army ant raid comes by. They live for the choke point
Or he could be refering to Trapdoor Ants who has two types of majors, the ones with the thicker exoskeleton that are better for combat and the ones with the enlarged head that is good for blocking entrances to satalite nurseries and the main hive in case of emergency.
"Leaf Cutter Soldier" sounds oddly badass
@@liamholt5623 Sounds like elven swordfighters.
@@liamholt5623 ify wana play as leaf cutters google "Empires of the Undergrowth" a couple diff ant variants to play with
My life for the choke point
The Orlan campaign would unironically be great. I remember an archives video one time where the idea of "bootleg" versions of all the Terran units came up - Orlan gets a really janky discount Terran army that's incredibly cheap to spam but never works right. Now, the *worst* character to base a campaign around...
...I mean, the meme answer is Ariel Hanson, but personally I don't understand the Hanson hate and I think her campaign would have interesting opportunities for new mechanics around infestation and research into fighting the Zerg virus.
I think the two top contenders are actually Izsha and Nyon. Izsha has a bland personality and she doesn't really have any good reason to get interesting new units or mechanics. She'd just have Kerrigan's Zerg faction, minus Kerrigan, probably minus some of the more interesting mutations. She doesn't really have any unique abilities or skills, other than acting as Kerrigan's office assistant. Nyon, meanwhile, is Tal'darim but doesn't get any of their cool units and powers. He uses *Scouts*, for Adun's sake. I mean, he gets warp-in Colossi, but that's old news in the world of custom factions and campaigns. His personality is based entirely around causing Jim problems and getting annoyed at people who try to touch his stuff. That's not a lot to work with.
Clolarion would just be a Purifier campaign, which isn't *bad* but I don't think he gives us much that Fenix doesn't. Likewise for Brakk, Yagdra, Kraith and Slivan; a Primal campaign is a fine idea but none of the pack leaders give you anything that you couldn't get from Dehaka or Zurvan. Ji'nara similarly brings very little to the table that distinguishes her from Alarak. Mechanically you can kinda say the same for Valerian or Warfield, but they at least have the personality to carry an interesting story.
Unexpectedly, I think Kate Lockwell would probably be one of the worst choices, unless you can swing a genre shift. It's narratively hard to justify putting her in charge of an army and I'm not sure what mechanics she could possibly have. You'd have to do a lot of work to build her as a character independent of her role as a "straight man" to Donny Vermillion (because if he's around, it will inevitably become "the Donny Vermillion campaign," not "the Kate Lockwell campaign"). I don't want to write her off completely, though - she could totally be the lead in a campaign that de-emphasised RTS base-building in favour of more RPG, MOBA or Roguelike mechanics.
And for an honourable mention - Lasarra seems like a *terrible* choice at first glance. She's dead and she's a non-combatant Khalai civilian. But if you're willing to do a moderately silly deus-ex-machina on her death... have her somehow "come back wrong" (but *not* truly infested, because Protoss can't be infested) after being killed by Kerrigan's parasite, then either escape the doomed Protoss colony ship or retake it from Niadra... She could build a weird, fucked-up new faction that focused on combining the native animals of different planets with both Protoss technology and Zerg mutations. Is it a *good* idea? No. But it's surprising that it doesn't feel like the *worst* idea.
With Nyon you could make a campain about him and his crazed followers taking control of the places we visit (dig, BC mission, etc.) before wol. And with Izsha - base menagement a la fallout shelter or X-com with upgrading units at Abatur's, sending them to semi automated missions and tasks from Zagara or Kerrigan.
The Lasarra campaign idea seems so ridiculous and so cool
@@krismal1300 Yeah, maybe? Build out the non-Amon-follower version of the Tal'darim faction, have them fight the Mobius Foundation, maybe work in some weird Xel'naga stuff on the worldship? I think the best angle there is to focus on how stretched thin the Tal'darim must be, trying to claim and protect all those Xel'naga sites on different planets around the sector. Maybe have some mechanics about shuffling your limited forces from one planet to another on a galaxy map and trying to balance which sites are most important vs. which ones are in the most immediate danger.
I still don't know if I'm seeing the Izsha one, honestly. I do think that's the right direction to go with her if you *wanted* to do an Izsha campaign, but I'm not sure the "disposable" nature of individual Zerg works well with that style of management game, and I feel like Abathur would still be a more interesting character to focus on.
normal kids: scared of monsters in their closets
Grant: scared of taldarim under his bed
Grant: mom i can't sleep there's a wrathwalker under my bed
Those vanguards would give anyone nightmares.
@@indominusrex1652 I am sure it‘s a wraithwalker
Reporter: "Sources say that king of Raynor's Raiders is in fact leading Hyperion!"
Isha: "What does he want?"
Sarrah: "He returned to finish the job!"
*dramatic music plays, screen fades to black*
Gods i still love the accidental conversations between grant and the AI.
Grant as civilian:"What are we standing in line for? Is there icecream?"
Kerrigan: "The swarm hungers."
59:00
Grant, "I think we need three gas geysers."
Kerrigan, "Who asked you?!"
🤣
@@TheFelmaster😂
4 days for an entire campaign? Good eating in the GiantMeatGames community! Battlecruisers also do the fire animation, as well as colussus. Another animation is the 'sliced' one that's most noticeable on marauders killed by zealots, DTs or sword Nova
"GiantMeatGames" ... phrasing.
The Orlan campaign would involve the heavy use of hacking, mercs, and contracts and be very cutthroat. Also it would involve more of Mira Han. No, the worst custom campaign would be about Hanson
I am getting the Kimeran Pirates vibe from SC1, a lot of theft, allies of opportunity and profit!
The worst would be about Amon for sure
@@andrzejnadgirl2029 Eh, the character sucks but at least he has access to all the fun toys
imagine Orlan trying to bribe a Zergling....
Nah, even Hanson has something she could do. Try Lasarra.
I love that you start with 5 zerglings on the first mission lol. 2.5 supply.
Yeah but you also have kerrigan, who even in human form is pretty op.
@@cranapple3367I think the supply is the joke here…
The most obscure named character to make a campaign around might be Nafash, the Zerg Queen that's dead in a corner on Kaldir.
Least favorite for me would probably be Cpl Faraday from the Rifts to Korhal coop mission, I hate every word that comes out of his mouth^^
I never realized until now that a zergling is as big as a dog no wonder Kerrigan consider one as a pet far more cuddly than a hydralisk 😂😂😂😂😂😂 hoping to see a memes of the swarm someday too
Yup! Zerglings are just as big as dogs. Raptor lings, are slightly bigger, and Swarmlings are slightly smaller. According to the lore on wiki.
Canon from the original Starcraft 1 terran campaign cinematics no less!
It’s a zergling, smaller type o zerg. But they ain’t been seen out this far yet…
WoL QoB seemed to prefer hydras. She kinda "pets" one in a cutscene during the Zeratul missions.
"I think you hit somebody's dog, Sarge!"
"That's no dog, Lester. It's one o them Zerglings, a smaller kind o' zerg."
@@alexanderchipman9571 It has been several years!
Dammit you mentioned mindhawks gauntlet... How am I gonna enjoy this video now that my brain is pumping pure HYPE fluids for the next 4 days straight?
Acid deaths are just fire deaths with changed color.
But did you notice how cool zealot and dark templar kills look? Pay attention when you have opportunity. The look sick.
Obviously this is the universe where Kerrigan actually keeps here humanity, while commanding the Zerg, and thus getting help from various Terran commanders
To be honest, a Colonel Orlan campaign in the vein of the WC3 Garithos Campaign would be fire. The person least suited to actually achieve anything bumbling their way into success in what is the most satire manner possible, probably taking over the Dominion in the process and courting a random Swarm Queen (Naktul?) who ends up leading the entire swarm as his ally somehow beating Amon without any Xel'Naga powers involved
And you could have it similar to star wars empire at war forces of corruption campain with criminal empire and shadow ruler wibes
I’ll be honest, I don’t think Orlan would actually be the worst custom campaign character. He’s got literally any personality in his one mission, and a decent set of grudges to take care of. As well as a pretty unique potential theme with the whole “scrapper army” thing. In my opinion, the worst character to make a custom campaign with would be the engineer guy from Nova Covert Ops because it would just be an even shittier version of something that already exists.
this makes me think how I would have liked to see HoTS explore a "good" swarm. Ya know, not having her go straight back to mass murder ya know?
For example the Ice planet in HoTS. She *had* the hydras and the brood, there was no reason to kill the protoss, she could have been gone by the time the Armada showed up.
Honestly I don't get why she goes back to char. Like there some zerg there, cool. But like it has little actually strategic value by the looks of things.
Blizzard: "But we must show how GREAT Kerrigan is by having her be smarter than Protoss! To prove that, Protoss will fall for incredibly stupid Kerrigan ploy that REALLY shouldn't have worked! And then everyone can talk about how GREAT and SMART Kerrigan is and how the Protoss are dumb doodoo heads who aren't as GREAT and SMART as Kerrigan!"
Sorry, I have SERIOUS hatred for SC2 Kerrigan. Pretty much all the worst parts of every SC2 Campaign are the ones involving her.
its true those contextual death animations are really good. I think collosus and battle cruisers have fire death animations too!
Colossus definitely does, and the battlecrusier should.
There is actually support in the editor for custom death models of many kinds, but obviously fire and disintegrate (aka dissolving in acid) are the most commonly used ones. Other death types like "Silent Kill" (used iirc for snipe deaths or whatever) tend to be animations baked in the vanilla death model
I feel like I just did Archipelago: Anti-zerg edition. A full grid, about 2 dozen missions... and the only zerg units I unlocked were the mutalisk and the infested siege tank.
"Messenger...
... of oblivion?"
Memes of the swarm team:
"Write that down! Write that down!"
And Sarah Preparrigan
Red Alert and Tiberium Sun also do the acid/fire death animations in a great way.
Grant built a hydra den right next to his lurker den. Poor reources getting thrown away.
Not really, by building it he also created the choke points which benefit the lurkers a lot. This map is super open and honestly I hope we got the swarm host instead
Re: Fire and Acid death animations
I think I might have also seen enemies burn to death when they're killed by the Battle Cruiser's laser weapons
Isn't there also unique death animations for Nova's Swords of having bodies just fall apart.
I THINK it might be also used for Dark Templar, but I'm very unsure.
Yes, most of melee units have kill animation to rip small units apart. And yes, bc have fire weapon too
One thing to note is that the availability of specific death animations also depends on the target. There are quite a few units which can proc them (mutas use acid, mommaships use fire) but for the most part only non-protoss infantry units and some core zerg units actually have those distinct death animations. Also pretty much no air units have any, and most missions where you face primarily bio or ladder zerg don't give you access to much unit variety.
The "sliced apart" death anim is used for zealots and DTs so you see it frequently vs toss.
The biggest unit to use unique death anims is the ultralisk, though only for fire/acid, not slashing.
may I put forth the Dr Hansen campaign, where you only choose dialogue options with the goal to romance Jim. This goal will always fail, the only event you can change is whether Haven gets purified or not.
Yeah, I've been asking for this playthrough.
10:53 Class 12 Psionic Grip detected.
13:43 That guy's a legend. He willingy charged a herd of Ultralisks for the first ATV, and a group of Hybrids including 2 Hybrid Dominators for the second one.
23:48 Niadra or Naktul campaign is good and all, but the worshipers demand the glorious return of Dowadiru.
24:14 Orlan would the worst, because after you upgrade his army, he just betrays you just before the final mission.
54:10 The raptors saw the forcefields and decided they should practice hurdling.
59:01 The awkward silence after Kerrigan's response, it hurts...
1:08:53 Synergy's mindset during the creation of this mod:
Is it evil? If so, do it.
Imagine a campaign centred around Donny Vermilion.
The generals custom campaign, where you just play as duke and/or warfield defending a series of crashed battlecruisers.
15:45 Abathur: MoRe ZeRgLiNgS
Kerrigan: Who asked you?
Average student when exam is in 4 days:
That was the coolest intro ever lol, I got chills when you said "On brutal, we're gonna annihilate this campaign." xD
I was literally looking for this series yesterday! Hella spooky! Thank you for doing it Grant!
I actually think this is one of the first where Synergy gave the bonus objectives real worth. See, you're getting units every time you unlock one. In WoL Protoss there was just no benefit to getting them at all, it was weird.
I'd play a Colonel Orlan. Based on his character model he was in the Confederate Alpha Squadron so you could do interesting things with his character.
Note: you do regenerate an hp 'intantly' in terms of practical macro gameplay. Actually, it takes 1/16 (0.0625) seconds if I remember correctly. Also, it isn't a full hp, but a fraction of it, but given that damage goes in natural numbers of, rarely, halves, so that 0.1 or whatever hp is practically indistinguishable from a full one and is displayed in interface as such.
Someone made Fenix sing Libera me From Hell so I can see someone make Kerrigan sing Another One Bites the Dust
"Killing kerrigan off is the fastest way to regenerate her energy" ah yes, pre-mastery zagara in a nutshell
Eventually, once they finish Memes of the Swarm (or Heart of Memes), you will need to go full circle and speed run Wings of Liberty using the MEME version of the Zerg.
I'm actually super excited for the mod I'm involved with now which is basically race swapped campaigns but making better use of the CCM's strengths and actually making the lore make sense of it.
C10 canister rifle does the same damage as Force™ Ligtning.
In D&D, Eldritch Blast and a hand Crossbow both do 1d10 damage.
The crossbow is also 10 gold. Therefore, your warlock's soul is worth 10 gold...
"The first escort is always the best." Grant 2024
Nafash campaign. Your hero unit is a corpse, and you never evolve past the Kaldir ice storm mechanic,
27:00 kerrigan arriving with zergs to defend the colony against the zergs that attack due to kerrigan's orders is the least schizo moment in kerrigan's multiverse of contradictory personalities
53:34
"The archon is the scary part of this next thing: basically the boss fight of the mission"
The stone zealots: Are we a joke to you?
"I like the acid deaths" Grant would have a field day with the Desolators and Tesla Troopers in RA2!
There is one other acid death animation, but one you wouldn't expect: Mutalisks. Any creature killed with their Glaive Wurm will disintegrate into an acid death. Also on Welcome to the Jungle, I find it funny that you are rescuing frozen Hydras in the middle of a tropical jungle.
GiantGrantGames creep spread is my favorite thing. I just love watching it spread efficiently and quickly across the map, giving him vision and increased move speed 😍
Ok ngl the customer campaign manager is so good
I think that part of the Reason the C-10 Canister Rifle does the same Damage as Lightning Hands, is that Ghosts psionically charge their Bullets. Kerrigan ran out of bullets, and just started smacking enemies with her Annoyance at their continued existence directly.
This is the continuity where Jim got Kerrigan out in Broodwar and then got captured, so now Sarah's taking up Jim's obligations while scheming against Mengsk
On the subject of acid deaths, Dawn of War 1&2 have melee kill animations that are similarly cool.
No, those are COMPLETELY ABSURD. Not the visuals themselves, but the fact that the unit performing them is both stunlocked and COMPLETELY INVULNERABLE during the animation. Granted, that does fit the WH40K franchise.
Fair point, though I think you need the invulnerability to counter the stunlock. I was never great at rts though so I didn't notice the problem.
Tbh sometimes the invulnerablity during the animation gets absurd, like with Big Mek (who has high melee dmg, so if you send him into a group of, say, IGs, 90% of the time he will be cleaning someone's clock with that can opener of his while being invulnerable).
I like headcanon that Kerrigan got rid of the gun because she just ran out of ammo and went "fuck it, lightning hands"
SCVs bringing minerals to a hatchery makes me think of a scenario where an SCV goes up to a queen and ask "So uuh, where should we put the minerals?"
I think one of the worst possible campaigns would be one around izsha. Literally just Kerrigan’s secretary lol
Ariel Hanson campaign was my first thought but I actually think that would be quite fun. You'd be the underdog all the time, desperately defending civilians against infestation, protoss and terran politics
I hope he doesn't skip "The ultimate weapon of the final war." He keeps hyping it up, but never shows it.
Lol the roaches are confused on 17:20. You can even see on the minimap that they keep going back and forth on the bridge. So it may had worked somehow
Wait, legacy of the void mindhawk's gauntlet? What happened to Heart of the Swarm it never gets enough love
He talked about it in an earlier video heart of the swarm is apparently a harder campaign to mod so mindhawk decided to do Legacy of the void first
39:15 my man is NOT doing colossus dirty like that
54:10 Very much agreed, for example in Armored Core 6 I personally loved the refight against the Helicopter that served as the boss for the tutorial.
how about a custom campaign of that one Dominion Lt. that yells "we are the sword of the dominion" every 5 seconds
Uh. I was writing a comment about how an Amon campaign would be worse than an Orlan campaign, but Grant pre-emptively read my mind and dropped some THICC LORE.
Grant straight up panicking as he learned the infested were detectors on Outbreak and instantly pulling all his lurkers into a ball in his base is hilarious. They 2-shot the infested, so 2 in each choke to one side, pulling them in a line would be enough. Add in maybe 1-2 extra in each choke and not even the infested terrans are a real problem.
GiantGrantGames casually talking about a few of the most horrific death that you can immagine but still beeing a silly little guy at 38:26
Honestly a Hanson custom campaign could be pretty cool if you leaned very heavily into the "what could've been" aspects of her character that were hinted at in dialogue, concept arts, etc., and by taking some creative liberties.
Like a mixture of improvised civilian/colonists weaponry, repurposed/scrapped tools that were left behind by the dominion (or other factions really), unethical experimentations/researches and medical procedures, maybe involving Zerg and terran infestation (lightly hinted at by Tosh dialogue).
It could have like a neat mechanic where you could switch between a terran composition and zerg-ish composition mid-mission on a cooldown, and it just globally switches all your units and structures to an infested variant or back to terran. Could probably make all the structures generate creep to varying degrees when switched to infested so they don't just die when off-creep, could also give buffs like regular creep. Maybe going infested could let you build timed pure zerg units (which would instantly die when switching back to terran). It could have Terran be focused on defense or sieging and Infested on offense and fast counterattacking, and have the missions be themed around having to swap between them to best utilize your tools (like switching to Terran for big enemy attack waves, and then switching to Infested to attack while the enemies have to rebuild or smth like that). Inversely it could also allow the missions to be more lax with their design as players would have the tools to decide how they wanna approach things based on personal preference and playstyle.
You could have like a skill/research tree where you choose between terran vs zerg focused upgrades, or just 2 separate research trees for terran/infested separately (though preferably you could switch reasearches between missions freely).
It would obviously be far from canon Hanson, but it could be a pretty cool idea
Colonel Arnol Merc Ops, who wouldnt pay for that?
@16:18 - "That's a buffed crushing grip!"
You may even call it ... a buffing grip.
Huehuehue
Ok, I'll see myself out.
Grant: Sarah Prepareigan
Kerrigan: Who asked you?
54:09 I've never seen a raptorling hop a forcefield, that's so cool
I mean, on one hand, you're right in that Naktul was just a throwaway character that we only saw once, but Niadra was no different on HoTS release. Maybe we *should* get to learn about what exactly Naktul was doing in those caves. Custom cave campaign.
24:30 The campaign for Orlan would be about protecting your damn adjutant, and preventing Orlan from telling people to take their damn adjutant. Your bonus objectives would give you another damn adjutant which you could spend on things- like solarite, except it's damn adjutants.
Kerrigan having to fight herself in Zero Hour is hilarious
38:30 if you want environmental themes deaths, command and conquer generals did this with anthrax and fire, its kind of horrifying...ly effective.
my answer for the custom campaign would be urun he was an pheonix admiral who appears in the final protoss mission of WoL i just like him for some reason i think hes pretty cool with his uniqeu model
The Command and Conquer: Red Alert series was great at adding silly special infantry deaths.
I always appreciate how silly the puns and obscure the discussion points get on Zero Hour as we wait for anything to happen. Blizzard was truly looking out of content creators with that map.
"we are gona rush this... in *4 days* " thats the slowest rush ever xD haha
Grant is kicking this revolution into overdrive using the Zerg!
Might be because of the video runtime or HOTS unit composition but Kerrigan was extremely rude today, almost every 2nd sentence of Grant she hits him with the "Who asked?"
I can't wait for some of Grant's comments here to make it into Heart of the Memes when it finally gets made. On that topic, since crabs are obviously the pinnacle of evolution, I really hope the Infestor becomes a crab that turns other units into crabs.
I wish Grant would have used the jumpy banes to sneakily steal ressource palettes, but that was still very fun :)
I need a custom campaign for the "My car!" guy. Call it like Wheels of Vengence or something idk.
Listening to your puns made me realize that Kerrigan is literally named Carry Gun. Kinda ironic since she only has a gun for a few missions
SMT5 also does the elemental death effects that you're talking about on the Baneling mission!
The lack of creep spread is fine. It's fine. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me. It bothers me. It bothers me a lot.
an infested Hyperion would be a good hub for "Zergs of Liberty"
I'd only pay that for the Orlan DLC if if came with his Co-op commander and voice packs
There are as many Zerg vs Zerg missions in this video as the entire vanilla SC2
38:00 In command and Conquer Red Alert when units got killed by elemental weapons like Tesla or fire there was a unique death animation and sound.
Grant: Is there a voiceline?
Kerrigan: Yes?
Grant: It's so normal they didn't make a voice line.
Kerrigan: Who ask you?
😂
Grant: You can call me Sarrah Preparigan...
Us: Facepalm*
If we're talking custom campains, I kind of wish we got more of Narud/Duran. Also, only now did I realized it's the same name backwards.
I remember when I noticed that, I also checked what his first name backwards was to see if it was anything relevant.
Nope, it's just "Lime"
I would make an investment if Devs or some Custom Campaing Dev guy make the Egon Stetmann backstory from how he falls into a Terrazine adiction and gets gary.
Great. Now I want to see a campaign where they swap the race of the ENEMY factions. So Korhal is just a zerg infestation. Maar and his pear are surrounded by Terrains and siege tanks. etc.
Mutas also have an acid kill animation