@@notaliablename2538 it’s not the whole set of requirements (i.e. the story isn’t good if you don’t get there while also liking the protagonist - the conflict between liking the protagonist and realizing how deeply they are in the wrong is part of what can make such stories great), but it is the gist ☺
Evil space dictator: stay with me, so the hungry space monster I used wouldn’t come and kill you Evil space dictator: did not, in fact, stop the hungry space monsters from coming down and killing you
@@ArneBab Eh, it doesn't really work when only the crazy dictator calls you out and you get everything you've ever wanted practically for free. it's more like a crazy person's wish fulfillment.
I once read that Starcraft, as a whole, is somewhat brought down by the fact that Kerrigan is the "teacher's pet". Her enemies are dumbed down in Brood War, her accountability for horrible crimes is removed frequently, and her fight with Amon is 100% protagonist-centered morality: Amon claims to 'reject the infinite cycle' and that 'he's killed Xel'Naga', and Kerrigan finishes up saying she 'chooses something different [than the infinite cycle]' and kills him (a Xel'Naga). They just couldn't let a good villain be a villain.
Exactly. It feels like the writers made excuses (the Prophecy, making her Xelnaga) to keep her from really facing consequences for her actions, when many other Starcraft characters did.
It wasn't even her creating life on new planets by the way, it was Zagara. Who proved to be a far more benevolent heart of the swarm than Kerrigan ever was. Fucking lmao.
@@ShadowFri3nd in the book Evolution ( written by tymothy zahn of Thrawn Star wars fame ) , Zegara uses Xelnaga DNA to create a type of zerg that can terraform planets and promote biodeversity which while benevolent ,also gives zerg even more essence to work on , this decision also causes a Zerg civil war bettwen Zegaras brood and abathurs
As Professor Grant said: "Kerrigan doesn't have a personality. She has 12." As for next video? I'd say either Jimmity or Artanis, since they are the "main characters" of their respective games.
more like 5, but i kinda understend why she not the same as in orginal. alos if they show she have psychological problems after all what happend, all what she done it could make her better even if she end up kinda bad.
Kerrigan had an amazing character arc in SC1 / BW. She literally made me hate her, but not in the "oh she sucks" way, but the "wow this Joffrey actor is amazing at making me hate his character, bravo." To take all of that energy, and to funnel it into some shitty messiah complex story was just disappointing.
yee kinda but they shoid make it well a litle bit clear. to point of few difrends version not 20 or 1000000. alos Isha was voice of old queen on paper but they just made her in the end int othat ai terran voice. in files she still have some voice lines abaut keringa not do zerg ways ect. alos people need kinda remeber kerigan never care abaut human live so much. sure she have problme to do bad things but her boss was mensg and she kill one or two parents by mistake, at this point her mind shoud be in total chaos. but they shoud show us it.
Artanis has a personality, it's just boring. He's a naive leader and a decent commander with hip-thrust energy. His character was used to fight the concept of old ways in his campaign, the purifiers were slaves but oh lawdy they strong, now he needs them and for some reason they just join him to push the message, bouncing off Ranala(? the preserver) who clings to what she's been taught, ignoring what she's seen personally cuz that would get in the way of de message. I get it, but it's cringe delivery bumped up to level 300.
apparently in the sequel story, Evolution, it was Zagara that took up the mantle of terraforming glassed planets. Kerrigan herself just nopes out of the universe.
One thing I noticed when replaying SC and BW, was that Kerrigan in the original Zerg campaign talked a lot more like the Overmind instead of how she used to talk in the Terran campaign. Big, slower and methodical speeches, etc. Very similar to how the Overmind talk. When she's reintroduced in BW, she talks like she used to in the Terran campaign. She's snappier, and the valley girl accent is back. The amount of control the Overmind had over her was that great.
I think that was part of the deception. You have to keep in mind that Duran was a shapeshifter that worked alongside her. He likely inspired Amon/Kerrigan to develop some sneaky way to trick people.
The way the Overmind spoke was great. But I never noticed the way she spoke in SC1 untl you pointed it out. It did occur to me that lines like "Then that shall be your epitaph" were unusually fancy but I never gave it much thought. That line was in BW though so I just think the writers for SC1 were better rather than any overmind influence.
She's still got pieces of her old personality, but the overmind did change her personality in her transformation. Her aggression and list for violence was added or amped up, among other things, like a lust for power. She gets purged of those changes later, becoming what we see in heart of the swarm, basically old Kerrigan again, but suffering the memories from the queen of blades and related thinfs.
After Legacy of the Void epilogue, we see cutscene where Raynor and Kerrigan (in her factory settings) leaving bar, and nobody saw them again. I concluded that Raynor developed a master plan to avenge Fenix murder: he get himself drunk, and offered Kerrigan a ride on vulture bike, so that would most definitely cause DUI crash (without deliberately planning to kill her, so she couldn't read his mind about it), sacrificing himself for the purpose of keeping the promise. I declare it canon.
I believe you. It's perfectly aligned with Raynor's biggest tendencies. Do stupid stuff and just let his vibe on the moment have priorities over any strategic foresight for humanity or even his own group
What’s funny about Kerrigan becoming a purple super saiyan instead of a manipulator is that they pulled the exact same shit on Sylvanas in Warcraft In W3 when she was introduced, she was literally just some random zombie with her banshee homegirls trying to survive to the next day. Every single mission was about her manipulating, deceiving and betraying her way to the top of the dogpile of Lordaeron’s power vacuum left after Arthas’ rampage. Cue 15 years later to her 360 no scoping the fucking Lich King and his armies by herself in the Shadowlands trailer, while slow walking in high heels to badass music. Blizzard can only write two characters - Goku for heroes, C’thulu-corrupted antihero for villain - and every single character which a writer tries to push outside those boundaries gets promptly put back in the milisecond a new writer gets to write them. It’s sad and ruined a lot of promising characters throughout the years.
Slyvanas is introduced as an enemy named Night Elf ranger, you have to kill her and complete an optional quest before she comes back as a banshee and then later on you turn her into the Dark Ranger hero character.
Sylvanas in the Frozen Throne is easily my favourite part of Warcraft III. Small scale, and graspable scale, a conflict with a grim anti-hero struggling for freedom and who becomes yet another monster. It is superb.
She also has a shoddily thrown together "redemption" arc after committing some heinous deeds just like Kerrigan. Blizzard loves their poorly written "anti-" heroines.
Sylvanas and the Undead were my favorite race in Warcraft 3 and WoW. They really had a chance of diving into gray morality. But as always the Horde is shat on by Blizzard and the Undead are always the villains. Undercity is sacked repeatedly, Sylvanas is made into a raid boss and betrays the Horde while the Alliance is shown as always the good guys. We never see the Alliance as the Xenophobic group they really are.
7 месяцев назад+306
kerrigan's entire story is a mess. She became a zerg, got reverted back to terran/human, only to willingly and eagerly turn herself into a zerg again to get revenge for being turned into a zerg in the first place, what the actual f*ck? Oh, and was willing to slaughter countless worlds along the way for a personal vendetta against 1 man. What was her 'punishment' for constant genocide? Oh, yeah, she gets to become basically a God with no reprecussions whatsoever.
"was willing to slaughter countless worlds along the way for a personal vendetta against 1 man." She might have switched races but she was always a woman so this is not that strange.
How Zeratul should have put it: "And though justice demands that she die for her crimes, she must not die yet. She has to do ONE THING, and then we can all f*&%ing kill her!" That would have been a better way to get fans on board with saving Kerrigan. Starcraft 2 had a huge problem with the story of Kerrigan. Kerrigan was nerfed so hard from Brood War just so we can face off against her without instantly losing. She loses all competency as a villain in Wings and is given too much of a power boost in Hots and becomes a god in LOTV. She literally killed billions of Terrans and Protoss, and we're expected to accept it because it was all Amon in the end. She can't just be redeemed with everything she had done up to that point. The best parts of Starcraft 2 in my opinion were really the parts without Kerrigan. The parts where we see other characters like Raynor and Artanis shine without her butting in were the best parts of Starcraft 2.
I differ from most ppl here. At the end of WoL it would be incredibly dumb to kill her cos she controls the zerg. Andy competent commander would like to capture and study her. so the artifact could return her to semi human form and then Raynor can capture her. Its normal to want to see what of her remains. we could have her being studied by Valerian but Mengsk attacks. Raynor saves himself but Keri escapes. She is weak, humans are hunting her. She can be still evil but not bloodthirsty. Her HoTS ark could have been - she finds zerg tribe that accepts her but learns about new Overmind. fearful about his control she gathers swarms and prepares to assault Overmind. During her campaign she meets hybrids and learns about Narud. She also withdraws all zerg from human space. She also saves Raynor while tryng to learn more about hybrids and Amon. She lets him go. At the end of her campaign she is still half human but with enchanced psi abilities due to hybrid research. She laids a trap and kills Mengsk with help of Raynor but by not invading human colonies. At the epilogue - humans, and toss and outnumbered by Amon forces, she arrives with several trilions of zerg and gives Artanis and Raynor/Valerian a chance to invade Amon domain. she and her swarm remain there. The last two mission you play as toss and terran against Narud while you have periodic zerg reinforcements. At very end she appears and is able to stun Amon while Artanis deliver the killing blow with Zeratul psi balde. The she kidnaps Raynor and bring him to Char to perfom dominatrix stuff on him the End..?
@@ixirionnah have tassadar willfully manifest himself as a force ghost alongside fenix to tell raynor to "stop simping" and remind him of how she chose to become a monster after being freed of the overmind.
I beg to differ. Kerrigan did kill billions as queen of swarm but a queen is really a queen if it's just a puppet? I claim mental instability for her crimes and after she was freed from that influence she didn't mindlessly murder. As an example with Warfield's death zerg started to pull back that is something that never happened before. Kerrigan is not a murderer if all her opponents stand away from her path she probably doesn't even fight protoss. All her fights born from absolute necessity after she is freed from amons control
Amon had a lot of faith in his hybrids I think so he probably just didn't pay as much attention to Kerrigan as he should have and that's why they were able to neutralize her. He didn't expect she would reclaim that transformation but in a wholesome way.
Personally, i think Kerrigan in SC1 as a protagonist could have worked IF the writers paid attention to her final words in SC1. She mentions how there will be a time when she will need to test the Terrans and Protoss again, where it then pans out to Amon's star-eye loop facial formation thing. This could have allowed her to be the ultimate Machiavellian character who is still very, very evil but has an overall good-ish end goal (or to be exact, her end goal is her being on top rather than Amon)...which is implied quite a lot to be what she may have been intended to be in WoL before HoTS and LoTV threw that away. In WoL, Kerrigan makes a lot of mentions on how Jim doesn't know what he's doing by preventing her from getting the artifacts, and she's correct. Narud is also opposing her...which makes no sense in HoTS since by all means if Amon was influencing her then he would have influenced her not to get in the way of procuring the artifacts at all. But she is actively rebelling against Narud in WoL, meaning that she knows of Amon, knows of Narud being Duran, and is actively trying to stop them. There are even a lot of small dialogue continuity errors sprinkled throughout HoTS such as Kerrigan knowing Prometheus Company's role in the Dominion...while having amnesia of everything up Mengsk betraying her which is before the Dominion is even formed. But what if this was used not as shoddily slapdashed rewrites, but on purpose? What if, most of HoTS' plot carries on as-is, but every once-in-a-while Kerrigans slips up by saying something she shouldn't know, with more and more of the cast catching on as the plot progresses with her snapping at them in denial whenever questioned about it. But then, upon rescuing Raynor, he tries to sell his "bUt YoU arEn'T the Qween ob bwades" nonsense only for Kerrigan to get pissed off and snap at him, revealing that she never had amnesia nor was she ever under Amon's control, finally explaining herself: what if she did all of her heinous things in Brood War to prepare the Dominion and Delaam for Amon's inevitable arrival due to seeing how woefully inadequate they were against the UED? If they got rolled over by some explorer force of a bunch of far-off Terrans, then they'd be 10000% screwed against Amon. So she engineers a cold war scenario where all sides build up their armies and arsenals rather than chill out in peace, unknowingly making themselves more prepared for Amon's arrival until Narud used that arsenal buildup to backfire that advantage. And when Raynor asks why she didn't tell anyone the truth, she'd roll her eyes and point out that only an idiot would have taken her seriously if she said that alien god space cthulu was coming to murder everyone for giggles so she needed to engineer a situation that would get the results she needed, even if it meant making everyone miserable in the process for their own good. Still the queen bitch of the universe without regretting anything, but now she gets the protagonist spotlight. But no, instead we got a flip-flopping writer's block being tossed around with shallow moral grandstanding nonsense.
This. Literally this. The only inconsistency, or rather a questionmark, would be the ending of WoL carrying to your version HotS. Just end the WoL as-is and then... retcon all the novels and go with your hots version, or?
I like your idea that kerrigan is making everyone evolve. so they could counter amon. but no she got the goku treatment. rather let her use her brain to save the universe.
You can't really force a cold war state, especially not with trigger happy factions like the Protoss and the Terran's, so it wouldn't really work. Also, this is not "Protagonist Spotlight", not how storytelling works.
Thank you for saying it. The treatment of Kerrigan is the worst thing in SC2. Her going super-saiyan was the final insult. I've been tempted to make a video like this since Wings of Liberty came out, but I'm much too lazy. Side-note: I never liked the broodmothers. They lack the cerebrates' cool-factor, and letting the work of a giant immobile brain be done by a fighting unit feels completely cheap and overpowered.
Rather than cheap and overpowered, I would say it is flawed and inefficient. Cerebrates can, in a very limited sense, move. They have moved before planet to planet, canonically. That's all the mobility they need. Why are you putting your brain on the front lines? If you lose your brain, you lose! Your brain should be the LAST thing to risk being damaged, to the point where if it IS being damaged, the rest of you is gone anyways. Abathur would be so disappointed by the concept of Broodmothers, they waste so much essence, so much energy, to allow for a role that they should never engage in. You could make a whole second creature, whose entire existence is War, with the spare essence you're wasting on the Broodmothers to make them middling-strength lasses instead of giant brain-worms. This flaw is even highlighted in canon: The cerebrates were problem-solvers, were creative thinkers, they figured out how to remake a new overmind without any blueprints. Meanwhile Zagara whittles her thumbs on a bone trench that a single flying unit could just go over, and needs Abathur to "adjust" her (in a very painful way, from their dialogues) to give her "vision", because the ability to think beyond pre-programmed systems at all was too much excess for the broodmothers compared to the cerebrates, with their wasteful mobility and minor combat abilities.
The "behind the scenes" reason is Games Workshop sued Blizzard for using the concept of Cerebrates. To play nice, they agreed to do away with Cerebrates.
@@zxKAOS1As if I needed more reason to detest Games Workshop. "Hurrr, I'm going to rip off every franchise in existence, then sue anyone who creates anything original that vaguely resembles something I've stolen. Frikkin IP pirates. All their victims should gang up and sue them at the same time.
@@zxKAOS1 I posted a reply to you but RUclips censored it. I'll try to redact what I think made CensorTube mad. As if I needed more reason to detest Games Workshop. "Hurrr, I'm going to rip off every franchise in existence, then sue anyone who creates anything original that vaguely resembles something I've ripped off." Frikkin IP pirates. All their (vic times) should gang up and sue them at the same time.
@@falsnamae3511 Yeah I think the concept of Broodmothers was some type of woke shit but buried under layers of new lore crap so that no one questions it. Probably not, but it is convincing and would be hilarious if this is somewhat true.
So basically sc2 Kerrigan continues to manipulate everyone, perhaps Zeratul missions in wol and his "prophecies" are also directed by her to stop everyone from wanting to kill her so she could completly free herself from Amon and get revenge aganist Mengsk and continues her mad quest for power to become god
@@ExValeFor huge gaps..? Like the entire HoS and LoV campaigns? Minus the fanfic part? Like pls. Stop it. Stop defending the multimillionaire company trying to justify a massive genocidical maniac as an "anti hero" when NOTHING before the "haha yeah Amon" had any clue about Amon influences (traumatized in many ways absolutely but her actions speak for themselves). As someone studying writing as a beginner even I can see the lame writing. Unironically the manipulative Kerrigan taking advantage of a Jimm (and toss, and valerian) with memory lost and zeratul bc the prophecy makes so much more sense. A true villain arc of someone that because of the horrible traumas in her past simply went full mad, became what she hated and finally died without redemption. People need to stop being so afraid to write more greek catastrophe for fk sake. I love Kerrigan but boy I wished they killed her, fk I change Zeratul dead for Kerrigans EVERY DAY
How to kill Amon without Kerrigan: - Steer the Spear of Adun into a collision course with Amon, with enough solarite to kill him - Use Mengsk's remaining nuclear weapons to weaken Amon and his forces
The prophecy is now that the SPEAR of Adun wasn't just named like that because it sounded cool but because it was actually meant to be used as a spearhead against Amon. I'm only joking but it's only slightly stupider than what we actually got.
@@PieisDaBest1 Abathur mentions during a dialogue that Stukov is probably the most powerful psionic being he knows after Primal Kerrigan. This is likely a result of a combination of factors involving his zergification, de-zergification via a Protoss attempt at a cure and then rezergification during experiments run on him by Narud. So he should be pretty damn powerful and Narud was likely weakened from having his mortal Avatar killed in LotV.
@@Salted_Fysh My point was that they were still able to beat him with conventional weapons. We still have to incapacitate him, while Stukov just finishes him off. Also, Amon lost a host form too. This feeds into my disappointment that we didn't get a final fight with Amon in either his host form or his real one. I get that he's supposed to be super powerful, but it also makes the final mission pretty anti-climactic when we spend all that time beating up rocks, only for him to die in a cutscene.
I was pretty blind to it when I played HOTS as a young infant. But man, replaying HOTS as a 30 year old and listening to Kerrigan's.. personality, if you could call it that, sure was something.
I had a weird thought, what if lab rat is still the first mission in the game, because rather than Zagara remaining on char, Zagara is this bizarre anomaly that survived the final blast which wiped out all the within its blast radius because of Zagara's PERFECTLY MERGED HUMAN DNA, a personal hybrid of Kerrigan's own making which was to be her new body for the final war. but now it's just there, a relative blank slate, one which is studied, closely by Valarian and Jim, Zagara could slowly develop more awareness and ego as time goes on, a strange attachment even to the Valarian and Jim in the same way zoo animals appreciate their caretakers, meanwhile confronting them with its obvious signs of sapience, casting the zerg in a subtle new light for their campaign and forcing Jim to both consider the implications of that considering this zerg hasn't done anything(because it's been in a cage since it was a larva) and it is in a sense all that's left of Sara, but Jim also has to be cautious, he's let his guard down before, he's seen what the zerg do if you turn your back to them even for a second, and thus has to be the one advising Valarian, whose inexperience with the zergs core nature leads him to consider and go through with releasing Zagara upon the dominion when they assault the umojans. This gives Zagara her chance to escape, which she takes without a second thought, as that is her and all other zergs nature first and foremost, to grow and spread, no cage is big enough, no world, no body. In the end Korhal will lie in ruin, Mengsk will be dead, as will billions of Terrans, and thousands of protoss, the swarm is whole, and now sets its sights to the last cage containing its spread, Amon.
I suppose that in this alternate reality of Dead Kerrigan after Wings, the protagonist of HotS would be... Y'know what, I'm gonna go against the grain here! Izsha. Apparently at one point in development she was infested (sometimes another psionic infested in Kerrigan's attempts to make another smart infested; other times an adjutant). Izsha is cold, but somewhat caring, has some common ground with Kerrigan as a fellow infested, and was the Queen's secretary - likely the only creature that Kerrigan would have ever voiced doubts or guilt to. If any living being could "redeem" the Swarm, I think it would be her. She's been with her Queen, probably managing the Swarm's intelligence network personally, she's seen Raynor travel across the sector, fighting like hell. She's seen Love at Kerrigan's execution - mercy for her, and justice for the fallen; and there's just enough individuality and humanity deep down in her for Izsha to become fascinated with this. She begins remodeling the Swarm for a bit less brutality and a bit more honest diplomacy (if the other species can be convinced to trust her). I foresee... Defensive missions against the Protoss, helping Raynor and Co discretely, and a falling out with Abathur who leaves to support Zagara in the Second Brood War.
I can see this happening bar one fact. Izsha isn't much of a fighter or a commander herself, she is there to support one, not be one, as such I think it would work much better if she chose a weaker queen and help her climb to the top of the swarm. She could even justify her decision by correctly pointing out that in the end kerigan got too arrogant for her own good and that's what ultimately led to her downfall. This way, you can have a whole cast of likeable zerg characters with a goals the players can somewhat empathize with.
I can see that, you play as izsha, and you hava abathur that urges you to consume everything like a proper zerg should, and zagara suggesting there might be more to life than eating and evolving.
The first question is what story does blizzard want. They write most of their stories with two things in mind; foes for the player to fight and baddies to deliver big impact lines of dialogue. Do they want a Kerrigan redemption arc? Then they should have baked a conflict to succeed Kerrigan getting redeemed into sc1 to be extended in the sequel. Do they want her to be the final boss? Then they should have done more to show how her character transitions from Raynnor's crush to a murderer of billions. A cascade of bad choices or the irreversible consequence of getting zerg-brain. They did neither. She is just bad until she not until she is. She's not making the wrong choices in a tough situation or having a character flaw explored. She's as evil or snarky as the situation needs for conflicts to happen. As much as people love the first game, it does nothing to set up anything about Kerrigan beyond assumptions and sc2 did nothing to correct those absent details. In fact it made them worse.
I'd think Kerrigan's redemption would've been more believable if they stuck to something like - Kerrigan's brutal and forced transformation and telepathic-link to countless, rapid zerg creatures caused her to go insane and develop Dissociative identity disorder (The Queen of Blades). Throughout Heart of the Swarm, she could get "whispers" from The Queen of Blades (as she still lives in her brain like The Green Goblin). In order to silence her, she attempts to prove to herself that she isn't the killing machine she was forced to be. You could even easily redo some of the missions where instead of slaughtering people, she goes out of her way to try and save them, affirming to herself that she is no longer The Queen of Blades. Here are a few quickly chalked up ones as examples. Kaldir - Kerrigan travels to Kaldir, seeking the memory of Nafash. However, with Nafash being killed by the local wildlife after being frozen, Kerrigan stumbles upon the protoss research colony. Kerrigan quickly finds out that the protoss technology is failing, and if they fail to evacuate, the entire colony may be frozen solid. Kerrigan promises to provide a safe escort to the warp conduits. (The fleeing protoss themselves being attacked by the rapid Ursadons on the planet, their weapons rendered useless with the flash freezes). Zerus - Zeratul informs Kerrigan about the "darkness of amon" (The Queen of Blades) that still lives within her. He tells her that so long as it remains, her psionic potential will only bring destruction. In order to further cleanse herself of the Swarm Zerg, she assimilates the Primal Zerg's independent structure to replace the Overmind's initial corruption that still taints her mind. The Ancient One, having sensed Kerrigan's powerful, pure essence, awakens from his slumber. Skygeirr Platform - Kerrigan, having told The Swarm they won't be testing on humans anymore, is informed by Abathur about an overrun research facility where many terrans had been infested by Narud. After the escapee, Stukov, boards the Leviathan, Kerrigan agrees to help him get revenge against Narud, but only if he helps bring mercy to the infested terrans. - Another small thing would be to simply adjust some of her dialogue to show more of her humanity, and her sense of justice. The most popular example would be her line with Izsha. Izsha: What about Arcturus Mengsk? Will his death bring you no joy? Kerrigan: I don't know yet, but I do know It'll bring joy to other people... Like everyone who lost their families on Tarsonis... That's what will bring me joy.
Damn, that's actually a good way to twist it. I wounder if we can have a full custom company with rewritten story, missions and cinematics. We have a great team at GGG that makes mods. Get some AI to do the voices, change text and some cutscenes, redo some missions and it could be so much better!
I think Subsourian confirmed that the development team was experimenting with having Kerrigan talk to the queen of blades and having her run this schizophrenia act in some way. They just didn't go through with it. HotS is just half-baked in general. Kerrigan's visual design also got cut short before they could do anything actually fun with her primal form. *Or her xelnaga form, apparently*
why a villain even should have a redemption arc? can we mature enough to understand that being someone who murdered thousands is rather hard to redeem?
Subpar Ending. I thought the whole point of StarCraft was to be a leader and tactical commander. Able to even outdo a god being like Amon through careful planning, allegiances, barely scrapping by, and that one ace you have up your sleeve to finish it off. But for whatever reason they just wanted Kerrigan to have her little dragon ball power fantasy of "I'm the strongest, Kerrigan strongest there is." moment or whatever.
She offers to atone by becoming a god and giving up her last humanity, love. But just a few minutes later, she naturally makes love in her human form and is saved instead of atoned for.
The problem is that Kerrigan, through her actions in BW and in WoL, crossed the moral event horizon so many times to the point of no return. She manipulated and killed everyone to her and her swarm's benefit.
@@razorback9999able thats why she should either stay the evil queen she was at the end of starcraft 1 (manipulative etc) or be killed, making her new Jesus was so against her character i just laughed
You know what would have been crazy? If Kerrigan went undercover as Doctor Hansen, and then stole the artifacts. It would fit, too. She could project herself as being in another place, has the power and skill to fool even the best psionics, and the artifact is a lot easier to use with Terran tech than Zerg stuff. Imagine a storyline where she used Raynor to collect them, mind controlled Swann and Stetmann to help her handle them, and projected a fake version of herself in a vulnerable position fighting Tal'darim to lure Raynor away and then steal the Hyperion, before leaving him behind the way Mengsk left her. Then Raynor teams up with the Tal'darim to try and get his ship and the artifact back, and then they join up with Valerian and half the dominion fleet to try to gank her, only for Zeratul to grab her when she's purified by the artifact. Then instead of lovey dovey shipping we could have had Zeratul and Kerrigan try and not kill each other as Kerrigan slowly relearns how to command the Zerg and is gradually let in on why Zeratul needed her alive. That being that Amon was coming back and if he takes full control of the Swarm, the good guys lose. Zeratul wants Kerrigan to stay human and contest Amon, Kerrigan comes to the realization of how strong Amon really is and goes to Primal her way back into being Zerg against Zeratuls wishes. Then instead of revenge plot against Mengsk her main goal is retaking full control of the Zerg before Amon awakens, and helping Jimmy boy kill Mengsk is just a bonus along the way.
one thing i always hated in #2 is how it starts with Kerrigan teaching the lesson that the zerg are unpredictable and dont do what you expect. Then her whole arc is letting go of her humanity and becoming the zerg. This culminates in her walking into mengsk trap, doing EXACTLY what he expected, to get personal revenge. VERY personal, almost like shes not the zerg at all. If she truly had finally become part of the swarm and not an individual, she would have just sent a bunch of Banelings knocking on mengks door, utterly blind siding him and cementing the point that she is the swarm; so for HER killing him with banelings is exactly the same thing. but noop.
I completely agree and have been saying it for a long while now. SC2 would have been a much better story if Kerrigan died in WoL. The Zerg campaign could have been an unabashed Zerg campaign. The Protoss campaign could have had proper stakes being set in the timeline where Kerrigan died knowing full well that it had been set up that that's the bad timeline in wings. And best of all no fire angel fanfiction epilogue.
It is downright bizarre. The Zerg is the logistical faction in the games, focusing on expansion, economy and outproducing the enemy. And they decided to center the Zerg campaign on a poorly written mass murderer with god-like stats in the scenarios. The disonance is appalling, and how in the void would that aid players in learning to play Zerg for multiplayer?
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof yeah the multiplayer Zerg and campaign Zerg are nothing alike. If I had the time and skill I'd love to remake the campaign though I doubt there'd be enough interest at this point
Dude, it's not just HOTS. Blizzard did this to every single one of their IPs. They took solid and interesting character based stories in somewhat generic fantasy worlds, and convoluted them to fuck. I don't know if it was all Metzen or what, but the ego behind some of the narrative decisions is insane. Let alone when they decided to allow outside authors to contribute to lore from even outside of the games.
Brood War writing wasn't much better (except UED). I never understood why Kerrigan in BW is praised, I absolutely hated her character, because it seemed like she didn't earn her victories at all and everyone else was just plain dumb. It was so unsatisfying. HotS is just an extension of that. Kerrigan was a pretty shite character all troughout in my opinion. In SC2 they tried to fix her - and failed. It would've been better if she had just died by the end of BW and we started off fresh in SC2 without her. The whole story would've been better that way.
@manolgeorgiev9664 I agree with everything you said. Kerrigan was a trash character in both games. The only thing I agree with from the video is that BW Kerrigan is less shiite than the sc2 one.
@@manolgeorgiev9664 Brood war wasn't the best written game, but at least Kerrigan was built up to be hated by the players, meaning there was the potential of a satisfying revenge against her in an eventual sequel. But then SC2 came and dissapointed everyone who wanted to get revenge for Fenix ......
Your "fixing Kerrigan" segment more or less hit the nail on the head for my thoughts. I'm an amateur writer (and I've always wanted to be a novelist), but I can't say I bothered putting as much thought into the Brood War or WoL problems. But my thought was to excise the prophecy, and kill Kerrigan at the end of WoL. Then Heart of the Swarm could be taken in SO MANY possible directions with a sort of "Second Brood War": maybe you take on the full villainous role as a Broodmother seizing power or a Hybrid battling for control of the Swarm (offering an opportunity for a deeper exploration of the Hybrid); or to create a more "heroic" Zerg, play as Stukov and fighting to take control of parts of the Swarm and create a Brood for himself and other infested, or even a Broodmother who decides to "evolve" her Brood in a different direction and try to be diplomatic, sharply contrasting with Kerrigan by being an engineered "monster" that refuses to be a monster. This whole idea of a new Brood War even better sets up the idea of the Zerg Swarm being broken into different factions and better justifies the "feral" Zerg, as well as the idea of the "heroic" Zerg taking a beating that prevents them from aiding the Protoss. I remember being a mix of confused, annoyed, and pissed off by Kerrigan's comment of "My Swarm was broken (at Ulnar)" when Artanis asked her to more formally ally with him, because it's like "Uh, hello?! Didn't you spend HotS taking near full control of the Swarm?! Wasn't that the alleged POINT of you not being offed by Raynor?! And you LOST MOST OF IT THAT EASILY?!!!!!" I could rant for hours, but I think I'm preaching to the choir, so I'd better shut up now. :P
When I showed my ex the whole Starcraft story, they said one thing that they would have done if they were writing it, and I've never been able to get it out of my head. "It would have been so much better if the Overmind succeeded in his goal of creating the "perfect zerg" when he formed on Aiur, assimilated a single protoss into the first hybrid, and Brood War had been about Kerrigan and this hybrid character fighting for control of the Swarm." Ever since, whenever I think of before ways the story could have gone or my own rewrites or fanfic or what have you, I always have the hybrid be a single and unique character, and the real big bad of the universe after the Overmind's death. There was no need for Amon and NaruDuran, there was no need for making the hybrid about as common as ultralisks, there was no need to make the Overmind and Kerrigan anything more than they were at the end of episode 3. My perfect Brood War would have had these as their campaign premises, not going into detail of how everything plays out and ends but at least a baseline of the campaigns. Episode 4: The protoss still escape to Shakuras. With the frankly extinction level population decrease the fall of Aiur had and the much more interesting story that happened off-screen, their campaign should be about two things. The Khalai/Nerazim divide, Ulrezaj's terrorism and creation of the Tal'darim, and the Khalai setting out to activate the three arkships they *stored off Aiur because it makes no sense to store your contingency for if your planet gets destroyed on said planet* and with the amount of protoss lost on Aiur *the only possible way they could even remain a player on the galactic stage was getting all those warriors stored in stasis on them.* Episode 5: A Mengsk campaign, where we get to see the power of the newly established empire and Mengsk be the genius he supposedly is, first establishing further ties with Umoja and pursuing Raynor and Kerrigan as the threats to his rule. At this point literally all of his enemies are in weak states after the battle for Aiur, it's the perfect time for him to *do something* and the whole UED invasion ultimately changed nothing so there's no point in introducing them when we already have a terran villain. Episode 6: Kerrigan now has three threats to her control of the Swarm; The hybrid, Ulrezaj, and Mengsk (both of who have a history of pursuing control of the zerg). Ultimately the hybrid is the greatest threat and everything Kerrigan and the hybrid do is a galactic chess game between the two. Whatever happens here should lead to Raynor on the path to finishing her in Wings of Liberty, and Zeratul to discovering the existence of the hybrid which will be the main big bad of the Starcraft 2 trilogy and the character played in 2's zerg campaign. No need for a retconned in surviving space god, instead it should build up to stop the hybrid's ascension that would inevitably doom everyone if they succeeded.
With the infested Stukov thing he did acknowledge that he can never return to Earth (because he’s infested), but Kerigan also agreed on the note that his return would only encourage the UED to come back
But he never really brought up the fact that Kerrigan was involved in his original death, his friend's death, and the destruction of the UED fleet. Not even a grudging acknowledgement that he's putting his feelings (if any) about that aside to stop Narud.
@@PieisDaBest1 yeah, I just meant to comment on how Kerigan sees and thinks of things as we(the player) are supposed to connect with her and go through that “redemption” arc that they tried. What I really meant to say is Stukov laments not being able to go back to Earth; and Kerrigan with no sympathy or empathy and pretty much being the reason he can’t go back (as you said killed all them and infested him), sees the political reason rather than the moral one with no apology or care and pretty much said she’d never let him go back.
I was a kid when StarCraft dropped, and it blew my mind that protagonists can be evil. Kerrigan was comparatively competent, had understandable reasons for wanting revenge, and got what she wanted in the end by playing enemies against each other. It really set the standard for me for many years (even Arthas' fall kinda flopped in comparison). When SC2 released, all the childish naivete fell off and it felt like my all time favorite character got brutally murdered. I still don't understand why Blizzard went that way, WotLK ended just a year before and they knew how to give an important character a send-off then.
I mean, to be fair. Kerrigan was born a human with psychic potential, so they tossed her child self into the ghost program and made her a living weapon for killing political dissidents. Then she broke out of that and teamed up with Mengsk and the others.... And got treated as a disposable tool by the bastard of bastards. She has never had a family, I don't recall any mention of her having had friends. Raynor aside Kerrigan has never had any reason to consider herself part of humanity nor like she owes humanity anything. Getting turned into a Zerg with all the mental influences of the Overmind and the Xel stuff hardly helped in this sense. Ultimately purifying her and trying to turn her back into a human was never going to work because there just isn't anything about being human that Kerrigan would want, aside from being able to be with Raynor I suppose and she can do that just fine as a Zerg. Furthermore for all that the Zerg are Zergy in their ways, they actually accept and treat her as one of their own. In the end her entire life has taught one very simple lesson: She and the Zerg who are effectively part of her cant rely on anyone else, even Raynor has trouble accepting the Zerg part of her and wants to see it purged if possible.
it's even worse than that. apparently, she unalived her own mother with her crazy psi powers at a young age, and vegetabled her dad. the ghost program had brutal physical and mental torture and conditioning, and the zerg morphosis wasn't a fun picnic either, as Abathur the evolution guy likes to remind us of. having jim try to redeem her but failing is nice, but wasn't pulled off nearly well enough. and the ending was complete bs of course
To be honest also the thing is SC1 started with Terran, SC:BW started with Protoss, what if rearrange all the SC2, so it starts with Zerg, second go Protoss and last campagin is terran. Damn that would be sick.
Honestly, that would be pretty cool. I always wondered why they never did one in that order. Like, yeah, Terrans for the final campaign aren't super interesting, but definitely doable.
I actually remember somewhere that WOL Would have been greater and unchanged if this order was the case, as the pattern was 1:fall of a regime. (confederacy in SC1 and the protoss council in SC:BW) 2:Rise to power. (Zerg eventually assaulting Aiur in SC1 and UED Taking over in BW) Followed by 3:New villain is made. (Overmind dies, Which allows the UED to take over the swarm in SC1 and Kerrigan becoming the defacto leader of the swarm in BW) If WOL was put in 3, then The ending would have been a nice end point for the game, as instead of cause another villain to have a reason to become a problem, they defy the pattern for a more happier ending. I haven't read it in a while, so i might have made some mistakes in my retelling.
@@thegameghoul3442 I remember seeing a pretty good video as a sort of alternate ending with the campaign order rearranged and the story changed to reflect it. I believe it was called " A Better Ending for StarCraft 2?", I don't know if YT would hide the comment if I posted the link itself.
Yes! It always bugged me, more than the mission design of LotV, that this is the order of campaigns they went with. Imagine starting SC2 with Heart of the Swarm, just instead of human Kerrigan controlling against Valarian's science equipment, start with the zerg attacking Hybrid aligned Terrans. Mission 2 would be an Infested Kerrigan only no-build with the boss at the end being a Hybrid, with emphasis that she has trouble fighting it. Story from there would instead be Kerrrigan going to various places looking for powerups in the form of lost Xel-Naga research (not artifacts, research) to empower herself, the bestest one being the super spawning pool on Zerrus. Instead of on Char have Kerrigan take on Warfield on (whatever planet) and then actually fail to kill him, earning him his heroic title. For the Narud missions I'd have Kerrigan constantly trash talk the Hybrids because she's been powering up so much, and not have her have any issues fighting them. Heck if it's the last mission chosen the beam struggle could also just instantly won and Kerrigan lazily send in the swarm to clean up instead of having a bit of pressure in having to take out the temples (you'd still need to destroy them to lower the shield to get in) (Also, I'd find it interesting if Infested Stukov didn't join up with Kerrigan and run away.) Final mission would still be attacking Korhol for Revenge. Only issue is what to replace the missions about rescuing Jim... Probably another planet with Xel-naga Research. A sandy desert one maybe? In any case, campaign one would end the same. Korhol invaded, Emp Mengsk dead, dominion shattered, though mercifully (some) people were allowed to escape this time, unlike Tarsonis Legacy of the Void could remain mostly the same, except instead of Primal Kerrigan dropping in you could have Infested Stukov. Or Zagara. Then make the big send off with Wings of Liberty. You don't have to change the initial start, just have it happen at the same time as HotS's final missions. Jim's three prologue missions are happening as collateral to Super Kerrigan's attack on Korhol. Swarm is Big. Couple of changes I'd make would be to have the missions in LotV where Jim shows up be playable again except as Jim, since there's now a timeline issue. But in any case, WoL would take longer timeline wise so that it would be the final ending. Second change would be reason for broadcasting the old Adjutant's file. Instead of just there to throw mud at Arcturus' rep, it would be to resolve a dispute on succession for the dominion throne. Completing the mission set would solidify Valarian's position, somehow... And then of course, ending it as described in the video. EDIT: I just watched "A Better Ending for Starcraft 2?" and dammit, he makes a compelling point.
I will never let it down. Never, ever. And not just the ruination of Kerrigan... Edit: Would've been fun to have Stukov as the MC of HoTS. He'd be controlling his own faction made out of a mix of Infested Terrans with their mental faculties still normal (and suffering mentally due to their condition of being a bunch of mutant freaks) and Zerg that the ex UED commander included into his infested fleet.
I'd twist it to ''it's not the Kerrigan herself that we need as a McGuffin, but something inside her'' - like, her ultimate essence or some sh*t. A little Fifth Element-ish, but it is suitable for Starcraft. That way the player still needs to defeat her, she is still to become the weapon against Amon in the end, but it's not the end of the world if she gets what she deserves. And this is where Stukov comes in when the question ''how tf do we extract what we need?'' arises. That would also allow us to keep the ''Zerg protagonist'', since this is a necessary component in core Starcraft pattern.
To be honest I always thought that Ariel Hanson could make a good replacement for Kerrigan. With Hanson initialy becoming a zerg when instead of curing the infestation she gets infested but manages to find a way of preventing herself and the others from falling under the control of the zerg. And that she becomes the new Zerg Queen after Kerrigan gets killed.
Alternative suggestion, we were the villain as the zerg in Brood War - Let the Zerg Campaign be from Amon or Duran's perspective being a genocidal maniac running roughshod over the galaxy while episode 3 is about the protoss figuring out what the hell to do with Kerrigan's essence after extracting it. CLARIFICATION: Make episode 2 Duran directing the swarm under Amon's orders to find and kill Kerrigan to prevent the "prophecy" not understanding that it was (like you suggested) her ESSENCE rather than her that was needed to kill him, have zeratul show up last second to gank Kerrigan (payback for razshagal) and swipe the essence having figured that out and bailing with Raynor to have episode 3 be the real heroes figuring out how they're supposed to use it. This adds the bonus of letting us actually spend time inside the head of the dude the game is asking us to hate so we can learn EXACTLY what he wants to do and what his future universe looks like
it's a Blizzard fetish apparently, same thing happened to Sylvanas in WOW, killed millions,nobody liked her yet somehow she redeemed hersefl in the end, but with the same harrowing hair pulling script situation ...
I remember there was a Bliz con event and a fan litterly mentioned how the story was going to go and said it would be lame if they did that. The look on writers faces was priceless.
Imagine we got a Starcraft 2 plot where Amon + the Hybrid appeared, and Kerrigan was instead intent on stealing the hybrid for her own use, "allying" with the Terran and Protoss once agian (intent on betraying them as always) out of sheer desparation, and successfully killing amon like she does, but getting killed directly after in a battle-weakened by none other than Raynor, keeping his promise from BW
They wanted to make her a girlboss without the baggage of previous games, so they just ignored it. Out of all the returning characters in SC2 she definitely suffered the most in terms of writing. I think they still could have done a redemption arc, but that would have required her to have been remorseful in some way, instead they just leaned into romance with Jim, that was established outside of games, pretty much a fail all around, modern Blizzard writing at its finest.
I'm actually of the opinion that BW's ending should have been different. BW had Kerrigan piss everyone off, and when the consequences for her actions finally showed up at her doorstep, she was completely bailed out because her cerebrate happened to have a high APM and could grind the level as much as was needed. Then she declares victory as if she did it all herself. I think a much better ending would have been in the face of such overwhelming fleets, if she'd had to have retreated into Char's nydus tunnels, but her cerebrate had to hold off the enemy in a last stand while she ran. She'd have been safe, but severely weakened, having lost her last cerebrate and having to rebuild her control over the zerg by herself. It would have explained her diminished presence in SC2 and why there are no cerebrates anymore. I even think it would have been cool seeing her in a moment of panic as the walls come crashing down, only to salvage a costly victory by the skin of her teeth, perhaps vowing to return stronger than ever before and crush her enemies once and for all.
@@DarkSeresutia the problem is these multi million Corp devs have massively overpaid executives who think doing things like this would give the players headaches so goes for a safer story.
You know, one could play this idea in a more dramatic manner. Kerrigan tasks her cerebrate to hold them off 'while I prepare my move'... and that move is betraying the cerebrate to it's death in the same manner she was betrayed. Just it's the huge alliance against her instead of the zerg overwhelming the abandoned one's defenses this time. Having her remark that she's become what she hated in order to win would have capped that off perfectly and explained why Kerrigan is so diminished, lost her best asset while taking a psychological blow in the process.
@@Sorain1 basically if the cerebrate last long enough it triggers a death wave and kerrigan will congradulate them for giving the station time to blow if they win the station blows not really changing much since kerrigan always did have a petty vendetta with the cerebrates
I always liked to think that the reason for the magistrate to disappear in Brood War was that he was clever enough to not trust Kerrigan and chose to part ways with Reynor
I really like the concept you listed for killing Kerrigan. It made me think of the next steps that'd come after for the zerg; a Brood War-style shattered swarm, with Abuthur leading one faction orientated towards infesting terrans to expand (making them an obvious direct enemy for the Dominion), while Zagara tries to carve out her own domain of planets that leads to her conflicting with the primal zerg, who seek to absorb the 'classic' zerg. Finally, Ishka tries to stay clear of all factions so she can pursue her own reunification strategy - just as infestation brought back a dead Stukov, she's trying to bring Kerrigan back. Not in that ruined body of course, but trying to obtain the resources to imprint a backup of Kerrigan's psionic pattern (her mind, effectively) onto a new viable host body - one of the said resources she needs to obtain, a ghost - Nova. This plan ultimately succeeds, giving us a Kerrigan that is not burdened by the sins of what the dead her did - it may look like Kerrigan, talk and think like her, have her memories, but also, it's not the same person, depending on your philosophical viewpoint. This one is more redeemable (some would argue she's actually none nothing wrong, as that was another person she was copied from, akin to holding a clone guilty for the crime of its originator). This also allows the prophecy to still be fulfilled (Prophecies are tricky animals, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer taught us) just not in an obvious way of redeeming the unredeemable. Original Kerrigan acted like an ineffective idiot in WOL and deserved to go down, having her die takes the story off the rails towards the 'beat Amon' conclusion, not to mention allows Jimmy to keep to his promise to Phoenix. The delayed arrival of a cloned Kerrigan, only revealing what Ishka was up to towards the very end of her plot, gives the story time to unfold as if all is lost, an Empire Strikes Back era of strife, a low point for some characters and a high for several bad guys, like Mengsk, Amon, and possibly even Abuthur (if one wants to take his story that way). The swarm needed to build itself back up, from initial petty infighting, to a more meaningful climax than "Finally killing Mengsk now after sitting around for years for no reason LOL". Getting a Kerrigan back, so they have a hope of saving the universe from Amon, seems a heck of a better payoff and natural end point for the chapter. Is it hack writing? Well, probably - but it may be better than what we got.
The two biggest problems that I have with Star Craft 2 are 1) The Tal'darim and the feral Zerg make no sense. In the case of the former, they've been separated for years beyond reckoning, but their technology looks nearly identical to the rest of the Protoss, but edgier. As for the feral Zerg, the manual that came with SC1 states that the Zerg are ultimately tiny parasites and that zerglings, hydras, mutas, etc. are altered forms of species assimilated across different planets, thus it makes no sense for the primals to have their own zerglings, hydras, mutas, etc. Depending on how much you want to alter the story, my proposals would be to have the Protoss fracture because they argue over the validity and meaning of Zeratul's prophecies. The Zerg could split because the Swarm is growing too large for Kerrigan to control; her human body, though augmented by Zerg infestation, is simply too limited to control it all. 2) The story was split up into three campaigns that were sold separately. Blizzard seems to have been afraid that making the player play as the bad guy for an entire campaign would have hurt sales (to be fair, when I was a kid, I didn't like Brood War because 2/3 of the game was not just playing as a bad guy, but actively hunting my friends). I don't have a good answer to this problem, other than to let Kerrigan be a villain and hope that your fan-base is now adults who won't mind playing the bad guy for an entire game.
There's been a good argument to be made that Wings of Liberty should have been the last Starcraft II campaign. Where we should have been put into another uneasy alliance with a fully infested Kerrigan, but this time to stop the Hybrid rather than the UED. Then, several campaigns of tension and wondering if she's going to betray people at any point does she do it while Raynor learns there's a way to de-infest her. Starcraft II, at its core, has a good premise. Wings of Liberty is Raynor's personal growth to end the cycle of vengeance around him, and grow as a person because of it. The problem stems from having to do stuff afterwards.
Totally agree! Giving Kerrigan a redemption arc because of a greater evil was just lame. I wanted to see a sub-plot of Raynor’s, Artanis', Zeratul's inner conflicts developed more like they still hate Kerrigan and want to kill her, but can’t since she’s the key of killing Amon, but I didn’t see that in any of the SC2 campaigns. It’s like they became friends in the end. Never thought about changing anything in the original or BW, but you made some good points.
My thought was Raynor in Wings should at first absolutely mean to kill her, but have no idea how. Then Zeratul tells him that for the universe to survive, Kerrigan must live. Raynor will have the perfect opportunity to kill her, but must not. At some point, he learns that the artifact could weaken Kerrigan and cut off her connection to the swarm. It's the tool he needs to see his vow done. But he knows Zeratul says Kerrigan is important. Then, Narud tells Raynor he can have his cake and eat it too. The artifact will kill the Queen of Blades, but will leave Sarah intact. She'll have her own mind again and be the caring person she once was. Maybe Matt would warn him that it is too good to be true, but he goes for it anyway, uses the artifact and spares Kerrigan. Then, the kicker: We find out that Narud was lying. That terrible Queen of Blades persona was part of Kerrigan all along, and Narud didn't care whether Kerrigan was weakened or dead. He was just also following the prophecy and getting rid of the only one who can stop him, or so he thinks. So in Heart of the Swarm, Zeratul has no choice but to convince Kerrigan to reembrace the monster, to power herself back up at whatever the cost, because he needs her to take control of the swarm to stop Amon. That's the crime that he thinks the other Protoss will condemn him for, and rightfully so. Shew's a dangerous evil, and he just told her how to rearm herself. She will surely threaten his people, but he sees no other way. She still frees Jim from prison, but when he mentions Fenix, she laughs at the horror of what she has become. Maybe she has lingering affection for him (he has none for her at this point) but she mostly saved him for utilitarian reasons. He is needed to fight Amon, just as she is. She might spare civilians, but the Swarm always comes first, and if the Swarm needs essence, she will take it and slay whoever stands in her way. There is no redemption, and the moment Amon is dead, everyone will turn on her. Or maybe her last vestige of goodness will sacrifice herself. With Amon dead, the universe no longer needs a weapon.
The first game was written by people that wanted to create a universe similar to Dune or 40k where there is no good guy and survival is the only thing that matters while the second game was written by people who wanted a soapopera in space
Nice video. Let me propose a compromise to keep the somewhat same story as canon. At the end of WoL, let her body be destroyed and just thank the 4 heroes from freeing her from the Zerg influence. "If you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares back" She might be freed from the Overmind, but having the voices of so many Zerg in your head might influence you. And what do Zerg do? Kill and devour everything --> evil Kerring from Brood War. Zeratul stops the heroes from killing her, because of the prophecy. In the Heart of the Swarm she might still have some influence over Zerg close to her, because of experience and because she was always strong psychic. Hybrids start to take control of the Zerg and attack. Valerian and heroes convince her, to help with stopping the Zerg. Zeratul proposes Dinosaur planet ---> healing Kerrigan's injuries and giving her power boost. Some Protoss still want to hunt her down for her crimes, so Protoss missions are defensive missions. Terran missions --> find and rescue Jim, with the help from Valerian and Hyperion. Zagara, Isha, Abathur might want to escape from Hybrids, so that is why they come under Kerrigan. Of course it is not perfect, but it makes Kerrigan a better character in SC2 and still keeps the same story beats as canon story.
So, one big thing to note in SC:BW. she wasn't the one who made most of the choices. it was Duran. Kerrigan was happy with the alliance but Duran was the one who convinced her to kill fenix and duke. Duran convinced her to mind control Raszagal, the whole thing was his doing, for the master he served. because the "amon was actually in control of the swarm and infested kerrigan" wasn't a retcon, it was established in SC1 and reinforced in BW, long before any of the books or stories built it up into the current space manatee stuff. 11:00 remember, she wasn't going against Jim in those missions. she was going against Narud... the same spacecow that had already demonstrated an ability to control her. she can't read jim's mind in those missions, because she wasn't allowed to. Just like the storm troopers in a new hope, she was intentionally missing, so the hero could think he got away with it.
Except Duran never convinced her. He only asked her what she wanted to do with them, and she came to the conclusion of killing them. Amon controlling the Swarm was never established in SC1. The only thing they established in the original game was that the Overmind wanted to complete the Xelnaga's experiments (i.e. assimilating the Protoss). Not to mention, they only revealed Narud was a Spacecow in the Epilogue missions. That reveal is a problem since it makes one wonder why Narud can't just mind-control everyone like Amon does in Legacy (I guess his power-level was too low?).
@@PieisDaBest1 Amon doesn't mind control everyone directly. He uses his Hybrid as psionic beacons just like the Overmind created Cerebrates to aid in the administration of the swarm, how Kerrigan created Brood Mothers to take over that duty and how the player is instructed to create Overlords. So yes, Narud simply lacks the power to control everyone. He can likely influence just like Amon can, but not as strongly. His real body is inside the Void, Duran and the Doctor Narud are only avatars he is using and it is likely that this requires him to expend a lot of his power to reach through the dimensions. As seen with the Tal'Darim and the Terrans, Amon and Narud also rely a lot more on traditional, psychological and societal methods of control. With the Tal'Darim he has influenced their religion and culture to make them more susceptible to himself and similarly, the Terrans under his control are religious fanatics. There is no indication that they are actually being mind controlled. They are manipulators, not overt conquerors. This tells us a lot about their limitations. The only time we see actual direct control is when the Nerazim Preservers are being tapped for knowledge and energy by Pear-man and when Amon floods the Khala with rage in Legacy of the Void. But this is only after he has already firmly established his psionic presence on Aiur and using a great many Hybrids. I believe that just like with the religion, the rage and the sudden shock of slamming it into the Khala is used similar to a mind-altering drug, something that makes people more susceptible to outside influence before he overpowers their minds. And since the Khala is such a strong connection that partly replaces personal identity with community, the effect is amplified and becomes a positive feedback loop.
@@Salted_Fysh The problem with the Hybrid being responsible for control is that they have several scenes of Amon directly possessing people like Rohana (he speaks through them and is clearly controlling them). They literally pull Amon's consciousness out of the possessed Templar at the end of Legacy. If it's the hybrid doing this, then why not just slay all of them like the Cerebrates? Sure, it's not a permanent solution, but it's never brought up as an option. The hybrid method makes sense for Amon's Brood, but then they never implemented a "kill hybrid to make the Zerg go feral" mechanic, which is a shame.
@@PieisDaBest1 I'm not saying that Amon can't assume control if he focuses on someone like Rohanna. He speaks to us several times via different proxies. But at that point in time, he has firmly established his presence in the Khala and like I said, I suspect the way it works, it's like a giant feedback loop where once he overwhelmed the mental defenses of the Protoss by creating an incredibly strong pulse of emotion using his entire presence and all of the Hybrid present, they themselves started contributing to his control. It's actually a testament to just how strong Rohanna's mind and discipline is that she managed to resist him for that long. If everyone is connected and you manage to reach a critical threshold of people mirroring and transmitting the same emotion, you are essentially amplifying the signal. If you've played Mass Effect 2, I visualize him taking active control as something like Harbinger forcing their mind and power into one of the Harvester drones. Harbinger is the leader and the Harvesters are a hivemind but Harbinger doesn't control all of them at the same time. I agree it's a shame that we don't see the Zerg turn feral when their controller Hybrid dies, it would have been a nice callback to SC1 but eh. It would have required designing at least once mission around it in order to be more than just a gimmick.
I think the problem is brand recognition. Kerrigan as the face of StarCraft was never allowed to die in Wings of Liberty no matter how much any writer would have wanted that or not.
It would be interesting to learn all the specific reasons. The other factor is Starcraft 2 felt more like a country western soap opera, so I'm assuming had vastly different writers. To me, it's like "Texas Ranger" cheesy level quality.
She should have remained the villain of SC 2. Teaming up only to defeat Amon but ultimately stabbing the terrans and protoss in the back Her killing naive Raynor if done right would have been an amazing story.
I actually really liked her, but to be fair I first knew her from SC2. I found her kind of evil personality intriguing, and that DESPITE her being evil, she was the chosen one. It was an interestin decision, and I think they should have just been more dedicated to her evil-manipulative side. She is evil and she has to be the chosen one, so make her miserable that her actions and sense of self conflicts with her duty, having to embrace being a saviour too. In the defense of their romance, I think it's really interesting, that no matter how much Jim wants to hate her, he cannot. He vows to kill her, but loves her to much that he moves heaven and earth to bring her back and when she turns back he gets angry and cuts connections with her. And even after that he still cannot stay away from her and helps her on Korhal. And Kerrigan falls in love with his compassion and conviction first, how he is so steadfast in his beliefs that almost nothing can break those. But HE can break, and does later and is being hurt by his love by Kerrigan. That's why he thinks he doesn't deserve a happy ending, because he loves a horrible woman. Maybe I just love weird disfunctional relationships in media, but I found their pairing interesting and to this day they are still my number one ship.
I believe that the intended StarCraft 2 campaign order was Zerg - Protoss - Terran The Zerg campaign would not only play into the Second Great War, but also allow countless interesting opportunities, just as you said. The rise of Broodmothers like Zagara and Niadra (Didn't happen), Hybrids being an actual threat, maybe taking over individual broods (Didn't happen), perhaps actually following the Dark Voice and being influenced by Amon, culminating in him tricking Kerrigan into bringing him back (And giving Narud a role)? Also, the Leviathan should without a doubt be the best (Or at least the most interactive) home area, the behemoth concept art and the unused destruction of worlds mechanic, maybe utilisation of Terran, perhaps even Protoss tech, Khaydarin crystals and other artifacts like the Xel'naga one (It's by far the worst home area). The Existance of the LotV prologue implies that Zeratul was supposed to be the main character, but was switched out for Artanis. Running around, collecting pieces of a greater puzzle and of course, looking out for Kerrigan and Amon. Another reason why I believe the Protoss campaign would come second is because of the previous campaign orders being Terran - Zerg - Protoss and Protoss - Terran - Zerg, finally allowing the Terrans to finish everything off. I don't know how the Terran campaign would go about. I have no idea. If it should follow Raynor, I'd say a Terran - Protoss alliance fight Amon's forces, but nothing beyond that. Also, instead of Amon's Brood, we should've had the Claw Brood, a fucking badass name. Give them some Omegalisks, maybe some enslaved survivor cerebrates or Hybrid to lead them, and boom, new faction. It makes me sad, really, the Zerg had such INCREDIBLE potential that we'll never get to see. P.S. I would without a doubt switch Amon for a different villain. They used to say that 'StarCraft is just WarCraft in space', but that is not true, StarCraft 2 is Warcraft in space.
All of this sounds absolutely amazing, and all I have to add is that parts or the whole of the Terran campaign should deal with the aftermath, struggles to rebuild, last minute betrayals, power vacuums, and so on. It would also bring down the scale so at the end you could see Raynor deal with Kerrigan once and for all.
Personally, in my heart, Mengsk has been the real SC villain. with the end of him, I lose interest in the hybrid affair and finished the lore just for the sake of finishing; HOTS ending is my real ending as cliffhanger, all that happened afterwards was just a predictable epilogue, at least for me
Hahahaha, as I watched and was reminded of the inexcusable deeds of Kerrigan, I was thinking: "At least Zuko was not a psychopath" . Funny to see you bring him too as a counter point
Yeah i think Kerrigan should have been the main bad guy in SC2. Forget Amon he sucks. They could have made her a fake redemption arc, that was part of her manipulations to infiltrate the Terran, she could have used Raynor and completely crushed his spirit. WoL could have begun with missions aiming to de-infest Kerrigan as part of Raynors narrative. She could willingly play along and change her form to appear uninfested then betray him. The hybrid could still have been part of the story, created by Narud and taking control of parts of the swarm forcing Kerrigan to retreat from the Terran war for now. HotS could have been about Kerrigan taking complete control of the swarm once more, the hybrid could have their own agency and retreat from the war to consolidate their own purpose when Kerrigan defeats Narud. There is no prophecy, there is no Amon, the hybrids are still a mystery. LotV would be about a crushed Raynor allying with the Protoss to end an all powerful Kerrigan once and for all. The triology ends with Kerrigans defeat and death at the hands of Raynor, the swarm dispersed and seems to be a threat no longer. But somewhere in the sector on a backwater planet a new phychic power stirs, Narud is dead but his creation is still out there and as a first step in their plans they aim to control the entire swarm, there is only one way to do this and so they have consolidated into a new hybrid overmind. SC3 would start with the Protoss finding out about this new threat as they never stopped watching the Zerg and notice how they have consolidated on a new planet. They find out about the new overmind and in classic Protoss fashion they try to destroy it alone but fail. Only then do they go to the Terrans for help, and they are contacted by a Hybrid faction, all Hybrid are not of the same mind, some of them would seek peace and balance. The faction that created the hybrid overmind came to the conclusion that subjugation was the only way to ensure peace, but this faction came to the conclusion that cooperation and understanding was the way. They see the Protoss working with the Terran and support this since it matches their ideological stance. But the swarm has grown greatly in power since taken over by the hybrid, they now employ both psycic and technological devices as part of the swarm. The Terran, Protoss and peaceful Hybrid come up with a terrible plan. They must clone the Queen of Blades so that she can regain control of the swarm. With Hybrid technology they do this, Kerrigan lives again, takes over parts of the swarm with Terran, Protoss and Hybrid help, she throws off their new psychic and technological shackles reverting the Zerg back to biological perfection. The overmind is finally destroyed along with its hybrid keepers through some dark templar shinanigans. Before this Kerrigan absorbs all of the overminds knowledge, by its death she regains complete control of the swarm and reverts it back to its biological roots, then she immediatly betrays everyone again. Kills Raynor, kills Artanis, showing there truly was no redemption. The remaining hybrid say f this and bee lines for another galaxy. End of story. Kerrigan wins, and is still evil. Oh and she is heading for Earth now. 😂
Ok, so, here is the thing: Starcraft fans really love Kerrigan. Most of them don't want her to die. But she also did horrible, horrible things that are basically unforgiveable. Even though the Overmind said that her mind will be untouched, it's very obvious that this is not quite the case, she is a VERY different person, after her infestation. So, here is how I would change it: maybe fix the missions to make Zerg Kerrigan seem smarter and more menacing, but that's all just small bits. The biggest thing I would change, is for Kerrigan, once de-infested, to be presented as a clearly different person. To a degree, they already do, but to another, she for some reason still does absurdly evil things like executing an entire colony of civilian Protoss. Instead, have re-humanized Kerrigan be actively horrified at the things she did. Have her struggle with grasping the extend of her deeds. Let Raynor be out for her blood, but once he sees how she's essentially her old self again, let him hesitate. She never wants to have anything to do with the Zerg or even kill anyone, ever again. She refuses to do any tests or control the swarm at all. But when the Queens decide to take control themselves, she is forced to tap into that connection in order to save people, as the rampant Zerg threaten innocent people. Make the campaign about her stopping and reforming the Swarm. Then, it turns out that the Queens recreated a Queen of Blades of their own. Crafted from Kerrigan's memories and actions within the swarm. Then you can have her symbolically fight the past and have Raynor kill that manifestation of the Queen of Blades, making good on his promise. It would not be as satisfying as killing the real Queen of Blades, but since you gotta satisfy the Kerrigan fans and want that happy end with Raynor and her, that Kerrigan cannot die, so it's the next best thing. Then, once the Queen of Blades clone is dead, you can have Kerrigan reluctantly leading a part of the swarm, knowing that the galaxy will need it, while the majority of the Queens is still out there, causing trouble. In the finale, when it comes to Mengsk, she can stop him not out of revenge, but because it's the right thing to do. Instead of reinforcing the "Yes, I am a monster" thing, which begs the question: then why does she not get any comeuppance, they could actually make it more of a "Even though I look like it, I am nobody's monster, now." and she doesn't even kill him, just to show how she is past vengeance, murder and cruelty. Because if you want to redeem Kerrigan, it kind of requires her to be a good person. Afterwards, Mengsk can be sentenced to death by the reformed Dominion or something. Justice is done, but not vengeance. Kerrigan is very clearly shown to be a new person, the fans cheer and everyone is at least somewhat happy. Heck, if you want to go the extra mile with her redemption, have her use non-lethal Zerg against the Dominion's common troops, like Banelings who explode into hardening goo, trapping the terrans safely inside or something and then have her only fight Mengsk most loyal, genuinely evil personal guard with the lethal swarm, because that is the only way to get past the much tougher troops. That way, you can show the non-lethal approach in the sequence, but then have the bloody conflict in the actual mission gameplay.
one thing that really really bugs me about the SC2 kerrigan design is that there's literally no reason for her to have big fat zerg boobies sticking out of her carapace. The SC1 design looks that way:tm: because her ghost suit had been absorbed and integrated into her carapace allowing her to still channel the cloaking field it provides (the space boobies are still dumb but at least its a better reason than the no-reason SC2's design has). Even the "remaster" cottoned on to that and gave her art and portrait a more clear visual of being able to see her ghost suit in her assimilated form.
to be honest i think that it explains her abilities in the SC1 lore. it wasn't cloaking(her ability) the enemies jsut stared at it so much they forgot she's an enemy. but in all seriousness i get you but at the same i think that her design in SC1 didn't make much sense either, like those metalic-like armour... how?? wouldn't it just melt? and i still didn't understand how she could cloak, regarless if it was rewritten/changed in SC2 i would still prefer the fanservice alien boobies over the ilogical armour that should have never servicved the infestation. but hey! at least alien boobies distracts from bad writing
Very rare to see quality Starcraft channels around, still trust me that even as a non-professional writer, your suggestions would have made the Starcraft 2 story incredible
Brood War Kerrigan is one of my favorites. She's ruthless, brutal, visceral, decisive, calculating, conniving, bloodthirsty and remorseless. I don't like the idea that she was being influenced or corrupted by infestation or Amon, rather, her personality was simply that vindictive. She's so phenomenally cool because her human fury, her undying spite, were so powerful that she was integrated as a perfect weapon by the Swarm. Previously the Swarm was simply an urge to grow and kill, a cancerous seige engine blighting the galaxy. But Kerrigan? She granted it *conviction.* Her gift to the Swarm was the galvinization to fight not for survival, but for *supremacy.* Who she is and her actions are *completely* incompatible to redemption, and *that* is why I love her.
I just hated how they changed everything from the first one, even Brood Wars to an extent, someone fell in love with Kerrigan and turned her (and the Zerg) into his damaged ex instead of the monster they were.
IMO, the issues with Kerrigan's characterisation in SC2 stem from a major lore change: that the Overmind wasn't evil itself, but was under Amon's control. In the original lore found in the SC1 manual, Amon didn't exist. Instead, the Overmind was a Xel'naga creation, devised as a central intelligence for the Zerg, which grew beyond their control and eventually destroyed them. The lore changes made in SC2 retroactively absolve Kerrigan of all responsibility for her actions in Brood War as merely being corrupted by Amon's influence. My interpretation of the pre-SC2 lore is that Kerrigan is essentially similar to Griffith from Berserk. She wasn't brainwashed into becoming a narcissistic psychopath - she was always like that, or at least always had the potential for great evil. That's a much more interesting plot angle, especially from Raynor's perspective; deep down, maybe he does still want her to be redeemed, but at some point he'd have to face the truth that the person he loved didn't really exist. Unfortunately, instead we just got 'muh prophecy' and 'lmao, space Diablo'. Thanks, Metzen.
Double-featuring this and the Amon video, your appraisal of Kerrigan almost sounded like a perfect mirror to what little of his lore we were given, (Twisted and broken into something he isn't, made into a weapon against his will, left to decide his own fate after, etc etc) And it made me realize what a missed opportunity that could've been to explore, seeing as how both of them are as listless as they are in SC2's plot. Same with the point about her being a character who never sacrificed anything, imagine how much more interesting HoTS could have been if she tried and failed to redeem herself because she was torn between her desire for revenge against Mengsk and Amon, and her tentative alliance with Raynor. Killing Arcturus but being left as she was at the end of Brood War, to become a rogue element/secondary antagonist during the events of LoTV instead.
The even dumber thing is that Stukov told the player to tell Dugalle he isn't abandoning the fight and he is attempting to obtain a weapon so they can win, but since you can't speak, all you can do is helplessly watch Dugalle be stupid.
I feel like the kerrigan arc she has in SC2 just made me appreciate the overmind more. It was already my favorite SC character back in SC1 days, but the bullshit way they pulled a good guy kerrigan turning into benevolent god out their ass just sort of reinforces the idea that the overmind set this all up to defeat his final enemy to free himself fully. The last Xel'naga, Amon. He couldn't do it alive so he created a new god. The death of Amon to Kerrigan felt like the last spit in the face from the Overmind, who in my opinion clearly knew he was going to die, the only reason Zerathul even knows anything about anything is because he saw a glimpse of what the overmind knew after all. So the only reason he died then, was for this to happen. For a creature who spent almost it's entire existance to be mind controlled in a game bigger than itself that managed to break loose. Kerrigan mirrors it's own life. And to some degree, the overmind was benevolent, or maybe it was a side effect of it's goal. The overmind saved the galaxy, maybe out of revenge, maybe out of benevolence. A mirror to kerrigan herself. Although, i feel like if they did write her correctly, she would've properly mirrored the overmind and kept it vague as to her true reasoning. Is she a monster, or is she a human? Is the overmind mindless in it's desire to consume, or does it have a will, hopes and dreams? Zerathuls personality change the second he connected with the overmind says so much when it comes to that question, and all he saw was a glimpse.
@@christopherbravo1813 I would really like to know what the original plan with the hybrids and amon was back in SC1. I'm curious how much was retconned and how much was always planned. Kerrigan turning into a god? Maybe not, but the overmind creating her to kill amon? Could still be very possible, which is what i personally believe.
@@christopherbravo1813 I don't think that's true as Duran heavily implies he was working for a Xel'naga or the likes, even back in SC1. They were making hybrids back then and while they didn't use the Amon name, it's very likely the writer had his name written down on his notes.
The main problem of Blizzard writing is that there's ALWAYS a greater power behind the scenes. It ruins every good character writing. They did it to Kerrigan, they did it to 99% of WoW's villains, and they'll keep on doing it until the end of times
tossing aside how she has most (note this down) of her evil zerg deeds hand waved away due to either having her mental state compleately altered or being mind controlled (the latter mainly being in starcraft 2). and why amon kept her alive if he knew she was supposed to be the key reason for his downfall (as seen in the vision) and not ask when he learned that. while we could give her the benefit of the doubt and possebly assume that the part of the swarm she led directly during heart of the swarm showed some restraint and mostly targeted military personell. Something you forgot to mention, though it is understandable since it comes from a few cutscenes that barely is 30s long each, is her unleashing the broodmothers upon dominion worlds. because what i just said can most definetly not be said about the broodmothers. if i am not wrong she even verbait ordered them to DESTROY the world when it was the individual broodmothers. in the last one when it is all the remaining ones she tells them where her enemies are and that they should be destroyed and their strongholds burned. here one could again give her the benefit of the doubt regarding her targets, were it not for that we can fairly assume that to the broodmothers their enemies are ALL non-zerg and they were given no clarification otherwise. mind you this was ALL done after she was purifed and reborn. so with that in mind all those worlds we can likely take for granted that the zerg butchered ANY human they could get their claws on. i think there were only two worlds we were told what they were actually for, one was a hub of military production and the other a massive shipyard, so fair targets but still likely possesing massive civillian populations of labourers and their families due to those two being manufacuering focused worlds. i have already made clear their likely fate as zerg chow. the reason i bring this up is i have to compare all of that to mengsk. in universe mengsk greatest crime, according to the general dominion populace, was him lureing the zerg to tarsonis. when it was revealed even his most ardent supporters were shaken in their faith, as seen with the propaganda guy. THE NON-MINDCONTROLLED, NON-CORRUPTED AND COMPLEATELY PURIFIED KERRIGAN EITHER REACHES THE LEVEL OF TARSONIS OR SURPASSES IT WHEN THE BROODMOTHERS DEEDS ARE SUMMARISED, ALL OF WHICH HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REDEMPTION ARC! as said, she verbaitm orders her broodmothers to DESTROY two world and we have no reason to assume that how many other world were targeted were treated any differently. Mengsk unleashes the zerg upon a single world and the pure kerrigan does it on several, yet only the former is treated as a horrific act as the other is simply handwaved and forgotten moments after the order is given nor did it come back to bite her in any way.
Kerrigan is definetely the leas consistent character in SC i belive, Mengsk is inconsistent too but its within a spectrum of degrees btween Game of Thrones evil and comically insane evil.
Back when i first played SC1 i had the theory that the overmind got in contact with mengsk and "asked" him to give kerrigan to the zerg. Him just abandoning her made, and still dont, makes sense to me
In the novels, it was revealed that Kerrigan killed Mengsk's family when she was still under Confederate control. Even without that explanation, her psionic powers and uncertain loyalty (questioning his use of psi emitters) likely convinced him that she'd be a threat to his power in the long run. He was definitely right about that.
The whole SCII story IMO fell off a cliff after Wings of Liberty. While I can't say I agree with the whole de-infesting Kerrigan plot, I thought overall it was well delivered and exciting. Then Kerrigan goes and has some weird fairy tale story with the feral zerg and getting reinfested and all that jazz, then becomes the chosen one. Like...huh. Huh.
In StarCraft 1, Kerrigan is a Confederate ghost whose mission is to kill Mengsk. Unfortunately, you have to read the books to actually understand this, but Mengsk killed her on purpose. He just didn't expect her to get infested into the most BS plot armored Mary Sue ever
Actually, I fully expected Kerrigan to get a redemption arc after Brood War for several reasons. The first reason being that the hybrids were already a looming threat at the end of Brood War, meaning she was never going to be the overarching threat. The second reason is that her moral agency was questionable ever since her infestation. This was noticed not only by Jim Raynor, but also by Tassadar. She went from being a "honorable and full of life" soldier reluctant to commit war crimes to being a cruel and bitter tyrant. Aldaris was immediately suspicious of Kerrigan because of the fact she was infested, even after the Overmind was dead, and his suspicions turned out to be correct (a case of boy crying wolf considering Aldaris was prejudiced against Dark Templars and Terrans, but at the time he was starting to warm up to them). The third reason is that she seemed to be tired of constant war by the end of Brood War, which I interpreted as a buried longing for peaceful coexistence. The fourth reason is that StarCraft 2 was going to need a Zerg faction willing to ally with Terran and Protoss for multiplayer teams. The UED was extinct, while Ulrezaj and infested Stukov only shew up in bonus missions, so I was expecting Kerrigan to team up with Raynor's Raiders and the Protoss one last time. I guess this still does not excuse Kerrigan making bad tactical decisions in Wings of Liberty. For gameplay reasons players have to win every mission, but maybe her defeats are too silly. As for Heart of the Swarm I think she does much fewer war crimes than in Brood War at least, but I may be wrong.
When I first saw the romance in Heart I thought it was supposed to be bad. Like, the only time Raynor and Kerrigan appear to have ANY real chemistry is the very end, when she flies off into the sunset. I always thought it was supposed to be subtext about how Raynor was clinging to the human image of Kerrigan, but her true nature was to always be Zerg (or, something in between if you prefer that take). Then I read a transcript from an interview or panel or something and no, they thought they were writing a real heart wrenching romance. I think it's a result of the culture at Blizzard at the time. They had some idea, but they saw the fans pulling in both directions. Some wanted her redeemed, some wanted her brought to justice, so they tried to play the first, play around with the idea, and then back it off. They did a similar thing around this time in WoW, both having conflicting camps on the story for Garrosh, and doing Warlords of Draenor seemingly just because...they wanted to do Warcraft 2 again but an MMO? And starting in 09-ish Blizz also had "single character syndrome" infect their storytelling, something they really never got away from. I think that's why Kerrigan suffers in Wings. You can't just fight some random Zerg lieutenant, you have to fight KERRIGAN every step of the way, rather than her being a looming, elusive presence. Personally I would have gone the other way, shown how Kerrigan WANTED to be human, tried to let things go, but her very first lines are about how she wants to kill Mengsk. If instead she had been all "Oh no, I don't wanna talk about Mengsk, can't we try to have fun?" and wanted to look at the goldfish with Raynor or something, and THEN they get attacked and THEN it looks like Mengsk killed Raynor. And a Kerrigan alone will pursue her natural instincts: a human who wants revenge, a Zerg who wants to be the top dog and knock out every other power player.
One could attribute much of her Brood War strength to the remaining Cerebrates, including the player character. Each seasoned, veteran commanders, and as the player character demonstrated even fledgeling Cerebrates can fend off three fleets at once. It's also a perfect means of weakening her and forcing her to rebuild from the ground up. Her entire command structure dies without the Overmind's ability to keep Cerebrates alive, and not only is she toothless, she has to go and reacquire swathes of rogue zerg. Doesn't justify her being an idiot or the rest of the 'story' though.
SC1 and Broodwar Kerrigan was my favorite game villan growing up as a kid. SC 2, by all accounts, completely derailed itself unnecessarily. I've said this before about Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and so many other beloved IPs: The fans are likely to write a better story than a company ever could. Sure, the fans will also write some of the worst dribble imaginable, but there are thousands, if not millions of them, all with creative and eager minds. It is "Infinite Monkey Theory" played out in a plausible context. Countless fans with nothing but time and passion will undoubtedly uncover a better story than a studio ever could. This is why, IP holders need to bare in mind the risks they take in rushing stories or ignoring plot points for the sake of wrapping up. It killed GoT and the Skywalker sagas. It completely wrecked SC 2's characters and story.
I got one fav example of fan writing great stories- 4thsnake. This guy dissected NRS Mortal Kombat games, proving how much wasted potential there is and provided great alternatives, without resorting to resetting stuff all the time because NRS writes their stories into corner and have no idea how to make another chapter without time travel and other BS.
32 whole minutes of absolute catharsis. Pre-SC2 Kerrigan was one of my favorite villains in gaming, maybe of all time. Just a woman who after being burned by the universe for all her life, passed from master to master, decides to burn the universe back cause god damn does it feel good. Super compelling, fantastic villain, and utterly *wasted* in the sequel. Definitely subscribing, would love to see those videos talking about the other characters
NGL During the last game I kind of waited for some of the Protoss to step up and give her "Honorary Protoss Card" since it's the only race she was not a member of.
Metzen explains. He prominently explored this theme in Warcraft with both Arthas and Illidan. “Kerrigan was the heart and soul of it. The wicked Queen of Blades was not who she was. She never had a chance to be herself. She was always manipulated by one power or another.” from Celebrating 20 Years of Starcraft: An Interview with Starcraft's Creators Kerrigan was infected defending Protoss' attack. Protoss is also have fault. poor kerrigan.
Kerrigan getting redemption is more than a Starcraft problem, it happens a lot in Warcraft too. Jaina and the Windrunner sisters all always get away without consequences or being given a reason to do horrible things. Jaina's home was bombed and destroyed even though she helps the Alliance in a war vs the Horde yet despite being part of the Alliance, she's always treated as neutral or justified for her actions, more so after she loses Theramore and does heinous acts. Vereesa is always racist to her people thinking Blood Elves are impure and in need of redemption even though the Blood Elves worked to regain Silvermoon and maintain it. Alleria is using Void as a power source even though previous expansions and examples shows that's a bad idea, but the story bends over backwards saying it's a good thing despite every other instance of it being bad. She also thinks she shouldn't be barred from the Sunwell even though her Void powers have proven to bring the Void to the Sunwell. Which then leads to the Void Elves as a race thinking they're in the right when clearly it is shown they're wrong. Sylvanas is the worst of them, being Kerrigan 2.0 doing horrible acts but given an excuse that she was mind controlled. Instead of being erased from existence she is given a redemption path. It's a pattern that is being played out in other medias as well, women can't be evil and always can be redeemed. Redemption is open to anyone, but so long as the person chooses it BEFORE crossing the threshold, not after.
I thought you had so many more subs when I stumbled upon this video, the quality of content is amazing I’m definitely going to go watch more of your past videos.
She's been a Mary Sue since brood war, she's cOoLeR aNd sMaRtEr mOrE bAdAsS than everyone else and she constantly betrays everyone too because that's what a mega cool villain does. All the well written characters died with the overmind
dropped out of SC story halfway through heart of the swarm. All my thoughts were verified by this vid, didn't lose anything. Thanks for saving me money bro.
My issues with Kerrigan go back to the Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos campaign. Arthas is focused entirely on two things - revenge, and protecting his people. And then he 'loses his soul' and goes murdering his people without a care in the world. There are some messy suggestions that it's mind control, or that his 'soul' was his personality, without which he's a soulless monster - but the narration from there to the present day treats this as the same person, most explicitly with his death scene in Wrath of the Lich King. Character motivation is nothing in the face of 'revenge makes you evil' and 'only bad men do bad things' (culling of stratholme) apparently. And before WC3 there's Medivh...
@@Salantor no, it's Diablo in space haha. I always hated this in the soundtrack for SC2. In SC1 each faction had a completely unique ost, albeit the Protoss one already sounded a bit like "Diablo in space", but it was still good. But in SC2, each soundtrack is like that. No more country'n'roll for the Terrans, no more experimental ambient noise for the Zerg, nothing. It's all mediocre orchestral slop. Orchestral stood out for the Protoss in SC1 because they were the only faction with that sound. Here though...
I would love to see a Arcturus Mengsk video (does one write it like that I dont know) since he is my favorite charakter in the series and I think he deserves the time spent on him. Being evil is just cooler.
The player: Leaves hundreds of marines, ghosts, seige tank drivers, and battlecruiser pilots to die on countless worlds through the terran missions. Mission done, we're moving out. Mengsk: Leaves one singular ghost behind. The player: "Mengsk is clearly evil."
Mengsk is cool, but I feel like his character was just made less interesting in Starcraft 2. They basically tried to do Imperium from 40k and considering the guy who wrote the plot also wrote 40k for the most of his time... I wish Mengsk remained alive as one of the forces, so Blizzard isn't just writing itself into the same corner they did as they did with Warcraft where there are no lingering villains/non-friendly powers left and they literally just have to come up with something entirely random from ground up. There is also an issue with modern Blizzard writing where there can't be surviving villains at all
@@RedaniaKnight-Elect Honestly I don't think you could do much with Mengsk after how he was treated in BW. He spends most of that expansion as a damsel in distress, compeltely undermining the Terran Dominion as an idea. Blizzard went for two polar opposite extremes with him and it's just rough.
Really well done! My experience mirrored your own somewhat! As a kid, when I was forced to killed Fenix in Brood War, I was heartbroken and I knew she had gone too far. I was willing to finish her villain story, but I knew she should be the villain from now on. I was very excited to bring her to justice in SC2. When she first showed up in Wings of Liberty, she was like "Ohh the darkness is coming and nothing can stop it." I was immediately thrown off. Who is this depressed Kerrigan? This is not the Queen B who took over everything in Brood War! Amon's "influence" was honestly a terrible idea. They could have done a lot with the hybrids, but not THAT. Anyway, well done! For Fenix!
You know you have a problem when siding with the evil space dictator over your protagonist is the morally correct thing to do.
You also know that you have a pretty great story.
@@ArneBab if thats your bar for great stories, Im actually kind of jealous
@@notaliablename2538 it’s not the whole set of requirements (i.e. the story isn’t good if you don’t get there while also liking the protagonist - the conflict between liking the protagonist and realizing how deeply they are in the wrong is part of what can make such stories great), but it is the gist ☺
Evil space dictator: stay with me, so the hungry space monster I used wouldn’t come and kill you
Evil space dictator: did not, in fact, stop the hungry space monsters from coming down and killing you
@@ArneBab Eh, it doesn't really work when only the crazy dictator calls you out and you get everything you've ever wanted practically for free.
it's more like a crazy person's wish fulfillment.
I once read that Starcraft, as a whole, is somewhat brought down by the fact that Kerrigan is the "teacher's pet". Her enemies are dumbed down in Brood War, her accountability for horrible crimes is removed frequently, and her fight with Amon is 100% protagonist-centered morality: Amon claims to 'reject the infinite cycle' and that 'he's killed Xel'Naga', and Kerrigan finishes up saying she 'chooses something different [than the infinite cycle]' and kills him (a Xel'Naga). They just couldn't let a good villain be a villain.
Exactly. It feels like the writers made excuses (the Prophecy, making her Xelnaga) to keep her from really facing consequences for her actions, when many other Starcraft characters did.
@@PieisDaBest1 Sounds a lot like Sylvannas lol
Doesn't this mean that Kerrigan does literally the exact same thing as Amon, rejecting the infinite cycle?
@@ziephel-6780 one might say she's done *worse.*
@@christopherbravo1813 bingo
It wasn't even her creating life on new planets by the way, it was Zagara. Who proved to be a far more benevolent heart of the swarm than Kerrigan ever was.
Fucking lmao.
Whaa? If that's true, that's so fucking funny!
You mean that barren planets becoming green with plants is because of Zagara? Where did you read that?
@@supercato9613 starcraft wiki confirms it, seems zagara created a type of zerg that promotes life (somehow, because for me sounds kinda stupid)
@@ShadowFri3nd in the book Evolution ( written by tymothy zahn of Thrawn Star wars fame ) , Zegara uses Xelnaga DNA to create a type of zerg that can terraform planets and promote biodeversity which while benevolent ,also gives zerg even more essence to work on , this decision also causes a Zerg civil war bettwen Zegaras brood and abathurs
@@szymonpinkowski256 hmmm i didnt knew that, the last thing ive played from SC2 was the Nova mini campaing.
As Professor Grant said: "Kerrigan doesn't have a personality. She has 12."
As for next video? I'd say either Jimmity or Artanis, since they are the "main characters" of their respective games.
more like 5, but i kinda understend why she not the same as in orginal. alos if they show she have psychological problems after all what happend, all what she done it could make her better even if she end up kinda bad.
Kerrigan had an amazing character arc in SC1 / BW. She literally made me hate her, but not in the "oh she sucks" way, but the "wow this Joffrey actor is amazing at making me hate his character, bravo."
To take all of that energy, and to funnel it into some shitty messiah complex story was just disappointing.
To be fair, trying to contain a hive mind with/in a human mindset might actually lead to a bit of inconsistent personality.
yee kinda but they shoid make it well a litle bit clear. to point of few difrends version not 20 or 1000000. alos Isha was voice of old queen on paper but they just made her in the end int othat ai terran voice. in files she still have some voice lines abaut keringa not do zerg ways ect. alos people need kinda remeber kerigan never care abaut human live so much. sure she have problme to do bad things but her boss was mensg and she kill one or two parents by mistake, at this point her mind shoud be in total chaos. but they shoud show us it.
Artanis has a personality, it's just boring. He's a naive leader and a decent commander with hip-thrust energy. His character was used to fight the concept of old ways in his campaign, the purifiers were slaves but oh lawdy they strong, now he needs them and for some reason they just join him to push the message, bouncing off Ranala(? the preserver) who clings to what she's been taught, ignoring what she's seen personally cuz that would get in the way of de message. I get it, but it's cringe delivery bumped up to level 300.
Kerrigan: i've killed billions of lives but ill plants some trees to make up for it XD
"For every 100 lives I've taken I'm planting 1 tree on a random planet"
@@hunterstanis33221 Billion sub special
apparently in the sequel story, Evolution, it was Zagara that took up the mantle of terraforming glassed planets. Kerrigan herself just nopes out of the universe.
@@Appletank8 Zagara is the President of Kerrigan's Peace Corp then. LMAO
She took lessons from Rose Quartz xd.
One thing I noticed when replaying SC and BW, was that Kerrigan in the original Zerg campaign talked a lot more like the Overmind instead of how she used to talk in the Terran campaign. Big, slower and methodical speeches, etc. Very similar to how the Overmind talk. When she's reintroduced in BW, she talks like she used to in the Terran campaign. She's snappier, and the valley girl accent is back. The amount of control the Overmind had over her was that great.
I think that was part of the deception. You have to keep in mind that Duran was a shapeshifter that worked alongside her. He likely inspired Amon/Kerrigan to develop some sneaky way to trick people.
@@iNsOmNiAcAnDrEw hey, it's not that deep, relax. Noone was thinking it through like that
The way the Overmind spoke was great. But I never noticed the way she spoke in SC1 untl you pointed it out. It did occur to me that lines like "Then that shall be your epitaph" were unusually fancy but I never gave it much thought. That line was in BW though so I just think the writers for SC1 were better rather than any overmind influence.
She's still got pieces of her old personality, but the overmind did change her personality in her transformation. Her aggression and list for violence was added or amped up, among other things, like a lust for power.
She gets purged of those changes later, becoming what we see in heart of the swarm, basically old Kerrigan again, but suffering the memories from the queen of blades and related thinfs.
@@timthorson52 she seems about the same in personal interactions before and after
Honestly I just hate that her xelnaga form is just a giant naked human woman with Diablo angel wings
yeah, we need real cosmic god version
Very, very lame look.
Something with Tentacles
man dont make ma boi imperius dirty he doesnt deserve it
Sc2 doesn't have many good kerrigan designs in general. Purple Kerrigan and super saiyan Kerrigan are both terrible.
After Legacy of the Void epilogue, we see cutscene where Raynor and Kerrigan (in her factory settings) leaving bar, and nobody saw them again.
I concluded that Raynor developed a master plan to avenge Fenix murder:
he get himself drunk, and offered Kerrigan a ride on vulture bike, so that would most definitely cause DUI crash (without deliberately planning to kill her, so she couldn't read his mind about it), sacrificing himself for the purpose of keeping the promise.
I declare it canon.
Hard cope - Tychus was a true G for Jimmy
That's some high tier cope you're on, my friend!
I believe you. It's perfectly aligned with Raynor's biggest tendencies. Do stupid stuff and just let his vibe on the moment have priorities over any strategic foresight for humanity or even his own group
after the first time I played that epilogue, I'm buying anything that makes kerrigan not walk away as canon
How can a car crash kill god or do starcraft universe have a version of truck-kun?
What’s funny about Kerrigan becoming a purple super saiyan instead of a manipulator is that they pulled the exact same shit on Sylvanas in Warcraft
In W3 when she was introduced, she was literally just some random zombie with her banshee homegirls trying to survive to the next day. Every single mission was about her manipulating, deceiving and betraying her way to the top of the dogpile of Lordaeron’s power vacuum left after Arthas’ rampage.
Cue 15 years later to her 360 no scoping the fucking Lich King and his armies by herself in the Shadowlands trailer, while slow walking in high heels to badass music.
Blizzard can only write two characters - Goku for heroes, C’thulu-corrupted antihero for villain - and every single character which a writer tries to push outside those boundaries gets promptly put back in the milisecond a new writer gets to write them. It’s sad and ruined a lot of promising characters throughout the years.
Slyvanas is introduced as an enemy named Night Elf ranger, you have to kill her and complete an optional quest before she comes back as a banshee and then later on you turn her into the Dark Ranger hero character.
@@ace8099 High elf actually
Sylvanas in the Frozen Throne is easily my favourite part of Warcraft III. Small scale, and graspable scale, a conflict with a grim anti-hero struggling for freedom and who becomes yet another monster.
It is superb.
She also has a shoddily thrown together "redemption" arc after committing some heinous deeds just like Kerrigan.
Blizzard loves their poorly written "anti-" heroines.
Sylvanas and the Undead were my favorite race in Warcraft 3 and WoW. They really had a chance of diving into gray morality.
But as always the Horde is shat on by Blizzard and the Undead are always the villains. Undercity is sacked repeatedly, Sylvanas is made into a raid boss and betrays the Horde while the Alliance is shown as always the good guys.
We never see the Alliance as the Xenophobic group they really are.
kerrigan's entire story is a mess. She became a zerg, got reverted back to terran/human, only to willingly and eagerly turn herself into a zerg again to get revenge for being turned into a zerg in the first place, what the actual f*ck? Oh, and was willing to slaughter countless worlds along the way for a personal vendetta against 1 man. What was her 'punishment' for constant genocide? Oh, yeah, she gets to become basically a God with no reprecussions whatsoever.
Kinda like the crew of RWBY, but a hundred times worse.
"was willing to slaughter countless worlds along the way for a personal vendetta against 1 man."
She might have switched races but she was always a woman so this is not that strange.
@@skitidet4302 typical woman of today's fiction: it's all a about me, me, me! I can do whatever I want and you'll STILL love me!
@@skitidet4302 🤣
But you don't understand, she's a woman. And so everything she does is justified and for the Greater Good.
How Zeratul should have put it: "And though justice demands that she die for her crimes, she must not die yet. She has to do ONE THING, and then we can all f*&%ing kill her!" That would have been a better way to get fans on board with saving Kerrigan.
Starcraft 2 had a huge problem with the story of Kerrigan. Kerrigan was nerfed so hard from Brood War just so we can face off against her without instantly losing. She loses all competency as a villain in Wings and is given too much of a power boost in Hots and becomes a god in LOTV. She literally killed billions of Terrans and Protoss, and we're expected to accept it because it was all Amon in the end. She can't just be redeemed with everything she had done up to that point. The best parts of Starcraft 2 in my opinion were really the parts without Kerrigan. The parts where we see other characters like Raynor and Artanis shine without her butting in were the best parts of Starcraft 2.
I differ from most ppl here. At the end of WoL it would be incredibly dumb to kill her cos she controls the zerg. Andy competent commander would like to capture and study her. so the artifact could return her to semi human form and then Raynor can capture her. Its normal to want to see what of her remains.
we could have her being studied by Valerian but Mengsk attacks. Raynor saves himself but Keri escapes. She is weak, humans are hunting her. She can be still evil but not bloodthirsty. Her HoTS ark could have been - she finds zerg tribe that accepts her but learns about new Overmind. fearful about his control she gathers swarms and prepares to assault Overmind. During her campaign she meets hybrids and learns about Narud. She also withdraws all zerg from human space. She also saves Raynor while tryng to learn more about hybrids and Amon. She lets him go.
At the end of her campaign she is still half human but with enchanced psi abilities due to hybrid research. She laids a trap and kills Mengsk with help of Raynor but by not invading human colonies.
At the epilogue - humans, and toss and outnumbered by Amon forces, she arrives with several trilions of zerg and gives Artanis and Raynor/Valerian a chance to invade Amon domain. she and her swarm remain there. The last two mission you play as toss and terran against Narud while you have periodic zerg reinforcements. At very end she appears and is able to stun Amon while Artanis deliver the killing blow with Zeratul psi balde.
The she kidnaps Raynor and bring him to Char to perfom dominatrix stuff on him
the End..?
@@ixirionnah have tassadar willfully manifest himself as a force ghost alongside fenix to tell raynor to "stop simping" and remind him of how she chose to become a monster after being freed of the overmind.
I beg to differ. Kerrigan did kill billions as queen of swarm but a queen is really a queen if it's just a puppet? I claim mental instability for her crimes and after she was freed from that influence she didn't mindlessly murder. As an example with Warfield's death zerg started to pull back that is something that never happened before. Kerrigan is not a murderer if all her opponents stand away from her path she probably doesn't even fight protoss. All her fights born from absolute necessity after she is freed from amons control
Amon had a lot of faith in his hybrids I think so he probably just didn't pay as much attention to Kerrigan as he should have and that's why they were able to neutralize her. He didn't expect she would reclaim that transformation but in a wholesome way.
Frankly, you could stop at "Starcraft 2 had a huge problem with the story".
Personally, i think Kerrigan in SC1 as a protagonist could have worked IF the writers paid attention to her final words in SC1. She mentions how there will be a time when she will need to test the Terrans and Protoss again, where it then pans out to Amon's star-eye loop facial formation thing. This could have allowed her to be the ultimate Machiavellian character who is still very, very evil but has an overall good-ish end goal (or to be exact, her end goal is her being on top rather than Amon)...which is implied quite a lot to be what she may have been intended to be in WoL before HoTS and LoTV threw that away.
In WoL, Kerrigan makes a lot of mentions on how Jim doesn't know what he's doing by preventing her from getting the artifacts, and she's correct. Narud is also opposing her...which makes no sense in HoTS since by all means if Amon was influencing her then he would have influenced her not to get in the way of procuring the artifacts at all. But she is actively rebelling against Narud in WoL, meaning that she knows of Amon, knows of Narud being Duran, and is actively trying to stop them. There are even a lot of small dialogue continuity errors sprinkled throughout HoTS such as Kerrigan knowing Prometheus Company's role in the Dominion...while having amnesia of everything up Mengsk betraying her which is before the Dominion is even formed. But what if this was used not as shoddily slapdashed rewrites, but on purpose?
What if, most of HoTS' plot carries on as-is, but every once-in-a-while Kerrigans slips up by saying something she shouldn't know, with more and more of the cast catching on as the plot progresses with her snapping at them in denial whenever questioned about it. But then, upon rescuing Raynor, he tries to sell his "bUt YoU arEn'T the Qween ob bwades" nonsense only for Kerrigan to get pissed off and snap at him, revealing that she never had amnesia nor was she ever under Amon's control, finally explaining herself: what if she did all of her heinous things in Brood War to prepare the Dominion and Delaam for Amon's inevitable arrival due to seeing how woefully inadequate they were against the UED? If they got rolled over by some explorer force of a bunch of far-off Terrans, then they'd be 10000% screwed against Amon. So she engineers a cold war scenario where all sides build up their armies and arsenals rather than chill out in peace, unknowingly making themselves more prepared for Amon's arrival until Narud used that arsenal buildup to backfire that advantage. And when Raynor asks why she didn't tell anyone the truth, she'd roll her eyes and point out that only an idiot would have taken her seriously if she said that alien god space cthulu was coming to murder everyone for giggles so she needed to engineer a situation that would get the results she needed, even if it meant making everyone miserable in the process for their own good. Still the queen bitch of the universe without regretting anything, but now she gets the protagonist spotlight.
But no, instead we got a flip-flopping writer's block being tossed around with shallow moral grandstanding nonsense.
This. Literally this. The only inconsistency, or rather a questionmark, would be the ending of WoL carrying to your version HotS. Just end the WoL as-is and then... retcon all the novels and go with your hots version, or?
the funny is what you just said here will be far better than what we get
I like your idea that kerrigan is making everyone evolve. so they could counter amon.
but no she got the goku treatment. rather let her use her brain to save the universe.
That could've been a lot more interesting, not great necessarily, but I woudl've been a lot more okay with that.
You can't really force a cold war state, especially not with trigger happy factions like the Protoss and the Terran's, so it wouldn't really work.
Also, this is not "Protagonist Spotlight", not how storytelling works.
Thank you for saying it. The treatment of Kerrigan is the worst thing in SC2. Her going super-saiyan was the final insult.
I've been tempted to make a video like this since Wings of Liberty came out, but I'm much too lazy.
Side-note: I never liked the broodmothers. They lack the cerebrates' cool-factor, and letting the work of a giant immobile brain be done by a fighting unit feels completely cheap and overpowered.
Rather than cheap and overpowered, I would say it is flawed and inefficient. Cerebrates can, in a very limited sense, move. They have moved before planet to planet, canonically. That's all the mobility they need. Why are you putting your brain on the front lines? If you lose your brain, you lose! Your brain should be the LAST thing to risk being damaged, to the point where if it IS being damaged, the rest of you is gone anyways. Abathur would be so disappointed by the concept of Broodmothers, they waste so much essence, so much energy, to allow for a role that they should never engage in.
You could make a whole second creature, whose entire existence is War, with the spare essence you're wasting on the Broodmothers to make them middling-strength lasses instead of giant brain-worms. This flaw is even highlighted in canon: The cerebrates were problem-solvers, were creative thinkers, they figured out how to remake a new overmind without any blueprints. Meanwhile Zagara whittles her thumbs on a bone trench that a single flying unit could just go over, and needs Abathur to "adjust" her (in a very painful way, from their dialogues) to give her "vision", because the ability to think beyond pre-programmed systems at all was too much excess for the broodmothers compared to the cerebrates, with their wasteful mobility and minor combat abilities.
The "behind the scenes" reason is Games Workshop sued Blizzard for using the concept of Cerebrates. To play nice, they agreed to do away with Cerebrates.
@@zxKAOS1As if I needed more reason to detest Games Workshop.
"Hurrr, I'm going to rip off every franchise in existence, then sue anyone who creates anything original that vaguely resembles something I've stolen.
Frikkin IP pirates. All their victims should gang up and sue them at the same time.
@@zxKAOS1 I posted a reply to you but RUclips censored it. I'll try to redact what I think made CensorTube mad.
As if I needed more reason to detest Games Workshop.
"Hurrr, I'm going to rip off every franchise in existence, then sue anyone who creates anything original that vaguely resembles something I've ripped off."
Frikkin IP pirates. All their (vic times) should gang up and sue them at the same time.
@@falsnamae3511 Yeah I think the concept of Broodmothers was some type of woke shit but buried under layers of new lore crap so that no one questions it.
Probably not, but it is convincing and would be hilarious if this is somewhat true.
So basically sc2 Kerrigan continues to manipulate everyone, perhaps Zeratul missions in wol and his "prophecies" are also directed by her to stop everyone from wanting to kill her so she could completly free herself from Amon and get revenge aganist Mengsk and continues her mad quest for power to become god
That... actually makes way more sense than it should.
problem she's stupid in sc2 as is mensk and amon cause blizzard can't write
@@JohnTrustworthy Because it's fanfiction that looks over huge gaps in logic and is not, in fact, even remotely close to the original text
@@ExValeFor But, consider: It isnt godawful like the canon is
@@ExValeFor huge gaps..? Like the entire HoS and LoV campaigns? Minus the fanfic part? Like pls. Stop it. Stop defending the multimillionaire company trying to justify a massive genocidical maniac as an "anti hero" when NOTHING before the "haha yeah Amon" had any clue about Amon influences (traumatized in many ways absolutely but her actions speak for themselves). As someone studying writing as a beginner even I can see the lame writing. Unironically the manipulative Kerrigan taking advantage of a Jimm (and toss, and valerian) with memory lost and zeratul bc the prophecy makes so much more sense. A true villain arc of someone that because of the horrible traumas in her past simply went full mad, became what she hated and finally died without redemption. People need to stop being so afraid to write more greek catastrophe for fk sake. I love Kerrigan but boy I wished they killed her, fk I change Zeratul dead for Kerrigans EVERY DAY
How to kill Amon without Kerrigan:
- Steer the Spear of Adun into a collision course with Amon, with enough solarite to kill him
- Use Mengsk's remaining nuclear weapons to weaken Amon and his forces
Or just A-move a clump of mutalisks since that's the easiest way to break all of his rocks tied his mortality anyways.
It does raise the question of how they were able to kill Narud so easily. I guess Amon's just built different?
The prophecy is now that the SPEAR of Adun wasn't just named like that because it sounded cool but because it was actually meant to be used as a spearhead against Amon. I'm only joking but it's only slightly stupider than what we actually got.
@@PieisDaBest1 Abathur mentions during a dialogue that Stukov is probably the most powerful psionic being he knows after Primal Kerrigan. This is likely a result of a combination of factors involving his zergification, de-zergification via a Protoss attempt at a cure and then rezergification during experiments run on him by Narud.
So he should be pretty damn powerful and Narud was likely weakened from having his mortal Avatar killed in LotV.
@@Salted_Fysh My point was that they were still able to beat him with conventional weapons. We still have to incapacitate him, while Stukov just finishes him off. Also, Amon lost a host form too.
This feeds into my disappointment that we didn't get a final fight with Amon in either his host form or his real one. I get that he's supposed to be super powerful, but it also makes the final mission pretty anti-climactic when we spend all that time beating up rocks, only for him to die in a cutscene.
Jim simps
Artanis simps
Zeratul simps
An attractive woman in bug cosplay gets everything she ever wants. Most realistic story ever tbh.
I was pretty blind to it when I played HOTS as a young infant. But man, replaying HOTS as a 30 year old and listening to Kerrigan's.. personality, if you could call it that, sure was something.
Regardless of the reasoning for her behaviour, it doesn't make her any more likable.
Holy shit has it been that long????
@@gloriousblobber9647 SC2 WoL came out in 2010. Swarm, I think, came out at least a year or two later. So yeah, it's been a bit. 😅
If you're in your thirties now you would have had to have been the oldest kind of teenager when you played HOTS
@@emillarsson1299 I lied, i was a toddler.
I had a weird thought, what if lab rat is still the first mission in the game, because rather than Zagara remaining on char, Zagara is this bizarre anomaly that survived the final blast which wiped out all the within its blast radius because of Zagara's PERFECTLY MERGED HUMAN DNA, a personal hybrid of Kerrigan's own making which was to be her new body for the final war. but now it's just there, a relative blank slate, one which is studied, closely by Valarian and Jim, Zagara could slowly develop more awareness and ego as time goes on, a strange attachment even to the Valarian and Jim in the same way zoo animals appreciate their caretakers, meanwhile confronting them with its obvious signs of sapience, casting the zerg in a subtle new light for their campaign and forcing Jim to both consider the implications of that considering this zerg hasn't done anything(because it's been in a cage since it was a larva) and it is in a sense all that's left of Sara, but Jim also has to be cautious, he's let his guard down before, he's seen what the zerg do if you turn your back to them even for a second, and thus has to be the one advising Valarian, whose inexperience with the zergs core nature leads him to consider and go through with releasing Zagara upon the dominion when they assault the umojans. This gives Zagara her chance to escape, which she takes without a second thought, as that is her and all other zergs nature first and foremost, to grow and spread, no cage is big enough, no world, no body. In the end Korhal will lie in ruin, Mengsk will be dead, as will billions of Terrans, and thousands of protoss, the swarm is whole, and now sets its sights to the last cage containing its spread, Amon.
Very interesting theory.
Now that's a hell of a lot better than what we got, there's actually something interesting to say there, too.
I suppose that in this alternate reality of Dead Kerrigan after Wings, the protagonist of HotS would be... Y'know what, I'm gonna go against the grain here!
Izsha. Apparently at one point in development she was infested (sometimes another psionic infested in Kerrigan's attempts to make another smart infested; other times an adjutant).
Izsha is cold, but somewhat caring, has some common ground with Kerrigan as a fellow infested, and was the Queen's secretary - likely the only creature that Kerrigan would have ever voiced doubts or guilt to.
If any living being could "redeem" the Swarm, I think it would be her.
She's been with her Queen, probably managing the Swarm's intelligence network personally, she's seen Raynor travel across the sector, fighting like hell. She's seen Love at Kerrigan's execution - mercy for her, and justice for the fallen; and there's just enough individuality and humanity deep down in her for Izsha to become fascinated with this.
She begins remodeling the Swarm for a bit less brutality and a bit more honest diplomacy (if the other species can be convinced to trust her).
I foresee... Defensive missions against the Protoss, helping Raynor and Co discretely, and a falling out with Abathur who leaves to support Zagara in the Second Brood War.
This is such a cool way of doing things; i would love this. Seeing a properly morally good swarm would be so cool.
I can see this happening bar one fact. Izsha isn't much of a fighter or a commander herself, she is there to support one, not be one, as such I think it would work much better if she chose a weaker queen and help her climb to the top of the swarm. She could even justify her decision by correctly pointing out that in the end kerigan got too arrogant for her own good and that's what ultimately led to her downfall. This way, you can have a whole cast of likeable zerg characters with a goals the players can somewhat empathize with.
@@islar7832 You could have Niadra as a larva in the early missions with Izsha protecting her.
@@tatooine0 That could definitely work.
I can see that, you play as izsha, and you hava abathur that urges you to consume everything like a proper zerg should, and zagara suggesting there might be more to life than eating and evolving.
The first question is what story does blizzard want. They write most of their stories with two things in mind; foes for the player to fight and baddies to deliver big impact lines of dialogue.
Do they want a Kerrigan redemption arc? Then they should have baked a conflict to succeed Kerrigan getting redeemed into sc1 to be extended in the sequel. Do they want her to be the final boss? Then they should have done more to show how her character transitions from Raynnor's crush to a murderer of billions. A cascade of bad choices or the irreversible consequence of getting zerg-brain. They did neither. She is just bad until she not until she is. She's not making the wrong choices in a tough situation or having a character flaw explored. She's as evil or snarky as the situation needs for conflicts to happen. As much as people love the first game, it does nothing to set up anything about Kerrigan beyond assumptions and sc2 did nothing to correct those absent details. In fact it made them worse.
I'd think Kerrigan's redemption would've been more believable if they stuck to something like - Kerrigan's brutal and forced transformation and telepathic-link to countless, rapid zerg creatures caused her to go insane and develop Dissociative identity disorder (The Queen of Blades).
Throughout Heart of the Swarm, she could get "whispers" from The Queen of Blades (as she still lives in her brain like The Green Goblin). In order to silence her, she attempts to prove to herself that she isn't the killing machine she was forced to be.
You could even easily redo some of the missions where instead of slaughtering people, she goes out of her way to try and save them, affirming to herself that she is no longer The Queen of Blades.
Here are a few quickly chalked up ones as examples.
Kaldir
- Kerrigan travels to Kaldir, seeking the memory of Nafash. However, with Nafash being killed by the local wildlife after being frozen, Kerrigan stumbles upon the protoss research colony. Kerrigan quickly finds out that the protoss technology is failing, and if they fail to evacuate, the entire colony may be frozen solid. Kerrigan promises to provide a safe escort to the warp conduits. (The fleeing protoss themselves being attacked by the rapid Ursadons on the planet, their weapons rendered useless with the flash freezes).
Zerus
- Zeratul informs Kerrigan about the "darkness of amon" (The Queen of Blades) that still lives within her. He tells her that so long as it remains, her psionic potential will only bring destruction. In order to further cleanse herself of the Swarm Zerg, she assimilates the Primal Zerg's independent structure to replace the Overmind's initial corruption that still taints her mind. The Ancient One, having sensed Kerrigan's powerful, pure essence, awakens from his slumber.
Skygeirr Platform
- Kerrigan, having told The Swarm they won't be testing on humans anymore, is informed by Abathur about an overrun research facility where many terrans had been infested by Narud. After the escapee, Stukov, boards the Leviathan, Kerrigan agrees to help him get revenge against Narud, but only if he helps bring mercy to the infested terrans.
-
Another small thing would be to simply adjust some of her dialogue to show more of her humanity, and her sense of justice. The most popular example would be her line with Izsha.
Izsha: What about Arcturus Mengsk? Will his death bring you no joy?
Kerrigan: I don't know yet, but I do know It'll bring joy to other people... Like everyone who lost their families on Tarsonis... That's what will bring me joy.
I like how you think. That would be a good compromise for those who prefer to keep Kerrigan around.
Damn, that's actually a good way to twist it. I wounder if we can have a full custom company with rewritten story, missions and cinematics. We have a great team at GGG that makes mods. Get some AI to do the voices, change text and some cutscenes, redo some missions and it could be so much better!
I think Subsourian confirmed that the development team was experimenting with having Kerrigan talk to the queen of blades and having her run this schizophrenia act in some way. They just didn't go through with it. HotS is just half-baked in general. Kerrigan's visual design also got cut short before they could do anything actually fun with her primal form. *Or her xelnaga form, apparently*
why a villain even should have a redemption arc?
can we mature enough to understand that being someone who murdered thousands is rather hard to redeem?
@@DarkSeresutia More than thousands, millions of billions.
Kerrigan becoming Xel'naga super sayan will aways be really funny, they really couldve used some of that anime influence on other campaigns
"And this is to go...even further beyond!"
Subpar Ending. I thought the whole point of StarCraft was to be a leader and tactical commander. Able to even outdo a god being like Amon through careful planning, allegiances, barely scrapping by, and that one ace you have up your sleeve to finish it off. But for whatever reason they just wanted Kerrigan to have her little dragon ball power fantasy of "I'm the strongest, Kerrigan strongest there is." moment or whatever.
She offers to atone by becoming a god and giving up her last humanity, love. But just a few minutes later, she naturally makes love in her human form and is saved instead of atoned for.
The problem is that Kerrigan, through her actions in BW and in WoL, crossed the moral event horizon so many times to the point of no return. She manipulated and killed everyone to her and her swarm's benefit.
@@razorback9999able thats why she should either stay the evil queen she was at the end of starcraft 1 (manipulative etc) or be killed, making her new Jesus was so against her character i just laughed
@@DarkSeresutia Yeah! When I got back to Starcraft, I was like "wait, why is she one of the good guys now? Did I miss something?!"
You know what would have been crazy? If Kerrigan went undercover as Doctor Hansen, and then stole the artifacts. It would fit, too. She could project herself as being in another place, has the power and skill to fool even the best psionics, and the artifact is a lot easier to use with Terran tech than Zerg stuff. Imagine a storyline where she used Raynor to collect them, mind controlled Swann and Stetmann to help her handle them, and projected a fake version of herself in a vulnerable position fighting Tal'darim to lure Raynor away and then steal the Hyperion, before leaving him behind the way Mengsk left her. Then Raynor teams up with the Tal'darim to try and get his ship and the artifact back, and then they join up with Valerian and half the dominion fleet to try to gank her, only for Zeratul to grab her when she's purified by the artifact.
Then instead of lovey dovey shipping we could have had Zeratul and Kerrigan try and not kill each other as Kerrigan slowly relearns how to command the Zerg and is gradually let in on why Zeratul needed her alive. That being that Amon was coming back and if he takes full control of the Swarm, the good guys lose. Zeratul wants Kerrigan to stay human and contest Amon, Kerrigan comes to the realization of how strong Amon really is and goes to Primal her way back into being Zerg against Zeratuls wishes. Then instead of revenge plot against Mengsk her main goal is retaking full control of the Zerg before Amon awakens, and helping Jimmy boy kill Mengsk is just a bonus along the way.
one thing i always hated in #2 is how it starts with Kerrigan teaching the lesson that the zerg are unpredictable and dont do what you expect. Then her whole arc is letting go of her humanity and becoming the zerg. This culminates in her walking into mengsk trap, doing EXACTLY what he expected, to get personal revenge. VERY personal, almost like shes not the zerg at all. If she truly had finally become part of the swarm and not an individual, she would have just sent a bunch of Banelings knocking on mengks door, utterly blind siding him and cementing the point that she is the swarm; so for HER killing him with banelings is exactly the same thing.
but noop.
I completely agree and have been saying it for a long while now. SC2 would have been a much better story if Kerrigan died in WoL.
The Zerg campaign could have been an unabashed Zerg campaign. The Protoss campaign could have had proper stakes being set in the timeline where Kerrigan died knowing full well that it had been set up that that's the bad timeline in wings. And best of all no fire angel fanfiction epilogue.
It is downright bizarre. The Zerg is the logistical faction in the games, focusing on expansion, economy and outproducing the enemy. And they decided to center the Zerg campaign on a poorly written mass murderer with god-like stats in the scenarios.
The disonance is appalling, and how in the void would that aid players in learning to play Zerg for multiplayer?
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof yeah the multiplayer Zerg and campaign Zerg are nothing alike. If I had the time and skill I'd love to remake the campaign though I doubt there'd be enough interest at this point
I hate the writing in HOTS. Nice to see someone cover it for once. I'd play your canon story anytime.
Dude, it's not just HOTS. Blizzard did this to every single one of their IPs. They took solid and interesting character based stories in somewhat generic fantasy worlds, and convoluted them to fuck. I don't know if it was all Metzen or what, but the ego behind some of the narrative decisions is insane. Let alone when they decided to allow outside authors to contribute to lore from even outside of the games.
Brood War writing wasn't much better (except UED). I never understood why Kerrigan in BW is praised, I absolutely hated her character, because it seemed like she didn't earn her victories at all and everyone else was just plain dumb. It was so unsatisfying. HotS is just an extension of that.
Kerrigan was a pretty shite character all troughout in my opinion. In SC2 they tried to fix her - and failed. It would've been better if she had just died by the end of BW and we started off fresh in SC2 without her. The whole story would've been better that way.
@manolgeorgiev9664 I agree with everything you said.
Kerrigan was a trash character in both games.
The only thing I agree with from the video is that BW Kerrigan is less shiite than the sc2 one.
@@manolgeorgiev9664 Brood war wasn't the best written game, but at least Kerrigan was built up to be hated by the players, meaning there was the potential of a satisfying revenge against her in an eventual sequel.
But then SC2 came and dissapointed everyone who wanted to get revenge for Fenix ......
Zagara was cool
Your "fixing Kerrigan" segment more or less hit the nail on the head for my thoughts. I'm an amateur writer (and I've always wanted to be a novelist), but I can't say I bothered putting as much thought into the Brood War or WoL problems. But my thought was to excise the prophecy, and kill Kerrigan at the end of WoL. Then Heart of the Swarm could be taken in SO MANY possible directions with a sort of "Second Brood War": maybe you take on the full villainous role as a Broodmother seizing power or a Hybrid battling for control of the Swarm (offering an opportunity for a deeper exploration of the Hybrid); or to create a more "heroic" Zerg, play as Stukov and fighting to take control of parts of the Swarm and create a Brood for himself and other infested, or even a Broodmother who decides to "evolve" her Brood in a different direction and try to be diplomatic, sharply contrasting with Kerrigan by being an engineered "monster" that refuses to be a monster.
This whole idea of a new Brood War even better sets up the idea of the Zerg Swarm being broken into different factions and better justifies the "feral" Zerg, as well as the idea of the "heroic" Zerg taking a beating that prevents them from aiding the Protoss. I remember being a mix of confused, annoyed, and pissed off by Kerrigan's comment of "My Swarm was broken (at Ulnar)" when Artanis asked her to more formally ally with him, because it's like "Uh, hello?! Didn't you spend HotS taking near full control of the Swarm?! Wasn't that the alleged POINT of you not being offed by Raynor?! And you LOST MOST OF IT THAT EASILY?!!!!!"
I could rant for hours, but I think I'm preaching to the choir, so I'd better shut up now. :P
When I showed my ex the whole Starcraft story, they said one thing that they would have done if they were writing it, and I've never been able to get it out of my head.
"It would have been so much better if the Overmind succeeded in his goal of creating the "perfect zerg" when he formed on Aiur, assimilated a single protoss into the first hybrid, and Brood War had been about Kerrigan and this hybrid character fighting for control of the Swarm."
Ever since, whenever I think of before ways the story could have gone or my own rewrites or fanfic or what have you, I always have the hybrid be a single and unique character, and the real big bad of the universe after the Overmind's death. There was no need for Amon and NaruDuran, there was no need for making the hybrid about as common as ultralisks, there was no need to make the Overmind and Kerrigan anything more than they were at the end of episode 3.
My perfect Brood War would have had these as their campaign premises, not going into detail of how everything plays out and ends but at least a baseline of the campaigns.
Episode 4: The protoss still escape to Shakuras. With the frankly extinction level population decrease the fall of Aiur had and the much more interesting story that happened off-screen, their campaign should be about two things. The Khalai/Nerazim divide, Ulrezaj's terrorism and creation of the Tal'darim, and the Khalai setting out to activate the three arkships they *stored off Aiur because it makes no sense to store your contingency for if your planet gets destroyed on said planet* and with the amount of protoss lost on Aiur *the only possible way they could even remain a player on the galactic stage was getting all those warriors stored in stasis on them.*
Episode 5: A Mengsk campaign, where we get to see the power of the newly established empire and Mengsk be the genius he supposedly is, first establishing further ties with Umoja and pursuing Raynor and Kerrigan as the threats to his rule. At this point literally all of his enemies are in weak states after the battle for Aiur, it's the perfect time for him to *do something* and the whole UED invasion ultimately changed nothing so there's no point in introducing them when we already have a terran villain.
Episode 6: Kerrigan now has three threats to her control of the Swarm; The hybrid, Ulrezaj, and Mengsk (both of who have a history of pursuing control of the zerg). Ultimately the hybrid is the greatest threat and everything Kerrigan and the hybrid do is a galactic chess game between the two. Whatever happens here should lead to Raynor on the path to finishing her in Wings of Liberty, and Zeratul to discovering the existence of the hybrid which will be the main big bad of the Starcraft 2 trilogy and the character played in 2's zerg campaign.
No need for a retconned in surviving space god, instead it should build up to stop the hybrid's ascension that would inevitably doom everyone if they succeeded.
With the infested Stukov thing he did acknowledge that he can never return to Earth (because he’s infested), but Kerigan also agreed on the note that his return would only encourage the UED to come back
But he never really brought up the fact that Kerrigan was involved in his original death, his friend's death, and the destruction of the UED fleet. Not even a grudging acknowledgement that he's putting his feelings (if any) about that aside to stop Narud.
@@PieisDaBest1 yeah, I just meant to comment on how Kerigan sees and thinks of things as we(the player) are supposed to connect with her and go through that “redemption” arc that they tried.
What I really meant to say is Stukov laments not being able to go back to Earth; and Kerrigan with no sympathy or empathy and pretty much being the reason he can’t go back (as you said killed all them and infested him), sees the political reason rather than the moral one with no apology or care and pretty much said she’d never let him go back.
@@PieisDaBest1 the idea of people curing stukov just for him to become infested again was lame anyways
I was a kid when StarCraft dropped, and it blew my mind that protagonists can be evil. Kerrigan was comparatively competent, had understandable reasons for wanting revenge, and got what she wanted in the end by playing enemies against each other. It really set the standard for me for many years (even Arthas' fall kinda flopped in comparison).
When SC2 released, all the childish naivete fell off and it felt like my all time favorite character got brutally murdered. I still don't understand why Blizzard went that way, WotLK ended just a year before and they knew how to give an important character a send-off then.
I mean, to be fair. Kerrigan was born a human with psychic potential, so they tossed her child self into the ghost program and made her a living weapon for killing political dissidents. Then she broke out of that and teamed up with Mengsk and the others.... And got treated as a disposable tool by the bastard of bastards. She has never had a family, I don't recall any mention of her having had friends. Raynor aside Kerrigan has never had any reason to consider herself part of humanity nor like she owes humanity anything. Getting turned into a Zerg with all the mental influences of the Overmind and the Xel stuff hardly helped in this sense.
Ultimately purifying her and trying to turn her back into a human was never going to work because there just isn't anything about being human that Kerrigan would want, aside from being able to be with Raynor I suppose and she can do that just fine as a Zerg. Furthermore for all that the Zerg are Zergy in their ways, they actually accept and treat her as one of their own. In the end her entire life has taught one very simple lesson: She and the Zerg who are effectively part of her cant rely on anyone else, even Raynor has trouble accepting the Zerg part of her and wants to see it purged if possible.
LOL! You have a better understanding of Kerrigan's character than the SC2 writing team.
it's even worse than that. apparently, she unalived her own mother with her crazy psi powers at a young age, and vegetabled her dad. the ghost program had brutal physical and mental torture and conditioning, and the zerg morphosis wasn't a fun picnic either, as Abathur the evolution guy likes to remind us of. having jim try to redeem her but failing is nice, but wasn't pulled off nearly well enough. and the ending was complete bs of course
To be honest also the thing is SC1 started with Terran, SC:BW started with Protoss, what if rearrange all the SC2, so it starts with Zerg, second go Protoss and last campagin is terran. Damn that would be sick.
Honestly, that would be pretty cool. I always wondered why they never did one in that order. Like, yeah, Terrans for the final campaign aren't super interesting, but definitely doable.
I actually remember somewhere that WOL Would have been greater and unchanged if this order was the case, as the pattern was 1:fall of a regime. (confederacy in SC1 and the protoss council in SC:BW) 2:Rise to power. (Zerg eventually assaulting Aiur in SC1 and UED Taking over in BW) Followed by 3:New villain is made. (Overmind dies, Which allows the UED to take over the swarm in SC1 and Kerrigan becoming the defacto leader of the swarm in BW) If WOL was put in 3, then The ending would have been a nice end point for the game, as instead of cause another villain to have a reason to become a problem, they defy the pattern for a more happier ending. I haven't read it in a while, so i might have made some mistakes in my retelling.
@@thegameghoul3442 I remember seeing a pretty good video as a sort of alternate ending with the campaign order rearranged and the story changed to reflect it. I believe it was called " A Better Ending for StarCraft 2?", I don't know if YT would hide the comment if I posted the link itself.
Yes! It always bugged me, more than the mission design of LotV, that this is the order of campaigns they went with.
Imagine starting SC2 with Heart of the Swarm, just instead of human Kerrigan controlling against Valarian's science equipment, start with the zerg attacking Hybrid aligned Terrans. Mission 2 would be an Infested Kerrigan only no-build with the boss at the end being a Hybrid, with emphasis that she has trouble fighting it. Story from there would instead be Kerrrigan going to various places looking for powerups in the form of lost Xel-Naga research (not artifacts, research) to empower herself, the bestest one being the super spawning pool on Zerrus. Instead of on Char have Kerrigan take on Warfield on (whatever planet) and then actually fail to kill him, earning him his heroic title. For the Narud missions I'd have Kerrigan constantly trash talk the Hybrids because she's been powering up so much, and not have her have any issues fighting them. Heck if it's the last mission chosen the beam struggle could also just instantly won and Kerrigan lazily send in the swarm to clean up instead of having a bit of pressure in having to take out the temples (you'd still need to destroy them to lower the shield to get in) (Also, I'd find it interesting if Infested Stukov didn't join up with Kerrigan and run away.) Final mission would still be attacking Korhol for Revenge.
Only issue is what to replace the missions about rescuing Jim... Probably another planet with Xel-naga Research. A sandy desert one maybe?
In any case, campaign one would end the same. Korhol invaded, Emp Mengsk dead, dominion shattered, though mercifully (some) people were allowed to escape this time, unlike Tarsonis
Legacy of the Void could remain mostly the same, except instead of Primal Kerrigan dropping in you could have Infested Stukov. Or Zagara.
Then make the big send off with Wings of Liberty. You don't have to change the initial start, just have it happen at the same time as HotS's final missions. Jim's three prologue missions are happening as collateral to Super Kerrigan's attack on Korhol. Swarm is Big. Couple of changes I'd make would be to have the missions in LotV where Jim shows up be playable again except as Jim, since there's now a timeline issue. But in any case, WoL would take longer timeline wise so that it would be the final ending.
Second change would be reason for broadcasting the old Adjutant's file. Instead of just there to throw mud at Arcturus' rep, it would be to resolve a dispute on succession for the dominion throne. Completing the mission set would solidify Valarian's position, somehow...
And then of course, ending it as described in the video. EDIT: I just watched "A Better Ending for Starcraft 2?" and dammit, he makes a compelling point.
Been thinking the exact same thing since it came out.
I will never let it down. Never, ever. And not just the ruination of Kerrigan...
Edit: Would've been fun to have Stukov as the MC of HoTS. He'd be controlling his own faction made out of a mix of Infested Terrans with their mental faculties still normal (and suffering mentally due to their condition of being a bunch of mutant freaks) and Zerg that the ex UED commander included into his infested fleet.
I'd twist it to ''it's not the Kerrigan herself that we need as a McGuffin, but something inside her'' - like, her ultimate essence or some sh*t. A little Fifth Element-ish, but it is suitable for Starcraft. That way the player still needs to defeat her, she is still to become the weapon against Amon in the end, but it's not the end of the world if she gets what she deserves. And this is where Stukov comes in when the question ''how tf do we extract what we need?'' arises. That would also allow us to keep the ''Zerg protagonist'', since this is a necessary component in core Starcraft pattern.
To be honest I always thought that Ariel Hanson could make a good replacement for Kerrigan.
With Hanson initialy becoming a zerg when instead of curing the infestation she gets infested but manages to find a way of preventing herself and the others from falling under the control of the zerg.
And that she becomes the new Zerg Queen after Kerrigan gets killed.
Alternative suggestion, we were the villain as the zerg in Brood War - Let the Zerg Campaign be from Amon or Duran's perspective being a genocidal maniac running roughshod over the galaxy while episode 3 is about the protoss figuring out what the hell to do with Kerrigan's essence after extracting it.
CLARIFICATION: Make episode 2 Duran directing the swarm under Amon's orders to find and kill Kerrigan to prevent the "prophecy" not understanding that it was (like you suggested) her ESSENCE rather than her that was needed to kill him, have zeratul show up last second to gank Kerrigan (payback for razshagal) and swipe the essence having figured that out and bailing with Raynor to have episode 3 be the real heroes figuring out how they're supposed to use it.
This adds the bonus of letting us actually spend time inside the head of the dude the game is asking us to hate so we can learn EXACTLY what he wants to do and what his future universe looks like
Should've been the Cerebrate from Brood War, making them the last one
it's a Blizzard fetish apparently, same thing happened to Sylvanas in WOW, killed millions,nobody liked her yet somehow she redeemed hersefl in the end, but with the same harrowing hair pulling script situation ...
I remember there was a Bliz con event and a fan litterly mentioned how the story was going to go and said it would be lame if they did that. The look on writers faces was priceless.
Imagine we got a Starcraft 2 plot where Amon + the Hybrid appeared, and Kerrigan was instead intent on stealing the hybrid for her own use, "allying" with the Terran and Protoss once agian (intent on betraying them as always) out of sheer desparation, and successfully killing amon like she does, but getting killed directly after in a battle-weakened by none other than Raynor, keeping his promise from BW
They wanted to make her a girlboss without the baggage of previous games, so they just ignored it. Out of all the returning characters in SC2 she definitely suffered the most in terms of writing. I think they still could have done a redemption arc, but that would have required her to have been remorseful in some way, instead they just leaned into romance with Jim, that was established outside of games, pretty much a fail all around, modern Blizzard writing at its finest.
I'm actually of the opinion that BW's ending should have been different. BW had Kerrigan piss everyone off, and when the consequences for her actions finally showed up at her doorstep, she was completely bailed out because her cerebrate happened to have a high APM and could grind the level as much as was needed. Then she declares victory as if she did it all herself.
I think a much better ending would have been in the face of such overwhelming fleets, if she'd had to have retreated into Char's nydus tunnels, but her cerebrate had to hold off the enemy in a last stand while she ran. She'd have been safe, but severely weakened, having lost her last cerebrate and having to rebuild her control over the zerg by herself. It would have explained her diminished presence in SC2 and why there are no cerebrates anymore. I even think it would have been cool seeing her in a moment of panic as the walls come crashing down, only to salvage a costly victory by the skin of her teeth, perhaps vowing to return stronger than ever before and crush her enemies once and for all.
i am always amazed when random people in the web has better ideas than those devs in a multi million corp
@@DarkSeresutia the problem is these multi million Corp devs have massively overpaid executives who think doing things like this would give the players headaches so goes for a safer story.
You know, one could play this idea in a more dramatic manner. Kerrigan tasks her cerebrate to hold them off 'while I prepare my move'... and that move is betraying the cerebrate to it's death in the same manner she was betrayed. Just it's the huge alliance against her instead of the zerg overwhelming the abandoned one's defenses this time. Having her remark that she's become what she hated in order to win would have capped that off perfectly and explained why Kerrigan is so diminished, lost her best asset while taking a psychological blow in the process.
@@Sorain1 basically if the cerebrate last long enough it triggers a death wave and kerrigan will congradulate them for giving the station time to blow
if they win the station blows not really changing much since kerrigan always did have a petty vendetta with the cerebrates
Remember phoenix died before he could teach the falies of SIMPING.
I always liked to think that the reason for the magistrate to disappear in Brood War was that he was clever enough to not trust Kerrigan and chose to part ways with Reynor
I like the unufficial theory Matt Horner is SC1 magistrate
I really like the concept you listed for killing Kerrigan. It made me think of the next steps that'd come after for the zerg; a Brood War-style shattered swarm, with Abuthur leading one faction orientated towards infesting terrans to expand (making them an obvious direct enemy for the Dominion), while Zagara tries to carve out her own domain of planets that leads to her conflicting with the primal zerg, who seek to absorb the 'classic' zerg. Finally, Ishka tries to stay clear of all factions so she can pursue her own reunification strategy - just as infestation brought back a dead Stukov, she's trying to bring Kerrigan back. Not in that ruined body of course, but trying to obtain the resources to imprint a backup of Kerrigan's psionic pattern (her mind, effectively) onto a new viable host body - one of the said resources she needs to obtain, a ghost - Nova. This plan ultimately succeeds, giving us a Kerrigan that is not burdened by the sins of what the dead her did - it may look like Kerrigan, talk and think like her, have her memories, but also, it's not the same person, depending on your philosophical viewpoint. This one is more redeemable (some would argue she's actually none nothing wrong, as that was another person she was copied from, akin to holding a clone guilty for the crime of its originator). This also allows the prophecy to still be fulfilled (Prophecies are tricky animals, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer taught us) just not in an obvious way of redeeming the unredeemable. Original Kerrigan acted like an ineffective idiot in WOL and deserved to go down, having her die takes the story off the rails towards the 'beat Amon' conclusion, not to mention allows Jimmy to keep to his promise to Phoenix. The delayed arrival of a cloned Kerrigan, only revealing what Ishka was up to towards the very end of her plot, gives the story time to unfold as if all is lost, an Empire Strikes Back era of strife, a low point for some characters and a high for several bad guys, like Mengsk, Amon, and possibly even Abuthur (if one wants to take his story that way). The swarm needed to build itself back up, from initial petty infighting, to a more meaningful climax than "Finally killing Mengsk now after sitting around for years for no reason LOL". Getting a Kerrigan back, so they have a hope of saving the universe from Amon, seems a heck of a better payoff and natural end point for the chapter. Is it hack writing? Well, probably - but it may be better than what we got.
I think Abathur would seek to create the ultimate Zerg lifeform(s) rather than infesting. I clearly remember him saying he hates working with Terrans.
I could get behind this
The two biggest problems that I have with Star Craft 2 are
1) The Tal'darim and the feral Zerg make no sense. In the case of the former, they've been separated for years beyond reckoning, but their technology looks nearly identical to the rest of the Protoss, but edgier. As for the feral Zerg, the manual that came with SC1 states that the Zerg are ultimately tiny parasites and that zerglings, hydras, mutas, etc. are altered forms of species assimilated across different planets, thus it makes no sense for the primals to have their own zerglings, hydras, mutas, etc.
Depending on how much you want to alter the story, my proposals would be to have the Protoss fracture because they argue over the validity and meaning of Zeratul's prophecies. The Zerg could split because the Swarm is growing too large for Kerrigan to control; her human body, though augmented by Zerg infestation, is simply too limited to control it all.
2) The story was split up into three campaigns that were sold separately. Blizzard seems to have been afraid that making the player play as the bad guy for an entire campaign would have hurt sales (to be fair, when I was a kid, I didn't like Brood War because 2/3 of the game was not just playing as a bad guy, but actively hunting my friends). I don't have a good answer to this problem, other than to let Kerrigan be a villain and hope that your fan-base is now adults who won't mind playing the bad guy for an entire game.
There's been a good argument to be made that Wings of Liberty should have been the last Starcraft II campaign. Where we should have been put into another uneasy alliance with a fully infested Kerrigan, but this time to stop the Hybrid rather than the UED. Then, several campaigns of tension and wondering if she's going to betray people at any point does she do it while Raynor learns there's a way to de-infest her.
Starcraft II, at its core, has a good premise. Wings of Liberty is Raynor's personal growth to end the cycle of vengeance around him, and grow as a person because of it. The problem stems from having to do stuff afterwards.
Kerrigan is what happens when GRR Martin decides to make Joffrey the main character and redeem him.
More Cersei Lannister
Good GODS, that is terrible idea!
Totally agree! Giving Kerrigan a redemption arc because of a greater evil was just lame. I wanted to see a sub-plot of Raynor’s, Artanis', Zeratul's inner conflicts developed more like they still hate Kerrigan and want to kill her, but can’t since she’s the key of killing Amon, but I didn’t see that in any of the SC2 campaigns. It’s like they became friends in the end. Never thought about changing anything in the original or BW, but you made some good points.
My thought was Raynor in Wings should at first absolutely mean to kill her, but have no idea how. Then Zeratul tells him that for the universe to survive, Kerrigan must live. Raynor will have the perfect opportunity to kill her, but must not. At some point, he learns that the artifact could weaken Kerrigan and cut off her connection to the swarm. It's the tool he needs to see his vow done. But he knows Zeratul says Kerrigan is important. Then, Narud tells Raynor he can have his cake and eat it too. The artifact will kill the Queen of Blades, but will leave Sarah intact. She'll have her own mind again and be the caring person she once was. Maybe Matt would warn him that it is too good to be true, but he goes for it anyway, uses the artifact and spares Kerrigan.
Then, the kicker: We find out that Narud was lying. That terrible Queen of Blades persona was part of Kerrigan all along, and Narud didn't care whether Kerrigan was weakened or dead. He was just also following the prophecy and getting rid of the only one who can stop him, or so he thinks. So in Heart of the Swarm, Zeratul has no choice but to convince Kerrigan to reembrace the monster, to power herself back up at whatever the cost, because he needs her to take control of the swarm to stop Amon. That's the crime that he thinks the other Protoss will condemn him for, and rightfully so. Shew's a dangerous evil, and he just told her how to rearm herself. She will surely threaten his people, but he sees no other way.
She still frees Jim from prison, but when he mentions Fenix, she laughs at the horror of what she has become. Maybe she has lingering affection for him (he has none for her at this point) but she mostly saved him for utilitarian reasons. He is needed to fight Amon, just as she is. She might spare civilians, but the Swarm always comes first, and if the Swarm needs essence, she will take it and slay whoever stands in her way. There is no redemption, and the moment Amon is dead, everyone will turn on her. Or maybe her last vestige of goodness will sacrifice herself. With Amon dead, the universe no longer needs a weapon.
It would be cool if the final mission was Artanis and Raynor fenixing Kerrigan.
@@delivererofdarknessshoguno1133 Having her be an anti-climax boss after the actual final boss would have been a neat capstone.
The first game was written by people that wanted to create a universe similar to Dune or 40k where there is no good guy and survival is the only thing that matters while the second game was written by people who wanted a soapopera in space
Nice video. Let me propose a compromise to keep the somewhat same story as canon. At the end of WoL, let her body be destroyed and just thank the 4 heroes from freeing her from the Zerg influence. "If you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares back" She might be freed from the Overmind, but having the voices of so many Zerg in your head might influence you. And what do Zerg do? Kill and devour everything --> evil Kerring from Brood War. Zeratul stops the heroes from killing her, because of the prophecy.
In the Heart of the Swarm she might still have some influence over Zerg close to her, because of experience and because she was always strong psychic. Hybrids start to take control of the Zerg and attack. Valerian and heroes convince her, to help with stopping the Zerg. Zeratul proposes Dinosaur planet ---> healing Kerrigan's injuries and giving her power boost. Some Protoss still want to hunt her down for her crimes, so Protoss missions are defensive missions. Terran missions --> find and rescue Jim, with the help from Valerian and Hyperion.
Zagara, Isha, Abathur might want to escape from Hybrids, so that is why they come under Kerrigan.
Of course it is not perfect, but it makes Kerrigan a better character in SC2 and still keeps the same story beats as canon story.
So, one big thing to note in SC:BW. she wasn't the one who made most of the choices. it was Duran. Kerrigan was happy with the alliance but Duran was the one who convinced her to kill fenix and duke. Duran convinced her to mind control Raszagal, the whole thing was his doing, for the master he served. because the "amon was actually in control of the swarm and infested kerrigan" wasn't a retcon, it was established in SC1 and reinforced in BW, long before any of the books or stories built it up into the current space manatee stuff.
11:00 remember, she wasn't going against Jim in those missions. she was going against Narud... the same spacecow that had already demonstrated an ability to control her. she can't read jim's mind in those missions, because she wasn't allowed to. Just like the storm troopers in a new hope, she was intentionally missing, so the hero could think he got away with it.
Yeah but the Xel naga story stuff is boring
The better story was the original plan
Except Duran never convinced her. He only asked her what she wanted to do with them, and she came to the conclusion of killing them. Amon controlling the Swarm was never established in SC1. The only thing they established in the original game was that the Overmind wanted to complete the Xelnaga's experiments (i.e. assimilating the Protoss).
Not to mention, they only revealed Narud was a Spacecow in the Epilogue missions. That reveal is a problem since it makes one wonder why Narud can't just mind-control everyone like Amon does in Legacy (I guess his power-level was too low?).
@@PieisDaBest1 Amon doesn't mind control everyone directly. He uses his Hybrid as psionic beacons just like the Overmind created Cerebrates to aid in the administration of the swarm, how Kerrigan created Brood Mothers to take over that duty and how the player is instructed to create Overlords.
So yes, Narud simply lacks the power to control everyone. He can likely influence just like Amon can, but not as strongly. His real body is inside the Void, Duran and the Doctor Narud are only avatars he is using and it is likely that this requires him to expend a lot of his power to reach through the dimensions.
As seen with the Tal'Darim and the Terrans, Amon and Narud also rely a lot more on traditional, psychological and societal methods of control. With the Tal'Darim he has influenced their religion and culture to make them more susceptible to himself and similarly, the Terrans under his control are religious fanatics. There is no indication that they are actually being mind controlled. They are manipulators, not overt conquerors. This tells us a lot about their limitations.
The only time we see actual direct control is when the Nerazim Preservers are being tapped for knowledge and energy by Pear-man and when Amon floods the Khala with rage in Legacy of the Void. But this is only after he has already firmly established his psionic presence on Aiur and using a great many Hybrids. I believe that just like with the religion, the rage and the sudden shock of slamming it into the Khala is used similar to a mind-altering drug, something that makes people more susceptible to outside influence before he overpowers their minds. And since the Khala is such a strong connection that partly replaces personal identity with community, the effect is amplified and becomes a positive feedback loop.
@@Salted_Fysh The problem with the Hybrid being responsible for control is that they have several scenes of Amon directly possessing people like Rohana (he speaks through them and is clearly controlling them). They literally pull Amon's consciousness out of the possessed Templar at the end of Legacy. If it's the hybrid doing this, then why not just slay all of them like the Cerebrates? Sure, it's not a permanent solution, but it's never brought up as an option.
The hybrid method makes sense for Amon's Brood, but then they never implemented a "kill hybrid to make the Zerg go feral" mechanic, which is a shame.
@@PieisDaBest1 I'm not saying that Amon can't assume control if he focuses on someone like Rohanna. He speaks to us several times via different proxies. But at that point in time, he has firmly established his presence in the Khala and like I said, I suspect the way it works, it's like a giant feedback loop where once he overwhelmed the mental defenses of the Protoss by creating an incredibly strong pulse of emotion using his entire presence and all of the Hybrid present, they themselves started contributing to his control. It's actually a testament to just how strong Rohanna's mind and discipline is that she managed to resist him for that long.
If everyone is connected and you manage to reach a critical threshold of people mirroring and transmitting the same emotion, you are essentially amplifying the signal.
If you've played Mass Effect 2, I visualize him taking active control as something like Harbinger forcing their mind and power into one of the Harvester drones. Harbinger is the leader and the Harvesters are a hivemind but Harbinger doesn't control all of them at the same time.
I agree it's a shame that we don't see the Zerg turn feral when their controller Hybrid dies, it would have been a nice callback to SC1 but eh. It would have required designing at least once mission around it in order to be more than just a gimmick.
I think the problem is brand recognition. Kerrigan as the face of StarCraft was never allowed to die in Wings of Liberty no matter how much any writer would have wanted that or not.
It would be interesting to learn all the specific reasons. The other factor is Starcraft 2 felt more like a country western soap opera, so I'm assuming had vastly different writers. To me, it's like "Texas Ranger" cheesy level quality.
She should have remained the villain of SC 2. Teaming up only to defeat Amon but ultimately stabbing the terrans and protoss in the back
Her killing naive Raynor if done right would have been an amazing story.
And it doesn't help you see her face via splash screen every time you load up Sc2
I actually really liked her, but to be fair I first knew her from SC2. I found her kind of evil personality intriguing, and that DESPITE her being evil, she was the chosen one. It was an interestin decision, and I think they should have just been more dedicated to her evil-manipulative side. She is evil and she has to be the chosen one, so make her miserable that her actions and sense of self conflicts with her duty, having to embrace being a saviour too.
In the defense of their romance, I think it's really interesting, that no matter how much Jim wants to hate her, he cannot. He vows to kill her, but loves her to much that he moves heaven and earth to bring her back and when she turns back he gets angry and cuts connections with her. And even after that he still cannot stay away from her and helps her on Korhal. And Kerrigan falls in love with his compassion and conviction first, how he is so steadfast in his beliefs that almost nothing can break those. But HE can break, and does later and is being hurt by his love by Kerrigan. That's why he thinks he doesn't deserve a happy ending, because he loves a horrible woman.
Maybe I just love weird disfunctional relationships in media, but I found their pairing interesting and to this day they are still my number one ship.
I believe that the intended StarCraft 2 campaign order was Zerg - Protoss - Terran
The Zerg campaign would not only play into the Second Great War, but also allow countless interesting opportunities, just as you said. The rise of Broodmothers like Zagara and Niadra (Didn't happen), Hybrids being an actual threat, maybe taking over individual broods (Didn't happen), perhaps actually following the Dark Voice and being influenced by Amon, culminating in him tricking Kerrigan into bringing him back (And giving Narud a role)?
Also, the Leviathan should without a doubt be the best (Or at least the most interactive) home area, the behemoth concept art and the unused destruction of worlds mechanic, maybe utilisation of Terran, perhaps even Protoss tech, Khaydarin crystals and other artifacts like the Xel'naga one (It's by far the worst home area).
The Existance of the LotV prologue implies that Zeratul was supposed to be the main character, but was switched out for Artanis. Running around, collecting pieces of a greater puzzle and of course, looking out for Kerrigan and Amon. Another reason why I believe the Protoss campaign would come second is because of the previous campaign orders being Terran - Zerg - Protoss and Protoss - Terran - Zerg, finally allowing the Terrans to finish everything off.
I don't know how the Terran campaign would go about. I have no idea. If it should follow Raynor, I'd say a Terran - Protoss alliance fight Amon's forces, but nothing beyond that.
Also, instead of Amon's Brood, we should've had the Claw Brood, a fucking badass name. Give them some Omegalisks, maybe some enslaved survivor cerebrates or Hybrid to lead them, and boom, new faction. It makes me sad, really, the Zerg had such INCREDIBLE potential that we'll never get to see.
P.S. I would without a doubt switch Amon for a different villain. They used to say that 'StarCraft is just WarCraft in space', but that is not true, StarCraft 2 is Warcraft in space.
All of this sounds absolutely amazing, and all I have to add is that parts or the whole of the Terran campaign should deal with the aftermath, struggles to rebuild, last minute betrayals, power vacuums, and so on. It would also bring down the scale so at the end you could see Raynor deal with Kerrigan once and for all.
I always thought that Starcraft was supposed to be Warhammer 40k
XD
Personally, in my heart, Mengsk has been the real SC villain. with the end of him, I lose interest in the hybrid affair and finished the lore just for the sake of finishing; HOTS ending is my real ending as cliffhanger, all that happened afterwards was just a predictable epilogue, at least for me
Hahahaha, as I watched and was reminded of the inexcusable deeds of Kerrigan, I was thinking: "At least Zuko was not a psychopath" . Funny to see you bring him too as a counter point
Yeah i think Kerrigan should have been the main bad guy in SC2. Forget Amon he sucks. They could have made her a fake redemption arc, that was part of her manipulations to infiltrate the Terran, she could have used Raynor and completely crushed his spirit. WoL could have begun with missions aiming to de-infest Kerrigan as part of Raynors narrative. She could willingly play along and change her form to appear uninfested then betray him. The hybrid could still have been part of the story, created by Narud and taking control of parts of the swarm forcing Kerrigan to retreat from the Terran war for now. HotS could have been about Kerrigan taking complete control of the swarm once more, the hybrid could have their own agency and retreat from the war to consolidate their own purpose when Kerrigan defeats Narud. There is no prophecy, there is no Amon, the hybrids are still a mystery. LotV would be about a crushed Raynor allying with the Protoss to end an all powerful Kerrigan once and for all. The triology ends with Kerrigans defeat and death at the hands of Raynor, the swarm dispersed and seems to be a threat no longer. But somewhere in the sector on a backwater planet a new phychic power stirs, Narud is dead but his creation is still out there and as a first step in their plans they aim to control the entire swarm, there is only one way to do this and so they have consolidated into a new hybrid overmind. SC3 would start with the Protoss finding out about this new threat as they never stopped watching the Zerg and notice how they have consolidated on a new planet. They find out about the new overmind and in classic Protoss fashion they try to destroy it alone but fail. Only then do they go to the Terrans for help, and they are contacted by a Hybrid faction, all Hybrid are not of the same mind, some of them would seek peace and balance. The faction that created the hybrid overmind came to the conclusion that subjugation was the only way to ensure peace, but this faction came to the conclusion that cooperation and understanding was the way. They see the Protoss working with the Terran and support this since it matches their ideological stance. But the swarm has grown greatly in power since taken over by the hybrid, they now employ both psycic and technological devices as part of the swarm. The Terran, Protoss and peaceful Hybrid come up with a terrible plan. They must clone the Queen of Blades so that she can regain control of the swarm. With Hybrid technology they do this, Kerrigan lives again, takes over parts of the swarm with Terran, Protoss and Hybrid help, she throws off their new psychic and technological shackles reverting the Zerg back to biological perfection. The overmind is finally destroyed along with its hybrid keepers through some dark templar shinanigans. Before this Kerrigan absorbs all of the overminds knowledge, by its death she regains complete control of the swarm and reverts it back to its biological roots, then she immediatly betrays everyone again. Kills Raynor, kills Artanis, showing there truly was no redemption. The remaining hybrid say f this and bee lines for another galaxy. End of story. Kerrigan wins, and is still evil. Oh and she is heading for Earth now. 😂
Ok, so, here is the thing: Starcraft fans really love Kerrigan. Most of them don't want her to die. But she also did horrible, horrible things that are basically unforgiveable. Even though the Overmind said that her mind will be untouched, it's very obvious that this is not quite the case, she is a VERY different person, after her infestation. So, here is how I would change it: maybe fix the missions to make Zerg Kerrigan seem smarter and more menacing, but that's all just small bits. The biggest thing I would change, is for Kerrigan, once de-infested, to be presented as a clearly different person. To a degree, they already do, but to another, she for some reason still does absurdly evil things like executing an entire colony of civilian Protoss.
Instead, have re-humanized Kerrigan be actively horrified at the things she did. Have her struggle with grasping the extend of her deeds. Let Raynor be out for her blood, but once he sees how she's essentially her old self again, let him hesitate. She never wants to have anything to do with the Zerg or even kill anyone, ever again. She refuses to do any tests or control the swarm at all. But when the Queens decide to take control themselves, she is forced to tap into that connection in order to save people, as the rampant Zerg threaten innocent people. Make the campaign about her stopping and reforming the Swarm. Then, it turns out that the Queens recreated a Queen of Blades of their own. Crafted from Kerrigan's memories and actions within the swarm. Then you can have her symbolically fight the past and have Raynor kill that manifestation of the Queen of Blades, making good on his promise. It would not be as satisfying as killing the real Queen of Blades, but since you gotta satisfy the Kerrigan fans and want that happy end with Raynor and her, that Kerrigan cannot die, so it's the next best thing.
Then, once the Queen of Blades clone is dead, you can have Kerrigan reluctantly leading a part of the swarm, knowing that the galaxy will need it, while the majority of the Queens is still out there, causing trouble. In the finale, when it comes to Mengsk, she can stop him not out of revenge, but because it's the right thing to do. Instead of reinforcing the "Yes, I am a monster" thing, which begs the question: then why does she not get any comeuppance, they could actually make it more of a "Even though I look like it, I am nobody's monster, now." and she doesn't even kill him, just to show how she is past vengeance, murder and cruelty. Because if you want to redeem Kerrigan, it kind of requires her to be a good person. Afterwards, Mengsk can be sentenced to death by the reformed Dominion or something. Justice is done, but not vengeance. Kerrigan is very clearly shown to be a new person, the fans cheer and everyone is at least somewhat happy.
Heck, if you want to go the extra mile with her redemption, have her use non-lethal Zerg against the Dominion's common troops, like Banelings who explode into hardening goo, trapping the terrans safely inside or something and then have her only fight Mengsk most loyal, genuinely evil personal guard with the lethal swarm, because that is the only way to get past the much tougher troops. That way, you can show the non-lethal approach in the sequence, but then have the bloody conflict in the actual mission gameplay.
one thing that really really bugs me about the SC2 kerrigan design is that there's literally no reason for her to have big fat zerg boobies sticking out of her carapace. The SC1 design looks that way:tm: because her ghost suit had been absorbed and integrated into her carapace allowing her to still channel the cloaking field it provides (the space boobies are still dumb but at least its a better reason than the no-reason SC2's design has). Even the "remaster" cottoned on to that and gave her art and portrait a more clear visual of being able to see her ghost suit in her assimilated form.
it's better that way :)
Hey, atleast it distracts us from the bad writing, even makes it better one might say!
to be honest i think that it explains her abilities in the SC1 lore. it wasn't cloaking(her ability) the enemies jsut stared at it so much they forgot she's an enemy.
but in all seriousness i get you but at the same i think that her design in SC1 didn't make much sense either, like those metalic-like armour... how?? wouldn't it just melt? and i still didn't understand how she could cloak, regarless if it was rewritten/changed in SC2 i would still prefer the fanservice alien boobies over the ilogical armour that should have never servicved the infestation. but hey! at least alien boobies distracts from bad writing
Very rare to see quality Starcraft channels around, still trust me that even as a non-professional writer, your suggestions would have made the Starcraft 2 story incredible
Zagara video when?
NOW, I want Zagara so bad!
i always thought tycus’s betrayal was a missed opportunity. seriously none of reynor’s allies could come up with a solution to tycus’s suit situation?
Brood War Kerrigan is one of my favorites. She's ruthless, brutal, visceral, decisive, calculating, conniving, bloodthirsty and remorseless. I don't like the idea that she was being influenced or corrupted by infestation or Amon, rather, her personality was simply that vindictive.
She's so phenomenally cool because her human fury, her undying spite, were so powerful that she was integrated as a perfect weapon by the Swarm. Previously the Swarm was simply an urge to grow and kill, a cancerous seige engine blighting the galaxy.
But Kerrigan? She granted it *conviction.* Her gift to the Swarm was the galvinization to fight not for survival, but for *supremacy.*
Who she is and her actions are *completely* incompatible to redemption, and *that* is why I love her.
I wish I had a picture of my face the first time I saw Kerrigan turn into Sailor Moon. What little respect I had for Blizzard vanished.
I just hated how they changed everything from the first one, even Brood Wars to an extent, someone fell in love with Kerrigan and turned her (and the Zerg) into his damaged ex instead of the monster they were.
starcraft 2 reads like the writers didn't play starcraft 1
IMO, the issues with Kerrigan's characterisation in SC2 stem from a major lore change: that the Overmind wasn't evil itself, but was under Amon's control. In the original lore found in the SC1 manual, Amon didn't exist. Instead, the Overmind was a Xel'naga creation, devised as a central intelligence for the Zerg, which grew beyond their control and eventually destroyed them. The lore changes made in SC2 retroactively absolve Kerrigan of all responsibility for her actions in Brood War as merely being corrupted by Amon's influence.
My interpretation of the pre-SC2 lore is that Kerrigan is essentially similar to Griffith from Berserk. She wasn't brainwashed into becoming a narcissistic psychopath - she was always like that, or at least always had the potential for great evil. That's a much more interesting plot angle, especially from Raynor's perspective; deep down, maybe he does still want her to be redeemed, but at some point he'd have to face the truth that the person he loved didn't really exist.
Unfortunately, instead we just got 'muh prophecy' and 'lmao, space Diablo'. Thanks, Metzen.
Double-featuring this and the Amon video, your appraisal of Kerrigan almost sounded like a perfect mirror to what little of his lore we were given, (Twisted and broken into something he isn't, made into a weapon against his will, left to decide his own fate after, etc etc) And it made me realize what a missed opportunity that could've been to explore, seeing as how both of them are as listless as they are in SC2's plot.
Same with the point about her being a character who never sacrificed anything, imagine how much more interesting HoTS could have been if she tried and failed to redeem herself because she was torn between her desire for revenge against Mengsk and Amon, and her tentative alliance with Raynor. Killing Arcturus but being left as she was at the end of Brood War, to become a rogue element/secondary antagonist during the events of LoTV instead.
one of the dumbest things to me was Duran convincing Dugalle to let him raid the reconstructed psi emitter and kill all personnel along with Stukov
The even dumber thing is that Stukov told the player to tell Dugalle he isn't abandoning the fight and he is attempting to obtain a weapon so they can win, but since you can't speak, all you can do is helplessly watch Dugalle be stupid.
I feel like the kerrigan arc she has in SC2 just made me appreciate the overmind more. It was already my favorite SC character back in SC1 days, but the bullshit way they pulled a good guy kerrigan turning into benevolent god out their ass just sort of reinforces the idea that the overmind set this all up to defeat his final enemy to free himself fully. The last Xel'naga, Amon. He couldn't do it alive so he created a new god.
The death of Amon to Kerrigan felt like the last spit in the face from the Overmind, who in my opinion clearly knew he was going to die, the only reason Zerathul even knows anything about anything is because he saw a glimpse of what the overmind knew after all. So the only reason he died then, was for this to happen. For a creature who spent almost it's entire existance to be mind controlled in a game bigger than itself that managed to break loose. Kerrigan mirrors it's own life. And to some degree, the overmind was benevolent, or maybe it was a side effect of it's goal. The overmind saved the galaxy, maybe out of revenge, maybe out of benevolence. A mirror to kerrigan herself. Although, i feel like if they did write her correctly, she would've properly mirrored the overmind and kept it vague as to her true reasoning. Is she a monster, or is she a human? Is the overmind mindless in it's desire to consume, or does it have a will, hopes and dreams? Zerathuls personality change the second he connected with the overmind says so much when it comes to that question, and all he saw was a glimpse.
Tbh I don't like this retconning of the Overmind either, though it's more tolerable by far than Kerrigan becoming a god.
@@christopherbravo1813 I would really like to know what the original plan with the hybrids and amon was back in SC1. I'm curious how much was retconned and how much was always planned. Kerrigan turning into a god? Maybe not, but the overmind creating her to kill amon? Could still be very possible, which is what i personally believe.
@@starcraft2own I don't think Amon even existed prior to his introduction.
@@christopherbravo1813 I don't think that's true as Duran heavily implies he was working for a Xel'naga or the likes, even back in SC1. They were making hybrids back then and while they didn't use the Amon name, it's very likely the writer had his name written down on his notes.
@@starcraft2own Did the Xel'naga themselves even exist back then?
The main problem of Blizzard writing is that there's ALWAYS a greater power behind the scenes. It ruins every good character writing. They did it to Kerrigan, they did it to 99% of WoW's villains, and they'll keep on doing it until the end of times
tossing aside how she has most (note this down) of her evil zerg deeds hand waved away due to either having her mental state compleately altered or being mind controlled (the latter mainly being in starcraft 2). and why amon kept her alive if he knew she was supposed to be the key reason for his downfall (as seen in the vision) and not ask when he learned that.
while we could give her the benefit of the doubt and possebly assume that the part of the swarm she led directly during heart of the swarm showed some restraint and mostly targeted military personell. Something you forgot to mention, though it is understandable since it comes from a few cutscenes that barely is 30s long each, is her unleashing the broodmothers upon dominion worlds.
because what i just said can most definetly not be said about the broodmothers. if i am not wrong she even verbait ordered them to DESTROY the world when it was the individual broodmothers. in the last one when it is all the remaining ones she tells them where her enemies are and that they should be destroyed and their strongholds burned. here one could again give her the benefit of the doubt regarding her targets, were it not for that we can fairly assume that to the broodmothers their enemies are ALL non-zerg and they were given no clarification otherwise. mind you this was ALL done after she was purifed and reborn.
so with that in mind all those worlds we can likely take for granted that the zerg butchered ANY human they could get their claws on. i think there were only two worlds we were told what they were actually for, one was a hub of military production and the other a massive shipyard, so fair targets but still likely possesing massive civillian populations of labourers and their families due to those two being manufacuering focused worlds. i have already made clear their likely fate as zerg chow. the reason i bring this up is i have to compare all of that to mengsk.
in universe mengsk greatest crime, according to the general dominion populace, was him lureing the zerg to tarsonis. when it was revealed even his most ardent supporters were shaken in their faith, as seen with the propaganda guy. THE NON-MINDCONTROLLED, NON-CORRUPTED AND COMPLEATELY PURIFIED KERRIGAN EITHER REACHES THE LEVEL OF TARSONIS OR SURPASSES IT WHEN THE BROODMOTHERS DEEDS ARE SUMMARISED, ALL OF WHICH HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REDEMPTION ARC! as said, she verbaitm orders her broodmothers to DESTROY two world and we have no reason to assume that how many other world were targeted were treated any differently. Mengsk unleashes the zerg upon a single world and the pure kerrigan does it on several, yet only the former is treated as a horrific act as the other is simply handwaved and forgotten moments after the order is given nor did it come back to bite her in any way.
Kerrigan is definetely the leas consistent character in SC i belive, Mengsk is inconsistent too but its within a spectrum of degrees btween Game of Thrones evil and comically insane evil.
This is the finest video on the tubes that I have listened for weeks; more like this please!
Back when i first played SC1 i had the theory that the overmind got in contact with mengsk and "asked" him to give kerrigan to the zerg.
Him just abandoning her made, and still dont, makes sense to me
In the novels, it was revealed that Kerrigan killed Mengsk's family when she was still under Confederate control. Even without that explanation, her psionic powers and uncertain loyalty (questioning his use of psi emitters) likely convinced him that she'd be a threat to his power in the long run. He was definitely right about that.
Oh yeah i forgot about the books.
Cool video btw. I life for this kind of content. Easy sub from me!
I’m so happy I discovered your channel! I love StarCraft content, especially StarCraft 2. Thanks for making this.
No problem! Glad you found me!
The whole SCII story IMO fell off a cliff after Wings of Liberty. While I can't say I agree with the whole de-infesting Kerrigan plot, I thought overall it was well delivered and exciting.
Then Kerrigan goes and has some weird fairy tale story with the feral zerg and getting reinfested and all that jazz, then becomes the chosen one. Like...huh. Huh.
In StarCraft 1, Kerrigan is a Confederate ghost whose mission is to kill Mengsk. Unfortunately, you have to read the books to actually understand this, but Mengsk killed her on purpose. He just didn't expect her to get infested into the most BS plot armored Mary Sue ever
From what i read, she was not send to kill Arcturus, but a men named Angus Mengsk and his family.
Actually, I fully expected Kerrigan to get a redemption arc after Brood War for several reasons.
The first reason being that the hybrids were already a looming threat at the end of Brood War, meaning she was never going to be the overarching threat. The second reason is that her moral agency was questionable ever since her infestation. This was noticed not only by Jim Raynor, but also by Tassadar. She went from being a "honorable and full of life" soldier reluctant to commit war crimes to being a cruel and bitter tyrant. Aldaris was immediately suspicious of Kerrigan because of the fact she was infested, even after the Overmind was dead, and his suspicions turned out to be correct (a case of boy crying wolf considering Aldaris was prejudiced against Dark Templars and Terrans, but at the time he was starting to warm up to them). The third reason is that she seemed to be tired of constant war by the end of Brood War, which I interpreted as a buried longing for peaceful coexistence. The fourth reason is that StarCraft 2 was going to need a Zerg faction willing to ally with Terran and Protoss for multiplayer teams. The UED was extinct, while Ulrezaj and infested Stukov only shew up in bonus missions, so I was expecting Kerrigan to team up with Raynor's Raiders and the Protoss one last time.
I guess this still does not excuse Kerrigan making bad tactical decisions in Wings of Liberty. For gameplay reasons players have to win every mission, but maybe her defeats are too silly. As for Heart of the Swarm I think she does much fewer war crimes than in Brood War at least, but I may be wrong.
The occasional tau jumpscares are welcomed into the greater good
When I first saw the romance in Heart I thought it was supposed to be bad. Like, the only time Raynor and Kerrigan appear to have ANY real chemistry is the very end, when she flies off into the sunset. I always thought it was supposed to be subtext about how Raynor was clinging to the human image of Kerrigan, but her true nature was to always be Zerg (or, something in between if you prefer that take). Then I read a transcript from an interview or panel or something and no, they thought they were writing a real heart wrenching romance.
I think it's a result of the culture at Blizzard at the time. They had some idea, but they saw the fans pulling in both directions. Some wanted her redeemed, some wanted her brought to justice, so they tried to play the first, play around with the idea, and then back it off. They did a similar thing around this time in WoW, both having conflicting camps on the story for Garrosh, and doing Warlords of Draenor seemingly just because...they wanted to do Warcraft 2 again but an MMO?
And starting in 09-ish Blizz also had "single character syndrome" infect their storytelling, something they really never got away from. I think that's why Kerrigan suffers in Wings. You can't just fight some random Zerg lieutenant, you have to fight KERRIGAN every step of the way, rather than her being a looming, elusive presence.
Personally I would have gone the other way, shown how Kerrigan WANTED to be human, tried to let things go, but her very first lines are about how she wants to kill Mengsk. If instead she had been all "Oh no, I don't wanna talk about Mengsk, can't we try to have fun?" and wanted to look at the goldfish with Raynor or something, and THEN they get attacked and THEN it looks like Mengsk killed Raynor. And a Kerrigan alone will pursue her natural instincts: a human who wants revenge, a Zerg who wants to be the top dog and knock out every other power player.
I too felt like they only had a professional relationship in SC1.
SC2 did some crazy character assassination for literally everyone who survived Broodwar.
One could attribute much of her Brood War strength to the remaining Cerebrates, including the player character. Each seasoned, veteran commanders, and as the player character demonstrated even fledgeling Cerebrates can fend off three fleets at once.
It's also a perfect means of weakening her and forcing her to rebuild from the ground up. Her entire command structure dies without the Overmind's ability to keep Cerebrates alive, and not only is she toothless, she has to go and reacquire swathes of rogue zerg.
Doesn't justify her being an idiot or the rest of the 'story' though.
SC1 and Broodwar Kerrigan was my favorite game villan growing up as a kid. SC 2, by all accounts, completely derailed itself unnecessarily.
I've said this before about Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and so many other beloved IPs: The fans are likely to write a better story than a company ever could. Sure, the fans will also write some of the worst dribble imaginable, but there are thousands, if not millions of them, all with creative and eager minds. It is "Infinite Monkey Theory" played out in a plausible context. Countless fans with nothing but time and passion will undoubtedly uncover a better story than a studio ever could.
This is why, IP holders need to bare in mind the risks they take in rushing stories or ignoring plot points for the sake of wrapping up. It killed GoT and the Skywalker sagas. It completely wrecked SC 2's characters and story.
I got one fav example of fan writing great stories- 4thsnake. This guy dissected NRS Mortal Kombat games, proving how much wasted potential there is and provided great alternatives, without resorting to resetting stuff all the time because NRS writes their stories into corner and have no idea how to make another chapter without time travel and other BS.
32 whole minutes of absolute catharsis. Pre-SC2 Kerrigan was one of my favorite villains in gaming, maybe of all time. Just a woman who after being burned by the universe for all her life, passed from master to master, decides to burn the universe back cause god damn does it feel good. Super compelling, fantastic villain, and utterly *wasted* in the sequel. Definitely subscribing, would love to see those videos talking about the other characters
NGL During the last game I kind of waited for some of the Protoss to step up and give her "Honorary Protoss Card" since it's the only race she was not a member of.
Metzen explains. He prominently explored this theme in Warcraft with both Arthas and Illidan. “Kerrigan was the heart and soul of it. The wicked Queen of Blades was not who she was. She never had a chance to be herself. She was always manipulated by one power or another.” from Celebrating 20 Years of Starcraft: An Interview with Starcraft's Creators
Kerrigan was infected defending Protoss' attack. Protoss is also have fault. poor kerrigan.
Kerrigan getting redemption is more than a Starcraft problem, it happens a lot in Warcraft too. Jaina and the Windrunner sisters all always get away without consequences or being given a reason to do horrible things. Jaina's home was bombed and destroyed even though she helps the Alliance in a war vs the Horde yet despite being part of the Alliance, she's always treated as neutral or justified for her actions, more so after she loses Theramore and does heinous acts. Vereesa is always racist to her people thinking Blood Elves are impure and in need of redemption even though the Blood Elves worked to regain Silvermoon and maintain it. Alleria is using Void as a power source even though previous expansions and examples shows that's a bad idea, but the story bends over backwards saying it's a good thing despite every other instance of it being bad. She also thinks she shouldn't be barred from the Sunwell even though her Void powers have proven to bring the Void to the Sunwell. Which then leads to the Void Elves as a race thinking they're in the right when clearly it is shown they're wrong. Sylvanas is the worst of them, being Kerrigan 2.0 doing horrible acts but given an excuse that she was mind controlled. Instead of being erased from existence she is given a redemption path.
It's a pattern that is being played out in other medias as well, women can't be evil and always can be redeemed. Redemption is open to anyone, but so long as the person chooses it BEFORE crossing the threshold, not after.
Can't wait for Amons redemption story in StarCraft 3!
I thought you had so many more subs when I stumbled upon this video, the quality of content is amazing I’m definitely going to go watch more of your past videos.
It's actually amazing writting, they wrote exactly how a woman would act if given godlike powers and also wrote the perfect simp in raynor.
She's been a Mary Sue since brood war, she's cOoLeR aNd sMaRtEr mOrE bAdAsS than everyone else and she constantly betrays everyone too because that's what a mega cool villain does. All the well written characters died with the overmind
4:27 I like how Lurkers burrow inside of the building and attack from the floor bellow.
In theory, a lurker ambush is pretty awesome. I'm just baffled why Arty and Zeratul are eatin' popcorn while it happens.
It's really cool that there are such good video essays for a game so old
Everyones favourite plot point: "idk he just kinda forgot which means it never happened"
I kinda forgot HotS's plot, so it never happened :^)
dropped out of SC story halfway through heart of the swarm. All my thoughts were verified by this vid, didn't lose anything. Thanks for saving me money bro.
My issues with Kerrigan go back to the Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos campaign. Arthas is focused entirely on two things - revenge, and protecting his people. And then he 'loses his soul' and goes murdering his people without a care in the world. There are some messy suggestions that it's mind control, or that his 'soul' was his personality, without which he's a soulless monster - but the narration from there to the present day treats this as the same person, most explicitly with his death scene in Wrath of the Lich King.
Character motivation is nothing in the face of 'revenge makes you evil' and 'only bad men do bad things' (culling of stratholme) apparently.
And before WC3 there's Medivh...
Just found your videos! First time seeing someone disccuss the characters of SC this well. I like your editing too!
Thanks!
The problem is that they turned a sci fi story (SC1) into a prophecy fantasy story (SC2).
Those do not mix well.
"This is not Warcraft in Space!"
@@Salantor
I remember that being said, but it is precisely what SC2 is.
@bernardomansoldo2978 I know and I am still to this very day very salty about it.
@@Salantor no, it's Diablo in space haha. I always hated this in the soundtrack for SC2. In SC1 each faction had a completely unique ost, albeit the Protoss one already sounded a bit like "Diablo in space", but it was still good. But in SC2, each soundtrack is like that. No more country'n'roll for the Terrans, no more experimental ambient noise for the Zerg, nothing. It's all mediocre orchestral slop. Orchestral stood out for the Protoss in SC1 because they were the only faction with that sound. Here though...
you said it all in context, just red this: fire to fight fire, sometimes you need bigger monster to defeat a monster. Kerrigan is the 'bigger monster'
I would love to see a Arcturus Mengsk video (does one write it like that I dont know) since he is my favorite charakter in the series and I think he deserves the time spent on him. Being evil is just cooler.
The player: Leaves hundreds of marines, ghosts, seige tank drivers, and battlecruiser pilots to die on countless worlds through the terran missions. Mission done, we're moving out.
Mengsk: Leaves one singular ghost behind.
The player: "Mengsk is clearly evil."
@@falsnamae3511 He killed a planet in a false flag attack to gain power, at least we can headcanon that we pick up everyone at the end of missions
@@christophersmith8848 More like got vengeance on the planet at ordered the Nuclear sterilization of his planet Korhal
Mengsk is cool, but I feel like his character was just made less interesting in Starcraft 2. They basically tried to do Imperium from 40k and considering the guy who wrote the plot also wrote 40k for the most of his time... I wish Mengsk remained alive as one of the forces, so Blizzard isn't just writing itself into the same corner they did as they did with Warcraft where there are no lingering villains/non-friendly powers left and they literally just have to come up with something entirely random from ground up. There is also an issue with modern Blizzard writing where there can't be surviving villains at all
@@RedaniaKnight-Elect Honestly I don't think you could do much with Mengsk after how he was treated in BW. He spends most of that expansion as a damsel in distress, compeltely undermining the Terran Dominion as an idea. Blizzard went for two polar opposite extremes with him and it's just rough.
Really well done! My experience mirrored your own somewhat! As a kid, when I was forced to killed Fenix in Brood War, I was heartbroken and I knew she had gone too far. I was willing to finish her villain story, but I knew she should be the villain from now on. I was very excited to bring her to justice in SC2.
When she first showed up in Wings of Liberty, she was like "Ohh the darkness is coming and nothing can stop it." I was immediately thrown off. Who is this depressed Kerrigan? This is not the Queen B who took over everything in Brood War! Amon's "influence" was honestly a terrible idea. They could have done a lot with the hybrids, but not THAT.
Anyway, well done! For Fenix!
For Fenix!