Arguably, Alarak never actually backstabs anyone. He challenges Malash to a pitched duel, and only after he learned he was betrayed. He works with Artanis, and while he uses his troops as fodder, he does the same for his own, and stays with them until Amon was defeated. In Nova Covert Ops, he more or less states exactly what he is going to do once he finds the Defenders of Man - scour them from the world. Most of starcraft's (liked) villains are schemers and double-crossers, but Alarak stands out because he will tell you exactly what he is going to do, and hopes you try to oppose him. The Tal'darim aren't something he wants to rule over and see prosper, but a military he gets to smash into enemies and fight the greatest powers in the sector with. He is the definition of a petty warlord; small-minded and bloodthirsty with a semblance of honor.
Alarak is one of my favorite things to come out of lotv, his disdain for Artanis that grows into a begrudging respect and comraderie is pretty interesting to see.
In StarCraft 2 Kerrigan is written as if she doesnt know that she's confronting Duran. You'd think she'd know its Duran and chew his butt out for abandoning her in Brood War. Almost like the StarCraft 2 writers never played the earlier games and just skimmed everything else off a wiki page.
"I've seen through your 'Doctor Narud's pathetic charade..." Says Kerrigan, right before choosing to completely ignore everything about the fact it is a charade. "Jim, your employer is Samir Duran, the UED officer whom I infested, just thought you might want to know. Serve me or serve him, I get what I want in the end." would probably have worked better as a taunt.
@@falsnamae3511. The problem with that is she didn't infest him or control him by that point. Like she could have lied, but going "your boss works for me" is kind of dismantled when she is fighting in the street against narud instead of just walking up and asking for the artifact from her underling.
In terms of "archetypes" The zerg were xenomorphs, the highly adaptive animals and beasts that kill you because they want your biomass The protoss were the little green men with technology of the future far outclassing our own But the Xel'naga? Those were ELDRITCH abomination. No evolution, no technology, just ancient being beyond comprehension The reason they failed as villains was because they didn't properly fit their mold, they were just generic "bad guy" faction The freaking Overmind was a better "eldritch" monster than Amon, and he freaking MADE the overmind
honestly you know what would have been a great way to play into that if amon just didn't care about anyone he straight upp feels annoyed to have to aknowledge them "what do you think your doing? you lost what? to mildly inconvenience me just run and save me the trouble"
@@zxt5148 Alien hiveminds have been a thing in sci-fi way before StarCraft & Warhammer. Let's not pretend like Warhammer 40K is superbly original and doesn't owe itself to God Emperor of Dune & Starship Troopers, two works that Rick Priestly himself credited when he made the setting of 40K, especially with the whole "crusading fanatical legions", God Emperors, and power armor, tropes that the aforementioned books established in the genre. The Xenomorphs from James Cameron's Aliens take heavy inspiration from the Arachnid Empire of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel from the '50s. Cameron himself made the crew read Heinlein's book when he took on Alien and reconfigured the Xenomorph from a "perfect organism" to a vicious and adaptable alien-caste hivemind. The StarCraft 1 Terran cinematics are almost beat for beat shots from Ridley Scott's Alien & James Cameron's Aliens.
@@zxt5148also, look at the Tyranid models from the early-mid 90s, they bear a strong, tho goofier, resemblance to their Xenomorph inspirations. In fact, you can see an update in the models looking similar to the Hydralisk from StarCraft in the later releases from the late 90s and early 2000s onward.
And before anyone talks about the Blizzard and Games Workshop partnership, that was solely for the first Warhammer/Warcraft game back in 1994. By the time Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness released in 1995, Blizzard had no association with GW at all, and StarCraft was its own thing by the time they started on it and released it in 1998.
Getting a fourth playable race would have been a fitting payoff for the cliffhanger. If the hybrid have independent thought, maybe you'd even get to betray Amon and make alliances with the other races.
Duran's original true voice was so incredible, his voice changing from human to infested was cool by itself, but his disappearance, and then reveal with THAT voice behind it saying "Magnificent, isn't it?" is just MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. I love the the SC1/Brood War voices and how they were done.
Honestly, Dark Voice Amon has a lot of the same flair as the Overmind. "The very ground beneath your feet carries the seeds of your destruction" has very much that same biblical feel, and his final line, "I love it when a plan comes together," suggests he even has a dark sense of humor and takes satisfaction in his plans coming to fruition. But when we meet him again in LotV, he really does just spout generic villain lines and (after the first Aiur segment) lose a lot. It's frustrating because at some point you can see there was something there, but they just... lost hold of it.
I think a big problem with the Hybrid is that they don't really seem to have the strengths and advantages of the Zerg. The Zerg are all about adaptability and being to consume and absorb the advantages of other races. But the Hybrids never do any of that. They have the psionic powers of the Protoss but you never see them adapt and evolve like the Zerg. It would have actually been interesting if the Hybrids ended up turning on the Xel'Naga just like both the Protoss and the Zerg. Making the Xel'Naga into gods and ramping the mystical elements so much was also a terrible idea. The SC1 manual portrayed the Xel'Naga as curious scientists who were destroyed by their own hubris. Yes, they were very powerful and technologically advanced but there was nothing to suggest that they were gods. It just seems like they were a race that evolved much earlier and had more time to develop their science and technology, not that they were just born with mystical powers. Wasn't that why the Protoss turned on them? They realized that the Xel'Naga weren't gods and attack them, causing the Xel'Naga to abandon them.
There was a hybrid that did exactly that: Maar AKA the one you fight in the protoss missions in wings (IIRC the second one). He got stronger and harder every time you killed him. Could be an interesting setup for an endgame type enemy: one that just cant die and gets stronger every time it comes back, witch is horrifiyng because they already are strong as hell.
@@MrZDMan The funny thing is, this actually was the premise for an unused co-op mutator. There'd be a shadow hybrid that would spawn shortly after the mission starts and head to your base, and every time you kill him he just returns but stronger.
+1 for the SC1 manual, those backstories were incredible! The Xel Naga deserved their own campaign, perhaps the opportunity to figure out what they truly wanted with their hybrids, to assess their power, or carve out a spot in the Kuprulu sector. And what would Kerrigan think? Would she be trying to get a hold of hybridization somehow? Would the Xel Naga have to team up against Kerrigan because she just goes out of control? Such untapped potential; it's a good thing SC2 is fun to play at least 😁
Regarding the "show don't tell" - imagine if in the initial missions of liberating Aiur you play with corrupted Artanis and hear Amon's whispers and commands. You hear the way he thinks what his coming goals are and the tactics he will achieve them through. This way we can grasp the character's overall psyche. While the Main Objective is to kill Zeratul. Also the hybrids can be a combination of different personalities of protoss and zerg, a much higher level of an abomination which doesn't just tell you how the "End is nigh", but at times asks you to kill it. Man this could have been such a better story line for Amon and Co. than what we got :(
Interesting Theory: on the topic of Xel'naga ascension, we actually get hints of which two species would have ascended instead if Amon hadn't mucked things up; the Primal Zerg... and the _Terrans._ Think about it; the Terran Ghosts are psychic badasses who can accomplish nigh impossible feats (just look at the Nova covert ops), and that's only after their psychic potential is effectively neutered by thorough conditioning and implants. Even then, their own handlers can barely control them. In their short sighted pettiness, the major Terran powers saw such individuals as mere weapons rather than the next stage of evolution. Secondly, while the Swarm may acknowledge the importance of essence, the overmind sees it as just one half of a puzzle, while the Primal Zerg are fanatically devoted to the concept. Zurvan even attacks Kerrigan on Zerus explicitly to either gain her essence or provide _his own_ to her _in sacrifice,_ and is perfectly content with both outcomes. If that's any indication of the Primal Zerg culture or mentality, they are indeed the true scions of essence. Unfortunately, Amon's meddling destroyed any hope of the two races ascending into a new Xel'naga. It's not like a Psychic Terran is ever going to splice herself with Primal Zerg DNA... Wait a minute... 🤯🤯🤯
Wouldnt that mean that the terrans would have to be pure of form though? I would argue we are far from it. Maybe with enough gene editing for a thousand years but thats a big maybe. The protoss couldnt be infested like we could so they are much more likely to be the pure of form? Or am I missing something
@@Viper40758 While "Purity of form" is already pretty vauge, it clearly doesn't include physical might. No Protoss or Terran army will ever match the Zerg (purity of essence) with biology alone; even the dark templar required technology to have a prayer against the zerg. Rather, "Form" seem to indicate the minds, creativity, and psychic potential of the individual. Yet even though psychic power is the Protoss's main shtick, the primitive Terrans are still able to face them on equal terms via their ingenuity and resourcefulness while the Protoss have a _major_ problem with creative sterility and cultural stagnation.
@@Antidragon-nl7by To me purity of form doesnt mean might or any of that. Purity of form feels like an uncompromisable body, the antithesis to the ever changing zerg. You have to have a iron will and an unchanging form to stay pure. The protoss definitely represent that more
@@Viper40758 Furthermore, let's look at how quickly both races developed their psychic abilities. The Protoss were given a leg up several millennia before and haven't grown any more powerful since. The Terrans began displaying psychic potential just a few generations ago, and some individuals (notably Kerrigan) are already on par with some of the greatest Protoss in the setting. TLDR; The Protoss's (admittedly powerful) psychic abilities have already plateaued, while the Terrans are progressing in psychic potential in leaps and bounds.
Bro I'd totally listen to a 20 minute video talking up Abathur. He's like if pragmatism was a slug with a PhD in biology. He is such a bizarre personality and visual design that he manages to be more alien than any character that's ever existed in the entirety of Starcraft. His strangeness isn't even limited to his own game. He was 100% my favorite character in Heroes of the Storm with how tricky and strange he was as a character archetype. There's literally nothing else like him in any game that I've ever seen and it's hard to believe that this brilliance came from the same team that gave us SC2 Kerrigan.
I was really disappointed when we first learned about him the popular theory was that he was evolved from the original broodwar cerebrt that karrgen kept alive (you the player) it even tried a little with the u oversaw you in the crystals line. Discounting it was a popular theory
Abathur is THE pinnacle support character in any game and his interaction when encountering Azeroth magic like with Kel'thuzad were very fascinating. Imagine him trying to make a magic Zerg.
This video just reminded me that Ourous straight up says "only a xel'naga can deafeat the fallen one" but we JUST killed Narud with like, guns and stukov's corrosive blast
@@Tridetus Honestly, Lotv was a god damn let down. We had cool hybrid like Maar and Hazrad in WoL (Zeratul mission line and the secret mission, respectively), as well as the mission where you have a time limit on your life. No new hybrid gimmicks that were cool, no new named dudes, and then repetetive missions, except for like one or two, Zeratul dies after doing all his stuff for fucking nothing, epilogue was cringe, and we didn't get Mohandar!
You know what might have fixed Amon? The closest thing he has to... well, anything character wise is the whole "forced identity" thrust upon him. So imagine if anytime he interacts with a character, he is only able to do so by taking the identity of that character. A simple shadow, a twisted version of whoever he's speaking with, because in this reality that's the only way he can express himself. It'd really lean into the pathetic Lovecraftian vibe they tried to give him. It's not that he hates existence because it's imperfect, it's not that he thinks he can do the Xel'Naga's job better. On a fundamental level he's a being incompatible with this world, he's a creature of the Void. So say the Xel'Naga tried to "fix" his species, make the Void more like them, by giving the Void an option to mirror them, to comprehend and interact with their "real" world. And it hurts. Mirroring the hive mind of the Zerg and the Khala of the Protoss, this "Amon" entity was an experiment that bottled up the whole Void and gave it a personality, but the Void was never meant to be condensed like that! It just exists, a weird primordial soup, it's an entirely separate plane of existence than what we'd call sentience. Imagine we took every plant in the world and created a single entity to act as a personality to connect with them because "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to talk to plants?" But that thing isn't part of what it once was, yet it can still feel everything it's supposed to be part of while simultaneously being entirely alien to all of plant-kind, because that's fundamentally not what plants are. That would be maddening, it's fundamental existence would feel wrong! It'd make his destructive conquest make sense. In this forced, warped parody of existence where he's eternally divorced from his home in the Void, the only course of action left is to destroy everything so there is only the Void. Could even make Duran more interesting in the process, turn him into a "Netflix Castlevania Isaac" kind of character that hates humanity, sympathizes with Dracula/Amon's plight, so he actively assists him in destroying his own world. It could finish off the epilogue as a tragedy, because Amon can't be fixed, he can't be returned home but will always exist so long as his home does, so the only course of action is to destroy the Void entirely to put him out of his misery. It'd require heavy rewrites, it doesn't fix how garbage the other elements of the sequel's stories are, but writing this is the first time I've felt any kind of interest in anything related to Amon. Admittedly a low bar, but hey! At least it's something!
Great Idea! That shadow identity could be elaborated upon: instead of Amon possessing someone to just smugly say how doomed they are, Amon could take the bits and pieces of the possessed’s personality they/it agrees with and amplify them. It could be truly Lovecraftian in the sense that this alien entity reveals and amplifies specific traits of personally to exploit them. Like possessing Artanis to amplify his thirst for justice, fill his mind with “RAGE” of all his memories of the Narazeem (Dark Protoss) betraying his people and culture, “As THEY knew better than EVERYONE else” Driving his hatred and thirst for revenge to the extreme of killing Zeratul. Great drama potential there. Another possession is the Protoss Lorekeeper, her trait Amon could amplify would be pride, so she would be saying stuff like “I am a force beyond the very GODS of reality” (having the idea that the Void-avatar Amon would be more chaotically powerful than its creators). And finally Selendas’s possession could revolve around her detached absolute loyalty, Amon twisting the honourable side of her as a great Templar commander, into an unflinching willingness to kill friends (like Artanis) if he doesn’t join “… the right side in the universe’s greater conflict”. Each time Void-avatar Amon would be amplifying each victim’s traits to be more alike to him, to find empathy in this foreign world, like a child drawing themselves into a picture book as a little stick figure. And the natural hostility of people against these personality corruption, could be the catalyst for further disconnection and thus motivation for the destruction of all unempathstic to Amon: reality.
To my mind, one of the things that rubbed my gears the wrong way the most about LOTV was that it undoes a lot of what makes the Protoss interesting in the original game. The glory and the tragedy of the Protoss is that they're heroes, who always, *always* stand up for what they believe in, and it's this very trait which often leads them to be fanatical or uncompromising. This, to my mind, is what makes the Khalai/Dark Templar story so interesting: it's not about good guys and bad guys, it's about people who are so alike in temperament that they can't help but see one another as deadly threats. And then Amon comes along. The Khala was a tool, the Dark Templar were objectively right, no more shades of grey.
just because the khala was able to be corrupted doesn't mean it wasn't the right way to do things. new baby protoss will be born able to access the khala free of any risk of amon, but even if they keep cutting their connection to it, that doesn't mean it wasn't the best choice at the time. remember, the khala was developed as a push for peace. the race was about to autogenocide themselves, until the khala was used to connect everyone and put an end to the endless wars caused by stupid people being stupid. it's part of the joke, but think about it like facebook. at the start facebook was a pretty good app, it connected people all around the world in a way that had never been done before, allowing people with drastically different points of view and personal histories to weigh in on discussions with people they otherwise would have never met. now facebook is literal brain rot and has time and time again been shown to be trying to influence people with ads and curated conversations. the fact that facebook has died doesn't mean the discussions we had years ago are now tainted. knowing that something good can become bad doesn't make it's objectively good traits magically become bad. so the khala is still a tool that people could use to deepen their understanding and communication... but there is a risk that it can be used against them. the nerazim forsake the khala and communicate with their words and actions... but that can lead to misunderstandings and pointless conflict. the tal'darim value power and see honor and strength as the strongest virtues... but a strong leader can use his absolute power for absolute evil. none of them are "objectively right" there is a compromise happening in all 3 ideologies, but the nerazim compromise is the closest to your human mindset which is why you think it is objectivly correct.
@@NoESanityit’s a very tiny interaction, but I really liked the way Talandar’s whole concept of identity interacts with the khalai/nerazim philosophy. You get everyone giving their cultural and personal input on things in a fun way, like the nerazim consider someone’s identity to be the sum of their actions- Vorazun believes a 99% copy of a person will act differently in that 1% of the time , across their whole lifetime, enough to be a completely different person. Karax and the khalai see a person as some core immutable concept, your memories left behind in the khala after you die are you. So the digitized brain scan with all your memories is a copy, it’s a continuation of the person in a new form. Alarak despises outright lies as weakness, and the taldarim only really see a person for their usefulness and place in society. He sees the purifiers as lies incarnate, they’re just machines that have memories uploaded into them, to claim that identity as their own is just a lie and a charade, weakness in clinging to and pretending to be something they’re not. He seems to consider Talandar a person in his own right, but to claim he’s fenix would be a lie, fenix is a dead protoss- this is just a machine with his memories. You get a lot of tiny character elements like that across lotv, but I think that specific plotline has the most where they’re just directly compared to one another. None of them are considered wrong, either, it’s actually cool that Talandar’s journey to his own identity is considered *his* and not how purifiers as a whole view it, with many others taking on different elements of those different cultural perspectives.
@@NoESanity While I do like that way of looking at it, you're mistaken to think that I think the Dark Templar ideology is objectively correct because it's "closest to my human mindset". From the wiki: "A few rogue tribes refused to submit to the Khala, believing that their individual identities would be erased to further promote the rule of the Judicator Caste. Although they were not hostile or militant, they believed that the communal agenda of the Conclave would be the eventual doom of the protoss." Substitute 'Judicator Caste' for 'Amon', and this is 100% correct. For the record, you shouldn't conflate my considering the Dark Templar to be objectively correct with considering the Dark Templar to be relatable: they're hypocrites, every bit as prone to unquestioning obedience of authority as the Khalai are (as they proved in 'The Insurgent'). Kerrigan often gets flak for not deserving her redemption arc: the Dark Templar don't deserve ideological vindication. Also, you missed out one faction in your list: the Purifiers. They still have the Khala - or rather, a data-web that fulfils the same purpose. With Artanis and his followers having become de-facto Dark Templar by forsaking the Khala and severing their nerve cords, the Purifiers could be viewed as the last "real" Templar left.
We really should've had Ulrezaj or some sort of Dark Templar villain instead of Amon, not only is that a more interesting potential dynamic but it makes the Dark Templar less "goodie goodie two shoes who are always right and perfect about everything"
@@KaiserMattTygore927 While I agree that a Dark Templar villain would have worked better, to call the Dark Templar right about everything is objectively wrong. Remember in both base SC1,Brood war, WoL, and LotV; the Dark Templar are often wrong and pay the price for it. Remember in brood war the Dark Templar's nativity with the Queen of Blades resulted in the loss both of a High Templar leader and the matriarch of the Dark Templar. Or when their advice on how to defeat the cerebrates goes wrong because High Templar don't have void energy to properly defeat them, resulting in a fruitless battle that ruined Tassadar's reputation and caused infighting within the High Templar. Or how Zeratul not preparing for and Not fighting against Artanis properly made him lose the dual even if there was the silver lining of freeing Artanis. Or them Dark Templar needing to detonate their own home planet because they couldn't protect it properly. The Dark Templar literally lost their entire civilization in that one battle. TLDR: Good villain idea but Dark Templar are far from always right even in SC2. As Dark Templar are defined by their failures and how they learn from them.
The biggest problem with Amon is he was basically a Starcraft version of Warcrafts Sargaras. Both are members of a god-like race who eventually become tired of the order and decide to destroy reality. I was quite disappointed the Xel'naga turned out too be god like entities instead of just technologically powerful aliens, like imagine Amon was part of a remanent of the Xel'Naga continuing their experiment of creating the perfect life forms instead of a god wanting to destroy the universe.
I feel like one major problem for Amon compared to the other villains is that he doesn't really get to *do* anything. The Overmind is directly ordering you and the rest of the swarm, it infests and kills characters we like. Mengsk is charismatic you fight his forces directly in Starcraft 2, you attack territory he controls, steal weapons he's building, and co-opt his research projects. He acts as an antagonist, although far reduced from a primary actor in the first game. Alarak fronts super hard then gets to show off why he's in charge in a Might Makes Right society. Enough has been said about Kerrigan. All of Amon's action are both retroactive and in the past. He controlled the Overmind. He planted the hybrid. All he gets to do in 3 games as the antagonist is insult you and take the Golden Armada 2/3s of the way through, who immediately leave the story to go fight the terrans and zerg offscreen. And his insults suck. Give him dope Lieutenants for every major arc that you can actually fight and have a cool design and different personalities (and have them all come back for a big boss fight in the epilogue). Give us a horror mission where the Golden Armada under his control is trashing a Terran force and we're huddled in dark hallways hearing his voice echoing from every corner. Give him more forces like the Taldarim that have goals and aren't just generic red force and *show* us what he promised them. Have him *regularly* kill characters we know or like, this is the big sendoff to the setting with an end war and nobody except Zeratul dies. Every campaign has a bunch hangers-on, Ice one of them every now and then. Have Amon kill Matt Horner, Abathur, and Karas while taunting them. Finally, punch-up his dialogue a little. Holy cow I can't remember a single one of his lines.
_"All of Amon's action are both retroactive and in the past. He controlled the Overmind. He planted the hybrid. All he gets to do in 3 games as the antagonist is insult you and take the Golden Armada 2/3s of the way through, who immediately leave the story to go fight the terrans and zerg offscreen. And his insults suck."_ Why does that kinda sound like Zovaal.
What really confuses me is how many characters that do exist almost solely as random one-off fodder who could have been killed by Amon. Urun and Mohandar disappear after their WoL appearance, so they could have starred as supporting characters who Amon kills. Maybe have Mohandar initially be the DT leader on Shakuras, giving tons of support and advice, and the big planet kaboom stunt get's interrupted by Amon foreseeing it with Mohandar having to warp in to save Artanis, sacrificing himself to do so and entrusting the future to Vorazun? It would have been interesting if Vorazun initially started off justifiably pissed off and bitter at Artanis leading the destruction of her home and the death of her foster dad, but lightens up the more she and Artanis work together. Urun could have piloted the Shield of Auir (also weirdly nonexistent after WoL) to hold off the possessed Golden Armada as Artanis' small group flees, perhaps even starring in his own timed holdout mission where he leads an orbital space defense as Artanis gathers his forces to leave on the Spear of Adun. And it ends with Urun ultimately deciding not to join them to pull off something cool as a last stand blow against Amon, who kills him only for Urun to refuse to yield in his final moments as a demonstration of the unbreakable Protoss will.
IIRC Maar was named Maar during Wings of Liberty and was changed to Hybrid Protoss after LotV launched. I thought it was because they used the name Maar somewhere in LotV and forgot that they had used it for WoL and didn't want to confuse people, but I can't seem to find what in LotV it also referred to. Either way, Maar is memorable not because he's our first experience fighting a hybrid and its immense power, but also because it was named. There are no named hybrid in LotV which reduces their memorability.
One major plot hole is in SC1, it was known (read the manual!) that the zerg killed the Xel'Naga. Kerrigan may not have known this, but other cerebrates or Abathur-aged beings in her employ certainly would. So did Abathur just... not bother to bring it up? "Oh, you've been looting like a hundred temples looking for Xel'Naga, I should note that we took them out, like, ages ago. Guess I should have said that a couple dozen planets earlier..." The real reason she didn't know, is it's just a plothole from writers who didn't pay attention to the original lore, but there could have been something there: WHY did all the zerg just selectively not tell Kerrigan? We could have had the hand and works of Amon directly messing with the viewpoint character (Kerrigan) a whole expansion earlier, giving him more time for development.
the whole entirety of sc2 was badly written, there was no prophecy in sc1 why would they use such a terrible trope for a sequel? oh to give kerrigan plot armor, when the previous game established no one was safe. Then the xel naga where ruined they are supposed to be a super advanced race that have zerg and protoss like traits, could have easily made them a campaign faction like the naga in wc3 frozen throne, but no that would require being original and competent at writing a story and game.
@@hammrshark9881 I feel like modern blizzard create Stories far too complex for their own hood that just don't make sense they have to add just too many weird unnatural angles now to their stories that just don't fight with the actual universes these elements are put into all the Eldrick beings and void dimensions and nephalem really don't enhance the stories blizzard create nowadays they just muddy things up in it stops feeling like a real world and it becomes very clear that it is an artificial written world Warcraft Starcraft and Diablo all moved way past there beautifully simple and easy to understand worlds and stories Making what felt like bad fan fiction
Here's the thing you got teached in professional theatre. King played by his surroundings. If a character fear the king, king is fearsome. If a minion smart and treaky, king is smart to keep them. And if a minion is dumb brute with generic lines, well... You got the idea. They should focus more on Narud and smart manipulative characters more so the Amon feels more like mastermind.
That is, a very true when it comes to writing villains. This could be akin to for example, companies or organizations in real life. You see, to be a leader, you don't need to be the best at everything. You just need to know how to use your tools right. Something that is usually call leverage when dealing with people. You can see traces of amon personality in Alarak, Malash, Narud and Maar; because in a way, the leaders under a boss are a extension of that particular individual. Whatever is mindset or modus operandi, you get the point. The problem with Amon I would say, is that despite all his power and resources, he miss uses, miss manages and waste all his opportunities. He lacks competence. I think a similar character from another franchise that comes to my mind is Jul' Mdama from halo 4. While wasted and dislike (I personally hate him, in a good way), is arguably a villain that is there because he is an opportunist. The amount of times he survive out of luck or cleverness is infuriating, because is a villain that knows how to screw things up, the type of person that can be bad and will take every opportunity to make his enemies miserable. Amon, despite his role and assets, is like that character that says: The risk I took was calculated. But damn, I am bad at math. The reason I compare them both is because either have a very anticlimactic death or serve sort of like a similar antagonistic role in the story, despite being absent 90% of the time in the game.
Narud definitely is the one that didn't get enough script writing, you and I agree on that much. Amon was fine though. I guess they could have done more flashbacks or something(like showing the lore that was in the SC1 instruction manual, which was poorly described, I guess they sort of fix the problem in a book that I didn't read or something, but it would be nice if that kind of thing was in the game) but I think what they did with him was okay for the most part.
I still cannot forgive them for what they did to Duran. Him and Stugolv were probably the most memorable characters to me in SC1, and while I did enjoy Infested Stugolv quite a bit, turning Duran from the silver tongued schemer to some old white dude in a dragon ball cosplay was just so bad. Like I didn’t even put two and two together that Narud was Duran backwards until the very end of HOTS because something like that would just be too stupid for him.
That and even if you do put the pieces together the characters just don't feel like they're the same character it doesn't feel like it's Duran playing a new angle of manipulation His appearance in the second game is just objectively dumber less charming less skilled at manipulation he just doesn't seem to be the same you can tell me it's the same character but it doesn't feel like it
It really is some absurd narrative whiplash seeing Duran go from the ultimate schemer who played literally every single faction and subfaction in SC1 as the mastermind to eldritch powers, to just Frieza LARPing as an old dude who can't decide on what form he wants to wear after he loses his DBZ beam struggle.
The Hybrid suck because they take over as the bad guy in 2 If you played brood war the last mission just tells you the UED is coming back and they will bring a real army this time Amon is hella boring, he comes out in Legacy and then dies He has no build up
Agreed. The UED should have came back in LOTV and while the fighting is going on, Amon forces strike. The Hybrids come out of nowhere with their zerg forces. And the people of the koprulu sector are scrambling to figure out whats going on.
@@haplogoldfein8426 And that....has 0 to do with what he said, next time......Rather then doing the reddit thing of ruining ellipsises....work on your......reading comprehension........ Gah! *coughs and dies because he had breathing difficulties*
@@libertinarey How does what I said have 0 to do with the things stated? They said the hybrid were a sudden thing. Like out of nowhere. But in a secret mission in Brood War, where you control Zeratul, you discover protoss being experimented on. Also, the fuck is reddit?
@@haplogoldfein8426 "He has no build up" is the last line of OP's comment, referring to Amon, not the Hybrid. And if you're talking about MasterGhostf's comment, "The Hybrids come out of nowhere with their zerg forces." is a continuation of their hypothetical storyline. That's why what you said has 0 to do with what was stated previously. Also reddit is a social media website divided into categories (subreddits) whose userbase doesn't tend to use good punctuation. Does that answer your questions?
I kinda wish 2nd expansion was Protoss instead, reclaiming Aiur with Raynor's crew on the side, then after its liberation the UED returns with a massive fleet, and attack. Soon you find out the UED fleet is infested; for anyone who played Brood War those implications are horrible; Raynor and crew then ask the Protoss to help them back to Earth, where Heart of the Swarm final expansion begins. Kerrigan in human form helps them fight/control the Zerg who have completely taken over the Sol system, and eventually they destroy the reformed Overmind, with Kerrigan's influence over the remaining Zerg growing. At an alarming rate. "You should know better by now Jim, not to trust me. I may look human, but never trust a beast by its skin. I am amazed you were so easy to convince, after all these years. Did it never occur to you the Xel'Naga device was my own creation? You still hoped I could be saved. While you wallowed in self-pity after the Brood War I let a few UED ships return to Earth. The Swarm on board did not disappoint. THIS is the heart of the swarm now. All mine. Take whatever allies you can find still alive, and run home like the dogs you are. I will not show the same mercy when I return." ruclips.net/video/3Fao3B7XEF0/видео.html
It's simple, he doesn't have a campaign. The Overmind has one. Kerrigan has one. Amon doesn't. And he doesn't have the presence of Mengsk to carry him as a side character. So it's no wonder he's forgetful as a character. I disagree with the hybrids. They're very strong in design and I want more hybrids without Amon.
My suggestions for fixing Amon are as follows: 1) Ditch the floating squid head design and make the Xel'naga walk. They could be quadrupeds like centaurs or even have six crab legs to make them more interesting/unique, but they should be smaller than a house and should walk. 2) Amon was part of the team that uplifted the Protoss and the Zerg. His was one of the ships orbiting over Zerus when the Overmind sent the swarm to wipe them out, and he managed to warp away from the planet, but not before his ship was damaged enough that the jump was only partially successful, trapping him and his crew in the Void. 3) He and his crew eventually managed to free their ship from the Void, but not before most of them died and the rest went a bit mad. 4) Upon returning to normal space, Amon and his crew started to develop the hybrid as a means of enacting revenge on the Zerg and the Protoss. 5) After using the hybrid as weapons to destroy the Zerg and Protoss, Amon plans to experiment on humans just as they had previously experimented on the previous two species.
In WoL the Hybrid were set up as really scary. The one Raynor encounters is literally invincible and he has to run from it like a horror mission. Maar would be scary if not for immortal hardened shields lol. In Utter Darkness was a crazy fucking mission back in 2010. Hell even in HotS they were kinda scary in Narud's lab. Then LOTV uh yeah
Maar also isn't a big fan of High Templars and their feedback, without the energy he really can't do much ^^ - but for an average player he is a menace
Starcraft 2 story has a ton of parallels with Diablo 3. They went for spectacle instead of writing a grounded story and ended up creating generic cheesy marvel universe type b movie plot. characters acting out of character, bbeg as the main antagonist, super saiyan kerrigan, etc. Appealing to the lowest common denominator means making bland garbage that doesn't appeal to anyone. Which is a great shame, perhaps one day we will return to some good storytelling if Blizzard ever decides to bring back the franchise. Anyway review Abathur, he is great.
@@RancorSnp You know it would have been very interesting, is aside from Amon we fight other factions like. Dominion Mengsk Loyalist refusing to give up and would not ally with the Zerg under Karrigan after what she did. Zerg factions either under Amons control, or independent ones wishing to simply consume all life in there path. An a Protoss faction like lets say a small group of Tal'darim Protoss joining Amon and helping his return by attacking the other races.
Alright, I remember Ye Olde Starcraft Manual. And I prefer the Xel Naga in that version- They Make the protoss, but were less than impressed by them, made the Zerg and *was* impressed by them, until they were eaten by the Swarm. In the nu canon, the idea that the Xel Naga gets eaten is laughable, unless they willingly walk their dicks into the Zerg Swarm. Making the zerg v Protoss a long awaited Sibling rivalry match, and from the sounds of it- Protoss was winning by virtue of Orbital Superiority till Zerg really fucked them up.
@@lostrelicsf2p756 "We're a species that makes the protoss look like Zerg, technologically. Let's get eaten by ground based organisms who can't get off their planet, since they haven't eaten the things that *Let them do that yet.*" "Our ancient technology can instantly wipe out areas of effect because our giant brains grant us enough ability to produce the zerg and the protoss as species. Whoops." This is Tech Tree 0 Zerg, they haven't eaten everything yet. It's like a player came in 30 minutes late to a match and still won.
Ah, the OG Starcraft manual. I musta read the terran/zerg/protoss backstories dozens of times! Such an incredible setup which makes the changes all the more glaring. The Xel Naga were part of the universe not above it. Story could have been so much more interesting with their own campaign.
I always found it interesting that the gameplay of starcraft 2 got better with each expansion while the story got worse by at least the same margin. By the end, I was 0% invested in the characters and the story. The hybrids and amon were so lame to me. Not sure why, but they just seemed so arbitrary to have one villain that all the others could come together and fight against. The cliché anime villain plot of "I'll kill everything so nobody has to suffer anymore" also gives me brain damage every time I encounter it.
The gameplay definitely got more refined with each expansion, but Hots and especially Wings has lotv beaten in terms of variety. Almost every mission has a unique gimmick. Sure some of them are better than other to play and some just suck, but I think the more experiemental, open enden, nonlinear approach of wings leads to a better overall experience, even if the average mission quality might be objectively greater in lotv. Like you would never see anything like the fire wave of supernova or the rising lava of devil's playground in later expansions.
@@herrdoktor1810To be fair, both the wall of fire and the rising lava worked, because the Terrans have mobile buildings. That type of gameplay is easier to implement when you can move your base around.
@@Altermerea Sure i see your Point. But ist can be done with protoss getting unpowered buildings. See harbinger of oblivion from mindhawks Challenge gauntlet. Unforgivingly hard, But it could done with reasonable difficulty with a few tweaks. You also have the moving Platform from ravenscar to relocate your Base. The Mission Designer Just hast to get creative.
@@herrdoktor1810 Could have given the protoss a mission where an EMP goes off every now and then requiring the protoss place to use warp prisms to power buildings.
Because with every expansion, the conflict became more external instead of internal. The stakes felt impactful in WoL because it was essentially a story of redemption. Raynor felt guilty about Kerrigan becoming the Queen of Blade, so he kept trying to save her and it wasn't clear until the end that it was possible. Tychus was also a man looking for redemption, but with much more tragic end. The conflict is rooted in human values and so it felt big. In later expansions everything gets thrown out the windows in favor of a faceless evil enemy. Imagine if Heart of the Swarm has been about Kerrigan having to reckon with the things she's done with every faction howling for her blood, including the Protosses who helped Raynor last time. That would have been great drama.
You know what would kinda be interesting. If at the end of salvation when there's maybe 10-20 seconds left on the clock. You are getting battered on all sides by the golden armada. You've destroyed amon's host body and are about to save the protoss when amon being the petty control freak he is decides to flip the table when things don't go his way. All the protoss units attacking just drop dead on the spot. And you are stuck there with the last few seconds on the clock counting down as what just happened sinks in. You are left with a moment of quiet and a pyrrhic victory. The keystone goes off but there's no protoss left to save. I don't know if it would be better but I think it would give amon more characterization and give the player stronger feelings towards amon
LotV is just so earnest it would feel wrong. Salvation is a perfect ending for Artanis. You finally go up against the famed Golden Armada and weather the onslaught, brother killing brother, until you fire the mcguffin and get the chance to make your case. Artanis gets a few minutes to convince them all to let go of the old ways and comes into the future together. You might make Amon more threatening you'd be sabotaging the part of LotV that works
@@hannabelphaege3774 That is true, but I would argue that the idea of Artanis convincing the entire Protoss population to "let go" is inferior on just too many levels. It blends the Protoss society (speaking solely in terms of former Imperials, obviously) into an amorphous mass, lacking nuance and featuring only the general "Protoss" social traits as relevant. This is the case for the whole "we are all Templar" thing, but much more so at the very pinnnacle of the Salvation arc, as for it to work, every single Protoss needed to arrive at this particular decision to separate themselves from the Khala at that exact few moments they had to spare, regardless of their caste, their ideology, their background. It makes Amon look incompetent for playing into an obvious trap. He is literally one of those who used to create things like Keystones, he should be fairly aware of its capabilities, especially given that its basically the cornerstone of his entire 10 000 years-spanning plan. It feels hollow, because none of Artanis'es "diplomatic victories" are actually earned, and this one isnt an exception. In all situations he has to do "diplomacy" to "convince" someone to work with him, they either give themselves to him before he can even start (see Alarak) for no real reason, or just does a speech to make his problems go away. There is no buildup of trust, there is no compromises, there is no convincing - all the factions at his disposal are ALREADY willing to work FOR him, and that doesnt even begin to cover the many-faceted former-Imperial (I refuse to call them Khalai) society, which is perfectly willing to work together for practically anything even before Amon was a thing. It also is incredibly hypocritical of Artanis of all people to talk about "letting go of the old ways", but unforunately nobody remembers what Artanis used to actually be like before Blizzard decided to shoehorn him into a Protoss role model.
I SO MUCH WISH we could explore the philosophies of Hybrids (as individuals), Amon, Narud in any more starcraft games since Microsoft can make small SC games now, not just RTS. Just imagine, You fight as extension of will power of an ancient god and he just kinda *is gone* at one point. What now? kind of moment.
For a while now I’ve wanted to make a custom sc2 campaign where your on an outlying world, some ragtag farmers and settlers, away from all the sc2 politics stuff and like THREE total hybrid show up and it’s properly terrifying for a several story tall genetically perfect monster.
The issues that I have with the story of Star Craft 2 all stem from the fact that they never force you to play as the bad guys. The closest that you come to being bad is HotS, and even then, it's Kerrigan has noble intentions; then ends justify the means.
You are very right about the hybrid. For years I envisioned a semi-playable 4th race in SC that mixed the powers of the Zerg and Protoss. Players would interact with it in a similar manner as they did with the Naga race in Warcraft 3. But your thoughts about simply giving them any kind of personality would be cheaper to build and probably carry the story better.
The idea of the hybrid being kind of Frankenstein's monsters would have been interesting - horrible abominations, intelligent and powerful, in a tentative alliance with their creator until the creator turns against them. Maybe have them be self destructive - torn between their zerg and protoss nature, they swarm into battle but share in the suffering of it. Maybe they don't know Amon's true plans any more than the Tal'Darim do; they believe they will take the place of the various races as the dominant sapient lifeform in the universe led by their god-king Amon in his own hybrid body, but then learning his desire to unmake all of creation - leading to him trying to try to do the hybrid detonation thing he does at the end of the In Utter Darkness vision - which would add more tension to the need to destroy his body. Maar creates the implication that the hybrid could be actual characters with personalities and it's a shame the writers never did anything with it.
Blizzard probably tried to make a space version of Sauron, but they couldn't give him a proper motivation. I could probably forgive him if his motivation remained unclear, if at the same time he acted less predictably throughout the game. He would seem incomprehensible.
Amon's vision is a utilitarian-nihilistic view of the problem of suffering. Eliminating all life in a generation is numerically the lesser of two evils quantitatively, compared to the deaths before and after in an infinite cycle. Darwin realized how much pain would be enough to produce one species. Why does evolution thrive on pain? And even if 99 percent of beings were happy, that would be less than 1% of beings who suffered in the past and infinite future. That's the genius of Amon's motivation as a villain. The questioning of life itself. Then there's a downside to his resentment, but it's interesting. It has layers. and it draws a parallel with Kerrigan and her position in taking the mantle of the Xelnaga. One resents it and another takes it as penance.
Man I remember this one video where a guy casually explained both the story of warcraft and starcraft at the same time. I genuinely do not know who did it though and that fact has been eating away at me since to me it was such a funny video. I know that this probably isn't the place hut thinking about amon got me into thinking about that video and how I don't know who made it.
I alwasy thought the hybrids as vessels for Amons consciousness, a way for him to get ”hands-on” into business on a micro scale. Not directly controlled by him but given a purpose that they’d follow, kinda like a programming, and that’s why they have little to none in the personality department. This would leave outliers like Mar but in that case more autonomy would be needed as Mar was basically a warden and Amon did not have any reason to babysit him.
"the lore is in the novels" I miss the times of warcraft 3, diablo 2 and old blizzard games where the lore was actually in the game and not paywalled behind products of even more questionable quality.
To be fair, a significant chunk of the lore for the old blizzard games was in the manuals that came with the games as well. Starcraft's manual covered the creation of the Zerg and Protoss along with the formation of the major Terran nations, Diablo's manual covered the war between Heaven and Hell and how Diablo and his brothers were imprisoned, and Warcraft's manual covered the beginning of the Burning Legion and the backstory of other major characters. Each manual was pretty much a novel in their own right. Now the manual's came with the games so at least you didn't have to pay extra for them. Plus it was something almost every game did back then to save on memory.
Basically, they resolved most of story and characters arcs in incredibly lazy way, only so Terrans, Zerg and Protoss could fight together... Giant Cthulhu Squid? Amon looks more like a way for Raynor and Kerrigan to end up together than actual character.
To me Amon is a textbook example of a villain made not with the intention to be its own character, but as a stepping stone for the main characters. The reason why I liked kerrigan so much is that I (atleast personally) enjoy villains which could be the main character of their story, as much as kerrigan is a villain, she was designed to have all of her actions playable, when you fight kerrigan you also PLAY as kerrigan meaning that the writers wrote her personality to not only grow and change, but also her actions to be interesting and unique. I think that if Amon was also written as a character to be playable by the player, he would have done more unique stuff, his personality would have existed and changed and he would have had ACTUAL DRIP. But yeah, it just feels like everything he does isn't for himself. A villain should at the least be the main character of THEIR OWN story, but Amon is not that. I wish he did more cool shit, instead of just unsheathing the curtain and being like "Haha its too late guys" when it was not too late, I wish he would have still kept more secrets and I wish duran/narud would have done some more stuff. I would have loved if you were secretly playing in Amons hands, and the curtain was revealed when he was actually resurected, the hybrid are slowly leaking out and you get suspicions and its actually too late and more interesting. Like, why doesn't Amon infest ships with larvae which grow and we have to chase around a big swarm, being on the opposite end of The Enemy Within? I also really liked the idea of being controlled by amon, FORCE ME to kill Zeratul and betray my allies, make me also be in Amons grasp, make me, the player, feel the impact of what Amon does instead of hearing about it. Being mind controlled would show the severity of the situation much more than watching people be mind controlled and being told about how they were mind controlled
SC2 storytelling, especially in LOTV, suffers a lot with 'tell, don't show'. There were instances of that across all entries, but LOTV was supposed to wrap up the series, so they tried to handwave as many plot holes as possible. Some examples, other than your mention of Amon's plight against the Infinite cycle, include: - The Terran Dominion being busy fighting the Golden Armada, while Artanis is doing the Protoss campaign. Since the GA is supposed to be *the biggest fleet ever ain Protoss history*, the Terrans would be fighting one hell of an uphill battle (and one that would be nice to experience as a player) - The Swarm having been nearly extinguished when Kerrigan took it to fight the Hybrid. We're supposed to believe that, in a few days, they went from billions (that occupied entire planets) down to a single hive cluster (and that Kerrigan's essence, if she died, could not be restored from another Hive or a Leviathan) - Nyon (who isn't even named in WoL) was actually 'mad from too much terrazine', that's why he wasn't reviving his master with all the artifacts he already possessed. This one would actually be easy to fix if some of the artifacts were held by Narud already, and that he and Nyon were, unbeknownst to the player, competing to revive Amon and win his favor (and/or be the only ones actually ascended by him) - in fact, having Terrazine all over the Tal'darim homeworld makes it completely pointless for any expedition to gather it elsewhere. If Nyon 'went mad' from it, this would've happened before he left Slayn. Why was he even allowed to leave the planet commanding a big crew then? - Moebius changed from a crew of scientists protected by mercenaries, to a 'Corp' that manned thousands of soldiers and could rival the Dominion and the Protoss in strength. How and when did that shift happened, and how did nobody noticed? This could easily be explained if, by the end of Moebius mission in WoL, Narud would say something like 'we need to beef up our security, we're attracting too many enemies'. So in short, SC2 relies too much on exposition to tell its story. Amon is just another casualty of that horrible writing style.
I honestly believe that the scale issue could be remedied in a lot of ways by having the galaxy (the sector, really) map display an actual map as opposed to just showing mission-specific planets. Imagine the many inhabited systems and planets of the Koprulu sector being slowly overtaken by Amon's forces, going dark one by one as the campaign progresses.
@@UEDCommander Agreed. WoL had Hanson's questline end as she settles her people on a planet "close to protoss space". We have no idea what that is, how big is it, how far is Haven from other Terran worlds and so on. Also, SC2 (especially WoL) is plagued by 'throwaway planets' that are visited once for a quick mission, then never mentioned again. By comparison, SC1 had only a few planets with a lot of missions (and all factions would have missions on repeated planets). It made them feel more meaningful in a way. The Zerg occupation of Aiur was the culmination of thousands of years of the Overmind's planning... in HoTS, near the end of the campaign, you get a cutscene with half a dozen nameless planets being instantly covered in creep. It kinda takes away the punch.
The whole point of the Hybrid was that for all their power they are just Amon's mooks. They didn't have any personalities on purpose. Now however, that Amon is dead... NOW we can have interesting hybrid Characters. Like, I'm sure there will be cool Hybrid personalities in Nova Covert Ops, right?
a major issue why the Hybrids feel like they lack depth it's because they aren't a playable race. terran, protoss and zerg have fascinating units with tons of worldbuilding expectations. the hybrid are just big tanks that hit stuff, like an ultralisk with a few extra bilities, they lacks so much worldbuilding, you don't have hybrid bases, you don't know how their workers look like, they where "seeded" by Durand, but you don't really know they "interact" with the world, or if a hybrid is there, how it changes it's surroundings other than mind-controlling(?) units. so far, it seems like the Taldarim faction work like dark cultists for the dark god?, controlling the Khala was an interesting move, I loved that, but again, instead of working through other races, I would had loved to see them being an actual faction
Amon honestly just needed Narud and the Hybrid to be more than "You will die lmao". He's perfectly fine for an objectively evil character but his underlings are just nothing. His underlings are more than mindless mouthpieces for him because Amon is a bit of a eloquent yapper, he still says "you will die lmao" but he says it in like 40 words. If his underlings were also yappers and they echoed him then he'd probably be a lot better but there's too much of a disconnect. It's not even like his minions are mindless and he's sophisticated he's still a 1 dimensional rage monster. He either needed his minions to be silent or smarter or he needed to be smarter. Fixing Amon is hard because he's fine, there's nothing wrong with him but his faction BLOWS
also, if they wanted the hybrid to be entirely "You will die lmao" they should have made them actual threats if they want the hybrid to be terrifying and unstoppable, they shouldn't be curb stomped by a few immortals, and shouldn't be everywhere imagine if their were far less hybrid, but each one could actually threaten even large armies,
Kerrigan & Raynor are missing after the Epilogue, and here’s why. 1. They went on a honeymoon and are fucking every single day. 2. The honeymoon ended and Raynor is the only being Kerrigan trusts, empowering him just enough to survive traveling with her as she went on her newest mission, finding the universe in which Amon, Narud, Orous (however it’s spelt) and finding out what exactly happened to Amon that caused his insanity. 3. After those purity of Form/Essence races were taken and uplifted to Xel’Naga this universe lost 2 very important species that kept balance there, resulting in other races becoming extremely powerful in their place, but these races KNEW of what happened to Amon and the others and began to radically alter themselves to protect against the evil returning to do the same to them. 4. And they view this threat in the form of Kerrigan and this empowered being by her side. 5. Full of fury and rage they attack and proceed to follow them back to the main SC universe and they’re brought to war against them. 6. Kerrigan realizes he folly of seeking the truth of Amon, and puts 2 universes at each others throats, and got her lover killed in the process. This will wrap up what Blizzard failed to do to give us with Amon, and keep conflict alive in the Kophrulu sector.
Sorry for the misspellings and general errors, I was taking a 💩 at the time & it wasn’t going well, so I just wanted to wrap up my thoughts and move forward. Ill fix it tomorrow.
Amon is built as a force and is known through others we know his motivations through others and we understand the character because he is a parallel to Kerrigan in her final stage, Narud simply can't get over Amon because he's basically a cliche villain who laughs and mocks the protagonist in a childish way and knowing that he is a xelnaga or xelnaga does this more pathetic does not express magnanimity that even in Megks is capable of doing better with his proportion of safeguarding humanity, Amon is the final evil not the superficial form it is the embrace of the peace of death nihilism the final rebel who questions the very existence of life and in its real form infinite hatred a mirror of Kerrigan's fear of losing her humanity and mundane life, if you ignore that it is built through narrators like Nuroka and Rohana you miss a lot, through the eyes of others as a threat Whisperer will not understand it, he does not need exposition dialogues but absolute conviction of his twisted benevolence, he is not someone who schemes, he is direct even in the deception but he is victorious even in defeat, that is why it is important to read the short prequel stories that have Alarak as the protagonist.
While you do acknowledge reworking/fixing Amon to be more compelling would require major rewrites, I got an idea of what they could have possibly done with him. At the beginning, you're only aware of him being evil because we have meta-knowledge. Instead, he is shown using flowery language and false promises of a better life. Trying to portray giving up one's identity as a way to free themselves of their burden by giving themselves over to him. Of course, nobody who was freed from his influence or heard what it was like under his thrall, buys into it. Eventually, you see cracks forming as he grows more and more frustrated with such resistance. Resorting to threats and demands instead, before just going full "Fine, you want to resist me? Then die like the rest of these insignificant worms who defied me!" Also, have his hybrid play into this. Make them show an almost peaceful or sense of glee in their lack of identity. Speaking in ways of asking those they face to join their side as well. Only thing is, due to how Amon personally hand-crafted them (Though admittedly through giving Duran/Narud the specifications he wanted for them), they genuinely believe in this. Perhaps show maybe one or two that were shattered off from his control, suddenly begging to be struck down, disgusted by what they are, horrified by the lie they were made to live. Sickened that their only purpose is destruction, and cannot find any solace in existing further because they were merely a means to an end, they have no higher purpose or capacity to find one. Basically, make the hybrid a tragedy of an antagonist faction who are victims of those who made them.
Great vid. Always wished the the hybrid would've been minibosses the whole of each mission they appear in are centered around like Maar or the one in Piercing the Shroud, but they just show up as big tough capital ship units and mainly rely on their allied zerg, protoss or terran to do the heavy lifitng.
I think the problem here is that they made him physical at all, even in “the void” whatever that is, if the hybrid had been the real super weapon they were made out to be, and the xel’naga were these cryptic liberation beings that existed only in the minds of their servants, it would add to them a lot, don’t show the monster and it makes them scarier, in the secret mission and Protoss missions in wol they are literally unstoppable save for in the final battle where the Protoss inevitably lose, and yet in legacy of the void we don’t just fight them, we win against them repeatedly, absurd?
Amon is the worst thing that has EVER happened to Starcraft 2. WoL was pretty okay, hots was... was. And LotV was insufferable. And even worse the coop missions ran with this. As if anyone gave half a shit about Amon and his lazy ass excuse to reuse existing races in a single army. "Amon is transporting some stuff by trains!" - Amon is supposed to be a LITERAL GOD, why does he care about a god damn supply train. Corruption of Khala was also interesting at first, but quickly lost all of the appeal, I would much rather have all of the protos heroes come together in the last stand, like we saw it in WoL, than go "Oh yeah, Selendis bad now, we do not need to see her again". Every mission being about Amon this Amon that, surprisingly how going against the god took away all the stakes from the story. I would care more if the antagonist was a moisture farmer called bob than Amon. He's overused, he never wins, his design is lame, his plan is stupid and I hate everything about him, but not in the good way. In the "good lord I wish they came up with anything else" way
Honestly Amon needed a few side missions. Sort of like Brood Wars with you as the villain killing characters you enjoyed. Think about this for a new first or second mission. Reclaim the home world, celebration, then evil mind control kicks in. Have you play as play as the mind controlled protoss. Heave each mission objective appear forcing you to kill the dark templar as Amon makes his gloating. Sort of like how the Overmind did his gloating when you took control of Aiur... Only this time we show more of his personality. How he mocks your failure. Laughs as he forces you to kill your allies. Shows each new objective and how you can't resist as you must finish them in order to progress. Then you kill your favorite dark templar... And then... You get the cut scene fight before you are cut free from his control. Amon was just... A lesser version of the Overmind story wise. His schemes? You are blasting them apart? His speech? Generic villain garble. His death? You kill him because he is annoying. For goodness sake I didn't realize Nurad was Duran because of how different the two versions were to the point I was waiting for Duran to show up with trickery, betrayal, and having to fight some twisted gauntlet of traps... Just to get discount DBZ laser battle. Such a shame considering how much work and detail went into their other characters, other factions, and other... Everything else. Also would love to see an abathur video.
the humans and primal zerg are the true inheritors of the Xel'naga Humans cannot be turned into zerg, only infested. Abathur really tried with them. Kerrigan herself had to be broken down into raw D.N.A. in order to become the queen of blades, and she still looks human. The primal zerg are primal zerg. By gestating in the pool, consuming the essence of the pack leaders, Kerrigan BECAME xel'naga.
Okay hear me out, I think there is a version where this story could work out, if and that's a big if, if narud/duran was made the main villain! Like, I know this isn't possible lore-wise, but let's say, that Amon was just trying to get "birthed"/enter the universe and narud/duran just manipulated events around to the point that he could become this god/ ruler of everything. Let's say he somehow escaped or survived his last campaign mission and he would return in the final battle between amon and ascended kerrigan, with a corrupted artifact, that allowed him to channel and take away the power/life of both of them and the last mission would be, the rest of the zerg/humans/protoss who were once again outsmarted by him teaming up to defeat him together without a savior?! On second thought, this sounds like a theory on drugs, so maybe it's good that this didn't happen
You gotta remember: SC2 came out in 2010. LotV came out in 2015. Gaming got _a lot_ shittier in that time, so it really shouldn't be surprising that all build up, nuance, and established lore is just thrown out the window to have pretty lights and generic laser beam action that appeal to the lowest common denominator. Acti bought Blizz in 2008. So they might've influenced about 20% of SC2's development, temporally speaking. They influenced _all_ of HotS and LotV.
If You think about it, there are only 5 hybrid units. The 2 from Wol used in in utter darkness were based on the more iconic hybrids used in the other 2 Wol missions, maar and the nameless inmortal vanishing hybrid. Then they Made a Big hybrid, a flying one and a spellcaster one. If there was a actual hybrid race, then the concept of Protoss and zerg combined could be fleshed out more. More small units, more variety on air, fast and strong units, deadly capital ships, annoying spells, and so on. Instead You get attacked by bulky, mid speed units that just deal damage (the spellcaster hybrid is still threatening and the flying hybrid has a cool spell but its just a stronger Corsair). A hybrid campaign would be awesome as well. Imagine using duran in character for once, awaken hybrid in different Worlds and unlocking different hybrid clases throught collecting new zerg Essence and capturing Protoss (yeah, kinda like with Protoss/zerg tech but narud was behind that regardless so it makes sense). And then brainwashing the Moebius terran with massive terrazine exposition and finding some sort of macguffin to allow duran (amon) to control the Protoss before the Main event where You acutally kill zeratul, your Main enemy disrupting the hybrid growing process. Then the campaign closets with a cinematic where duran returns to the void unleashing the hybrid on the galaxy in full capacity (he does return because he doesnt need a body after all, but he can also get killed in lotv)
If we got 3-4 more characters who served Amon and interacted with him often. One from each race or so that serve the hybrid pursuit of perfection or self destruction, or both. Amon himself would've been a far better if his core character trait was spite. He hates everything and including himself, and his only recourse is to control everything to be like him.
In the original Starcraft, you played as everyone, antagonist and protagonist alike. In Starcraft 2, you played as all three factions, but they were all presented as protagonists to the overarching story. You didn't get to play as the antagonist, so you never got to understand their motivations.
I wish SC2 was more like SC1 and it's just "regular" people fighting over a sector for control/power, not "SPACE DEVIL!" :\ It makes me worried for Stormgate cause it looks like another "SPACE DEVIL" coming for that one. Also, would say, your audio for the clips vs your own speaking audio quite a different volume :P a bit jarring, but not horrible. Just something to focus on in the future.
@@misterwolf3817 I can deal with the art style (even if it's not quite what I love), but the story just being "SPACE DEVIL" looking so far and the rehashing of Warcraft 3 structure for the start is a bit of a disappointment to me.
The introduction is the hybrid in 1998 and that mission was really haunting for me. Seeing SC2, I was really disappointed in how it turned out. I can't be alone in thinking that SC2 would have been better if we stuck with "game of thrones in space" rather than "full explanation of the hybrid and defeating Eldritch gods with bullets" sort of thing.
It's true that Amon doesn't really have an older version to ruin in 1/BW, but it's his presence in the sequel and the retcons he put into the canon (like the Khala being his doing, and not a purely Protoss creation like it used to be). The only arguably good retcon/addition he brought about was the Primal Zerg as a faction, with them dodging being messed with by Amon, and the Tal'darim... Okay no, not the Tal'darim as the whole, just Alarak, really. The faction as a whole wasn't terribly interesting, Alarak just has a very strong personality and is voiced by a very good actor (giving him Q's VA was a stroke of genius) - a rarity in SC2's otherwise bland antagonists. I really wish they kept the Xel'Naga in the background and never actually showed them to us. If I could rewrite SC2, I would cut out Amon entirely and have Duran/Narud as the principle, main antagonist trying to carry out and finish his former masters' experiment (in this case, I would say he isn't a Xel'naga himself, but something other that resulted from their Zerg/Protoss experiments that also isnt a proper Hybrid). Maybe he ends up being killed by one of his Hybrid creations in a mirror to the Xel'naga being destroyed by their meddling in the Protoss and Zerg. Have the final boss fight be an actual, proper fight against a super powerful Hybrid or several smaller fights - the only thing I would keep from the Epilogue being that all three species participate in some form. Maybe each faction has their own hybrid boss to kill that's in some way a reflection of them, or designed to counter them, but fails to account for something, or that each species helps each other in some way to overcome them. (Oh and Kerrigan is absolutely dead, Raynor kills her, as he should have, and either Zagara and/or Abathur step up to lead the Swarm, working together with the Terran and Protoss because they feel they have to, in a shaky alliance while planning for what they will need to do after Duran and the hybrid are dealt with). The biggest issue I have with SC2 was the radical change in tone, eschewing the greyer morality of the first game in favor of much blander all good guys vs. bad guys (and Kerrigan, who the writers really want us to see as deserving of good things for some reason, and yes I'm still mad they gave her a happy ending, while my boy Zeratul was butchered both as a character in his writing and in his ultimate fate, getting killed off when the writers decided they were done using him as a lore mouthpiece, having stripped away everything that made him interesting in 1/BW).
In Brood War, during the secret mission, the main emotion I remember feeling from Duran's speech to Zeratul was a sense of dread. You really get this creepy, ominous sense that the Hybrid would be truly awful and really would lead to a calamity that makes what happened on Aiur look tame. If the interaction with Duran was able to leave someone as strong as Zeratul feeling haunted and full of dread, then I wonder how the others would've felt. I think it would've been great if Blizzard leaned into this with both the Hybrid and Amon -- they could've been very intimidating and spooky. Blizzard is no stranger to Lovecraftian vibes either, and considering how the Hybrid and Amon appear in SC2 I think it's a serious shame that we didn't see them lean into making them more intimidating and ominous. We're talking about an eldritch star god here, they could've made him so spooky. He's destroyed worlds and created the Overmind for crying out loud!
I have a suggestion that could help with the Amon and Hybrid story and a way to better entwine them. Instead of the Hybrid being generic monsters and the whole Amon host body thing, have the Hybrid *be* Amon's host *bodies* with each one being an aspect of Amon, so instead of the Hybrid being used as extensions of Amon's will, have them be hosts to Amon's will. I would also effectively isolate Amon among the Xel'naga, yet keep Narud/Duran as a Hybrid, perhaps the representation of Amon's deceit, carved out of the rest of the Amon and given an independence. Other Hybrid encountered can therefore be more carefully personalised and customised as each is a unique part of Amon. His deceit, his greed, his pride and even his hope and courage and honesty. A Hybrid possessing Amon's honesty could be hilarious and somewhat similar to Alarak in how they could tell the heroes how small and meaningless they are compare to the whole of Amon.
Regarding a villain who strips identity of those he subjugates, and who is utterly terrifying and vaguely alien; She-Ra has such a villain. And it works, becsuse he subjugates individuals that we know and recognize and heroes are forced to fight their own friends and allies.
My thoughts on the secret BW mission at the time: The Swarm had destroyed the Xel’Naga. The Xel’Naga were a Proto-Protoss-Zerg hybrid, so the hybrids were simply a stronger resurrection of the Xel’Naga. Duran’s master was either a Xel’Naga spirit, or simply the idea to bring the Xel’Naga back.
I feel like the Hybrids and Xel'Naga characters all suffer from not being given a campaign of their own. Because SC1 allowed you to play the baddies (Zerg) but SC2 had you play only goodies (and made the Zerg goodies too), which is sad. Playing the rise of the Xel'Naga and THEN bringing their downfall could feel very satisfying.
you made a lowkey good point when you mentioned that Narud should have had a bigger role in SC2 He should have made an appearance in LotV as the catalyst for Amon's control of the golden armada. Sure that would mean we'd have to kill Narud twice in the same expansion (ew epilogue) but the alternative is someone who would have much more impact in the shadows, just mentioned as the "true god of all" while the priest who puts this true god over controls the flock of brainwashed sheep to do his bidding
Would've been much more interesting if he ACTUALLY wanted to die. But as long as a protoss/zerg exists he will as well or something Would give an explanation to his goal to wipe out all life, and he makes the hybrids and tricks them, if they're under his control he can kill them when he needs to and then just fade into nothing. or just be a BBEG with "me kill life" as his motivation.
When I was little playing SC1 I interpreted the Xel Naga as the species both the zerg and protoss had evolved from eons before after some sort of rift or disaster caused it to split off. Duran and his master were ones that went dormant and awoke during brood wars. The Zeratul mission was about them ressurecting their original race with splices of protoss and zerg dna to takeover and rule the sector again.
I'm convinced that Amon was either originally created for, or was retooled to serve as, a scapegoat to blame Kerrigan's evil actions on so that she could have her awful Happy Ending. It doesn't help that most of Amon's forces are simply mind-controlled units from other races, meaning that his "faction" lacks a coherent aesthetic or identity. You can't even tell any interesting stories about why other races are serving Amon because they're simple mind-controlled pawns with no will of their own.
One of the biggest failures of LotV is that they didn't make hybrid behemoths Colossus-sized ingame. I'm not sure if one of the many published campaign mods did that, but I know I tried doing that myself for fun (with a co-op mod) and it made them feel genuinely fun to fight. I do know I was inspired by what the Nightmare mod did for Hybrid in that it buffed them up and gave them several spells from their respective races (hybrid reavers for example can spam the zerg viper's abduct, while hybrid destroyers have the classic hardened shields. which makes it very ironic because they first appear in the mission that introduces immortals, which hard-countered the original hybrid way back in wol). What am I getting at here? Well, that the Hybrid just aren't hard enough! They should've had really cracked stats every time they appeared, they should've been something you genuinely planned around rather than just waltzed into with most compositions. The only hybrid that actually manages this is the hybrid dominator, which has extremely powerful spells that can punch holes through your army. Even in the co-op mode they're still the highest tier threat.
In fact, let's elaborate on this concept a bit more. Making the hybrid harder is great yes, but you know what we could've used? MORE hybrid. More opportunities for them to actually have personality, of course. Each Hybrid does something different and represents something unique. You could have hybrid who are attuned with the void, hybrid who are afraid of their own master yet serve because they have no choice. Hybrid that not only ensure the doom of the sector, but _relish_ in it (seriously the hybrid in LotV talk about doom n shit but are they having fun? I don't think so.) The Hybrid behemoth idea I mentioned at the start would have certainly given them personality, even if it was just being a big dumb monster. Like, a kaiju-sized hybrid really speaks for itself, let's be honest. But the other hybrid couldve had more depth maybe. Like, have the dominators(?) on Brothers in Arms INSULT the Terrans and the Protoss, have them make some really deep-cut jabs at us. Anyway I really look forward to the Alarak video, and I just wanna say that Rak'shir is genuinely a very strong political strategy in the Tal'darim society. Like, most of the time the two challengers are equal in psionic power like we see with Alarak and Ma'lash. The fact that Rak'shir allows supplicants to contribute to their champion's cause is what really makes it, since it turns it into a _metaphorical_ power contest rather than just a literal one. It's like if the US elections let the democrats and republicans just throw hands with each other.
Someone in the comments mentioned that blizzard shoud have made a hybrid camapaing (idk if they meant it as a joke but well) and that is kinda what i thought would have been better. In SC1 you play as the antagonist at some point (helping mengsk at the beginning, or litterly the entire zerg campaing) and maybe that is why the sc1 antagonists are so memorisable.
I agree with you on the Amon point. I liked SC1 and BW so much because the villains were just characters acting out their own agendas and desires, they were only villains to the other parties that were affected by them. The Villains felt justified in what they were doing. That leads to complex and interesting character development and as the audience we get to confront uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil and the role of perspective etc. Having a character like Amon who is for all intents and purposes just the devil is a little boring. its simplistic. here is a character who's motives are unfathomable to anyone else, who is universally perceived as evil by all other factions and who operates from a silo cut off from the wider universe. Its just not as much fun as say BW kerrigan who having freed her mind from the control of the overmind, and finding herself vilified by all other factions for the actions she performed as its slave has no other option than to free and unite the swarm, to run the humans and protos out of her home system and take control. she also deals with her own feelings of betrayal by her friends and guilt over what she has become. she is ambitious and ruthless. From the UED perspective she is absolutely evil, same for the Protos, Raynor's feelings are more mixed because he remembers her from before and is guilty for letting it happen. Kerrigan feels like she has been given no other choice and her actions are justified because of that.
I think the Hybrid failed as villains because they didn't have anything about them that would differentiate them from the Zerg. The Zerg are horrifying, powerful, deadly and ugly aliens who want to take over the galaxy. And the Hybrids are the same. Only they have glowing purple powers. I reminds me much of World of Warcraft's writing. Have a faction of people get colorful new power, and then present them because of this power and glowing effect as an interesting and cool faction. But if they are not interesting when not glowing, they don't become more interesting just because of this effect. If I wrote Amon and the Hybrid, I would give them something more. A philosophy. A cause. And if the story intended to show them as all powerful Eldritch abominations, make them be truly godly. But you don't make something a god by just giving it glow or magic powers. Better way how to make something a god is to make a lot of people worship them. Tuey could have some unnatural ability that all beings in their vicinity started having religious feelings, revelations, visions, feeling of being watched and examined by the god. They had a good thing going with the Tal Darim. That's why people like Alarak. But it was barely enough. We even had the Mobeus core eventually getting brainwashed by their experiments and starting to worship them. That's also something that could have been explored better. Instead of it being just a background flavor for invade and crush your enemies missions. What if Amon had a point according to some characters in the story? What if him brainwashing the Protoss using Khala was not a mind controlled, but instead just him convincing them to fight for his side? Then you'd have main characters put against each other because of their stated differences. Then there would be some back and forth. Instead of just having a snowball of good guys unstoppably becoming an avalanche that crushes the bad guys who just wait for it. That's what the original story had. Characters having their agendas, their motives and goals, changing sides. Not just "we will grow our army of allies until we overwhelm the bad guys!" That hardly feels like a story.
I agree that for story telling HoTs and LotV had deep issues… but that final level where Amon was destroying the earth beneath your base was pretty impactful. I wish it would have come sooner so we could learn to fear him and maybe get some depth. After all, he touched what is most precious to SC players. The mineral line
I expected the Hybrid as a 4th faction when they were revealed (zerg+protoss with adaptable gameplay style like terran) but turns out they're just campaign bosses😂
In the case of the Hybrid, I wonder if they were created to all be extensions of Amon's will with no true character of their own. I remember watching a modded mission where one plays as some Hybrid trying to escape a facility that created them after Amon's death and in that mission, it gets establised that with Amon gone, the Hybrid have the ability to act on their own and its story is the hybrid fearfully trying to escape death while being hunted by the Dominion, with the Ghost leading the hunt even psionically contacting them and expressing some reluctance at his mission, knowing that the Hybrid he's hunting are free-willed beings who haven't committed any sins but also fearing the possibility of Amon using those Hybrid to cheat death.
Probably would have worked better if (from my memory) they kept the idea that hybrids were designed as a way to resurrect Xel-Naga and the changing the world forever was that they were an entire race of genetic maestros with Kerrigan tier level psionics. In hindsight they're basically old ones from 40k or chaos gods. In general tone and power scale is best encapsulated with Liberty's Crusade and the trilogy of books where a Terran accidentally merges minds with a Protoss historian contained in psionic crystal. That second one was pretty fascinating since the terran rapidly gained powerful psionic powers but it was also killing him, he formed a strong bond with the protoss mind and she ended up sacrificing herself to defeat a rogue Dark Archon.
"Awaken my child and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I, am the Overmind, the Eternal Will of the Swarm and you have been created to serve me." That's why.
Yea Starcraft and warcraft have very similar villians, IE there is an overall single villian, then there is a swarm villian which one person has to take a place of to control, then there is corrupting others. However the thing is, that Starcraft 2 is very isolated and does not jab at the first game, it make sense to not be concern of it in Wings of liberty since, well, no one truly knows until Raynor is given a hefty dump that "oh Amon is returning". An issue between the Xel'naga and the Burning legion, one has a mold, the other is just there, however there was something when I played Wings of liberty and heart of the swarm, I noticed one felt heftier while the other felt shorter than short, sure its a revenge story but I felt like there was more to the plot in some regards.
Taking this dancing game of reluctant alliances and crushing betrayals and reducing it to just "Let's get the lads together and go kill SATAN" was such an odd choice
The natural purity of form and purity of essence are humans and primal zerg. Mankind naturally evolved psionic abilities and Primals became the way they are on their own. Protoss and Swarm are valid yet artificial purities crafted by Amon. Given time, without his interference, terrans and primals would ascend on their own.
It seems Alarak is the next character your going to cover, but are you planning on covering the overmind? I revisited the zerg campaign story and hes honestly such a unique villain, in that he manages to pull off being very nice to his cerebrates and kerrigan while also waging several wars that kill hundreads all without becoming goofy. He praises his cerebrates saying they have wisdom and experience, often says that hes pleased with you, is very supportive of kerrigan when she starts going off to do her own thing, and when she ends up leaving Zasz vulnerable and thus gets him killed, the overmind is mad chill about it. The juxtaposition between how he treats his underlings like a doting father and him being a literal war criminal sounds comical, but the campaign slmehow manages to make him feel alien instead. Very underrated.
Well, gotta say, they were right; when the hybrids areived it did change the StarCraft universe forever. Maybe for the worse l, but it certainly changed.
Haven't watch the video so I'm sure you'll make some good points, but I think Amon was a great villain and very memorable. It was so exciting going through all 3 campaigns and learning all about Amon and his plans for the Hybrid. Witch I also absolutely love, I love the concept and execution of them.
Arguably, Alarak never actually backstabs anyone. He challenges Malash to a pitched duel, and only after he learned he was betrayed. He works with Artanis, and while he uses his troops as fodder, he does the same for his own, and stays with them until Amon was defeated. In Nova Covert Ops, he more or less states exactly what he is going to do once he finds the Defenders of Man - scour them from the world.
Most of starcraft's (liked) villains are schemers and double-crossers, but Alarak stands out because he will tell you exactly what he is going to do, and hopes you try to oppose him.
The Tal'darim aren't something he wants to rule over and see prosper, but a military he gets to smash into enemies and fight the greatest powers in the sector with. He is the definition of a petty warlord; small-minded and bloodthirsty with a semblance of honor.
But at least he got style ;)
I can listen to him mocking me all day long
Voiced by John De Lancie. The voice like sinister velvet cake. His acting very much brings much of that personality to Alarak.
Alarak is one of my favorite things to come out of lotv, his disdain for Artanis that grows into a begrudging respect and comraderie is pretty interesting to see.
I like Alarak because he's clearly evil, but rational in his goals and a surprisingly dependable ally when your goals align with his.
In StarCraft 2 Kerrigan is written as if she doesnt know that she's confronting Duran. You'd think she'd know its Duran and chew his butt out for abandoning her in Brood War. Almost like the StarCraft 2 writers never played the earlier games and just skimmed everything else off a wiki page.
A wiki Subsourian wrote because Blizzard lost their lore book
That would be too interesting and cathartic. Blizzard writers avoid intriguing story elements like the plague.
"I've seen through your 'Doctor Narud's pathetic charade..." Says Kerrigan, right before choosing to completely ignore everything about the fact it is a charade.
"Jim, your employer is Samir Duran, the UED officer whom I infested, just thought you might want to know. Serve me or serve him, I get what I want in the end." would probably have worked better as a taunt.
@@falsnamae3511.
The problem with that is she didn't infest him or control him by that point. Like she could have lied, but going "your boss works for me" is kind of dismantled when she is fighting in the street against narud instead of just walking up and asking for the artifact from her underling.
All of SC2 is written as if they assumed the entire audience played SC1 but skipped BW.
In terms of "archetypes"
The zerg were xenomorphs, the highly adaptive animals and beasts that kill you because they want your biomass
The protoss were the little green men with technology of the future far outclassing our own
But the Xel'naga? Those were ELDRITCH abomination. No evolution, no technology, just ancient being beyond comprehension
The reason they failed as villains was because they didn't properly fit their mold, they were just generic "bad guy" faction
The freaking Overmind was a better "eldritch" monster than Amon, and he freaking MADE the overmind
honestly you know what would have been a great way to play into that if amon just didn't care about anyone he straight upp feels annoyed to have to aknowledge them "what do you think your doing? you lost what? to mildly inconvenience me just run and save me the trouble"
You mean the zerg were tyranids
@@zxt5148 Alien hiveminds have been a thing in sci-fi way before StarCraft & Warhammer. Let's not pretend like Warhammer 40K is superbly original and doesn't owe itself to God Emperor of Dune & Starship Troopers, two works that Rick Priestly himself credited when he made the setting of 40K, especially with the whole "crusading fanatical legions", God Emperors, and power armor, tropes that the aforementioned books established in the genre.
The Xenomorphs from James Cameron's Aliens take heavy inspiration from the Arachnid Empire of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel from the '50s. Cameron himself made the crew read Heinlein's book when he took on Alien and reconfigured the Xenomorph from a "perfect organism" to a vicious and adaptable alien-caste hivemind.
The StarCraft 1 Terran cinematics are almost beat for beat shots from Ridley Scott's Alien & James Cameron's Aliens.
@@zxt5148also, look at the Tyranid models from the early-mid 90s, they bear a strong, tho goofier, resemblance to their Xenomorph inspirations. In fact, you can see an update in the models looking similar to the Hydralisk from StarCraft in the later releases from the late 90s and early 2000s onward.
And before anyone talks about the Blizzard and Games Workshop partnership, that was solely for the first Warhammer/Warcraft game back in 1994.
By the time Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness released in 1995, Blizzard had no association with GW at all, and StarCraft was its own thing by the time they started on it and released it in 1998.
All they needed to do was to give us a hybrid campaign with Amon as your boss, ordering you around and being an actual character
That actually sounds pretty amazing. Seeing what he wants, goals and needs beyond just 'murder everyone lmao'
That's what heart of the Swarm should've been.
Then I'm becoming Amon's dog voluntarily.
Eh, that's a big ask, to be honest
Getting a fourth playable race would have been a fitting payoff for the cliffhanger.
If the hybrid have independent thought, maybe you'd even get to betray Amon and make alliances with the other races.
Me, scrolling (played 1000+ hours of SC2 campaign and coop): "Wait, who's Amon?"
This video: "Exactly."
Duran's original true voice was so incredible, his voice changing from human to infested was cool by itself, but his disappearance, and then reveal with THAT voice behind it saying "Magnificent, isn't it?" is just MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. I love the the SC1/Brood War voices and how they were done.
Honestly, Dark Voice Amon has a lot of the same flair as the Overmind. "The very ground beneath your feet carries the seeds of your destruction" has very much that same biblical feel, and his final line, "I love it when a plan comes together," suggests he even has a dark sense of humor and takes satisfaction in his plans coming to fruition. But when we meet him again in LotV, he really does just spout generic villain lines and (after the first Aiur segment) lose a lot. It's frustrating because at some point you can see there was something there, but they just... lost hold of it.
I think a big problem with the Hybrid is that they don't really seem to have the strengths and advantages of the Zerg. The Zerg are all about adaptability and being to consume and absorb the advantages of other races. But the Hybrids never do any of that. They have the psionic powers of the Protoss but you never see them adapt and evolve like the Zerg. It would have actually been interesting if the Hybrids ended up turning on the Xel'Naga just like both the Protoss and the Zerg.
Making the Xel'Naga into gods and ramping the mystical elements so much was also a terrible idea. The SC1 manual portrayed the Xel'Naga as curious scientists who were destroyed by their own hubris. Yes, they were very powerful and technologically advanced but there was nothing to suggest that they were gods. It just seems like they were a race that evolved much earlier and had more time to develop their science and technology, not that they were just born with mystical powers. Wasn't that why the Protoss turned on them? They realized that the Xel'Naga weren't gods and attack them, causing the Xel'Naga to abandon them.
There was a hybrid that did exactly that: Maar AKA the one you fight in the protoss missions in wings (IIRC the second one). He got stronger and harder every time you killed him. Could be an interesting setup for an endgame type enemy: one that just cant die and gets stronger every time it comes back, witch is horrifiyng because they already are strong as hell.
@@MrZDMan The funny thing is, this actually was the premise for an unused co-op mutator. There'd be a shadow hybrid that would spawn shortly after the mission starts and head to your base, and every time you kill him he just returns but stronger.
And for the most part they don't use those abiltiies. They're Protoss-shaped Ultralisks.
@@SenyiKimmo Sounds like a pretty good idea, though in harder mutations it could get out of hand easily. Still fun tho
+1 for the SC1 manual, those backstories were incredible! The Xel Naga deserved their own campaign, perhaps the opportunity to figure out what they truly wanted with their hybrids, to assess their power, or carve out a spot in the Kuprulu sector. And what would Kerrigan think? Would she be trying to get a hold of hybridization somehow? Would the Xel Naga have to team up against Kerrigan because she just goes out of control? Such untapped potential; it's a good thing SC2 is fun to play at least 😁
Regarding the "show don't tell" - imagine if in the initial missions of liberating Aiur you play with corrupted Artanis and hear Amon's whispers and commands. You hear the way he thinks what his coming goals are and the tactics he will achieve them through. This way we can grasp the character's overall psyche. While the Main Objective is to kill Zeratul.
Also the hybrids can be a combination of different personalities of protoss and zerg, a much higher level of an abomination which doesn't just tell you how the "End is nigh", but at times asks you to kill it.
Man this could have been such a better story line for Amon and Co. than what we got :(
Interesting Theory: on the topic of Xel'naga ascension, we actually get hints of which two species would have ascended instead if Amon hadn't mucked things up; the Primal Zerg... and the _Terrans._
Think about it; the Terran Ghosts are psychic badasses who can accomplish nigh impossible feats (just look at the Nova covert ops), and that's only after their psychic potential is effectively neutered by thorough conditioning and implants. Even then, their own handlers can barely control them. In their short sighted pettiness, the major Terran powers saw such individuals as mere weapons rather than the next stage of evolution.
Secondly, while the Swarm may acknowledge the importance of essence, the overmind sees it as just one half of a puzzle, while the Primal Zerg are fanatically devoted to the concept. Zurvan even attacks Kerrigan on Zerus explicitly to either gain her essence or provide _his own_ to her _in sacrifice,_ and is perfectly content with both outcomes. If that's any indication of the Primal Zerg culture or mentality, they are indeed the true scions of essence.
Unfortunately, Amon's meddling destroyed any hope of the two races ascending into a new Xel'naga. It's not like a Psychic Terran is ever going to splice herself with Primal Zerg DNA...
Wait a minute...
🤯🤯🤯
That's right! It's Stukov!
Wouldnt that mean that the terrans would have to be pure of form though? I would argue we are far from it. Maybe with enough gene editing for a thousand years but thats a big maybe. The protoss couldnt be infested like we could so they are much more likely to be the pure of form? Or am I missing something
@@Viper40758
While "Purity of form" is already pretty vauge, it clearly doesn't include physical might. No Protoss or Terran army will ever match the Zerg (purity of essence) with biology alone; even the dark templar required technology to have a prayer against the zerg.
Rather, "Form" seem to indicate the minds, creativity, and psychic potential of the individual. Yet even though psychic power is the Protoss's main shtick, the primitive Terrans are still able to face them on equal terms via their ingenuity and resourcefulness while the Protoss have a _major_ problem with creative sterility and cultural stagnation.
@@Antidragon-nl7by To me purity of form doesnt mean might or any of that. Purity of form feels like an uncompromisable body, the antithesis to the ever changing zerg. You have to have a iron will and an unchanging form to stay pure. The protoss definitely represent that more
@@Viper40758
Furthermore, let's look at how quickly both races developed their psychic abilities. The Protoss were given a leg up several millennia before and haven't grown any more powerful since. The Terrans began displaying psychic potential just a few generations ago, and some individuals (notably Kerrigan) are already on par with some of the greatest Protoss in the setting.
TLDR; The Protoss's (admittedly powerful) psychic abilities have already plateaued, while the Terrans are progressing in psychic potential in leaps and bounds.
Bro I'd totally listen to a 20 minute video talking up Abathur. He's like if pragmatism was a slug with a PhD in biology. He is such a bizarre personality and visual design that he manages to be more alien than any character that's ever existed in the entirety of Starcraft. His strangeness isn't even limited to his own game. He was 100% my favorite character in Heroes of the Storm with how tricky and strange he was as a character archetype. There's literally nothing else like him in any game that I've ever seen and it's hard to believe that this brilliance came from the same team that gave us SC2 Kerrigan.
I was really disappointed when we first learned about him the popular theory was that he was evolved from the original broodwar cerebrt that karrgen kept alive (you the player) it even tried a little with the u oversaw you in the crystals line. Discounting it was a popular theory
I'd say that a proper analysis of Abathur needs the novels
Abathur is THE pinnacle support character in any game and his interaction when encountering Azeroth magic like with Kel'thuzad were very fascinating. Imagine him trying to make a magic Zerg.
Why do I want to be science pals with a fictional alien slug? It's thrilling, yet also vaguely frightening
This video just reminded me that Ourous straight up says "only a xel'naga can deafeat the fallen one" but we JUST killed Narud with like, guns and stukov's corrosive blast
it's just stupid. No need to analyse anything to try to come up with some explanation. It's just stupid lazy writing.
In my opinion, Narud isn't a Xel'naga. I don't think he's been ever mentioned as a Xel'naga, only that he was a servant of Amon
Yeah, he was always said to be a shapeshifter. So most likely he shapeshifted into a Xel'Naga.
@@Tridetus Honestly, Lotv was a god damn let down. We had cool hybrid like Maar and Hazrad in WoL (Zeratul mission line and the secret mission, respectively), as well as the mission where you have a time limit on your life. No new hybrid gimmicks that were cool, no new named dudes, and then repetetive missions, except for like one or two, Zeratul dies after doing all his stuff for fucking nothing, epilogue was cringe, and we didn't get Mohandar!
@@haplogoldfein8426 Pretty sure Stukov calls him one in HotS.
You know what might have fixed Amon? The closest thing he has to... well, anything character wise is the whole "forced identity" thrust upon him. So imagine if anytime he interacts with a character, he is only able to do so by taking the identity of that character. A simple shadow, a twisted version of whoever he's speaking with, because in this reality that's the only way he can express himself.
It'd really lean into the pathetic Lovecraftian vibe they tried to give him. It's not that he hates existence because it's imperfect, it's not that he thinks he can do the Xel'Naga's job better. On a fundamental level he's a being incompatible with this world, he's a creature of the Void. So say the Xel'Naga tried to "fix" his species, make the Void more like them, by giving the Void an option to mirror them, to comprehend and interact with their "real" world. And it hurts. Mirroring the hive mind of the Zerg and the Khala of the Protoss, this "Amon" entity was an experiment that bottled up the whole Void and gave it a personality, but the Void was never meant to be condensed like that! It just exists, a weird primordial soup, it's an entirely separate plane of existence than what we'd call sentience. Imagine we took every plant in the world and created a single entity to act as a personality to connect with them because "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to talk to plants?" But that thing isn't part of what it once was, yet it can still feel everything it's supposed to be part of while simultaneously being entirely alien to all of plant-kind, because that's fundamentally not what plants are. That would be maddening, it's fundamental existence would feel wrong!
It'd make his destructive conquest make sense. In this forced, warped parody of existence where he's eternally divorced from his home in the Void, the only course of action left is to destroy everything so there is only the Void. Could even make Duran more interesting in the process, turn him into a "Netflix Castlevania Isaac" kind of character that hates humanity, sympathizes with Dracula/Amon's plight, so he actively assists him in destroying his own world. It could finish off the epilogue as a tragedy, because Amon can't be fixed, he can't be returned home but will always exist so long as his home does, so the only course of action is to destroy the Void entirely to put him out of his misery.
It'd require heavy rewrites, it doesn't fix how garbage the other elements of the sequel's stories are, but writing this is the first time I've felt any kind of interest in anything related to Amon. Admittedly a low bar, but hey! At least it's something!
Great Idea!
That shadow identity could be elaborated upon: instead of Amon possessing someone to just smugly say how doomed they are, Amon could take the bits and pieces of the possessed’s personality they/it agrees with and amplify them.
It could be truly Lovecraftian in the sense that this alien entity reveals and amplifies specific traits of personally to exploit them.
Like possessing Artanis to amplify his thirst for justice, fill his mind with “RAGE” of all his memories of the Narazeem (Dark Protoss) betraying his people and culture, “As THEY knew better than EVERYONE else”
Driving his hatred and thirst for revenge to the extreme of killing Zeratul.
Great drama potential there.
Another possession is the Protoss Lorekeeper, her trait Amon could amplify would be pride, so she would be saying stuff like “I am a force beyond the very GODS of reality” (having the idea that the Void-avatar Amon would be more chaotically powerful than its creators).
And finally Selendas’s possession could revolve around her detached absolute loyalty, Amon twisting the honourable side of her as a great Templar commander, into an unflinching willingness to kill friends (like Artanis) if he doesn’t join “… the right side in the universe’s greater conflict”.
Each time Void-avatar Amon would be amplifying each victim’s traits to be more alike to him, to find empathy in this foreign world, like a child drawing themselves into a picture book as a little stick figure.
And the natural hostility of people against these personality corruption, could be the catalyst for further disconnection and thus motivation for the destruction of all unempathstic to Amon: reality.
Your idea is so much better, worth a fanfic. Maybe i won't be lazy to write it one day...
If Blizzard still existed, they’d like to know your location
my dude, you are brilliant
Warhammer warp:
To my mind, one of the things that rubbed my gears the wrong way the most about LOTV was that it undoes a lot of what makes the Protoss interesting in the original game. The glory and the tragedy of the Protoss is that they're heroes, who always, *always* stand up for what they believe in, and it's this very trait which often leads them to be fanatical or uncompromising. This, to my mind, is what makes the Khalai/Dark Templar story so interesting: it's not about good guys and bad guys, it's about people who are so alike in temperament that they can't help but see one another as deadly threats.
And then Amon comes along. The Khala was a tool, the Dark Templar were objectively right, no more shades of grey.
just because the khala was able to be corrupted doesn't mean it wasn't the right way to do things. new baby protoss will be born able to access the khala free of any risk of amon, but even if they keep cutting their connection to it, that doesn't mean it wasn't the best choice at the time.
remember, the khala was developed as a push for peace. the race was about to autogenocide themselves, until the khala was used to connect everyone and put an end to the endless wars caused by stupid people being stupid. it's part of the joke, but think about it like facebook. at the start facebook was a pretty good app, it connected people all around the world in a way that had never been done before, allowing people with drastically different points of view and personal histories to weigh in on discussions with people they otherwise would have never met. now facebook is literal brain rot and has time and time again been shown to be trying to influence people with ads and curated conversations. the fact that facebook has died doesn't mean the discussions we had years ago are now tainted. knowing that something good can become bad doesn't make it's objectively good traits magically become bad.
so the khala is still a tool that people could use to deepen their understanding and communication... but there is a risk that it can be used against them.
the nerazim forsake the khala and communicate with their words and actions... but that can lead to misunderstandings and pointless conflict.
the tal'darim value power and see honor and strength as the strongest virtues... but a strong leader can use his absolute power for absolute evil.
none of them are "objectively right" there is a compromise happening in all 3 ideologies, but the nerazim compromise is the closest to your human mindset which is why you think it is objectivly correct.
@@NoESanityit’s a very tiny interaction, but I really liked the way Talandar’s whole concept of identity interacts with the khalai/nerazim philosophy. You get everyone giving their cultural and personal input on things in a fun way, like the nerazim consider someone’s identity to be the sum of their actions- Vorazun believes a 99% copy of a person will act differently in that 1% of the time , across their whole lifetime, enough to be a completely different person.
Karax and the khalai see a person as some core immutable concept, your memories left behind in the khala after you die are you. So the digitized brain scan with all your memories is a copy, it’s a continuation of the person in a new form.
Alarak despises outright lies as weakness, and the taldarim only really see a person for their usefulness and place in society. He sees the purifiers as lies incarnate, they’re just machines that have memories uploaded into them, to claim that identity as their own is just a lie and a charade, weakness in clinging to and pretending to be something they’re not. He seems to consider Talandar a person in his own right, but to claim he’s fenix would be a lie, fenix is a dead protoss- this is just a machine with his memories.
You get a lot of tiny character elements like that across lotv, but I think that specific plotline has the most where they’re just directly compared to one another. None of them are considered wrong, either, it’s actually cool that Talandar’s journey to his own identity is considered *his* and not how purifiers as a whole view it, with many others taking on different elements of those different cultural perspectives.
@@NoESanity While I do like that way of looking at it, you're mistaken to think that I think the Dark Templar ideology is objectively correct because it's "closest to my human mindset". From the wiki: "A few rogue tribes refused to submit to the Khala, believing that their individual identities would be erased to further promote the rule of the Judicator Caste. Although they were not hostile or militant, they believed that the communal agenda of the Conclave would be the eventual doom of the protoss." Substitute 'Judicator Caste' for 'Amon', and this is 100% correct.
For the record, you shouldn't conflate my considering the Dark Templar to be objectively correct with considering the Dark Templar to be relatable: they're hypocrites, every bit as prone to unquestioning obedience of authority as the Khalai are (as they proved in 'The Insurgent'). Kerrigan often gets flak for not deserving her redemption arc: the Dark Templar don't deserve ideological vindication.
Also, you missed out one faction in your list: the Purifiers. They still have the Khala - or rather, a data-web that fulfils the same purpose. With Artanis and his followers having become de-facto Dark Templar by forsaking the Khala and severing their nerve cords, the Purifiers could be viewed as the last "real" Templar left.
We really should've had Ulrezaj or some sort of Dark Templar villain instead of Amon, not only is that a more interesting potential dynamic but it makes the Dark Templar less "goodie goodie two shoes who are always right and perfect about everything"
@@KaiserMattTygore927 While I agree that a Dark Templar villain would have worked better, to call the Dark Templar right about everything is objectively wrong.
Remember in both base SC1,Brood war, WoL, and LotV; the Dark Templar are often wrong and pay the price for it. Remember in brood war the Dark Templar's nativity with the Queen of Blades resulted in the loss both of a High Templar leader and the matriarch of the Dark Templar.
Or when their advice on how to defeat the cerebrates goes wrong because High Templar don't have void energy to properly defeat them, resulting in a fruitless battle that ruined Tassadar's reputation and caused infighting within the High Templar.
Or how Zeratul not preparing for and Not fighting against Artanis properly made him lose the dual even if there was the silver lining of freeing Artanis.
Or them Dark Templar needing to detonate their own home planet because they couldn't protect it properly. The Dark Templar literally lost their entire civilization in that one battle.
TLDR: Good villain idea but Dark Templar are far from always right even in SC2. As Dark Templar are defined by their failures and how they learn from them.
The biggest problem with Amon is he was basically a Starcraft version of Warcrafts Sargaras. Both are members of a god-like race who eventually become tired of the order and decide to destroy reality.
I was quite disappointed the Xel'naga turned out too be god like entities instead of just technologically powerful aliens, like imagine Amon was part of a remanent of the Xel'Naga continuing their experiment of creating the perfect life forms instead of a god wanting to destroy the universe.
I feel like one major problem for Amon compared to the other villains is that he doesn't really get to *do* anything. The Overmind is directly ordering you and the rest of the swarm, it infests and kills characters we like. Mengsk is charismatic you fight his forces directly in Starcraft 2, you attack territory he controls, steal weapons he's building, and co-opt his research projects. He acts as an antagonist, although far reduced from a primary actor in the first game. Alarak fronts super hard then gets to show off why he's in charge in a Might Makes Right society. Enough has been said about Kerrigan.
All of Amon's action are both retroactive and in the past. He controlled the Overmind. He planted the hybrid. All he gets to do in 3 games as the antagonist is insult you and take the Golden Armada 2/3s of the way through, who immediately leave the story to go fight the terrans and zerg offscreen. And his insults suck.
Give him dope Lieutenants for every major arc that you can actually fight and have a cool design and different personalities (and have them all come back for a big boss fight in the epilogue). Give us a horror mission where the Golden Armada under his control is trashing a Terran force and we're huddled in dark hallways hearing his voice echoing from every corner. Give him more forces like the Taldarim that have goals and aren't just generic red force and *show* us what he promised them. Have him *regularly* kill characters we know or like, this is the big sendoff to the setting with an end war and nobody except Zeratul dies. Every campaign has a bunch hangers-on, Ice one of them every now and then. Have Amon kill Matt Horner, Abathur, and Karas while taunting them. Finally, punch-up his dialogue a little. Holy cow I can't remember a single one of his lines.
_"All of Amon's action are both retroactive and in the past. He controlled the Overmind. He planted the hybrid. All he gets to do in 3 games as the antagonist is insult you and take the Golden Armada 2/3s of the way through, who immediately leave the story to go fight the terrans and zerg offscreen. And his insults suck."_
Why does that kinda sound like Zovaal.
What really confuses me is how many characters that do exist almost solely as random one-off fodder who could have been killed by Amon. Urun and Mohandar disappear after their WoL appearance, so they could have starred as supporting characters who Amon kills. Maybe have Mohandar initially be the DT leader on Shakuras, giving tons of support and advice, and the big planet kaboom stunt get's interrupted by Amon foreseeing it with Mohandar having to warp in to save Artanis, sacrificing himself to do so and entrusting the future to Vorazun? It would have been interesting if Vorazun initially started off justifiably pissed off and bitter at Artanis leading the destruction of her home and the death of her foster dad, but lightens up the more she and Artanis work together.
Urun could have piloted the Shield of Auir (also weirdly nonexistent after WoL) to hold off the possessed Golden Armada as Artanis' small group flees, perhaps even starring in his own timed holdout mission where he leads an orbital space defense as Artanis gathers his forces to leave on the Spear of Adun. And it ends with Urun ultimately deciding not to join them to pull off something cool as a last stand blow against Amon, who kills him only for Urun to refuse to yield in his final moments as a demonstration of the unbreakable Protoss will.
IIRC Maar was named Maar during Wings of Liberty and was changed to Hybrid Protoss after LotV launched. I thought it was because they used the name Maar somewhere in LotV and forgot that they had used it for WoL and didn't want to confuse people, but I can't seem to find what in LotV it also referred to. Either way, Maar is memorable not because he's our first experience fighting a hybrid and its immense power, but also because it was named. There are no named hybrid in LotV which reduces their memorability.
surrender to this pear
Don't forget Hazrad, the hybrid of Castanar
One major plot hole is in SC1, it was known (read the manual!) that the zerg killed the Xel'Naga. Kerrigan may not have known this, but other cerebrates or Abathur-aged beings in her employ certainly would. So did Abathur just... not bother to bring it up? "Oh, you've been looting like a hundred temples looking for Xel'Naga, I should note that we took them out, like, ages ago. Guess I should have said that a couple dozen planets earlier..."
The real reason she didn't know, is it's just a plothole from writers who didn't pay attention to the original lore, but there could have been something there: WHY did all the zerg just selectively not tell Kerrigan? We could have had the hand and works of Amon directly messing with the viewpoint character (Kerrigan) a whole expansion earlier, giving him more time for development.
Kerrigan: Where could the Xel'Naga have gone?
Abathur: [tentatively raising a hand] We ate them
the whole entirety of sc2 was badly written, there was no prophecy in sc1 why would they use such a terrible trope for a sequel? oh to give kerrigan plot armor, when the previous game established no one was safe. Then the xel naga where ruined they are supposed to be a super advanced race that have zerg and protoss like traits, could have easily made them a campaign faction like the naga in wc3 frozen throne, but no that would require being original and competent at writing a story and game.
Exactly! The Zerg killed the Xel'Naga! Amon being the sole survivor could have been interesting, but they didn't really go that route.
@@hammrshark9881 I feel like modern blizzard create Stories far too complex for their own hood that just don't make sense
they have to add just too many weird unnatural angles now to their stories that just don't fight with the actual universes these elements are put into
all the Eldrick beings and void dimensions and nephalem really don't enhance the stories blizzard create nowadays they just muddy things up in it stops feeling like a real world and it becomes very clear that it is an artificial written world
Warcraft Starcraft and Diablo all moved way past there beautifully simple and easy to understand worlds and stories Making what felt like bad fan fiction
Here's the thing you got teached in professional theatre. King played by his surroundings. If a character fear the king, king is fearsome. If a minion smart and treaky, king is smart to keep them. And if a minion is dumb brute with generic lines, well... You got the idea. They should focus more on Narud and smart manipulative characters more so the Amon feels more like mastermind.
That is, a very true when it comes to writing villains. This could be akin to for example, companies or organizations in real life.
You see, to be a leader, you don't need to be the best at everything. You just need to know how to use your tools right. Something that is usually call leverage when dealing with people. You can see traces of amon personality in Alarak, Malash, Narud and Maar; because in a way, the leaders under a boss are a extension of that particular individual. Whatever is mindset or modus operandi, you get the point.
The problem with Amon I would say, is that despite all his power and resources, he miss uses, miss manages and waste all his opportunities. He lacks competence.
I think a similar character from another franchise that comes to my mind is Jul' Mdama from halo 4. While wasted and dislike (I personally hate him, in a good way), is arguably a villain that is there because he is an opportunist. The amount of times he survive out of luck or cleverness is infuriating, because is a villain that knows how to screw things up, the type of person that can be bad and will take every opportunity to make his enemies miserable. Amon, despite his role and assets, is like that character that says: The risk I took was calculated. But damn, I am bad at math.
The reason I compare them both is because either have a very anticlimactic death or serve sort of like a similar antagonistic role in the story, despite being absent 90% of the time in the game.
Narud definitely is the one that didn't get enough script writing, you and I agree on that much. Amon was fine though. I guess they could have done more flashbacks or something(like showing the lore that was in the SC1 instruction manual, which was poorly described, I guess they sort of fix the problem in a book that I didn't read or something, but it would be nice if that kind of thing was in the game) but I think what they did with him was okay for the most part.
I still cannot forgive them for what they did to Duran. Him and Stugolv were probably the most memorable characters to me in SC1, and while I did enjoy Infested Stugolv quite a bit, turning Duran from the silver tongued schemer to some old white dude in a dragon ball cosplay was just so bad. Like I didn’t even put two and two together that Narud was Duran backwards until the very end of HOTS because something like that would just be too stupid for him.
That and even if you do put the pieces together the characters just don't feel like they're the same character it doesn't feel like it's Duran playing a new angle of manipulation
His appearance in the second game is just objectively dumber less charming less skilled at manipulation he just doesn't seem to be the same you can tell me it's the same character but it doesn't feel like it
It really is some absurd narrative whiplash seeing Duran go from the ultimate schemer who played literally every single faction and subfaction in SC1 as the mastermind to eldritch powers, to just Frieza LARPing as an old dude who can't decide on what form he wants to wear after he loses his DBZ beam struggle.
The Hybrid suck because they take over as the bad guy in 2
If you played brood war the last mission just tells you the UED is coming back and they will bring a real army this time
Amon is hella boring, he comes out in Legacy and then dies
He has no build up
Agreed. The UED should have came back in LOTV and while the fighting is going on, Amon forces strike. The Hybrids come out of nowhere with their zerg forces. And the people of the koprulu sector are scrambling to figure out whats going on.
Actually, the hybrid were... mentioned in Brood War on a secret mission that featured Zeratul.
@@haplogoldfein8426 And that....has 0 to do with what he said, next time......Rather then doing the reddit thing of ruining ellipsises....work on your......reading comprehension........
Gah! *coughs and dies because he had breathing difficulties*
@@libertinarey How does what I said have 0 to do with the things stated? They said the hybrid were a sudden thing. Like out of nowhere. But in a secret mission in Brood War, where you control Zeratul, you discover protoss being experimented on. Also, the fuck is reddit?
@@haplogoldfein8426 "He has no build up" is the last line of OP's comment, referring to Amon, not the Hybrid. And if you're talking about MasterGhostf's comment, "The Hybrids come out of nowhere with their zerg forces." is a continuation of their hypothetical storyline. That's why what you said has 0 to do with what was stated previously.
Also reddit is a social media website divided into categories (subreddits) whose userbase doesn't tend to use good punctuation.
Does that answer your questions?
The whole amon storyline cheapens the overmind's swarm quite a bit I think.
I kinda wish 2nd expansion was Protoss instead, reclaiming Aiur with Raynor's crew on the side, then after its liberation the UED returns with a massive fleet, and attack. Soon you find out the UED fleet is infested; for anyone who played Brood War those implications are horrible; Raynor and crew then ask the Protoss to help them back to Earth, where Heart of the Swarm final expansion begins. Kerrigan in human form helps them fight/control the Zerg who have completely taken over the Sol system, and eventually they destroy the reformed Overmind, with Kerrigan's influence over the remaining Zerg growing. At an alarming rate.
"You should know better by now Jim, not to trust me. I may look human, but never trust a beast by its skin. I am amazed you were so easy to convince, after all these years. Did it never occur to you the Xel'Naga device was my own creation? You still hoped I could be saved. While you wallowed in self-pity after the Brood War I let a few UED ships return to Earth. The Swarm on board did not disappoint. THIS is the heart of the swarm now. All mine. Take whatever allies you can find still alive, and run home like the dogs you are. I will not show the same mercy when I return." ruclips.net/video/3Fao3B7XEF0/видео.html
I’m for learning about Donny. It’s be interesting to see how someone so seemingly straight forward impacts the story of StarCraft.
It's simple, he doesn't have a campaign. The Overmind has one. Kerrigan has one. Amon doesn't. And he doesn't have the presence of Mengsk to carry him as a side character. So it's no wonder he's forgetful as a character. I disagree with the hybrids. They're very strong in design and I want more hybrids without Amon.
My suggestions for fixing Amon are as follows:
1) Ditch the floating squid head design and make the Xel'naga walk. They could be quadrupeds like centaurs or even have six crab legs to make them more interesting/unique, but they should be smaller than a house and should walk.
2) Amon was part of the team that uplifted the Protoss and the Zerg. His was one of the ships orbiting over Zerus when the Overmind sent the swarm to wipe them out, and he managed to warp away from the planet, but not before his ship was damaged enough that the jump was only partially successful, trapping him and his crew in the Void.
3) He and his crew eventually managed to free their ship from the Void, but not before most of them died and the rest went a bit mad.
4) Upon returning to normal space, Amon and his crew started to develop the hybrid as a means of enacting revenge on the Zerg and the Protoss.
5) After using the hybrid as weapons to destroy the Zerg and Protoss, Amon plans to experiment on humans just as they had previously experimented on the previous two species.
Just give him his own campaign
In WoL the Hybrid were set up as really scary.
The one Raynor encounters is literally invincible and he has to run from it like a horror mission.
Maar would be scary if not for immortal hardened shields lol.
In Utter Darkness was a crazy fucking mission back in 2010.
Hell even in HotS they were kinda scary in Narud's lab.
Then LOTV uh yeah
Maar also isn't a big fan of High Templars and their feedback, without the energy he really can't do much ^^ - but for an average player he is a menace
Hybrid Crushing Machine Simulator
Starcraft 2 story has a ton of parallels with Diablo 3. They went for spectacle instead of writing a grounded story and ended up creating generic cheesy marvel universe type b movie plot. characters acting out of character, bbeg as the main antagonist, super saiyan kerrigan, etc. Appealing to the lowest common denominator means making bland garbage that doesn't appeal to anyone. Which is a great shame, perhaps one day we will return to some good storytelling if Blizzard ever decides to bring back the franchise. Anyway review Abathur, he is great.
Everytime I start a next mission of LotV:
- Wait, who are we fighting now?
And the answer is always: Amon Faction. It’s so freaking boring.
@@Noplayster13 Yeah, the exact problem of the campaign for me is that every single mission is "we are fighting amon again"
@@RancorSnp You know it would have been very interesting, is aside from Amon we fight other factions like. Dominion Mengsk Loyalist refusing to give up and would not ally with the Zerg under Karrigan after what she did. Zerg factions either under Amons control, or independent ones wishing to simply consume all life in there path. An a Protoss faction like lets say a small group of Tal'darim Protoss joining Amon and helping his return by attacking the other races.
@@RancorSnpyeah just combination of all factions taking away from their individual personalities in gameplay
Alright, I remember Ye Olde Starcraft Manual.
And I prefer the Xel Naga in that version-
They Make the protoss, but were less than impressed by them, made the Zerg and *was* impressed by them, until they were eaten by the Swarm.
In the nu canon, the idea that the Xel Naga gets eaten is laughable, unless they willingly walk their dicks into the Zerg Swarm.
Making the zerg v Protoss a long awaited Sibling rivalry match, and from the sounds of it- Protoss was winning by virtue of Orbital Superiority till Zerg really fucked them up.
It is the host bodies that are eaten. The real ones are killed by Amon and his followers inside void.
@@lostrelicsf2p756
"We're a species that makes the protoss look like Zerg, technologically. Let's get eaten by ground based organisms who can't get off their planet, since they haven't eaten the things that *Let them do that yet.*"
"Our ancient technology can instantly wipe out areas of effect because our giant brains grant us enough ability to produce the zerg and the protoss as species. Whoops."
This is Tech Tree 0 Zerg, they haven't eaten everything yet. It's like a player came in 30 minutes late to a match and still won.
You get a like for remembering Ye Olde Manual! The Xel'Naga had "world ships", and the Zerg became aware of them and killed them.
Ah, the OG Starcraft manual. I musta read the terran/zerg/protoss backstories dozens of times! Such an incredible setup which makes the changes all the more glaring. The Xel Naga were part of the universe not above it. Story could have been so much more interesting with their own campaign.
I always found it interesting that the gameplay of starcraft 2 got better with each expansion while the story got worse by at least the same margin. By the end, I was 0% invested in the characters and the story. The hybrids and amon were so lame to me. Not sure why, but they just seemed so arbitrary to have one villain that all the others could come together and fight against. The cliché anime villain plot of "I'll kill everything so nobody has to suffer anymore" also gives me brain damage every time I encounter it.
The gameplay definitely got more refined with each expansion, but Hots and especially Wings has lotv beaten in terms of variety. Almost every mission has a unique gimmick. Sure some of them are better than other to play and some just suck, but I think the more experiemental, open enden, nonlinear approach of wings leads to a better overall experience, even if the average mission quality might be objectively greater in lotv. Like you would never see anything like the fire wave of supernova or the rising lava of devil's playground in later expansions.
@@herrdoktor1810To be fair, both the wall of fire and the rising lava worked, because the Terrans have mobile buildings. That type of gameplay is easier to implement when you can move your base around.
@@Altermerea Sure i see your Point. But ist can be done with protoss getting unpowered buildings. See harbinger of oblivion from mindhawks Challenge gauntlet. Unforgivingly hard, But it could done with reasonable difficulty with a few tweaks. You also have the moving Platform from ravenscar to relocate your Base. The Mission Designer Just hast to get creative.
@@herrdoktor1810 Could have given the protoss a mission where an EMP goes off every now and then requiring the protoss place to use warp prisms to power buildings.
Because with every expansion, the conflict became more external instead of internal. The stakes felt impactful in WoL because it was essentially a story of redemption. Raynor felt guilty about Kerrigan becoming the Queen of Blade, so he kept trying to save her and it wasn't clear until the end that it was possible. Tychus was also a man looking for redemption, but with much more tragic end. The conflict is rooted in human values and so it felt big. In later expansions everything gets thrown out the windows in favor of a faceless evil enemy. Imagine if Heart of the Swarm has been about Kerrigan having to reckon with the things she's done with every faction howling for her blood, including the Protosses who helped Raynor last time. That would have been great drama.
You know what would kinda be interesting. If at the end of salvation when there's maybe 10-20 seconds left on the clock. You are getting battered on all sides by the golden armada. You've destroyed amon's host body and are about to save the protoss when amon being the petty control freak he is decides to flip the table when things don't go his way. All the protoss units attacking just drop dead on the spot. And you are stuck there with the last few seconds on the clock counting down as what just happened sinks in. You are left with a moment of quiet and a pyrrhic victory. The keystone goes off but there's no protoss left to save. I don't know if it would be better but I think it would give amon more characterization and give the player stronger feelings towards amon
Damn that would be brutal.
That would be a proper 'fuck you' honestly. Just all of the Protoss in his control killing themselves out of spite
LotV is just so earnest it would feel wrong.
Salvation is a perfect ending for Artanis. You finally go up against the famed Golden Armada and weather the onslaught, brother killing brother, until you fire the mcguffin and get the chance to make your case. Artanis gets a few minutes to convince them all to let go of the old ways and comes into the future together.
You might make Amon more threatening you'd be sabotaging the part of LotV that works
@@hannabelphaege3774
That is true, but I would argue that the idea of Artanis convincing the entire Protoss population to "let go" is inferior on just too many levels.
It blends the Protoss society (speaking solely in terms of former Imperials, obviously) into an amorphous mass, lacking nuance and featuring only the general "Protoss" social traits as relevant. This is the case for the whole "we are all Templar" thing, but much more so at the very pinnnacle of the Salvation arc, as for it to work, every single Protoss needed to arrive at this particular decision to separate themselves from the Khala at that exact few moments they had to spare, regardless of their caste, their ideology, their background.
It makes Amon look incompetent for playing into an obvious trap. He is literally one of those who used to create things like Keystones, he should be fairly aware of its capabilities, especially given that its basically the cornerstone of his entire 10 000 years-spanning plan.
It feels hollow, because none of Artanis'es "diplomatic victories" are actually earned, and this one isnt an exception. In all situations he has to do "diplomacy" to "convince" someone to work with him, they either give themselves to him before he can even start (see Alarak) for no real reason, or just does a speech to make his problems go away. There is no buildup of trust, there is no compromises, there is no convincing - all the factions at his disposal are ALREADY willing to work FOR him, and that doesnt even begin to cover the many-faceted former-Imperial (I refuse to call them Khalai) society, which is perfectly willing to work together for practically anything even before Amon was a thing.
It also is incredibly hypocritical of Artanis of all people to talk about "letting go of the old ways", but unforunately nobody remembers what Artanis used to actually be like before Blizzard decided to shoehorn him into a Protoss role model.
@@UEDCommander "I WILL CHASE YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!!!" Oh wait, wrong one.
I SO MUCH WISH we could explore the philosophies of Hybrids (as individuals), Amon, Narud in any more starcraft games since Microsoft can make small SC games now, not just RTS.
Just imagine, You fight as extension of will power of an ancient god and he just kinda *is gone* at one point. What now? kind of moment.
For a while now I’ve wanted to make a custom sc2 campaign where your on an outlying world, some ragtag farmers and settlers, away from all the sc2 politics stuff and like THREE total hybrid show up and it’s properly terrifying for a several story tall genetically perfect monster.
The issues that I have with the story of Star Craft 2 all stem from the fact that they never force you to play as the bad guys. The closest that you come to being bad is HotS, and even then, it's Kerrigan has noble intentions; then ends justify the means.
You are very right about the hybrid. For years I envisioned a semi-playable 4th race in SC that mixed the powers of the Zerg and Protoss. Players would interact with it in a similar manner as they did with the Naga race in Warcraft 3. But your thoughts about simply giving them any kind of personality would be cheaper to build and probably carry the story better.
The idea of the hybrid being kind of Frankenstein's monsters would have been interesting - horrible abominations, intelligent and powerful, in a tentative alliance with their creator until the creator turns against them. Maybe have them be self destructive - torn between their zerg and protoss nature, they swarm into battle but share in the suffering of it. Maybe they don't know Amon's true plans any more than the Tal'Darim do; they believe they will take the place of the various races as the dominant sapient lifeform in the universe led by their god-king Amon in his own hybrid body, but then learning his desire to unmake all of creation - leading to him trying to try to do the hybrid detonation thing he does at the end of the In Utter Darkness vision - which would add more tension to the need to destroy his body. Maar creates the implication that the hybrid could be actual characters with personalities and it's a shame the writers never did anything with it.
Blizzard probably tried to make a space version of Sauron, but they couldn't give him a proper motivation. I could probably forgive him if his motivation remained unclear, if at the same time he acted less predictably throughout the game. He would seem incomprehensible.
Amon's vision is a utilitarian-nihilistic view of the problem of suffering. Eliminating all life in a generation is numerically the lesser of two evils quantitatively, compared to the deaths before and after in an infinite cycle. Darwin realized how much pain would be enough to produce one species. Why does evolution thrive on pain? And even if 99 percent of beings were happy, that would be less than 1% of beings who suffered in the past and infinite future. That's the genius of Amon's motivation as a villain. The questioning of life itself. Then there's a downside to his resentment, but it's interesting. It has layers.
and it draws a parallel with Kerrigan and her position in taking the mantle of the Xelnaga. One resents it and another takes it as penance.
Man I remember this one video where a guy casually explained both the story of warcraft and starcraft at the same time.
I genuinely do not know who did it though and that fact has been eating away at me since to me it was such a funny video.
I know that this probably isn't the place hut thinking about amon got me into thinking about that video and how I don't know who made it.
I alwasy thought the hybrids as vessels for Amons consciousness, a way for him to get ”hands-on” into business on a micro scale. Not directly controlled by him but given a purpose that they’d follow, kinda like a programming, and that’s why they have little to none in the personality department. This would leave outliers like Mar but in that case more autonomy would be needed as Mar was basically a warden and Amon did not have any reason to babysit him.
"the lore is in the novels"
I miss the times of warcraft 3, diablo 2 and old blizzard games where the lore was actually in the game and not paywalled behind products of even more questionable quality.
To be fair, a significant chunk of the lore for the old blizzard games was in the manuals that came with the games as well. Starcraft's manual covered the creation of the Zerg and Protoss along with the formation of the major Terran nations, Diablo's manual covered the war between Heaven and Hell and how Diablo and his brothers were imprisoned, and Warcraft's manual covered the beginning of the Burning Legion and the backstory of other major characters. Each manual was pretty much a novel in their own right.
Now the manual's came with the games so at least you didn't have to pay extra for them. Plus it was something almost every game did back then to save on memory.
@@toddclawson3619 Weren't there also books for the older Warcraft games too, or am I forgetting something?
@@toddclawson3619😢
now I want Starcraft 2: Voidtastic Boogaloo.
Basically, they resolved most of story and characters arcs in incredibly lazy way, only so Terrans, Zerg and Protoss could fight together... Giant Cthulhu Squid? Amon looks more like a way for Raynor and Kerrigan to end up together than actual character.
To me Amon is a textbook example of a villain made not with the intention to be its own character, but as a stepping stone for the main characters. The reason why I liked kerrigan so much is that I (atleast personally) enjoy villains which could be the main character of their story, as much as kerrigan is a villain, she was designed to have all of her actions playable, when you fight kerrigan you also PLAY as kerrigan meaning that the writers wrote her personality to not only grow and change, but also her actions to be interesting and unique. I think that if Amon was also written as a character to be playable by the player, he would have done more unique stuff, his personality would have existed and changed and he would have had ACTUAL DRIP.
But yeah, it just feels like everything he does isn't for himself. A villain should at the least be the main character of THEIR OWN story, but Amon is not that. I wish he did more cool shit, instead of just unsheathing the curtain and being like "Haha its too late guys" when it was not too late, I wish he would have still kept more secrets and I wish duran/narud would have done some more stuff. I would have loved if you were secretly playing in Amons hands, and the curtain was revealed when he was actually resurected, the hybrid are slowly leaking out and you get suspicions and its actually too late and more interesting. Like, why doesn't Amon infest ships with larvae which grow and we have to chase around a big swarm, being on the opposite end of The Enemy Within? I also really liked the idea of being controlled by amon, FORCE ME to kill Zeratul and betray my allies, make me also be in Amons grasp, make me, the player, feel the impact of what Amon does instead of hearing about it. Being mind controlled would show the severity of the situation much more than watching people be mind controlled and being told about how they were mind controlled
SC2 storytelling, especially in LOTV, suffers a lot with 'tell, don't show'. There were instances of that across all entries, but LOTV was supposed to wrap up the series, so they tried to handwave as many plot holes as possible.
Some examples, other than your mention of Amon's plight against the Infinite cycle, include:
- The Terran Dominion being busy fighting the Golden Armada, while Artanis is doing the Protoss campaign. Since the GA is supposed to be *the biggest fleet ever ain Protoss history*, the Terrans would be fighting one hell of an uphill battle (and one that would be nice to experience as a player)
- The Swarm having been nearly extinguished when Kerrigan took it to fight the Hybrid. We're supposed to believe that, in a few days, they went from billions (that occupied entire planets) down to a single hive cluster (and that Kerrigan's essence, if she died, could not be restored from another Hive or a Leviathan)
- Nyon (who isn't even named in WoL) was actually 'mad from too much terrazine', that's why he wasn't reviving his master with all the artifacts he already possessed. This one would actually be easy to fix if some of the artifacts were held by Narud already, and that he and Nyon were, unbeknownst to the player, competing to revive Amon and win his favor (and/or be the only ones actually ascended by him)
- in fact, having Terrazine all over the Tal'darim homeworld makes it completely pointless for any expedition to gather it elsewhere. If Nyon 'went mad' from it, this would've happened before he left Slayn. Why was he even allowed to leave the planet commanding a big crew then?
- Moebius changed from a crew of scientists protected by mercenaries, to a 'Corp' that manned thousands of soldiers and could rival the Dominion and the Protoss in strength. How and when did that shift happened, and how did nobody noticed? This could easily be explained if, by the end of Moebius mission in WoL, Narud would say something like 'we need to beef up our security, we're attracting too many enemies'.
So in short, SC2 relies too much on exposition to tell its story. Amon is just another casualty of that horrible writing style.
I honestly believe that the scale issue could be remedied in a lot of ways by having the galaxy (the sector, really) map display an actual map as opposed to just showing mission-specific planets. Imagine the many inhabited systems and planets of the Koprulu sector being slowly overtaken by Amon's forces, going dark one by one as the campaign progresses.
@@UEDCommander Agreed. WoL had Hanson's questline end as she settles her people on a planet "close to protoss space". We have no idea what that is, how big is it, how far is Haven from other Terran worlds and so on.
Also, SC2 (especially WoL) is plagued by 'throwaway planets' that are visited once for a quick mission, then never mentioned again. By comparison, SC1 had only a few planets with a lot of missions (and all factions would have missions on repeated planets). It made them feel more meaningful in a way. The Zerg occupation of Aiur was the culmination of thousands of years of the Overmind's planning... in HoTS, near the end of the campaign, you get a cutscene with half a dozen nameless planets being instantly covered in creep. It kinda takes away the punch.
The whole point of the Hybrid was that for all their power they are just Amon's mooks. They didn't have any personalities on purpose. Now however, that Amon is dead... NOW we can have interesting hybrid Characters. Like, I'm sure there will be cool Hybrid personalities in Nova Covert Ops, right?
a major issue why the Hybrids feel like they lack depth it's because they aren't a playable race.
terran, protoss and zerg have fascinating units with tons of worldbuilding expectations.
the hybrid are just big tanks that hit stuff, like an ultralisk with a few extra bilities, they lacks so much worldbuilding, you don't have hybrid bases, you don't know how their workers look like, they where "seeded" by Durand, but you don't really know they "interact" with the world, or if a hybrid is there, how it changes it's surroundings other than mind-controlling(?) units.
so far, it seems like the Taldarim faction work like dark cultists for the dark god?, controlling the Khala was an interesting move, I loved that, but again, instead of working through other races, I would had loved to see them being an actual faction
Amon honestly just needed Narud and the Hybrid to be more than "You will die lmao". He's perfectly fine for an objectively evil character but his underlings are just nothing. His underlings are more than mindless mouthpieces for him because Amon is a bit of a eloquent yapper, he still says "you will die lmao" but he says it in like 40 words. If his underlings were also yappers and they echoed him then he'd probably be a lot better but there's too much of a disconnect. It's not even like his minions are mindless and he's sophisticated he's still a 1 dimensional rage monster. He either needed his minions to be silent or smarter or he needed to be smarter. Fixing Amon is hard because he's fine, there's nothing wrong with him but his faction BLOWS
also, if they wanted the hybrid to be entirely "You will die lmao" they should have made them actual threats
if they want the hybrid to be terrifying and unstoppable, they shouldn't be curb stomped by a few immortals, and shouldn't be everywhere
imagine if their were far less hybrid, but each one could actually threaten even large armies,
Kerrigan & Raynor are missing after the Epilogue, and here’s why.
1. They went on a honeymoon and are fucking every single day.
2. The honeymoon ended and Raynor is the only being Kerrigan trusts, empowering him just enough to survive traveling with her as she went on her newest mission, finding the universe in which Amon, Narud, Orous (however it’s spelt) and finding out what exactly happened to Amon that caused his insanity.
3. After those purity of Form/Essence races were taken and uplifted to Xel’Naga this universe lost 2 very important species that kept balance there, resulting in other races becoming extremely powerful in their place, but these races KNEW of what happened to Amon and the others and began to radically alter themselves to protect against the evil returning to do the same to them.
4. And they view this threat in the form of Kerrigan and this empowered being by her side.
5. Full of fury and rage they attack and proceed to follow them back to the main SC universe and they’re brought to war against them.
6. Kerrigan realizes he folly of seeking the truth of Amon, and puts 2 universes at each others throats, and got her lover killed in the process.
This will wrap up what Blizzard failed to do to give us with Amon, and keep conflict alive in the Kophrulu sector.
Sorry for the misspellings and general errors, I was taking a 💩 at the time & it wasn’t going well, so I just wanted to wrap up my thoughts and move forward.
Ill fix it tomorrow.
Amon is built as a force and is known through others we know his motivations through others and we understand the character because he is a parallel to Kerrigan in her final stage, Narud simply can't get over Amon because he's basically a cliche villain who laughs and mocks the protagonist in a childish way and knowing that he is a xelnaga or xelnaga does this more pathetic does not express magnanimity that even in Megks is capable of doing better with his proportion of safeguarding humanity, Amon is the final evil not the superficial form it is the embrace of the peace of death nihilism the final rebel who questions the very existence of life and in its real form infinite hatred a mirror of Kerrigan's fear of losing her humanity and mundane life, if you ignore that it is built through narrators like Nuroka and Rohana you miss a lot, through the eyes of others as a threat Whisperer will not understand it, he does not need exposition dialogues but absolute conviction of his twisted benevolence, he is not someone who schemes, he is direct even in the deception but he is victorious even in defeat, that is why it is important to read the short prequel stories that have Alarak as the protagonist.
While you do acknowledge reworking/fixing Amon to be more compelling would require major rewrites, I got an idea of what they could have possibly done with him. At the beginning, you're only aware of him being evil because we have meta-knowledge. Instead, he is shown using flowery language and false promises of a better life. Trying to portray giving up one's identity as a way to free themselves of their burden by giving themselves over to him. Of course, nobody who was freed from his influence or heard what it was like under his thrall, buys into it.
Eventually, you see cracks forming as he grows more and more frustrated with such resistance. Resorting to threats and demands instead, before just going full "Fine, you want to resist me? Then die like the rest of these insignificant worms who defied me!"
Also, have his hybrid play into this. Make them show an almost peaceful or sense of glee in their lack of identity. Speaking in ways of asking those they face to join their side as well. Only thing is, due to how Amon personally hand-crafted them (Though admittedly through giving Duran/Narud the specifications he wanted for them), they genuinely believe in this. Perhaps show maybe one or two that were shattered off from his control, suddenly begging to be struck down, disgusted by what they are, horrified by the lie they were made to live. Sickened that their only purpose is destruction, and cannot find any solace in existing further because they were merely a means to an end, they have no higher purpose or capacity to find one. Basically, make the hybrid a tragedy of an antagonist faction who are victims of those who made them.
Great vid. Always wished the the hybrid would've been minibosses the whole of each mission they appear in are centered around like Maar or the one in Piercing the Shroud, but they just show up as big tough capital ship units and mainly rely on their allied zerg, protoss or terran to do the heavy lifitng.
I think the problem here is that they made him physical at all, even in “the void” whatever that is, if the hybrid had been the real super weapon they were made out to be, and the xel’naga were these cryptic liberation beings that existed only in the minds of their servants, it would add to them a lot, don’t show the monster and it makes them scarier, in the secret mission and Protoss missions in wol they are literally unstoppable save for in the final battle where the Protoss inevitably lose, and yet in legacy of the void we don’t just fight them, we win against them repeatedly, absurd?
Amon is the worst thing that has EVER happened to Starcraft 2. WoL was pretty okay, hots was... was. And LotV was insufferable. And even worse the coop missions ran with this. As if anyone gave half a shit about Amon and his lazy ass excuse to reuse existing races in a single army. "Amon is transporting some stuff by trains!" - Amon is supposed to be a LITERAL GOD, why does he care about a god damn supply train. Corruption of Khala was also interesting at first, but quickly lost all of the appeal, I would much rather have all of the protos heroes come together in the last stand, like we saw it in WoL, than go "Oh yeah, Selendis bad now, we do not need to see her again". Every mission being about Amon this Amon that, surprisingly how going against the god took away all the stakes from the story. I would care more if the antagonist was a moisture farmer called bob than Amon. He's overused, he never wins, his design is lame, his plan is stupid and I hate everything about him, but not in the good way. In the "good lord I wish they came up with anything else" way
Honestly Amon needed a few side missions.
Sort of like Brood Wars with you as the villain killing characters you enjoyed.
Think about this for a new first or second mission.
Reclaim the home world, celebration, then evil mind control kicks in.
Have you play as play as the mind controlled protoss.
Heave each mission objective appear forcing you to kill the dark templar as Amon makes his gloating.
Sort of like how the Overmind did his gloating when you took control of Aiur... Only this time we show more of his personality.
How he mocks your failure. Laughs as he forces you to kill your allies. Shows each new objective and how you can't resist as you must finish them in order to progress.
Then you kill your favorite dark templar... And then... You get the cut scene fight before you are cut free from his control.
Amon was just... A lesser version of the Overmind story wise.
His schemes? You are blasting them apart?
His speech? Generic villain garble.
His death? You kill him because he is annoying.
For goodness sake I didn't realize Nurad was Duran because of how different the two versions were to the point I was waiting for Duran to show up with trickery, betrayal, and having to fight some twisted gauntlet of traps... Just to get discount DBZ laser battle.
Such a shame considering how much work and detail went into their other characters, other factions, and other... Everything else.
Also would love to see an abathur video.
the humans and primal zerg are the true inheritors of the Xel'naga
Humans cannot be turned into zerg, only infested. Abathur really tried with them. Kerrigan herself had to be broken down into raw D.N.A. in order to become the queen of blades, and she still looks human.
The primal zerg are primal zerg.
By gestating in the pool, consuming the essence of the pack leaders, Kerrigan BECAME xel'naga.
Okay hear me out, I think there is a version where this story could work out, if and that's a big if, if narud/duran was made the main villain!
Like, I know this isn't possible lore-wise, but let's say, that Amon was just trying to get "birthed"/enter the universe and narud/duran just manipulated events around to the point that he could become this god/ ruler of everything.
Let's say he somehow escaped or survived his last campaign mission and he would return in the final battle between amon and ascended kerrigan, with a corrupted artifact, that allowed him to channel and take away the power/life of both of them and the last mission would be, the rest of the zerg/humans/protoss who were once again outsmarted by him teaming up to defeat him together without a savior?!
On second thought, this sounds like a theory on drugs, so maybe it's good that this didn't happen
You gotta remember: SC2 came out in 2010. LotV came out in 2015. Gaming got _a lot_ shittier in that time, so it really shouldn't be surprising that all build up, nuance, and established lore is just thrown out the window to have pretty lights and generic laser beam action that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Acti bought Blizz in 2008. So they might've influenced about 20% of SC2's development, temporally speaking. They influenced _all_ of HotS and LotV.
If You think about it, there are only 5 hybrid units. The 2 from Wol used in in utter darkness were based on the more iconic hybrids used in the other 2 Wol missions, maar and the nameless inmortal vanishing hybrid. Then they Made a Big hybrid, a flying one and a spellcaster one.
If there was a actual hybrid race, then the concept of Protoss and zerg combined could be fleshed out more. More small units, more variety on air, fast and strong units, deadly capital ships, annoying spells, and so on. Instead You get attacked by bulky, mid speed units that just deal damage (the spellcaster hybrid is still threatening and the flying hybrid has a cool spell but its just a stronger Corsair).
A hybrid campaign would be awesome as well. Imagine using duran in character for once, awaken hybrid in different Worlds and unlocking different hybrid clases throught collecting new zerg Essence and capturing Protoss (yeah, kinda like with Protoss/zerg tech but narud was behind that regardless so it makes sense). And then brainwashing the Moebius terran with massive terrazine exposition and finding some sort of macguffin to allow duran (amon) to control the Protoss before the Main event where You acutally kill zeratul, your Main enemy disrupting the hybrid growing process. Then the campaign closets with a cinematic where duran returns to the void unleashing the hybrid on the galaxy in full capacity (he does return because he doesnt need a body after all, but he can also get killed in lotv)
If we got 3-4 more characters who served Amon and interacted with him often. One from each race or so that serve the hybrid pursuit of perfection or self destruction, or both.
Amon himself would've been a far better if his core character trait was spite. He hates everything and including himself, and his only recourse is to control everything to be like him.
In the original Starcraft, you played as everyone, antagonist and protagonist alike. In Starcraft 2, you played as all three factions, but they were all presented as protagonists to the overarching story. You didn't get to play as the antagonist, so you never got to understand their motivations.
I wish SC2 was more like SC1 and it's just "regular" people fighting over a sector for control/power, not "SPACE DEVIL!" :\
It makes me worried for Stormgate cause it looks like another "SPACE DEVIL" coming for that one.
Also, would say, your audio for the clips vs your own speaking audio quite a different volume :P a bit jarring, but not horrible. Just something to focus on in the future.
Stormgate's art design is already a death sentence.
@@misterwolf3817 I can deal with the art style (even if it's not quite what I love), but the story just being "SPACE DEVIL" looking so far and the rehashing of Warcraft 3 structure for the start is a bit of a disappointment to me.
@@Vicioussama Oh wow yeah the writing is absolute garbage, almost as if it is collecting the worst from all the Blizzard games
Stormgate has much bigger problems, main one is that it looks like a custom starcraft 2 map
@@Vicioussama
"Regular" people may be subjective here. The Zerg Overmind would certainly qualify as an eldritch abomination to any casual earthling.
The whole prophecy storylines are always horrendous
The introduction is the hybrid in 1998 and that mission was really haunting for me. Seeing SC2, I was really disappointed in how it turned out. I can't be alone in thinking that SC2 would have been better if we stuck with "game of thrones in space" rather than "full explanation of the hybrid and defeating Eldritch gods with bullets" sort of thing.
It's true that Amon doesn't really have an older version to ruin in 1/BW, but it's his presence in the sequel and the retcons he put into the canon (like the Khala being his doing, and not a purely Protoss creation like it used to be). The only arguably good retcon/addition he brought about was the Primal Zerg as a faction, with them dodging being messed with by Amon, and the Tal'darim... Okay no, not the Tal'darim as the whole, just Alarak, really. The faction as a whole wasn't terribly interesting, Alarak just has a very strong personality and is voiced by a very good actor (giving him Q's VA was a stroke of genius) - a rarity in SC2's otherwise bland antagonists.
I really wish they kept the Xel'Naga in the background and never actually showed them to us. If I could rewrite SC2, I would cut out Amon entirely and have Duran/Narud as the principle, main antagonist trying to carry out and finish his former masters' experiment (in this case, I would say he isn't a Xel'naga himself, but something other that resulted from their Zerg/Protoss experiments that also isnt a proper Hybrid). Maybe he ends up being killed by one of his Hybrid creations in a mirror to the Xel'naga being destroyed by their meddling in the Protoss and Zerg. Have the final boss fight be an actual, proper fight against a super powerful Hybrid or several smaller fights - the only thing I would keep from the Epilogue being that all three species participate in some form. Maybe each faction has their own hybrid boss to kill that's in some way a reflection of them, or designed to counter them, but fails to account for something, or that each species helps each other in some way to overcome them.
(Oh and Kerrigan is absolutely dead, Raynor kills her, as he should have, and either Zagara and/or Abathur step up to lead the Swarm, working together with the Terran and Protoss because they feel they have to, in a shaky alliance while planning for what they will need to do after Duran and the hybrid are dealt with).
The biggest issue I have with SC2 was the radical change in tone, eschewing the greyer morality of the first game in favor of much blander all good guys vs. bad guys (and Kerrigan, who the writers really want us to see as deserving of good things for some reason, and yes I'm still mad they gave her a happy ending, while my boy Zeratul was butchered both as a character in his writing and in his ultimate fate, getting killed off when the writers decided they were done using him as a lore mouthpiece, having stripped away everything that made him interesting in 1/BW).
In Brood War, during the secret mission, the main emotion I remember feeling from Duran's speech to Zeratul was a sense of dread. You really get this creepy, ominous sense that the Hybrid would be truly awful and really would lead to a calamity that makes what happened on Aiur look tame. If the interaction with Duran was able to leave someone as strong as Zeratul feeling haunted and full of dread, then I wonder how the others would've felt. I think it would've been great if Blizzard leaned into this with both the Hybrid and Amon -- they could've been very intimidating and spooky. Blizzard is no stranger to Lovecraftian vibes either, and considering how the Hybrid and Amon appear in SC2 I think it's a serious shame that we didn't see them lean into making them more intimidating and ominous.
We're talking about an eldritch star god here, they could've made him so spooky. He's destroyed worlds and created the Overmind for crying out loud!
I have a suggestion that could help with the Amon and Hybrid story and a way to better entwine them. Instead of the Hybrid being generic monsters and the whole Amon host body thing, have the Hybrid *be* Amon's host *bodies* with each one being an aspect of Amon, so instead of the Hybrid being used as extensions of Amon's will, have them be hosts to Amon's will. I would also effectively isolate Amon among the Xel'naga, yet keep Narud/Duran as a Hybrid, perhaps the representation of Amon's deceit, carved out of the rest of the Amon and given an independence. Other Hybrid encountered can therefore be more carefully personalised and customised as each is a unique part of Amon. His deceit, his greed, his pride and even his hope and courage and honesty. A Hybrid possessing Amon's honesty could be hilarious and somewhat similar to Alarak in how they could tell the heroes how small and meaningless they are compare to the whole of Amon.
I think not adding the hybrid as a playable class was a huge mistake.
Regarding a villain who strips identity of those he subjugates, and who is utterly terrifying and vaguely alien; She-Ra has such a villain.
And it works, becsuse he subjugates individuals that we know and recognize and heroes are forced to fight their own friends and allies.
My thoughts on the secret BW mission at the time:
The Swarm had destroyed the Xel’Naga.
The Xel’Naga were a Proto-Protoss-Zerg hybrid, so the hybrids were simply a stronger resurrection of the Xel’Naga.
Duran’s master was either a Xel’Naga spirit, or simply the idea to bring the Xel’Naga back.
I feel like the Hybrids and Xel'Naga characters all suffer from not being given a campaign of their own. Because SC1 allowed you to play the baddies (Zerg) but SC2 had you play only goodies (and made the Zerg goodies too), which is sad. Playing the rise of the Xel'Naga and THEN bringing their downfall could feel very satisfying.
you made a lowkey good point when you mentioned that Narud should have had a bigger role in SC2
He should have made an appearance in LotV as the catalyst for Amon's control of the golden armada.
Sure that would mean we'd have to kill Narud twice in the same expansion (ew epilogue) but the alternative is someone who would have much more impact in the shadows, just mentioned as the "true god of all" while the priest who puts this true god over controls the flock of brainwashed sheep to do his bidding
This guy feels like the kind of person who will demand a Moby Dick-esque kind of lore and analysis for the shark in Jaws.
A mod that retells the starcraft 2 story in a way like mental omega would be so cool
Would've been much more interesting if he ACTUALLY wanted to die.
But as long as a protoss/zerg exists he will as well or something
Would give an explanation to his goal to wipe out all life, and he makes the hybrids and tricks them, if they're under his control he can kill them when he needs to and then just fade into nothing.
or just be a BBEG with "me kill life" as his motivation.
When I was little playing SC1 I interpreted the Xel Naga as the species both the zerg and protoss had evolved from eons before after some sort of rift or disaster caused it to split off. Duran and his master were ones that went dormant and awoke during brood wars. The Zeratul mission was about them ressurecting their original race with splices of protoss and zerg dna to takeover and rule the sector again.
I'm convinced that Amon was either originally created for, or was retooled to serve as, a scapegoat to blame Kerrigan's evil actions on so that she could have her awful Happy Ending. It doesn't help that most of Amon's forces are simply mind-controlled units from other races, meaning that his "faction" lacks a coherent aesthetic or identity. You can't even tell any interesting stories about why other races are serving Amon because they're simple mind-controlled pawns with no will of their own.
My first reaction to the video thumbnail was "oh right Amon exists"
One of the biggest failures of LotV is that they didn't make hybrid behemoths Colossus-sized ingame. I'm not sure if one of the many published campaign mods did that, but I know I tried doing that myself for fun (with a co-op mod) and it made them feel genuinely fun to fight.
I do know I was inspired by what the Nightmare mod did for Hybrid in that it buffed them up and gave them several spells from their respective races (hybrid reavers for example can spam the zerg viper's abduct, while hybrid destroyers have the classic hardened shields. which makes it very ironic because they first appear in the mission that introduces immortals, which hard-countered the original hybrid way back in wol).
What am I getting at here? Well, that the Hybrid just aren't hard enough! They should've had really cracked stats every time they appeared, they should've been something you genuinely planned around rather than just waltzed into with most compositions. The only hybrid that actually manages this is the hybrid dominator, which has extremely powerful spells that can punch holes through your army. Even in the co-op mode they're still the highest tier threat.
In fact, let's elaborate on this concept a bit more. Making the hybrid harder is great yes, but you know what we could've used? MORE hybrid. More opportunities for them to actually have personality, of course. Each Hybrid does something different and represents something unique. You could have hybrid who are attuned with the void, hybrid who are afraid of their own master yet serve because they have no choice. Hybrid that not only ensure the doom of the sector, but _relish_ in it (seriously the hybrid in LotV talk about doom n shit but are they having fun? I don't think so.)
The Hybrid behemoth idea I mentioned at the start would have certainly given them personality, even if it was just being a big dumb monster. Like, a kaiju-sized hybrid really speaks for itself, let's be honest. But the other hybrid couldve had more depth maybe. Like, have the dominators(?) on Brothers in Arms INSULT the Terrans and the Protoss, have them make some really deep-cut jabs at us.
Anyway I really look forward to the Alarak video, and I just wanna say that Rak'shir is genuinely a very strong political strategy in the Tal'darim society. Like, most of the time the two challengers are equal in psionic power like we see with Alarak and Ma'lash. The fact that Rak'shir allows supplicants to contribute to their champion's cause is what really makes it, since it turns it into a _metaphorical_ power contest rather than just a literal one. It's like if the US elections let the democrats and republicans just throw hands with each other.
Just write Amon's existential angst earlier into the story and make it a core part of his dialogue and such.
Someone in the comments mentioned that blizzard shoud have made a hybrid camapaing (idk if they meant it as a joke but well) and that is kinda what i thought would have been better. In SC1 you play as the antagonist at some point (helping mengsk at the beginning, or litterly the entire zerg campaing) and maybe that is why the sc1 antagonists are so memorisable.
I agree with you on the Amon point. I liked SC1 and BW so much because the villains were just characters acting out their own agendas and desires, they were only villains to the other parties that were affected by them. The Villains felt justified in what they were doing. That leads to complex and interesting character development and as the audience we get to confront uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil and the role of perspective etc. Having a character like Amon who is for all intents and purposes just the devil is a little boring. its simplistic. here is a character who's motives are unfathomable to anyone else, who is universally perceived as evil by all other factions and who operates from a silo cut off from the wider universe. Its just not as much fun as say BW kerrigan who having freed her mind from the control of the overmind, and finding herself vilified by all other factions for the actions she performed as its slave has no other option than to free and unite the swarm, to run the humans and protos out of her home system and take control. she also deals with her own feelings of betrayal by her friends and guilt over what she has become. she is ambitious and ruthless. From the UED perspective she is absolutely evil, same for the Protos, Raynor's feelings are more mixed because he remembers her from before and is guilty for letting it happen. Kerrigan feels like she has been given no other choice and her actions are justified because of that.
I think the Hybrid failed as villains because they didn't have anything about them that would differentiate them from the Zerg. The Zerg are horrifying, powerful, deadly and ugly aliens who want to take over the galaxy. And the Hybrids are the same. Only they have glowing purple powers.
I reminds me much of World of Warcraft's writing. Have a faction of people get colorful new power, and then present them because of this power and glowing effect as an interesting and cool faction. But if they are not interesting when not glowing, they don't become more interesting just because of this effect.
If I wrote Amon and the Hybrid, I would give them something more. A philosophy. A cause. And if the story intended to show them as all powerful Eldritch abominations, make them be truly godly.
But you don't make something a god by just giving it glow or magic powers. Better way how to make something a god is to make a lot of people worship them.
Tuey could have some unnatural ability that all beings in their vicinity started having religious feelings, revelations, visions, feeling of being watched and examined by the god.
They had a good thing going with the Tal Darim. That's why people like Alarak. But it was barely enough.
We even had the Mobeus core eventually getting brainwashed by their experiments and starting to worship them. That's also something that could have been explored better. Instead of it being just a background flavor for invade and crush your enemies missions.
What if Amon had a point according to some characters in the story? What if him brainwashing the Protoss using Khala was not a mind controlled, but instead just him convincing them to fight for his side? Then you'd have main characters put against each other because of their stated differences. Then there would be some back and forth. Instead of just having a snowball of good guys unstoppably becoming an avalanche that crushes the bad guys who just wait for it.
That's what the original story had. Characters having their agendas, their motives and goals, changing sides. Not just "we will grow our army of allies until we overwhelm the bad guys!" That hardly feels like a story.
I agree that for story telling HoTs and LotV had deep issues… but that final level where Amon was destroying the earth beneath your base was pretty impactful. I wish it would have come sooner so we could learn to fear him and maybe get some depth. After all, he touched what is most precious to SC players. The mineral line
I expected the Hybrid as a 4th faction when they were revealed (zerg+protoss with adaptable gameplay style like terran) but turns out they're just campaign bosses😂
In the case of the Hybrid, I wonder if they were created to all be extensions of Amon's will with no true character of their own. I remember watching a modded mission where one plays as some Hybrid trying to escape a facility that created them after Amon's death and in that mission, it gets establised that with Amon gone, the Hybrid have the ability to act on their own and its story is the hybrid fearfully trying to escape death while being hunted by the Dominion, with the Ghost leading the hunt even psionically contacting them and expressing some reluctance at his mission, knowing that the Hybrid he's hunting are free-willed beings who haven't committed any sins but also fearing the possibility of Amon using those Hybrid to cheat death.
man what! i want to see this now, that sounds awesome
Probably would have worked better if (from my memory) they kept the idea that hybrids were designed as a way to resurrect Xel-Naga and the changing the world forever was that they were an entire race of genetic maestros with Kerrigan tier level psionics. In hindsight they're basically old ones from 40k or chaos gods.
In general tone and power scale is best encapsulated with Liberty's Crusade and the trilogy of books where a Terran accidentally merges minds with a Protoss historian contained in psionic crystal. That second one was pretty fascinating since the terran rapidly gained powerful psionic powers but it was also killing him, he formed a strong bond with the protoss mind and she ended up sacrificing herself to defeat a rogue Dark Archon.
"Awaken my child and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I, am the Overmind, the Eternal Will of the Swarm and you have been created to serve me." That's why.
Yea Starcraft and warcraft have very similar villians, IE there is an overall single villian, then there is a swarm villian which one person has to take a place of to control, then there is corrupting others.
However the thing is, that Starcraft 2 is very isolated and does not jab at the first game, it make sense to not be concern of it in Wings of liberty since, well, no one truly knows until Raynor is given a hefty dump that "oh Amon is returning".
An issue between the Xel'naga and the Burning legion, one has a mold, the other is just there, however there was something when I played Wings of liberty and heart of the swarm, I noticed one felt heftier while the other felt shorter than short, sure its a revenge story but I felt like there was more to the plot in some regards.
Taking this dancing game of reluctant alliances and crushing betrayals and reducing it to just "Let's get the lads together and go kill SATAN" was such an odd choice
I'm convinced Alarak was getting high on the Breathe of Creation in the cutscene before Rak'Shir. Literally no fear before battle.
The natural purity of form and purity of essence are humans and primal zerg. Mankind naturally evolved psionic abilities and Primals became the way they are on their own.
Protoss and Swarm are valid yet artificial purities crafted by Amon. Given time, without his interference, terrans and primals would ascend on their own.
I appreciate your talking points, but I have to comment on the Akira meme, it caught me completely off guard, I loved it.
*nods in agreement, good points*
"He has many of Amon's traits: arrogance, ambition, being red"
*dies of laughter*
Brood war Duran was an amazing character
Now i can't stop imagining Kerrigan using her telepathy to make Mengsk hear the vine fart sound whenever he is mid speach.
It seems Alarak is the next character your going to cover, but are you planning on covering the overmind?
I revisited the zerg campaign story and hes honestly such a unique villain, in that he manages to pull off being very nice to his cerebrates and kerrigan while also waging several wars that kill hundreads all without becoming goofy.
He praises his cerebrates saying they have wisdom and experience, often says that hes pleased with you, is very supportive of kerrigan when she starts going off to do her own thing, and when she ends up leaving Zasz vulnerable and thus gets him killed, the overmind is mad chill about it.
The juxtaposition between how he treats his underlings like a doting father and him being a literal war criminal sounds comical, but the campaign slmehow manages to make him feel alien instead. Very underrated.
I played the entirety of wings of liberty to include the secret mission, and still forgot sbout the hybrid.
They just weren't notable enough
Well, gotta say, they were right; when the hybrids areived it did change the StarCraft universe forever. Maybe for the worse l, but it certainly changed.
Haven't watch the video so I'm sure you'll make some good points, but I think Amon was a great villain and very memorable. It was so exciting going through all 3 campaigns and learning all about Amon and his plans for the Hybrid. Witch I also absolutely love, I love the concept and execution of them.