Starcraft backstory

So, I don't enjoy Starcraft. I pretty much actively dislike the game, the universe it's made in, and Blizzard itself is on my "Oh that looks like an interesting concep- ohhh, THEY'RE making it. Nevermind then" list.

Then I was sent a link to 4 youtube videos showing the Starcraft single-player campaign experience. At first, I admit, I was intrigued. It seemed to be presenting the between-mission stuff of the campaign as almost an RPG experience. I then realised it was just a complicated way of giving you choices in the missions and buying stuff in between missions. I still give them credit for doing something other then stock standard boring "click mission, press start, RUSH" stuff, but it's less then I was hoping for on first viewing.

I must admit I applaud the fact that they're putting the story forward as an important part of the single player campaign, it seems to be a staple of Blizzard's games (outside of Wow, of course) that the single player campaign is never seen as 'just filler' despite the fact that Multiplayer is where the -craft games genuinely shine. The -craft games (Starcraft and Warcraft III) are well acknowledged as excellent multiplayer games

Yes, I dislike Blizzard, but not so much that I can see that what they do, they do VERY well. The -craft games of various types are celebrated as tightly balanced RTS' of great variety. When you have two forces of completely different styles that can battle and be considered on equal terms, you have done something right. When you can do that same thing with three or four different forces, you have done something amazingly.

I can see they do it well, I just really don't enjoy the games, and prefer my RTS' to be more about grand sweeping armies then crap 'representative' rushing games with the only consideration given towards 'epic' being an occasional claim to such in the marketing blurb.

Plus, while I appreciate the effort put towards having a good story, I am yet to feel attached to any character ever presented in a Blizzard game. While that could possibly be due to limitations of technology in previous examples, I personally just find Blizzard's characters and story to be on the wrong side of 'annoying'. Their War- characters are a horrible mix of 'dramatic and gritty' and 'high fantasy', and their Star- characters just seemed quite bare. They were a pair of stereotypes mashed together and put in a space setting.

The single thing that bothered me most about the Starcraft story as you played through the single player game? The way the campaigns were structured one-after-the-other. It worked in the sense that it allowed for the grand story to continue in one long arc, but it left out so much. If I wanted to know what happened to the humans after their campaign? Tough, I had to wait until they popped up in the Protoss campaign. Normally this was a niggling factor, but there was one point it really bugged me. The Zerg campaign. Somehow the good guys found a way to kill the super evil immortal alien insect brains. This was completely glossed over how they managed to do this. Thank you Blizzard, I was almost interested.


Wow, this has gone from a tangent. I originally just intended to talk about the Starcraft II video (which I shall not link).

Anyway. Long story short: Story important in video games, even RTS' where it is difficult to do. Kudo's to blizzard to trying an innovative method to get the story across better in the single player campaign even though, by all rights, they could get away with just releasing a multi-player only (with vague skirmish game support) if they wanted.