Thursday, August 5, 2010

StarCraft II: The anti-narrative (Spoilers within)

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has the worst story ever told in a video game.

That's not to say I'm down on the game in general. I've had more fun playing through StarCraft II's campaign than I have with any other game in recent memory. It's an immaculately constructed experience, with varied, briskly-paced missions and painstaking attention to detail at every level. In fact, the gameplay is so good that criticizing the writing - which many players, jumping straight to online play, will never even experience - feels somewhat besides the point. But lead writer Chris Metzen's effort for StarCraft II isn't just bad. It's fascinatingly bad. It's bad in a way that few games ever even get the opportunity to be - it takes the cast of beloved franchise and misuses it in every way possible.

Much more fun than the cutscenes.

Let's start with the narrative structure. StarCraft II begins with the premise of a political rebellion against Arcturus Mengsk's Dominion, then shelves that idea about an hour in to introduce the premise of a Zerg invasion. The game then proceeds to ignore both of these plot points for the better part of the campaign's duration, instead focusing on the fascinating goals of raising money and collecting mysterious artifacts for no very good reason. The missions proceed nonlinearly, so there's no semblance of logical progression towards a coherent endpoint; the story simply meanders for ten hours as protagonist Jim Raynor diligently ignores everything that might interest the player in favor of running off on his latest random errand. With the exception of a sidestory involving the Protoss, none of the story's five prongs ultimately amount to anything significant to the endgame. They simply exist as a buffer to stall the player over until the game's concluding twist comes out of left field - but more on that later.

Mengsk is ultimately irrelevant.

To Metzen's credit, writing a plot for a real-time strategy game is difficult. It's essential, for the sake of mission variety, that every faction wind up fighting every other faction in the game at some point, and coming up with a plausible reason to pit the Terrans against the alien Protoss - with whom they allied themselves to save the universe four years prior - would be difficult, to say the least. The effort made, however, is beyond pathetic. For instance: in his quest to acquire resources and Xel'Naga artifacts, Raynor spends several missions butting heads with a Protoss faction known as the Tal'darim, who are cutely described as "fanatics" but commit no obvious crime aside from refusing to roll over and die when Raynor comes to scour their worlds (by force!) of their rightly-owned valuables. The Tal'darim are dressed up in scary religious language - "You shall not defile the Breath of Creation! Execute all those who would desecrate our altars!" - but it's hard not to see Raynor as the villain here, especially considering that he's knowingly making a grab at a resource the Tal'darim consider religiously significant.

Imperialism: the Game

The cultural insensitivity and abject stupidity reach their heights in the mission "Supernova" - an implausibly-constructed scenario in which Raynor must plunder a valuable artifact from the Tal'darim before the planet is engulfed by a slowly-moving wall of flame - where the following dialogue is uttered:

Tal'darim Executor: "Now you will pay for desecrating our holy relics!"
Raynor: "Aw, hell. Not these Tal'darim guys again. They seriously need to learn when to quit!"

A rough translation would be as follows:

Tal'darim Executor: "Stop robbing us of the objects of our faith at gunpoint!"
Raynor: "Gee whiz, these Tal'darim are just so unreasonable!"

Jim Raynor, real American hero

So Raynor has some trouble setting himself up as the most scrupulous of protagonists, the game's halfhearted attempts to other-ize the Tal'darim notwithstanding. Meanwhile, his partner in crime, a rough-and-tumble ex-convict with a Southern drawl named Tychus Findlay, manages to inject stupidity into the story in completely different ways. Tychus bought his freedom from Dominion emperor Arcturus Mengsk in exchange for agreeing to work for him in secret - a plot point which is revealed hamfistedly in the game's very first scene. Since Raynor is leading a rebellion against Mengsk, it's an ostensible source of tension that he has a traitor in his midst. It's somewhat confusing, then, when Findlay thinks nothing of committing violent acts of sedition against the Dominion alongside Raynor, even going so far as to personally steal their new secret weapon and rampage across town with it. Mengsk - who has taken a curious turn from dangerous megalomaniac to cartoon villain in the interim between the two games - is surprised and befuddled by Raynor's tactics at every turn, but he ought to know about all of them in advance, seeing as Raynor literally has a plant as his number two.

An extremely ineffective double agent.

Another problem with the game's story is that there is no clear singular antagonist. I think the antagonist was supposed to be Kerrigan, but she exists more as ambient noise than as an actual character. She shows up for a couple of missions to dispense some occasional generically threatening banter ("You were fools to come here!"), and then, in a truly impressive squandering of an entire game's worth of buildup, turns in her villain card in the ending sequence through a deus ex machina. The chemistry between her and Raynor which was built up in Brood War is nonexistent here, as is any of her former charisma or presence. (On that note, someone might need to remind Tricia Helfer that she's not still voicing the Normandy's artificial intelligence from Mass Effect 2 anymore. Glynnis Talken's original performance is sorely missed.)

Sadly, her pet hydralisk never becomes
a miniboss.

I'm not even going to touch upon Zeratul's excruciatingly-written encounter with the hitherto-dead Tassadar. The scene deconstructs itself.

All of this pales in comparison, however, to what can only be described as the dumbest moment in the history of video games. There comes a point at which a Ghost operative named Nova contacts Raynor and tries to convince him that his ally Tosh is conspiring to free a band of violent prisoners and drug them to create psychotic killing machines. The problem here is that Nova just so happens to be employed by the Dominion - the very same Dominion that Raynor is in open revolt against. The scene literally amounts to Raynor's sworn enemy calling him up and telling him to betray someone who has been helping him the whole game, just because she says so. Tosh has not at this point wronged Raynor in any way or even committed a single violent act. Ostensibly, he's a pirate, but that should make him and Raynor good pals, seeing as Jim's the one looting and pillaging alien worlds. So why would the player trust Nova? There are only two reasons I can think of as to why Blizzard would think there was any choice to be made here:

1) Tosh's portrait is on a scary red background instead of Nova's friendly blue one.
2) Tosh is a black guy with dreadlocks instead of a hot white chick.

Make your choice.

The scene transcends mere stupidity and treads precariously on the grounds of racist imagery. Could they have possibly even attempted to construct this scenario without the manipulative way Tosh's race and physical appearance are used? The worst part of it is that the player can literally do no wrong in their decision. If they choose to side with Nova, her testimony is vindicated; if they side with Tosh, her claims turn out to be false. The weight of choice fails to materialize on almost too many grounds to count.

There are a few bright spots hidden within the horrible effluvium of fan-fiction that is StarCraft II's story. The propaganda-laden Dominion newscasts that can be viewed between each mission are occasionally funny, even if they make it difficult to take Mengsk seriously. And Tychus, though his character arc is nonsensical, is amicable enough, and his chemistry with Raynor is genuinely believable. If there's one lingering trace of the original StarCraft's space Western aesthetic to be found in the sequel, it's there. But on the whole, the story is such an inexplicably impressive disaster. The flimsiness of its pretenses and compounded failures of logic are so myriad that they seem almost willful, as though Metzen was afraid of someone taking the story too seriously. Considering the duration of the game's development (seven years) and Blizzard's important role in the game industry, I'd venture to say they have a responsibility to do better. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has a plot so foul that it may well sabotage the credibility of gaming as a storytelling medium.

12 comments:

  1. Every UNN broadcast went like this:
    Donny: The Dominion triumps over all! Kate?
    Kate: Well, ACTUALLY...
    Donny: Cut her off! Now, what were we saying?

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  2. I agree with what you raised in this post; there are a lot of bugs in the StarCraft II story, and this extends to worldbuilding as well. Sometimes I think they just didn't care. See, when I played SC1 the overall impression I got was that the Koprulu Sector was VERY thinly settled by Terrans, because that's what it seemed like - and also because the manual stated that Korhal was a core world of the Confederacy with a population of four million.

    Yeah, Korhal - the world that was nuked so hard it became a desert, and yet thirteen years later looks like Coruscant and has a population, according to Blizzard, of 6.4 billion. There's no way the Terrans could have the numbers SC2 suggests given what's already been established about their history. Looks like it's just one more datum for Blizzard's disinterest in what's been already established when they come up with some new idea.

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  3. What struck me about the campaign decisions was how often I'd be picking between in-game events and out of game decisions.

    Nova I gave some weight to purely due to knowing she was the planned protagonist of SC: Ghost, otherwise there's no reason to believe her. Hansen said why the zerg virus is conventionally incurable (mutates too quickly), but has nothing but heartfelt assurances that she'd be able to cure it. If she'd had at least some vague direction to focus her research that'd be something, but since crushing unrealistic optimism is something you do to progress a plot thread rather than end it, you more or less knew you were picking happy ending vs. sad ending at that point.

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  4. You also forgot to mention the entire sequence where Raynor is introduced to Valerian Megnsk via shooting his way onto a battlecruiser and then just going all "meh" once Valerian revealed what (from Raynor's perspective) would have seemed like an obviously terrible, terrible plan for invading Char. Plus Warfield's character had zero depth. He was basically a GI Joe voicebox that spouted absurd comments in almost every scene.

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  5. The claim that Tosh's portrayal is manipulative and racist simply because he's black and set in front of a "scary red background" is silly. As for the rest of the story, I don't see how it's any better or worse than the first game's. It's just comic book backstory for the single player missions. You're really taking this too far for what it is.

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  6. I agree, bonch. This article presumes that the original Starcraft was some sort of narrative masterpiece, which it was not. Brood War was even more nonsensical. The series has interesting characters, fantastic gameplay, and little-to-no meaningful plot, and it's been that way since the first mission of the first game.

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  7. I really appreciate this write up. It is thoughtful, funny, and well written. Part of why Blizzard can ignore criticism is because so much of it comes in the form of "Story sux, bro. never gonna by a bliz product again ever!" It is always refreshing to read a thoughtful critique, and makes it harder to dismiss.

    (Now for the shameless plug) I have written a similar critique focusing on many of the broken elements in a forum thread http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/374721415 I'd be honored if you were to join our discussion.

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  8. http://thumbnails.truveo.com/0006/F9/6C/F96C0609F3C515D0FFCB9A_Large.jpg

    We'd be honored if you were to join us.

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  9. Did SC1 have as many plot-holes, abandoned plots, inconsequential choices, undeveloped characters, useless scripting, inconceivable character changes, dumbing down of SC1's elements, inconsistencies, illogical arguments and blatant disregard to StarCraft's theme?
    WoL didn't answer any questions, didn't introduce any interesting characters. It didn't even make sense. It introduced new questions and not the right kind, the 'WTF... Excuse me' kind.
    Blizzard's 20th century games are held very high as single player stories that totally immerse the character to the point where you are shocked or sad when a plot event hits you. In WoL that's all Blizzard did. Took plot elements from the plot elements pile and tried to club you on the head with them.
    WoL is not up to modern game standards, for storyline, let alone Blizzard's storylines. It passes only as a string of UMS with neat objectives.
    If you were let down by this game like I was, chin up. HotS is on it's way and there's no way to remake a released title. Sorry WoL you will not be remembered.

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  10. you don't deserve that locke avatar with a numb observation like that zegota!

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  11. I fully agree with this article. I think even the TV newscasts are ridiculous. Just like the first comment points out, every single one is basically the same obvious joke. I would have much more enjoyed a somewhat realistically-made newscast, kind of like in the original; funny but balanced. The object descriptions in the armory are also nice. That's the kind of easy/subtle humor I like.

    I do also miss the original Arcturus. He really fit into his role. The SC2 Mengsk seems boring in comparison. Same goes for Kerrigan of course. She seems harmless and annoying, whereas in the original she was a real interesting character who I could (and still am able to, when I play the game today) believe.

    It would be awesome if Blizzard could pull themselves together for the expansions. I wouldn't bet on it though.

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  12. Agree with every point in the article. The whole story is an insult for both Starcraft fans and Blizzard Entertainment. Even Shadow of the Xel'naga had more sense than WoL.

    Just hope HotS and LotV won't continue in this direction.

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