quoted below
There's a lot of logical fallacy going on here, both from those with whom I would agree and those with whom I would disagree. I'm not sure if it will be advantageous to express an opinion after the thread has gone on for a couple of weeks, but maybe I'll have something interesting to bring to the table.
Yes. I was one of those who thought the narrative in WoL was weak. Terrible, even. However, the narrative and its many faults have little to do with the voice acting, the gameplay, the pricing, or the corporate policies of Blizzard or Activision. I don't speak here of WoL as a game, but rather as a narrative.
The characters' motivations are ill-defined, yet the characters themselves defend their actions fervently. Jim Raynor's original motivation appears to be to topple Arcturus Mengsk--at least, that's what his actions suggest, when he begins attacking Dominion outposts. But what is his motivation for doing so? Matt Horner suggests that Raynor's Raiders are idealistic freedom fighters, but more than once, Raynor himself seems unpersuaded by the ideals ostensibly held by his own organization. When Tychus approaches him, one gets the impression that he was bored more than anything.
For that matter, why does Raynor fight Mengsk? Is he fighting because he's a wanted criminal? Does he want revenge on Mengsk for betraying Sarah Kerrigan? Does he want to establish a new political order? The prognosis is unclear, particularly because Mengsk is relegated to a side-story afterthought the moment Raynor discovers that he might be able to save Kerrigan.
Or is he? Here a major problem with the narrative rears its head: the story consists of a few starter missions (Mar Sara), followed by several independent side stories which can be followed more or less to completion in any order the player chooses. Because of this fragmented narrative structure, the game can make no assumptions about what events have happened when you're undertaking a mission; you can't have Dr. Ariel Hansen play any kind of role beyond chit-chat in a mission if it's possible that she's left the Hyperion by the time the player reaches that point in the game. The characters can only meaningfully interact with one another at a few points where all of them are guaranteed to be present and their timelines are fixed. This increases player agency and provides some flexibility as to how the player approaches the game (a stated goal during development) but the narrative suffers accordingly.
Here, I want to make a point about two missions in the game where the player has to make an ostensibly significant choice between two options. These dilemmas are the final mission of the Colonist thread (Safe Haven vs. Haven's Fall), and the final mission of the Covert thread (Breakout vs. Ghost of a Chance). Each of these choices are presented in a classical dilemma, and initially my reaction to them was positive: I felt a real sense of dread, and spent some time weighing my options, approaching the choice as an actual, important one. I didn't want to make the wrong choice. I wanted to follow the greater good.
I didn't have to worry.
The narrative is malleable, and here in a way I find destructive to its coherence, unlike the way choices typically present themselves in (say) a non-linear RPG or other game where you have choices to make. The choice you make does not change the story after the choice is made; it changes the story before the choice is made. If you side with Dr. Hansen in the Colonist thread, the Protoss are respectful and enthusiastic to test Raynor in battle, and Executor Selendis seems to treat the entire thing as almost a game. After the mission Safe Haven is completed, you never hear another word about what the Protoss think of your actions. For all we can surmise based on Selendis' words, they were willing to treat the defeat as nothing personal and went home with no hard feelings. Later, Dr. Hansen leaves to lead "her people" to a bright new future on Haven. The Protoss were wrong, the Zerg infestation threat was overblown, and the colonists are assumed to ride happily into the sunset.
If you side with the Protoss, however, things turn out entirely different. The Zerg infestation actually was real and severe, and not only that, Dr. Hansen herself was infested all along. With the Protoss' help, you burn out the infestation. The same is true with the final Covert mission: if you side with Tosh, New Folsom Prison is full of political dissidents, scientists, artists, and other enemies of the regime, and Dr. Hansen (if she happens to still be with you) says that psych tests have proven that Spectres aren't much crazier than anyone else, and Nova was clearly lying to get you to keep the Dominion's enemies imprisoned. If you side with Nova, New Folsom Prison is full of the sector's worst murderers, and Gabriel Tosh was a psychotic just waiting to crack. In either case, the release (or confinement) of the prisoners has no effect whatsoever on anything else, except what unit you get.
It is painfully obvious that the writer wanted there to be no bad options, no hard feelings, no possible mistakes, to the point where the game retcons itself smack in the middle to ensure there is no wrong choice.
The story with Mengsk, Tychus, Raynor, and Valerian is equally absurd. Mengsk employs Tychus Findlay, an old associate of Raynor's, to... what, exactly? As has been noted before, unless Mengsk could see into the future and know Raynor was going to go to Char to try to rescue Kerrigan, the apparent reason to force Tychus' betrayal makes no sense. The reason Mengsk sent Tychus to join up with Raynor is never clear. Was it to kill Raynor? He had plenty of opportunity to do that before Char, and even on Char, Tychus went for Kerrigan instead. Was it to keep tabs on the rebellion? Then why was Mengsk so shocked when he discovered his son Valerian was working with Raynor? Here I see the dangling threads of the author's thoughts: he wants there to be some sort of dramatic betrayal from within, a friend manipulated by a common foe. But the execution is nonsense. Even as Gabriel Tosh says that Tychus is struggling against having to do something he doesn't want to do, Tychus shows not an iota of regret, shame, or apology in the final moment.
Furthermore, there is no effort expended to explain how all the disparate parts of the narrative come together here. We know that Mengsk has a mole on the Hyperion. We know that Valerian wants to be a better emperor than his father. We know that Valerian is the secret head of the Moebius Foundation. We know that Tychus is (presumably) unwillingly working for Mengsk. We know that Tychus is unwittingly working for Valerian. But none of these components congeals into anything resembling a coherent whole. Mengsk both knows and doesn't know what Raynor's up to. Valerian is willing to commandeer half of his father's fleet to help Raynor, but doesn't show a lick of concern for the efforts of the rebellion in spite of his stated desire to prove himself to be a worthy man. (He barely seems aware of the rebellion.) The final confrontation between Raynor and Tychus couldn't be more obvious: the writer had the vague idea that a dramatic confrontation between old friends over a tragic, irreconcilable dilemma would be a good storytelling device. He was right, roughly, but lacked the skill to have the events lead to the conclusion. The final result was forced by the Hand of God, a confrontation that occurs only because everyone involved is stupid and because the writer wants it to happen a certain way.
And let's gird our loins for the final kick in the junk. After Raynor walks off into the sunset, the blurb on the Starcraft 2 menu screen indicates that Mengsk remains securely on his throne. So... is that it? 26 missions later, after a systemwide rebellion, a crushing defeat for the Zerg, the appropriation of half the Dominion fleet to fight alongside Raynor, the apparent defection of the Dominion heir apparent and its top general, and his plans to ??? Raynor (or maybe ??? Kerrigan) foiled in every respect, Mengsk is sitting just as pretty as he was at the beginning of the first. The epilogue doesn't even have the good grace to tell us why. He just is. The entire campaign saw two things happen: Tychus died, and Kerrigan became human again. And based on some speculations here and there, even those two things might not have happened, which make the millions spent on its story (those CGI cutscenes don't render themselves) equivalent to an episode of Seinfeld: it's a campaign about nothing.
