I am going to talk a bit about Starcraft in this post so if that game or this topic is not of interest you can pretty much ignore it.
I mostly wanted to talk about my Starcraft experiences in general after I have been playing Starcraft Mass Recall this last week and having been looking into its lore again as well as reading up on what people think of it and how Blizzard has been handling it.
Back in the 90s next to Fallout and Half Life I played Starcraft 1 as I loved games with science fiction themes. I wasn't a big RTS player as I never really got into Command and Conquer or C&C Red Alert (their universes also did not appeal that much to me) so Starcraft was technically my first RTS.
The campaign was okay but I wasn't really sold on it as the missions weren't that interesting but it was the gameplay I had the most difficulty with sometimes. The big obstacle was the number of units that could be selected but also the issue that you could not select units with special abilities alongside other units because you would be unable to access to special abilities until you had selected that single unit or those specific units.
And if you used an ability and all of the units with this ability were selected they would use it all at the same time which can be rather a waste of something that may play an important role in a crucial moment.
As a result I was sometimes very reluctant to use units with special abilities.
A year later I think its expansion pack Brood Wars came out.
I enjoyed this expansion a lot more than its parent game. The controls still had their old issues but it was the campaign which I just found a lot more fun to go through, it felt a lot more tightly written and made me curious of what was going to happen next.
Especially the Terran campaign was my favorite.
What I remember the most of this game was a secret mission which was going to set up a plotline element that would be continued in a sequel.
I genuinely wanted to know what was going to happen next and I was sad that Blizzard for the foreseeable future was not going to continue Starcraft, or at least the main series as the next Starcraft game that was announced was a spin off action game for the consoles.
I was actually quite interested in this game as well, going through the Starcraft universe in a third person shooter and I did mind that it was a spin off game.
Sadly that game got cancelled though Blizzard for years kept pretending that its development was just shelved.
It would take more than ten years before there would be a new Starcraft game and in the meantime the RTS genre continued to development and evolve, bringing another sci fi RTS that I really enjoyed gameplay and story wise; Homeworld 1 and Homeworld Cataclysm. (couldn't care less for Homeworld 2)
Sadly the RTS genre in general would die a rather quiet death in the late 2000s (was it with C&C4).
It was quite surprising to see Starcraft 2 after all these years, especially after Blizzard made it clear that it wanted to focus more on multiplayer projects like World of Warcraft which was way more profitable.
Starcraft 2. Now that game was a bit of a mixed bag.
At one side it brought in a lot of improvements I felt really fixed some of the flaws of the original game and its expansion such as the number of units you could control and using special abilities no longer being such a mess any more, making it more enjoyable to use these.
Gameplay was also expanded in other ways.
-There were unique campaign only units.
-Research, evolution, and equipment changing could be done between missions which would give you access to new abilities or units or enhance existing units and buildings.
-Campaigns were a lot more dynamic now. They weren't just about building a base, an army, and then destroy the enemy. Sometimes the goals were a lot more different like collecting certain things in order to complete the level.
-Missions could be done in a different set of order. Sometimes it was better to finish one mission first to get access to a new unit that would be really useful in another mission.
-Hero units were a lot more useful now instead of just regular units with some extra health. Hero units had special abilities which would really come in use during certain situations or when the players plays missions in which they only have a hero unit and some regular units.
-Gameplay elements that are unique to certain missions such as hazards but also things that can be of use to the player.
Visually the game looked so much more detailed, the range of backgrounds and assets had been drastically expanded so places that are suppose to look like cities now actually look the part instead of a couple of metal walls with your or enemy buildings spread between them.
Lots of NPC stuff that made the world look way better such as civilian houses, cars, shacks, and so on.
Stuff that in the original games would probably just have taken too much space.
But story... oh boy was this a rather unexpected turn of events.
Now I never read the books as I already had plenty of other stuff to read and tie in novels and comics to movie, television, and games tend to be a rather mixed lot which are often just average. All I knew was the open plot threads from SC1 and its expansion.
Well the writers of SC2 decided to go with rewriting some of the plot elements and lore of the previous and do a couple of retcons.
Now I am not going through these as that would make a ridiculous long list and it is not that interested. But character personalities and motivations were quite rewritten here which made it feel that this game featured some recurring people from SC1 but that this was a different universe.
In a way it even pretended as if Brood War never happened though it continued on some of the developments in it.
I did not try to take much notice of it in the first Starcraft 2 game; Wings of Liberty. But as the follow up games came out; Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void, this different approach of writing and changing the themes in Starcraft reached a point that it could no longer be ignored.
Starcraft 1 and Brood Wars now never were highlights of writing as even they suffered from their own shortcomings and changes in lore between each other and the background mentioned in the manual, but it took a turn to eleven during Starcraft 2.
It went from a somewhat grounded sci-fi action military space monsters story that some players compared to televised serial telling to that of an epic space fantasy in which the fate of the universe at some point was at stake.
Coupled with the sometimes ridiculous cliche writing I at some point could no longer take it any more.
Near the end of the second game I pretty much had enough of it and decided to discontinue.
Then the third game came out and I decided to give SC2 another try but I was burned out even quicker because of the generic writing and dialog of the characters to whom I absolutely felt no attachment to, let alone that I wanted to find out what this great threat was even if I had been really invested in it since I learned about it during a secret mission in Brood War. Instead I just looked up the ending on Wikipedia, Starcraft wiki, and Youtube.
After more than ten years of waiting, finding out that the story ended in such a ridiculous way, not to mention the ridiculous setup, I was quite disappointed. SC2 Wings of Liberty had won me back and it even made me feel frustrated that there was not more to play as WoL just felt like it had just started.
It made me wish that the spin off Starcraft Ghost had been released despite it being a side story as I just wanted more Starcraft to play.
But now I really felt that I had wasted a lot of time being even somewhat invested in Starcraft's ongoing story. Not as much like Star Trek or Fallout but still enough.
I feel Starcraft 2 shows gameplay wise what a traditional RTS can be like, especially when you want to put a narrative in it. In game missions can be so much more varied and fun and not just the already established types.
Some of this I would really love to see in future RTS games.
But storywise I feel that SC2 did not just finish the open story threads of Starcraft 1 and its expansion, it pretty much completely dismantled or closed up the universe.
Because after the conclusion of this storyline and all the changes that come with it, where do you go from there creatively wise. (not that it is so good because it isn't but any conflict after this is going to feel minor)
Recently I decided to give Starcraft 2 another go after I rediscovered a total conversion mod called Mass Recall for it again. I already knew it but I had kind of forgotten about it for a couple of years.
But before I wanted to give that mod a try I first wanted to play an expansion download/DLC called Nova Covert Ops which I never did when it was newly released because as I mentioned before I kind of grew tired of Starcraft 2's campaign during the second and the third game.
In that regard I think that Nova Covert Ops was a bit better but still not enough to wash away the bad taste the campaigns of the second and third part had left me.
The gameplay remained fine and some of the missions were decent to good but the storyline in general was not much of an epilogue to Starcraft 2, it did not really set up anything for possible future games and I am not sure if it added anything meaningful.
In comparison Mass Recall is a lot more "old school" compared to Starcraft 2, most of the missions being about building a base, then an army, and then destroy the enemy with the occasional mission thrown in in which you just command a handful of units (though this time hero units have more abilities like in SC2).
Mass Recall consists of a remake of Starcraft 1, its expansion Brood Wars, and a couple of mini map packs called Enslavers, Enslavers Dark Vengeance, and Resurrection.
These were previously maps on the old Battlenet and also served as sort of tutorials on how to make maps with the map creator tool. And one map only appeared on the N64 version.
Content wise none of these three were that special in their original form (no new units) and even storywise they were bare bones. People would not have missed out on not playing them, some of them could not even be played solo.
The people who made Mass Recall decided to reimagine Enslavers and Enslavers Dark Vengeance into a sort of "missing chapter" between Brood Wars and Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty but if that really worked I will tell in a moment.
So far Starcraft 1's campaign seems to have ported pretty well (I have not completed it yet), recreating the missions of the original game but having the advantage of the improved controls and extra assets that Starcraft 2 provides.
What people might find interesting is that a number of options have been added that can change the original experience.
-Players can decide to include some of the additional gameplay elements/units from Brood Wars to appear in Starcraft 1 such as the medic though their skills have been cut back to fit better in the original campaign. (I always felt the medic should have been in SC1)
-Heroes can now be given extra abilities like in Starcraft 2, making them a lot more useful sometimes.
-In some missions the player can have more than one hero.
-Visually the player can decide if they want the SC2 appearance or prefer looks similar to that of SC1 as the modders have included model recreations of the original units (this can be hit or miss)
The hero missions can now actually be played as third person action sections in which the player can directly control a hero unit as they take him or her through a level.
This is completely optional though and it can also still be played as a RTS level. Having this choice is such a cool feature.
A couple of secret or hidden missions that were intended for Starcraft 1 but that got cut for some reason have also been reinserted in Starcraft 1 but I think if the player does not like that that they can skip these.
And before I forget, all the voice files from SC1 and Brood War were transferred to this mod so the two main campaigns have all the voices.
The cutscene videos and campaign end videos can also be added if the player wants them in the campaign.
Personally I enjoy Mass Recall much more than what I have seen of Blizzard's own Starcraft Remastered which is just Starcraft 1 and Brood Wars with new graphics but no gameplay changes.
Okay now we are getting to Dark Enslavers and Dark Enslavers remake which are part of a new campaign the modders have put together.
As mentioned before this campaign serves as a sort of bridge between Brood Wars and Wings of Liberty.
The modders decided to expand on these to make a more long running campaign and I think some elements of the Starcraft books was also included.
The campaign also expands a bit on the player characters from Starcraft 1 which were completely separate people from the hero units like as Reynor, Duke, Kerrigan, the Protoss characters, such as the magistrate who was the commander in the Terran campaign in Starcraft 1 (this character now has its own unit in game)
I have not played this campaign myself but I have been watching a lot of longplay videos about it and my reaction and opinion on this campaign is rather divided.
Now as I mentioned before Enslavers and its sequel (and Resurrection) were pretty bare bone in general so expanding on it was not a bad decision though I am not sure if there was a lot to expand upon.
The original campaign was about a pirate who had managed to take control of a group of the deadly zerg aliens and was now using them against other Terrans and the player had to stop him.
In the sequel the pirate and his mercenaries have returned and are now working together with a Protoss who is hostile towards its own people.
These return in the campaign but the modders have tried to integrate them into a long running plotline that was started in Starcraft 1/Brood War that involved the creation of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and the return of the character Namir Duran who was revealed to be an agent of an unknown power that threatened all three factions. I think the modders also tried to fix a number of plotholes of Starcraft 2.
Now the execution is a little bit lacking to be honest, the number and type of missions (remember that these are more Starcraft 1/Mass Recall style) but also the writing which tends to be a bit more verbose.
And the writing is pretty much on the level of Starcraft 2 if not fanfic based on it. You are not going to find a plot that is really that much better than Starcraft writing in general.
I don't think this bridge chapter was necessary to be added in the form that it is now.
Gameplay, now this is where the problem starts and it has mostly to do with the fact that this campaign is technically not finished yet. There are still a lot of things that needed to be added or fixed such as triggers as the player whose longplay I was watching at some point got simply stuck because a certain trigger was needed to give the hero character he was using a certain ability it needed to cross a chasm.
This never happened so that pretty much ended the last video.
The same issue with triggers also happens in the preceding levels and sometimes the player has to have to make the units go all over the map in the hope that it causes the trigger to go off so that game can continue or perhaps even has to reload or even restart the mission.
This is really disappointing when you see what the quality of the remakes of the SC1/Brood War campaign are.
Oh before I forget there is also the Resurrection mini campaign (this one could not be integrated into the Enslavers campaign) which mostly revolves around a character that got killed in Brood War but got resurrected during this map and which would re appear in Starcraft 2.
Some of the lore during this mini campaign doesn't seem to be correct to the rest of Starcraft but I can not mention it without spoiling the plot.
Apologies that I always make these texts so ridiculous long.
. Damn modernization.
