StarCraft II: Difference between revisions

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* [[0% Approval Rating]]: Mengsk in the border worlds. After {{spoiler|Raynor exposes his crimes}}, this spreads to the core worlds as well

* [[Acronym and Abbreviation Overload]]:

{{quote|'''Raynor''': ''Relax, partner; [[Tempting Fate|we got HOURS till that sun explodes!]]''}}

* [[Alliterative Name]]:

** According to [[Word of God]], when Raynor's unit, the former Colonial Militia, was working with Mengsk, they were known as Raynor's Rangers.

* [[And I Must Scream]]: {{spoiler|The Zerg Overmind}}, {{spoiler|Kerrigan}} and the Infested Terrans:

''"[[Survivor Guilt|You were too late!]]"'' }}

* [[And the Adventure Continues...]]

* [[Bag of Spilling]]:

** Due to [[Technology Marches On]], many of the old units are either upgraded with new abilities or replaced outright with new units. Doesn't explain why some perfectly good old abilities like Lockdown, Stasis Field, Dark Swarm and Plague are no longer in use. Plague and Stasis Field have equivalent new abilities, but otherwise...

* [[Bar Brawl]]: The cutscene [[Meaningful Name|"Bar Fight"]]: {{spoiler|After you finish the mission "Maw of the Void" and collect the last piece of Xel'Naga technology, the non-primary members of the Hyperion are considering a mutiny because Jim "sold" them to the Dominion when Jim agreed to work with Valerian to defeat and de-infest Kerrigan, something they see as a betrayal, since they've signed up to fight against the Dominion, not to work along them. Then, Tychus (who was drunk) says that nobody can trust in "that drunk Jim Raynor". Jim heard all of this and had a fight with Tychus, which ended in Tychus being neutralized after damaging Raynor's jukebox}}.

* [[Baseless Mission]]: There's several of these in the game, many of which require you to be careful with your forces so you don't squander them.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: {{spoiler|Valerian's}} plan to recruit {{spoiler|Raynor}} relied pretty much entirely on predicting {{spoiler|Raynor would want to confront Arcturus face to face}} rather than, say, blasting his ship out of the sky with the Hyperion's Yamato Cannon. It also relies heavily on {{spoiler|Raynor's guilt of leaving Kerrigan behind and his wanting to cure her instead of just killing her like he swore he would in Brood War}}.

* [[Beehive Barrier]]: Immortals' hardened shields.

* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Half of the single-player campaign consists of Raynor running around the galaxy rescuing abandoned colonists from zerg and occasionally protoss. However, at the end of the campaign {{spoiler|Jimmy's invasion of Char kicks it into overdrive, with him bailing out half the Dominion fleet including their General, mopping the floor with the zerg on their home turf (which an [[Enemy Mine]] alliance failed to do), and deinfesting Kerrigan.}}

* [[Bigger Bad]]: The "Dark Voice".

** Mass Mutalisks. Once they reach critical mass, it is pretty damn hard to stop even with the right counter units all lined up.

** Alongside the Marine, you get the SP-only Goliath once it gets the upgrades for range and attacking multiple targets. Studier, more powerful and one of the most versatile units in the game.

* [[Broad Strokes]]: Continuity regarding the [[Non-Entity General]] player characters of the Magistrate, the Cerebrate, and the Executor from the first game. Current Canon/[[Word of God]] holds that the first game's Executor was Artanis, and the Cerebrate was among those killed by Zeratul during the defense of Aiur, while Kerrigan's ''Brood War'' Cerebrate eventually died without the Overmind to sustain it. The ''Brood War'' Executor may have been Selendis. The UED captain is probably dead. The Colonial Magistrate was mentioned by Raynor directly: apparently they parted ways after the events of ''Brood War'' and Raynor has not heard of him since.

* [[Broken Faceplate]]: A scene near the end of the game shows the aftermath of a battle, with many broken and immobile suits of Terran power armor strewn across the ground. One prominent shot shows a large hole shot through the characteristic domed visor.

** Played straight as can be with Raynor's revolver. He's only got one bullet, too.

** The artifact pieces, somewhat. You collect the first piece as early as the second mission (as an opportunity to make some money), and other bits here and there... until after the fourth piece, when its purpose is revealed.

* [[Cliff Hanger]]: ''Heart of the Swarm'' and ''Legacy Of The Void'' have a '''lot''' of things to explain.

* [[Combining Mecha]]: [http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47494.html Terratron], from the 2009 [[April Fools' Day]] gag. [[Ascended Meme|It makes an appearance in the]] [[Mini Game]].

{{quote|Beware of Terra-tron. HE DOES NOT LIKE YOU.}}

* [[Cipher Scything]]: This happens to the player characters from the original and Brood War campaigns; the unnamed Commander/Executer/Cerebrate being retconned away.

* [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]: On Hard and Brutal difficulties, the AI will use units you don't have and cannot have access to yet, such as Siege Tanks in the second mission and Ravens and Banshees in the train mission. Later missions also give the Dominion bases Tech Lab add-ons to their buildings so they can double-train any unit they like long before you can access them, and on Brutal they get more of the other upgrades you won't have access to yet, such as their buildings auto-repairing themselves. Also, statwise, their units will be better than yours in every way.

* [[Continuity Snarl]]: Since the player is free to play through the missions in any order they like, you can end up fighting enemy units, seeing various sideplots, and snagging new units you aren't supposed to know exist yet. For example:

** Within the Protoss army itself, the colossus is an old unit the Protoss have dug up since abandoning them, and the Mothership is an old unit in the lore that just wasn't used for combat in the first game. Void Rays and Stalkers were designed by the Dark Templar. So in a way, the Khalai/Aiur Protoss are still experiencing this since this means the only new units they themselves have created are the Phoenix and Immortal, which was only created to replace the Dragoon,--the jury's out on the sentry since it has no unit lore.

* [[Creator Cameo]] / [[The Cast Showoff]]: One of the in-game TV ads is about [[Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain]], in-game called "L800ETC", the band comprised of several members of Blizzard's development team, promoting their new album.

* [[Crippling Overspecialization]]:

** Present as in most (all?) other RTS games, but some examples are particularly egregious--like the firearm-equipped units that can't shoot airborne targets (immortal, reaper, marauder, Viking in walker mode), and the various flyers with air-to-air weaponry that can't be used to attack the ground.

** Justified. Hitting a flying target with a weapon not designed for anti-air use is probably a little harder than the necessary for gameplay depiction of the action.

* [[Crossover]]:

** There is also a Murloc Marine.

** ''[[Diablo]]'' makes a cameo in the rising lava level, reminding much of Hell as it was in Diablo 2.

** The official DOTA mod features characters from [[Warcraft]] and [[Diablo]], like Thrall and the Witchdoctor.

* [[Converging Stream Weapon]]: The Void Ray. The number of beams that converge actually increases over time letting it be a much better weapon against targets that take a while to kill.

* [[Cutting Off the Branches]]: Although the storyline has multiple branching paths, Blizzard is on the record stating which paths are canon. If you want to know, the canon ending of the Tosh missions is {{spoiler|Breakout}} and the canon ending of the Ariel Hanson missions is {{spoiler|Safe Haven}}.

* [[Curse Cut Short]]:

'''Tape:''' "Anger does not dictate my life."

'''Spectre:''' "You just said that you stupid b-!" }}

* [[Danger Deadpan]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H00V486-H4Q The Wraith pilot]. The unit has four different death lines, all of which would sound normal when delivered with [[Oh Crap|utter terror]].

* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: The protoss now sport a number of Dark Templar-related units beyond just the Dark Templar themselves. They have their own creepier version of the Dragoon, the Stalker, and a flying laser beam called a Void Ray.

** ''Wings of Liberty'' is fairly easy on Normal difficulty, with the exception of the final mission. There's also a significant spike in difficulty just going from "Normal" to "Hard." On Hard, the A.I. changes its tactics completely and often [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|has unfair advantages]]. For example, in the third "Zero Hour" mission, the zerg not only swarm you in vast numbers but reinforce their area by spawning Creep Tumors and building Spine Crawlers, ''and'' get orbital strike backups.

** There are also several missions where you have additional objectives on Hard to make it more challenging. For example, you can't lose too many civilians in The Evacuation in addition to having to escort 50 of them to the airport.

** Earlier: "Zero Hour" is pretty tough compared to the first two missions, but not right away... just manning those bunkers is enough at first, but it gets pretty intense by the end.

** Three missions stand out for this trope. "In Utter Darkness," "Supernova," and "All In" are, by far, the most difficult missions of the game and stand above the others assuming equivalent difficulty levels. "All In" isn't too terrible if you know a few secret knocks, namely using a ridiculous number of siege tanks and making sure to intercept Kerrigan with a ball of stimmed Marines short of her hitting your tank line. "Supernova" doesn't give you enough time to build a proper force to face the Tal'darim and, to make it worse, they frequently attack you and cause attritional losses. Moving your base under pressure is very problematic. "In Utter Darkness" is probably the worst of the three (althought "Supernova" comes close), as success in this mission depends on being able to pick out hybrids for Lift with your Phoenixes. This gets very problematic once the number of units on the map gets so high they're all stacked on top of each other.

* [[Enemy Mine]]: {{spoiler|The final missions have you team up with the Dominion - who you've been fighting the entire game - to put an end to the zerg threat by [[Rescue Romance|saving Kerrigan]].}}

* [[Escort Mission]]: Two of them.

** Also directly lampshaded in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx1JDEnrVK8 Blizzard DOTA trailer].

* [[Executive Meddling]]: Blizzard and Gretech's efforts to push SC2 at the expense of the Proleague have earned them this reputation.

** As of the end of Wings of Liberty, {{spoiler|Dark Voice}} ''is'' this.

** When {{spoiler|the decrypted Adjutant}} is playing back its recording, its eyes turn red whenever Mengsk is talking.

* [[Good Guy Bar]]: The cantina on the ''Hyperion,'' complete with an arcade machine and a jukebox hanging from the ceiling. Raynor's in another bar in the beginning on Mar Sara and it looks like said bar is actually ''his headquarters.'' Of course, since he has only a handful of troops on-world and his staff is literally a holographic head in a box, he doesn't need much.

* [[Gotta Catch Them All]]: In order to unlock the final three missions of the campaign, Raynor must complete all the missions whose objectives are to acquire pieces of a Xel-Naga artifact that is the key to defeating Kerrigan. It is not necessary to complete all of the non-artifact missions to beat the campaign, although a certain number must be completed to unlock various artifact missions.

* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: Literally in the case of the Protoss. Their new dropship is a flying robot called a "Warp Prism" which stores units in a teleportation matrix. It can also double as a warp-in point for new troops from a Warp Gate.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]:

** Medics sometimes cry "Medic!" when they die. Guess they can't [[Heal Thyself]].

** In the [[Bar Brawl]] cutscene, Tychus tells the others that they can't trust "that drunk" (Raynor). While being drunk himself and the least trustworthy guy in the faction next to Tosh.

* [[In Working Order]]: The xel'naga artifact. Interestingly, Ariel Hanson notes that the artifact is thousands of years old, which is really ''young'' compared to most xel'naga artifacts, which are ''millions'' of years old. Probably built around when they were uplifting the Protoss.

* [[It Can Think]]: ''Heart of the Swarm'' promises to introduce several other intelligent types of zerg capable of speech, including Kerrigan's [[Voice with an Internet Connection|Voice with a Hivemind Connection]].

* [[It's Raining Men]]: Mercenaries, MULEs, and a couple of protoss tech upgrades deliver units in orbital drop pods. The Zerg get their own equivalent of this in some of the ''Wings of Liberty'' campaign missions; some kind of purple, fleshy torpedo falling from the sky that unleashes zerglings and creates a Creep Tumor on the spot. The Protoss are exempt from this trope, presumably, because they just warp in units via teleportation.

* [[The Jimmy Hart Version]]: An almost note-for-note rendition of a common [[Firefly]] theme appears as {{spoiler|Raynor stands victorious over Tychus after their bar-fight.}}

* [[Lego Genetics]]: The various attempts at {{spoiler|splicing zerg and protoss DNA to create hybrids}}. This is foreshadowed in lore, as {{spoiler|the zerg and protoss were both created by the Xel'Naga in the attempt to create another race like themselves.}}

* [[Lightning Bruiser]]: The Ultralisk. With a whopping 500 hit points, ridiculous attack damage and heavy armor, you'd have thought that it would be as heavy as you can get. Then you find out that the thing moves FASTER THAN A MARINE. These guys can destroy armies on open fields and can be produced in bulk so long as you have the resources. Their ability to ram buildings for extra damage was removed, but due to their default attack being area of effect this was actually a buff.

* [[Lost Forever]]: Once you {{spoiler|invade Char}}, you can't complete any missions from other arcs, nor can you play Lost Viking anymore. At least you're warned of this beforehand.

* [[Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me]]: Terran marines get a 30mm riot shield welded to their left pauldron. It gives them [[Body Armor as Hit Points|+10 HP]].

* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]: The banshee. Missile turrets and battlecruisers can be upgraded with this.

* [[Made of Explodium]]: The Aberration, when killed, turns grey and explodes in several different areas, culminating with its [[Your Head Asplode|head exploding.]]

* [[Man in the Machine]]: Immortals and stalkers.

* [[Meaningful Name]]:

** As an example, a map that was banned for (accidental) use of prominently-displayed swastikas gained a following who believed Blizzard took it down for use of the word "badass". In reality, Blizzard has never banned a map for using curse words, although there is a filter preventing such words from appearing in the map description. The reason they gave is: "because we can". This is exactly as dickish as it sounds: they had almost no way of doing it with Starcraft and even [[Warcraft]] 3, because they didn't have the staff, but now they do.

* [[Mordor]]:

{{quote|'''Warfield:''' Char. If hell ever existed, this is it.}}

** Redstone too. In fact, the periodic lava flooding might make it more of a Mordor than Char. Raynor notices it too:

* [[Neck Lift]]: {{spoiler|Kerrigan is seen performing a telekinetic version of this on Valerian Mengsk in a trailer for ''Heart of the Swarm''}}.

* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: A sizable chunk of the trailer/commercial footage for Starcraft II happens out of order in the campaign. For example, {{spoiler|one trailer has Matt handing Raynor his badge and this apparently motivating Raynor to take back up the fight: in the game Raynor ''has'' been keeping up the fight, just laying low for a bit, and the scene of Matt handing him his badge is much later in the game. In the trailer Matt's line "vengeance doesn't factor into this, our revolution is about freedom" is directed at Raynor. In the game he's actually talking to Tosh...although he could also be gently reminding his commander, given the context of the scene. A commercial trailer shows a hologram of Mengsk telling Raynor he's way in over his head. Mengsk is actually talking to his son, though Raynor is also present and when he announces his presence, Mengsk directs a similiar line to him.}}

{{quote|''Blinding. Searing. Like the sun burning in your face with your eyes squeezed shut. I have never felt such a thing before. I hope I never do again.''}}

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Averted when Tychus is driving the [[Humongous Mecha|Odin]].

* [[One Bullet Left]]: Done thematically. {{spoiler|Raynor's revolver only has one bullet left, and it's meant for Arcturus. He almost wastes it on Valerian (who he mistakes for Arcturus), and ultimately sacrifices it to save Kerrigan from Tychus}}.

* [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]]: The Lost Viking game in the Cantina; the aformentioned lost viking dies from one hit (without any power-ups) in a [[Bullet Hell]]-type game. Good luck.

* [[One-Man Army]]: If you thought some of the heroes in the original game were strong, wait until you see {{spoiler|the Odin}}. In addition, an achievement for one mission where you're required to get 50 kills with Zeratul is called One Man Army.

* [[One-Scene Wonder]]: High Templar Karass; He has glowing orange eyes that no other protoss has, he has his own speech set even though he's never playable, his only role in the campaign is to lead a charge of Zealots through a Zerg barricade so that Zeratul can get the last piece of the Prophecy, and then pulls a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] by duelling with the Queen of Blades so that Zeratul can escape with the prophecy. He is seen in only one sixth of one mission in the campaign, but his actions may have saved the Universe.

* [[Retcon]]:

** {{spoiler|Everything the zerg Overmind did in the first game, from infesting Kerrigan to the invasion of Aiur, was an attempt to circumvent the Dark Voice's plans. The Overmind couldn't resist its xel'naga programming, so it arranged its own destruction, transferring control of the Swarm to the hopefully-independent Kerrigan.}}

* [[Rise to the Challenge]]: Twice. The mission "The Devil's Playground" (your first Tosh mission) has the lower levels flooding every few minutes, forcing you to evacuate before your units die. Another mission ("Supernova") has you having to relocate your base due to a fire barrier consuming everything at it's way. And a later mission ("Belly of the Beast") has you outrunning a rising lava river as you try to escape a cave.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: From what we've seen so far of the upcoming Zerg expansion, Kerrigan is downright ''pissed'' at Arcturus ([[Up to Eleven]] compared to Raynor), after what Mengsk did to her in Starcraft 1.

* [[Sand Worm]]: One of the new zerg units/buildings is effectively this. Load a bunch of zerg into a Nydus Network, then grow a giant underground worm that pops up and starts disgorging tons of swarming zerglings. Seeing them, especially in the campaign, is always an "[[Oh Crap]]" moment.

* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]]: In case regular protoss weren't dogmatic enough for you, the terran campaign features the Tal'Darim, who don't really care for humans at all and swear bloody revenge on you every time you help yourself to something they're guarding.

* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]:

** We're low on resources and space here on Earth; in the Koprulu sector they're always expanding to new worlds and refining new resources. Hypothetically speaking, if they ''did'' experience a population boom like that they'd probably have a much easier time sustaining it than we would. But it's still a ''huge'' boom that needs to take place.

** Also, advances in technology plus the fact that they were originally colonists could mean that they were given technology that could increase fertility or even clone/artificially grow new people. Another explanation can be found in one of the ''Frontline'' short stories, where a team of protoss try to recover a Xel'Naga artifact that's explicitly stated to increase fertility.

* [[Spent Shells Shower]]:

** This trope is used to good effect to show how utterly screwed General Warfield and his men on {{spoiler|Char}} are. Even with the insane amount of [[More Dakka|dakka]] inherent with this trope they don't so much as slow the incoming wave of zerg down.

* [[Squishy Wizard]]:

** The trope is somewhat averted with the ghosts. Despite their role being essentially the same in the game as the previous game, the rounds on a ghost deal 20 damage to light units, making them very effective as anti-infantry/air even without using the snipe ability. With Snipe, they can essentially 1 shot Zerglings and Marines provided the Marine is not upgraded. They are still squishy, just not as squishy.

** Valerian actually encourages this at the start of the ''Maw of the Void'' mission.

{{quote|'''Valerian:''' Take your time, commander.}}

* [[Technology Marches On]]:

** Biology marches on too, apparently. Some of the zerg samples you bring Egon are from sub-species of Zerg that are no longer used as playable units, like the Defiler. Apparently Kerrigan just isn't using those types of zerg any more, which is why samples of them have become rare and valuable for examiners. On the same note, some of the zerg breeds have evolved into massive beasts of destruction like the Leviathan or the Omegalisk.

** On the other hand, some old-school Terran units are still just as effective as ever. Goliaths remain well-balanced units with a nice antiair niche, and the classic Medic can now be upgraded to heal faster and use less energy, which in tandem with lower build time and costs can make it superior to the Medivac in some situations. Unedited medics inserted into a certain custom game that adds Brood War units to the standard cache of Starcraft II units result in completely overpowered Terran infantry for melee games.

** The AI simply does not know when to run from a fight in the single-player campaign. In "Smash and Grab" you have to grab an alien artifact from a Tal'darim base before the Zerg overrun them on another front. Rather than pull their units back to regenerate their shields and wait for the next attack wave after fending off the Zerg, the Tal'darim will send their units down the lane into battle and get themselves utterly crushed. And then in "Media Blitz", despite commanding {{spoiler|the Odin with 2500 HP and enough firepower to kill any enemy unit in two shots}}, any Dominion defenders you come across, even if it's just a lone Marine, will charge in and start firing.

** Subverted by the Tal'darim Executor in "Maw of the Void", who will fight you, then teleport away after taking enough damage to regenerate his shields and energy. He does this two or three times.

* [[Trailers Always Spoil]]: The final commercial trailer for the game ruins the surprise twist that {{spoiler|Raynor allies with Valerian Mengsk (though not the reason Raynor agrees)}}, and that {{spoiler|at some point he returns to Char}}.

* [[Tripod Terror]]: Technically, Colossi have four legs, but they still fit the spirit of this trope, since they're gargantuan walkers on long legs whose primary attack is frying the enemy from a distance with a sweeping heat ray, just like the Martians in the ''War of the Worlds.'' As a bonus, those long legs aren't just for show--they can walk right over cliffs, giving them a good mobility advantage.

* [[Tron Lines]]: Ghosts and spectres (judging from Tosh and Nova) both have these as part of their suits.

* [[Units Not to Scale]]: You're able to fit pretty much your entire army and whatever colonists you rescued from Mar Sara inside the ''Hyperion''. Of course, when units ''are'' to scale it's a lot harder to see the fine details (see games like ''[[Supreme Commander]]''), which is why Blizzard went with this. On top of this, the ''Hyperion'' is one of the more powerful Battlecruisers ever built, so it might be unusually large.

** Several buildings can also produce units far too big to fit inside, like the Thor and Battlecruiser.

* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: {{spoiler|As a result of working for the Moebius Foundation, Raynor unwittingly ends up allying with the Dominion he had been fighting with all along. On top of that, it's possible that both have been double-suckered by a third party.}} Poor Jimmy seems to get suckered at every plot twist and turn since the first game.

* [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]]: The first cutscene showing Swann shows that his console is identical to the one the player uses when selecting upgrades for units. Apparently he personally arranges it so that every single piece of hardware has but two possible upgrades--no more, no less. Seems an odd way of doing things.

{{quote|"My forces are without number."}}

* [[Wham! Episode]]: The entirety of Zeratul's mini-campaign. {{spoiler|Starting on Zhakul, we have our first contact with an active hybrid. It's all but immortal and ''gets stronger every time you defeat it''. After that, there's the trip to Aiur in which we learn not only that Tassadar is still alive, for a given value of alive, but also what the Overmind's true motivation for creating Kerrigan was and realize it wasn't as evil as we'd thought. Lastly, and the most whammy of them all, the Overmind's vision of the future, in which we learn what happens if Kerrigan is killed. You control the last remnants of the protoss race against the immensely powerful Dark Voice and his army of hybrids and zerg. It ends with the Dark Voice extinguishing the star you're orbiting and presumably destroying all life in the universe.}}

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: If you take the time to read the terms and conditions the first time you run the game, you'll be doing so to the main theme mentioned above.

* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]: Raynor laments about the wall of fire in the Supernova opening cinematic with this trope.

 

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