StarCraft II: Difference between revisions

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The terran campaign, ''Wings of Liberty'', was released on July 27th, 2010. Set four years after the events of the Brood War, the campaign focuses on rebel hero Jim Raynor and the [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|Raynor's Raiders]], and their efforts to take down the corrupt empire called the Terran Dominion. ''Heart of the Swarm'' was released on March 12, 2013 and follows Sarah Kerrigan in her effort to regain control of the swarm and exact her revenge on the Terran Dominion's emperor, Arcturus Mengsk. ''Legacy of the Void''' was released on November 10, 2015 and focuses on Artanis, as he reclaims his homeworld of Aiur and reunites the Protoss factions in order to defeat Amon.

 

 

{{tropelist}}

* [[All There in the Manual]]: ''The Dark Templar Saga'' and the ''Frontline'' series are practically required reading for the sequel. ''Frontline'' gives the backstory and lore of several new units, while ''The Dark Templar Saga'' explains in detail what Preservers are and why they're significant. In addition the "Ghost Academy" series of books details the back-stories of Nova and Tosh; Though Starcraft 2 immediately spoils how well their friendship went after academy.

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

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

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

{{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.

** 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.

* [[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.}}

* [[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.

** In addition, if you decide not to cleanse the Colony, the Doctor is seen walking off afterwards just fine. If you DO decide to cleanse it, turns out she was secretly harboring a Zerg infection, and turns after. Same thing happens in any other branched mission; if you side with Tosh, it turns out he really is a revolutionary. Go against him and he turns out to be a scoundrel as Nova said.

* [[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]]:

** A lot of the campaign-only units are [[Too Awesome to Use]] (in multiplayer) or would even be [[Game Breaker|Game Breakers]], but a few others that are returning units from the first game are demonstratably inferior to their new counterparts--minus their mines and a slight speed advantage, Vultures aren't as nearly effective as Hellions, and Wraiths aren't quite as effective as either Vikings and Banshees. This is even lampshaded in-universe: Swann says that Vulture bikes are deathtraps, while Raynor says they're a classic piece of engineering. (Possibly also a lampshade of the [[Broken Base]].)

** 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.

** Ghosts and Nukes are ''far'' more useful than in the original game. Ghosts cost less to upgrade (though the unit itself costs more to train), they aren't as [[Squishy Wizard|squishy]] with a stronger attack and a lot more HP, and they build faster. Plus, ghosts are actually able to act as assassins, popping infantry units in one shot (though this takes energy). They also now have the ability to fire EMP rounds, which is ''highly'' useful against Protoss units in general, units that need energy for their abilities, and can even temporarily decloak invisible units! Meanwhile, Nukes cost less, build faster, and the Ghost and Nuke are much lower on the tech tree, on approximately the same tier as the Factory, allowing them to come out much earlier. The Ghost's prerequisite building is also where the Nuke arms so once its up you can have your Ghost ready to Nuke in a minute flat.

* [[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.

{{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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[[Category:Video Game]]

[[Category:Blizzard Entertainment]]