I Strongly Dislike StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

StarCraft II still makes me nostalgic for what were the last few worry-free years of my life. I quite like the Wings of Liberty campaign, from following the struggles of Jim Raynor and the crew of the Hyperion, the antics of Tychus Findlay, and the gameplay progression with the unlockable units and upgrades. You get the sense of the revolution against Arcturus Mengsk being bootstrapped with scraps and held together by a thread. I replayed its campaign so much that I completed all the achievements. On the other hand, Heart of the Swarm gives me a really bad fuzzy feeling that it almost makes me physically nauseous.

Heart of the Swarm made me hate Kerrigan not as the effective villain that she was in Brood War or the sympathetic anti-hero that they tried to make her become, but as the overpowered bitch who deserves to be punished for her countless sins. However, since Blizzard liked her as a sexy girlboss mascot for StarCraft II — salvaging their failure with Nova due to the cancellation of StarCraft: Ghost — they gave her the same treatment that 20th Century Fox gave Magneto in X-Men: Apocalypse.

Let’s take a look at the dumpster fire that was StarCraft II’s first expansion pack. I’m going to off-load a decade’s worth of frustration at a game I used to play religiously. I don’t hate it — I still liked some parts of it — but I strongly dislike it as a whole.

Stop It With the Redemption Arcs Already!

Blizzard really loves the redemption arc. Every franchise they have — except Diablo, which has its own problems — features some form of redemption arc. Even Overwatch, which is discontinued salvage project, you could see how some of its characters were being lined up for redemption arcs. However, the two Blizzard characters most infamous for their redemption arcs are Sylvanas Windrunner and Sarah Kerrigan.

Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, killed billions of innocent people, but that’s ok because she’s a critical character. They didn’t think the audience wanted to see the genocidal but sexy good-turned-bad character get a tragic ending. Take note that we have to critique without going too hard at the fact that she’s female because that would be misogynistic.

The only reason why Kerrigan isn’t as bad as Sylvanas Windrunner in World of Warcraft is that more people played the latter, which led to Sylvanas sticking around for much longer.

It’s the one trope that has irked me more than anything else throughout the years. When a bad guy doesn’t get punished for being a bad guy simply because they’re even a tad bit likable, not only does that reek of bullshit, but that also makes the story become too similar to reality — in a world full of forgiven tyrants, ignored abusers, and redeemed murderers. But instead of creating some bittersweet ending for Kerrigan, they made her a demigod figure.

I don’t care if the whole hybrid thing was planted since the end of Brood War. They could’ve written it in a way that lets her be a savior to repent for her crimes, but still pay for said crimes.

Perhaps it’s a stretch to say that such sentiment has given way to the socio-political situation we now see in the world today, with questionable individuals being put in positions of great power and authority. However, there’s no ignoring the pattern that somewhat ‘likable’ villains throughout media are being given redemption arcs simply to extend their shelf life, either due to their creators being attached to them or merely for profit.

I’d like to blame Star Wars for this, but there’s much to blame that franchise for these days.

In a world where felons and mass murderers can run for office, people want villains to be redeemed. If they’re attractive or charming enough, they get put on a pedestal and even considered mascots for their respective titles. To be fair, Blizzard hasn’t executed that very well since Sylvanas is a lot more like John Cena than The Rock in terms of her approval rating, while only nerds know who Kerrigan is.

Nobody knows Nova. They almost made her appealing in Heroes of the Storm by giving her a flirtatious personality, but Blizzard almost immediately gave up on that game.

Heart of the Swarm Had Garbage Units

Take note that I’m horribly out of date with StarCraft II since I haven’t played and followed it regularly for almost a decade now. I would still catch GSL every now and then, but I don’t know what the best strategies and build orders are nowadays. For this section, I’m working from my memory of how things were during that time.

The unit design for Heart of the Swarm included some of the most unbelievable and inconceivable decisions ever. Even in hindsight, more or less a decade since, those decisions still confuse and frustrate me. The swarm host was just the tip of the iceberg.

For Protoss — my main race — the Mothership Core was a terror for the early game. Having a flying unit that can attack during the opening is difficult to deal with for Zerg and a nuisance for Terran. If Zerg had an Overlord-like unit that can attack, they would dominate. However, it could also time warp and mass recall — two abilities that made the unit indispensable.

Blizzard had to get rid of the Mothership Core. It was too good.

They really didn’t know what to do with the Tempest. If Overwatch had Symmetra, StarCraft II has the Tempest — both of them went through changes and redesigns. On one hand, it takes some accountability and courage to admit that they made mistakes and pull effort to correct them. On the other hand, it showed that they didn’t know what they were doing.

I think it would’ve been fine to keep it as the Protoss version of the Zerg Guardian from Brood War, but they wanted all the salty Terran and Zerg players to shut up.

The new Terran units are mostly fine. The Hellbat is actually a pretty cool addition, giving Terran more options for the early to mid game. As for the Spider Mine, it gave us numerous highlights featuring stuff being destroyed en masse. Perhaps they could’ve worked harder to make mech more viable, but they did somewhat do that for Legacy of the Void.

Then we get to the Zerg units. The Viper is an okay unit that gave Zerg the ability to yoink enemy units, which led to several highlights over the years. However, arguably the most egregious error in judgment ever in the history of gaming came about with the introduction of the Swarm Host — the worst unit design in Heart of the Swarm.

They must’ve gone, “Let’s take the Carrier, make it Zerg and put it in the ground.” That alone wasn’t that big of a deal, but they must’ve felt that since Zerg was already so micro-intensive that having to create the tiny units that come out of that pustule of a unit may already be too much for the poor Zerg players’ tiny, exhausted fingers.

So, they made the locusts free and automatic. This was their biggest mistake.

Some say “free units” is a misnomer for semi-autonomous projectiles that shoot their own projectiles. In any case, you can plant a bunch of Swarm Hosts outside the enemy base and bring the game to a standstill. Do it against another Zerg and stare at the clock while waiting for something different to happen — it’s insanity. By the 2-hour mark, you’ll rue the day you ever picked up Zerg or even this accursed game in the first place.

Maybe I can blame its existence to bureaucracy, with developers having to go through more than one middleman to get authorization for a change or revision. It looked like once they were finally able to fix the problem, it was already the launch of Legacy of the Void. At that point, I was playing a lot less StarCraft II and had moved onto other things in life.

I played StarCraft II semi-seriously for over five years, playing no less than 10 ladder games daily. I never got that good at it, but I loved the hell out of that game and learned a lot of things both in and out of the game.

Things did get better in Legacy of the Void, but the combination of drastic gameplay changes and the damage left behind by Heart of the Swarm are the reason why I barely played ladder after January 2016. A few months later, Overwatch came out and I never felt a need to touch StarCraft II ever again. I did keep playing the campaigns to get the achievements, but that was about it after ‘accidentally’ reaching platinum league for one last season.

I got what I could from the game, but I wish it kept getting better even past its peak instead of showing the symptoms of a chronic disease.

Conclusion

Heart of the Swarm is far from the worst thing ever, but it was certainly the least among the StarCraft II trilogy. Wings of Liberty continues to be the best campaign, although its development wasn’t exactly the best due to dweebs in its team. Seriously, how are you supposed to ‘get ahead of development’? With psychic powers?

That QA head must have thought he had Kerrigan’s psionic powers.

Unfortunately, during the mid-2010s, game director David Kim took a lot of flak for StarCraft II’s balance issues. There’s no avoiding controversy when it comes to the game balance of any competitive title, but it was particularly contentious with StarCraft II because it was developed by a studio that still had a reputation for polish. However, ever since Activision and Blizzard had its merger back in 2008, the culture of the company had been changing.

In terms of profits, StarCraft II was a failure. It made less money than a horse in World of Warcraft. The rule of thumb now is if the game is by a public company, it will have microtransactions. The likely reason they didn’t put unit skins in StarCraft II was because the player base was so small that it wasn’t worth it. Overwatch became a more valuable IP than the legendary StarCraft because of its lootboxes (and indirectly due to SFM porn).

It was fun growing up with StarCraft. I can replay the campaigns whenever I want. But I’m not expecting a new game. And even if they do come out with a new game, I’m not expecting much from its story. If there’s a new story, it can’t bring back the old characters — the slate should be wiped clean.

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