Kerrigan’s Flaws in StarCraft II (Part Four: Inconsistency)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

Kerrigan’s actions in StarCraft II, especially Heart of the Swarm, are all over the map. Her moral standards change hourly, ranging from a mentality of slaughtering everybody one day to trying to spare as many lives as possible the next.

The first glaring point would be when she attacked Kaldir. Apart from the fact that everything she needed there could have just as easily been acquired on a planet without a Protoss presence, she launches a bloodbath that sees every Protoss perish. The only motivation for this given in the game is that Kerrigan feared some vague Golden Armada. The armada in question never came for her before, so if she simply kept her location hidden until the Swarm was restored, there would be no reason to expect it to do so again.

In any case, there was absolutely no point to slaughtering the Protoss who tried to flee in the final Kaldir mission. If they were out of communications range with Shakuras, then they were at a considerable distance from it that would have taken a great deal of time to cross. Kerrigan had no need to silence them even if she feared that Golden Armada, because they would not reach Shakuras in time to make any difference. Despite that, she chooses to kill them all anyways.

Another problem is what occurs with Warfield’s army on Char. She offers him the chance to flee, which he refuses out of the justified expectation that she would not hold up her end of the deal. Kerrigan subsequently slaughters his entire army, even though she had no real need to. When she wipes out his army, she finds Warfield trapped in his operations centre, mortally wounded. She kills him, and then spares a single transport filled with soldiers, apparently out of compassion.

If she actually wanted to spare lives, she could have done so much more effectively. Leaving Warfield on Char, for instance, would not have done any great harm to her cause. She could have simply re-established the Swarm on another planet and left Warfield to sit there until such time as she dealt with Arcturus. He was largely stranded there in any case, since Kerrigan had destroyed every one of the Gorgon Battlecruisers he had wasted so stupidly. Trying to kill him off on the spot would only waste some of her own forces, especially since Warfield was willing to nuke his own base, and the Swarm would need everything it could muster to assault Korhal.

One especially severe flaw to note is what she does with the various Broodmothers who contact her throughout the story. She tells them to attack various Dominion industrial worlds producing war materials and raze them to the ground, leaving no survivors. This is an incredible way to waste valuable resources that could be used on Korhal, as those industrial worlds were irrelevant in the type of war she was waging.

If she was fighting a war of attrition over several years, they would certainly be important targets. However, the whole of Heart of the Swarm takes place within a few months at best, which means she was planning a lightning strike. Such a strike deals with the forces already in place, as such a short timeframe means that production capabilities would be largely meaningless.

The burning of so many inhabited worlds is also in stark contrast to what she does later on Korhal. She goes so far as to handicap her own assault by landing outside the city, and later in avoiding civilian-heavy districts, in order to give Valerian time to evacuate civilians from the city. What she did would have weakened her attack greatly over a few million lives.

On the other hand, she showed no signs of compassion or doubt over ordering the destruction of numerous worlds with millions of inhabitants apiece. It should also be noted that all of these consequences were utterly ignored by Blizzard, which simply threw the references in without any kind of follow-up, so it would not be terribly surprising if Legacy of the Void proceeded to ignore that destruction and allow Valerian to miraculously repair the Dominion in time for some final showdown with Amon.

The ultimate problem with Kerrigan’s morality and choices is incredible inconsistency. Her actions simply make no sense, as they veer wildly from plans for massacres to compassionate deeds, sometimes combined at the same time. If she was intended to be written as a redeemed person to some extent, the industrial worlds should never have come into play, and the Kaldir attack would not have had a good point to it. If, on the other hand, she was to be shown as somebody who was offered redemption and turned away to commit further evils, she certainly should not have sabotaged her own goal of deposing Arcturus by crippling her attack on Korhal.

Kerrigan’s Flaws in StarCraft II (Part Three: Lunacy)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

Throughout StarCraft II, Kerrigan makes numerous mistakes. Some of them have already been outlined, namely those in the Umoja missions, but there are many others as well that fly in the face of common sense to varying degrees.

In Wings of Liberty, during the Char invasion, she makes a few critical errors. First of all, most of her forces had been spread entirely too far apart throughout the sector hunting for the various pieces of a Xel’Naga artifact. This was an understandable mistake, as she could not have reasonably expected such a large portion of the Dominion fleet to target Char directly even when the Dominion itself was being invaded.

However, she also mangles some of her defenses. With the two choice missions, especially the one where Raynor opts to blast the Zerg out of their tunnels, it would be expected that Kerrigan would have some forces there. In the tunnels, you see measly handfuls of Zerg, to the point where three experienced soldiers are enough to blast through any resistance, collapse the tunnels, and get out alive.

Finally, and most importantly, she botches her strategy at the end miserably in the “All In” mission. She makes no special attempts to flank the defenses around the artifact, instead choosing to simply ram Zerg down their throats and hope that they would break through. Kerrigan is too intelligent to make such an obvious mistake, which makes this highly unusual. Also, she could probably perceive with her psionic abilities that the artifact was dangerous to her. If she could feel its power building, she could have simply gone into orbit and waited for it to spend its energy, then come back down with reinforcements and destroyed any survivors.

There is also the question of Kerrigan’s presence on Kaldir. She apparently goes there to find one Broodmother Nafash, only to find her dead corpse at the hands of the Protoss. She then moves to annihilate the Protoss presence rather than ignore it and leave before they notice her. If she was detected and a warning got out, she would, according to the game, face a quick demise. Given that she is trying to take revenge against Arcturus, her provoking a war with the Protoss makes no sense. If she was simply looking to rebuild a piece of the Swarm, she could surely have gone to a planet without a Protoss presence and recruited a Broodmother there. If she was looking specifically for the Hydralisk and Roach strains that turn up there, those were incredibly common and would have been present on numerous other planets as well.

Incidentally, while largely unrelated to Kerrigan, it should be noted that Abathur was supposed to be the genetic mastermind of the Swarm. He is shown to be capable of manipulating Zerg genetics on the fly, apparently creating new mutations in days that somehow never turned up over the four years between the first and second StarCraft games. Despite such capabilities, he apparently lacks the knowledge to simply create creatures like Hydralisks without working specimens.

This is remarkably bizarre, as he has all their genetic patterns stored in his mind, and the basic Zerg Larvae hold all the relevant genetic strains of the Swarm, or at least those in frequent use. Kerrigan’s deinfestation would not have suddenly removed most of those DNA strands from the general pool, which means that this was probably a case of Blizzard not spotting the implications of such a genetic repository in Kerrigan’s retinue.

Another point to note is that Kerrigan charged in rather blindly at Arcturus Mengsk in the final mission. After taking the time to make at least a basic strategy for the planetary landing, and a slightly more complex plan for the Psi Destroyer, she seems to throw all that thinking away to smash through the Imperial Palace alone. Admittedly, she had considerable power, but she should at least have had some of the Zerg follow her in.

She then faces Arcturus alone, seemingly planning to savour the moment. She is apparently caught off guard when he deploys the same artifact used to deinfest her on Char, and is left lying on the ground. The player is given the impression that Arcturus will kill her right then after his obligatory gloating, if not for Raynor’s fortunate arrival buying Kerrigan the chance to gather herself and finish him off.

Apart from the fact that, again, a few of the Zerg should have been accompanying her, she could have probably killed Arcturus on the spot. Telepaths in the StarCraft universe are capable of instantly killing with the power of their mind, which generally causes the victim to bleed out of their eyes, ears, and mouth. Arcturus quite foolishly gave her more than enough time to do so, and Kerrigan had more than enough power for the task.

Also, he had been using a small remote to control the artifact, which Kerrigan could have telekinetically swatted out of his hand very easily. Since that was the only weapon he had, not that a simple gun would have been likely to do him much good, such a simple move would have left him defenseless.

Part Four will deal with some of the highly inconsistent actions Kerrigan displays in Heart of the Swarm.

Kerrigan’s Flaws in StarCraft II (Part Two: Back in the Saddle)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

The second mission in Heart of the Swarm has Kerrigan and Raynor attempting to escape the laboratory. They have to work their way through various groups of Dominion forces and released Zerg as they navigate their way to a specific tunnel. It’s odd that there is no easily reachable landing zone within the main complex, but that is a minor concern.

Once they reach the tunnel, they hop onto a transport that takes them through it, before they ultimately reach a landing pad with a shuttle ready and waiting. Raynor and Kerrigan get split up at this point, as a bridge is blasted by Dominion forces when Kerrigan crosses it, but before Raynor can follow her. He goes to find another path out as Kerrigan deals with them. Raynor is cut off and tells Kerrigan to go without him. He calls Valerian Mengsk for an extraction team, but it never launches. Nova shows up at Raynor’s location, and they face off. Their fate is unknown at that moment, but it gets revealed in due time. However, there are several flaws here.

The first point to note is that standard Marine armored suits are powered. They enhance one’s strength massively, and are quite capable of running faster than an ordinary human. They can jump farther as well. Why, then, could Raynor not simply jump the gap created by the ruined bridge? It could be that the game perspective is misleading, and that the bridge is actually supposed to be a great deal larger than shown. However, it still looks very unusual.

It gets worse when you notice that only a small piece of the bridge was blown out by the missile, not the entire thing, so the length would have been mostly irrelevant in any case. The hole left by the single missile should not have been too large for Raynor. Still, the moment makes for good drama, and this is not the greatest problem.

It should also be noted that the Archangel failed to simply blow up the shuttle when it arrived, despite the fact that there was no reason to leave it intact and every reason to destroy it, thereby cutting off one potential avenue of escape.

A more notable point is that of the shuttle, since it doesn’t seem like Kerrigan had much trouble with the Archangel that blasted the bridge. If Raynor had waited, taking shots at the Archangel when he could, until it went down, Kerrigan could have just flown the shuttle over to him and picked him up that way.

Alternatively, when he found himself cut off and heard about Kerrigan’s success, he could have simply backtracked until he got to the landing pad again, which would surely have been a quick process. He might have been too impatient or concerned for Kerrigan to wait until she destroyed the Archangel on her own, and justifiably fearful that it could kill her.

On the other hand, the problem of why he didn’t backtrack is never really answered, as it is only indicated that his planned path was blocked, not that he was incapable of retracing his steps. Given that Kerrigan destroyed the Archangel within a few minutes, Raynor would have been able to retrace his steps quite quickly.

Finally, it needs to be considered that Kerrigan had telekinetic powers. These are shown in numerous cases, such as the Crushing Grip ability she has in that very mission, which was capable of lifting a number of Marines at once. When StarCraft II is opened to the main screen after logging in, Kerrigan is seen levitating and manipulating metal objects with only her mind.

What was stopping her from simply grabbing Raynor and flinging him over the gap in the bridge? If she actually just shot him over, it would only take a second or two. If she wanted to ensure a safe landing, it would not be too hard to catch him before he landed, which would have extended the required time to about five seconds, possibly as much as ten.

Given that they spend longer than that talking about how Raynor plans to get to her, it would have been perfectly safe for her to simply grab him with her mind and levitate him over that way. This is a rather glaring hole in the idea of common sense, since it was well within her means to move a single person telekinetically over a gap with whatever degree of care was reasonably necessary.

Part Three will cover some of Kerrigan’s more atrocious ideas throughout StarCraft II.

Kerrigan’s Flaws in StarCraft II (Part One: Umoja)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

Kerrigan was at least reasonably well-written in the first StarCraft. Initially a senior lieutenant under Arcturus Mengsk in the Sons of Korhal, she was abandoned by him and left for the Zerg. Instead of killing her, the Overmind infested her and turned her into its greatest weapon, twisting her mind seemingly irrevocably in the process.

After the Overmind met its end, she came into her own as a power to be reckoned with. She successfully acquired help from the Protoss and the remnants of Arcturus’ Dominion to deal with the UED and the second Overmind. When her allies outlived their usefulness, she stabbed them in their collective backs, a masterful move that left them crippled. She then killed the new Overmind with the help of the Dark Templar, after which it became clear that Kerrigan had been manipulating the leader of the Dark Templar for some time. When the Protoss and Arcturus joined forces with the UED to defeat her, she crushed them all, only sparing them because she wanted to relish their defeat and to quash their hopes once again when they were raised for her own sadistic enjoyment.

Sadly, when StarCraft II opened, she had become a stereotypically idiotic villain incapable of defeating forces a mere fraction of her own in size. After she was deinfested by the Xel’Naga artifact and brought to a secret Umojan laboratory, Heart of the Swarm begins. Some problems become immediately apparent here.

In the very first mission, she is in the laboratory, being experimented upon. Valerian Mengsk made the mistake of asking her to control some Zerg, but Kerrigan took his planned experiment several steps too far, massing enough Zerglings to sweep through a substantial portion of the laboratory and destroy a great deal of security and research equipment.

Admittedly, she had taken great care to avoid injuring the researchers themselves, but the ruined equipment was expensive in the extreme, and precious time would have to be wasted to rebuild enough to start experimenting once again. Her motivation for this? According to her, it was to teach Valerian a lesson in the power of the Zerg, and of the preposterous idea of containing them. That lesson most likely would hit home, but her means would have left all present very concerned.

If Kerrigan was secretly plotting to return to the Zerg, this would have been a foolish way of alarming those watching and reducing her chances of a sudden breakout. If she was trying to genuinely build goodwill with Valerian and Raynor to hopefully mitigate her many previous deeds, then she could surely have chosen less drastic means to drive the point home. Either way, however, it suggests a considerable degree of control to cause so much destruction without injuring others, which is at odds with what happens later.

Later on, at the end of the second mission, she leaves the planet without Raynor and meets Valerian and Matt Horner on the Hyperion. When they tell her that Raynor didn’t make it, and that they plan to go back for him later, she completely loses control and almost strangles Valerian on the spot. She then leaves in a dropship to head to the planned rendezvous point, where she finds Dominion forces ready to blast the Hyperion out of the sky. She summons a roaming Zerg brood and uses them to destroy those forces before the Hyperion arrives.

However, her loss of control on the Hyperion would be troubling. If she wanted to save Raynor, she should have at least stopped to realize that Raynor’s own lieutenant was saying to wait. Failing that, she could have promptly gone back down to the planet and searched for him without causing a huge scene on the bridge.

Finally, if she had kept the cool head she had demonstrated earlier, she would have known full well that Valerian and Matt were her best chance of finding Raynor again. Matt was acting commander of the Raiders in Raynor’s absence, while Valerian had innumerable resources and valuable connections that could be used to dig up Raynor’s location in short order.

An emotional outburst is the only explanation given for her breakdown and loss of control. It could have been even worse, but Kerrigan was a cold-hearted Ghost assassin before she joined the Sons of Korhal, and her time as the Queen of Blades could safely be supposed to have killed her sense of morality along with any caring emotions she felt for others.

Of course, with the implication in Wings of Liberty that the Queen of Blades was only an alternate personality created by the Overmind’s infestation that was eradicated by the Xel’Naga artifact, with the real Kerrigan buried underneath, this bizarre reversal might make some sense. However, that would raise its own questions about Kerrigan’s destruction of the Umojan laboratory previously.

Yet another problem with Kerrigan’s actions in the early parts of Heart of the Swarm is her reaction to Arcturus’ broadcast about Raynor’s execution. She loses control for a few seconds, before settling into some dark train of thought. After a long minute, she chooses to head directly to Zerg space, presumably to begin working at the downfall of Arcturus Mengsk. The fact that the broadcast even reached her ship on a remote, largely deserted planet whose Dominion outpost had been destroyed is itself difficult to explain, but that can be put down to dramatic effect.

The more serious point is that of Kerrigan’s lack of actual thought about the problem. She knew Arcturus Mengsk’s deceptive nature very well, and she would know that he had much to gain from announcing Raynor’s execution. Without the actual body, there would be no reason to believe his claim about Raynor’s death, and every reason to believe he either escaped or was captured. She could simply contact Valerian and Matt to see if Raynor had found them after she left them in such an angry fashion. If they hadn’t seen him, then she could go to them, apologize, and work with them to start looking for the location of whatever prison Raynor had been condemned to. Either way, Kerrigan would not need to rush directly to Zerg space. If she saw Valerian and Matt as being ineffectual at some point, she could always choose to go to a Zerg planet and bring them into the situation later.

Part Two will cover a very specific inconsistency in the early parts of Heart of the Swarm, in the ending of the second Umoja mission.

 

Kaldir’s Flaws (Part Two)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

The Kaldir mission arc was poorly thought out, if the number of inconsistencies are any indication. The lack of Protoss competence, the Golden Armada’s impotence, and the simple fact that it ended in a wholesale massacre were all parts that could have been greatly improved upon. However, there are still some other mistakes that should be covered.

It was noted earlier that Kerrigan, due to the Khala and the behavior of the Zerg when they lose their controller, could not have kept her status secret from the Protoss. It should be kept in mind that the Broodmothers created by Kerrigan might have been able to manage their fragments of the Swarm, but the lack of central control would have been noticeable. Also, the Broodmothers appear to have turned upon one another, which would be another tipoff to anybody watching. This might not have saved Kaldir, but it would have at least informed the Protoss on Shakuras that they needed to search for Kerrigan and eliminate her while she was weak.

Also, there is a critical point to consider. What happens when one stops to think about the question of why the Protoss did not simply send a transmission to Shakuras through technological means? After all, Protoss technology is vastly superior to Terrans in most aspects, and even Terrans can manage real-time communications.

In addition, the Protoss have mastered the technology of warp gates for near-instantaneous transportation of matter, like warriors and warships, over interstellar distances, so it is logical to assume that a message can be transferred the same way. Given all of this, one would think that an emergency beacon sounding the alarm about Kerrigan would be simple to transmit.

Unfortunately, according to Heart of the Swarm, this is not the case. Apparently, it takes multiple High Templar wasting considerable amounts of time at flashy Psi Spires in order to simply send a warning that would consist of a few sentences. An actual message relaying a scientific discovery or some other such matter would have taken hours, most likely.

Even the Warp Gates in the second mission should have been an avenue for sending a message. It would not have taken much to point the Protoss equivalent of a radio antenna at a Warp Gate, automatically instruct it to open a portal, and quickly beam a transmission through before it closed. If that was not an option for some unknowable reason, they could always have rushed their Scouts into a Warp Gate, instead of using them to escort lumbering shuttles that move at a ludicrously slow pace.

There is another crucial lapse, as well. In the first mission, the area is periodically swept by a flash freeze, when the temperature drops so low that the Protoss are frozen in place. At first, this cripples the Zerg as well, but throughout the mission, Kerrigan can absorb essence from some native animals that survive the brutal conditions to enhance the Zerg genetics with an eye towards better performance in extreme cold. It is ridiculous to expect this to happen within seconds, of course, but that particular flaw can at least be waved away as a gameplay mechanic.

The freezes also fail to reappear in the second mission; the third takes place within a Protoss transport or warship, so it would be more preposterous if they did appear in that one. It might be reasonable to dismiss that complaint due to the freezes being a gimmick to make a particular scenario stand out, but it was still poorly thought out.

The greater problem is the fact that the Protoss, who have established a full base and as such have clearly been on the planet for much longer than Kerrigan has, are utterly unprepared for these freezes. They must surely know about the flash freezes, and common sense dictates that they should have prepared their equipment to keep functioning in those conditions. Otherwise, they would be at risk of freezing to death if one of those freezes simply lasted longer than usual. The Protoss had the time to prepare their equipment for it. In any case, their ships could survive the absurdly cold temperatures of outer space and work perfectly, so it is safe to assume that they can make stationary buildings capable of withstanding the icy blasts of Kaldir.

With so many flaws, the missions should probably have been redesigned from the ground up before the release of the game. As for any ideas about what such a drastic change would have looked like, one will be offered here as a final note.

The first mission could have been some kind of stealth mission, with Kerrigan leading some of those fancy new Roaches around, trying to uncover the fate of Nafash without being detected by the Protoss. The ending could have been where Kerrigan’s efforts at stealth failed, and Shakuras was alerted.

The second mission could then have involved Kerrigan’s attempts to destroy the Warp Gates before an untenable supply of Protoss forces came through. It is simple to send a warning, but an army can only be marshalled and sent through such a comparatively small portal so quickly, so Kerrigan would have had a window to cut off the flow of reinforcements. Air units could be plentiful in that level, which would induce a need for the Hydralisks.

The third level would depend on how Kerrigan was to be portrayed. If she was intended to look like a monster, or at any rate like a person who cares nothing for innocent Protoss lives, the last level would have been for killing off the surviving colonists before they can take their transports and flee. If Kerrigan was intended to actually have some morals, then it would have probably needed to have some Shakuras warriors survive the destruction of the Warp Gates. They would have joined the colonists in an attempt to do something crippling to Kerrigan, ranging from manipulation of the planet’s weather to kill Kerrigan or her Leviathan outright, the activation of some recently uncovered Xel’Naga device, or another similar idea.

There are certainly other ways that the Kaldir missions could have been structured, however; this was only one possibility. The inspiration for this idea came from this thread on the official StarCraft II forums.

Kaldir’s Flaws (Part One)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

Kaldir is an icy wasteland of a planet introduced in Heart of the Swarm. Three of the earlier missions revolve around the planet, starting with Kerrigan’s arrival to search for Broodmother Nafash. Over the course of her time there, Kerrigan found that Nafash was dead, destroyed a Protoss colony, and exterminated the survivors ruthlessly when they tried to flee.

However, there are multiple logical mistakes within the missions, and more arise when the StarCraft books are considered. The largest problem is the idea that Kerrigan’s chief motive for destroying the Protoss was to prevent them from sending a warning to Shakuras about her weakened presence that would have brought the Golden Armada of the Protoss down upon her head.

First of all, Kerrigan could not have reasonably hoped to prevent any knowledge of her current status from reaching Shakuras. All Protoss, except for the Dark Templar, share a mental link known as the Khala, which allows them to share their emotions and thoughts with others of their species even across interstellar distances. Incidentally, the very definition of a Dark Templar is a Protoss who has severed their link to the Khala.

In any case, it would be ludicrous for Kerrigan to stop some stray Protoss thoughts passing through a connection that she cannot even perceive. This is an understandable lapse in the story, as the Khala is not explained within the context of any of the StarCraft games, and the developers probably thought that it would only confuse the players if it was introduced.

However, the more serious lapse is seen when the game indicates that the Protoss have no knowledge of Kerrigan’s loss of control over the Zerg. This is a stunning contradiction to what was seen in the original StarCraft, where any Zerg who lost their commanding presence, like a Cerebrate, went immediately and obviously insane, going so far as to slaughter one another.

When Kerrigan was deinfested by the Xel’Naga artifact in Wings of Liberty, she lost control over the Zerg, and the contrast between a controlled army and a horde of lunatic killing machines would surely have been obvious to the Protoss. Finally, Arcturus Mengsk sent out a Dominion-wide news broadcast stating that the Queen of Blades had been defeated, which would surely have been received by the Protoss as well through any kind of monitoring.

Another point to consider is the idea of the Golden Armada. This would supposedly be the death of Kerrigan if it arrived, yet there is no hint of it throughout Wings of Liberty. Admittedly, it probably lacks the power to deal with the full Swarm at once.

However, even as Kerrigan sent away most of the Swarm in her failed attempt to hunt down the pieces of a Xel’Naga artifact, the Protoss still made no attempt to strike at Char and decapitate the leadership of the Zerg. When Kerrigan was deinfested, the Protoss could easily have struck at the remains of Valerian’s fleet during the events of Flashpoint, as it seems that Arcturus Mengsk could track her easily enough, and a lonely Protoss Observer would not have been noticed for some time.

If the Protoss spotted her as she was retaking Char, that would have been yet another opportunity to crush the single greatest known threat to their species by trapping her on the planet. Between Warfield’s forces attacking her and the Golden Armada, Kerrigan would have lacked the strength to triumph, and would have perished soon enough.

There is also the question of why Kerrigan even had to go to or remain on Kaldir for any length of time. If she was simply looking for the Roach and Hydralisk strains to reintegrate into the Swarm, there must have been dozens of other planets to find such common Zerg that did not involve battling the Protoss. If she was looking specifically for Nafash, she could have left as soon as she confirmed that Nafash was dead and taken the remains of her brood with her, all without the Protoss noticing until she was already gone.

Instead, she chooses to fight it out and put her life on the line without a good reason, as this fanciful Golden Armada would apparently be her end if it arrived before she left. Even if she wanted revenge for Nafash, there would be a better time than that for it, such as after she had dealt with Arcturus Mengsk. Provoking the Protoss by exterminating one of their colonies, especially when she gains little from it, would be counterproductive to her goal of getting revenge on Arcturus, as it could easily force her to fight a two-front war.

Part Two will cover some more mistakes, including more detail on the apparent lack of Protoss communications and the absurd flash freezes seen on the planet.

The Dominion’s Miraculous Recovery (Heart of the Swarm)

This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.

The Dominion, by the end of Wings of Liberty, had been ruined almost as thoroughly as it had at the end of the Brood War. Multiple colonies had been pillaged by the Zerg, with Terran death tolls supposedly in the billions. Admittedly, Korhal had not been seriously damaged, but the rampage of the Odin would have been a severe blow to public confidence.

Also, Arcturus Mengsk had been openly discredited by the discovery of the Tarsonis recording that told, in his own words, of Arcturus’ real motive as emperor, which was power. Fully half of the Dominion fleet had gone to invade Char, and the casualties had been massive. In “Flashpoint”, which bridges the gap between Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, Arcturus turned on the remains of that half, reducing it to a single Battlecruiser commanded by his own son Valerian Mengsk, out of a flotilla of twenty-five.

Once again, however, the writers used their powers of plot control to minimize the effects of all this destruction, since Arcturus and his Dominion are somehow still a serious threat to Kerrigan when Heart of the Swarm opens.

The Dominion fleet is apparently as strong as ever, and the impact of Raynor’s raid on Korhal, irksome recording and all, appears to be utterly nonexistent. It must be granted that Arcturus was free to claim the credit for defeating the Zerg, which would have been a huge public relations boost, but that does not explain the sudden revival of his fleet or of his intact industrial base. Warfield, who for some reason stayed on Char, is commanding no fewer than seven mighty Gorgon-class Battlecruisers.

Those, in turn, are apparently impossible to destroy with steel-piercing Hydralisk spines confirmed to be capable of shredding other Battlecruisers like tissue paper, yet they can be taken down immediately by a handful of tiny explosive Scourge. Korhal, when it is finally invaded, has orbital defenses beyond count, which apparently managed to destroy millions of Zerg drop pods before they ever hit the ground, despite the fact that Kerrigan’s Leviathans and Mutalisks could have easily swarmed those defenses to ensure that most of the pods made it down with enough Zerg to instantly overrun the city.

Realistically, after mustering most of the Swarm and crushing Warfield, along with his unexplained warships and numerous soldiers, Kerrigan should have easily been able to hit Korhal with a lightning strike and eliminate Arcturus, along with most of Augustgrad, within hours. Since there are only a few months between the end of Wings of Liberty and the end of Heart of the Swarm, much of which is covered in the book Flashpoint, it is ludicrous to expect that Arcturus could have replenished his fleet by then.

Arcturus could not have had more than eighteen Battlecruisers at the time of the Korhal invasion (twenty-five lost in Flashpoint, and seven more destroyed with Warfield, out of a starting total of fifty), unless the writers contradict their own numbers as given by Flashpoint. Leviathans are far larger and more powerful than Battlecruisers, and Kerrigan from all appearances had more of them than Arcturus had Battlecruisers.

It must also be noted that Arcturus was calling for help from other planets within the Dominion, which would logically suggest that a noticeable portion of the Battlecruisers in question were not already at Korhal. The capital seems to have fallen within hours of the Zerg arrival, so it is doubtful that any reinforcements managed to appear before the invasion was done.

The writers of StarCraft II, at least as far as the Dominion goes, chose to skip consistency in favour of gameplay. It’s quite probable that the average player was not expected to think too much about how the Dominion was still shown as such a huge threat after so many losses. Accordingly, those defeats were negated or at least minimized, even though that would require rejecting at least the early parts of Flashpoint, which had been written specifically to fill in some of the gaps left by Wings of Liberty and explain some of what would later transpire in Heart of the Swarm. It was an unfortunate decision, in my opinion, but it would not surprise me if the developers relegated those defeats to the background a third time when Legacy of the Void is released in order to give Valerian Mengsk something to work with.