The Story of Starcraft Part 16: Terran Brood War

The Protoss Brood War campaign followed immediately on from the end of the original game. The Overmind is dead – now deal with the consequences.

With the Terran campaign, we topple the board by introducing a new player – one with enough oomph to mess everything up.

The Terrans of the Koprulu sector were exiled from Earth for the crime of being genetically engineered, cybernetically enhanced or just because. The world government – the United Powers League – wanted to purify the human race while also take some of the overpopulation pressures off.

Kicking tens of thousands of humans out of the sector was a good start.

Then the UPL collapsed and was replaced with the United Earth Directorate – a powerful and ambitious government that saw a lot of opportunities in their wayward colonists. They want to bring the Terran colonies back into the Directorate, enslave the new Overmind and use the Zerg it controls to wipe out the Protoss.

So they launched a fleet across the vast distances of space and invaded…

… using the same units that the colonists themselves used.

A ludonarrative crack

This confused the manure out of me. Why would the UED use the same marines, goliaths, ghosts and wraiths that the Terran colonists do?

For one thing, I made a big deal about how the units reflect the setting. The colonists struggled to survive for a few generations. They might be thriving, but a lot of their tech is still improvised, dirty and cobbled together. Meanwhile, the UED are a wealthy, sophisticated military, backed by a stable society.

The passage of time alone should have seen a divergence in military tech. Throw in radically different requirements and operating environments, plus different levels of science and industry, and the UED military should be alien to the colonists in every sense except the literal one.

Also… didn’t the UPL crack down on altered humans? We know so little about them, but we know that – it’s a major driver in the story, after all. So why do the UED use cybernetics, AI and genetic engineering? Did the UED reverse the old policies?

We know that the UED was observing the Koprulu sector from Earth. Did they decide to copy the local’s tech, since it would be a better fit for the conditions? Maybe their technology and doctrines diverged too much, so the UED – better suited for quelling rebellions and fending off pirates – decided to model their armies on what was working locally.

I guess that makes sense, except the UED are wildly arrogant and dismissive of the colonists. Also, it feels like the US invading an African nation with AK47s and Russian vehicles. Yeah, that’s how the locals fight, but you’re not a local.

When I first fired the game up, this hit me the moment the adjutant started talking. It never really stopped bugging me.

Oh well, it’s not a big deal, I guess. Let’s get into the…

New Terran Units

The UED do make some improvements to the armies, though – plugging crucial gaps in the Terran arsenal.

Medics heal nearby infantry. This makes them a lot tougher, obviously, and not just from the healing. Terran infantry can use stimpacks – powerful drugs that make them move and attack faster, at the cost of HP. Medics ease that trade off by healing the stimpack damage.

I like in… I think it was the manual… it describes medics as great because it’s more cost effective to keep troops alive than to train their replacements.

There’s also the valkyrie – an air unit capable of dealing with large numbers of enemy ships. This fits the idea of the UED being used to fighting large enemy forces. They probably also studied early Terran engagements, seeing their air power shredded by masses of mutalisks.

New Terran Characters

There’s an interesting mix of new faces here – a combination that’s both realistic and designed to maximise drama.

There’s Admiral duGalle. He’s a gruff, pragmatic, experience military commander. He’s stubborn, forceful and arrogant, but he has enough victories to his name to have earned that.

Then there’s Vice Admiral Stukov. He’s the younger and more creative tactician. Pairing them up was a smart move from the UED, since each has strengths in their style that complement the other. It also makes for good storytelling – they can work together, but there’ll be many points of friction between them.

(Foreshadowing…)

Also, it has a nicely international feel. You could guess from their names that DuGalle is French and Stukov is Russian. It’s a nice touch. A modern game could make one of them Asian and the other African or something, but this was circa 2000.

Then there’s Samir Duran, a former lieutenant still loyal to the old Confederacy. Under the new regime, that makes him a wanted rebel. He doesn’t care who the UED are – he just cares that they seem strong enough to overthrow Mengsk.

Taken together, these three mean there’s the old dog, the creative genius and the hothead. It makes for a tasty mix.

The First Bit: Invading the Dominion

The UED invades the Dominion with every advantage on their side. They have overwhelming firepower, a professional military and the element of surprise.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t a gigantic, unwieldy bureaucracy, though. An early screwup makes part of the invasion difficult, until Samir Duran helps the invaders. He adds his forces to the UED’s, offering valuable local knowledge to the efforts.

It goes well after that. The UED scores significant victories against the Dominion.

They also find a Psi Disruptor – a device capable of disrupting the telepathic link that Zerg use to communicate. Mengsk built it in secret but never got to use it. Stukov wants to use it to help them enslave the new Overmind. Duran points out that, once they control the Zerg, a device like this could only be used against them.

Admiral DuGalle sides with Duran. His arrogance coming through, he knows he doesn’t need help to defeat the Zerg and capture the Overmind. He orders the Psi Disruptor to be destroyed. Vice Admiral Stukov volunteers to do this.

The Second Bit: Flight of the Emperor

The UED assaults the Dominion capital world, Korhal. Their goal is to capture Emperor Mengsk. They almost succeed. At the last moment, Jim Raynor and a Protoss fleet intervene to rescue him.

Raynor hates doing this. He still blames Mengsk for what happened to Kerrigan. Still, he sees the UED as the bigger threat.

The UED follow the fugitives to Aiur, which is still heavily infested with Zerg. Again, the UED almost capture Mengsk. Through a miscommunication or tech glitch, Samir Duran allows the Zerg forces to overrun the UED position, so Mengsk, Raynor and the Protoss escape.

That was probably just bad luck.

(Foreshadowing…)

The Third Bit: Stukov’s Betrayal

Admiral DuGalle learns that Vice Admiral Stukov didn’t destroy the Psi Disruptor. Instead, he moved it in secret.

Samir Duran says this is proof of Stukov’s betrayal – that he sought to undermine the UED’s control of the Zerg.

The admiral, surprised by this but seeing no other explanation, sends Duran to assassinate Stukov, which he manages. In his dying words, he tells DuGalle that Duran is the real traitor – and possibly infested and an agent of Kerrigan’s. He was manipulating the UED, trying to foil their plans for the second Overmind.

Duran doesn’t dispute it. He disappears.

Stukov dies.

The Fourth Bit: Invading Char

A chastened DuGalle uses the Disruptor, which hinders the Zerg enough for him to invade the planet. He still has to fight his way to the Overmind.

It’s protected by several cerebrates, each with its own swarm with unique abilities. It’s good fun.

After a messy, bloody battle, the UED reaches the Overmind. With the help of drugs and psychics, they enslave it, bringing the majority of the Zerg under their control. Kerrigan is still independent, for now, but the Overmind grows stronger by the day.

The story and the gameplay

Blizzard did a great job. Most of this campaign felt epic, like you were fighting major battles against formidable foes. This was an invasion of the entire sector, not a series of minor skirmishes.

They achieved that through smoke and trickery, though. Mechanically, it’s all the same. Raynor’s Raiders fighting a small Dominion outpost is, mechanically, the same as the full might of the UED crashing down on the Dominion’s capital.

It’s a tough problem – one many RTSs struggle with. Is the only difference between an outpost and the capital down to the number of bases you have to destroy? That makes the battles feel tougher, but is it enough?

Whatever. This campaign made me feel like a conqueror. And the invasion of Char was a tough fight against a terrifying foe. I like it.