The Batlord's Attempt at a Life of
Entry #2: SC 2 Campaign and the Awesomeness of Sarah Kerrigan
*Spoiler Alert for both StarCraft 1 & 2*
I'm still making my way through the SC 2 campaign, which I intend to finish before going into multiplayer, and it's one of the more epic storylines I've ever seen in a game. StarCraft 2 is actually divided into three almost entirely complete games: Wings of Liberty, released in 2010, which contains the Terran (human) campaign; Heart of the Swarm, released in 2013, which contains the Zerg campaign; and Legacy of the Void, released in 2015, which contains the Protoss campaign. All three are basically full, self-contained games, but the last two are expansions to the original.
Why Blizzard would decide to release an entire game in three chunks over a period of five years is probably down to money-grubbing, corporate douchiness, but considering that StarCraft is a series largely built around its multiplayer sub-culture, it's understandable that they would want to stretch interest for as long as possible (though StarCraft 1 and its Brood War expansion remained a popular, professionally competitive game up until the release of the sequel). But I digress...
The basic premise of the series' plot is that originally you have the Terran Confederacy, an oppressive, interstellar empire, which becomes threatened upon the discovery of the highly aggressive Zerg swarm (a race of insectoid abominations, intent on both galactic domination and constant biological evolution). A third faction, the Protoss, are a theocratic, warrior race, bent on the destruction of the Zerg at all costs, even if that means destroying human worlds infected by the Zerg.
StarCraft 1, like 2, consisted of campaigns for all three races, which must each be unlocked in sequence so as to form a narrative (Terran, then Zerg, and finally Protoss). Brood Wars was an expansion/quasi-sequel to the original, which continued the story. The order of the campaigns was switched to Protoss, then Terran, then Zerg, but otherwise followed the same narrative format.
Why the StarCraft 2 campaign shares billing with the character of Kerrigan is because A) she is one of, if not the most important character in the series, who drives much of the plot in StarCraft 1, and takes an even more central role in 2; and B) because she's just so ****ing awesome -- one of my favorite characters in all of video games at this point -- and her storyline is exceptionally compelling, both from a narrative and emotional standpoint, forming what is shaping up to be a sub-plot which borders on being the actual main plot.
In a nutshell, Sarah Kerrigan was originally a special forces, psychic operative of a rebel leader in SC 1, Arcturus Mensk, but was betrayed by him, left to die against a massive Zerg swarm in his secret plot to ruthlessly overthrow the Terran Confederacy and raise himself up as emperor of what would become soon the Terran Dominion.
But rather than killing her, the Zerg captured Kerrigan and through their genetic experiments transformed her into "The Queen of Blades", a mentally-enslaved, hyper-evolved being of tremendous psychic powers, whose oddly hot appearance was somewhere between Borg Queen and
Alien Xenomorph. But rather than being a Borg-like automaton, she retained a personality of her own, though it was subverted to the Zerg Overmind (a sort of being existing only in the Zerg hive mind which controlled the Swarm with absolute domination).
She would go on to become the secondary antagonist of the series, fighting her former comrades with seemingly no qualms or remorse, until the eventual destruction of the Overmind in SC 1, after which she seized control of the entire Zerg Swarm in Brood Wars, through a Machiavellian scheme of manipulation of both the Terran and Protoss, becoming its undisputed Queen, controlling them in much the same psychic, hive mind way as her predecessor.
Much of the focus of StarCraft 2's Terran campaign was the "redemption" of Kerrigan by her former love interest, James Raynor, ending with some sci-fi/quasi-fantasy gobbledy**** that somehow restored her to partial-humanity, though leaving her with her psychic connection to the Zerg (and some seriously sexy, chitin dreadlocks).
Enter Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg expansion, which deals with her quest for vengeance against Emperor Arcturus Mensk, the man responsible for her becoming a monster, which is sparked by a Dominion attack resulting in the seeming death of James Raynor.
This is really why I love Kerrigan so much. Her story arc in Heart of the Swarm is all about her attempt to maintain her newly-regained humanity, while again taking command of the Zerg Swarm, her only hope of defeating Mensk and his Terran Dominion. It's easily the most compellying arc of the entire series so far, and while I am only about two-thirds of the way through the campaign, her journey is incredibly engrossing, and the almost Shakespearean tragedy of her inevitable decent into her former self as The Queen of Blades is heartbreaking. It's almost impossible not to root for both her vendetta and her doomed resolution to not lose herself to the Zerg. Kerrigan is pretty much the catalyst for my desire to play Zerg, and I eagerly await the resolution of this campaign.
All hail Kerrigan and the Swarm!
