The Brilliance of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty – A Brief Retrospective

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Wings of Liberty is an incredibly important game to me. This retrospective ended up taking a lot more time than I had initially intended. This is the only shot I will ever get to express my detailed feelings on this game and I hope I got it right.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
2:24 – Liberation Day
4:59 – The Outlaws
8:19 – Zero Hour
11:00 – MLG Cribs: The Hyperion
12:43 – The Evacuation
18:13 – Smash and Grab
25:01 – The Devil’s Playground
30:18 – Welcome To The Jungle
31:42 – Outbreak
37:16 – The Great Train Robbery
42:40 – Cutthroat
48:42 – Welcome Back To The Jungle
52:42 – Upgrades
54:51 – Dr. Ariel Hanson
56:39 – Haven’s Fall
1:00:16 – sAfE hAvEn
1:06:48 – The Dig
1:13:50 – If you laid out every possible Wings of Liberty route end to end it would reach from Columbus, Ohio to Pluto
1:16:53 – Whispers of Doom
1:20:28 – The Greatest Game of StarCraft Ever Played.
1:24:48 – Breakout
1:30:25 – Nova: Overt Cops
1:35:05 – A Sinister Turn
1:41:40 – M L G
1:45:02 – rotcaF suibeoM ehT
1:48:20 – Jim’s problematic inconsistent problem
1:50:15 – Engine of Destruction
1:53:30 – The News
1:55:22 – Echoes of the Future
2:00:00 – Exemplars
2:03:22 – Media Blitz
2:07:38 – Piercing The Shroud
2:11:40 – Why Side With Nova When You Can Go To SuperNova
2:18:44 – Maw of the Void
2:24:26 – In Utter Darkness
2:27:18 – In Utter Lameness
2:35:11 – Oh You Thought I wouldn’t bring up Touhou when talking about The Lost Vikings? WELL HOLD ON TO YOUR KNEE CAPS BECAUSE HERE WE GO. It is pretty clear that TLV was largely inspired by Touhou 12: Unidentified Fantastic Object, which came out 1 year earlier. The weapon pickup system is very similar to the UFO collection in…UFO. But ahhhhhhhh why did they ever pick THAT game as the basis? UFO is considered one of the hardest Touhou games because the system is incredibly inconsistent and leads to a lot of deaths trying to get power. There were so many better thing to be inspired from that weren’t mechanically problematic. Just copy Mountain of Faith for goodness sake, it was LITERALLY DESIGNED AS A SOFT REBOOT TO THE FRANCHISE and had very accessible and easy to learn mechanics as a result! A core mechanic forcing people to stop bottom hugging on a one-off game mode is incredibly silly! I have a pet peeve about people who invest a lot of time to get good at something and then proceed to forget how much time they invested to get there and assume everybody else can keep up with them. That sort of feels like what happened here. Somebody was a decent STG player and forgot how insanely difficult the genre is to get into. Anyway while I was making this video I ended up getting into Lost Branch of Legend because I needed a turn based game I could play in bite sized chunks. Really solid Slay the Spire knockoff. The use of MTG mana colors really adds a strategic depth that I like a lot, though I think the game is a bit too snowbally. The “True” boss on lunatic is nice and tough but I don’t think I have ever lost on act 3 because of how strong you get by then. Spell Carnival arrived in the mail while I was making this video and I am hoping it is decent, just haven’t had time to boot it up yet. I am a big Turn Based Strategy fan so I have high hopes. There is also Touhou Empries coming out eventually which I was hoping would be good but I legitimately don’t want to play it because Reimu’s sprite is too ridiculous. Anyway but maybe that is okay because Marisa ≫ Reimu anyway and I doubt this game would be an exception
2:38:00 – Gates of Hell
2:42:13 – Shatter the Sky
2:45:18 – Belly of the Beast
2:49:00 – War of the Field
2:49:55 – All-in
2:53:53 – The Finale
2:58:24 – The Only Good Part Of The Video

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48 thoughts on “The Brilliance of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty – A Brief Retrospective”

  5. on the nova/tosh mission you forgot to mention, if you do the mission and dr hanson is still on the ship, she tells you nova was lying, there was no evidence of specters becoming roge and killing people for fun

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  7. Honestly as great as the ending of Wings of Liberty is, I kinda lament that Tychus was killed and we don't see him again in future expansions. Tychus is a great character and I would've loved to have him stick around.

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  12. Idk I think you have an unfair bias against Hanson. In my view it's doing a thing I do when GMing where depending on the choices I'll change some lore to make it fit. If you side with the protoss, there's not cure for zerg infestations. If you side with the colonists, there's a cure in the early stages. That way both choices are "right" but they let you decide if Reynor lives in a grimdark world or one where hope and faith prevail.

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  14. I've always assumed that the Zerg cure was for a very specific strain of infection the colonists had. Which if you think of it does seem to operate very differently from normal Zerg infestations.

    The cure never comes up again because it doesn't work for anyone else.

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  17. 3:55 Nah that's not a pet peeve it's actual bad game deisgn. The very first mission in the singleplayer campaign teaches you that optional objectives exist and that they don't give you anything. A casual gamer might take that to mean that they're completely useless and just for fun or added challenge.

    It's funny how they did such a great job in warcraft 3 introducing you to all the mechanics, but in starcraft 2 they dropped the ball.

    Warcraft 3 introduces you to heroes, the ability system, the inventory system, the levelups, having a small army, /and/ it rewards exploration with extra items. You are taught from the first mission in the entire game, that exploring is not just for exploration's sake, you can get good rewards from doing it.
    The second mission introduces you to the resources, workers, supply, tax, and pits you against enemies of a few different kinds so you know what to expect.

    Starcraft 2 introduces you to units, units that look the same but have higher hp and no special abilities, does not give you anywhere to explore – the mission is completely linear, and while it tells you that you can do a side objective, it gives you no reward from it, implying that you're better off just doing the main objective and not bothering with anything else.
    The second mission introduces you to resources, workers and supply, and pickups, and gives you a secondary objective that only helps you out in the mission you're in – again painting secondary objectives as something completely optional that may not be worth doing if you just want to do things your way. Exploration is barely rewarded with one or two pickups, but they are in very on-the-path locations, no encouraging any exploration – and there is barely if anything to explore regardless.

    The first mission in starcraft 2 that has something to be discovered in if you explore, is mission 3, where they tell you "turtle up in your base and only go out if you want to rescue those extra units, which are only a thing for this mission". If you somehow wander off into the zerg base into the north, you might find the tauren space marine. Else you have the third mission in a row at the start of the entire game, telling you "exploring is useless just play the main objective, secondary objectives are just helpers inside of this mission".

    There is so much to be said about how blizzard dropped the ball in how they did secondary objectives in the first 3 missions. It is so utterly bad.

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  19. I'm glad you think making missions selectable so you can pick them out of order and get steamrolled is a good feature, but clearly they should have just put the missions in order of unlocks and difficulty since you end up doing it yourself anyway. Not sure I see that as 'brilliant game design' but I'm glad you had fun with that. hey you yourself point out how it denudes the storytelling an raynors alcoholism subplot. huh, it's almost like it's a terrible idea.

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  25. I feel Jim's just a just functional enough alcoholic to know he shouldn't be drinking on the job. but starts drinking the second he's back on the hyperion. and sobers himself up before each mission starts

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  29. In Haven's Fall.. I..actually I always solo the mission with vikings. Shoot all brood lords and mutas.. land and shoot the ground. Same for infestation attempts. Totally viable on brutal too.

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  37. 2:32:46
    I've said this about shooters before but it holds up for any game it seems.
    If the Pro's are supposed to be the best (pvp) players of any given game, why do they keep insisting the game adapts to them, instead of them adapting to the game?

    Edit: Actually.. you know what, that's not fair. I'm sure not all pro's are like that, but like the old saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the ones who do call for the games to change to cater to them are likely the minority, but because of who they are and the metaphorical volume they speak with, they get listened to.

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  39. Damn, this may just be one of the best videos you've ever made.
    Now I'm off to go replay all of WoL.
    If you haven't made me for HotS or the… Protoss one I hope you do! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the various retooling of WoL systems

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  41. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 were my main game for SIXTEEN YEARS. No other game has held my attention so long. I still have nothing but love for it, even though I really don't play much anymore.

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  45. 2:34:00 As a game designer I found the whole segment about the "balance council" quite fascinating. Generally speaking there's two issues here: a) Players are not game designers and they don't know what they want; "you think you do, but you don't" really is true in most cases. b) Even if they did, what top-level competitive players want is not the same as what casual players want, and neither is the same as what the game developers actually want; as demonstrated in this very video. So just letting players decide on the design of the the game, whether it's maps or balance updates, is generally a terrible idea.

    Specifically in this case, pro players generally want stability and simple, well-balanced games, that are predictable; casual players want units and maps that are varied, but also cool and interesting; and the actual developers probably want something in the middle. But you can see how just letting the pro players decide everything, or even just designing and balancing things around them, will be detrimental for the vast majority of players (and tournament viewers), who are far more casual.

    Unfortunately because high-level players are so vocal and often have a larger platform, it's a bit hard for developers to say "no sorry, we're actually gonna keep that weird ability you keep complaining about in the game, because it's really fun and casual love it, even if it messes up your pro tournament plays sometimes".

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  47. re Dr. Hanson and the cure: Do…people not remember that the Zerg have this evil super genius geneticist working in the swarm? Abathur? Name ring a bell? I figure there's probably, like, 12 or 15 "cures" for the zerg infestation virus – and each one works, like, one or two times before the virus has adapted to it. It's great if you're lucky enough to be infested and also, near by to a science genius with a fully equipped lab with a xel'naga artifact in it who can build a cure just in the nick of time – but most of the time, you're shit outta luck.

    I will admit, this is COMMUNICATED terribly, and the boss fight is garbage. But it's not a huge lore breach, imo.

    EDIT: And for a real world example, we're on COVID vaccine number, like…5. And COVID isn't being genetically engineered by a van sized evil bug, that's just natural evolution!

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