Emotional Contagion

My favorite game had me so emotionally gripped to the story when I played it over the summer. There was action, love, betrayal, and many emotional scenes. This game development company has been known for having some of the best storytelling in the industry. They have come out with many triple A titles and they are in my opinion, one of the best overall companies in the industry. This game has had it fame since the 90's and it was given a stunning new installment to the game's series just recently in the last few years. It is the dominant national sport in Southern Korea. If you haven't guessed it by now, I'm referring to Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft 2.

Now they didn't win the award for best story (Mass Effect 2 snatched it up), StarCraft 2 has from my experience, the most amazing story ever created. This includes their expansion of Heart of the Swarm, where the story goes from great, to phenomenal. Now I am going to spoil the story after this point so if you are interested in playing this for the story do not read on.

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Now this blog is focusing on the emotional aspect of story. More specifically the relationship between Sarah Kerrigan and Jim Raynor. Now these two have been through some rough times together. They met back in the first StarCraft as they were both working for the Dominion under the direct command of General Mengsk. Kerrigan was a ghost operative and Raynor was the marshall of the colonies on the planet Mar Sara. Mengsk was doing some tests on a new item, the psi emitter, which attracts an aggressive alien race called the Zerg. Now ghosts are born into their role as a ghost operative because they have psionic energy which is a very special type of energy in the future. The Zerg are attracted to ghost's energy so when Kerrigan was sent to drop off a psi emitter at one of the Dominion's enemy's, Mengsk called the order to leave her behind. She was swarmed by the Zerg and the Swarm infested her. She becomes the Queen of Blades and the leader of the Zerg. Raynor didn't like how Mengsk left Kerrigan behind and leaves the Dominion and forms his own group called Raynor's Raiders. Their goal from then on was to take down the Dominion. Kerrigan at this point has the goal to destroy everything in her path. Raynor has his own personal plans aside from Raynor's Raiders goals. He wants to bring Kerrigan back to her original state of being a human again. He fights hard and travels throughout the galaxy to gather what he needs to bring her back and he successfully manages to do this. He did this because he loves Sarah. She also liked Jim but it wasn't until after the transformation back that she fell for him.

At this point the game in now into the Heart of the Swarm expansion. Kerrigan is dedicated to getting revenge on Mengsk and nothing will stop her on this path of vengeance. In order to have what she needs to take him down she transforms herself back into the Queen of Blades after assuming Raynor has died based on information given through Mengsk's media. This gives her power to control the Swarm again and be able to take down Mengsk. As she grows stronger she finds that Raynor is not dead and is being held captive on a Dominion flying maximum security prison. She goes and breaks him out of prison. The cutscene that follows this mission was one of the most emotional cutscenes that words cannot explain so I will leave a link for you to watch.

The development of the character's relationships between one another throughout the series is what made this such an emotionally successful scene in the game. Each character's struggle for the other, along with what lays ahead causes the emotion between each person in the scene.

Here is also a link to all the cutscenes of the expansion pack of Heart of the Swarm incase you were interested in seeing all of the scenes where the two interact and show their relationship grow and struggle.