History VideoGame / StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm

* OvershadowedByAwesome: Swarmlings spawn in trios rather than pairs and have one tenth the build time of normal Zerglings. But Raptors deal extra damage, leap to close on enemies, and can leap up and down cliffs. Worse is that Swarmlings don't have a lower food cost. As such, players generally only use them if they're bad at defending their bases or if they focus heavily on using Banelings.

** The Protoss expedition on Kaldir. Revealed to be colonists trying to make the moon more habitable by adjusting its orbit, but a communication attempt between their leader and Kerrigan goes wrong, leaving violence as the only option. While this can be seen as a KickTheDog for Kerrigan, who has to slaughter them all with extreme prejudice (going as far as infecting one of the prisoners to destroy a shuttle that was escaping), it's made clear that neither side enjoyed that it had come down to this- Kerrigan especially expresed that the infecting of that one prisoner was [[DirtyBusiness not something she'd do if she had a choice]], but she doesn't.
** [[spoiler:''All'' the Dominion forces inside the ship Mengsk blows up in an attempt to kill Kerrigan. As you run to save Raynor while it's falling apart, you hear them panicking, horrified that their emperor is sacrificing them in such a way. Calling this a KickTheDog for Mengsk would be an understatment.]]

Compared to the story of ''Wings of Liberty'', which focused on Raynor and his men as they fought the Dominion and helped those in need, ''Heart of the Swarm'' takes a more personal focus on Kerrigan, examining her identity and moral struggles. Her amnesia provides a story engine through which Kerrigan must learn what it means to be Zerg and what they are to her and her to themm. If the Swarm is to be a tool to carry out Kerrigan's will, she must decide what she wants that will to be and rebuild the Swarm in that image, redefining herself and her minions together and showing players the "heart" of the Swarm.

** Protoss on Kaldir. Not really villains, actually. Revealed to be colonists trying to make the moon more habitable by adjusting its orbit. Kerrigan slaughters them all with extreme prejudice, even using a single prisoner as a carrier of broodmother larva to overrun their escape vessel. A type of KickTheDog moment for Kerrigan.

* SequelDifficultyDrop: ''Heart of the Swarm'' is much easier than ''Wings of Liberty''. Hatcheries innately produce up to 9 larvae each, making it very easy to mass an army and replace them when they fall, Kerrigan is an extremely powerful hero unit and usable in most missions, and upgrading your army is simplified from ''Wings of Liberty'', with players able to switch between Zerg evolutions at any time and getting Evolution Missions in accordance with the story, and the upgraded Zerg strains are often ridiculous in how good they are. This is actually GameplayAndStoryIntegration -- WordOfGod claimed that at the end of the Brood War, Kerrigan could have crushed her enemies without effort, but just didn't care to do it. Now that Mengsk has pissed her off in this game, and with the Protoss laying low, Kerrigan is bringing the full wrath of her Swarm down on the Dominion and there is little anyone can do to stop her.

* PowerUpLetdown: After completing the Zerus missions, Kerrigan is way more powerful and a third column of abilities is unlocked for her. Unfortunately, most of them fall into this trope; Automated Extractors is the major benefit she gains, everything else is either not as good as something in the first two columns or of circumstantial superiority over them.

** DynamicEntry: Attempted in one of the trailers. A [[WeHaveReserves wave]] of [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Zerg]] are advancing through a city and closing in on a Terran defensive line; after an Ultralisk crushes a [[TheWorfEffect retreating Siege Tank]] underfoot, a Viking swoops down and [[TransformingMecha transforms]] into combat-walker mode, [[GatlingGood opening fire]] on the Ultralisk [[CutscenePowerToTheMax before even hitting the ground]]. However, [[RealityEnsues reality]] [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration ensues]] when the [[MadeOfIron Ultralisk]] flings the [[GlassCannon Viking]] into the side of a building with a single toss of its massive, bladed head.

* EvilIsNotAToy: Invoked; in the first mission of the game, Valerian has Kerrigan "test" her control over the Zerg and attempts to end the experiment after creating a spawning pool. Kerrigan instead grows an army of zerglings and wrecks the lab, before sending the Zerg she created into holding cages, to show Valerian the dangers of trying to control a chaotic race like the Zerg. [[EvenEvilHasStandards She does deliberately avoid civilian casualties]], and Valerian is smart enough to take the point.

* RealityIsUnrealistic: So the primal zerg are creatures that consume other creatures' genetic code and mix it with their own. Quite a ridiculous understanding of biology... But have you heard about [[http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/11/bdelloids-surviving-on-borrowed-.html Bdelloids?]]

->''[[BadassBoast "I am the Swarm. Armies will shatter, worlds will burn. Now, at last, on this world, vengeance shall be mine. For I am the Queen of Blades."]]''

** Remember the unit upgrades you got in Wings of Liberty? The Dominion now has them. In this campaign you will know what it is like to be on the receiving end.

* EliteMooks: The whole of the enemies final mission ''Reckoning Day'', consisting of the elite of the Dominion army, which are stronger than the usual Terran units.

* FiveManBand: After spending most of the campaign PuttingTheBandBackTogether, Kerrigan unleashes them on Augustgrad in "The Reckoning."
** The Hero: Kerrigan
** The Lancer: Raynor
** The Smart Guy: Stukov
** The Chick: Zagara
** The Big Guy: Dehaka

** Your first choice of mission is to go to Char or Kaldir. The follow cutscene where Kerrigan finds the Leviathan and meets Izsha will show the appropriate planet, and Izsha has different dialogue to refer to the proper planet and which broodmother is on the surface (Zagara on Char and Nafash on Kaldir).

** It is possible to do several missions before others, resulting in characters being absent or present at different times and reacting appropriately to Kerrigan's increased power after the Zerus missions. Normally, Zagara will command the swarm while Kerrigan is busy on Zerus, but if you have not done the Char missions and acquired Zagara, Izsha will command instead. Dehaka also has dialogue for if you if you recruit him before going to Kaldir or Char and talk to him once you do. Blizzard even rendered two separate versions of an FMV depicting the same exact scene ([[spoiler:where Kerrigan kills Warfield]]), one with [[spoiler:the human-looking Kerrigan and one with the primal Kerrigan]]. The dialogue the protoss executor has upon first encountering Kerrigan on Kaldir also differs based on whether or not Zerus was visited first. After you finish the Zerus missions and the first two mission chains, you view a cutscene advancing the story, and there are three versions of that scene depending on which of the three mission chains you saved for last. Zerus and Kaldir's scenes mention a device retrieved from Char and relayed to Kerrigan by a Broodmother, but if you did Char last then she receives the device herself.
** When Kerrigan "dies", she tunnels back to base and enters a cocoon to regenerate. If at any point during the mission she's scripted to talk, her portrait is changed to show her in the cocoon, with a distortion to her voice. [[spoiler:Putting off early missions until she becomes the Primal Queen of Blades also uses the appropriate portrait and voice effects for her dialogue in the same manner.]]

* SequelDifficultyDrop: In general, ''Heart of the Swarm'' is much easier than ''Wings of Liberty'' -- the custom evolutions for the Zerg units make them incredibly powerful, Hatcheries produce up to 9 larvae letting the player get an army out very quickly from nothing, and in most missions there's Kerrigan who has an array of powerful abilities that let her steamroll a lot of opposition on her own. Each mission has two achievements that can be obtained on normal difficulty or above, rather than one normal and one hard achievement almost all ''Wings of Liberty'' missions have. Story-wise, this provides a borderline case of GameplayAndStoryIntegration -- WordOfGod is that at the end of ''Brood War'' Kerrigan was fully capable of crushing Mengsk and the Dominion beneath her heel, she just didn't care to do it. Now she does, at least specifically with regards to Mengsk. In addition, the more genuine threats of the previous Kerrigan and the upcoming threat of [[spoiler:Amon]] aren't present at the moment, leaving BigBadWannabe Mengsk, who is currently playing it defense throughout the entire game.
* SequelHook: Kerrigan creates a broodmother to infest a Protoss ship, and then abandons her. Then the broodmother states her only purpose is to destroy Protoss. [[PutOnABus They did not reappear in]] ''[[PutOnABus Legacy]]''. Fans are hoping that they'd be featured in one of the three post-main-story mini-campaign [=DLCs=] Blizzard has announced for the future of the game.
** Kerrigan and [[spoiler: Stukov]] discuss the United Earth Directorate at some point and agree that they will be back someday. More to the point, there aren't too many other antagonistic Terrans left, and every campaign to date has had at least some antagonists of each faction.

** Cutscenes often show Kerrigan in the company of a pet zergling with a broken tusk. If you did the zergling evolution mission and thus changed the zerglings' appearance, these cutscenes will reflect your choice.

* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: Several of the upgrades allowed for units via the evolution pit are upgrades they normally have in the melee game, such as the Hydralisk's grooved spines and the Zergling's adrenaline overload. Flavor text for these abilities notes that such mutations are often upgraded on the battlefield as needed, but it's possible to integrate them directly into the base strain without the need for individual mutations, which is why such upgrades become permanent and don't need to be re-researched every mission.

'''Kerrigan:''' [[ShutUpKirk I justify nothing.]] There may be more blood on my hands than yours, but in the end we are both killers.

* PleaseKillMeIfItSatisfiesYou: [[spoiler:After turning back into the Queen of Blades, after she rescues Raynor, and seeing him understandably pissed, Kerrigan guides his revolver towards her own head, sorrowfully asking if he still trusts her. He unloads the entire clip... deliberately missing, and then walks out of her life.]]

* BlackAndGreyMorality: While nowhere as bad as they were in the first game, Kerrigan and the Swarm still get in some pretty vicious deeds during the campaign, and [[KarmaHoudini never really suffer any comeuppance for their actions]]. It's not until she joins the Raiders in trying to rescue Jim Raynor that she gets a chance to do good along the way. That said, Mengsk is a sociopathic monster and Amon is an EldritchAbomination GodOfEvil [[OmnicidalManiac intent on destroying the cosmos]].

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Kerrigan's explanation to Raynor for why she became Zerg again to rescue him.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Kerrigan gets her revenge on Mengsk and the Swarm is free of GreaterScopeVillain Amon's influence. However, Kerrigan is forced to leave Raynor behind to prepare for the coming war with Amon and the Hybrids -- which can pull everything Jim and Kerrigan have worked so hard to build up utterly downhill in ''[[VideoGame/StarCraftIILegacyOfTheVoid Legacy of the Void]]''.]]