History VideoGame / StarcraftIIWingsofLiberty

** The Drop Pods lab upgrade gives the player the potential to finish "Maw of the Void" in just a couple minutes compared to having to build up a huge army of Battlecruisers to push across the map. This is due to one specific spot next to the vault containing the Artifact fragment that enemy detection can't reach. So it's possible to drop in several Ghosts/Spectres next to it, and drop a few nukes to cheese the vault structure.

* SequenceBreaking: A significant part of the third-to-last mission can be skipped with the Drop Pods upgrade. You're supposed to fight your way to an ally's downed ship, except Drop Pods let your infantry deploy straight to their rally point from orbit, letting a single Marine complete the mission for you seconds after the objective comes up.

** The player's tech options are permanent and not all of them can be acquired in the same playthrough, while the other two games let the player change up tech choices between missions and most options were accessible, save for ''Heart of the Swarm's'' evolved Zerg strains.

* MoodRingEyes: When [[spoiler:the decrypted Adjutant]] is playing back its recording, its eyes turn red whenever Mengsk is talking, green for Raynor, purple for Kerrigan and yellow for Duke. The adjutants in this game have blue eyes by default.

** The Hive Mind Emulator allows permanent mind control of a Zerg unit but has a long cooldown and limited range (so it can't be used to snatch a worker to build your own hive). Besides that, individual low-tech Zerg have little value, and Brood Lords and Infestors probably won't get inside of range, so all the Hive Mind Emulator is really good for is occasionally letting you steal an Ultralisk, which is fine. But then consider the alternative research is the Psi Disruptor, which slows the attack and movement rates of ''all'' Zerg in a fair-sized radius around it, making it vastly superior to the Emulator. It does have a niche use on a select few missions however, especially ones that provide Brood Lords and Mutalisks to steal from the enemy, allowing you to assemble a Zerg air force at no additional cost to you.

** One of the possible research upgrades in the campaign is the Planetary Fortress, upgrading your Command Centers to have extra armor and a powerful cannon but they can no longer take off. However, it comes at the cost of never having the more useful Perdition Turrets, burrowing flamethrower turrets with good damage and a considerable area of attack. And unlike the Perdition Turrets, which can be placed almost anywhere, by the time your Command Center's new cannon can shoot anything, your base is basically overrun already. Also, several missions will require to relocate your base to a new resource node; a pity the Planetary Fortress can't lift off and move.

** The harder AI levels also have awareness of what you're up to ''without scouting'', leading to fishy behaviour such as sending units to attack buildings you secretly constructed and always being aware of where you are undefended. Then again, this behavior ''can'' be expolited to an extent to divert attacks away from key areas.

** The second Rebellion mission requires you to scavenge resources from scrap pick-ups around the map to earn the alleigance of a neutral third-party to help you smash a heavily fortified enemy base. However, you only need to destroy their Planetary Fortress, which is located in back of the base on a high cliff with light defenses. If you use the Hercules dropship and build up a decent-sized army, you can ferry them up onto the high ground and focus fire down the Fortress before the enemy can mobilize enough defenders to save it.

** If you complete Ariel Hansen's mission arc as soon as possible, you unlock the Viking. It's especially powerful as an air-to-air fighter but can also land on the ground to transform into a ground-to-ground mecha. Having Vikings can make a lot of missions much easier such as in "Cutthroat" where you can land a large enough squadron at your objective to snipe Orlan's Planetary Fortress. If you upgraded your Vikings, they even outrange the Fortress and are safe from its return fire. In the following mission "Engine of Destruction", Vikings are generally superior to the Wraith unlocked at this point, proving overwhelming air-to-air support for the Odin as it demolishes bases, with this mission complete...
** You can complete the relatively easy "Media Blitz" and unlock the Thor heavy assault walker. With the Thor unlocked early, you have a very tanky multi-role HumongousMecha, with devastating anti-ground cannons and anti-air that devastates light fliers.

** If you complete Ariel Hansen's mission arc as soon as possible, you unlock the Viking. It's especially powerful as an air-to-air fighter but can also land on the ground to transform into a ground-to-ground mecha. Having Vikings can make a lot of missions much easier such as in "Cutthroat" where you can land a large enough squadron at your objective to snipe Orlan's Planetary Fortress. If you upgraded your Vikings, they even outrange the Fortress and are safe from its return fire. In the following mission "Engine of Destruction", Viking are generally superior to the Wraith unlocked at this point, proving overwhelming air-to-air support for the Odin as it demolishes bases.

** If you complete Ariel Hansen's mission arc as soon as possible, you unlock the Viking. It's especially powerful as an air-to-air fighter but can also land on the ground to transform into a ground-to-ground mecha. Having Vikings can make a lot of missions much easier such as in "Cutthroat" where you can land a large enough squadron at your objective to snipe Orlan's Planetary Fortress. If you upgraded your Vikings, they even outrange the Fortress and are safe from its return fire.

** Orbital Strike isn't as straightforward to use as the more flexible Tech Reactor, but the ability to have trained infantry arrive almost anywhere on a map can make reinforcements much easier, and you can complete some levels very quickly by inserting Ghosts/Spectres into weak points and taking out a key target with nukes. Orbital strike is also handy for collecting bonus objectives in a lot of cases.

* NotCompletelyUseless: Regenerative Bio-Steel is generally considered worthless compared Cellular Reactor, largely due to how slowly mechanical units heal using it. But in ''Ghost of a Chance'', you get access to mechanical units but no [=SCVs=] or Science Vessels to repair them. Regenerative Bio-Steel can be very useful with proper micro or even just pulling the entire force back after a few shots to whittle away your enemies over time.

** In the campaign, selecting Ultra Capacitors over Vanadium Plating can make the game marginally more difficult due to losing the more forgiving health boost from the later (+5% total hp for each armor upgrade), but if you put in the required extra micromanage, having +5% to total attack haste for each weapon upgrade will make upgraded attackers even more effective damage dealers, with Marines benefiting a lot when they activate their Stimpacks on top of that. Extra damage is also a major help for defense missions where you're the one dishing out most of the damage.

** The Shrike Turret touts that its an auto-turret that lets Bunkers contribute to base defense even if they're unmanned, but if you're building Bunkers and not manning them, you're doing it wrong. Besides, the firepower it offers is only equivalent to an un-upgraded, unstimmed Marine -- not a lot. The counterpart upgrade, +150 HP for Bunkers, is far more useful.

** In "Belly of the Beast", Raynor and his men explore a series of caves in Char, and briefly cross an acid marsh where a bunch of Zerg eggs are being incubated by a "Queen." Kerrigan will later encounter that same "Queen" (still incubating those eggs in that marsh) in "Domination" in ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm''.

** Also "The Dig", with the twist that "the line" is a gigantic [[FrickinLaserBeams Fricking Laser Drill]]. That can defend itself.

** There is no Master Archives reward for completing the campaign. Thus, if you want to try a different tech choice for a mission, you need an earlier savegame or outright restart the campaign altogether.

** In the campaign, enemies will never deliberately attack vital targets such as your mineral lines, or make an effort to circumvent your defenses. They don't even account for your strength, gleefully small attack head-on into a dozen Siege Tanks protected by Bunkers.

** Enforced in many of the campaign maps, where the enemy will have all the elements of an effective frontline defense or a devastating assault team, but won't use them all at once or use them very effectively, because if they did, the mission would be too difficult.

** The Hive Mind Emulator allows permanent mind control of a Zerg unit but has a long cooldown and limited range (so it can't be used to snatch a worker to build your own hive). Besides that, individual low-tech Zerg have little value, and Brood Lords and Infestors probably won't get inside of range, so all the Hive Mind Emulator is really good for is occasionally letting you steal an Ultralisk, which is fine. But then consider the alternative research is the Psi Disruptor, which slows the attack and movement rates of ''all'' Zerg in a fair-sized radius around it, making it vastly superior to the Emulator.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Sarah is "healed," but Raynor had to kill Tychus. Also, Arcturus Mengsk: his media image is reeling, but he's still TheEmperor of the [[TheEmpire Terran Dominion]]. And let's not forget about the Hybrids...]]