Eroldren continues his spotlight review over Blizzard’s Heart of the Swarm short story series.

“A mediocre Protoss story that could have done better yet upholds itself with an intriguing plot that makes it entreatingly enough worthwhile and insightful.” – The Founding Fields

Right from the start Void Rays are quite more different than previous thought to be piloted by a single pilot: they have a staffed bridge. Like protoss carriers or terran battlecrusiers beforehand you apparently can’t judge a StarCraft unit purely on the basis of its unit portrait and ignore the segregation aspects of its size. Things have to be balanced out for our gameplay experience except sometimes even I forget the lore subject matters in-universe that tell a different story.

Our character cast of protoss crewmen, we have the khalai Commander Feranon, Theromos, nerazim – dark templar – supervisor for the Purity of Form’s void lens and his newly inducted pupil Sharas. With this main trio of protoss characters we dwell into the unseen inner workings of operating a void ray in times of war except there can be a bit more troublesome for different sects to fully cooperate together.

Part of the character development for these characters was quite predicable how things would resolve by the end of Lens of the Void” and for that the story felt cliché. A harsher dilemma put upon them was something else instead I was excepting to read and watch the characters work out more on their differences. While yes it’s completely understandable that a spaceship crew would have to cooperate in order to fulfill their purpose as a warship in the fleet, on the other hand however, a slight tone of resentment shared by Theromos and Feranon was enough in that regard. In the background fiction of StarCraft Blizzard long noted there been tribal conflict between the two protoss factions that we players have yet to see since the protoss campaign was set last in the StarCraft II Trilogy. Here I hoped we would get a more hands on insight on the subject but it wasn’t the case. Even so, there were other interesting areas of “Lens of the Void” that Todd did explore much to my delight and was insightful indeed which help flesh out the world the protoss lived and duties aboard the void ray. Aside a handful of slagging parts, the good part of “Lens of the Void” is a swell enough read.

Until next time,

Overall Verdict: 7.5/10