Virtually everything Jim Raynor or Tychus Findlay or Matt Horner says can be found in one line or another from any other movie, TV show, or video game. There's almost nothing anyone says that isn't cliché', stupid, poorly delivered, or so bland and generic you can skip it and miss out on nothing.
Remember Arcturus Mengsk of Korhal, and how the Confederacy nuked Korhal into an uninhabitable wasteland, how Mengsk fought and bled and suffered to fight them, with his rebel group the Sons of Korhal. He was a character so morally ambiguous that he would suffer in order to help civilians, and then out of utter rage and vengeance, use psi emitters to obliterate entire Confederate planets, drawing billions of Zerg onto Antigua Prime and Tarsonis.
He wanted to end the war and end the Confederacy, and not end up spending decades fighting hard guerrilla war with the Confederate remnants. He made a bad decision, it was the wrong one, but he made it, and he was going to live with it. He was like Joseph Stalin in his ceaseless aggression to power and to the safety and security of all Terrans.
The Arcturus Mengsk in Starcraft 2 is better compared with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He and his administration create laws so blatantly false and outrageous, even CHILDREN would not fall for it. And this is presented CONSTANTLY in the form of UNN broadcasts featuring an obvious parody of news pundits. One mission sees you, Raynor's rebels, liberate a civilian area from the Zerg and Dominion forces. This is then reported on the news where a field reporter reports to the UNN pundit. He then asks about civilian casualties, and the reporter says "Actually, the only civilian casualties thus far have been crossfire from overzealous Dominion forces" and as soon as she finishes, they panickedly go back to the pundit who panickedly remarks "Uh, well, there you have it ladies and gentlemen; Jim Raynor, killing innocent women and children!" The actions of Arcturus Mengsk, having civilians rounded up and slaughtered, or encouraging neighbors to spy on one another, or abandoning half his Dominion at the first sign of Zerg threat so as to protect his core worlds, is so completely out of character for the Starcraft Mengsk that it's a farce. It's buffoonery, and it's made less funny if you've played the Terran campaign in Starcraft 1.
In Starcraft, the Protoss were the big tough fanatical race. They were loyal, courageous, religious, and xenophobic. They had highly advanced technology, but otherwise were very much like the Terrans in terms of being well-rounded, with good people and bad people making good decisions and bad decisions.
In Starcraft 2, you could replace them with night elves in World of Warcraft or any random race of wizards or magicians from any medieval fantasy work involving people speaking with stunted syllables about ancient prophecies and fallen ones and doom.
TVTropes has something called "Flanderization", named for Ned Flanders in "The Simpsons". "Flanderization" refers to taking ONE character trait of an otherwise normal character, and making that trait THE defining characteristic of it, to the exclusion of all else.
This has happened BIG TIME with the Protoss, where religious fanaticism and mysticism has now become the defining trait of the Protoss. Nothing Zeratul says is not painful to listen to, straight out of every Lord of the Rings knockoff done worse.
For whatever reason, whereas Raynor and the Terrans are written at a third grade level of vocabulary and storytelling, Zeratul is written at a kindergarten level. It becomes teeth-gnashingly irritating to have a cutscene show you where to go, and to have Zeratul SLOWLY exclaim "I must go over there and link with that thing, but there are Zerg in the way! They may be... problematic", or a mission where Zerg attack your base every three minutes, and when there's thirty seconds left, Zeratul ALWAYS says "The Zerg are massing for an attack! To arms!" And then comes Zeratul's FIRST crowning moment of stupidity (because there's at least two) that comes as such a smack in the face to Starcraft fans, it becomes less the fault of the character, and more the fault of BAD WRITING. Zeratul encounters a Protoss/Zerg Hybrid, and then states in that stilted, bland and monotonous delivery "Who could have created such a thing?" DID NO ONE ON THE WRITING STAFF EVEN READ THE SCRIPTS OF THE FIRST GAME, NOT EVEN NEEDING TO PLAY IT? So while you're thinking "Duran", the next mission comes and Zeratul encounters the "ghost" of an old friend. The FIRST THING this old friend says is "I have come to you from beyond this world", and the FIRST THING Zeratul says is "But you died!" The idiocy then continues as this old friend tells the story of the Overmind and its true purpose, and Zeratul chimes in POINTLESS commentary that only shows how utterly STUPID he is, not able to use age as an excuse to not understand the concept of "lies" and "ulterior motives" and "not everything is as it seems". The old friend remarks something about the Overmind, and Zeratul says "DUH DUH BUT, THE, OVERMIND, WAS, A, MONSTROSITY!" and this old friend has to chide Zeratul like a child that it only SEEMED this way to him.
The same way you wouldn't want to see rubber-forehead aliens in "Battlestar Galactica" or slapstick comedy in "Schindler's List", I don't want to see magical fantasy-type superstition and talks of "Prophecy", "Chosen One", "Fallen One", "the Damned", "Doom", and such in a hard science fiction game.
In fact Starcraft 2 does seem at times like what Warcraft 3 did with Warcraft; turning it from low-fantasy into high-fantasy. It doesn't fit on Starcraft 2. And seeing the Starcraft series go from something dark, ambiguous, and hard, to something literally at grade-school level in its simplicity, is like watching a childhood hero succumb to drugs or alcohol.
Remember Arcturus Mengsk of Korhal, and how the Confederacy nuked Korhal into an uninhabitable wasteland, how Mengsk fought and bled and suffered to fight them, with his rebel group the Sons of Korhal. He was a character so morally ambiguous that he would suffer in order to help civilians, and then out of utter rage and vengeance, use psi emitters to obliterate entire Confederate planets, drawing billions of Zerg onto Antigua Prime and Tarsonis.
He wanted to end the war and end the Confederacy, and not end up spending decades fighting hard guerrilla war with the Confederate remnants. He made a bad decision, it was the wrong one, but he made it, and he was going to live with it. He was like Joseph Stalin in his ceaseless aggression to power and to the safety and security of all Terrans.
The Arcturus Mengsk in Starcraft 2 is better compared with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He and his administration create laws so blatantly false and outrageous, even CHILDREN would not fall for it. And this is presented CONSTANTLY in the form of UNN broadcasts featuring an obvious parody of news pundits. One mission sees you, Raynor's rebels, liberate a civilian area from the Zerg and Dominion forces. This is then reported on the news where a field reporter reports to the UNN pundit. He then asks about civilian casualties, and the reporter says "Actually, the only civilian casualties thus far have been crossfire from overzealous Dominion forces" and as soon as she finishes, they panickedly go back to the pundit who panickedly remarks "Uh, well, there you have it ladies and gentlemen; Jim Raynor, killing innocent women and children!" The actions of Arcturus Mengsk, having civilians rounded up and slaughtered, or encouraging neighbors to spy on one another, or abandoning half his Dominion at the first sign of Zerg threat so as to protect his core worlds, is so completely out of character for the Starcraft Mengsk that it's a farce. It's buffoonery, and it's made less funny if you've played the Terran campaign in Starcraft 1.
In Starcraft, the Protoss were the big tough fanatical race. They were loyal, courageous, religious, and xenophobic. They had highly advanced technology, but otherwise were very much like the Terrans in terms of being well-rounded, with good people and bad people making good decisions and bad decisions.
In Starcraft 2, you could replace them with night elves in World of Warcraft or any random race of wizards or magicians from any medieval fantasy work involving people speaking with stunted syllables about ancient prophecies and fallen ones and doom.
TVTropes has something called "Flanderization", named for Ned Flanders in "The Simpsons". "Flanderization" refers to taking ONE character trait of an otherwise normal character, and making that trait THE defining characteristic of it, to the exclusion of all else.
This has happened BIG TIME with the Protoss, where religious fanaticism and mysticism has now become the defining trait of the Protoss. Nothing Zeratul says is not painful to listen to, straight out of every Lord of the Rings knockoff done worse.
For whatever reason, whereas Raynor and the Terrans are written at a third grade level of vocabulary and storytelling, Zeratul is written at a kindergarten level. It becomes teeth-gnashingly irritating to have a cutscene show you where to go, and to have Zeratul SLOWLY exclaim "I must go over there and link with that thing, but there are Zerg in the way! They may be... problematic", or a mission where Zerg attack your base every three minutes, and when there's thirty seconds left, Zeratul ALWAYS says "The Zerg are massing for an attack! To arms!" And then comes Zeratul's FIRST crowning moment of stupidity (because there's at least two) that comes as such a smack in the face to Starcraft fans, it becomes less the fault of the character, and more the fault of BAD WRITING. Zeratul encounters a Protoss/Zerg Hybrid, and then states in that stilted, bland and monotonous delivery "Who could have created such a thing?" DID NO ONE ON THE WRITING STAFF EVEN READ THE SCRIPTS OF THE FIRST GAME, NOT EVEN NEEDING TO PLAY IT? So while you're thinking "Duran", the next mission comes and Zeratul encounters the "ghost" of an old friend. The FIRST THING this old friend says is "I have come to you from beyond this world", and the FIRST THING Zeratul says is "But you died!" The idiocy then continues as this old friend tells the story of the Overmind and its true purpose, and Zeratul chimes in POINTLESS commentary that only shows how utterly STUPID he is, not able to use age as an excuse to not understand the concept of "lies" and "ulterior motives" and "not everything is as it seems". The old friend remarks something about the Overmind, and Zeratul says "DUH DUH BUT, THE, OVERMIND, WAS, A, MONSTROSITY!" and this old friend has to chide Zeratul like a child that it only SEEMED this way to him.
The same way you wouldn't want to see rubber-forehead aliens in "Battlestar Galactica" or slapstick comedy in "Schindler's List", I don't want to see magical fantasy-type superstition and talks of "Prophecy", "Chosen One", "Fallen One", "the Damned", "Doom", and such in a hard science fiction game.
In fact Starcraft 2 does seem at times like what Warcraft 3 did with Warcraft; turning it from low-fantasy into high-fantasy. It doesn't fit on Starcraft 2. And seeing the Starcraft series go from something dark, ambiguous, and hard, to something literally at grade-school level in its simplicity, is like watching a childhood hero succumb to drugs or alcohol.