Awesome / StarCraft

Goodbye, Tassadar. Forever.

For StarCraft II, see here for Wings of Liberty, here for Heart of the Swarm, and here for Legacy of the Void.

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Campaign

• Mengsk's speech at the end of the Terran campaign as he is crowning himself emperor. You play the game from Raynor's perspective so you know he's a bad guy. But the speech is so damn awesome and inspirational that it's no surprise that the average Terran would swear loyalty to him.
• Pretty much everything the Overmind says. From his first words onward, everything he says is done with such grandiosity that one can't help but feel humbled in his presence.
  Overmind: Awaken, my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright!
• Midway through the Protoss campaign, Tassadar comes upon the remnant of General Duke's Dominion force from Episode 2. He gives a fairly typical warning, claiming ownership of the planet's airspace, accusing Tassadar of recklessness and demanding his retreat from a mission vital to the future existence of both races in face of the Zerg. Having previously spared Duke more out of pity than anything, Tassadar has this to say:
  Tassadar: General Duke, I am Tassadar, and you are well known to me. Whatever leniency I extended to you and your comrades before, may have been in error. If you persist in halting our course, we will burn your pathetic fleet down to the last man.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The "well known to me" part is not just idle chat. Tassadar is likely aware that Duke is directly responsible for the massacre on Tarsonis. After he went against his own government to spare the Terran worlds from annihilation, it must have galled him to the core that another Terran would so callously sacrifice billions of his own people to the Zerg. So of course his hands are itching to dispose of the murderous bastard, but he must restrain himself for the sake of the mission.
• Raynor talking back to the Protoss for mocking him.
  Tassadar: Arrest me?? Aiur burns at the touch of the Zerg, and you travel all this way... to arrest me?!
  Raynor: Don't let it get you, man. This happened to me once.
  Aldaris: Who is this human, Tassadar?
  Raynor: The name's Jim Raynor, pal. And I won't be talked down to by anybody. Not even a Protoss.
  Aldaris: Amusing.
• "Eye of the Storm", the final mission of the Protoss campaign in the original StarCraft, is loaded with awesome moments.
  • Tassadar and Raynor get some badass lines during the mission briefing.
  Tassadar: And I say to thee, THIS SHALL NOT COME TO PASS! AIUR SHALL NOT FALL! Executor, I stand ready.
  Raynor: Well, I guess all I have left is to see this through. The Zerg have taken everything from me. My home, my friends, my family. I know that nothing I can do can bring those things back but I'll be damned if I just sit on my hands and wait for the end. I want a piece of them all right. I'm in.
  Tassadar: Then let our actions speak for us! For Adun! For Aiur!
  • After you start the mission, Aldaris chimes in, offering his apologies and giving a brief Rousing Speech. For all the trouble he has caused during the campaign, seeing him humbled is very cathartic.
  • The mission comprises of Raynor and his surviving Terran troops teaming up with Tassadar and his surviving Protoss to come together to try and defeat the Overmind. Controlling two races, each on opposite sides of the map made it really feel like a great moment. Not to mention the aftermath and Tassadar's Heroic Sacrifice.
• The last mission of the Brood War Protoss campaign gives you the opportunity to take control of a Zerg army (there's a small enemy Zerg base that is relatively easy to take out, and you can quickly get access to the Dark Archon). Unlike the sixth mission, you can have control of the entire Zerg army, including Lurkers and Devourers, which won't be playable again until the fifth and sixth missions respectively. And until you bring Zeratul and Artanis into the Xel'Naga temple, the enemy Zerg won't be harassing you much either. You could essentially have an entire Zerg and Protoss army ready to defend the stronghold. And after you finish this mission, you're treated to a cutscene where Artanis activates the Xel'Naga temple and then watches as the sun rises over Shakuras, bathing the normally dark planet in light.
• "Emperor's Flight". You as the UED start off by using a fleet of Valkyries and Siege Tanks to wipe out a Zerg base and claim it as your own, so you can assault a Protoss base before your targets escape to a warp gate (said targets are Terrans hiding out in a conspicuous Command Center in the base). Then as you begin building up your forces, you get a message that the warp gate has activated and its energy is inciting passive Zerg in the area to attack. From there you fight a three-pronged war, Terran, Zerg, and Protoss, all mixing it up. Then when you win, a third Zerg force operating for an unknown fourth party attacks you and the Protoss so the Terrans can escape. The mission is practically a microcosm of what Starcraft is all about.
• "Patriot's Blood" is an Installation mission where you direct Duran and a squad of Marines to arrest Stukov. Great scripting and lots of fun, especially with the hilarious interactions between the Marines and the civilians, and then it turns into a turning point in the campaign once you locate Stukov.
• "To Chain the Beast", the final Terran mission in Brood War, has you turtle up for the majority of the mission penned in by invulnerable Combat Tentacles and a super-Ultralisk that refuses to stay down. Fortunately, the three Cerebrates that enable this mission's gimmicks are quite vulnerable to a few well-placed Yamato shots, after which you can disband all your defenses and send them on the (second) biggest turkey shoot in the galaxy.
• Don't forget this precious piece of dialogue from Brood Wars.
  Fenix: It is difficult to believe that I am working along side my greatest enemy in order to save this sector.... Fortune has been whimsical of late.
  Raynor: You sound like a tired old man, Fenix!
  Fenix: Don't let the fact that I am 368 years older than you dull your impression of me young Raynor, I can still — how do you Terrans say it? — 'Throw down with the best of them!'
  Raynor: I stand corrected.
• DuGalle's confrontation with Arcturus Mengsk is dripping in coolness from both of them.
  DuGalle: So, the elusive Arcturus Mengsk at last. I was hoping to speak with you before we finished our business here. I am Admiral Gerard DuGalle, and I must commend you, Sir, for holding back our advance for as long as you have. You are indeed a worthy opponent.
  Mengsk: My thanks to you, Sir. But you must know that your victory here means little to me. It might have taken me awhile, but I did overthrow the Confederacy. I'll overthrow your rule as well.
  DuGalle: That seems unlikely, Sir, seeing as how you'll be publicly executed along with the rest of your ranking officers.
  Mengsk: You wouldn't dare!
  DuGalle: Hah! The man who crowns himself "Emperor" speaks to me of daring? You have far outlived your reputation, Citizen Mengsk. Captain, prepare to take the Emperor into custody.
• Kerrigan gets another one when she mocks Fenix by quoting Tassadar's "you are your own worst enemy" at him. Despite Fenix immediately lampshading the irony, the fact that she can do this with a perfectly straight face really shows how far she had come from the near-Blood Knight she started out as after she was zergified.
• Kerrigan does it again at the culmination of Brood War. She seemingly invokes Enemy Mine by rallying Raynor, Mengsk and the Protoss against the UED - but as soon as Korhal is retaken and Mengsk is restored to power, she turns around and backstabs all parties involved when they least expect it, ensuring that Mengsk can't pose a threat to her and eliminating one of the two high-ranking Protoss leaders left after Aiur's fall. Next, she blackmails Zeratul into restoring her to undisputed power over the Zerg then forces him to do something she knows will make his life, in her own words, "a walking torture day by day". And when she gets cornered by three separate factions rightly pissed at her, she counterattacks and sends two running home to lick their wounds as well as completely wiping out the UED. The same UED that pretty much came, saw and systematically kicked the crap out of every single faction in the Koprulu sector in one go. And she wiped them out — not defeated, killed down to the last man.
  DuGalle: I am giving you one last chance to surrender your forces and submit to the sovereign authority of the United Earth Directorate.
  Kerrigan: Gee, that's a tough one, Admiral. You'll have to let me think for a minute... You know, Admiral, I think I'll just massacre your remaining troops now and watch you die in agony. How would that be?
  DuGalle: You vastly underestimate me, my dear.
  Kerrigan: I don't think so, Admiral. You see, at this point... I'm pretty much the Queen Bitch of the Universe. And not all of your little soldiers or space ships will stand in my way again.

Expanded Universe

• For all that Mengsk looks like a General Failure in the games, the novella Starcraft: Uprising showed him displaying considerable tactical genius. Among his finest moments was using a siege tank to escape General Duke's battlecruiser. Yes, you read that right — he used a siege tank stationed in the Hyperion cargo bay to blast a battlecruiser IN SPACE! And we all thought siege tanks didn't have Anti-Air.
• In the novel Starcraft; Evolution by Timothy Zahn, a five-man research team is trapped inside a cavern with an entire army of Zerg trying to get in and slaughter them. Fortunately, they have a heavy flamethrower to even the odds… but most of the team have armor too insufficient or too compromised to survive the heat it would generate. This leaves Erin Wyland, civilian researcher, as the only candidate to wield the flamer. Even though her heart is pounding with fear, even though her armored suit is slowly shutting down due to the intense heat, even though she can smell her own cooking flesh, she still burns through fifty meters of charging Zerg and ignites a brushfire in the foliage surrounding the cavern, thus creating an impassable barrier.