Games, according to Mr. Fracca, are “a series of quests that combine to produce the overall experience of the game[s].” This is the case for StarCraft, a science fiction real time strategy video game that has attracted more than three million players around the world. The original StarCraft has six episodes that contain many quests within an episode. However, only episode III is written in quest narrative form that, by Thomas Foster’s definition in Every Trip Is A Quest (Except When It’s Not), consists of “five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there.”

A quester is the first element to impress players in a quest. As episode III commences, …show more content…
Protoss Conclave appoints Artanis, the quester, to be the Executor and requests him to go to the Zerg hive cluster on planet Aiur to kill the Overmind. The Zerg hive cluster is a gloomy deserted location where dwells Overmind that controls a swarm of aliens called Zerg. Surrounding the hive, tall rocky spikes and massive alien troops circulate around the center so that the Overmind is safe inside. The Executor must go there to slay the Overmind since Tassadar, another executor before Artanis, fails his quest and betrays the Conclave. That is his only focus during his entire …show more content…
In this particular episode, there are three main types of challenges: physical, mental and emotional. Most of his challenges are physical battles against the Zerg’s force where players spend lots of time preparing for battles and building strong combats to help Artanis defeat the evil force. His first physical challenge is to secure the outpost of Antioch from the Zerg’s swarm. Since physical challenges in the form of battles are abundant, mental and emotional challenges are rare in the quest. During the quest, he only encounters one mental and one emotional challenge. When Tassadar appears to ask for his help fighting against Zerg, Artanis faces a tough decision whether or not to ally and trust him since the Conclave views Tassadar as a traitor. However, he chooses Tassadar over the Conclave, which results in another physical challenge. At the end of episode III, the final battle takes away one of his comrade’s life. Overall, these challenges allow Artanis to grow as a dynamic quester so that the quest, in Metzen’s hope, will be “ten times better.” Episode III has a really concrete plot in a quest narrative form that follows the basic elements of a quest. This well-written episode along with the rest of the other well-developed episodes have made the original StarCraft, among the other versions of StarCraft, the highest ranking from both critic and users on Metacritic