that's how you start the campaign seriously fuck you dude
"'Bout time we kicked this revolution into overdrive" is the dumbest fucking launch phrase for the beginning of what ought to have an incredibly satisfying storyline, a sequel to StarCraft: Brood War, a gritty space opera of power and tyranny and rebellion - hatred and revenge and the breaking of the old order in good ways and in bad - that I think I've ever heard in my entire life.
How the fuck do you follow up this amazing intro cinematic - narrated by the amazingly talented voice of Arcturus Mengsk, James Harper
With THIS dumb ass fucking line.
So much of the cutscene up to this point was fine - Arcturus' speech to the press gave the kind of overview of Dominion politics that we'd need to start off an RTS campaign at a press conference that had him digging at Raynor in exactly the way you'd expect a conservative, totalitarian, graduate of the school of the americas style personality cult leader that Mengsk showed himself as at the end of the SC1 Terran campaign and throughout the Brood War story to act.
There is no amount of "oh it was 2010 and they were trying to sound edgy" that saves this intro after that god awful line. Especially when they could have just had Jim pivot to the adjutant immediately after this to start you off
"It ain't over 'til it's over, you son of a bitch" would be a fantastic way to start off what we all know is a campaign of revenge after the events of Brood War, and it happens only a few seconds before that idiotic overdrive line.
And just about everyone, even if they had been reading the ancillary StarCraft product, was confused by Jim's pining over Kerrigan in this scene as well
Oh come the FUCK on, dude. This is the situation that we last saw Raynor and Kerrigan interact with each other - at odds with each other over in the final campaign of Brood War, right after Kerrigan murders Fenix
Keeping in mind, Raynor argued with Mengsk to try to save Kerrigan, and left the Sons of Korhal immediately after the New Gettysburg betrayal that left her to the swarm. Jim is a caring man, noble enough to have made friends with Fenix and many other Protoss who were generally conditioned in their society to look down on lesser races
Raynor: He died because you betrayed him. How many noble souls do you need to consume before you're satisfied? How many more people need to die before you realize what you've become?
Kerrigan: You don't even know what you're talking about, Jim!
Raynor: Don't I? I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan. For Fenix and all the others who got caught between you and your mad quest for power!
Kerrigan: Tough talk, Jimmy. But I don't think you have what it takes to be a killer.
Raynor: It may not be tomorrow, darlin'. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day. I'll be seein' you.
Kerrigan: It is done, Cerebrate. They've all been destroyed. Let us return to Tarsonis to rest. For the first time since my transfiguration I am wearied of the slaughter.
You can TELL that what Raynor said had gotten to her. Both with her sad attempt to defend her actions - "you don't even know what you're talking about" - and the delivery of the last line of that mission. You could hear the hatred in his voice when he threatened her and you could hear her exhausted when she says it's time to rest.
There's no chance in hell that the passage of just a couple years (???? whoever decided on THAT time scale between the games was an idiot) was enough to make him forget about the murder of his friend who he had fought beside, not to mention her massacre of millions or even billions of other Protoss and Terrans.
Kerrigan is betrayed by Mengsk. Raynor, stricken with grief and anger, betrays Mengsk - realizing that Mengsk only seeks to become the tyrant that he's in the process of overthrowing. Kerrigan, having been betrayed and remembering what happened, falls into her role as the Queen of Blades after the death of the overmind. Having been betrayed, and being seen as everyone's enemy in the sector up to this point, she has no problem betraying others and has no problem scheming and manipulating what's left of the other power structures in the area to her interests.
She ends up hunting down and eliminating the most powerful champions of the Dominion and the remaining Protoss - General Duke and Fenix - in preparation for her rise to power over the UED. But she didn't count on being called out by the one person who tried to stand by her side and protect her and that really hurt.
Jim Raynor would never be pining over a long lost redhead after all this.
