So, with Kerrigan cured.... how the hell is Heart of the Swarm going to be played out as Zerg, when there is no longer a Zerg Jim Raynor equivalent?

You play as the ambitious Overlord Yggdrasil, in his quest to reunite the Swarm.

BS. Kerri retains her psionic control over the Zerg. Duh.

Yes, in other words it's a re-run of the early BW campaign where Kerrigan has to re-assert her dominance over the Zerg, with help from Raynor and possibly the Protoss. Just like BW.

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Heart_of_the_Swarm

The campaign will feature a branched storyline structure.[8] ]
woooooooooow. So something's going to be happening immediately that nullifies the entire first game? And like lanth said, it's just like BW all over again.

I assume... tassadar now controls the swarm and he cannot be owned due to.. you know

What the fuck? Didn't jimmy boy like cure her in the first game. This saddens me, very very much...

Clans, those quotes from wikia are from a long long time ago, shortly after they announced that they were splitting the game into 3 parts. So I wouldn't put much faith into them.

But assuming we are playing as Kerrigan, and assuming we lead the Zerg as the primary race in the campaign, then it is going to *have* to be some storyline that revolves around her gaining control of the swarm, for at least the first part of the campaign. Which, as I said above, is what BW did.

It's possible Kerrigan could only play a peripheral part, but given how conservative Blizzard were with the SC2 storyline (no major important new characters or even events really, apart from Kerrigan) it's hard to imagine what else they would do. Maybe they'll bring Alexi Stukov back - although it appeared he died in BW, he was brought back in the novels and IIRC N64 secret mission and Metzen has confirmed that Stukov being infested and de-infested is part of canon.

That's good, I liked Stukov.

Imo Kerri is going to have some serious character issues after being zerg for so long. I think she'll retain her hold on the Zerg, but what she'll do with it I don't know. That's pretty much the only way they can have a Zerg campaign. Eventually, she and Raynor are going to get married, probably after they reform the Xel'naga with Zeratul's help in Legacy of the Void and save the world from Duran and evil hybrids and crap.

I honestly think that Kerrigan basically struggles to control the Zerg (again) and slowly regains her strength as you progress through the campaign. She'll be attaining higher psionic powers while being human and will basically develop new breeds of Zerg. The main enemies will probably be Mengsk (surprise) and Protoss who believe Kerrigan is still the exact same. It'd be cool if she was in every campaign as a pseudo hero maybe, but that seems like it'd be easily exploitable. I just wonder if Jimmy will help her from time to time and how all of Jimmy's friends react to her being human again. You might even fight a lot of hybrids, which would be cool.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how her leading the Zerg necessarily means that they're evil. Judging from "In Utter Darkness," if she's the one who can save humanity a good portion of SC2-2 will probably be against the Hybrids/Xel'Naga.

Though people will complain that's a rehash of the Warcraft III story if it ends up being everyone against the Hybrids at the end, but I don't know, if they make it epic and pull it off well, I don't care. There's a reason why all vs the big bad guy is a trope, because it's a reliable and satisfying good one. Maybe Blizzard will throw a curveball at us though.

They probably won't.
But if they do do something like that, it better be a ball that shifts into a separate reality as it curves towards me then reappears from behind my head at 20x its original velocity and kills me.

I'm betting they won't, though. Seriously, they already went the way of "ABSOLVE KERRIGAN IN THE MOST PRIMITIVE MANNER POSSIBLE" and "ARTIFACT OF DEUS EX MACHINA", so whatever.

Isn't the whole concept of Xel'Naga basically Deus Ex Machina though?

Not even kinda.

luls, SC2's story bored me...

oooh big baddies coming to destroy the universe.
Dr. Nefarious behind Ratchet and Clank stories sounded more acceptable than that load of crap. It's just not up to par with all the hype...

anyways, I think what Neki said will be the closest:
The curveball would be jimmy dying to save kerrigan again. That'd be epic.

Possible, given how many heroes they killed in BW.

However by that same token, Jim, Kerrigan and Zeratul are the only characters from original Starcraft and Artanis is the only other one from BW that has made an appearance so far. Also all the heroes died in the 3rd part of BW, which is again likely how they'd do it this time as well, as it's more dramatic and easier to write a storyline that way.

Impossible, because the whole Starcraft story is mostly around Raynor.

I'm guessing Kerrigan will miss her power, and willfully give herself back up to the swarm, against Jim and Valerian.

Of course, this makes Jim realise she's truly a lost cause and he tries to kill her the rest of the game. Failing.

I really doubt Blizzard would nullify all of WoL by just turning her back into an evil Zerg unless they pulled it off masterly. It would anger so many fans, you basically wasted thirty missions for nothing.