The game was made long before the story. From what I remember (I can't remember where I read this) the story and campaign were fairly rushed afterthoughts, compared to the mechanics and multiplayer.
The story itself was iffy, but the campaign's aesthetic and maps were AMAZING.
I still remember the "defend the harbor" mission where you had one Moho mine and you had the long range destroyers showing up and desperately salvaging the long range Ranger missile ships for minerals because they were utterly nonthreatening but super valuable..
The map with a giant crevasse. The map with a ton of gunships. It was a really solid campaign. It felt like an amazing story even if the writing was simple to the point of parody just because everything was so well designed and fit perfectly together.
