>>537843457
Here's a short little image that I think sort of illustrates where they lost the plot with Karen S'Jet (Fleet command).

She was a character since the very beginning, but originally she was almost a footnote that was mainly mentioned in the historical backstory that was bundled with the game's manual (I've regretfully lost my copy over the years). In the game's story, they identified an ancient crashed starship in the depths of their planet's most hostile desert. They used this reverse engineered and barely understood technology to build their own mothership so that they could explore the galaxy and find a new home for their people. The ship's systems were too complex for them to adequately control, and the solution was an experimental and permanent surgery to integrate a human with the ship's systems so that they could act as the ship's beating heart. A living core that kept everything operating in unison. Karen was an important character, and a hero, but her story wasn't one of strength and empowerment. It was one of selfless sacrifice for the greater good of her people.

In the conclusion of the first game's story, the mothership was critically damaged during the final battle for the Homeworld. Karen's integration into the mothership was supposed to be permanent. It was too dangerous to risk detaching her from the systems. But the damage to the Mothership forced everyone's hand and she was violently ripped from the ship's core. Miraculously her life was saved and she managed to set foot on the homeworld before the ending credits.

In Cataclysm, she was mentioned in passing a few times but did not play a role in the story.

In HW2, she was more gracefully integrated into the 2nd mothership and had a more central role.

In the HW:remaster, her sorrowful appearance was replaced with one that had more "girl-boss" energy. Then they kept going in that direction with HW3.