Gee gee! StarCraft II adding Tastosis announcer pack
Mind the panda bear guy
We might not all have professional-grade StarCraft skills but soon we will all be able to have our games commentated on by the wonderful veteran commentary team of Nick 'Tasteless' Plott and Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski. The pair have once again merged into the casting Archon of 'Tastosis' to record an announce voice pack for StarCraft II, which will launch this week with patch 3.14. I got into watching pro StarCraft through Tasteless on the Korean GSL competition, which Artosis has joined him in, so this sounds great. I hope Blizzard manage to capture the fun of two goofy pals goofing off.
"This announcer places their witty banter and legendary inflections in a live arena environment along with crowd effects to take your immersion one step deeper as you hear them commentate over your game," Blizzard say.
I'd want my Tastosis experience to include them shooting the breeze during quiet moments, doing impressions, cracking each other up, and occasionally missing key developments because the camera operator is looking elsewhere. This video certainly shows them larking about in the recording both:
I do hope Blizzard don't polish that too much, pare it down to fit as direct replacement lines for the regular announcer. I do like having the option of announcer packs which ramble a bit and have fun with the format, even if they are less practical. All the belching, "oh my gosh"es and "jeez!"es of Dota 2's Rick and Morty announcer dilute vital information, sure, but they're a laugh.
Patch 3.14 is out this week. Looks like some balance changes are coming with it.