Yet Another Post About Starcraft II
Today on Games I'm Not That Interested In But Kinda Wish I was, it's Starcraft II. I'm still waiting for the reveal as to quite what it is about the singleplayer that necessitated trifurcating the game, because I've never been much of a one for multiplayer RTS. I can't, however, imagine that Blizzard are unaware of this kind of mindset, especially in light of what their name means to that hefty slice of the WoW crowd who aren't into the PvP or raid elements. They're up to something, I don't doubt - I just don't know quite what yet. Hopefully it won't just involve bombarding us with expensively-made cutscenes until we pass out from lore exhaustion. There's a hint of what they're up to in a new dev diary here, which includes the magic word 'decisions'. Ooh! I like making those! Unless they're about what to eat or whether I should put any clothes on, anyway. Also: new Zerg footage below. It's SC2's take on The Spy...
Here's a key phrase from that diary that sheds some light on the kind of dilemmas you'll face:
One example of the latter occurs in an early part of the game on a small farming colony located on a remote fringe world named Agria. After some daring heroics and righteous exploits, Jim Raynor and his band of rebels find themselves aboard their ship and receive a distress call from Agria, which has been abandoned by Dominion defenders and is facing a zerg invasion. Players can choose whether to heed the distress call or chase down an alien artifact to fund their own fight against the Dominion, leaving the other to tackle later.
There's also a video worth watching in the middle of that diary, sadly non-embeddable for now. It demonstrates a) that the missions don't seem to involve yet traditional base vs base battles and b) that the Terrans say "outstanding" an awful lot. There's even a boss fight of sorts. Whaddaya think? Can they make traditional singleplayer RTS feel all spicy again, or is it a bit King Canute?
And here's that promised Zerg Changeling video, which reveals quite how irritating this viscous wee fella will be to enemy forces. There's also a short story about it here, if you're into that kind of thing. Pervert.