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PC | Strategy | StarCraft II

Boxart for StarCraft II
StarCraft II 55 screen shots
  • AVG USER SCORE 5.0
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE n/a

Preview: StarCraft II (Page 2 of 3)

Preview by Daphinicus | 05/29/2007 | 10:08:26 AM PST

A Classic Reborn

Let's get one thing straight: Blizzard will not be reinventing any wheels. From the get-go, the announcement panel firmly stated that only the three originally-playable races will be appearing in the sequel, and that no major, game-changing additions are ever going to be introduced.

"Each of the races is going to have new abilities, but there won't be a 'big new thing' like the Supreme Commander cam," said Blizzard's Rob Pardo, VP of Game Design. Much of the reasoning behind this, he explained, was tied to StarCraft's status as a competitive title. "A lot of the features you see in a lot of other games are stopping them from having competitive depth and longevity. You don't need to have a big new feature to make the game compelling, interesting, and new."

But, that said, you need a lot of other stuff, and before you start making of any of it, you need a foundation to build off of. For Blizzard, development of that foundation began in July of 2003, immediately after it shipped Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. While the rest of the company (not to mention most of the gaming world) threw their hearts and minds into World of Warcraft, a contingent of about 40 core developers began production of a new RTS engine that could handle Havok physics; IK-enabled units; per-pixel lighting with high dynamic range bloom effects; and normal, rendering, and tone mapping.

New Units, New Abilities...

Once the engine was ready to go, the team began to recreate StarCraft the only way it knew how: enhancing old classics and inventing new ones, creating a game that looked and played like its roots-only better in every respect. During the gameplay demo shown at the Worldwide Invitational, we got the chance to see those results, as a selection of StarCraft II's new and returning units were highlighted one-by-one.

The Zerg's staple unit, the zergling, will be back in the sequel with a new trick up its sleeve: It can now morph into a creature called a baneling, a rolling kamikaze explosive that deals devastating damage on impact. The Terrans, on the other hand, showcased a brand-new, marine-like unit called the reaper. Equipped with dual pistols and jump jets, reapers will be able to traverse cliffs and small obstacles with ease, using their double-pistol armament to unleash some surprising hurt to certain units.

But the real focus of the demo was the Protoss and six of their new or improved units. First up came the zealot, still armed with a pair of deadly psionic blades and protected by a personal shielding system, but now able to charge nearby enemies at great speed. Afterwards, Blizzard introduced three successive newcomers: the immortal, colossus, and stalker.


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