Game News


StarCraft II Unveiled

By: News Editor
Date: Monday, May 21, 2007
Source: Blizzard

At the 2007 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational event in Seoul, South Korea,  Blizzard Entertainment unveiled STARCRAFT® II, the sequel to its award-winning real-time strategy game STARCRAFT. The announcement took place inside the Olympic Gymnastics Arena, in front of thousands of attendees, who received a presentation that included a StarCraft II cinematic trailer and a gameplay demonstration by the development team.

STARCRAFT II, will feature the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard's signature approach to game balance. Each race will be further distinguished from the others, with several new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that will be making a reappearance in the game. StarCraft II will also feature a custom 3D-graphics engine with realistic physics and the ability to render several large, highly detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultaneously. 

The game will include a unique single-player campaign, as well as fast-paced online play through an upgraded version of Blizzard's online gaming service, Battle.net®. In addition, the game will come with a powerful, full-featured map editor that will put the same tools used by Blizzard's designers into the hands of players.



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Comments/Responses
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kaybar • May 21, 2007, 01:16am •
wow, can't believe no one else has posted a comment on this yet, but as blizzard's tag line has stated it is damn time that this sequel come out.

I'm surprised blizzard decided to go with a more WC3 cartoonish feel to the animation, i was hoping for great new 3d graphics with starcraft-esque gritty rendering. I guess they also opted not to expand on the hero class units introduced in reign of chaos (or they just haven't released that info yet) but i think that would totally lend itself to the military structure of each races' army.

And speaking of races, only the original three so far? What about the protoss/zerg hybrid race?? I know its so early in the game's development, and it's blizzard so you know they'll put out a high quality product that will probably consume at least a year of my life, but the new "immortal" protoss units look like lame-ass versions of the star wars droid destroyers. Bring the dragoons back!

Scuzzlebutt142 • May 21, 2007, 05:48am •
Well, remember that thet completely redid the orginal SC graphics when they felt it was looking too much like Warcraft ...... in Space!

Probably will have heros of some kind in the game, as they play a large part of the story of the game.

Also, bets on how late its going to be? A year, two?

smegforbrain • May 21, 2007, 08:09am •
"Also, bets on how late its going to be? A year, two?"

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they never release it.

They got everybody so hyped up for Ghost, and then they finally gave up on it, that I won't believe there's a SC2 until the damn thing actually hits store shelves.

Merin • May 21, 2007, 08:25am •
You're right, kaybar. I can't believe that no one commented on this before this article . . .

oh wait . . . because someone DID.

http://www.mania.com/Merin/blog/272.html
and
http://www.mania.com/Merin/video/1345.html

This is great news, in any case. But I wouldn't compare the RTS Starcraft 2 being released to the clusterf*ck that was Ghost. Ghost was a FPS, got canned, switched developing teams how many times . . . Starcraft 2 is a whole different story.

smegforbrain points to Ghost as why SC2 will be delayed (not to be confused with Star Control 2, another great game) - I point to Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and Worlds of Warcraft to show that Blizzard delivers.

irascible • May 21, 2007, 09:33am •
If it is: Better it be delayed than released too early and it suck - but then I can't think of anything besides Ghost that Blizzard has put out that has sucked.
Merrin - your blog doesn't count as comment - nobody is reading it there. :)

goldeneyez • May 21, 2007, 10:17am •
To smegforbrain, Merin already said it, I'll have to second SC2 will be released. Its a flagship game. There were Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III; Diablo, Diablo II; Starcraft. I think Blizzard has too much riding on it to not release this game. Starcraft in Korea is what the NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB is here. Not to mention the fans of the game around the world.

This has happened before, however, with Warcraft. Initially there was supposed to be a Warcraft game in the vein of King's Quest/Monkey Island (I can't remember what that genre was called). The game was going to be about Thrall's rise to become the Warcief of the Horde. Eventually the game got scrapped and those story elements were used as the some of the backstory for Warcraft III.

The other example would be Warcraft III. Initially the game was supposed to play much more like a Role Playing game, with how the Heroes played. I think Blizzard did the right thing & halted that development in it's tracks and went ahead and made the WCIII we all know & love. Those elements to make a more RPG Warcraft... well I'd bet dollars to donuts that development wasn't entirely wasted & may have been the foundation for World of Warcraft.

I think by the same token, Ghost will probably be the foundation for whatever MMORPG they develop for the Starcraft universe... but time will tell.

Also, irascible, Blizzard never released Ghost, so as far as I know Blizzard has yet to put out suckage.

themacallan007 • May 21, 2007, 11:47am •
Oh the late 90s...when I would spend hours and hours playing games like Starcraft and Goldeneye for N64. SC has much to live up to considering the first one3 was one of the greatest games of all time...its good Blizzard takes it's time

smegforbrain • May 21, 2007, 10:36pm •
"I point to Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and Worlds of Warcraft to show that Blizzard delivers"

I don't give a rat's ass if Ghost was a clusterf*ck or not. It was a Blizzard title, and it was never released.

And, yes, there was a WarCraft game that was also never released that was advertised with the original StarCraft eons ago. I doubt it became the basis for anything else, because was almost cartoon-like in appearance from what they advertised.

kaybar • May 21, 2007, 10:41pm •
this game'll be the shit, it will be released, and it will be fine-tuned before that release with a comprehensive beta. RTS games are Blizzard's bread and butter.

As for Ghost, I was very much looking forward to the game. I mainly think it wasn't released because of the complete schism in production during the split between the Blizzard founders (some of which have gone on to form Flagship Studios).

goldeneyez • May 22, 2007, 08:46am •
smegforbrain, ok you don't give a rat's ass.

For those of you who do care about the facts, I looked up the game on Wikipedia. The game was Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. It was the story of how Thrall, Warchief of the Horde rose to power. The genre of game was an Adventure game which at that point had been dipping in popularity due probably to first person shooters, console games, etc. Most of the elements of the game served as the part back story for Warcraft III, and the game was eventually fleshed out into a novel by the name of Warcraft: Lord of the Clans written by Star Trek novelist Christie Golden.

kaybar, I agree with you about Ghost being dropped due to the schism when Bill Roper & co left Blizzard. I think a lot of those guys were Diablo folk as well.

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