Introduction to Starcraft 2

For me personally, I can't wait for the release of Starcraft 2!

Starcraft & Starcraft Broodwars was launched 10 years back in 1998, and is still played worldwide on a very competitive level! It means that it is a very successful game, and I think the sequel will have the same kind of success. So I decided to write about what I could discover about the game in the meantime....

Starcraft 2 will be a real-time strategy, which will hopefully create new boundaries, for other developers to achieve!



Development - Beginning of Starcraft 2

Starcraft 2 development has been announced by Blizzard Entertainment to the world on 19 May 2007, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea. The game developer team of Blizzard Entertainment started creating the game in 2003, just after their expansion release (which was Warcraft 3 : Frozen Throne) of their other very successful Series - Warcraft. They are developing it under DirectX 9.0c, but will also support the newer DirectX 10 (for the Windows XP / Vista operating systems), and also OpenGL (for the Mac clients).


Features

Starcraft 2 will have support for the Havok Physics Engine, which will allow for very realistic environmental elements (giving objects the ability to interact more realistically with other objects in real-time.
It could also have VOIP (Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol) support, allowing players to have conversations over the internet with their allies / opponents.
Cut-scenes will be pre-rendered as very high-quality CGI movies in-between missions and quest updates. More interestingly, it will also feature an in-game scene renderer, for updates in the current missions, which they claim to create these scenes with almost the same quality as the pre-rendered cut scenes.
It will feature a very advanced, user friendly campaign editor, for people that likes creating their own missions, campaigns and maps. Thinking of the very successful map making of Warcraft 3, this should be very impressive!
It will have a complete single player mode, with campaigns for all three playable races that returns from the original Starcraft : the Zerg, Terrans, and Protoss.
But, the main thing that the developers are concentrating on, is trying to achieve the same balanced, fun, and competitive gameplay on the multiplayer mode that its predecessor had.



Single Player Mode

As stated earlier, it will have a complete single player with a full campaign of about 26-30 missions for each race. The campaigns will be handled in a very non-linear way - each mission can be done when the player chooses. For instance, the Terran campaign, players take 'jobs' for money to be able to upgrade and purchase better weapons. Also, each campaign will also be handled differently than the others, while the Terran campaign focuses on a mercenary-upgrade style play, the Zerg campaign will have more RPG element, and the Protoss more political and diplomatic elements. Although all this is non-linear, the end result of each campaign is that the storyline will be more linear, as to prevent confusion and people losing interest in a 'disoriented' storyline.


Multiplayer Mode

The biggest concentration of the developers is on the Multiplayer mode. The developers have their work cut out on this, as balance issues in real-time strategy games are always a main thing for players losing interest in playing multiplayer, for instance - someone that has a 'favorite' faction to play with would lose interest if their faction is a lot inferior in strength and balance to other playable factions in a particular game. Blizzard Entertainment, however have done this mostly perfect with all their games released. The online Battle.net ladder system are being reworked on, with more better ranks and more equal match-ups for similar ranked players. The very popular replay feature will be made even better, as to allow players that watch the replays, to make it more interesting for them.



Release Date

Blizzard Entertainment has not announced any release date, with the developers just scheduling it for a 2009 release. Although the wait is unbearable, Blizzard Entertainment always release their games when they feel it is ready for the public, and it would be of very high quality.

Well, that is about all for now, hope you enjoyed the lens, and hope you are a fan of Blizzard Entertainment and their Starcraft series, like me !

Please also see my next lens about Starcraft 2, I have a look at the Starcraft 2 Storyline.