BlizzCon: Starcraft 2 Trilogy Announced; Blizzard’s Philosophy Behind it

If you’re a Blizzard fan, chances are that you have been looking at Starcraft 2 for months and possibly years now. We’ve all been wondering: when’s the release date? Well, the release date still has not been announced, however, they did announce big news at BlizzCon: Starcraft 2 will be a trilogy. The three parts of the trilogy are: the Human campaign – “Wings of Liberty,” the Zerg campaign – “Heart of the Swarm,” and the Protoss campaign – “Legacy of the Void.” Now, everyone is probably thinking, “This is just Blizzard’s way of sucking more money from us.” That is simply not true, and here’s why:

Starcraft has always been a multiplayer game. This time around they are fleshing out the campaign mode. Blizzard wanted to stress choice: choice on missions, choice on techs, and even choice on character relationships. In between missions, the player is able to interact with a “home-base” or other related environment. Here at BlizzCon, they showed two areas: a bar and a battle cruiser. Here, the player can interact with everything from the jukebox to any character on the screen. As far as mission selection, players can choose between which missions they want to embark on; each mission allows for different outcomes. At the end of a mission, the user is rewarded with money to purchase any technology they wish. For example, at the end of the first mission, the demonstrator bought the stim pack upgrade and an upgrade that allowed more units per bunker. Both upgrades were useable in the next campaign. Also in the campaign, the game will debut units that are not playable in multiplayer. The campaign looks incredibly solid, but at a price.

Blizzard had three options: shrink down the campaigns to get a quicker release, continue to create expansive campaigns and release as a trilogy, or make the campaigns long but push back the release date. Blizzard, knowing what we all want, decided to release the trilogy. Here, each game will be a complete campaign with a complete story and with no cliff-hangers. On top of that, each campaign will have fully complete, movie-quality cinematics similar to any of the epic Blizzard cinematics we’ve come to expect. The campaigns also flesh out the characters’ story lines. The Human campaign revolves around Jim Raynor, the Zerg campaign revolves around Kerrigan (YES), and the Protoss revolves around Zeratul.

Overall, as a Starcraft 2 follower, I was very excited to hear about this release. Not only does it mean a stronger campaign, but it also equals a quicker release date. Every gamer likes a quicker release—as long as it’s for a game, of course.