Starcraft II Gameplay
Building on the successes enjoyed by its predecessor, StarCraft, StarCraft II is designed to be the “ultimate competitive real-time strategy game.” It features the return of the three races from the original game—Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. In several video demonstrations held by Blizzard, Protoss and Terran units, and some Zerg units, have been shown on the StarCraft II official website. Some improvements include advanced scenery allocation and more detailed space landscape, such as floating space platforms with planets and asteroids in the backdrop. Also shown to have been improved are small cliffs, extensions, and even advertising signs. The Terran campaign shown at BlizzCon 2007 replaced the original StarCraft briefing room with an updated interactive version of the battlecruiser Hyperion, with a bitter and hard-drinking mercenary captain, Jim Raynor, as the central character.
Although each playthrough will vary, the final result will remain constant, keeping the storyline linear. Vice president Rob Pardo has stressed that each campaign will function very differently. The Terran campaign, Wings of Liberty, will place players in a mercenary type campaign, as Terran rebel Jim Raynor carries out missions for cash.
Starcraft II – Units
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty features about the same amount of units as the original game, some units from the original game will be returning where some are featuring new upgrades and abilities. The Protoss zealot, for example, a melee unit from the original game, now has the ability to dash forward and quickly reach nearby enemies as a refinement of their speed upgrade from the original. While other units have been replaced or removed entirely, some changes to unit design have been inspired by story events in StarCraft and its expansion, Brood War where replacing old units with new or renamed versions which sport different attributes and abilities.
Compared to the original, units in Starcraft II have new abilities that encourage more detailed interaction with the game environment. Among these are the inclusion of units that can cross over multiple levels of terrain, or have the ability to teleport short distances. Starcraft II’s campaign will also have exclusive units which would only be playable in the campaign and not in the multiplayer modes. Some Protoss units can be warped in to pylon-powered areas using the Warp Gate, a slight change of the existing building called the Gateway.
Starcraft 2 – Development
At the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea, on May 19, 2007, the development of StarCraft II was announced. Development on the game, initially set back for a year by the temporary reassignment of Blizzard’s resources to World of Warcraft, began in 2003, shortly after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was released. According to Rob Pardo and Chris Sigurd, development for StarCraft II was put on hold for a year in 2005 due to the assistance required for World of Warcraft.
Wings of Liberty will support the DirectX 9 (Pixel shader 2.0) software and will be totally compatible with DirectX 10 as well. The development team has not yet decided whether to add exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects. The Mac version will use OpenGL. The game will also include the Havok physics engine, which offers more realistic environmental elements such as “debris rolling down a ramp”. Rob Pardo said in a June interview that LAN support would not be included in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Their reason was to force players to use Battle.net. This has generated a large amount of protest mainly in the form of online petitions, and calls for boycotting the game.