Blizzard Explains Tough Decisions Behind StarCraft II Trilogy

[Brett Alex]

Just a quick thought.

What about those people who didn't want the Terran, but wanted the Zerg/Protoss?

From the brief osmosis of gameplay I've been getting, the Bio units have to target sacrifice, the Mech units simply work by attrition and the Psi units rely heavily on their Psi regenerators.

So effectively, the Mech units (Terrans) will be superior overall in that they need less micro-managing. Can anyone confirm/deny that hypothesis?

I'm.. not exactly what you mean by this. Unit types aren't exclusively one race, and they aren't even exclusively one unit type either, Protoss Dark Templar are psionic/biological, Terran SCVs are Mechanical/Biological and the Zerg Ultralisk is Massive/Biological. In other words, bio, psionic or mechanical isn't performance indicator, rather a gameplay mechanic to award different damage types vs different units, to strengthen the role of counter tactics.

If you are referring to the strategy of 'Terran Mech' (also known as Terran Metal), this is an inaccurate comparison because there is 'Zerg bio' strat, or 'Protoss Psionic'. If you are suggesting that Terran Mech is overpowered because it requires little micro, that isn't the case either, Terran Mech will get ripped apart by well timed air attacks, funnelling and choking, as well as flanking if you just A-Move everywhere. If anything, the Terran bio-ball (Marine/Marauder/Medvac) is the kind of strat that can perform well (perhaps too well) with inexperienced or lack-lustre micro.

And still, why is this related to splitting the game into three? You can play all three races in multiplayer, so the people who prefer Zerg/Protoss, are already playing Zerg/Protoss.

 

[Dogstile]

no point in this. There is nothing they can say to make people stop what they think.

personally 30 missions is a full game to me. The first game only had 30. So to expect this one to have 90 is unfair of people. then again I play primarily for single player, I guess people who only play for multi-player may think otherwise.

Considering the eleven years between broodwars and starcraft 2, I'm pretty sure it'd be perfectly reasonable to expect something in the realm of 347 campaign missions in a single game.

I mean, it used to be if something took eleven years to make, there was an actual fucking reason beyond, "couldn't be arsed."

You know, maybe they had distracting little side-projects during those years... like Diablo II, its expansion pack, Warcraft III, its expansion pack, World of Warcraft and its massive backend, two expansion packs for that and a game called Starcraft: Ghost that was never completed.

Wait, you think all those people in those MASSIVE headquarters blizzard have were all working on one game at a time?

It all makes sense now!

 

[marurder]

Translation:
We want lots of money and we know you'll pay it.

He's right.

 

[Amyler]

Cry some moar. I mean really, half these posts seem to be tantrums above anything else. Wings of Liberty had a fully fleshed out single player campaign. The other two games will also have their own fully realised single player campaigns. We are not paying for one multiplayer game, we are buying three seperate games. Yes, they are set in the same universe and follow one another in terms of story, but I don't see anyone bitching about how 'Halo released Halo 3 then ODST then Reach, OMG we're paying for the same thing three times.' After all, most people play Halo for the multiplayer. There isn't a difference here, so stop crying.

Deal with it.

Precisely, you really should.

 

[Father of Worlds]

Starcraft 2:Wings of Liberty is out. Those who like it, like it. Those who don't, don't. Right?

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is not out. So...we don't actually know if it's going to be better, worse, about equivalent, or so radically different as to be outside the bounds of that classification set. We know some things about it, but we don't know enough to judge the whole thing as a game. We also don't know how expensive it will be. So, when considering whether it'll be worth its price, we have * = . It's entirely outside the realm of our assessment whether it'll be what we consider "worth it".

Starcraft 2: <Whatever they're calling the Protoss one> is also not out. We also don't know.

Blizzard made the decision to release the main platform, along with the Terran storyline. We got that. They'll be releasing additional storylines, with at least as many missions as WoL and extra content beyond that as well. We will get those. Precisely how much that stuff will cost, when all is said and done, we don't know. So let's stop getting out knickers in a twist over imagined outrages, hmm?

If they charge $180 for the whole set, then that'll be pretty annoying. If they charge $110 for the whole set, that'll be a lot less annoying. Let's wait to decide how badly they're being corporate whores until we actually see what they do.

Also: Complaining about the time they're spending on the setup of these is a little silly, honestly. The process of actually assembling a given mission is a lot more complex than kludging a few tiles together into a loose map and throwing some triggers on it. They probably have long discussions about the tactical differences between the starting point being on the left or the right of the mesa, intending to optimize the difficulty for the point in the story and the resources you should be expected to have. However small the detail, they focus on it and make sure it's as good as they can manage. It's a very different process from a guy in a basement cooking up a custom map, and we expect different things from the results.

 

[Snarky Username]

I don't get why everyone is still saying "We're buying one game for the price of three"

It looks like we're buying three games for the price of three...

 

[Arenari]

I personally felt like I was playing a fully-fledged game with Wings of Liberty. I've gotten plenty of play timeout of the campaign and challenges, and I'm still working on them. I'm sure Heart of the Swarm and Loins of the Protoss (I don't know the actual title for that one) will have larger campaigns and mre challenge missions to make up for the fact that the multiplayer already came with Wings.

The last game is called Legacy of the Void. Unless Blizzard changes it.

 

[JeanLuc761]

Bloody hell, you're all a bunch of whining prats ('Cept those of you who aren't whining). A single campaign is not worth $60? Really? You're saying that multiplayer is worth thirty dollars?

Well, good for you. I'm glad that you've realised that after having no input into the game, having had none of your time taken up by developing said game, after not once being on their payroll in the past twelve years and not once being forced to buy this game that you get to have a massive say in what the final price of the game is.

I don't see the problem with this. Wings of Liberty was, by all accounts, awesome. It was a game that focused on the Terran story - a full game, judging from the sheer size of the campaign. Next up, we have a game that will focus on the Zerg story - A full game that focuses on the Zerg with an as-big or bigger campaign in it. And we have all that again when the Protoss game comes out.

Every game is standing up by itself as a full game. Blizzard have taken twelve years to develop this game; don't you think that maybe, just maybe, there might be $180 worth of content? You all seem convinced that the game will be the exact same as the original and thus only worth as much. If that's all, then why in God's name are you playing Starcraft 2? Go sit in the corner with your decade-old safety blanket.

Or you could accept that maybe this will actually be worth the three games it's coming as.

I don't get why everyone is still saying "We're buying one game for the price of three"

It looks like we're buying three games for the price of three...

I honestly expected the above two posts to be in sync with the majority of comments for this news post. Bravo to the two I quoted and those who are looking at this logically.

I haven't been this disappointed in the gaming community in a long, long time.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

I mean, it used to be if something took eleven years to make, there was an actual fucking reason beyond, "couldn't be arsed."

[couldn't be arsed]

... Did you intend to actually say something with that post?

I honestly expected the above two posts to be in sync with the majority of comments for this news post. Bravo to the two I quoted and those who are looking at this logically.

I haven't been this disappointed in the gaming community in a long, long time.

You may be too young to have noticed, being raised on 6 hour single player and multiplayer centered around endlessly repeating the same two maps and all, but theres been a severe case of development dilation with gaming. It used to take one guy an afternoon to make a five hour game. Now it takes hundreds of people several years to make ... pretty much the same thing. The argument sc1 and wings of liberty are kinda sorta maybe almost about the same length is crap, as what you should be expecting is more of everything. Not almost the same amount of one thing, less of others, and the only real increase being in price (purposefully ignoring graphical fidelity, thank you).

The industry is working backwards from how it used to. This is just more of the same. You always have the right to waive your rights, in this case the right to call "bullshit!" But that doesn't mean the people calling bullshit are wrong.

Blizzard does not deserve special treatment for going against the "flow" by releasing a game thats almost maybe somewhat near as long as games they made ten years ago, its still an indication that money is making more decisions in gaming than actual game design.

 

[TheMann]

Okay, here's an idea. Let's put this into the context of another popular medium; film.

Consider the Lord of the Rings films. Did Fellowship of the Ring complete the story arc? No. Did fans of the films have to wait three years to get the full deal, in the course of a concept known as a 'trilogy'? Yes. Pissing and moaning about not getting a complete and full campaign for all three races in one package is exactly like a Lord of the Rings fan whining incessantly that the whole story should have been neatly packaged into one movie, and that the greed of Peter Jackson and those bastards at New Line Cinema was the only reason they had to pay for three movie tickets to see the whole story. It should have been in one film dammit, or at least the cost of admission for the second two should have been half price.

If it'd been one movie it either would been 11 hours long or it would have sucked. Big time. I would rather have to pay for three fully fleshed out campaigns that, while not the whole story, have much more substance to them.

Also I think that some people have to be honest about the single player campaigns in the original Starcraft. To be perfectly honest they were kind of boring. There were ten missions per race and about 80% of those were basically "wipe out the enemy base" with a few plot points thrown in. A few characters would pop on to your teleconference screens, brief you and yell at each other before sending you on your way, but the play was very repetitive. You got rewarded with a few cut scenes, but most of them were far too short for your efforts. Brood War was a nice expansion, but basically more of the same. I believe that the reason many people think Starcraft was all about the multiplayer, was that the single player didn't have enough to offer in order to be compelling.

By contrast, the first thing I noticed about Wings of Liberty was how incredibly fun the single player is. It's far more varied in mission design, introduces several elements that enhance the gameplay, and is fantastically immersive to the point where you feel like you're actually a part of the Starcraft universe, as opposed to being some practical non-entity that simply completes the missions and is relegated to just watch the events unfold. Having around 30 missions per campaign that really tells a story and puts much more into the characters is way more appealing than jamming everything into ten missions, merely with better graphics.


I like story to my games, and I feel that Wings of Liberty delivered the goods. Maybe I'm biased because I am a Terran player, but I'll still pick up Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void when they are released, just to see what happens. If you're only in it for the multiplayer then you're already set but if not, please stop whining already.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

-snip-

Your entire argument is invalidated by the fact you don't have to play a game in one sitting.

Even then, Peter Jackson wasn't doing anyone favors by splitting lord of the rings into three parts. He may have been doing a service to the material, but potential ticket sales were the final decider.

As far as the comparison between starcraft+broodwars and wings of liberty, you're skipping over sixteen year's (all the way back to warcraft: orcs and humans) worth of progressively more complex, engaging, and generally awesome custom maps. The custom map community surrounding blizzard has contributed more to gaming in general than any development house. Its incorporated practically every genre into blizzard's games and invented whole genres (tower defense) unto themselves.

Of course sc2's single player maps would have to be more compelling. Not raising the bar even near to some of the custom maps made over the years would've been a complete disservice to their franchise.

Still isn't worth $180, though.

 

[Credge]

Everyone seems so negative. After playing starcraft 2 me and my buddies cant wait for the expansions. More of a good thing is defiantly worth paying for ;-)

The sign of a good game is not wanting an expansion a month or two after it was released.

 

[tlozoot]

There are games with 40-50 missions. Bilzz could have released the whole thing as one...they just knew fans would pay for three separate ones. This is called business, unfortunetely.

 

[JeanLuc761]

I honestly expected the above two posts to be in sync with the majority of comments for this news post. Bravo to the two I quoted and those who are looking at this logically.

I haven't been this disappointed in the gaming community in a long, long time.

You may be too young to have noticed, being raised on 6 hour single player and multiplayer centered around endlessly repeating the same two maps and all, but theres been a severe case of development dilation with gaming. It used to take one guy an afternoon to make a five hour game. Now it takes hundreds of people several years to make ... pretty much the same thing. The argument sc1 and wings of liberty are kinda sorta maybe almost about the same length is crap, as what you should be expecting is more of everything. Not almost the same amount of one thing, less of others, and the only real increase being in price (purposefully ignoring graphical fidelity, thank you).

The industry is working backwards from how it used to. This is just more of the same. You always have the right to waive your rights, in this case the right to call "bullshit!" But that doesn't mean the people calling bullshit are wrong.

Blizzard does not deserve special treatment for going against the "flow" by releasing a game thats almost maybe somewhat near as long as games they made ten years ago, its still an indication that money is making more decisions in gaming than actual game design.

Appreciate the backhanded insult right at the start, no matter how dead wrong it is. For the record, I'm 19, turning 20 in two weeks, and I've been gaming for the last 15 years. I've played great games, I've played crappy games. I've played long games, I've played short games.

I'm uncertain as to what point you're trying to prove, but it seems like you think that "Well, because more people are involved than ever before, the game should be lengthier in proportion."

Length has nothing to do with quality, and for my money, Starcraft 2 was worth every single penny I spent on it. I enjoyed every moment of the campaign, I was floored by the mechanically perfect level design and the multiplayer is addicting as can be. Everything about the game felt as though hundreds of people had worked on ironing out every mission, every character, every texture.

Sure, it may have taken less people before, but it was also a lot easier to make games before. Textures were 32x32 at best, everything was sprites, we didn't have to worry about volumetric shading, per-pixel lighting, specular maps, real-time reflections or having art design that holds up even under 1080p resolutions. It takes more people now because gaming is much more intricate than it was before.

 

[JeanLuc761]

Everyone seems so negative. After playing starcraft 2 me and my buddies cant wait for the expansions. More of a good thing is defiantly worth paying for ;-)

The sign of a good game is not wanting an expansion a month or two after it was released.

I wanted Mass Effect 3 to hurry up and arrive the second I finished Mass Effect 2. Does that prevent Mass Effect 2 from being my personal GOTY candidate and one of my favorite games of all time? Of course not.

 

[Supp]

What it really boils down to is the fanbase being greedy.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

-snip-

No, graphics are more intricate than they've ever been before. You listed nothing that has anything to do with game design and everything to do with graphical design. The two are not related at all. Basically the relationship between the two is architecture and feng shui (read: completely meaningless yet extremely overpriced service designed mostly to sell 400% markup fountains and windchimes to stupid people).

If they had told me twenty years ago that, eventually, fewer and fewer games would come out each year because each game would need hundreds of thousands of man-hours worth of graphical work, I'd say, "whats wrong with the way games are now?" But since no one asked me, I'm saying "whats wrong with the way games were?" Who the fuck cares about the volume of fog or how speculative the lighting is? None of this shit matters!

 

[new_age_reject]

Everyone seems so negative. After playing starcraft 2 me and my buddies cant wait for the expansions. More of a good thing is defiantly worth paying fore ;-)

HEAR HEAR!!! Personally im more than happy to pay £40 for each of the installments of Starcraft 2 if need be, primarilly because it is a cast iron fact that they will be worth the money. WoL was FUCKING DOPE, and there is nothing that leads me to believe that the next releases will be of lesser quality. If you cant afford it, then go get a job, or if you have one already then ask for a raise, or some extra hours, or some sunday overtime (time and a half on sundays innit)

It's not time and a half where I work.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Okay, here's an idea. Let's put this into the context of another popular medium; film.

Consider the Lord of the Rings films.

*Hyper Snip*

I like story to my games, and I feel that Wings of Liberty delivered the goods. Maybe I'm biased because I am a Terran player, but I'll still pick up Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void when they are released, just to see what happens. If you're only in it for the multiplayer then you're already set but if not, please stop whining already.

How dare you bring sensible thought and reason into this tired bitchfest of a topic!

 

[Nazulu]

Would of felt like a full game with all race campaigns instead of all 3 released separately. That's why all previous RTS games did it, because it was a much better method. Then they could continue the story or make a completely new story in a expansion. That's why your still full of shit Blizzard.

Meh, I'm not getting them anyway. I gave SC2 a go and found it was pretty pathetic, they've definitely lost their magic touch.