Blizzard Unleashes Final, Jaw-Dropping StarCraft II Launch Trailer

[findler]

Ugh, can't watch this since I'm at work... must wait. I wanna hear more about Tychus Findlay. Him and I have the same last name, so I'm going to pretend he's my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson.

Shayne? Is that you?

Haha no, but that is my brothers name.

 

[Slycne]

Could I speak to a non-fanboi please?

Also, there were nigh-on zero RPG elements in DOW2. Changing unit stats is no excuse to call something xyz-RPG. Exactly what role did you play in DOW2? No, armchair general does, again, not count, you play that in each and every rts to some extent.

(I could also go into how "action-RTS means: focus on tactics, not strategy, but what the hell)

Relic Entertainment, the people who actually made the game, disagree with you.

Epic Single Player Campaign - Command an elite strike force, developing the skills and abilities of your squads and commander as you progress through the game.

Persistent Long-Term Goals - Customize your Space Marines with persistent leveling and unlockable special abilities. Equip them with the hundreds of unique weapons and items you earn through mission rewards and battlefield drops.

Was there a conscious decision to make DOW II more accessible to a broader audience? Are the RPG elements such as levelling up and gaining experience points aimed at players who might otherwise choose not to play an RTS?

Jonny Ebbert: Well, the goal from the beginning was that we needed to broaden our audience. The RTS has become a lot more niche right? So, we wanted to build a game that would still appeal as much to our core audience, but we simplified it and made it a bit more compelling to people outside the traditional RTS genre.

There's a lot of RPG-like mechanics being introduced, from experience points right through to an inventory system. What's the reasoning behind this?

Noseworthy: We want players to become more attached to their units which in turn will make them care more about the battles they are fighting. Traditional RTS games have you controlling faceless soldiers and band boxing your way to victory as you send these generic units to their death, wave after wave. That paradigm is stale, and it needs to change. We believe attachment is the key to reinvigorating the genre.

One of the ways we drive up attachment is to let you customise your squads in meaningful ways and to watch them grow. We see these mechanics as the logical extension of our Wargear system from Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and the intelligent units of Company of Heroes.

 

[Haunted Serenity]

#1 Whoa kerrigan is hot(before zergification)
#2 I heard Sgt Foley!
#3 Second only to the hope of alderann trailer but damn i'm syked for this game but i have no money or computer to run it.

 

[Roland07]

Because replying to pg. 1 comments is cool...

Dunno about jaw dropping. It was good but the animations no where near what Halo Wars or FF is putting out there. It reminded me a lot of Freelancer shots.

The content though is badass. I cant wait for this

FYI, a solid 1/2 of the trailer was in-game cinematics (custscenes), which aren't nearly as pretty the full-quality cgi cinematics. The full cgi ones are truly jaw-dropping.

So it's gonna be, like, a knock-off of Warhammer 40K?

And it's real-time strategy, so that trailer is essentially meaningless.

It wasn't a multiplayer trailer, they're trying to push the single-player campaign, which is supposedly "revolutionary." The story is made to be epic in extreme as well, the full trilogy may have as much as 90 missions, and "Dragon-age" quantities of dialogue which is obviously massive. Anyone who wants can google it and find White-RA vs. TLO, and get a better multiplayer demonstration than Blizzard could make.

Also, saying it's a 40k knock-off, is like saying Warhammer is an LoTR knockoff. Of course it is, if it's military sci-fi it's a 40k knockoff, try making one without space marines, giant bugs, and psychic aliens.

 

[OmegaXzors]

I never beat a game more than once except with ones that I find to be memorable.

I've beaten Halo: Combat Evolved about three times. (I didn't care for the others.)
I've beaten Starcraft probably about seven times. I fucking love Starcraft. I've been waiting for this game. DO WANT.

 

[Rythe]

Sigh.

First of all, yes, it's a story trailer. Not a gameplay trailer. In fact, it was an unlock for fans who were doing the whole fandom thing. If you're irked because it's not aimed at you, well, get over yourself. And stop reading other people's mail.

As much as people complain about the cliches, you're forgetting why they're cliches and why almost all trailers everywhere use them. It's because people know what you mean when you say a certain things, so the trailer said those things, and people got it. The whole setup and feel of the story had to be established in two and a half minutes, which necessitates familiar terms and ideas. If you want something fresh out of this, you deserved 'It's time to kick this revolution into overdrive.' (Why do I feel like I've heard that somewhere else?) Even the wince inducing 'The answers you seek lie within' makes a lot of sense in actual context.

Over half of that trailer *is* game engine footage. You know those big battleships? I see the same exact thing cruising serenely through space every time I booted up the beta, rendered real-time. I was actually kinda impressed with it.

The core of Starcraft 2 is, indeed, Starcraft 1. However, the two games are quite different from each other. Starcraft 2 is a proper sequal in the way that fans of the series should want. I'm sorry if that's hard to believe from screenshots, but it's true. The Terran and the Protoss forces have been realized in ways that the original game only hinted at. Zerg more feel like an enhancement of the old using the new engine, but I'll forgive them that one. Add on that the possibilities of the new level editor are amazing, so the proper mega-campaign should be incredible and varied, the fan content will be bountiful and potentially exotic, and you do have something worth buying. That is, the people saying this game is a crap reskin of Starcraft 1 are talking out their arse.

If you don't care for the action RTS sub-genre, then that's up to you, don't play standard multiplayer at the very least. Or better yet, go pester another thread where people might actually care about what other games you're interested in. See the big Starcraft 2 trailer thing at the top? That's kinda a clue about the topic of discussion. Besides, Total Annihilation probably did the strategic, not click-fest RTS better than whatever game you're pining for.

And oh please, stop with the 'it's ripping off X entity' idiocy. No, it's not ripping of your favorite game or movie that's only been around for the past ten years, stop being stupid. Yes, it does owe a lot to Games Workshop and Westwood(Dune II), who in turn owe a lot to Sci-Fi and Generi-Fantasy of the past century. We did that argument twelve years ago. If you missed the highlights, then welcome to the creative process. You'll be horrified to note that Blizzard has evolved Starcraft into it's own, distinct creature. I'm sorry, but you can still go back and cry about Halo more.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

"Thats the commander I have been waiting for." was that Neebs?

 

[BboyTeddyBear]

for their time for sure. What i should have said is that wc3 cinematics are very much still on par with CGIs 7 years later.

 

[Epifols]

Blizzard's cinematic department should start making it into a full fletched movie.

My thoughts exactly.

Although, another thought I had was "Wait, I thought this is going to be an RTS...?"

 

[David Bray]

Because replying to pg. 1 comments is cool...

Dunno about jaw dropping. It was good but the animations no where near what Halo Wars or FF is putting out there. It reminded me a lot of Freelancer shots.

The content though is badass. I cant wait for this

FYI, a solid 1/2 of the trailer was in-game cinematics (custscenes), which aren't nearly as pretty the full-quality cgi cinematics. The full cgi ones are truly jaw-dropping.

So it's gonna be, like, a knock-off of Warhammer 40K?

And it's real-time strategy, so that trailer is essentially meaningless.

It wasn't a multiplayer trailer, they're trying to push the single-player campaign, which is supposedly "revolutionary." The story is made to be epic in extreme as well, the full trilogy may have as much as 90 missions, and "Dragon-age" quantities of dialogue which is obviously massive. Anyone who wants can google it and find White-RA vs. TLO, and get a better multiplayer demonstration than Blizzard could make.

Also, saying it's a 40k knock-off, is like saying Warhammer is an LoTR knockoff. Of course it is, if it's military sci-fi it's a 40k knockoff, try making one without space marines, giant bugs, and psychic aliens.

The chick on the planet was awesome, the rest was just very good.

 

[acosn]

Starcraft: Ghost was pretty much done when it was canceled, it was about par with other games on the market at the time, but not up to Blizzard's standards, so they scrapped it.

I took that with a few spoonfuls of salt when I read it and it still busted my balls a bit.

I very much doubt that to be honest; no company is stupid enough to just waste gigantic piles of money like that.

It's not the first time for Blizzard- they've actually canned more projects than they've released. Blizzard's got a spotty history with third party developers for their babies anyways. Lord of the Clans got canned, and the Diablo 1 expansion just barely made it despite Blizzard's misgivings and the general poor quality of it.

Ghost wasn't meeting their expectations, and the longer it took to make, the closer the next generation of consoles was. This posed a bit of a problem when Blizzard was disinterested in scrapping what they'd worked on just to remake it for the new generation of hardware.

 

[Lemon Of Life]

is this an online game or pc or what?

Yes to both of those. It's also got what sounds like a pretty sweet campaign to boot.

OT: Love it. Pity I have to wait a month before I can get it

 

[antipunt]

My view of SC2 since a couple months back

Before: Well..it looks 'alright'. Gameplay looks exactly like the one before, except mebbe...

Later: Hmm...this might actually show some promise. The campaign looks pretty good

Even later: W-wow...this is top notch

Today: HOLY **** I -NEED- this game

~

In other news, when was the last time we saw such an epic, pc exclusive

 

[rddj623]

If I had a job right now, I'd have this game reserved!

 

[Drejer43]

before this I were like " I am exited for starcraft"
now I am really REALLY hyped up for this.

 

[oppp7]

Wow, WTF happened to this thread? Everyone's arguing about shit on it.

OT: Some of the dialogue seemed cliche/corny, but overall it looks good. I do agree with whatever his name is that it gives off a FPS feel, but that's probably because whenever I see a CGI(I'm guessing that's the format) trailer about space marines that isn't a movie that's what it's normally about.

 

[Drejer43]

And oh please, stop with the 'it's ripping off X entity' idiocy. No, it's not ripping of your favorite game or movie that's only been around for the past ten years, stop being stupid. Yes, it does owe a lot to Games Workshop and Westwood(Dune II), who in turn owe a lot to Sci-Fi and Generi-Fantasy of the past century. We did that argument twelve years ago. If you missed the highlights, then welcome to the creative process. You'll be horrified to note that Blizzard has evolved Starcraft into it's own, distinct creature. I'm sorry, but you can still go back and cry about Halo more.

Yeah i'm tired of that too.
Like anything is original these days people!!

Edit: thinking about the trailers we haven't seen anything to Duran and what he is up to (course he certainly is up to something) maybe they will mostly cover that in the protoss campaign. Danm it, it was the big cliffhanger in broodwar, and we have to wait longer yet to find out more.

(yes I do know that Zeratul contacts Raynor and probably will tell him about it, but this story is going to be about Raynor and he's fight against the Dominion.)

 

[WarDaft]

The chick on the planet was awesome, the rest was just very good.

The awesome parts are the CGI sequences. The very good parts are IN GAME ENGINE. That is what the characters will look like between missions as you walk around on the Hyperion.

Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT5DlDaWTXc
Note that that's actually THREE YEAR OLD engine footage.

To date, we have seen *very* little of the actual CGI sequences.

 

[David Bray]

The chick on the planet was awesome, the rest was just very good.

The awesome parts are the CGI sequences. The very good parts are IN GAME ENGINE. That is what the characters will look like between missions as you walk around on the Hyperion.

Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT5DlDaWTXc
Note that that's actually THREE YEAR OLD engine footage.

To date, we have seen *very* little of the actual CGI sequences.

Ok, chill. It looks good. They get two claps now and a third if the entire game is a breathtaking experience.
Better had be, i've been waiting years