Starcraft II - THE TRILOGY?!

[Imagist]

Well, at least we know multiplayer ships complete with each campaign:

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/starcraft-2/918896p1.html\

EDIT: Also, campaigns have gameplay differences beyond which race you are, according to http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55267 :

Each campaign will be very different, with Pardo announcing the Zerg campaign will contain RPG elements. The Protoss campaigin will likewise be differentiated by elements of diplomacy. In addition, the Terran campaign will feature a Protoss mini-campaign.

[friendlyHunter]

At the rate this thread is growing, I don't have time to read the whole thing, but to me it looks like the same idea as the Broodwar expansion, except:

- The campaign in the first release is Terran only.

- There will be two expansions instead of just one.

- Each campaign will be very unique.

- Multiplayer ships complete with each campaign.

Is... is this a problem??

When SC first came out, you could get a handle on each races thanks to the single player campaign and being able to choose which race's campaign to play whenever.

I definitely see what you mean, but you can still teach yourself the other races by playing multiplayer maps against computer players =)

[Nekofrog]

At the rate this thread is growing, I don't have time to read the whole thing, but to me it looks like the same idea as the Broodwar expansion, except:

- The campaign in the first release is Terran only.

- There will be two expansions instead of just one.

- Each campaign will be very unique.

- Multiplayer ships complete with each campaign.

Is... is this a problem??

I definitely see what you mean, but you can still teach yourself the other races by playing multiplayer maps against computer players =)

But that honestly teaches you nothing of tactics. The SP campaigns in the first one taught you what unit does what, how to use this there, and what kind of terrain has advantages and what have you. This will just be throwing the player out into a lake to teach them to swim.

[friendlyHunter]

Yeah, I guess they did kind of introduce you to each unit and tell you their strengths and tactics...

Well, then I'm sure either Blizzard will make some tutorial maps for the other races, or eager SC2 players themselves will make tutorial maps for the masses.

All I know is the Warcraft III campaigns didn't teach me shit (or DID, depending on how you look at it). The multiplayer game differed vastly from the singleplayer, and not just because of all the patches...

[Antipode]

The sense of entitlement held by Blizzard fans is unparalleled.

It's not your game. It's their game. You just get to play it.

Anyway rather than working yourself up into a frenzy speculating about details you don't have, why not wait until there's more solid info before turning on the waterworks?

And anyway, come on. It's StarCraft. This isn't going to stop anyone from buying all three versions. Science fiction fans are notoriously obsessive-compulsive, and science-fiction fans who are gamers are even more so.

Please don't be so condescending to me. Of course I'm not ENTITLED to anything. You can't deny, however, that the expectations and hype Blizzard has been building about this game over time has given people hope that it will be the grand return of their old favorite RTS and, while I'm sure that's still the case, seeing 'innovative marketing strategies' come in between me and playing the entire game is disheartening. So if you're talking about my tone, it's because I wanted to make it clear I don't like and am surprised by what they're doing (and I was under the impression I'm allowed to complain about stuff I don't like, whether I'm entitled to anything or not). I thought others would want to know about it, and this IS solid, if vague, info (and I did actually acknowledge the lack of info in the post).

I'm not at all concerned whether or not people will buy the game - it matters to me whether or not I'll like it. At least in my case, I still plan to buy one, but I'd call myself a science-fiction fan and I certainly know better than to pay triple-price for the game (if that's actually the case), and I think a lot of people would agree.

[Sindra]

http://kotaku.com/5062018/starcraft-ii-lead-producer-on-the-split-single-player-campaign

Don't think of it as a split. That's main point StarCraft II lead producer Chris Sigaty was trying to get across during our brief interview following the StarCraft II panel at BlizzCon where it was announced that the single player campaign would be delivered as three separate products - first Terran, then Zerg, and finally Protoss. "Effectively each game in the will be an expansion," Sigaty explained when I told him of our reader's initial concerns about buying the same game three times with a different single player component. Think Warcraft III's The Frozen Throne, or the original StarCraft's Brood War.

Each new single player campaign will come with upgrades and changes to the multiplayer. The main difference here is that instead of giving you a tacked-on extension of the single-player experience as you often find in an RTS expansion, each title comes with a fully realized campaign.

Chris explained that each of the three installments would play a bit differently as well, with different meta-game types in each. The initial campaign would feature Terran Jim Raynor, with a meta game that involves upgrading technologies. The second focuses on the Zerg, with a meta-element involving diplomacy. I mentioned Star Control, and Chris said that that sort of gameplay element had been discussed.

So why the change? It really comes down to scope. "We always start with this really gigantic scope", Sigaty explained. Basically StarCraft II got bigger than they expected. They have a huge, solid Terran campaign that needs a bit of fleshing out at this point, and once you figure out the dev time needed for the other two campaigns it would have delayed the game for years. After months of discussion, this was their solution.

So basically, as I suggested to Chris, instead of thinking of the StarCraft Trilogy as three separate courses, think of it as three different meals, each with a different flavor.

So there.

[Avatar of Justice]

I see where blizzard is coming from here. I mean, splitting up the games by race would allow them to pack more in the games, yes. But seriously, it is kinda fucking the average gamer. And this will encourage piracy to some extent as well. I've been irritated at blizzard for a long time, and I know a lot of people see this as flat out greed (IE hey we make money every month off people, lets get more off SC2 than we would if we just released it as one game, people will buy it!). But Ill see what the announcements are about it in the coming weeks before I judge if I will not buy it.

I'm confused as to why Starcraft II has to worry about piracy. I thought the main draw was the online multiplayer which pretty much negates piracy for anyone seriously interested in the game.

[BardicKnowledge]

After reading that each campaign will be completely unique, this might actually turn out to be a good thing. So the Zerg campaign will have "RPG elements", and the Protoss campaign will feature "diplomacy".

Does that mean that Kerrigan, Samir Duran, and other Zerg heroes may play more like WC3 heroes than Jim Raynor and Zeratul? And how will this effect the map editor (that should still ship with all three versions)?

Ugh -- waiting for answers is terrible.

[Antipode]

That's a little relieving to hear that each campaign is going to be really fleshed out. Also, it's interesting to hear that each is an "expansion", since the other article said they were standalone. That's a bigger relief, as far as I'm concerned, because it may reduce the total price.

[Red Shadow]

But that honestly teaches you nothing of tactics. The SP campaigns in the first one taught you what unit does what, how to use this there, and what kind of terrain has advantages and what have you. This will just be throwing the player out into a lake to teach them to swim.

I'm sure most of the people playing a game sequel will be familiar with the mechanics anyhow.

[Nekofrog]

I'm sure most of the people playing a game sequel will be familiar with the mechanics anyhow.

Starcraft

Starcraft II

They're two different games that fall into the same genre. I would hope that the mechanics would be very different, otherwise why make a sequel to begin with? Just make another expansion.

[EdgeCrusher]

I'm confused as to why Starcraft II has to worry about piracy. I thought the main draw was the online multiplayer which pretty much negates piracy for anyone seriously interested in the game.

I didn't buy starcraft for years, but played it online. *nudge nudge wink wink*

But I did buy the battle chest version later.

[Imagist]

That's a little relieving to hear that each campaign is going to be really fleshed out. Also, it's interesting to hear that each is an "expansion", since the other article said they were standalone. That's a bigger relief, as far as I'm concerned, because it may reduce the total price.

Each game is not an expansion. The Blues said to think of them like expansions, in that they each bring something new to the core gameplay on which they all focus, but they are all still standalone games. Kotaku simply added its own interpretation to that.

[EdgeCrusher]

Question is, how much are these "expansions" gonna cost?

[Red Shadow]

Starcraft

Starcraft II

They're two different games that fall into the same genre. I would hope that the mechanics would be very different, otherwise why make a sequel to begin with? Just make another expansion.

fairly certain that scvs still build things and mine resources, drones morph, and the toss telelport

it is reasonable to believe that the tech tree expands

[Azure Prower]

I predict many people will be playing as Terran when "Starcraft II" comes out.

Either by if you get to only play terran in multiplayer with the 'terran copy'

or

If you get to play all three races, many people will still play as Terran. Why? Because they were only taught how to play Terran.

Oh and yes, I'm going to be playing Terran.

[Dunnowhathuh]

Don't like the idea of receiving more of the SCII story over three-ish years. Waited all this time for a conclusion (or at least expansion) on the game's storyline only to find out I'm gonna get 2 more "to be continued"'s before a "the end" or at least, that's how I interpret it. Oh well. So long's each game has enough content to merit me paying whatever the price tag is, I guess I'll cop it play along.

I'm sort of confused about DIII though, does that mean it's gonna ship after ALL THREE SCII's or after the Terran campaign?

[I-n-j-i-n]

Episodic content in which EVERYONE will buy. They might actually be smart for doing it, even if I'd still prefer the oldschool 'everything in a single CD/DVD' format.

[Dhsu]

Betting that a big reason for this is just to keeped people hyped on StarCraft before they release World of StarCraft.

[OverCoat]

I played SC2 at PAX and it was great [basically THE SAME GAME with new/different units and pretty graphics, so SC players please rest easy] . The game was pretty much almost done for all races, so the multiplayer should be there for all races immediately, I hope. I think by installments they're going to finish terran first, release it, work on zerg, release that, etc.

Installment or expansion, it's going to be full price. I remember paying $50 for Starcraft back in 1998 and then another $50 for Brood War! I never bought "Insurrection" though lol.

Also, in SC2, the Overlords shit creep. \m/

[Shadow Wolf]

So basically I was right. I for one am quite excited about having a whole game for each race. One of the things I didn't like about the original Starcraft, and there wasn't much to NOT like, is that I just didn't get enough time to spend with each race.

Each SC race already has a kind of meta-game if you will, that made each race vastly different to play, more than any other RTS I've ever played. If you even look at WarCraft III, each race played more or less the same. There were balancing differences, yeah, but not huge amounts of difference for each race. What Blizzard did in StarCraft, and I think one of the reasons for its enduring popularity, is practically give you 3 different games depending on which games you played.

For example, Terrans are the only ones that can deliberately repair their buildings. That gave you a distinct advantage with them. I'm sure the repair/upgrade/survive component of the Terrans will be a large part of the Terran game.

The Zerg, on the other hand, operate on the idea of cheap, disposable units and buildings and massive overwhelming swarms to get the job done. You have to work with them in a totally different way to get the job done. I'm not sure how 'diplomacy' will be worked into a Zerg campaign, or if their idea of 'diplomacy' involves blocking out whatever sun they're orbiting with a 500 strong swarm of guardians, but we'll find out.

At any rate, I love the idea of fully separating each race to expand on the differences they already had.

EDIT:

the Overlords shit creep.

SEE? CREEP SHITTING OVERLORDS!!! How could you NOT want this?

[I-n-j-i-n]

I don't see why having the entire experience in one package is supposed to be bad...

If the original could do it well, then you'd expect them to do the same. I guess not everybody felt that way.

Now I really don't want to see Warcraft 4 with 5 different versions for its different races (if it goes up to 5).

[Dafydd]

I'm getting sick of this trend where games just get longer and longer, while at the same time, there's more and more of them to choose from. I can already say that I most likely won't play this game at all. Even if I spent all of my spare time playing computer games, I wouldn't have the time to play more than 3 or so a year, if I wanted to beat them (and now I'm not even counting the MMORPGs). Unless I only did speedruns, but where's the fun in that?

The game industry would be better off economically if they did what nintendo used to do - make each game last for 1 hour tops and sell them for a hundred bucks each.

[Imagist]

I think an important thing to note here is that they didn't initially plan to do the game this way, but in development their ideas grew so "epic" (for lack of a better word) that they felt the only way to do the campaigns properly was to split them up. This is not dissimilar from Valve splitting "Half-Life 3" (or what was supposed to be Half-Life 3) into episodic content; the idea is to keep giving the fans something to do, without having to wait for such games' (not to mention Blizzard's) traditionally long development cycles to complete before releasing anything for the game. As one of those articles quoted them saying, it was either do this so that they could keep their promises to release "Starcraft 2" (or at least part of it) in 2009, let the game spend years in development hell, or release a significantly truncated version that wouldn't do the game (or the long wait for it) justice.

That said, we will see if the products they release actually do justify this move, not to mention whatever price point they decide to release it at. At least you can reasonably hope they won't pull a Valve and only release each campaign as a bundle with previous campaigns and other miscellaneous software.

[EdgeCrusher]

I would rather they release it as a bundle later on, like Valve. I bought half life 2 when it came out, got the special edition, mainly for the game and the shirt. I never bought episode 1 or other things though. Then when the orange box came out, I jumped at the chance to get ep 1, 2, portal, and TF2. And it was a great deal too for 40 bucks. If SC2 comes out, and are 50 bucks a pop, thats 150 bucks for the full experience, plus tax. So if that is the case, I'm not buying them, or not at the very least till they are all 3 out, and I can get a bundle pack for cheaper.