Monday, August 17, 2009

Starcraft II: the good, the bad and the ugly

12:24 PM / Games / CommentsNo Comments

Games

Hot on the heels of news that the release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty has been pushed back to 2010 (come on, is anyone even slightly surprised?) comes a wealth of new information to tide us over, pertaining mainly to the single player component.

IncGamers is hosting a video featuring clips from the solo campaign, and it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Plus, I must say it's wonderful to once again hear Robert Clotworthy as the voice of central protagonist Jim Raynor. He voiced the character in the original Starcraft, but for a long time it looked as if developer Blizzard Entertainment was dead set on recasting the role for the sequel. A stand-in provided the character's voice in numerous previews, and it even got to the point that Clotworthy personally announced, with considerable regret, that he would not be returning. Fans responded with messages of support for Clotworthy, petitions and a flurry of angry emails to Blizzard. It's unclear whether these steps had any direct impact on the developers, but for one reason or another they changed their minds and Clotworthy was reinstated. While it's a little hard to reconcile his character design in the new game with that of the balding, egg-shaped head in the original, the voice certainly goes a long way towards bridging that gap.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Glynnis Talken, voice of Kerrigan, the other principle character in the series: it seems that her role has indeed been recast (or is in the process of being recast). This strikes me as being a case of one step forward, one step back. These two characters and their storyline are justly celebrated as one of the strongest and most memorable from a period where storytelling in PC gaming was still in something of a state of infancy. These two characters and their encounters are fondly remembered for a reason, and it surely wasn't their 50x50 pixel talking head animation. Rather, it was the script by Chris Metzen and its delivery by the two voice-over artists. I can only hope that Blizzard see sense as regards Kerrigan's voice before it's too late to do anything about it.

Starcraft II "rising lava" mission - come on, this is just <strong>cool</strong>.

Starcraft II "rising lava" mission - come on, this is just <strong>cool</strong>.

Starcraft II "rising lava" mission - come on, this is just cool.

A further blow, not long after the announcement that there would be no LAN multiplayer component for the game, is the news that online activation will be required in order to play the game, even single player mode. And yet, despite this, Blizzard claims that piracy is not a significant concern. Erm, then why, pray tell, force players to activate their copies? And why leave out LAN play citing piracy as the main reason? This sounds an awful lot like a case of one hand not knowing what the other's doing. At least there's no mention of limited activations and, in any event, most players will admittedly have access to an Internet connection regardless of whether or not they intend to actually play online, so this shouldn't be a big deal for most people. It just seems like an unnecessary step to add, particularly given that, as lead producer Chris Sigaty readily admitted in an interview with Gamespot, a significant portion of their consumer base never plays the multiplayer component of their games, whether online or offline.

Ah, well. With all that said, the game itself looks terrific, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. A number of sites have posted extensive previews, some of which I've catalogued below:

 
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