Starcraft 2 campaign preview

[Suicidal]

Found an article about SC2's campaign and it sounds pretty good.

Here's the bit about the actual missions:

In terms of the actual single-player level, what we saw was a really nice collection of very differse gametypes. While the first few levels are fairly standard (mostly to introduce newcomers to the game), as soon as you get the ship, the levels become very different. Gone are the missions from the first StarCraft where you just start with a command center, build up a big base, and kill the enemy. Of the levels I got to play, one had you protecting a convoy trying to shuttle civilians to a starport while being constantly attacked by Zerg, another one had you trying to harvest crystals on a volcanic planet where lava would flood low terrain every five minutes, and there was even a very clever level where you were trying to steal an artifact from the Protoss. The catch was that Kerrigan was also trying for the artifact, and the Zerg were making a push toward it from a different area of the map. You had to sneak through the Zerg without starting a fight and kill the Protoss guardians to grab the artifact before the Zerg were able to complete their push.

There's also a lot of things written about the campaign, like how some missions are entirely optional, how you can explore the ship between missions, etc.

Worth a read for those who are still looking forward to the game (not sure if there are such people left here due to the absence of LAN n' shit, tho).

 

[poocolator]

Sounds boring. I actually enjoyed base-building on progressively more inhospitable maps from the original SC campaigns.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Sounds kind of cool. I'm wondering about this though:

At the armory, you can buy a wide array of specific upgrades for each of your units, and in some cases even unlock buildings. Want your medics to heal more quickly? There's an upgrade for that. Want your marines to do more damage? Upgrade.

So is there no tech tree in the actual levels?

 

[poocolator]

It sounds cool until you realize it's not an RPG and that Starcraft makes for a shitty quest-oriented, micromanaging experience.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Sounds kind of cool. I'm wondering about this though:

At the armory, you can buy a wide array of specific upgrades for each of your units, and in some cases even unlock buildings. Want your medics to heal more quickly? There's an upgrade for that. Want your marines to do more damage? Upgrade.

So is there no tech tree in the actual levels?

I wouldn't be surprised if the multiplayer is a standard tech-expand-rush RTS and the singleplayer makes a lot of the teching and base choices a metagame strategy. Look at the original design for WC3 - Blizz was going to have 7 campaign races (trolls, undead, demons and dwarves were going to be separate races), minor races, quests picked up from neutral towns, a persistent world map where resources and neutral towns would need to be controlled in some areas in order to supply your troops at the front, etc. The idea was that it would look a lot like more like a 4x game, with a massive persistent world, except that the front lines would be governed by a campaign structure. In the end they ended up conceding that it was an absurdly over-ambitious idea, and so they scaled the design down to a standard rts/hero hybrid, with nominally persistent heros in the single-player (although that was illusory, as the linearity of the missions meant that heroes would always have the same approximate strength).

Some of their ideas, like branching storylines and persistent bases, are taken straight from the original WC3 design. I'd be surpised if they aren't using their enormous resources to implement as much of the original WC3 design as possible - partially b/c they've wanted to do that for a while, and partially b/c it means they don't have to come up with new ideas post-WoW.

 

[J1M]

The levels will have a tech tree (unless you start certain missions with a pre-built base) but the cap on your technology is determined by your choices out of mission.

Simple example: you get 10 upgrade bucks after completing the first mission. You can unlock siege tank tech for $10 or spend $5 for stim packs and another $4 for firebats while saving $1 until the next mission.

Just because you have the siege tank tech doesn't mean you will start every mission with the machine shop and factories required to build them. I hope nobody thought that you could research something like stim packs or an EMP in some backwater base under attack. The costs for those are the cost to upgrade to that equipment, not invent it.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

I wouldn't be surprised if the multiplayer is a standard tech-expand-rush RTS

Well duh. Blizzard's got a big legacy to live up to MP-wise.

Look at the original design for WC3 - Blizz was going to have 7 campaign races (trolls, undead, demons and dwarves were going to be separate races), minor races, quests picked up from neutral towns, a persistent world map where resources and neutral towns would need to be controlled in some areas in order to supply your troops at the front, etc.

Whoa. You have any link to back that up? Sounds pretty cool.

 

[catfood]

Campaign video here: http://www.level.ro/stiri/3871/starcraft_2.html

Looks pretty good, except the voice acting is too stiff.

 

[yazaga]

Sounds to me like they will do exactly what Relic did in DOW2. Which in the end amounted to a lot of bland, boring missions with a little unique story missions thrown in the mix. So not only they are going the lazy way , but they also rip someone else idea.
Frankly the more i think about it buying anything from Bliz these days means insulting your own inteligence.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Sounds to me like they will do exactly what Relic did in DOW2. Which in the end amounted to a lot of bland, boring missions with a little unique story missions thrown in the mix. So not only they are going the lazy way , but they also rip someone else idea.

Trannies and Gentlemen, Codex has spoken once again.

(and I once again lack a picture to show you people how retarded you are)

 

[Krash]

Unlike many codexers I'll just do the intelligent thing; wait until the game is released and judge it then. Blizzard hasn't disappointed yet and until they do I'll keep buying their games.

 

[L'ennui]

Intelligent

Blizzard hasn't disappointed yet

Well, no.

 

[ricolikesrice]

Sounds to me like they will do exactly what Relic did in DOW2. Which in the end amounted to a lot of bland, boring missions with a little unique story missions thrown in the mix. So not only they are going the lazy way , but they also rip someone else idea.
Frankly the more i think about it buying anything from Bliz these days means insulting your own inteligence.

to me the SP preview sound like DoW2 done right. kinda fits the whole blizzard thing, copying others ideas but making them actually fun to play ( at least the old blizzard, could obviously have changed over the years and SC2 will be shit, only time will tell...).

DoW2 had some good ideas, just the implentation was fail most of the time.

I just hope one will be able to make their own campaigns with the editor as it was with SC1 and explode in nerdrage if that isnt the case.

 

[MetalCraze]

Blizzard always sucked at a single-player part of their games, why would they start doing it right this time?

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Why aren't you dumbfucked?

And why aren't I for that matter?

They just stopped dumbfucking people alltogether or something?

 

[bat_boro]

You'll always be dumbfucked in my heart, sugar

 

[thesheeep]

Skyway is not a dumbfuck. He is just bitter.

He is like this MTG card, especially the flavor text:

 

[DarkUnderlord]

It sounds cool until you realize it's not an RPG and that Starcraft makes for a shitty quest-oriented, micromanaging experience.

 

[catfood]

Skyway is not a dumbfuck. He is just bitter.

He is like this MTG card, especially the flavor text:

I love that card.

 

[Lingwe]

You'll very likely be replaying old missions, since StarCraft II is going to have achievements unique to each mission.

Well thank god. Who the hell would want to replay a single player strategy game if there weren't achievements available. It's not like people ever replayed the original campaign, why would they bother if there couldn't get any extra achievements out of it?

 

[Texas Red]

City building please. The Dungeon Siege style gameplay of Warcraft 3 made it completely unplayable.

 

[thesheeep]

I like those occasionally occuring character-based missions. It's just a nice change, as long as there are no 3 such missions in a row. Balance is the right thing here.

Those missions also serve to build up a better connection between the player and the characters. If they would just be one unit amongst many, as they are (almost always) in building-up missions, nobody would care. And nothing is worse for a SP-campaign than the player simply not caring about the fate of their characters.

City building please. The Dungeon Siege style gameplay of Warcraft 3 made it completely unplayable.

Funny. Without those missions, I think I would have quit after the first campaign.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Starcraft: Total War

Think about it.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Funny. Without those missions, I think I would have quit after the first campaign.

This. If I wanted a string of skirmish battles I'd play a string of skirmish battles. A campaign should offer something different.

 

[Panthera]

City building please. The Dungeon Siege style gameplay of Warcraft 3 made it completely unplayable.

I don't think you actually played Warcraft 3.