The New Story Mode

The missions are not as heavily immersed in story as the WarCraft III ones, a deliberate change made by Blizzard. Chris Metzen, the Loremaster of Blizzard told us the team "identified retty early that we wanted the feel [of the game] different." He elaborated saying Blizzard wanted "the mission objectives and the amount of story happening to feel distinctly different from WarCraft III." That's why the team built the Story Mode, to try and "pull a lot of character interactions out of the map experience and put them in their own space, so that the game would have a bit of own sense of self: its own vibe." Metzen told us he wanted it to be "a little bit more retro than WarCraft III, which felt a lot more like an RPG."

The new Story Mode is essentially a point-and-click game that, for Wings of Liberty primarily, takes place on Hyperion. You play as Jim Raynor himself, walking around on the Hyperion; the Bridge, Armory, Lab and Cantina. Each has their own NPCs you can interact with, and features you can use to customise your fight against the Terran Dominion and the Zerg.

The Hyperion is Arcturus Mengsk's former flagship Battlecruiser. Jim Raynor and his "Raynor's Raiders" took command over it when it became clear Arcturus was just really a power-hungry madman. The ship still features ornamental wolves (the animal of Mengsk's crest) around the Bridge. This type of lore information is scattered over the ship, but falls in line of "voluntary content". If you don't care, it's all just ornamental wolves on the table, or random posters on the walls.

The good part of this is that you have more options in this new dynamic between missions in comparison with the static Mission Briefing Room in the original StarCraft. It's about choices and interaction. You can go straight to the next mission map and skip the Hyperion content, or you can explore your surroundings, and you learn more lore about the current situation in the storyline. Voluntary content for the lore enthusiast.

To interact with the environment, simply click objects that light up when you mousover. To move from room to room, simply click the "Exit" sign, and choose your destination in a drop-down menu.


Armoury

Your little army of Raiders will need to purchase upgrades, which means you'll need to visit the Armoury. Even if you are mostly interested in lore or just playing through the game, this is one of the places you will visit the most.

Chief Engineer Swann is there to talk to you, but the actual upgrades are made at the computer console near him. Through a panel interface, you can choose different areas of tech upgrade purchases for infantry, vehicles, starships, buildings and other things you can only find in single player. Upgrades can be things like area of effect heal from all your Medics, an automated turret on top of your Bunkers or sometimes even buying new units or buildings, like the automated Perdition Turret flamethrower tower.

When you click an upgrade you get more information about it, including price and how it looks in mission mode. More upgrades become available as you finish maps and progress through the story.

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