StarCraft II Single Player Preview

27 May 2010 at 11:52:41 by Gunnar Petzall

Blizzard invited IncGamers to London to try out the new single player mode in StarCraft II, find out more about the game and catch up with Blizzard Entertainment's VP of production, Frank Pearce and PR man Bob Colayco.

The development team has updated the game heavily since last year's single player reveal, but many aspects are still quite similar. 

The original StarCraft has always primarily been a multiplayer game and all RTS games made by Blizzard since then have been designed to work in multiplayer first, with the single player component added later. This may seem a little backwards, but with most games primarily focusing on the single player campaign, it's nice to note an RTS game being built for its multiplayer, where you'll certainly have a lot more fun.

This does not necessarily mean the single player mode is lacking in StarCraft or it's sequel, however. When StarCraft was released it came with a surprisingly good story, decent voice acting as well as interesting mission objectives. Players were pulled into the story and, as a result, many only played the single player campaigns.



11 years of game development later, StarCraft II is arriving with the same premise: A well polished multiplayer experience, with a single player game mode on top. However, this time Blizzard is a multi-million dollar company and a lot more resources have been pushed into the single player aspect this time around. The two gameplay experiences are now completely separated to make sure neither makes any compromises in terms of gameplay enjoyment.

StarCraft II's single player comes with more content and units, including molotov-cocktail-throwing unarmoured civilians, race cars, trucks, massive transport ships, gigantic mining lasers and a host of units from the original game that were cut from multiplayer development.

Blizzard has stated that the single player campaign is not a tutorial for the multiplayer game. The single player campaign, which is split into three parts, will deliver the story and immersion of the universe as almost its own game all together. If you need help, separate training scenarios and guides will be available instead of "dumbing down" the story mode campaign.

Each of the missions you'll embark upon will be unique in at least some aspects. A couple of examples include classical missions like hold-outs, escorting transports and collection of items. Production and fighting off enemies is part of the mission, but most missions can be completed without destroying the opponent's base. It's a far cry from the original WarCraft I missions of "Destroy the opponent's base" in the early nineties.

Last year's single player event at Blizzard HQ unveiled seven missions which we reported thoroughly. These missions had varying objectives and gave a fresh look on the mission modes.

Here we were shown three more, including a very cool laser drill used to bore its way into an old Xel'Naga temple. Your job is to protect the drill, but after a few minutes you're allowed to control it manually, using it to kill off your opponents on the map. There's much more information in the respective mission guide articles. You can also see some gameplay footage from a selection of the first missions, and the latest ones revealed.

You can almost see the inspiration drawn from World of WarCraft in terms of differentiation of missions, objectives and the like. No daily quests though, but Blizzard have done what they can to include replayability with Achievements (if playing online) and different difficulty modes as well as various stats you can improve upon when re-playing each mission.

The main difference with the missions is really that you no longer get to control the main characters very often in missions. A few select ones, where it suits the gameplay, are available to control Jim Raynor and Zeratul, but for the most part, the "hero" units do not appear in the game. Blizzard felt they were mostly hidden at the back of one's base anyway in the original, so this time they have a purpose. They also added "expendable" heroes in the shape of Mercenaries, which you can read more about further in the preview.

I've never been in the top tiers of StarCraft skill and the single player aspect of the first game was always something I really enjoyed. In StarCraft II, it's even more diversified, and the new story mode interface and functionality really makes it come to life.


On page 2 we continue with the story mode gameplay, mercenaries, upgrades and easter eggs.

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