After jerking us around for a number of weeks, and even hinting at another MMO, Blizzard has finally put its cards on the table and announced today that their next project is StarCraft 2. It is a RTS and not an MMO. It will have a new 3D engine, will involve the same 3 factions but redesigned from the ground up to make them even more distinct from each other, single player campaign, battle.net for multiplayer, the whole nine yards.
That's right folks, rednecks in space is back again. As the cinematic trailer says, "Heyell, it's abayaout Tahhm." In addition to the cinematics and screenshots over at the official site, there's also a 5 minute gameplay trailer over at gamevideos.com.
My first impressions are:
1) The engine looks smooth, but they always do in trailers. The new engine smells to me like a suped up WC3 engine, which has its plusses and minuses
2) One of the minuses of the above is that it still doesn't look like you can zoom the camera out, and are forced to continue using WC3's rather intimate (some would say claustrophobic, after playing Supreme Commander) camera.
3) It looks like it's still a resource gathering race, which is kind of sad but I guess it would break from canon too much if it wasn't. THQ's squad/vehicle cap paradigm with requisition style resource growth is really a superior strategy model. SC2 seems to promise more Zerg Rushes, and not just from zerglings this time.
4) There's going to be some redesigned units, and at least as far as the humans go, WarHammer 40k looks to have had some more of their IP boosted. But hey, Blizzard's been doing it for 15 years, why would they stop now?
So, all in all, I'm still curious but not enthralled. Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations. Those who like StarCraft will probably be falling over with joy, and Koreans with perfect build orders memorized will still continue to kick everybody's ass on battle.net. Are you ready for the return of "U see? Is luv! ^_^ Kekekekekekekekeke!"? Ooh, suddenly I don't feel so good.
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