Talk about pressure. Blizzard’s StarCraft II is the sequel to the biggest selling game of 1998 and what many consider to be the greatest RTS of all time. Feverishly anticipated by the series’ legions of fans, it has been a long time coming, but it's closer than ever before. A decade after the original’s release StarCraft is back; better looking and with more strategy than you can poke a zergling at.
The original StarCraft’s storyline was based around three races; the Zerg, the Protoss and the Terrans. Unlike Blizzard's own Warcraft series and other RTS games of the era, each race had very distinct units and tech trees. This meant that the player was forced to be very flexible in their tactics and strategies in maximising their strengths to counter opponents in both the single player campaign and the massively popular multiplayer component. However it had a downside: players new to the RTS genre could get lost as they explored each race’s unique and very long tech trees.
In StarCraft II, the story arc will be continued. Set four years after the end of the Brood War (the expansion for StarCraft), Blizzard has announced that the three leaders of the different races will return, along with a host of new characters. So unlike in Brood War where a fourth race was added to the fray, StarCraft II will go back to only having three. Why? Blizzard want to concentrate on refining each of the original races further, making them even more "distinctly different" than before. This is great for the series’ faithful who will have plenty of fun exploring the deeper tech trees, but we hope Blizzard can find away of making it more accessible to all the mainstreamers in today’s market.
In addition, Blizzard are as focused as ever, even more so, on forcing you to employ different strategies depending on the races and units you play, as well as how you utilise the terrain and your base layout. Almost all the returning units have been altered in some way, while a few of the originals have made way for new alternatives. This redesign of the units has allowed Blizzard to improve gameplay balance, reducing or even eradicating the possibility of any one unit gaining overwhelming superiority.
Key to this is each unit having a particular "nemesis" in both of the opposing races – a specific foe with an attack to which they are vulnerable. This ensures that the way you populate your armies will be incredibly important. It will also make climbing the tech tree vital, as you will have to ensure you are able to build the unit that will take out whatever threat your enemy is throwing at you. The other plus of giving units specific weaknesses is that the tactic of winning by sheer overwhelming numbers won't be a guaranteed success, forcing a much more strategic style of play and innovative use of your units.
