The Earth shakes(Starcraft 2 Announced)

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The only great disappointment I have at this early stage is the scaling: they haven't even TRIED to improve unit scale!

Things may change with time, but the fact that they weren't even willing to make a few ship models bigger for these early showings speaks ill of any hopes for proper scaling, I think.

My beef with stands from the fact that WC3 barely had any scale or anything of the like. It was barely a RTS. It was more like some pseduo hack slash game like Diablo 2.

I am not optimistic that Starcraft 2 will be great, not lest if they follow WC3 AGAIN.

And I hardly regard the Koreans as a barometer for RTS as it is. They fancy RPG games and cheap flick strategy games like DOTA.

[Stark]

Guys, this is Blizzard. They've made a successful business built on uninspired and cartoony games. I would never have expected them to change the scale of units to buildings, even if they adopted many other 'modern' ideas.

It *IS* pretty absurd to see huge guys standing next to buildings, like the game is build on tile bitmap graphics like Dune 2.

[Edward Yee]

Yeah, they're definately making the Protoss more mobile. Makes me curious as to what they plan to add to the other races.

(And I cut my RTS teeth on C&C: RA, Barracks & Factories are etched into my mind as prime build structures. )

Well, the Reaper seems to be a specialized mobility unit for the Terrans -- unless you define "mobility" on a strategic level?

Would be intrigued to hear the full extent to which the Warp Gate upgrade will apply -- for example if it might somehow extend beyond Gateway-produced infantry.

[K. A. Pital]

Those graphics suck so much that I think I won't be able to play this after things like Dawn of War, Massive Assault, Perimeter, Supreme Commander.

They literally hurt my eyes.

[Ace Pace]

Those graphics suck so much that I think I won't be able to play this after things like Dawn of War, Massive Assault, Perimeter, Supreme Commander.

They literally hurt my eyes.

Not released yet, so obviously, we can freely judge the graphics of a game, years before it's released.

[Stark]

I repeat, do not defend unfinished screenshots. Why'd the release them? To start buzz. What's the buzz? Uninspired and ugly.

[Vympel]

I said the same thing on sb.com- SC2's screenshots are cartoony, Warcraft-franchise, uninspired drek-shit, when they instead could've taken the opportunity to make the game look like, oh, I dunno- the FMV from the original game. Just look at those Terran Battlecruisers.

Just a terrible, terrible design decision. Their art department needs to grow up.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

I'm pretty sure the graphics aren't going to go through any major changes before the game ships - according the article Ace Pace posted the game is very far along with all 3 races being playable in-game. Blizzard aren't going to redo all those in-game assets at this stage. The fact that they are all very WarCraft in style is because Blizzard probably retasked their entire art department to work on WoW for the past several years and they've become very set in their style.

I'm curious to hear a release date, as it looks like Blizzard has kept this under wraps longer than they usually do, it might be sooner than we'd think.

[Ghost Rider]

Meh, saw it. Blizz has the ability to make a decent trailer.

As for the game, far too early to say anything but "It looks like SC."

[K. A. Pital]

Not released yet, so obviously, we can freely judge the graphics of a game, years before it's released.

Hell, the basic looks of the thing would not change, as people noted the game's very far down the road and all races and units are playable. And those basic looks, they look like a fucking cartoon and are an insult to modern computer technology, okay? So yes, we can judge that shit and this is exactly what I am doing.

[TheMuffinKing]

To me starcraft 2 seems just as craptacular as Starcraft 1. It seems to me that blizzard is a bunch of lazy fools, only slightly better than the Neanderthals who fawn obsessively over this mediocre crap, perpetuating this kind of garbage software. Seriously, its been what, 10 years? Blizzard could and should have done better.

[Starglider]

It seems to me that blizzard is a bunch of lazy fools,

If they're fools, they're very rich fools. 'Risk averse' isn't the same thing as 'lazy'. 'Complacent' perhaps, but how many 'WoW-killers' have been proclaimed in the last two years without result? Something will dethrone WoW eventually, but who knows what at this point.

only slightly better than the Neanderthals who fawn obsessively over this mediocre crap, perpetuating this kind of garbage software.

Mediocre != garbage. Blizzard's stuff is at least fairly stable, well-balanced and competently put together. Take a look in the average software store bargain bin and you will find tons of genuine garbage.

Seriously, its been what, 10 years? Blizzard could and should have done better.

In gaming terms yes, but the decision making process at Blizzard isn't driven by what the game designers or discerning fans want, it's driven by revenues and risk. The company is too old and too profitable (for the gaming industry) for it to be any other way. Sad, but 'what's wrong with the gaming industry' rants have been a dime a dozen for at least the five years.

[Jim Raynor]

Yes, it doesn't look all that much more advanced than SC 1, and will likely play the same. I don't have much of a problem with that. To me, gameplay is much more important than looks. If the game has some depth of strategy, a variety of viable strategies, some skills that must be developed, balance, etc., then it's a good game.

Someone earlier in this thread said it best. Blizzard doesn't innovate so much as they take established game genres and polish them up into something highly playable.

Blizzard games might not be amazingly advanced, but you (well I, and most other gamers) can have fun playing them. I've seen a lot of mediocre or crappy games before. They're the ones with flawed mechanics and shallow strategy that you don't even want to play anymore after a short time.

[Covenant]

In gaming terms yes, but the decision making process at Blizzard isn't driven by what the game designers or discerning fans want, it's driven by revenues and risk. The company is too old and too profitable (for the gaming industry) for it to be any other way. Sad, but 'what's wrong with the gaming industry' rants have been a dime a dozen for at least the five years.

I wouldn't say that an advanced, highly detailed, beautiful looking version of Starcraft is financially inadvisable. I think they're actually taking a small risk here of not catching any new audience. The advantage of this path is that people will buy it just like they buy the new pokemon game and play it and are happy to expect the same game with new graphics.

This risk is offset by the existing demand for the product, yes. But I'm pretty sure those people would buy Starcraft 2 even if it looked next-gen. So it's really an update or an expansion pack strategy, and if they charged 65 bucks for it people would still buy it.

If Blizzard REALLY was just in this for the money, what they could and should do is release a game called "Starcraft Tournament Edition" which is an optimized 3D graphics version of Starcraft 1 with the exact same balance, look, and so on... and then offer a seperate Starcraft 2. The Koreans and traditionalists would glomp onto the Tourney edition while everyone else would get excited about the nextgen one.

But Blizzard doesn't have to make drek like that, it's not like it really made much of a jump. C&C3 is a traditional RTS, but it has pretty nice looking graphics. This is really bad. So I'm wondering if they're tapping this to make money back wasted on other projects (Ghost) that they haven't made back purely from WoW? If not, then... it's odd.

Because doing some fancy current-gen graphics would be a step up from this and help drag in a generation of players who don't have any Starcraft Nostalgia. I can only assume they're leaning extremely heavily on Old Timer Buzz to snare new people, the force of peer pressure, the Blizzard name, and the Korean market. If this was any other company putting out this game, I think it would be rightly panned as looking extremely cookie-cutter and not even good cookies being cut.

So we can hope that they'll put out a highly tuned, well balanced game, but Blizzard invented the long 'beta after purchase' process of refining balance and such based on feedback. That's good and bad, but really, this is running on name alone. If it's good, I'll buy it, since I like active Multiplayer games. But really, they better make this the world's best popcorn-movie style of action RTS. They'll have no excuse if they can't at least manage THAT.

[Covenant]

Ugh. I just watched the cleaner versions of the gameplay vids up on youtube. It's sent me from mild annoyance to despair. What are they thinking! This is it? This can't be the top end of what they're showing. Tiny little view frame, ugly clunky graphics, stand-and-shoot mechanics for the big ships and utterly zero scale.

I'm just dumbfounded. This from Mr. Cartoon here. So, I just don't get it. I saw the vids, but this gives me a much better feel. I think it might be a little fun, but right now it's less exciting to me than BFME3 would be.

I used to be such a Starcraft fanboy too. I actually got into Warhammer stuff because of the Starcraft similarities rather than the reverse. How sick is that? Heresy, I know. And I love cartoony units and colors and such. It's just too much though. I can't take something being THIS retro. It might as well run at 640x480 again.

[avatarxprime]

I don't like the art style at all. It's too much like Warcraft III. Starcraft always had a more hard edge look in comparison to the fantasy look of the Warcraft series. The concept art is dead on for the SC style, but the ingame representations are bad.

I have to admit, I like the new high mobility Protoss, and I wonder what the ability of the Zerg Nydus worms are, are they considered units or just a new version of the nydus canal?

It sounds like not only is Blizzard going to pander to the Korean market, but that they are taking a page from the MMOs and are going to charge for use of Battlenet, that's utter crap.

Overall, this is still pre-Alpha and I hope Blizzard decides to ditch the cartoonish look, add in some new features like those mentioned by Aaron Ash in the RTS innovations thread, and not pander to the Korean market so much. Yes, they are still playing the game today, but so are plenty of people in the American gaming market and others worldwide, you should remember them too, one country did not make SC the cash cow that it was. Don't follow the RPG and console ideas of "if it doesn't work in [insert Asian country that seems to be obsessed with this type of game here] it won't work anywhere" cause that's really not the case. Besides, simple economics, there are more "Western gamers" than there are Korean gamers, even if they are in general far and away better.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Honestly, I wouldn't call it heresy. I went Starcraft -> War40k myself. (though I lack the disposable income to actually get an army )

I expect negative change from blizzard. If anything changes at all. True they occassionally come up with decent original features... (WoW is about the most player friendly MMO out there... A huge combination of factors feed into that...)

But starcraft 2 is set to appease Korea. On the off chance that they decided one of the thousands of other games released would make a better national sport...

I play RTS for the single player, since I'm no where near competitive in my micro skill. And to get a little more out of the starcraft story, which they deliver usually.

[Resinence]

flawed mechanics and shallow strategy that you don't even want to play anymore after a short time.

You mean like "build more units"? Because that's exactly what starcraft is.
I'm not saying I hate starcraft, I used to play it alot and even some ladders, but RTS's have seriously come a very long way in both gameplay, mechanics and graphics since then. And what I have seen from SC2 is just depressing, it doesn't even look like they are fucking trying. They have all of the nice current gen lighting and smoke, beams etc, and then use shitty low poly models and shitty terrain. The cartoony style is starcraft and that doesn't annoy me as much, but the original WAS gritty and violent, this looks like shiny bits of plastic shooting water at eachother. Dissapointing. I expected SOME effort besides pandering to the insane korean players who want "starcraft again, with better graphics".

[Nephtys]

Honestly? Take a look at their last major game, Warcraft 3. It's actually pretty much a massive step back from Starcraft. There's less buildings, very little purpose to expand, less requirements in combined arms and deceptive strategy...

Rather, if you can make your hero heal friendly units or summon water elementals or whatever, etc faster... you win. And minor stupid crap like clicking your troops to move just before an enemy's swing animation flies.

That's what I call 'idiot micro'. It's no different than if you were playing diablo and your guy swung faster if you clicked faster. And I hope honestly Starcraft 2 moves away from that, but it doesn't look likely. It even looks like Warcraft 3 in a new engine for crying out loud.

Nowadays, games are about maneuver and all kinds of 'meta-micro'. Not clicking a button per-se, but repositioning troops and withdrawing battered front liners, etc. Something more on par with a thinking sorta strategy, instead of waiting to click on an AoE spell to wipe out a bunch of crap units so the heroes can do real fighting.

And don't get me started on how 'creeping' or killing NPCs in a multiplayer map for xp farming is just stupid. At least there isn't a confirmed sighting of a hero unit in SC2 yet, but the 'walk up to the enemy and shoot' gameplay style was out of date ten years ago.

[Nephtys]

I think my opinion of the looks alone (which are not nearly as major of a flaw as it's very old-styled gameplay) can be best summed up by these two screenshots.

In shot #1, it's 'Game A' in development.
In Shot #2, it's 'Game B' in development.

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/850/85012 ... 60192.html
http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-con ... bar-ui.jpg

Which one of these looks like it's an older title? Despite the better one being already out?

[K. A. Pital]

You could compare Starcraft 2 landscapes and unit rendering with the landscapes of Warhammer 40k DoW and the older game would still win.

[MKSheppard]

FOR THE EMPEROR!

[K. A. Pital]

That is not to mention that Blizzard shamelessly plagiarized elements of Games Workshop WH40K - both in style and game balance - even in the first incarnation of Starcraft.

And continues to do this in the second one with jet marines and teleporting Eld... protoss, sorry.

[Vympel]

Oh, and the trailer was stupid. It was obviously more interested in showing off their ability to do nice CG with an overwrought, wankish, impractical fitout for a Space Marine (can you imagine how much fucking infrastructure you'd need to outfit a platoon at a time?) than something that actually made any sense.

[Shroom Man 777]

A friend says that DoW looks like shit and SC2 looks better. Does anyone have some pics that, in particular, will show just how crappy the current pics of SC2 look compared to DoW?