StarCraft II Announced

Today, Blizzard Entertainment officially announced StarCraft II, which will be released for the PC and Mac at an unspecified date. The game will be an RTS, and you can read the announcement press release here.

Starcraft, released in 1998, is one of the greatest real time strategy games of all time. It chronicled the war between the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss races along the Galactic Rim, and as a video game, was one of the first RTSes to feature truly distinct yet well balanced races.

In my personal opinion, the only great RTSes ever made are from Blizzard Entertainment, so you'd think I'd be more excited about the announcement of the sequel to one of my favourite games of all time.

Why aren't I then? Well, though this is just the initial announcement, as others have commented, there's not much in the way of innovation to the genre that seems to be totted. There are no new playable races (that we know of), and it looks like Blizzard Entertainment is going for the classic style of gameplay, trying to mimic the fast-paced action of the retro-classic. While that's good from one perspective, personally, I want something that's not just going to be a carbon copy clone.

I also find that the graphics aren't impressive. Sure, we're only seeing early build screenshots and footage, but those early shots should wow me, not make me think that it already looks 3 to 4 years old. Starcraft was also dark and gritty in its visual themes, but what I've seen of StarCraft II thus far looks much more cartoony, more exaggerated and I don't like it one bit.

There's a cinematic and concept art trailer available respectively, and both of them feature exceptional music. The cinematic trailer, though being some of the single most beautiful CG cinematics I've seen to date, lacks any dramatic build up or real military sci-fi action to get me hyped; it looks pretty but doesn't have much substance. Take a look at the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos announcement cinematic (1999 ECTS Trailer) to see what I mean. That trailer made you want to find out about the story and experience the perceived action that was to come.

Now, of course I could be wrong, and doubtless, whether good or bad, StarCraft II will sell great, but I think I'm going to wait and try a demo before rushing out and buying this one. I just can't shake the feeling that Blizzard Entertainment has gone the way of many other developers, simply looking to milk cash.

I do hope I'm wrong.