Yes, you read correctly. Blizzard Entertainment is now planning to release StarCraft II as a trilogy; three completely separate games, all stand-alone titles.
The decision came about as Blizzard felt they needed more missions to tell the game's story respectively for each Species, so they're now going to release each Campaign as it's own game.
The first will be the Terran Campaign, entitled "Wings of Liberty," followed by the Zerg Campaign, "Heart of the Swarm," and lastly the Protoss Campaign, "Legacy of the Void."
This is not to be confused with episodic content that some other developers are trying out, each of these games will be stand-alone titles.
While the details are still being finalized, each Campaign will have a different flavour (aside from the unique feel of each Species) and weigh in at more than 30 missions each. From a Multiplayer standpoint, each StarCraft II title will ship will a fully featured Multiplayer game with all three Species intact, and each subsequent game will add extra, as yet undecided additions.
So what does all this mean for us, the consumer? Well, it's a little early to tell, but it looks like there will be a lot of StarCraft II to go around, and also what seems to me a clever plan to drain our wallets.
Call me a pessimist, 'cause I am one, but this means if you want the complete StarCraft II experience, you're going to be shelling out around $149.97 for the game, but spread out around roughly three years. Granted, the overall Campaigns will be epic in size, and who knows how this multi-release will affect Multiplayer (what if someone purchases the Terran Campaign, but another person purchases the Zerg Campaign? Since the Zerg release will have extra stuff added, can they play together?), but my first association with this announcement was a cash grab under the veil of giving us more content and choice.
I do hope I'm wrong.
Details from IGN PC here, and originally spotted at ActionTrip here.
2 comments:
Yeah, We don't quite know what to make of this just yet. They need to release more specific details, such as how far each "game" will be spaced out, what the exact differences will be from game to game aside from the campaign content. But it does indeed smell of a cashgrab. Perhaps it's a bit of a shift in Blizzard's policy since they merged with Activision?
Personallys (personally needing to be pluralized since there's multiples of Us), We're looking forward more to Dawn of War II. It has Orks in space. And violence. It makes Us happy.
-The Staff
Yeah, too early to tell, but I'm not too thrilled about this announcement either. Anything that screams cash-grab makes me unhappy.
Personally, I haven't been a big Blizzard Entertainment supporter since PC gaming changed and became a "lesser" platform for my own gaming tastes, and this doesn't help matters.
For myself, I'm really looking forward to Halo Wars. Not because it's another Halo title, but because it's a console RTS designed from the ground up for a console. If Ensemble can pull it off really well, they'll achieve the first amazing console RTS ever, which would be a huge step forward for the genre.
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