Seriously? We’re Still Doing Peon Lines?
The gaming community is in a tizzy over Blizzard’s latest announcement. I’m sure you’ve all seen the videos and the screenshots and the wallpapers and the Youtube videos for Starcraft 2. So far it looks like they should subtitle this one Starcraft 2: More Of The Same.
I don’t know if Blizzard has noticed, but the RTS genre has moved on without them. We’re kinda past the whole gathering crystals with little worker units shtick. I demand something a little more strategic and less mind-numbingly stupid for my resource gathering. Oh, I don’t know, like maybe tie strategic resources to actual map real estate, so that I as I take and hold STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES I get more resources. (Yes, like Dawn of War.)
But that’s the problem, isn’t it. If Blizzard changed the core gameplay too much, then they’d have the problem of alienating an entire market, namely Korea. With as hot as Starcraft still is in Korea, even now, it would take an epic amount of idiocy to take the game in a new direction. That’s why SC2 was unveiled in Seoul and not Irvine, CA.
So, we can look forward to a Starcraft sequel as much as we want but don’t expect a lot of gameplay changes. Oh, and I just read over at Gamespot that Blizzard is touting how effective rushing strategies will be in Starcraft 2. Great. Can we do anything else to make this game less appealing? I guess I just like my strategy games to be a bit deeper than a 6 ling rush.
OMG ZERG RUSH
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Though you might be correct about SC2 being more of the same, you have to ask yourself which market has carried on SC for blizzard? The Koreans have TV shows for live matches of the game. Years after the release the Korean market has kept the game alive.
No doubt that Blizzard wouldn’t risk changing the formula too much. They would lose the largest market in Korea. From what I’ve seen I’m interested in how the game pans out, but I’ll still definitely be picking this one up.
Please don’t argue in favor of Warcraft 3′s hero units… I thought they totally destroyed Warcraft (and Starcraft)’s dynamic of build-an-awesome-base, build-an-awesome army. In Warcraft 3, it became build-a-hero-then-surround-him-with-eight-human-shields.
By your logic, would Gran turismo be stale by now? All we do is drive cars with pretty graphics.
What about Half Life? I mean, sure the whole “you are part of the story” thing was good in the 90s….but this is the year 2000 and somthing. I want see 3rd person slow mo gunfu fights! Doing anything less is just more of the same right?
I’m all for innovation, but I want SC2 so I can continue the story I loved from the first, along with similar gameplay. Sure they could have made it like those games you mentioned, but then it wpouldn’t be starcraft. Then they might as well have done an MMO.
Now if Blizzard created a new IP with the same warcraft/starcraft formula then you’d have a case. But frankly I’d be really disppointed if SC2 wasn’t more of the same, since that’s what I want.
Command and Conquer only changed the basic formula 3 times, and each time was fairly unsuccessful. Sole Survivor, Renegade and Generals all took a different spin on CNC. And peopel didn’t like them because while they were fine games in their own right-they weren’t CNC and that is what they paid for.
I brought my asbestos underwear today:
I didn’t like StarCraft. I greatly preferred Total Annihilation for all of the great features like queueing up orders, setting multi-point, repeating patrol routes, and the general robot-destroying-robot action.
That said, I didn’t play way too much of it since I was pretty bad at it, so I’m not really an RTS aficionado by any means.
Great article, George. I also didn’t like Starcraft, but I also didn’t like Total Annihilation. Wasn’t nearly as interesting a setting to me as Warcraft. Yet, Warcraft 3 can’t hold my attention for very long, either now.