StarCraft 2 news

Liz Skuthorpe brings us up to date with the latest news on the most popular RTS of all time's sequel.

2.00pm: Blizzard game developers announced today that the next installment of StarCraft will be released as three separate campaigns. This announcement was made at the StarCraft II Gameplay panel at Blizzcon, which included Rob Pardo and Dustin Browder. Each campaign will focus on one of the established playable races: Terran, Zerg or Protoss.

The three campaigns will all follow the original mission format of the first StarCraft, with some new additions to the gameplay - mainly story mode. The first of the campaigns is Terran, titled Wings of Liberty. In this campaign players will play as Jim Raynor, rather than an anonymous human character. Developers also announced at the panel that the game will also feature a lot of in-game cinematics, new characters and the new story mode, which will carry through all of the new campaigns.

The later installments, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm and Protoss: Legacy of the Void will carry over story elements from the first campaign and reveal a larger story thread that will be explored thoroughly through Zeratul and the Protoss campaign.

Devs were quick to point out that nothing will change for the multiplayer and skirmish modes and that all races will be fully implemented in the release of the Terran campaign.

Chris Sigarty, lead game designer on StarCraft II says the game's new incarnation came about from them thinking too big initially and having to work around the new story mode elements they had incorporated.

"Story mode was such an unknown for us, we knew we wanted to tell story in a compelling fashion or allow the gamer that wants to explore more deeply into the whys and the whos, to get that opportunity, and the gamer that doesn't they can just click into the missions."

Each campaign will feature between 26 and 30 missions, more than previously implemented in StarCraft, with developers trying to make sure that each campaign feels like a complete game in itself and not a mini-expansion. As the game will be broken up into three parts with an overall plot Pardo said that the ending of each will be set, but there will be many options in the middle of the game with new branching-style gameplay opportunities opening up for the player from about the third mission in.

Those classic Starcraft cutscenes are set to make a return.

Other details included the world premiere of part of a future cinematic (my money is on the Legacy of the Void campaign) featuring Zeratul kicking naga arse. And an animated storyboard flashback of Kerrigan being left behind to face the Zerg. These all looked great and I can't wait to see the full versions once they're completed.

That said, with up to 30 full missions in each campaign, there should be plenty to keep people who only want to concentrate on the missions happy. Wings of Liberty is currently in company-level alpha testing; when that has been completed the beta testing should open to the public.