StarCraft II Preview: Leading The Terrans To Glory

Full Story: IGN.com



IGN - August 17, 2009 - In June, we brought you the latest details on the multiplayer mode of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which highlighted some of the new elements of Battle.Net, replay features and stat tracking to improve a player’s game. Building on the popularity of the multiplayer is vital, but having a solid single player experience is just as important, especially with such a long hiatus for the franchise. The stories of beloved and hated characters haven’t been resolved, and with such a long time between games, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Fortunately, Blizzard’s come up with some pretty unique ways to bring players up to speed on the galactic saga. At a recent press event, I got a chance to play through a number of the single player missions to get a sense of what the first chapter of StarCraft II will be like.

It’s been known for a while that StarCraft II is split into three separate chapters. While I won’t spoil any major plot twists, Wings of Liberty is set four years after the events of Brood War and focuses on Jim Raynor, one of the heroes from the first game. These past few years haven’t been particularly good to Raynor: he’s been fighting the good fight as a kind of stellar Robin Hood, fighting the tyrannical rule of Arcturus Mengsk, who’s declared Raynor a dangerous outlaw to be captured or killed on sight. Mengsk has also proclaimed himself Emperor of the New Dominion, establishing control over the Terran Colonies. Even worse, Kerrigan and the Zerg have returned after years of being dormant, slaughtering billions of colonists and conquering dozens of planets. This has led Jim to periods of heavy fighting and heavy drinking to erase his sorrows. However, as time goes on, he will discover that people are willing to be recruited into Raynor’s Raiders to fight for his cause, allowing him to restore himself from his fall from grace and again become the hero he once was.