New Interesting Details on Starcraft II

In an interview with German Starcraft 2 site, Starcraft II’s producer Chris Sigaty shared some details and explained some of the design decisions behind their upcoming RTS game. You can follow the link to check out the full interview, but here are the key points that were discussed in the interview.

– Replays in Single Player: Sigaty said that they are leaning away from allowing this feature. The reasoning is that in the single player game, Blizzard uses a lot of internal triggers that spawn units for storyline purposes, and so on, and allowing full view of that might really break the sense of immersion in the game. He noted that it’s an easy switch to flip, so there’s still a chance this will be possible.
– Rights of Observers: The quell concerns that observers might try and tip the scales of a battle in one direction or another, Sigaty made it clear that observers aren’t able to communicate directly with any other player. He said that Blizzard is very conscious of the potential issues of spectators, and are taking steps to ensure that it is a safe feature to include.
– Joining Games in Progress: While firm on the idea that people couldn’t join a game in progress as players, Sigaty mentioned the possibility that players might be able to “audit” games types to see if it’s something they are interested. He mentioned custom games like DoTA, where players might want to check it out and see how it’s played before joining a game of that type.
– Maximum Players: The basic maps that ship with the game will be limited to 8 players each, plus 4 spectators, in any configuration (i.e. it could be a 4 vs. 4 or 8 player free for all, and so on). For custom maps, map makers will have the ability to make maps for up to 12 players, in which case there will be no spectators.
– “Taboo League”: Sigaty mentioned the possibility of a specific game type that is catered more toward beginners. In this mode, players bases would start off blocked off from each other, so that newbie players can’t just get zerg-rushed out of the game in 3 minutes. This is one of the many ways that the dev team are trying to make SCII accessible for beginners.

Some other tidbits:
– A rematch feature is being considered
– The Battle.net is partially inspired by social networking sites, and will be directly linked to the game’s forums
– The Protoss and Zerg campaigns will be expansions, not standalone games, and will require the Wings of Liberty (Terran) campaign
– In the Terran campaign, you will play with some Protoss units, but no Zerg
– Voice chat is built-in
– There may be a demo after the game has shipped, also language packs will drop sometime after the game hits shelves

Nothing much here for those just looking for new info on units or the game’s storyline, but plenty of interesting stuff nonetheless.

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