100 replies to this topic

[Erix]

A trailer appeared on Youtube a few hours ago, most likely by accident. It was removed due to copyright claims, but not before others had copied it.



I have a feeling the next year is going to be very interesting.

[hagren]

Must...resist...urge...to...buy...SC..II...

[Haasth]

Short, didn't see much. Sadly Now I'm wondering... Canon is that you side with Tosh. Don't you actually kill Nova in that mission? Hmm.. Or did she escape? It's been too long.

At any rate. I've been wondering for a while how they would work Heart of the Swarm out. A new Campaign, obviously. But how far can their multiplayer additions go? I can't remember how it worked with Brood War. Could people with Brood War play with vanilla Starcraft? I suppose in the end you'll just need to have Heart of the Swarm. They did it that way with The Frozen Throne if I remember correctly, but Starcraft 2 is just a little bit more competitive than WC3 was. And this would eventually split the population up in three. With Legacy of the Void also coming out.

Anyway, this is personally the one I look forward to the most out of the three. Heart of the Swarm. Zerg <3 Now lets see if my assumptions as to what will happen are going to be right...

Edited by Haasth, 28 May 2011 - 07:03 AM.

[Valdez]

No you didnt kill Nova, so the canon prevails.


From the teaser, it sounds like Kerrigan goes amok, and presumably Raynor's the only thing that can restore her humanity, or sanity, or whatever. Ah well.

[Haasth]

Valdez, on 28 May 2011 - 07:55 AM, said:

No you didnt kill Nova, so the canon prevails.


From the teaser, it sounds like Kerrigan goes amok, and presumably Raynor's the only thing that can restore her humanity, or sanity, or whatever. Ah well.

Well, Nova isn't with Raynor mind you. She's with the Dominion. So even if Kerrigan is for all intents and purposes a 'goodie' there's a good chance Nova wants to take her out. But I was getting a bit of an ominous feeling towards the end as if she kind of showed Nova what's what with her amazing psionic abilities or such.

At any rate, I'm pretty sure she'll keep her connection to the Swarm for I'm pretty sure she's the 'heart' of the Swarm. I'm assuming it'll have sort of a Brood War style where it's her and her Zerg fighting off hostile Zerg possibly controlled by the Hybrids and the likes.

For in the end, that's what it all boils down to. Zerg had been modified to seek out and assimilate all sources of psionic power against their original 'programming' and the Overmind knew this, tried to find a way out by creating Kerrigan and now I'm pretty sure her goal'll be to save the Zerg race from becoming the Hybrid's personal bitches.

Edited by Haasth, 28 May 2011 - 08:05 AM.

[Erix]

I never played the mission where you side with Tosh so I can't say if Nova is killed there, but she at least doesn't die in the cutscene after. And who knows, maybe they'll have an option to import savegames. It seems to be the big thing these days.

[Sean_Seanston]

I have StarCraft II on my shelf still but I need to finish Brood War. IIRC, I finished all of SC1 but only started Brood War when some sort of computing mishap (I think it was a hard drive failure) some years ago put an end to that.

[Valdez]

Haasth, on 28 May 2011 - 08:03 AM, said:

Well, Nova isn't with Raynor mind you. She's with the Dominion. So even if Kerrigan is for all intents and purposes a 'goodie' there's a good chance Nova wants to take her out. But I was getting a bit of an ominous feeling towards the end as if she kind of showed Nova what's what with her amazing psionic abilities or such.

At any rate, I'm pretty sure she'll keep her connection to the Swarm for I'm pretty sure she's the 'heart' of the Swarm. I'm assuming it'll have sort of a Brood War style where it's her and her Zerg fighting off hostile Zerg possibly controlled by the Hybrids and the likes.

For in the end, that's what it all boils down to. Zerg had been modified to seek out and assimilate all sources of psionic power against their original 'programming' and the Overmind knew this, tried to find a way out by creating Kerrigan and now I'm pretty sure her goal'll be to save the Zerg race from becoming the Hybrid's personal bitches.

Kerrigan's pretty much got a neon sign above her head saying "Zerg-affiliated anti-heroine character driving the plot device for "Good Guy" Zerg forces to find the Hybrids"

...so yeah.

I kinda want her to still stay evil or at least semi-evil, because having her turn back to the good side and join Raynor is a bit of a cheap (and action-movie cliche) story development.

Edited by Valdez, 28 May 2011 - 12:07 PM.

[Haasth]

Erix, on 28 May 2011 - 08:08 AM, said:

I never played the mission where you side with Tosh so I can't say if Nova is killed there, but she at least doesn't die in the cutscene after. And who knows, maybe they'll have an option to import savegames. It seems to be the big thing these days.

Possibly, but in this case they were pretty clear on what's canon and what isn't. So I am doubtful.

[Valdez]

tbh I wasnt even keeping track of the canon, I just assumed both routes in every 2-choice mission was just conveniently inconclusive, because the character deaths affected by choices (Tosh and Dr Hanson) don't influence the plot. Blizzard did after all, design the missions to be as such, and a pretty ballsy move too considering Hanson and Tosh are now canon-locked because of their character deaths (similar to Wrex in ME1)

But a quick look at the wiki brings me up to speed. The canon choices are saving Haven, siding with Toosh, voting Obama instead of McCain, and destroying the Zerg air platform on Char.

Edited by Valdez, 28 May 2011 - 10:52 PM.

[Haasth]

I know! With Heart of the Swarm we'll have a new race! A race I've been waiting to play since the dawn of Starcraft (Slight exaggeration may be possible). No, I know what you're thinking... "They're not going to give us Hybrids, that would be silly."

Of course not! INFESTED TERRAN! YES! A race dedicated PURELY to Infested Terran! I would be so happy.  

Hah, I do think a fourth race would spice things up quite a bit but I doubt an eSport-centered game like this will ever do that anytime soon. Would be neat though. Warcraft 3 had four races and did just fine!

[Dei]

MOAR INFO'S!

Kotaku's Hands-on review of a 1 hour demo

Few things:

• Kerrigan plays the combat role of a Hero, with customizable abilities etc.
  
• Kerrigan has 2 advisors, so it's not just Kerrigan.
  
• Game has about 20 missions.
  
• It has lovely pictures of the game.

Oh and a video.

Edited by Dei, 31 May 2011 - 03:14 AM.

[Haasth]

ZERGASM.

Well, sounds about like how I figured it would go. Kerrigan is not stupid, the Zerg will be assimilated by the Hybrids if she doesn't step in and without the Zerg swarm the rest of the universe is doomed as there is no feasible way they can possibly defeat the Hybrids with just the Protoss (The Terran would be wiped out pretty damn easily as shown by the visions in Wings of Liberty)

Of course, Raynor would never let her go and after an assault from Nova - who likely wants her dead merely out of Mengsk's orders - she escapes and reclaims her 'throne' as the Zerg overmind. Gathering her broods and battling renegade ones, ala Brood War style, while fending off possible Protoss and Terran threats that are a little ignorant and just want Zerg dead for dead's sake.

We may even have some awesome Hybrid vs. Kerrigan show-off.

---

I like the advisor part, though it seems a little obvious to me. With Kerrigan and so many infested Terran running around it's clear to me there's a lot more 'human' to the Swarm than may appear at first. At any rate, there's a lot of intelligent members of the Swarm and it seems logical to me that Kerrigan has her own crew of special awesome pplz. (This is mainly why I like Zerg so much more than Tyrands - who no doubt were a source of inspiration for Zerg - As Tyranids really just are a feral hive mind-controlled force that do nothing but destroy and consume. Whereas with Zerg there's a lot more intelligence to it and even free will interestingly enough)

The hero role sounds interesting. In the original Starcraft they were more of a nuisance I'd say, when they died you had to restart etc etc, but since here she can come back after death like in Warcraft 3 that sounds pretty awesome. I loved the hero system there and now you can customize her? Hell yes. Lets see if I can turn her into a Hero Infestor of sorts.

Edited by Haasth, 31 May 2011 - 06:08 AM.

[Valdez]

Why is it that evolving a critter means choosing between a green version or a purple version >_>


Also wtf Yetis? In my starcraft? Congrats Cae you got your 4th faction

Edited by Valdez, 31 May 2011 - 09:16 AM.

[Haasth]

Valdez, on 31 May 2011 - 09:14 AM, said:

Why is it that evolving a critter means choosing between a green version or a purple version >_>


Also wtf Yetis? In my starcraft? Congrats Cae you got your 4th faction

Hahaha, that is not quite what I wanted out of a fourth faction. I'll stick to Zerg, thanks very much. The Yetis are just there to be assimilated into the Swarm anyway!

And well, when it comes to banelings I can understand that the difference is mostly about their... fluids. It depends what the differences do really, I mean if one of them suddenly starts breathing fire and fly around then yes... the minor difference in looks kind of ruins it.

To be fair...


I don't think turning them into a pile of goo will make them good subjects for assimilation.

Edited by Haasth, 31 May 2011 - 09:27 AM.

[Erix]

I gotta say it's about damn time we got snow terrain. Mappers have been wanting that ever since the beta.

[Haasth]

That campaign is looking quite a lot of fun. Sad to hear it's shorter than Wings of Liberty, but the initial sound of the level design sounds pretty good.

Edited by Haasth, 31 May 2011 - 10:16 AM.

[Gorays]

Very interesting, looking forward to it.


EDIT - Also, check out this new interview from Gamespot! Senior designer Jonny Ebbert(was the lead designer for DOW II) gives us new info on HOS.

http://www.gamespot....g=topslot;img;2

Edited by Gorays, 31 May 2011 - 12:32 PM.

[VonVentrue]

Starcraft 2 is a one-of-a-kind game for me. It's the first RTS in over a decade which made me appreciate its multiplayer component while stirring up hatred (sic) for the single player campaign.
The missions themselves and the overall campaign structure are perfectly fine (brilliant even), what gets in the way of enjoyment is the story. The sequel is filled with way too many facepalm-inducing moments, contradictions and banal characters for me to tolerate - downright miserable writing plus omnipresent boredom (nothing of importance happens, nothing gets resolved) most certainly don't help, either.
The original wasn't perfect in this regard either, but there's a huge gap in quality between these two products. Unless Blizzard finally hired someone actually capable of writing a coherent plot without resorting to tired clichés, I'm in no hurry to buy the expansion. If I do, it'll be solely for the mp experience plus the improved editor.

[Haasth]

VonVentrue, on 31 May 2011 - 01:28 PM, said:

Starcraft 2 is a one-of-a-kind game for me. It's the first RTS in over a decade which made me appreciate its multiplayer component while stirring up hatred (sic) for the single player campaign.
The missions themselves and the overall campaign structure are perfectly fine (brilliant even), what gets in the way of enjoyment is the story. The sequel is filled with way too many facepalm-inducing moments, contradictions and banal characters for me to tolerate - downright miserable writing plus omnipresent boredom (nothing of importance happens, nothing gets resolved) most certainly don't help, either.
The original wasn't perfect in this regard either, but there's a huge gap in quality between these two products. Unless Blizzard finally hired someone actually capable of writing a coherent plot without resorting to tired clichés, I'm in no hurry to buy the expansion. If I do, it'll be solely for the mp experience plus the improved editor.

I think the problem in this regard mostly comes down to the fact that they, for whatever reason (Well, money is likely the reason), decided to cut things up into clearly defined pieces; three of them in fact.

With Starcraft you had a good setting and story and important things got resolved during the vanilla game. Then came Brood War, an expansion, and the story there was mostly a different chapter if you will.

With Starcraft 2 they decided to throw the entirety of the story over three different games without making it feel like it was an expansion but more so... You watch one-third of the movie now, one-third in a year and the final part in another year. This is a bit of a shame. Hopefully Heart of the Swarm will really feel like it has it's own story and events and not just be a smaller part of something bigger. I liked Wings of Liberty's campaign, but that was mostly because the campaign had solid map and level design. I also liked the little RPG aspects they added without making them take over the game (e.g Dawn of War 2)

The story however in Wings of Liberty was largely unimportant. There was some interesting and important bits flying around but all of that was really just foreshadowing. We didn't defeat Mengsk, we didn't warn everyone of the Hybrid threat, we didn't even solve the solution with Kerrigan. We merely made one move into the direction of solving that - which hopefully will be resolved in Heart of the Swarm and not dragged onto Legacy of the Void.

Edited by Haasth, 31 May 2011 - 01:49 PM.