What's it like under a Rock?

If you played the original Starcraft and its expansion, Starcraft Broodwar, there’s almost no chance in hell that you weren’t impressed by the games’ story. Playing Starcraft was close to the experience of reading a novel, if not better: you had an intriguing plot, heroic characters, and dastardly villains (c’mon, Zerg Queen Bitch? What other game gave you that) a lot of turnovers, dramatic conflicts and of course, breathtaking cinematics for its time, which took the story one step further.

Plot twists

In Broodwar, the single player campaign was a blast as well. Basically, after fighting with one race or another for two games straight, in the last scenes of Starcraft Broodwar, you get to witness an unhealthy alliance between the Zerg (represented by Sarah Kerrigan turned Queen Bitch), the Terrans (represented by Samir Duran and Jim Raynor), the Protoss (represented by Fenix) and the Rebels (the ever so charming Arcturus Mengsk). In the last mission, you play as Kerrigan and manage to overcome a newly formed alliance between the Dominion, the United Earth Defense and the Artanis fleet.

What's New?

It’s still a bit unclear as to what the story of Starcraft 2 brings on the table. What IS known (and it would be silly if this wouldn’t be true...) is that we’ll be able to see old characters such as Kerrigan or Jim Raynor.

Jim Raynor

In Starcraft 2, Jim Raynor will be the central focus of the Terran campaign and he has a much more rugged feel it seems. Working as an underpaid soldier together with his crew, the Hyperion, Raynor tries all sorts of tricks to get back in the warring game and steals a couple of Protoss artifacts.

Blizzard, secretive as Usual

Of course, the story of Starcraft 2 is still pretty much under wraps, so I can’t say anyone knows for sure what is going to happen. Knowing Blizzard Entertainment, they might as well just drop an entire part of the story to make room for a new one. Remember how World of Warcraft started out as an adventure game and Blizzard changed it a couple of times around until they got what they wanted? Well there’s no telling what they come up with for Starcraft 2. After all, they announced an indefinite deadline for the game saying that “it’s done when it’s done”.

What I want to see

Since the story of Starcraft 1 ended with Kerrigan being the dominant force in the warring sector it would have been interesting to see how this loose end develops in Starcraft 2. However, the Zerg campaign is the last to be shown to the public. The only leaking information about the Protoss so far is that they will be lead by Artanis, the guy who joined in the attack over Kerrigan (and failed miserably).

Mystery of the Xel'Naga

Another fact that ties into all stories related to Starcraft 2 is that the Xel’Naga, the all mighty mysterious race that you might remember from the original games. It might be fun to watch them as arbitrators, but I seriously doubt we’ll be able to play them. There’s a lot of buzz around the fact that Blizzard might be prepping up a surprise and allow us to pick Xel’Naga as a playable race, but seeing how the developers are known to stick to the “if it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it” rule, chances are pretty slim.

My Verdict

Things are looking up for fans of the series, as Starcraft 2 is already on its way to success. The gameplay videos that can be found on the game’s official site make thousands drool every day and the only question is: when is Starcraft 2 coming out? According to Blizz, when it’s ready they’ll let us know :(.