New StarCraft II stuff Options

[Xeno]

http://www.starcraft2.com/screenshot.xml?s=122

I don't know who this is, but I have five dollars that says she winds up zergy by the end of the game.

[Ordos]

http://www.starcraft2.com/screenshot.xml?s=122

I don't know who this is, but I have five dollars that says she winds up zergy by the end of the game.

I'd take that bet...

The zerg seem to prefer the action-girl type, someone who's already dangerous. She strikes me as a scientist-sort that'll be Raynor's conscience for the campaign until she's tragically killed in the fourth act.

[nyerguds]

Or maybe Blizzard will be original and come up with something else? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

[Time Lord]

Or maybe Blizzard will be original and come up with something else? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

What's this Blizzard, being original? Is this one of your earth jokes?

[Cadell]

There was a time long passed in which the entity known as Blizzard was almost original. With the advent of Diablo, an Angband clone, things began to go down hill.

Then again, the plot from WarCraft and StarCraft seem to be mostly their own. Even if that's all they've got.

[Xeno]

You can actually look at the special thanks section of both WarCraft and StarCraft for many of the (acknowledged) inspirations that influenced those development teams. WarCraft, particularly, wasn't much more than a low-magic Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting at its most fundamental level and borrowed liberally from the fantasy establishment.

Neither were these games particularly groundbreaking in regards to technology or gameplay. Again, Blizzard borrowed concepts that had already been explored in other real-time strategy games of the day and polished them until they shined.

And that's really where Blizzard excels; at taking a concept and refining it.

[Cadell]

Research? Who wants to do that? It's much better to just draw conclusions from the tiny amount of information that you have.

[Time Lord]

Yeah that's the fun of bagging on places like Bizzerd. Besides one does recall the Vikings that were quite good and original. Something that Bizzerd will never get back to because of WoW. There was hit's of a third game from the ending of the second.

[Crissa]

Warcraft borrows pretty directly from Warhammer for aesthetics and background. They just made it... simpler. Lots simpler.

-Crissa

[ShadowDragon]

I would like to think that she becomes all Zergy, maybe even a slobbering useless drone. I don't know how many of you read the short story "Hybrids", but it was disclosed that Kerrigan uses just about anyone in her genetic experiments, even if she knows that they will be failures and end up being half human half zerg genetic defects robbed of any humanity and intelligence. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Xeno]

Somebody owes me five dollars!

[Mystery_wolf]

As a somewhat avid warcraft player, I have to say that the more you play it, the less you like it. A lot of their lore came directly from their own warcraft games 1,2,3 which i doubt warhammer was around at all during that time. They've been killing their own lore left and right though and admittedly it will most likely die when SC2 and Diablo 3 come out. I'm not really a starcraft fan myself.
Diablo though....that's a maybe.

[Xeno]

I... hmm. What's a tactful way to say this?

I know that this particular forum is a lot more laid back than most, but even still, you really shouldn't go around making statements without knowing any of the relevant facts.

That's really besides the point, though, since we've already established that Warcraft has more in common with a generic D&D campaign setting than it does with Warhammer; steampunk goblins, blue-skinned alien space goats, magic-addicted elves and dapper Victorian werewolves notwithstanding. Those are all genre inversions, though, making them more or less unique to the setting.

The thing is, all fantasy fiction in general - WarCraft, Warhammer, what have you - is basically just European mythology. There will always be similarities because these settings all share a similar ancestry. If you want something well and truly different, try something with a different cultural pedigree. I like kung-fu movies, myself.

Of course, if you don't like Blizzard's 'lore,' then I suppose you're not obligated to play their games. Personally, I'm a StarCraft fan. I don't expect it to be some revelatory work of science fiction that shifts paradigms and causes me to undergo some sort of deeply spiritual epiphany, but I'm really looking forward to the game nonetheless and I've been waiting a very long time for it; if I wanted to hear about how much it's going to suck, I'd post on 4chan, so please, try not to piss in my Cheerios. Thanks.

I guess that wasn't particularly tactful at all. Oh, well.

[Ordos]

I'm off to pick up the game in a few minutes, and I just realized this thread was still going on.

I still don't think the lady-scientists will end up infested, although I haven't played the actual campaign yet. There might be released information I haven't found. Still, I can't wait to find out.

As for Blizzard... admittedly, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Blizzard fanboy, so everything I type comes with its own bias, but still...

I've heard a rumor that the original Warcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer Fantasy video-game, but Blizz couldn't get the legal rights, so early in production they decided to make their own world and publish it as new IP. Admittedly, there's a lot of borrowing in this industry, and Blizzard certainly borrowed a lot of themes from Warhammer (which had been in production for over a decade by the time of the first Warcraft game), but as time went on they fleshed out their product. Just as Warhammer as advanced, so too has Warcraft, often in opposite directions. I enjoy both products nowadays, and I tend to think it's kind of fun to see what sprang from what. (For example, I remember in the early 2000s watching as the concept of a fairy-dragon spread through the industry. I never heard of such a thing, but over the course of a few years every single fantasy RTS or TBS game I played ended up including one, from Age of Wonders to Warcraft III. It was neat, since no two interpretations were the same, and they were often vastly different in appearance and application.)

Warhammer Fantasy borrowed quite a bit from Tolkien and DnD, so it's kind of hard to figure out where some of these individual ideas came from (I've traced back a lot to Norse mythology, ultimately, but that's another topic). Starcraft seems to borrow a lot thematically from 40K, but it's also taken on a life of its own. The protoss are Space Elves, sure, but they're still worlds different than the eldar, and zerg and Tyranids have more than passing similarities, but they've both developed in different and interesting ways.

Basically, it's fun all around.

[Xeno]

I still don't think the lady-scientists will end up infested, although I haven't played the actual campaign yet. There might be released information I haven't found. Still, I can't wait to find out.

Take a closer look at my spoiler tag. Or don't. Actually, probably better if you don't...

[Time Lord]

Take a closer look at my spoiler tag. Or don't. Actually, probably better if you don't...

Way to go. Now he's going to read your tag. Just because you said not too...

[Ordos]

Take a closer look at my spoiler tag. Or don't. Actually, probably better if you don't...

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)


Edit:
Hmm... it seems her zergyness depends.

She can end up infested, but on my play-through she didn't.

[Siobhan]

As a somewhat avid warcraft player, I have to say that the more you play it, the less you like it. A lot of their lore came directly from their own warcraft games 1,2,3 which i doubt warhammer was around at all during that time. They've been killing their own lore left and right though and admittedly it will most likely die when SC2 and Diablo 3 come out. I'm not really a starcraft fan myself.
Diablo though....that's a maybe.

Suuuuper late to the party here but uh... I direct you to here http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/4/10/

Warcraft explicitly steels directly from warhammer, the original warcraft is almost exactly the setting of warhammer, Granted they changed it a little bit, but not a whole lot. That being said SC2 is pretty fun, But I'm waiting on D3 cuz well I got nothin better to do.