The character models here are far more detailed than those in Warcraft III, though these are also rendered in-engine. Pardo controls Raynor, walking him up to Tychus and choosing a comment from an onscreen dialogue tree. Next to Raynor is Tychus, the marine shown in the original CG trailer for the game. Raynor's living a little harder, drinking a little harder, and living a mercenary life against the Terran Dominion in the new game. Raynor is the central character of the terran campaign in StarCraft II. The demo begins with a camera fly-through into the dirty bridge of the battlecruiser Hyperion, where Rob Pardo points out returning hero Jim Raynor to much applause. Finally, we move on to an actual demo of StarCraft II's single-player campaign. It also got rid of the mission briefing-based exposition in favor of cinematic sequences that happened within missions. Next came Warcraft III, which featured a wide variety of different mission types and objectives. The game also featured one linear storyline through three campaigns, rather than Warcraft II's mirrored campaigns, which told two versions of the same story. Next is StarCraft, which featured more complex missions with triggered events. Warcraft II's story was told through simple text and narration-no major characters, no cutscenes to speak of. First, Warcraft II, which had extremely simple mission flow-build a base, defeat the enemy base. Now Pardo takes the stage to show off StarCraft II's single-player campaign, starting with a history lesson. In addition to the old nuclear strike, the ghost can now call down drop pods that will spawn a handful of marines behind enemy lines. Next up, everyone's favorite, the ghost. However, the new cobra tank hunter shows up to exploit the weak turning speed of the Thor, attacking it from behind faster than it can turn to face the opposition. The Thor also has a stationary artillery attack similar to the siege tank's, which will utterly wreck buildings. The demo shows how the Thor can walk over some supply depots, which can now lower into the ground. The Thor actually has a slow turn speed, so it has to rotate on its axis before it can move in a new direction. Next up is the Thor, which is so big it has to be built by an SCV. In addition to jumping over barriers, the reaper has a new ability: It can throw timed bombs and then flee before the bombs wreak havoc on everything around it. The presenters are whipping through the demo, next with a look at the reaper shown at the StarCraft II announcement in May. The rocket spread seems to have a large area of splash damage. The banshee has no anti-air function, but it can decimate ground units like marines and siege tanks, which can't really fight back. Next, the banshee, which blitzes enemy ground units with rockets. It acts like a goliath when it's in bipedal mech form, and it can also turn into a flyer. Next, the viking, which is basically a transformer. Next is the battlecruiser, which can now specialize to use either the old Yamato gun, or a new plasma cannon that lets you decimate ground opponents. Next up: the sensor tower, which gives you a massive site range that even shows enemies moving beyond the fog of war as large red dots. There's also the tech lab, an alternative add-on that lets you research new functionality for units. The first new feature shown is the command center's automatic SCV-deploy ability, followed by the reactor, which can double the output capacity of the barracks or factory. Pardo, along with Blizzard's Andy Chambers and Dustin Browder, begin the presentation by jumping straight into a demo of the terrans.
SELECT MORE THAN ONE WORLD EDITOR WARCRAFT 3 PC
Though we've been playing StarCraft II off and on all day-with more in-depth coverage of the terran and protoss factions yet to come-we've been told to expect more material to be presented at this panel than Blizzard is showing on the BlizzCon floor.Īn understandably excited crowd has packed the hundreds of seats in the convention hall, and Pardo and other Blizzard employees are milling onstage, fiddling with a PC setup and generally preparing for the demo, so things should get underway in just a few moments. ANAHEIM, Calif.-This year's BlizzCon is moving into the back half of its first day, but the action isn't slowing down, as game design VP Rob Pardo will soon take the stage to host an hour-long discussion and demonstration of StarCraft II.