Interview: Frank Pearce on StarCraft 2
Frank Pearce, Vice President and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment looks exactly how you might expect one of the key decision makers for both StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft to look – weary. Having just flown overnight from US to UK to take part in a StarCraft 2 press event can’t have helped matters either; it’s no wonder he’s called in a PR rep to help him out with a demanding morning of interviews.
Still, after a coffee or two, he’s more than happy to sit down with us to discuss what we can expect from the upcoming StarCraft 2, both offline and online and incidentally you can also cut to our opinion of the game here.
Q: First of all just a little about StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, its story and what we can expect from the title?
FP: Sure, so the storyline for Wings of Liberty follows the chronicles of Jim Raynor as he leads the revolution against Emperor Mengsk; four years after the events of Brood War (the original StarCraft’s expansion pack). There are 29 missions, branching mission options, optional missions.
We introduce some new characters into the scene like Tychus Findlay and then there are old familiar characters like Raynor, Sarah Kerrigan and Zeratul. With the campaign for Wings of Liberty we’re delivering a much more immersive story telling experience than we have historically in our RTS games.
Q: Then there are the two planned expansions, for Protoss and Zerg, to follow later; what’s the thinking behind those?
FP: When we were developing the game several years ago we realised the storyline we wanted to tell was really extensive. We really felt that if we tried to cram (the whole storyline) into the original release of the game that we would be short-changing ourselves and short-changing the fans in terms of the story we wanted to tell.
At the time we made the decision to say well lets take our time rather than try and cram it into the single game, we know we’re going to make expansion packs anyway, lets plan to tell that story across the original game and its expansions.
Q: And do you envisage the multiplayer also expanding with each subsequent release?
FP: Yeah, we’ll definitely want to add functionality to the experience and develop the multiplayer online experience.
Q: Did the development team feel the weight of expectation on them when developing the sequel to one of the most played games ever created?
FP: Well the development team working on StarCraft 2 is the team who worked on Warcraft 3, so this group of people are not unfamiliar with the idea of creating a very highly anticipated sequel because they already did it with Warcraft 3; they’re just focusing on making a great game.
A lot of these same guys worked on the original StarCraft so they know how to honour its legacy, but they also have a wish list of new ideas that we had many years ago which we evaluate and contemplate for inclusion in the sequel. For example, if you look at the original StarCraft its 2D, but a lot of it was created using 3D tools and then converted into 2D spreads, now we actually have a 3D engine which is really exciting for a lot of the guys.
Q: You mentioned earlier that SC2 has a branching storyline; can you do everything in the first run or is the idea to play through the campaign multiple times?
FP: You can play every mission if you chose the right path there is certain pathways that close certain doors and there are some missions that branch that are mutually exclusive but there are only a couple cases of that, and they’re very similar in play style. For example there’s a storyline for a character called Hansen where you will need make of choice of playing either mission ‘A’ or ‘B’; if you choose ‘A’ you exclude things in ‘B’.
Q: And is that decision based on a good versus evil morality choice?
FP: Yeah, kind of, but it’s always a grey area. If it’s obviously good or obviously evil then it’s not as fun as when everything is kind of grey and you have to look inside yourself to decide what you want to choose. Of course, you might want to go back and play it again to get the experience of the other perspective of the game too.
Rockstar’s LA Noire and its victims get up-close and personal in the latest round of casework screenshots. Continue reading
Next Monday 6th December, GAME is hosting the official UK launch of the new Blizzard Entertainment title, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm at a special opening at Sound nightclub, Leicester Square in central London. Continue reading
Konami has revealed the content for the latest free update for its PES 2011 title to debut next week. Continue reading | 1 Comment