Written by KDraconis |
Thursday, 17 February 2011 23:38
News -
StarCraft II
A lengthy interview with Dustin Browder, StarCraft II's lead designer, has been posted on Games On Net. The questions are about a variety of subjects, some about the official Blizzard mod maps and others about Heart of the Swarm. A note of interest is that there will be separate ladders for Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, for those who purchase the expansion and those who do not.
games.on.net: Blizzard is no doubt ramping up development on Heart of the Swarm. Can you clarify for us how players of Wings of Liberty will be affected by the changes, especially in the multiplayer arena - if they don't purchase the next installment of the game, will they be ranked separately so as not to cause balance issues with any new units, for example?
Dustin: Woo! Yes, this is something we’ve dealt with a couple of times before, we had this problem in Brood War, we had this problem in Warcraft III and then Frozen Throne. Our current plan is to use the same solution we had for those products. There will be separate ladders, if you choose not to upgrade and continue forward with Heart of the Swarm that’s totally your option, your ladder will still work and you’ll be matched against people who are playing the same game that you’ll be playing. We’ll still be watching the balance for you in that area and making sure you’re having a balanced experience, we’ll still be rolling new maps to that part of the game, so it will continue forward like any other Blizzard product. Those of us who do come forward to Heart of the Swarm will have their own ladders, their own maps, their own ranking, all of that stuff. It’ll effectively split off - if you come with us, you’ll be playing the new stuff, if you don’t decide to come with us that’s totally cool, we’ll keep you with the old stuff and you won’t have to deal with new units or balance problems or anything like that.
games.on.net: Any comment on that leaked video which was supposedly the ending cinematic for Heart of the Swarm?
Dustin: (laughs) We don’t comment on rumours or speculation, so... no. Sorry.
games.on.net: Will any of the decisions made in Wings of Liberty campaign carry over to Heart of the Swarm? For example, choosing to support Nova over Tosh?
Dustin: This is a really interesting question! I gotta tell you, we have picked canon, ultimately, for the game. So if you look at the DVD that comes with the game it tells you which one we’ve picked as the canon, but we are still talking about this and I don’t honestly know what will end up happening. There’s a lot of enthusiasm on the team for being able to access your save file and to give you access to the choices you made, to have an effect on some things that go on in the universe. Obviously for Heart of the Swarm and Sarah Kerrigan - a lot of these characters, she doesn’t have a lot of interaction with, like there’s not a lot of enthusiasm for Kerrigan to deal with somebody so low-down in the totem-pole of the StarCraft universe as a Doctor Hansen or a Gabriel Tosh.
These guys are important to Raynor, but Kerrigan battles on a whole other level of the StarCraft universe. On a good day Raynor wants to scare Arcturus Mengsk, that’s a good day - on a good day for Kerrigan she’s destroying whole empires. She is the queen goddess of the Zerg, she’s really battling in many ways against empires and gods and is not as worried about the fate of individual humans. But we are talking about it, I think it’ll be totally fine - I’m sorry, I can’t promise you one way or the other but we are definitely still looking at it going forward.
The interview covers some interesting subjects and the extensive answers are interesting to read.
Click here for the full interview.
Source:
Games.on.net - Dustin Browder on StarCraft II
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