My experience with real-time strategy games is largely limited to the Command & Conquer series — and limited further still to my encounters with those through this blog. Finally taking on another big name in the genre, my first impression was of just how much alike Starcraft II is. Not just in the approach and controls, the clicking and dragging and the building and repairing of bases, but in the aesthetics: the glowing crystals to mine, a clean and slick grey-and-primary-colour future beset by decay.
Almost as soon as that first impression, the key difference emerged. 2007’s Command & Conquer 3 showed EA leaning on nostalgia for a mid-’90s world of camp live action monologues, retrenching into the series’s past. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has some monologues but Blizzard take the opposite approach, going for a very different style of narrative and modernising its delivery in every way they can.
That means cutscenes which are artfully made computer-generated conversations, and which may be over-the-top but never with the kind of knowing wink that might risk their sincerity. The humour is all situated firmly within the story, a difference may be in part a question of American versus British origins. It also means missions which are even more artfully full of moving parts guiding a narrative thread while feeling organic.
Resources and forces are scattered around ready to rescue and integrate. Take on an evacuation mission and enemy forces will steadily escalate in line with how close you are to the finish, just right to set up the narrative of being overwhelmed but escaping. Rival enemy forces take each other on to a carefully considered timetable. A host of achievements and sub-achievements guide you through the possible routes through each mission. Those in turn tie into a whole online ecosystem set up for competition and for future instalments and running right through to today. I bought a physical copy of StarCraft II but couldn’t get it to work, and turned to the online copy through Blizzard’s Battle.net. Luckily it was free, so worked with my policy of not giving Blizzard money.
The story Wings of Liberty tells is of rebellion against an empire, led by one man, full of space Western trappings, bluegrass and whiskey. It’s equally full of familiar archetypes and casual sexism, muscle-bound men, women as doctors and dancers not fighters, announcements that it’s time to man up. I didn’t find myself liking what they put together, but even still there was a pull to getting through and seeing how things panned out. Without even going that deep into a game made to get extraordinarily deep, I could certainly see how well crafted it was, for better or worse.
Top of the charts for week ending 31 July 2010:
