Monthly Archives: August 2009

We went to California last month and played some of StarCraft II’s single-player Campaign. It was “cool”. Below is all the news, impressions and all the rest of it from the event, which, quite frankly, was one of the best things ever.

• Hands-on: StarCraft II single-player Campaign
• Interview – VG247 Vs Blizzard’s Rob Pardo
• StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty gets new logo
• StarCraft II has planned trial versions, says Blizzard
• Pardo: A Blizzard console game could “dominate”
• Blizzard’s Pardo: LAN will be a “great footnote in our history”
• Blizzard game add-on take-up “well above” 50%, says Pardo
• Blizzard’s Pardo: Natal may struggle with “spatial recognition”
• StarCraft II: “There is no co-op campaign”
• StarCraft II has online verification, but Battle.net connection not necessary for single-play
• StarCraft II: First Campaign screens and movies released

“Two hikers died here yesterday.”

“No fucking way.”

“F’real. I’m getting more water.”

It’s roasting. A hundred plus in the LA canyons and California’s on heat alert. We’re at Blizzard’s offices in Irvine and anything not black is blasted white. Death aside, however, we’re less concerned with the giddy temperature than the matter in hand: StarCraft II’s single-player.

In truth, none of us have any real idea of what to expect. The game’s Campaign has never been detailed beyond vague Blue Poster mentions. The solo game can’t just be “a story,” right? You expect more from Blizzard. You expect giant leaps, real advancement. We’re dumb in the heat.

The clue stands in the form of an icon.

As is well known, a large orc wolfrider statue dominates the outer space of Blizzard’s offices. Euro journos swap positions for photos against it, the humanoid smartly dressed by the drill blue sky. The last time writers were invited to the complex, fences ringed the statue’s base as the publisher was having a metal compass inserted into the ground around it. On it are forged Blizzard’s general ethics.

The barriers are gone now. Some of the motifs are funny (“Embrace your inner geek”) and some are austere (“Lead responsibly”). One is a giveaway.

The northern point, directly facing the office’s blank, toothy face, is stamped with the words, “Gameplay first”.

Should have known.

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It’s not every day you get flown to Blizzard’s HQ in Irvine, CA, to see StarCraft II. And it’s not every day you’re given a chance to grill Rob Pardo, the firm’s executive VP of game design, on the most anticipated strategy sequel of all time, Blizzard’s development strategy, the new Battle.net, Natal, and an embarrassing amount more.

July 21 wasn’t “every day,” evidently.

Hit the link.

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Blizzard’s revealed a new logo for the first part of StarCraft II, as you can see heading this story.

Wings of Liberty is the strategy sequel’s Terran campaign, and is now slated for a 2010 release.

The initial product will be followed by the Zerg campaign in Heart of the Swarm and a Protoss story in Legacy of the Void.

Pretty, innit?

The logo was released as part of an asset drop for StarCraft II’s single-player component, which we got to play at Blizzard’s HQ in California last month.

Impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

Blizzard will release “trial versions” of StarCraft II, Blizzard’s confirmed, although you’ll have to wait until the game itself’s shipped to be able to try before you buy.

“We’ve got lots of different SKUs planned,” said lead game designer Dustin Browder, speaking at Blizzard’s HQ on a recent press trip.

“I don’t even know what they all are right now, but there are trial versions planned, and all kinds of stuff.”

Added design boss Rob Pardo: “We’ll do those after release, though. We always do those after release. ”

The sequel’s planned for a 2010 launch.

We got to play StarCraft II’s single-player component in California last month. Impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

Blizzard design boss Rob Pardo has said that should the company ever decide to enter the console space, he’d be looking at the same sort of leadership Blizzard games have achieved on PC.

” If we wanted to make a good console game, I’d hope that we could dominate there too,” he said, speaking at Blizzard’s HQ in California last month.

Don’t hold your breath though, console fans.

“No, not today,” Pardo said when asked if Blizzard has plans to create console games.

“It’s something that we always think about, because we’re all big console gamers.

“I play tons of console games, and I would love to make a console game, but we really try to come up with games that we really want to make, and then try to find out if it makes any sense to put them on console versus PC.”

And it clearly doesn’t.

Pardo was talking at a StarCraft II single-player event. Impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

LAN in future Blizzard games? Really not. Blizzard boss Rob Pardo’s given a very solid indication that offline networking for the hoi polloi in the firm’s games is no more.

“I think LAN will be a great footnote in our history, just like DOS was,” said the exec, speaking at a StarCraft II single-player press event in California last month.

News that StarCraft II wouldn’t support LAN play resulted in internet outcry in June. More than 100,000 have now signed a petition to get the feature reinstated.

“It was a very tough decision, and I’d say we’d been talking about it back and forth for well over a year before we finally decided that this is more the direction for the future for us, and actually for the industry,” said Pardo.

Pardo was talking at a StarCraft II single-player event. Impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

“Well over” half of World of Warcraft, StarCraft and Warcraft III players buy add-ons for the games, Blizzard design boss Rob Pardo has told VG247.

“I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I know that back when you look at Brood War and Frozen Throne, we had well above 50 percent of people that bought the original bought the add-on,” he said, talking as a StarCraft II single-player press day in California last month.

“With WoW, because of the subscription model and the nature of the game, it’s way beyond that.”

Pardo was talking on the subject of expansion sales as StarCraft II will be released in three parts, the first of which, Wings of Liberty, hits next year.

Blizzard design boss Rob Pardo’s claimed Microsoft motion-sensing unit Project Natal might not be the wonder-box the 360-maker would have us believe.

“I’ve got to play with Natal a little bit, and it seems like the difficulty with it is still spatial recognition with moving your hands and doing things,” said the exec, speaking at a StarCraft II single-player event in California last month.

Pardo went on to say that recent ideas for Natal-based strategy games lofted by Ubisoft’s Michael de Plater may not be possible thanks to the system’s “imprecise” nature.

“You’d actually still need an interface that you could do that with, and Natal is still going to be pretty imprecise in the way Wii is today,” he said.

“I mean, I could see the future one day [allowing it], but I don’t know if Natal’s it. Maybe it’s a step towards it.”

It’s worth noting this is the first time Pardo had ever thought about Natal in this sense before.

“I’ve thought about it for all of five seconds right now, so there could be some genius there that I don’t immediately see,” he added.

Natal’s expected to release in late 2010.

Content from the event: impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

Those of you holding out for a co-op element to StarCraft II can start drowning yourselves now: there isn’t one.

“There is no co-op campaign,” lead game designer Dustin Browder told VG247 at Blizzard’s HQ in California last month.

There is, however, an enormous single-player experience in the sequel, which we got to play in Irvine. Impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

The game’s out in 2010.

StarCraft II will require both an online verification check and a Battle.net account to play, Blizzard’s confirmed to VG247.

“You need to connect once to install the game,” said lead game designer Dustin Browder, speaking at Blizzard’s HQ on a recent press trip.

Offline single-play is allowed, however.

“After that you don’t need to be connected,” added the developer.

Being connected to Battle.net is obviously the preferred way of playing the game.

“If you want access to your Achievements, and your Friends List, and all the good stuff that goes with it, you need to be connected,” said Browder.

“But if you don’t care about that stuff, then you’re free to play offline.”

StarCraft II will release next year.

We got to play StarCraft II’s single-player component in California last month. Impressions here, Rob Pardo interview here, Campaign screens here.

Blizzard’s released the first shots of the StarCraft II single-player Campaign, as you can see after the break.

There’s a story movie there as well. We were also given an amazing montage of in-game single-play under embargo, but we honestly can’t encode it. We’ll add it as soon as we find an embeddable version.

We were lucky enough to get the chance to play everything you can see in these screens in California last month. Read all about that here.

StarCraft II first section, Wings of Liberty, releases next year.

Update: That in-game movie’s on IncGamers.

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Eidos head honcho Ian Livingstone has confirmed to PWGM that Batman: Arkham Asylum dev, Rocksteady Studios, aren’t developing Hitman 5.

“This is the first I’ve heard about it. Hitman always has been and always will be IO Interactive’s baby, which it still continues to be so,” said Livingstone.

“Rocksteady are not involved with the development of Hitman 5.”

Last Thursday, a rumour came out that the studio were working on a sequel after it appeared in a CV for an actor who apparently did mo-cap for the game.

Thanks, Anders.

A brand new scan of Final Fantasy XIII has appeared over the weekend from Japanese gaming magazine, V-Jump.

In it, it shows a character known as Yaag Rosch. You may remember him as the tall figure with silver hair – and sort of similar to Sephiroth in a way – from the E3 trailer. It’s revealed that he is gonna be a protagonist for the game.

Also confirmed is that main character Lightning’s summon for the game, Odin, can transform into a horse. It’s in a similar vain to what Shiva can do for Snow.

We’ve seen it all now.

Out this winter for Playstation 3 in Japan. PS3 and Xbox 360 in the spring for everywhere else.

Thanks, PSLS and nousemark.

TUI Studios, a studio which deals in animation, has put live ten storyboards of animation from Team Bondi’s LA Noire. That’s the 50s styled GTA game that, in case you have forgotten, is due to be published by Rockstar.

Go check them out through the link. They’re in “Storyboards”, forth down from the left.

It’s honestly been too long since we’ve heard a peep on the game: the debut trailer was released only three years ago. But hopefully, we should hear something on it soon after this.

Thanks, nousemerk.

Loads of stuff happened this week with MMOs. Bethesda laughed off an Elder Scrolls MMO, APB started the Beta application process, Aion released pretty trailers, Star Wars will be playable at GamesCom and all other sorts of interesting things happened.

What we didn’t tell you about was that Lord of the Rings Online got some new jewelry and bounty quests in Esteldin, Funcom will announce Conan stuff at PAX, and there were some rumored leaks on the upcoming WoW expansion posted all over God’s green earth.

For all of this and more, read on past the break.

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Over 100,000 people have now signed a petition to get Blizzard to include LAN support in StarCraft II.

The company confirmed in June that offline network play wouldn’t make the sequel’s final cut.

StarCraft II was recently pushed back into 2010.

Another day, another historical figure on the Lionhead website. Today it’s Aristotle with the quote, “He who is to be a good ruler, must have first been ruled.”

There’s a number three. Microsoft’s GamesCom press conference takes place on Wednesday morning, 10.00am local time.

In case you’ve missed the rest so far this week, we’ve had Lincoln, Robespierre and Che Guevara. All very intelligent.

Not long now.

Tales of Monkey Island: Episode 2 – Siege of Spinner Cay comes out August 20.

Telltale has released a few new screens for it, and you can find ‘em over on GoNintendo.

Hooray. Only a few more days away!

EA has announced that Randy Couture has signed on to appear in EA Sports’ MMA alongside Fedor Emelianenko, Jay “The Thoroughbred” Hieron an others.

“I have been a part of MMA for over 10 years and I am excited about the global visibility that a game like EA SPORTS MMA will bring to the sport,” said Randy Couture. “Like my fighting career, I look forward to taking on all comers in EA SPORTS MMA.”

Randy Couture, a 6’1”, 220 pound heavyweight, who currently holds a 16-9 record and is a five-time MMA champion

Big guy, there.

No date yet for the PS3 and Xbox 360 sports fighter.

Full press release through the jump.

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