Games
Let’s be honest here, what are we expecting from this title, at this point, on all fronts?
We’re talking about the final chapter in what arguably remains one of the biggest, if not the biggest RTS franchises in the gaming world. StarCraft had remained at the helm with competitive RTS gaming for some time, before the advent of other titles that toppled it from its throne. SC II: Wings of Liberty was to breathe new life into this already big-budget title. Oh! And it did just that; sales were off the roof, praiseworthy missions and online multiplayer competitive play, it seemed to have it all. Still conservative in design, people thought it was time for Blizzard to try something more dynamic, but did not really find anything beyond slight adjustments and tweaks here and there. The plot was praised, the missions and level design as well, with everyone now waiting for the next part of the saga – Heart of the Swarm. Still praised, still noteworthy, but suddenly, you could tell that everyone looked a little more pinched than before. You wanted to like this and you’d been waiting for decades to. But somehow, Blizzard had managed to undo all that they’d promised by way of a storyline, even with online play.
This now brings us to Legacy of the Void, or actually, what we see from Whispers of Oblivion, which can be accessed immediately if you pre-order the game, giving you the beta for prologue missions. Now we know that this might not be a fair comparison to make, but it is giving us a peek into what the expansion is supposed to be like, when it comes out later this year. If this is anything to go by, we’re a little worried. Wings of Liberty had some excellent campaigns, your choices were relevant, the plot progression was polished, cutscenes everywhere; it was clear that all stops were pulled then. Sometimes you were hunkered down in a bunker, overwhelmed by the Zerg only to realize that there were Terran troops that could be rescued, should you have a look around the map in between waves, and that would eventually help you hold the Zerg back. Or the perilous escort of a convoy that required you to constantly fend off the enemy at night, making it impossible to move, unless you did so in daylight. There were good things present there; memorable, every last one of them.
But sadly, that does not seem to be the case with Whisper of Oblivion. It all seems a bit insipid, something we might not even enjoy if this was an introduction to what RTS was many, many years back. It’s not like the twists aren’t there, so we’re not sure why they’ve been designed to fall flat on their face anyway. You have no vespene gas, you’re really managing your resources so that you barely scrape by and have at least some Protoss elite…but oh, there you have Vespene vents, and that means an unlimited supply of it, so time to build an impossible-to-stop army. It just didn’t work.
Then there’s the plot itself. The fact that absolutely nothing has changed after the first two parts; the third making even lesser sense by shifting attention to some entity that has been in the overarching plot, just seems reconned at best, and something nobody really seems to care about at this point. This was not how we wished to see Zeratul return. Amon has not been one of our primary concerns, ever. Why is Jim Raynor still scuttling about with a handful of men, and why is Kerrigan back to being who she was, exactly who she was with a booster pack of vengeance. Whatever was done in Wings of Liberty has been undone completely by the second expansion’s end, and you’re left wondering, what about this is different from SC: Brood War?
The writing, the plot, and the missions aside (oh yeah, what’s left you ask?), there’s still the multiplayer, and this is something that they’ve worked on well. Yes, worked on well, as in we’re looking at a good job. I would think that the competitive scene might outlast the resentment towards how the storyline goes. You have great defensive and offensive plays, and with units like Zerg Lurker and the Protoss disruptor, you have geographic control in fights, allowing you to push enemies to unfavourable vantage points, the style and operation of the Terrans has received considerable tuning making it more exciting than it has ever been thus far, and they are finally taking liberties with design and giving us new units which alter gameplay significantly, like the Swarm Host. So where it really matters, Blizzard is still coming through it would seem. We think, we’ll still have to reserve judgement, after all that, simply because we don’t want it to be anything but great.
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