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Meet the Developers Turning StarCraft Units Into Heroes of the Storm
StarCraft encourages you to build dozens of siege tanks or firebats. In Heroes of the Storm, these units become legends in their own right.
StarCraft recently turned 20 years old. It’s a game old enough to vote, and it’s stuck around in popular culture because of two things. First, it’s arguably one of the best and longest lasting esports titles ever — the game’s competitive play has gone a long way in bringing esports to the massive global platform it enjoys today. Secondly, the game’s art style is classic, with each individual unit boasting their own iconic personality. Classic characters like the Firebat, Siege Tank, Zergling or Goliath have stuck with players for two decades, which is no easy feat.
Heroes of the Storm, the MOBA based around the all-stars of Blizzard canon, is in a unique position to celebrate these units by uplifting them and turning them into standalone heroes. No longer do characters like Blaze, Morales or Hammer have to be a humble member of an army that runs dozens strong; they are now a hero in their own right. Red Bull Esports had the opportunity to talk to Lana Bachynski, Animator and Hero Designer Jade Martin about the StarCraft cast of Heroes, and how one unit from the armies of StarCraft can become a hero in their own right.
From the Koprulu Sector to the Nexus
StarCraft offered a host of units for players to build in an attempt to annihilate their foes, and the Brood War expansion added even more great characters. (It’s easy to forget the Medic wasn’t originally a Terran unit, and everyone remembers the terror of Lurkers ripping through your army.) Some of those units are represented by unique characters in the game. Nova, a hero in the story, represents the Ghost fantasy; Zeratul represents the fantasy of the Dark Templar. But what about units like the Siege Tank, the Firebat, or the Medic? These units, amassed by the dozens, offer powerful gameplay fantasies and unique hooks for players. For Blizzard, that question presented a fascinating opportunity.
The end result is uplifted heroes. Sergeant Bama “the Hammer” Kowalski, Blaze the Firebat, and Lieutenant Rosa Morales all tap into the core gameplay mechanic of classic StarCraft heroes. Jade Martin uses Blaze as an example. “I think a Firebat is one of those nostalgic units,” he laughed. “Anyone need a light?” While he acknowledges that he can’t do the voice, any StarCraft player who went Terran will recognize the line immediately.
“We look for little things that people remember from playing these games. The Firebat, Blaze, was one of the more iconic faces and units from StarCraft. We knew we’d love to bring him over. With Morales, a medic is very cool, with a unique way of healing that we didn’t have in the game at the time.” The Medic’s iconic exosuit with enormous healing prongs created a unique silhouette, and the game was short a single-target channeling hero. Bringing the Medic into the game as Morales just made sense.
If you need a light, Blaze has you covered — probably too much
© Blizzard Entertainment
Finding the gameplay hook
Each hero in Heroes of the Storm needs to have something that draws players in and makes their gameplay value immediately apparent. Valeera is the typical fantasy rogue, based around feinting, stabbing and stealthing. Sonya allows players to be the barbarian they’ve always wanted to be, unleashing rage on the battlefield with heavy, reckless attacks. When it comes to capturing the je ne sais quoi of a StarCraft unit, the developers have less to work with; they’re extremely specialized units. That’s where the magic happens — how do you turn a unit into a full-fledged hero?
“In the case of someone like our Siege Tank, Hammer, that came from a place of ‘when I played Terran growing up, that was my dream team comp!’” Bachynski said. Players who remembered the original RTS will definitely remember the terror of hearing a Siege Tank lock into place, or the satisfaction of watching the cannons blasting and wiping away a wave of Zerg with each wave of artillery.
Martin agrees, returning to the example of Blaze. “From a design standpoint, for me it’s very important when we looked at the Firebat unit, what did he do in StarCraft? Well, he shot fire and he had the ability to use stimpacks. From a design standpoint, we wanted to incorporate that as much as possible.”
Finding that initial hook is easy, but developing it into a full-fledged hero is tough. How do you take a unit with one strong ability, and turn it into a full fledged hero of the Storm? With each of these heroes, both Martin and Bachynski repeatedly stressed that they couldn’t feel like one unit in a massive army; they had to feel like a standalone hero.
The developers know that a siege tank or firebat is more than just a unit; they’re a representative of many of their players’ childhood, or a favorite character from their first competitive game. “As we design these heroes, its important to us that we do recapture your childhood,” Martin said. “With fans of StarCraft, Diablo, WarCraft, we want to do this hero justice and we want you to feel like you’re playing the hero you grew up with and love ... but we want you to feel like you have a unique hero in the Nexus as well.”
There’s just one problem, as Bachynski noted: “If we make it too niche and we hit a fantasy too hard, we don’t want someone to feel like they’re playing an inside joke they weren’t a part of.”
Sgt. Hammer captures the siege tank experience and adds some sass
© Blizzard Entertainment
Developing a hero
From character art to writing to design to animation, an entire team of developers comes together to bring a hero to life. When they’re working on a StarCraft unit, they need to ask themselves how they can make that unit fit in (and be equally appealing) next to a High King of the Alliance, a Diablo Demon Hunter or an Overwatch cyber ninja. As Bachynski puts it: “We could bring the siege tank in straight up, but how do we make it unique to the Nexus?”
With Hammer, the most interesting story they could tell about the Siege Tank was that of Bama Kowalski, a rough and tumble Southern gal who takes pride in her tank and her rank. While the team admitted that ideally, they would like to port every StarCraft unit in, some will be trickier than others — either in capturing that gameplay hook or expanding it into a full-fledged character. That being said, Bachynski acknowledges the Nexus is a weird place where a lot can happen. She mysteriously adds, “Who knows how the Nexus affects these heroes once they’re there?"
Having a large and passionate team also ensures that the developers challenge each other to make the hero the best and most true to the original inspiration they can be. “I think we try our best and there’s a lot we give up internally,” Martin said. “If a hero’s not hitting that fantasy, no one here is shy to let you know you’re missing the mark. So overall, I think we do a really good job of bringing these heroes in to match their vehicle.”
One of the most common parts of a Hero that needs to be reiterated and perfected are the Heroic abilities. The challenge is bringing something that sounds super cool on paper into the game, and having it work. Blaze’s original Combustion Heroic was like a fire-based version of the Overwatch ultimate Death Blossom, shooting fire out from his arms in a T-Pose that the player controlled with their mouse. It “felt really bad,” and it had to go back to the workshop.
On the other hand, sometimes the team reaching for the stars pays off big time. For instance, one of the new hero Fenix’s Heroics. “Planet Cracker sounded crazy on paper, but it’s perfectly cranked up to 11. It’s the edge of extreme,” Bachynski said. Bringing a hero right to the brink of too much without pushing is easier said than done, but the end result is that the player feels like they’re controlling a StarCraft legend — even if that hero originated from a humble unit with one major attack.
Go big or go home
© Blizzard Entertainment
Source material
Certain heroes require more imagination than others when it comes to uplifting them from a single unit into a Hero of the Storm. “Probius, from the Protoss side, is a cute little probe, but we really had to imagine what a probe can do beyond collecting minerals.” Meanwhile, the Terran characters all need to feel like the same faction while standing a part. Raynor is rough and tumble, Tychus is super aggressive, and the Medic Morales is noble, well put together and has a vested interest in helping her allies.
The writing team also goes above and beyond to bring the heroes to life with in-game interactions. Martin credits the writing team for making sure each hero fits in with their faction: “They’re so into the lore, they just know all these little things and all these fun little interactions each hero can have. When we’re designing a hero and we know who that hero will be, they start that writing process early on and find funny little interactions, and they come and ask us about that. It allows them to inject a whole bunch of personality into these heroes.”
The team experimented with Terran characters, for instance, getting in-game bonuses for playing together, but it quickly became oppressive and warped the game around those interactions. (Imagine, briefly, a Raynor who becomes more powerful if he plays with Morales and what that could do to picks and bans.) If Terrans don’t buff each other in combat, they can at least share a ton of in-universe dialogue in the universe that reminds players of their shared origins.
Of course, it helps that the writers also double as fans. Bachynski lit up as she explained how the team coordinates over a hero’s interactions and in-game lines: “There are a lot of people on these teams who were around working on the original StarCraft across the teams. If there are questions, ‘would this person say this?’ ‘Hell, yeah, they would say this!’” Laughing, she explained how the writers can run into the art pit and chime in, getting amped up with ideas. The units that the team are bringing to life are so iconic, so widely understood, that everyone gets involved and excited.
Heroes of the Storm is an intrinsically ridiculous game in some ways; there are few competitive experiences where you get to play an abomination lumbering around in a summer-ready bikini. The game is silly, but its salvaged by the absolute sincerity and earnestness of the design behind your heroes.
This game is a love letter to the fans who enjoyed Blizzard games growing up, and not every hero needs to be the named character who got the spotlight in cinematics. Sometimes, all a gamer needs is just a brave little probe or a sassy siege tank operator or a pyromaniac Firebat to step up and remind them why they started playing in the first place.
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