Remember when Blizzard Entertainment used to make technique video games? Even after the corporate turned a lot of its consideration in direction of different genres — conquering the planet with World of Warcraft — StarCraft 2 arrived in 2010 to vital and participant acclaim. But 15 years later, the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty launch nonetheless feels just like the final huge hurrah of the real-time technique (RTS) style as an entire.
That’s to not say the style is extinct. Sure, most main publishers have deserted it in favor of multiplayer on-line battle enviornment (MOBA) releases like League of Legends or DOTA 2 — which mockingly owe their births to Blizzard’s 2002 masterpiece Warcraft 3 — however smaller studios and corporations have stepped as much as fill the void. We have numerous indie groups attempting to duplicate the magic of the golden period of RTS video games, and the just lately introduced Dawn of War 4 appears to be like prefer it could be one to observe.
The exception to ‘nobody in the AAA space is still working on RTS projects’ might be Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios; Age of Empires — one of many undisputed greats of the style — continues to be alive and usually getting new entries, expansions, and smaller content material packs. With Activision-Blizzard and every thing below that dome now absolutely absorbed by Xbox, ought to we count on StarCraft 3 at any level sooner or later? It’s difficult. We do not count on the powers that be to Zerg-rush into such a venture, however hope is not utterly misplaced.
An overdue sequel with a twist
The original StarCraft and its Brood War expansion were released in the ancient year of 1998. Blizzard would later move on to Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and — of course — World of Warcraft and its expansions. By the mid-2000s, fans had lost almost all hope of ever seeing a second StarCraft game, but they were shocked on May 19, 2007, by the surprise announcement of a full-blown sequel that had really been in improvement since 2003.
The larger shock was that Blizzard’s plans for the sequel prolonged past a single story marketing campaign. In June 2008, it was revealed that two expansions — Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void — would proceed the marketing campaign of Wings of Liberty, the base-game StarCraft 2 launch. Did this imply Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan’s return can be a brief affair by the point it launched in 2010? Quite the alternative, as Wings of Liberty was an enormous sci-fi epic that enormously expanded the Terran-Zerg-Protoss battle, expertly deploying a number of plot twists to maintain issues attention-grabbing into the latter two installments.
Evolution was key to survival
StarCraft is all about three core factions. Humanity is represented by the Terran Dominion, but they’re joined by two unique alien races: the insectoid Zerg and the psionically-charged Protoss. Each faction has a deep well of lore and, crucially, a distinct playstyle on the battlefield. It’s entirely possible to be terrible with one faction but excel as one of the others.
Following critical acclaim in 2010, which also extended to the other two entries, StarCraft 2 evolved over the years by primarily targeting the hardcore crowd, while also expanding its mode selection to entice new players. Follow-up releases Heart of the Swarm (2013) and Legacy of the Void (2015) weren’t just new massive story campaigns and a selection of extra maps and units; they substantially reshaped the systems and mechanics as the competitive multiplayer community around it grew older.
Substantial support continued until 2017, when StarCraft 2 fully embraced a free-to-play model for its base multiplayer and co-op modes, as well as the Wings of Liberty chapter of the campaign. With hundreds of millions in combined franchise revenue at that time, the transfer made sense to maintain the three-part sequel alive for as a lot time as doable.
StarCraft 3: Is there a chance?
Fast-forward to 2025, and we’re still playing StarCraft 2 for two key reasons: First, well, it’s arguably the best RTS ever made. Second, it’s a great space opera well worth revisiting every few years if you’re more of a solo player. Few studios, no matter the genre, have achieved such heights of science fiction storytelling in video games. Sure, it’s still a Blizzard game, so the story is a bit convoluted and world-salad-y at times, but it’s rare to see this level of care put into the worldbuilding and characters, especially in an RTS. SC2 is often remembered as the last game in which Blizzard was firing on all cylinders, and even after all these years, it’s easy to see why.
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty’s production budget was reported to be below $100 million (however nonetheless fairly costly) in 2010, not considering the cash that later went into ending the expansions, in addition to the years of post-launch assist for every entry. Even again within the day, it was the kind of RTS behemoth that solely Blizzard may afford to make with such manufacturing values, so is it life like to count on a follow-up on that scale within the close to future, with the style barely respiratory?
Considering the cost-cutting measures occurring throughout the video games trade as I write this and the dire state of affairs at Xbox specifically, I would not maintain my breath… for now. As acknowledged earlier than, Age of Empires is alive and kicking, and StarCraft is arguably the larger IP regardless of solely having two video games, so it is exhausting to think about Xbox by no means ever going again to this iconic RTS collection. Don’t be stunned if the next StarCraft project leaves behind its strategy roots, although.
StarCraft 2 is offered on PC (Windows & macOS). The aggressive and co-op multiplayer modes, in addition to the primary single-player marketing campaign, are free-to-play. The entire assortment is included with Game Pass subscriptions.