In the second half of the nineties, the real-time strategy (RTS) genre was not just popular — these games were everywhere. Strategies constantly appeared both here and there, and their victorious game procession from the company Blizzard Entertainment. This studio has achieved fame and respect from gamers thanks, first of all, to its three titles: WarCraft: Orcs & Humans (1994), WarCraft 2: Tides of Darkness (1995) and the action-RPG called Diablo on the last day of 1996. These products have earned Blizzard the reputation of a company that produces games of the highest quality and with a plot no worse than in the movies. And at the same time playing all this is interesting, affordable and never annoying.
In StarCraft, their third real-time strategy game, Blizzard left the fantasy world of the breakthrough WarCraft franchise and turned their gaze into the distant future. The players were offered a fantastic setting, where humans and strange alien races fought each other in high-tech warfare, which was presented in an isometric form. The studio began its own journey; the look of the game and how it felt, changed dramatically between the release of WarCraft 2 and the launch of StarCraft, which occurred in 1998. In the same way, the plot, characters, equipment and other combat units controlled by the player have changed. We present to you the history of this evolution… and the success that followed it.
Another interesting point in the design of the StarCraft universe and the parties to the conflict existing in it is the fact that individual units became the starting point for creating entire races. The Terran is an ordinary infantryman, clad in bright blue armor and ready to shoot from his machine gun in everything that moves. The main inspiration of the zerg was the organic hydralisk — thin, elegant, but deadly. As for the cosmic priests in the form of super-intelligent protoss, here the first was a four-legged robot, which then began to be called a dragoon — it hit opponents at great distance with blue plasma balls.
In many ways, StarCraft’s twenty-year history can be divided into two halves. The first is a rich sci-fi universe, where players are waiting for an epic story with a lot of unexpected plot twists. The second is the multiplayer component. This is a deep and demanding player skill game in which there is a place for a lot of action and where you need to think quickly and make decisions quickly. And, more importantly, this is a gaming experience where the level of skill can grow almost indefinitely.
Even before the anniversary of the game, Blizzard released StarCraft’s remaster, where they changed the visual design and animation, but left the game experience that this game offers unchanged. The team was thinking about somehow improving and refining the game mechanics, relying on the knowledge that was acquired during the work on StarCraft 2, but the final decision — not to change what many consider to be classics — made even more appreciate the design of the original game .
