14 DAY TRIAL // Starcraft II is the biggest video-game release of the fall of 2009, which has been pushed into early 2010. And the extra time, while probably annoying those gamers who have been eagerly waiting for the sequel for the better part of the decade, has allowed the team to take an extra look at the title and see how recent RTS releases could bring something new to its experience.
Dustin Browder, who is the project lead from Blizzard working on Starcraft II, has told Gamasutra in a wide-ranging interview that, “I certainly found Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II to be interesting, and I learned a lot about RTSes by playing that game because they've done some interesting things.” He says that the team is always looking to other real-time strategy titles on the PC to see if they offer anything innovative for the genre, adding, “We try to look and analyze what is working for them in their game, or what is not working for them in their game. Is there anything about what they're doing that we can learn from, either what not to do or what to do?”
Players should not take this statement as evidence that Starcraft II will not have an identity of its own, but as a recognition of what other developers, like Relic, have managed to do well in their products. There's still a direct connection between how the original Starcraft is and how the sequel will challenge the player and all the fans of the first game will instantly recognize the follow-up as being a true successor.
Starcraft II has been broken up by Blizzard into three sections, each one of them focusing, in the single-player campaign, on one of the three main races that inhabit the universe. The developers are promising no more than a one-year space between the releases.