Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (

2010

) ½

The original Starcraft [1998] and its expansion/sequel Starcraft: Brood War [1998] were more successful than anyone dared to hope. Sure, Blizzard had expected a hit after its previous, and well-loved RTS games: Warcraft: Orcs and Humans [1994], Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness [1995], and Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal [1996]. A Warcraft in space was hardly a risky venture, especially in an age where Warhammer 40K had proved that such a concept was a virtual license to print money. However, I don't think in even the most outlandish of their breast-milk-induced fever dreams did any of the leadership at Blizzard ever hope that people would be playing Starcraft religiously a decade hence, and that entire professional leagues had cropped up with huge tournaments and massive cash prizes. Sure, the zoomers in my audience might roll their eyes at this claim to fame, as in the current era even shovelware like Valorant [2020] can boast a tournament scene. However, in the 1990s, the very idea of a professional gamer was a concept fit only for mirth and ridicule.

So, this raises the question of how the hell do you follow up on the most successful RTS of all time? Indeed, how the hell do you make a sell a sequel to a game that people had spent years training and mastering the minutia? There's a reason why we never got a Chess 2, and if one were to be released it would cause an uproar among more than a few grand-masters. Indeed, Blizzard, seeing the unprecedented success of their game, made the wise decision and just sat on their hands, quietly updating their game so it would continue to work on more modern systems and quashing the occasional bug or exploit that cropped up. The Blizzard of the 1990s and early 2000s was smart enough to realize that since they had no idea why their game had become a genre-defining success, they better not screw around with it too much less they accidentally remove what made it so special.

However, despite the massive success of the original Starcraft [1998], it was hardly without its flaws. The pathing for your units was bad when the game releases in 1998, with units constantly getting stuck on obstacles, log-jamming narrow corridors, and wandering off halfway across the map for an alternative route. As RTS continued to evolve, this became a more and more noticeable problem. Indeed, after getting Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos [2002] when it launched, I found my old copy of Starcraft [1998] practically unplayable by comparison. There was also the issue of the game's interface, which limited you to controlling a maximum of 12 units at a time. Unlike the issue was pathing this was not even a common problem for RTS at the time of Starcraft's release. Total Annihilation [1997], for instance, let you select every unit on the map and give them all the same order. By the late aughts, it was becoming obvious that a face-lift was needed if the increasingly venerable Starcraft was going to stay relevant.

I give Blizzard a lot of shit, most of it deserved, but they did a fantastic job on the technical side of their Starcraft reboot. The obvious issues with pathing and unit selection size were cleaned up, but the sequel went much further and added a host of quality of life improvements. Worker units can now be designated to collect from a certain resource field as soon as they are created, while the optimal amount of workers for any resource is displayed, eliminating the need for guesswork. When you set a rallying point from the factory there is now a small visual cue showing you where your units will go. Units that can repair structures like the Terran SCVs now do so automatically if they don't have any other orders, rather than having to manually order each unit to do so. Indeed, after playing Starcraft 2 for any length of time, it can be hard to go back to the original. I wish that when Blizzard went and remastered Starcraft [1998] and Starcraft: Brood War [1998], they had added in the option to use modern unit selection, pathing, and other quality of life changes. Alas, if you want that you'll have to go for the fan-made remake of Starcraft [1998] in Starcraft 2's engine.

At the same time, the game's core mechanics remain almost unchanged, as the development team wisely hewed to the maxim “If it ain't broke don't fix it.” You still construct bases, gather resources with worker units, build troops from specific factories, and raid enemy defenses. The building order has been cleaned up considerably, and the total number of units has been increased for all factions. However, almost all the classics are back in some form or another, with minimal changes to how they behave and function on the battlefield. About the only significant change in this respect is that the game was sped up overall, which was probably a good idea as “fastest” had become the default setting on the previous game.

The core of Starcraft 2 is excellent, there can be no serious argument about that. I suspect that many a hard-core tournament player was overjoyed to switch over to the new system. However, for guys like me who had only seldom played a competitive game, and were instead mostly interested in the game's campaign mode, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was much more of a mixed bag. For one thing, the campaign here is singular, only showcasing one of the factions, The Terrans (well, ok you do get to play a couple of optional missions as the Protoss). Whereas, in the original Starcraft [1998] and the Starcraft: Brood War [1998] expansion, there were three campaigns one for each of the three playable factions. To be fair to Wings of Liberty here, the one campaign is a chunky one, easily as long in terms of raw playtime as the combined three campaigns from Starcraft [1998]. Still, it's a bit disappointing to only get one faction showcased in a campaign and had to wait for the two expansions to get a proper look at the Zerg and Protoss.

The campaign follows Jim Raynor, four years after the events of Starcraft: Brood War [1998] (though he looks like he's aged about ten). The UED expeditionary fleet has been eradicated, and Kerrigan has withdrawn the bulk of her swarm to Char, leaving Arcturus Mengsk, once again, in control of the entire sector. It seems that in the intervening years, Raynor has softened a bit in his attitude towards Kerrigan. He went from telling her "I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan. For Fenix and all the others who got caught between you and your mad quest for power... Rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you someday" at the end of Starcraft: Brood War [1998], to pining endlessly over her here. Indeed, when we're introduced to Raynor at the start of the game, he seems like a drunken shell of his former self, with no aspirations loftier than getting revenge on Mengsk. This is rather a depressing turn of events for a character who, in the original game, was always brave and gallant to a fault. Still, I suppose that if he's going to be our protagonist he's got to have an arch, even if that arch has to be clumsily grafted onto his existing story.

Unfortunately, the character retcon of our lead is only the start of Wings of Liberty's writing issues, as the game's main plot is completely FUBARed. The story has Jim Raynor teaming up with an old pal of his, Tychus Finely to hunt a set of Xel Naga artifacts. Unbeknownst to them, the one having them collect the artifacts is Valerian Mengsk, the son and heir of Emperor Aucturus Mengsk. Valerian plans to use the artifact to destroy Kerrigan, as the Xel Naga energy could un-infest her and render her vulnerable. He's apparently doing all this without the approval or knowledge of his father, as a way to demonstrate his independence and personal ability. However, Mengsk must know all about his son's plan because as it's revealed in the game's opening cinematic, Tychus is working for the elder Mengsk. Apparently, despite not knowing about the artifact or the plan to un-infest Kerrigan, he has released Tychus with orders to kill Kerrigan as soon as he gets the chance.

There are several issues here aside from the seeming impossibility of Mengsk's order to Tychus though. Most specifically is the question: Why is Jim Raynor, an outlaw rebel, at the center of both Valerian and Acturus' plans? I can understand Valerian's hesitancy to use his father's army to collect the artifact, as that would tip his hand too early. However, I fail to see why Raynor is a better choice for the operation than any of the numerous other mercenary forces floating around the sector (many of whom you can hire in-game). Why bring in somebody like Raynor who despises all parties involved and is likely to complicate everything? Indeed, if Acturus is going to go through all the trouble of releasing one of Raynor's old friends from prison, why not use said friend to murder Raynor? After all, it would be a hell of a lot easier for Tychus to kill Raynor than it would be for him to kill Kerrigan, and it's not like Mengsk is happy to have Raynor alive and kicking.

The plot of Wings of Liberty is a goddamn mess, that falls apart if you give it any serious thought. This is doubly damning because it's not a complicated story that the developers are trying to tell, and a quick re-write would be all that's needed to make it work. Raynor regrets his inability to rescue Kerrigan and blames himself for the billions she's massacred as the Queen of Blades. While in self-imposed exile on Mar-Sara he discovers a Dominion mining operation that is digging up a Xel Naga artifact, which he disrupts mostly as a way to disrupt Mengsk's plans. Upon stealing the artifact Raynor discovers its potential powers and learns about the other components he'll need to use it. Raynor's not the only one interested in the artifact though, both Mengsk and Kerrigan are racing to control the relic and use it for their own purposes. If you need to keep Tychus in the picture, then have him be initially sent to kill Raynor but stop once he realizes all the pieces in play, as he tries to play the three factions off each other for the best deal for himself. This rewrite is hardly anything brilliant, but it does at least have the advantage of being somewhat functional.

It would also have helped if Wings of Liberty made the prospect of saving Kerrigan a bit more morally dubious. Sure, we as the players love Kerrigan because she's the self-styled “Queen bitch of the universe” but in the world of Starcraft, she's a genocidal maniac who massacred untold millions. Any sane person would conclude that she's crazy and needs to be taken out. In such a context Jim's adolescent pining seems downright unhinged. I don't care how good a lay she was, it's pretty fucking obvious that she's too far gone. The writers of Wings of Liberty realized this, and they tried to fix it but wound up tilting the scales too far in the opposite direction. Now the universe is in danger of being destroyed by the rogue Xel Naga named Amon, and Kerrigan is the only thing that can stop him. Exchanging one obvious good for another is not how you create a moral dilemma, Blizzard.

The original Starcraft [1998] campaign suffered from monotonous mission objectives, nearly every level boiled down to assaulting this enemy base and either destroying a particular building, reaching a specific marker, or just killing everything outright. A bit more variety wouldn't have hurt the proceedings. Unfortunately, I fear that Blizzard has once again managed to learn all the wrong lessons, and as a result, the Wings of Liberty campaign has almost no missions where you're tasked to destroy the enemy base or wipe out all opposition. In each stage, you're either racing against the Zerg to tear down Protoss defenses, trying to harvest a set amount of resources while avoiding periodic lava flows, or playing a bare-bones MOBA while the AI fights each other. At first, this variety was a welcome change of pace, but as the campaign ground on I kept finding myself wondering: When do I get to just play a regular mission?

It doesn't help that a lot of these gimmicks seem tailor-made to annoy me and disrupt my normal play style. In the original Starcraft [1998] I loved nothing so much as building up a strong defensive perimeter, tanking enemy attacks while preparing a small but elite force to counterattack the enemy defenses. It's a slower, more relaxed approach to the game, which fits my slow and ponderous nature. However, in Wings of Liberty, this approach is outright impossible in most missions due to the gimmicks requiring you to constantly be rushing from one objective to the next. The worst offender is the mission where you're literally chased by a wave of fire, forcing you to periodically relocate your base. Combine this with the overall faster pace of Starcraft II, and I found myself regularly pining for the good old days when Starcraft didn't feel so rushed.

The other issue with the campaign is that it desperately wants to be Mass Effect [2007] in addition to Starcraft [1998], and so in-between missions you can putter around your ship talking to NPCs and crew mates. This worked in Mass Effect [2007] because that was an RPG where you would regularly take your squad-mates along on missions and see how they react to new developments as the story progressed. They were active parts of the narrative and the between missions talks back at base served as a chance for the game to flush out their characters. Since Starcraft is an RTS though, and except for one optional level at the end of the campaign, the only characters you see in the game are the protagonist Jim Raynor and deuteragonist Tychus Finely. As a result, I didn't care about the characters on the ship and had little interest in anything they said and did because they didn't feel like part of the game.

That said, quite a few good ideas are floating around in the campaign. The fact that you can use credits earned in various missions to buy permanent upgrades for your forces is a lovely addition to the formula. Likewise are the bonus objectives that give you research points that can be exchanged for still more upgrades. Still, these are not implemented satisfactorily, as you have no way of field testing the upgrades before you select them and all sales are final. Min-maxers are forced to save the game, make their purchases, start the next mission, play around with the upgrades, reload the old save, and repeat the process. Quibbles aside, it adds a lovely sense of progression to the game where your forces are continuously getting better equipped.

Still, though, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was one of the earliest warnings that something had happened to the Blizzard that we knew and loved in the good old days. Sure, it wasn't a bad game by any means, but it showed some glaring issues that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. Even the game's harshest critics have to admit that it's a brilliant refinement of the original Starcraft formula, one that would keep the RTS relevant for the foreseeable future. So what if the storyline is sloppy? Even if Blizzard has forgotten how to tell stories, it's not like they could forget how to make games, right? … Right? Such misplaced optimism would linger for another decade before Warcraft: Reforged [2020] showed us how wrong we were.