Incgamers.com has done a comprehensive interview Starcraft 2 developers Dustin Browder (Lead Designer), along with Chris Sigaty (Lead Producer) and Samwise Didier (Art Director) regarding the game. Check out the full interview here: Incgamers.com

What other new units has come up since we last saw StarCraft II?
There are a number of changes, besides Zerg, it is all in change, really. For example the Protoss Nullifier with its anti-gravity ability that will lift buildings, so you can run under it and attack a base. We are still a bit unsure on this ability in the game, like animations and balance, but many changes like this are on the table all the time.

The Mothership seems like an extremely powerful unit, are there any counters to it?
Sure! It has been changed significantly since BlizzCon. You can use Corruptors, Hydras, Vikings or Phoenixes, depending on your race. It is a unit that you only should build if you have air superiority, as it can relatively easily be defeated if you can’t defend it. It is not a unit you make unless you have air superiority as it will be run over. You wouldn’t choose to make a Mothership without backup.

How has the building for Drones changed with the Queen?
Drones still mutate from larvae and into buildings, but the Queen takes care of the base defence. A queen can rapidly be crushed, if you are not careful, as it isn’t a true “super unit”.

Are there any changes to Creep as such?
Creep has the same functionality as before, besides the new graphics, and how it spreads.
[Editor's note: It now spreads down ramps as well, even if you can't build there.]

Original StarCraft was rather heavy on the “micro management”, are you planning to make StarCraft II less intimidating for new players?
We want a balance between “micro & macro”, and don’t want to go too far in either direction. For one thing, it is easier to handle Zerglings now, with 150 units selection limit, rally points and selecting multiple buildings for making units. It is still a challenge, and something we keep refining over and over. Nothing is set in stone.

How does the resource mechanics work? What does the yellow crystals do?
These are high yield resources, that gives the double minerals per delivery. The point behind this feature is to make the games more interesting in terms of terrain and line of sight. Having these points of interest creates stronger friction and battle over the areas.

The game also has pathing blocks that can be destroyed, like large stone slabs with a lot of health, that needs some proper fire power to be destroyed. The idea is to let the game start out kind of narrow, but will change as these blocks are destroyed. Perhaps the whole balance of a map will change slightly with the destruction or protection of a blocker. For one thing you can find Relics that turns to help you if you have a unit besides it. It gives increased sight radius, and can be worth a lot to have in your control.

One of the scenes from the trailer shows a huge amount of Zerglings attacking a Protoss base. Is it really possible to do this sort of thing in the game?
That scene is made within the game engine, and it will have amazing possibilities for making scenes like that, but when it comes to a regular game you would probably not see that happening. It is not like it isn’t possible, but by that time in the game, you have so much resources and development that you probably would have spent it on something else. The scene was mainly for show. It definitely possible to happen, but it generally doesn’t.

The Queen seems very much like a Hero Unit, like in WarCraft III, is that the meaning of the Queen?
The Queen can die just like any other unit, and isn’t “resurrected” like Heroes of WarCraft III. If she dies you need to make a new Queen and upgrade her again, to the former unit’s strength. While she definitely isn’t invincible, she can easily take on an Ultralisk for example. She is mainly a really good base defence as she can heal a building for 100 HP very fast early on, and do it several times. What can happen is that your opponent start hammering your building, taking the HP all the way down, and then it’s up all of a sudden, so they might have to beat it down several times. During this time, they could possibly already be dead from the other base defences, or that the Queen’s player have time to do some other action.

Her Deep Tunnel ability makes it possible to escape most dangerous attacks, by just tunnelling to another building, or tunnel between bases. Still, you should be careful with that, as it will be 15 seconds before she can use that ability after it has been activated. In worst case you might find yourself loosing the Queen as you got attacked at a bad time. You’ll find that the Queen can be used in offensive action, but she is better designed for defence, as she walks slowly, and her abilities require creep or buildings, like making poisonous creep.

What is the difference in style direction between WarCraft and StarCraft?
WarCraft is generally more disproportional, exaggerated, and StarCraft is generally less “over-the-top”. The WarCraft style consists of a lot of huge shoulder pads and weapons twice your size, while StarCraft is more “reality in space”. It requires a lot of tweaking with the style and team colours. We don’t want candy-red units, but then someone can complain that the team colour parts are too small, and isn’t visible, so then they make it a bit more like WarCraft, or if they are to bright, they fix that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 5:41 am and is filed under Buildings, Heroes, Interview, Units. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.