I’m not sure how the company in it’s current state could make anything resembling a good game. I own everything battle.net has, been a fan since Blackthorne. Nothing the company has released in the past 5+ years has been pretty awful, be that because of predatory monetization, or bad gameplay. How can they now mess this up?
Where could they possibly go woth starcraft 3. At the end of the day starcraft is really the story of raynor and Kerrigan as seen by there appearance in every single campaign. There story is done and they cant really go anywhere from there since they killed the big bad evil in amon and now Kerrigan is watching over and osnt controlling the zerg like amon was causing a scourge invasion. The protoss and terrian are friends now so there is no conflict anymore so what would the game be about
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There’s always the UED.
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Whatever the case, a StarCraft III campaign cannot have the same stakes as the SC2 campaign. The “big baddy” is dead, and it’s not like you can pull another one out of a hat.
It may be possible to setup some conflicts involving the UED, some splinter Dominion faction (although that was already explored in Covert Ops), the Tal’Darim (or another splinter Protoss faction), and an invading Zerg Swarm (renegade or major); however, all of these conflicts would be on a much smaller scale than the implied conflicts in SC2.
Furthermore, the largest factions (at the very least Artanis’s Protoss and Valerian’s dominion) are currently allies. Both factions could quickly crush any small-scale conflict, so you would have to contrive a reason why these factions either cannot properly react, or do not know about the looming threat until it has had time to fester.
I was thinking about something stupid but it makes sense:
What if SC2 NEVER HAPPENED ? Imagine SC3 picking up exactly where Brood War ended:
UED on Earth wondering what has happened to DuGalle’s fleet ? And sending another giant expedition just to learn that the previous one was completely decimated. So the story would revolve around terrans from earth who could slowly make an alliance with Artanis faction to crush Kerrigan once and for all. And this time allied forces would succeed ensuring peace in this sector for some time.
I was thinking more in the lines of UED become more xenophobic like W40K and declare war on the whole koprulo sector. Zagara, current zerg queen break alliance when a rogue dominion faction set loose an adaptable virus against zerg and Valerian died of old age and replacement has been less than respectful Protoss dominion and customs because of profit and public image, leading another age of strife.
StarCraft Terran tend to live around 150 years, and Valerian was in his early 20s during the events of SC2. Considering the timespans involved, a StarCraft game set in that era could be unrecognizable, unless technology and Zerg evolution are basically stuck in stasis for all of those years.
Age of Empires III had a similar problem. The game moved so far forward in time compared to its predecessors that the gameplay was almost completely different and unrecognizable compared to those predecessors. Age of Empires III doesn’t feel like a typical Age of Empires game anymore. Age of Empires IV went back to the Feudal age because of this problem.
I wouldn’t recommend starting the timeline for SC3 any more than a decade or two forward. A lot could still happen during that time in terms of unit changes and politics, probably enough to justify a good campaign, despite lower stakes than the SC2 campaign.
Maybe the Dominion starts fracturing due to greed and differences in xenophobia among its members. The old guard (particularly Arcturus) used xenophobia to help build support for a unified dominion. In contrast, Valerian and Han Horner are not particularly xenophobic, and they are allies with the Protoss under Artanis. That difference could be used to justify another split, like we saw in covert ops.
Age of empires 3 was far more inspired than the clown mess aoe4 was, functionally, gameplay wise and even flavor wise
For anyone who enjoyed AOE1 or AOE2, AOE3 was a massive downgrade.
And aoe4 was an even bigger downgrade lol
AOE 3 was revolutionary but the fighting mechanics is what turned off most players. AOE 4 is more like AOE2,AOE3 and Starcraft 2 combined. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, they took some of the bad aspects of the 3 which now account 40% of the game.
The fact that I have to fight my own army controls more than the enemy in AoE 3 means no matter how inspired it was it will always be the worse game. And given the age difference, the fact that they somehow managed to downgrade the unit AI so badly is frankly embarrassing.
Also, all the units being bulletproof is obnoxious.
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The game doesn’t necessarily need to have a big bad like on the scale of Amon. As we have seen in the Covert ops storyline, war still happens within the universe and always will. Zagara leads the swarm now. I could easily see her going to war with the terrans and protoss over a number of different reasons. I am pretty sure the terrans and Protoss hate the zerg and the Taldarim is still quite a threat.
I wouldn’t want w3. There is so much potential with the actual sc2, just the staff missing. People making mods are also giving much alternate gameplay value atm, and there’s a good amount of us.
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Putting aside the issue of idk what they could even do with the story after amon, I don’t trust blizzard with starcraft anymore. Maybe a revived starcraft ghosts project could be decent, but after sc2 I doubt their ability to balance a video game has improved much. Also RTS doesn’t make enough money for blizzards standards anymore so unless stormgate makes some bank I doubt we will see blizzard teasing the notion of a real sequel.
At Blizzcon 2018, I attended a Starcraft roundtable. Among the topics, the future of SC was presented in a single sentence: there was no intention to make Starcraft 3.
Granted, if SC2 was still being actively developed, one could say that 5 years is plenty of time to change their mind.
However, considering that 1) SC2 development has officially ended and SCR is assumed ended, 2) the entirety of Dev Team 1 was eliminated, 3) most of the big SC personnel left the company/were reassigned to other franchises, and 4) the fact that they didn’t have any intention of making a SC3, it unfortunately is a virtual impossibility that there will be a SC3.
Even if Microsoft takes over, they will likely refer to the same market analyses that Bliz did which lead to the end of the Starcraft franchise.
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Theres no story all the games have been the story of raynor and kerrigan with other characters sprinkled in raynor and kerrigan show up and have a role in every campaign. You can’t really do that now that kerrigan is basically god and raynor has rescued kerrigan so there is no story. It’s not like warcraft where the races make the story. Starcraft has always been about raynor and kerrigan from the beginning
Their experienced developers have left the company already.
I believe that Microsoft acquisition was more about getting IP.
So after Microsoft gets the IP it will either create a new studio that would make StarCraft3 or re-purpose one of their existing ones.
And this is good.
I would guess that they would make a time jump. Story of all of the original characters is complete.
I.e. events of StarCraft3 would be happening 100-300 years after the events of last SC2 campaign (would also tie in nice with the Protoss campaign final cinematic where Artanis watch Aiur being re-built and give a speech to Zerathul grave… I got the impression that centuries have past, or at least a century).
So we would have only Artanis and Alarak from the older characters (okay most of other Protoss characters are young enough to live for another several centuries, but it was evil Q was the best part of LotV campaign). I also expect Artanis becoming more like Aldaris due to centuries of experience…
From the Terran characters one can be kept alive either via crystorage or relativistic travel: it should be relatively easy to build near-lightspeed spacecraft for them… Some experiment, or spec-ops mission going wrong I guess…
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I can’t imagine MS buying all of Blizzards IP and letting SC3 rot. If they try to go the “Mobile” route with SC then we need to riot on a level not seen since Diablo Immortal.
That said, my other concern is oversaturating the esports markets with THREE types of Starcraft. It would be like trying to promote three NBA leagues with their own rules and styles. That will not work. Only thing I can think of is designating each one as;
SC1: Pro
SC2: Competitive
SC3: Casual? User friendly, more QoL, controller friendly, ect.
~
All of which are under the same new SC3 game engine but uses the respective mechanics such as pathfinding, MBS, speed and behavior of their OG game. This is a tall order. It would also give players of their respective leagues to make changes needed.
As for the BIG BAD. We got the UED or something else. Im sure there are other aliens, or whatever caused Amon to go insane (which is suspected to be the Voice in the Darkness).
If there’s money to be made then you will definitely see a Starcraft 3 or outright reboot in some form or fashion. I think personally it’ll be a more washed down experience with less sweaty mechanics for a newer generation of gamers.