Quick Look: StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

I can't wait to see more content of this game. Brad used to be addicted to sc2.

Neat, i'v been looking forward to this

1998, I knew you'd come back. Let's listen to some OK Computer and talk about our friends in the middle east.

There's a pretty big, early spoiler around the 8 min mark for them precious few who still care about the story. It's over inside of a minute, so you should be able to just skip it.

Hell, it's about time.

Jeff with the zinger. Love it.

Holy crap, I was very certain this would not be a thing, but looks like I was fortunately wrong :D

Edit: @brad you know that only on default hotkey setups the different buildings are different between races, I play on the Grid setting and it's the same between races. Also you can customise any hotkey.

I love nothing more in video games than big ass fucking orbital strikes.

EDIT: He just clicks so fast and I have no idea what's going on but it's silly to watch

The game everyone forgot.

This game came out at such a weird time. I bought it and am very eager to get to it, but finding time amongst Fallout 4 and Black Ops III (and still finishing MGS V bits and bobs off) is going to be tough. I'm secretly very excited though; I realised that because I've fallen away from it since Heart of the Swarm released that it could catch me somewhat off-guard when I jump back in and remind me why I loved it.

EDIT: Stealth Brian Leahy appearance!

It's kind of weird how much of a non-event the release of this appeared to be :O

I loved Starcraft 1.

I kind of liked Starcraft 2-1.

I wasn't that crazy about Starcraft 2-2.

Starcraft 2-3 looks OK, but I'm kind of burned out on Starcrafts.

Blame Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm for cannibalizing the Blizzard eSports scene alongside DoTA and LoL.

I'm a big Blizzard fan but I've never enjoyed RTSes. I really enjoy the progression aspect of WoW, Diablo, and even Hearthstone. Whether you're leveling up, collecting gear, or discovering new cards - you're building a character or deck.

Whereas StarCraft just seems like a series of missions that mostly just unfold the same way. You start with a little HQ, you send out gatherer units, you use your gathered stuff to build some armies, then you send your armies out to fight other armies and if you win you get to move onto the next mission where you'll build up another base and another few armies and so forth.

Am I missing something?

LOL oh man, I wonder if there still somebody out there who does after two iteractions of SC2.

But can I still do the four warpgate rush?

Well, it's a gameplay loop interspersed with bits of story. In abstraction, it's not really any different from most other video game campaigns. And they do try to vary the actual objectives of the story missions.

The progression in Starcraft is you getting better at the game. Same way Chess is a good game despite not earning xp or perks for your pieces that carry over into new games. They're saving that for Chess 2.

I'm liking this a whole lot. Don't see myself on the ladder ever again, but luckily they have a bunch more options for multiplayer now.

I still haven't even finished the previous one.

Just really hate playing as Zerg I guess.

It's so nice to see Starcraft again! @brad it's worth noting that you can make archon mode matches as custom games with more than two players per archon!

multiplayer > custom > create game > settings > category: archon > mode: custom

So many great cameos and callbacks. So many. This is easily the best campaign of the three imo.

You must construct additional pylons.

I never finished Starcraft 2-1...I wonder if I should at this point

oh god, all this "keystone" shit is killing me

The Starcraft II campaigns have a bunch of progression, when it comes to new units and modifying them as you go on. Your force grows more powerful as you move on through. Heart of the Swarm even had you building up Kerrigan's abilities.

Not far in this one yet, but the previous two have had a bunch of variety as far as missions go, too. Some were build a base and kill some guys. Or try to take down a train. Or fly this battlecruiser through hostile space. Or harvest resources before the planet erupts. Here's a handful of heroes. Here's an infinite amount of banelings. Purge a place during the day, defend your area against zombies at night. Last stand against an overwhelming force. There's a lot of different stuff in these campaigns.

If you're talking about multiplayer, you have a base on various maps and games can unfold in tons of different ways. But building a base and taking out our enemy is essentially what competitive games are like. Variety there comes from what your opponent does.

@ripelivejam: ha, I forgot he ran around so giddy like that. Man he really liked starcraft 2 back then!

Wakako-zake is pretty good

My life for Keystone Light

The starcraft scene is alive and well, obviously MOBAs have overtaken SC2 in terms of popularity but it's still going strong with tournaments and viewership :)

Jeff with the hot Wakakozake reference.

We may have a new anime editor folks.

I do hope Brad takes some time to 5-star this game and then not mention it once during GOTY deliberations. It's a Blizzard tradition! (Well, post Wings of Liberty at least)

On a serious note, I really hope the narrative of this chapter addresses the problems from the previous campaign. Heart of the Swarm was real rough, in a way I didn't expect after Wings of Liberty.

Man remember when Wings of Liberty came out and Star Craft II was on top of the world? What happened!? (Don't answer, I know its MOBAs).

Its just kind of crazy to me that Star Craft's super main stream penetration didn't even last till Heart of the Swarm came out.

Indeed, there is only one anime.

Yeah, just to add in to what the guys already said, what you're describing pretty much describes the competitive MP aspect though at high level matches there's a lot more to it than that (e.g. timing, optimal tech progression, micro and macro-management).

The campaign however while it does have missions where you're doing the base building that you described it is mostly objective based, has a lot of variety and not all of the missions even have base building. Plus, there is progression that can improve your units and buildings such as improved armor on certain units or improved skills or unlocking of skills (e.g. medics heal faster, reapers gain anti-personnel mines, goliaths can fire at both ground and air units simultaneously) or new units/buildings.

Shoutouts to Wakakozake, the one true anime.

I'm going to go the opposite direction of the other posters (who did a fine job in explaining how Starcraft works) and say this:

You like RPGs/A-RPGs. You don't like RTSs. Simple as that. You're not "missing something", and you certainly shouldn't feel like you're obligated to like a game just because a certain game studio published it.

Drink everytime they say "campaign"

About 11 minutes in, Brad goes over the very beginning of the unit progression.

I'm so disappointed he just glossed over the return of dragoons. I HAVE RETURNED!

@moregrammarplz: I feel like that criticism is really more valid leveled against Warcraft 1-3 and the original Starcraft: Brood War. They really evolved in how they designed missions and the way you're getting experience and upgrading units between missions.

That said, I'm really in it for the multiplayer personally. It's this fast-paced, multitasking intensive chess game that has an amazingly high skill cap.

I had thought that the whole story campaign could be played co-op. So is the co-op play just selected skirmish-type maps? Is it really robust enough that you'd want to level up a bunch of different characters

RAX

MICRO

MARINE KING

DRAGONBALL Z ALL SAGAS

Does anyone know if Jeff is referring to a specific anime at 7:15?

@ghost_cat: Wakako-zake

So since yesterday these video clips are taking horribly longer to load. This one isn't loading at all. anyone else having this issue?

Edit: Holy crap! It started playing after 15 mins of black screen.

Edit 2: Really??? I never played the second or third chapter but I liked how the first started out. I really hate it when they set up an enemy and then suddenly distract from it to something entirely different. Lame... I really wanted to see a proper end to the Zerg infestation.

I think these campaigns are pretty fun to play through on gameplay, and the cutscenes are always amazing, but man it's sad how Blizzard completely fell apart when it came to storytelling. Maybe it's rose-colored glasses or lower expectations back then, but I really liked the stories and lore of the older Starcraft and Warcraft games.

Also it's crazy how fast the multiplayer scene went from king of esports to barely relevant. Even within Blizzard it's now likely the third-tier game behind HotS and Hearthstone, if not further down behind WoW and Overwatch.

Man, the way the background changes and the flames increase on the Sky Shield mission as it falls is really cool. Starts off with a high-orbit view of the planet and by the end of it you can see individual city buildings. Hope that level of detail is in all the missions.

And thats Metal Gear.