ANAHEIM -- In between killing hordes of Zerg in StarCraft 2, protagonist Jim Raynor spends his afternoons like most hard-bitten soldiers: Drinking in a run down dive bar.
Far from the focus of the game, these interludes -- which were demonstrated during the SC2 panel earlier -- demonstrate Blizzard’s new-found focus on immersive storytelling for the series.
Instead of just commanding hordes of troops, the goal is to have players dictate actions to groups of soldiers that they actually care about.
To accomplish this, Blizzard has outfitted these between-mission cutscenes with simply amazing graphics.
That’s par for the course for Blizzard’s titles, but the truly stunning bit is that while these graphics are some of these best CGI I’ve so far seen in a game, it’s all rendered inside the StarCraft 2 engine.
Far from just a pretty locale, the bar also serves as something of a homebase for Raynor. There’s a jukebox where you can listen to tunes (presumably from the game), a television that fills in background info with stereotypical broadcast news and other minutiae whose sole purpose is to add gravitas and a sense of personalization to the game.
I already assumed the actual strategy action in SC2 would live up to the original -- more on this when I post my hands-on impressions with the title -- but knowing that Blizzard is also infusing the game with literary depth makes it an even more tempting purchase.
Correction: The lead character's name is indeed Jim Raynor, as pointed out by our meticulous, typo-phobic commenters.
Image courtesy Blizzard Entertainment
