September 20th, 2002

lizzard has announced a new game, and for the first time in about 5 years it's actually "new".  Not an expansion (D2X, Brood War) or an inevitable sequel (Warcraft 3).  I was pretty sure this one would be just the War3 X-pack, so it's interesting to have something at least slightly different.  The game, I guess I should mention, is Starcraft Ghost.  Set in their popular Starcraft world, it stars one of the units from that RTS, and turns her and the rest of the Sci-Fi world into a 3d game that you'll play in 3rd person view.  Tomb Raider in space?  Well, probably not, and the screenshots don't look like it, but you wouldn't know it from the Cyber-Croft concept art.

There's not much detail about it at this point, but it looks like a Tomb Raider type game, but with gameplay more like Thief or Deus Ex or Halo, rather than the Quake/Doom style of "shoot everything that moves, and lots of things that don't." There is a short preview on IGN, and the press release and some screenies/art on the Blizzard site, as well as a short FAQ.

The IGN preview does have some interesting revelations, mostly in terms of who is doing the game.  It's largely being programmed and designed by Nihilistic, a gaming company best known for their recent semi-hit Vampire: The Masquerade. To quote from the IGN preview:

This seems a very generous assessment for a working relationship that appears to be along the lines of "Blizzard says jump, and Nihilistic asks how high." All the name credit is going to Blizzard, but given the relative size and experience and reputation of the two companies, this isn't a surprise, and it would be stupid to market it otherwise. Blizzard isn't exactly hiding the fact that Nihilistic is working on at least half of it, but there's nothing about that on the main page of their site, and it's just one question in the FAQ and one mention in the press release.  The Nihilistic website is barely alive, and has nothing about the project other than links to Blizzard's pages about it.

SC Ghost's development looks a lot like Blizzard's Warcraft 2 and Diablo 1 expansions, which were both almost entirely programmed by other development houses, with oversight from Blizzard.  Compare the quality of those two expansions to the more recent Diablo II and Starcraft Expansions, which were done almost entirely by Blizzard, and largely by the same development teams that did the original games.

This doesn't meant that SC Ghost will be more Hellfire than BroodWar, but the possibility exists.  To be fair, the War2 and D1 Xpacks were both pretty good games, but far more limited in scope and quality than Blizzard's more recent expansions.

The Blizzard FAQ has little info of note, but there is one question that's more important than all others.

Q: Will there be a PC and Mac version?
A: No. StarCraft: Ghost is only being developed for console systems.

How you feel about this depends on how you feel about consoles.  The initial presentation at the Tokyo Game Show, seen thus far only in this one photo, has the X-box logo right on the SC Ghost presentation screen, but Blizzard doesn't commit to any specific systems in their own information, so assumptions are it'll be developed for all the "big three" consoles.

Current Blizzard fans are PC gamers, mostly or exclusively.  The general reaction from the fan base thus far seems to be an anguished, "Why is Blizzard wasting their time on a kiddy console game when they could be doing more real PC games?!" Even players who have a console are used to Blizzard games being on the PC, and would prefer this one to be that way as well, at least as one option.  Blizzard has ported a number of their PC titles to home consoles, so why can't they go the other way?

Being as the X-box is basically an underpowered PC with various pieces of hardware included to hobble its performance, Blizzard could easily make the X-box version work on the PC, if they wanted to. "If they wanted to." is the key point here.  Since Blizzard has said so definitely that it won't be made for the PC, it seems their minds are made up. Given that this won't be a game anywhere near the depth and size (and quality?) of a typical Blizzard game, this is probably a sign of integrity.  They could port it to the PC and move another two million copies at $55 a pop, but since it's just a small and quick action game, they don't want it on their sterling record as PC developers.  Console games come with much lower expectations of depth and replayability than big PC titles do, so even a mediocre Blizzard game would still be a great console title.

If you are worried about delays on other upcoming Blizzard games, or patches for existing ones, (like the perpetually-delayed v1.10 D2X patch) you should put down the rusty spoon you're about to plunge into your duodenum.  Since Nihilistic is apparently doing most of the work on SCGhost, there shouldn't be any real impact on the progress of other Blizzard titles. There's no official word on things, but my impression is that a few Blizzard guys are advising and probably some level designers are working on things full time, but that the whole Blizzard SC Ghost team is much smaller than they would use on a full game project.

In this light, the whole SC Ghost thing is sort of a side project. A potentially-nifty one, but still a side project. It's not being done in-house which means it has a shorter development time and requires a much smaller Blizzard team. Also the game isn't that big; fewer features means less bug testing and balancing, especially since there's not going to be some huge Warcraft III style multiplayer element.  With no PC version there's no need for Battle.net support (there may be online capabilities, but those would presumbly be on the X-box or Playstation service), and since it's a console game, it won't won't be like 99% of computer games and require/receive major post-release patches to improve things and fix bugs.

How Blizzard, notorious for their delays, rushed shipping dates, and subsequent "fat from the fire" bug-killing and feature-adding patches will pull this off with a non-patchable console game is a question that will be interesting to see answered.

Should Blizzard be castigated or congratulated for this project? It's certainly less-exciting to most PC gamers than a whole new PC game would be, but isn't a fun console game from Blizzard better than nothing at all? I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "cash cow", but it's barely a "Blizzard game".  Would anyone pay this upcoming title any attention if it weren't being billed as a Blizzard game, and based on Starcraft?  Of course not, it would be dismissed as "Tomb Raider crossed with Thief set in outer space".

This appraisal, cynical though it might be, is probably true.  However it isn't entirely fair or accurate. Let's give Blizzard some benefit of the doubt. They've only made half a dozen PC games (plus some X-packs) but every one of them has been excellent. None of their game concepts are that original or inventive and they are addicted to sequels, but all of their games are huge hits and very fun to play.  You don't need to be wildly-original if you are better than all the rest, and Blizzard's games have been, for a simple reason. They are more fun.

This seemingly-simple trick is pulled off mostly with intangibles.  Blizzard games have better interfaces, quicker learning curves, stay fun for longer, have all the small details like sounds, music, voices, seem simple but turn out to have great depth, etc. Many of them get better over time, and the more you play the more you see there is to do, find more ways to customize your style or character, more strategies to learn, and so on. So while SC Ghost is pretty clearly not a full-on "Blizzard game" it's probably going to be a lot of fun when it eventually arrives.  And if they were doing a PC version, I'd probably be looking forward to it, despite myself.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.