![]() Before I move onward and away from the story, I feel I should put this out there: This is very much a universal stakes, everyone must put aside their differences, bog-standard sci-fi story. To talk more about the story would open up way too many spoilers about what has happened over the past two Starcraft 2 entries, as well as Legacy‘s story itself, but the important aspect of it is that the Protoss will do anything to retake their homeworld, which includes continuing their compulsory - albeit tense - alignment with their outcast brethren, The Dark Templar. In order to show how much the Protoss want this, the intro cinematic for the game, created by the ever-awe-inspiring CG team at Blizzard, is below (no spoilers). Therefore the Protoss are marching on with the mission they’ve had in mind since the end of the first Starcraft‘s arc: The invasion and retaking of their home planet, Aiur, currently overrun by the Zerg. The short version is: There’s a looming threat over everyone’s heads, but only a few know about it. The campaign picks up right after the end of Heart of the Swarm, which I won’t spoil here because it’s both a huge story spoiler and also has more to do with the current state of affairs in the wider setting than it has to do with Legacy of the Void‘s story. ![]() And rightfully so, because Legacy of the Void is a stellar end to the Starcraft 2 saga. So the question posited over the past two years has of course been: ‘Now that MOBAs rule the RTS roost, how successful could a Starcraft game possibly be?’īy all accounts at the time of writing this, damn successful. 2013’s Heart of the Swarm - the Zerg campaign - followed Wings of Liberty up with an even better campaign design, taking the wider story arc of Starcraft into crazy new places that were only hinted at throughout its predecessor. The stakes of the story were high, and the constantly shifting mission designs kept the pacing as close to perfect as I’ve ever seen a video game accomplish. The player could converse with the diverse cast of characters, customise every aspect of their army, or hell, just play video games within a video game in the ship’s arcade machine. It presented its story both during the action and in its mission hub, aboard Jim Raynor’s ship. Its mission design forced players to learn multiple strategies and to build diverse armies to insure against any possible disaster scenarios. We’d almost forgotten that this company was as gold-standard as any video game developer could be, that they were the Muhammad Ali of the development world, and Wings of Liberty came out swinging for a knockout. World of Warcraft was dominating the MMORPG space, and had been for several years, but the rest of their properties had gone almost a decade without any iteration. Wings of Liberty reminded us all that Blizzard were still the trend-setters. The now seemingly overwhelming MOBA scene hadn’t really started to gain ground yet, and every RTS coming to market acted more as a reminder of how great the genre was a decade beforehand, rather than pulling it into a state of modernity. Upon its release in 2010, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty was a stern reminder that RTS base-building games were far from outdated. Where to start? Reviewing a standalone expansion for a PC exclusive that came out five years ago is - to understate things - a bit odd.
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