作家：Megan Farokhmanesh

在90年代的时候，Chris Metzen想出了一个新游戏理念。而对于还处于发展阶段的暴雪娱乐来说，那几年是属于重要的形成期。那时候只有1994年发行的《魔兽争霸》，还没有《魔兽世界》。那时候的主流趋势是实时策略游戏，而该公司也非常擅于这方面，并且他们也希望能够引领这一趋势的发展。

作为故事和授权开发部门的高级副总监的Metzen和作为艺术与音频开发部门的现今副总监的Nick Carpenter一起致力于这个全新理念中。这是一个科幻故事—-即发生在拥有一个巨大的世界并包含不同派别的遥远宇宙上。

这是关于太空吸血鬼的故事。

Metzen说道：“我们的其他团队成员的反应是，‘我不懂，太空吸血鬼太古怪了。我们为什么不创造一些较正常的内容。’”

直到2013年《暴雪的艺术》发行时，我们才知道《Bloodlines》这款游戏，并且它也影响着暴雪之后的游戏—-主要是《魔兽世界》。Metzen（也是暴雪）最终决定投入一个全新的RTS项目中。大部分游戏概念是关于三大种族；而找到这三个种族间的平衡便能够定义它的特性。它们的文化是什么？它们是如何在战斗中相互联系？它们的战斗风格是什么？它们是如何重新创造单位？

这些都是《Bloodlines》并未考虑到的问题。而暴雪也将全新项目命名为《星际争霸》，与之前的名字很相近。

Metzen在听到这个名字的反应是：“星际争霸？你说真的吗？跟魔兽争霸相似的星际争霸？”

“那时候的我并未参与进去。我也不喜欢《暗黑破坏神》。但这并不代表它就不有趣。它们只是具有相同点。我也不能想象如果它未变成今天我们看到的《星际争霸》的话会是怎样的情况。”

《星际争霸》真的拥有很长的发展史，即跨越了17年。而随着《星际争霸2：虚空之遗》的发行，暴雪总结了Jim Raynor和Sarah Kerrigan的故事以及2010年首次问世的这三部曲内容。

比起想出《Bloodlines》这个游戏理念的Chris Metzen，2015年的Metzen变成了一个更聪明，更年长，同时也更冷静的人。现在的他已经是暴雪的元老级人物，这与他在1994年刚进入该公司时的作家角色真的相差甚远。

Metzen描述过去的自己就是一个普通的作家。他也强调：“现在的我还是这样，”即那种努力想要将更多角色和细节呈现在最终作品上的作家。那时的他只是一个年仅19岁的孩子，迫切地想要证明自己的能力。他希望让朋友能够为自己感到骄傲，并希望能让爸爸放心地卸下自己的重担。

Metzen回想过去并说道：“当我们开发了第一款《星际争霸》时，我还是作为电子游戏产业中的一名小小的作家。对于那时候的电子游戏产业，一名作家到底能够做些什么呢？我并不能找到其它相似的先例。”

“而我拥有了所有可以证明这点的东西。我们的团队也是如此。”

比起现在暴雪的团队规模，那时候我们的团队还很小，大概只有50名成员。这是一个非常严谨的社区。周四的时候，10至20名来自不同地方的群组成员会聚集在一家当地酒吧Patsy一起K歌。虽然我们唱的都不好，但这却是让团队成员交流并放松的机会。

Metzen提到正是在那时候他遇到了Chris Sigaty（游戏邦注：现在作为《星际争霸》的执行制作人）。那时候的Sigaty是《星际争霸》主要测试员。Metzen回想起那时候对他的印象就是“很高，还很严肃。”因为那时的Sigaty是在QA部门，所以他们两个见面的机会很少。不过最终他们一起参与了《魔兽争霸3》的创造。

Metzen将Sigaty描述为“金属之神”，即比起游戏开发者，他更适合舞台，因为那时的他留着摇滚爱好者中很常见的长发。但现在Sigaty的形象已经不是这样的，现在的他是一个带着轻柔语调，并且坐着的时候会双手交叉的人。他的语调缓慢而有分寸，就像一个充满耐心的父亲一样—-而他的确就是。

和Metzen一样，Sigaty也是走了很长的一段路才到达这里。他是在20岁的时候参与了《星际争霸》项目，这也是他的第一份工作。即当他还在南加州大学的一个夏天，为了赚取生活费的他找到了一份测试工作。他也表示那时候作为超级宅男的自己深陷于游戏世界的魅力中。尽管他并未接受过正式的训练也不是主修相关专业，他还是为了找到更适合游戏领域的工作而改变了自己的目标。

QA并不是一份简单的工作。他便曾经历过几个晚上为了跟上较快的游戏开发节奏而睡在办公室的地板上。

Sigaty说道：“我记得那时候的自己就像在迎接呼啸而来的旋风似的。那是一段非常特别的时期。”

Metzen也对此作出了回应，但却是基于一种不同的方式。他表示，暴雪是一艘很容易驾驶的船只。一旦他们明确了方向，他们便会启程。“

Metzen说道：“那时候，我会说，‘嘿，让我们创造一款太空游戏吧！’那是一段非常单纯简单的时期。”

Metzen将那段时间描述为“大金刚”。也就是说在那个时期的电子游戏中，故事所扮演的角色与今天是不同的。Metzen是伴随着《龙与地下城》和Marvel所创造的世界长大。他渴望能够挖掘一些更深入的理念。而当他们团队开始撒下《星际争霸》的种子时，他的这种感受也更加强烈。

他们很快便确定了《星际争霸》的核心理念。它是关于三大种族，Metzen说道：“一个是超自然的，一个是爬行类的，还有一个是高科技的。”也就是古老的Protoss，代表人类的Terrans以及虫族Zerg。

Metzen说道：“我想几乎所有人在看到它时便知道我们创造的是怎样的游戏。‘这听起来就好像我们已经清楚下一步是什么，’即基于我们准备创造的内容以及我们所拥有的能力。”

当然了，《星际争霸》并非暴雪的第一款实时策略游戏，但这却是暴雪迈向更复杂世界的一大步。它从《魔兽争霸》的两个种族中发展到三个种族。并且这些种族中的角色也与玩家之前看到的不同，每个种族都有自己的策略和游戏风格。这对于该公司来说是全新且大胆的尝试。

不幸的是，粉丝们在一开始并不是这么想的。

《星际争霸》标志着暴雪从《魔兽争霸》的幻想世界中开始转移。紧随着《魔兽争霸2》的发行，该工作室必须做出选择。他们可以继续创造《魔兽争霸3》，就像粉丝所期待的那样，或者他们也可以在RTS游戏领域中尝试一些不同的内容。

在第一款《星际争霸》中，暴雪使用了他们在《魔兽争霸》中使用的引擎，但却是基于不同的图像。暴雪的首席执行官同时也是联合创始人Mike Morhaime回想到，当团队打包了游戏的早前版本并将其带到1996年的E3展会时，粉丝们根本就不买单。

“我们展示了这款游戏，但是所有人看到它时都说，‘哦，这就像是太空中的半兽人。’而这并不是我们所期待的反应。”

带着受伤的自尊，暴雪重新开始计划。游戏的引擎需要得到强化，团队也需要重新思考一款太空RTS游戏到底该是怎样的。单纯改造《魔兽争霸》是不可能成功的。

虽然《星际争霸》系列是基于主角Jim Raynor和Sarah Kerrigan的关系展开，但在一开始并不存在这种动态化。Chris Metzen最初希望Raynor能够作为一个比起牛仔更倾向太空的太空牛仔。而Kerrigan的背景则较为明朗。暴雪是以花样滑冰运动员Nancy Kerrigan的名字为该角色命名（游戏邦注：Nancy Kerrigan曾遭遇竞争对手Tonya Harding男友的攻击而受了重伤）。但是这一选择却刚好对上了竞争游戏《命令与征服》及其角色Tanya。

Metzen解释道：“大声说出这点可能听起来会很荒谬，因为这一点都不酷。”

“那时候Tonya Harding和Nancy Kerrigan的事件在花样滑冰界引起了巨大的轰动。而我们选择使用这个名字时只是觉得这很有趣。但其实这是很愚蠢的做法！”

Kerrigan成为太空牛仔Raynor隐秘的心灵武士。当Metzen尝试着体验这两个角色之间的动态元素时，他逐渐发现早前的架构能够构建这个系列内容。

Metzen说道：“在这么多年后，特别是考虑到《星际争霸2》的宽度时，我们有趣地发现他们之间的动态元素真的很有意义。这便是《星际争霸》的核心。但在一开始这并不是一个重要理念。我们是在之后的过程中领悟到这一点。你们也会发现这些理念真正定义了这些游戏及其故事。所以一开始我们并不需要一个巨大的理念。它们总是会随着时间的发展以及游戏的发展而不断完善。”

就像Kerrigan进化成Queen of Blades等更大的理念也是在之后才出现的。

Metzen说道：“在成长过程中我阅读了许多有关托尔（游戏邦注：北欧神话中司雷，战争及农业的神）的故事—-Stan Lee或Walt Simonson所处的时期也是我最喜欢的时期。就像我为Zerg创造了莎士比亚与旧约的相遇这样的氛围。但是我还是需要人类角色，所以便延伸出了Terran活动，而我们也再一次地在这里遇到了这些连接点。”

最终，在粉丝的翘首期盼下，《星际争霸》于1998年发行了。《星际争霸》社区中一群粉丝随之开始编写有关他们如何期盼游戏的文章，同时也分享了有关游戏状态的一些异想天开的理念。

Morhaime说道：“他们想出了许多有关游戏真正该如何进行的理论。但是我和其他成员还是继续坚持我们的游戏理论，因为我们拥有自己的计划。他们将自己的行动称为‘再也等不下去了’。并且他们会开始在我们的工作室周围游走并在晚上拍下停车场里还有多少辆汽车的照片。”

Morhaime在回想起这些粉丝时表示，当时真的很害怕他们爬进公司。他真的是非常真挚地在讲这个故事，而这也解释了暴雪为什么会决定在最初的《星际争霸》中添加“快速建造”作弊码。但在那时候，暴雪已经拥有良好的声誉。如果说《星际争霸》让公众认识了该公司，那么《暗黑破坏神》则让暴雪成为一家强调优化的公司—-甚至在今天这也仍流淌在他们开发者的血液中。

当《星际争霸》发行时，它对暴雪的贡献是基于不同方面。这是一款将暴雪带向国际市场的游戏，这也是暴雪的第一款电子竞技游戏。并且这款游戏是从韩国起步的。

Morhaime说道：“在引领着世界电子竞技游戏的韩国，这款游戏迎来了发展的最高潮，甚至有三个有线电视频道在宣传《星际争霸》。而这也是我们之前从未预料到的情况。”

“在今天，作为《星际争霸》最初版本的《星际争霸：母巢之战》仍然是韩国最受欢迎的游戏之一。它也向我们证实了世界各地人们对于暴雪的游戏拥有巨大的兴趣。所以对于《星际争霸》之后的游戏我们都面向韩国市场进行了本土化调整。”

如今，暴雪的一大核心目标便是面向全球市场，即考虑将全世界的玩家当成是暴雪的“一级公民”。

2012年，前研发部门副总监Patrick Wyatt（游戏邦注：之后离开了暴雪并创建了ArenaNet，即《激战》的创造者）发布了一系列详细描述《星际争霸1》的开发细节的文章。

在接受Polygon的访问时，他谈论到了他们公司早前为《星际争霸》设定的方向：他表示这款游戏最初只是一个一年项目。他说道，他们团队打算为1996年的E3展会准备些东西。但是结果“并不尽人意”。多亏了那时候还没有社交媒体，暴雪并未因为游戏而遭受“猛烈抨击”，但是该团队还是对此感到郁闷。他也将部分原因归咎到竞争游戏Ion Storm的《Dominion: Storm over Gift 3》身上。

他说道：“比起我们的游戏，《Dominion Storm》更有野心。而我们的声誉是源自我们在自己的领域所创造的开创性的游戏，我们所创造的是真正具有抱负的游戏。”

“这便是我们所创造的《星际争霸》。我们之所以会继续创造这款游戏是因为我们的母公司觉得我们需要继续制造产品，而不是因为我们非常热爱它。比起个人原因这更多地倾向于工作原因。”

Mike Morhaime在回应Wyatt对于这一故事的评价时说道，《星际争霸》最初的规划是花一年时间进行开发，但是结果我们却投入了更多时间。他也推翻了暴雪原先将《星际争霸》作为一个填充项目的想法。

他说道：“从一开始，《星际争霸》就是我的主要支柱之一。我们所有人都是疯狂的科幻题材粉丝，并希望能够创造这类型游戏。我们意识到比起尝试特定的发行内容，创造一款真正优秀的游戏更重要，于是我们便投入时间去创造《星际争霸》并认真构造这个世界，三大种族和游戏玩法，直至它们都达到我们所设定的标准。”

实际上，暴雪也纠正了原先的计划，但是有关《星际争霸》的改变并不是一触即发；首先，暴雪必须先发行《暗黑破坏神》。而当他们重新恢复《星际争霸》的开发工作时，Wyatt表示整支团队已经因为《暗黑破坏神》长期且高强度的工作而精疲力竭。而《星际争霸》的许多内容都需要重新创造—-即按照Wyatt的估算，为了支持替换后的系统，他们需要调整90%至95%的内容。所以团队成员需要再次应对高强度的工作，虽然Wyatt对于自己在暴雪中的工作感到自豪，但是在回忆时他说道：“我们真的是很辛苦地在做这些工作。”

在回想当时的情况时他说道：“牺牲是必要的。我们都不自觉地投入这个我们想要完成的理念中。但是在面对整个过程时我们却显得心有余而力不足。对于创造这款游戏我们都充满热情。我们希望这会是一款出色的游戏，但同时我们也为此承受着巨大的压力。”

Wyatt在2000年离开暴雪，他也表示，正是在那时候暴雪开始做出改变。迫切需要发行游戏的想法被投入尽可能多的时间去创造真正出色的游戏的想法所取代了。

他说道：“直到我们开始投入《星际争霸》时，我们才真正开始内部化整个公司所获取的经验教训。”

Chris Metzen说道：“我不记得我们是从几年前开始创造《星际争霸2》了。可能是在10年前？天哪。”

当2007年《星际争霸2》对外发布公告时，那时的游戏领域已经和最早之前出现了巨大的区别。《星际争霸》本身便是一个非常受欢迎的内容。而随着《魔兽争霸2》和《魔兽争霸3》，《暗黑破坏神2》以及引人注目的《魔兽世界》的出现，暴雪的阵容也不断扩大着。而当《星际争霸》续集出现在韩国的暴雪全球精英赛时，人们将全部视线都转向了这款游戏。

在首尔举办的这场活动非常完美。当Morhaime上台并发表公告时，台下的人群发出了热烈的欢呼。游戏的预告片在黑暗中展开，当Raynor出现时人们又一次尖叫起来。当他再一次开口说话时，整个体育场瞬间被高分贝的欢呼声掩盖住。

而当时与现在的《星际争霸》以及暴雪这家公司的区别已经大大超越这样欢呼的人群或已发行的游戏列表。暴雪清楚自己是谁，想要做什么，并且想要将时间投入于哪里。他们也对设计，编写，创造更大型的游戏充满信心。

Metzen说道：“我们的志向变得更大，并回到了《星际争霸》中。比起只是呈现出彼此大叫的角色的画面，我们希望它们变得更加真实。也许有些人会觉得我们扯太远了。但我们知道自己是与众不同的开发者。这也推动着我们去思考一些更大且更有远见的内容。”

“比起我们之前的尝试，《星际争霸2》便拥有更突出的叙述内容。所以当你问我们改变了什么时，我的回答是全部。我们想要尽可能地创造出一个最大且最疯狂的科幻内容。这也是我们一直尝试着去做的事。”

粉丝们很快便会注意到《星际争霸2》有多厉害。在2008年的暴雪嘉年华中，暴雪公开了《星际争霸2》将以三部曲的形式呈现出来—-即包括三个部分并且每个部分都将侧重不同的种族。

《星际争霸2》一开始并不是如此。当暴雪确定了故事内容时，他们便意识到将这些内容整合到一款游戏中是不合适的。所以他们决定去分解它，并提供给每个种族各自发展的空间。

说实话，玩家并未对该消息感到兴奋。反而他们在Kotaku和GameSpot等网站上表达了自己的种种担忧与失望。

Chris Sigaty表示，《星际争霸2》已经按照团队想要的方式发展了，但是那时候，他们也“清楚地”听到了反馈。他指出因为第一款游戏的成功让玩家对此充满期待，而这也是出现这种反应的部分原因。

Sigaty说道：“我们尽自己所能添加了部分内容，但还是有人提供给我们负面反馈。我希望这种情况只是暂时的。重要的是，那时候的我们觉得《星际争霸》已经可以发行了。”

对于暴雪是否考虑再次进行分解是未定的。Sigaty表示这将取决于公司想要通过这款游戏达到怎样的目的。

他说道：“对于我们来说这很重要。这可能又是我们要面对的一个大问题，但这也是‘我们尝试着通过下个产品所实现的，’不管该产品是什么。”

在回忆《星际争霸2》的第一部分《自由之翼》时，Metzen既感到自豪又表现出了作家们常有的自我讨厌的心态。为了为《虚空之遗》做好准备，他在几周前又重新进入了《自由之翼》中。而这段怀旧旅程遇到了一些麻烦。

Metzen说道：“天哪，这个在之前看来多棒啊。但是现在却如此糟糕。”

在所有的故事线中，未能达到标准的便是Raynor严重的酗酒问题。Metzen想要呈现的任务是Raynor能够基于某种方式不断发展，甚至是在玩家成功完成目标时。虽然人们最终可能会受伤，但最后Raynor还是会克服自己内心的恶魔并获得救赎。

Metzen说道：“那时候我们团队的反应是，‘为什么要这样？这是不必要的。’‘我只是想清楚地看清一切。我想要在一开始就感受到这样。’这是完全可行的。如果我能够编写有关这一内容的小说，它一定会很棒。”

“但是在为游戏创造故事时，你必须记得人们只是想要拥有强大的感受。如果在你的游戏玩法的前几分钟，在故事线的前几个任务中，你的感受并不好，你便不会愿意再玩下去。”

他继续说道，尽管还有一些问题存在，他还是很高兴看到自己所添加的内容。为游戏编写内容并不轻松，而致力于创作中可能会一而再再而三地让你感到难过。

他表示：“这便是作家。我们总是会有为什么那时候这听起来是个不错的理念的想法？但同时，这些内容在之后看来却像是未加工过的一样。。它不一定要像莎士比亚笔下的内容一样。它不用达到最完美的状态。我们只是想竭尽所能去创造这样的内容而已。”

“你不可能什么都做到最完美。你只可能通过热情不断前进。”

《自由之翼》是Metzen想要创造的许多主题和故事的灵感来源。但有时候也会制造一些阻碍。

Metzen说道：“回想过去所写的内容，我发现有许多让我感到尴尬的内容。不管那真的是糟糕的内容，还是当时对我来说很重要的理念—-只是当我回首时我会觉得自己的想法都显露无疑，而在当时追逐主题或故事的时刻对我来说真的很重要。但我还是对于自己采取的每一步感到非常骄傲。这是真的。因为在那时候这就像非常纯粹的艺术一样。”

当《虚空之遗》于11月10日发行时，它是带着暴雪为该系列游戏所规划的三部分体验问世的。这是《星际争霸2》的Protoss章节，即主要关于《母巢之战》中的Artanis展开。而这款游戏业是对于该系列游戏中一些重要问题以及基础故事的归结。

Chris Metzen说道：“关于Protoss，这些将在《虚空之遗》中完结的主题是从一开始便存在着的。它们基于各种方式构建了《星际争霸2》的整体故事。很久以前在宇宙中存在一个黑暗势力操控着所有的这些活动，这是我们必须处理的问题。而我们的英雄将为此做出许多牺牲。这始终是游戏的核心，甚至在几年前这便是游戏的唯一故事线。”

Metzen是最初《星际争霸》幕后的重要力量，但自从《自由之翼》诞生以来，他在《星际争霸2》的角色便被大大削弱了。他在公司中的工作转变让他需要承担更多责任并处理更多问题，从而导致他在面对键盘的时间大大减少了。

在《自由之翼》的大部分基础工作完成后，剩下便是Andy Chambers的工作了。故事和创意开发部门总监James Waugh作为《虚空之遗》的首席作家只提供了一些情节节奏。

2008年成为首席故事开发者的Waugh从未想过自己会成为一名电子游戏作家。他是来自电影产业，在那里他做了10年的开发主管与编剧的工作。但是他与《星际争霸》的关系却可以追溯到大四那年，那时候他选择了自己的第一款游戏。Waugh回家并开始玩他的全新游戏，之后他花了好几个小时去研究游戏的指南，也就是Metzen所编写的一页页的内容。

Waugh表示在他待在电影产业的日子里，他也非常喜欢玩游戏。并且他对将《星际争霸》等游戏带到大荧幕的想法充满兴趣。而最终他获得了在暴雪工作的机会，而他在这里的第一份工作便是作为《自由之翼》的作家。

他说道：“一开始我是否真的想要成为一名电子游戏作家？刚毕业的时候我甚至不知道还存在这样的职业。我认为这是一个不断改变的产业，而电子游戏也成为了一种有效的故事叙述载体。所以我最终选择了这里。”

Waugh也对自己从浏览电子游戏指南到为游戏史诗的最后章节收官感到惊讶。在今天，他将自己称为叙述内容的传递者，即引导着游戏系列中的世界和角色的创造。

在编写《虚空之遗》时，Waugh和暴雪遇到了一个有趣的挑战。不管是在《自由之翼》还是《虫群之心》，Raynor和Kerrigan都提供给了玩家观察故事发展的镜头。但是《虚空之遗》却缺少了这样的角度，因为暴雪并不想破坏玩家的Protoss体验。

Waugh说道：“如果能够将角色与游戏玩家真正维系在一起的话最好了，即找到与我们的体验相关的共性和故事弧—-同时也不会让他们觉得太现实。我们仍然需要找到一种方法去传达这样的事实，即这是一个与我们现在不同的古老的种族，但最终他们其实也是关于人性某一面的体现。”

《虚空之遗》的故事主要是关于“本位主义”和“集体主义”的区别，他们也一直在努力寻找两者间的平衡。而对于游戏主角Artanis，《虚空之遗》则是关于领导的压力。

Waugh说道：“也许成为领导者听起来是件很棒的事，因为他能够将各个Protoss派系集合在一起。但事实上领导者也需要承担着巨大的压力。我想在这点上人类便能够产生共鸣了。”

Artanis的工作既包括引导人们前进，也包括对抗游戏中可怕且强大的坏人Amon。在《母巢之战》中就有Amon了，Waugh表示，早在《星际争霸2》开始前这个角色便在他们的计划中了。

在提到Amon时Waugh说道：“这非常像撒旦的故事。这是一个有可能成为好人的角色，但是之后你会意识到事实并非如此。最后他变成了过去中的一份子，即掉进了无限的循环中。而他会发现这并不是自己想要的，所以他要摧毁这样的循环。他想要破坏所有的一切。在他心中，他便是自己故事中的英雄。”

Amon是一个很难创造的反派角色，毕竟当关于他们的最有趣的内容是力量时，所有的一切也就变得无趣了。在早前的设定中他其实是一个蛮单调的角色。虽然在团队内部大家都知道他的动机是什么，但是在游戏中玩家却很难判断出来。

Waugh说道：“我真的认为游戏中的主角与他的对手一样出色。在很多方面，Amon就像是基于不同主题的Artanis。在那里Artanis遇到了巨大的压力并意识到世界上存在许多问题，并且存在一种方法能够解决这些问题，但是Amon却决定去破坏该方法。”

“我认为真正的问题在于寻找这个负面角色的人性。即为什么他要做这些事。”

而关于暴雪是否成功塑造了Amon或Artanis的角色还是有待观察。但不管怎样暴雪还是继续向前发展着。随着《虚空之遗》的结束，开发者将把注意力转向全新的机遇。

暴雪多次声明《虚空之遗》将终结《星际争霸》的故事。但是直到现在他们才表明，这款游戏也为这系列注入了新鲜血液：受故事驱动的可下载内容。即作为三部曲中的其中一部，作为terran族的Nova本来是作为被尘封的《星际争霸：幽灵》中的主角，但之后她还是出现在了《自由之翼》中。

暴雪将新扩展包称为《星际争霸2：Nova的秘密行动》。James Waugh担任内容故事总监，而Valerie Watrous则负责内容的编写。Waugh表示他们的目标是将Nova与Kerrigan区分开来，因为粉丝们总是能从他们身上找到许多共同点。

他说道：“我们认为Nova是一个非常与众不同的角色。在Nova身上，我们总是觉得自己身处一个如何成为一名好士兵的故事中。她是一名军事刺客，不过有时候她的角色也会变得很混乱。”

“这是一款有关选择的游戏，这也非常符合Nova是谁的主题，我认为当我们完成游戏时，我们便能够将Nova带到一个比过去更强大的位置上。”

尽管从未拥有一款真正关于自己的游戏，但是Nova还是拥有一批热衷的粉丝。在2013年的暴雪嘉年华上，开发者便展示了《风暴英雄》的影片，而在这里像Jim Raynor和Nova等英雄将对抗Kerrigan和《暗黑破坏神》。

Chris Metzen说道：“让Nova出现在《风暴英雄》中是很简单的事。我记得当影片开始播放时，Nova出现并开始戏弄Kerrigan时，整个房间瞬间沸腾了起来。”

Metzen本身便非常喜欢Nova，他是这么描述Nova一天的冒险的，“这绝对是我们梦想做的事。”Chris Sigaty也表示认同，他说Nova是一个非常吸引人且复杂的角色。但是该开发者还是警告玩家不要期待Nova的全新故事能够填补《星际争霸：幽灵》所创造的空缺。暴雪表示他们不会再从最初的故事中提取任何内容。

Sigaty在提及《Nova的秘密行动》时说道：“我们专注于一个更加内在的故事，并且拥有较为黑暗的氛围。到目前为止我们一直专注于银行上的冲突以及银河故事。而现在我们想要探索一些更加接地气的内容。”

但是最重要的是，来自《Nova的秘密行动》中的内容并不是关于Nova本身。暴雪表示《星际争霸2》还未完成，该公司仍计划去探索之前从未尝试过的方法。对于Nova还有很多可挖掘的故事，或者他们也可以转向《星际争霸》宇宙中的其他角色。从内部看来，暴雪仍会继续维持《星际争霸2》的团队。

对于暴雪来说，转向更频繁的内容便是一大改变。他们是先从《风暴英雄》开始这样的改变，即这款游戏每隔几周便会推出一些新内容。

Sigaty说道：“这完全，且根本改变了我们的工作方式。我们意识到了完成一个特定的英雄图像需要花费多长时间以及我们需要进行多少次迭代才能将英雄安置于一个适当的未知数—-而这与现在的《星际争霸2》所经历的过程是完全一样的。”

在团队完成《虚空之遗》的同时，他们也仍致力于《星际争霸2》的全新内容。而这种全新转变的部分内容便包括从不可预期的来源（如好莱坞）和电视世界中获取灵感。Sigaty便表示《权力游戏》便带给了他们许多内容灵感。

Sigaty在提及游戏时说道：“这就像是一种奢侈的老方法，但是我认为它能够让我们更出色地完成这项工作。这对于我们来说就是一种改变。”

“我们将发行我们一年又一年所创造的内容。我们将看到这会带来怎样的结果。而这也将带给作为开发者的我们不同的激励作用。”

根据Waugh，暴雪宣称在《Nova的秘密行动》之后，《星际争霸》的内容将由科幻小说作家Timothy Zahn进行编写。他表示故事的方向还未100%确定，但这却能够让人们预测到这款游戏之后的发展趋向。

《星际争霸》的未来将会更加广阔。随着11月10日《虚空之遗》的发行，暴雪将能够探索策略领域以外更广阔的游戏世界—-不管是方法还是游戏类型。

等到《虚空之遗》完成时，这个发展了多年的神话故事也将回到原点。而影响着该系列游戏的巨大冲突也将被终结。这也将再次为暴雪创造一个全新的游戏空间。Metzen说道，尽管现在他不再亲自参与项目的制作，但是在暴雪中人们还是对《星际争霸》的发展感到兴奋。

Metzen说道：“这就像是在开阔的高速公路上行驶一样。说实话，从《星际争霸1》以来，我们好像一直都拖着这些巨大的理念棚车在行走，并且在很久以前我们便创造了一个巨大的理念。我们将使用许多内容去讲述一个完整的故事。而现在，我们完成了这一任务了。那接下来要做什么呢？”

对于Metzen来说，《星际争霸》是他最终想要回归的地方。他仍然会去思考这个游戏世界。

Metzen表示，他还是想继续在这系列游戏中呈现更多理念，他认为：“它还可以继续向前发展。”

“现在的我们觉得《星际争霸》拥有无限的可能性。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

STARCRAFT: THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

by Megan Farokhmanesh

Back in the ‘90s, Chris Metzen had an idea for a new game. For the still-blooming Blizzard Entertainment, these were formative years. There was Warcraft as of 1994, but there was no World of Warcraft. There was talk about doing more real-time strategy, as the company was arguably getting good at it, and a keen interest in heading into space.

Senior VP of Story and Franchise Development Metzen, along with present-day VP of Art and Cinematic Development, Nick Carpenter, was working on concepts for something new. It was a sci-fi, fantasy-driven epic — a story told in a far-out universe with a huge world and different factions. It was “badass,” says Metzen.

It was … space vampires.

“The rest of the team was like, ‘I dunno man, space vampires are pretty wack,’” Metzen says. “‘We want to do something a little broader’.”

Bloodlines, which Metzen wouldn’t talk about publicly until the 2013 release of coffee table book, The Art of Blizzard Entertainment, folded into the seams of Blizzard’s future titles — mostly World of Warcraft. Metzen, and ultimately Blizzard, decided to pursue a new RTS project. Much of the game’s concept focused on three distinct races; finding balance between these three would define its personality. What are their cultures? How do they relate to one another in battle? What are their fighting styles? How do they respawn their units?

These were the broad questions that Bloodlines had so desperately lacked. Blizzard christened the newborn project StarCraft — with some slight reservations about that name.

“StarCraft?” Metzen says of his reaction at the time. “Really? Warcraft, StarCraft?

“I was not into it at the time. I didn’t like Diablo either, in my own space. But ain’t it funny how, over time, words become powerful? They just take on their own identity. I can’t imagine it not being StarCraft now.”

The history of StarCraft is a long one, spanning a 17-year saga of multiple games, expansions within the universe and at least one major canned project. With StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void, Blizzard wraps up the sprawling story of Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and a trilogy that saw its first release in 2010.

But Blizzard’s time within the StarCraft universe — and, more specifically, StarCraft 2 — is hardly finished. The heavy lifting of seeing a story through to the end is over. Now it’s time for Blizzard to play.

The Chris Metzen of 2015 is a little wiser, a lot older and much calmer than the kid who came up with Bloodlines. He’s an elder statesman of Blizzard, he jokes, and a far cry from the writer he was when he joined the company in 1994.

Metzen describes himself back then as pretty average, as far as writers go. “I still am,” he insists — the kind of writer who fought hard to get so many characters and details into final products. He was young and hungry, a 19-year-old kid “running hot and fast” to prove himself. He wanted to make his friends proud, and maybe get his dad off his back about his unconventional career path.

“When we developed the first StarCraft I was a writer in the video games industry,” Metzen recalls. “What the hell [was] a writer doing in the video games industry at the time? There was no precedent for that.

“I had everything to prove. The team felt like that too.”

Then, the team was small by Blizzard’s standards today, with maybe around 50 people. It was a close-knit community. On Thursdays, a shifting group of anywhere from 10 to 20 people would gather at Patsy’s, a local Irish pub, to sing karaoke. The singing itself might have been bad — and, according to those who were there, it sometimes was — but it was a chance for people to hang out. Talk. Relax.

Metzen recalls that it was in these early days when he met Chris Sigaty, who now serves as StarCraft’s executive producer. Sigaty was the lead tester on StarCraft and fresh out of the navy. At the time, he had the “high and tight” look about him, Metzen says. With Sigaty over in the QA department, the two didn’t get much time together. Eventually, they’d work together on WarCraft 3 and bond over music.

Metzen describes Sigaty as a “metal god,” and for a moment, the image fits, if only for the long, rocker hair that seems better fitted for a stage than a game developer. But the illusion can’t hold up to Sigaty in motion today, a man who speaks in soft, soothing tones and sits with his hands neatly folded. His tone is slow and measured, exactly like that of a patient dad — perhaps because he is one.

Sigaty, too, traveled a long road to get here. He stumbled into his first StarCraft job as a 20-something. One summer during his scholarship days at USC, he took a testing job to earn some extra cash. The self-described super nerd found himself enthralled with the gaming space. Despite having no formal training and an unrelated college major, he rerouted his goals to find a better career fit there.

QA wasn’t an easy gig. Some nights he’d wind up sleeping on the floor at the office trying to keep up with the fast pace of game development.

“I remember it being a whirlwind,” Sigaty says. “It was a very different time.”

Metzen echoes this sentiment, but in a slightly different way. Blizzard was an easy ship to steer, he says. Once they’d settled on a direction, off they went.

“Back then, ‘Hey, let’s make a space game!’ It was about that simple,” says Metzen. “It was such a purer time, such a simpler time.”

Metzen describes the early days as “Donkey Kong Country.” That is to say, it was an era in video games when stories didn’t play the sort of role they do today. Growing up as a kid, Metzen tore through D&D books and tales from the Marvel universe. He ached to dig into deep ideas, big ones that people would be drawn into. Once the team started cultivating the seeds of StarCraft, that feeling only intensified.

The core concept of StarCraft came together pretty quickly. Its focus on three races — “one’s psychic, one’s creepy and one’s high-tech,” Metzen says — formed the ancient Protoss, human Terrans and insectoid Zerg.

“What galvanized everybody around it was, I think everyone saw very quickly what kind of game we could make,” Metzen says. “‘That sounds rad. That sounds like the next step for us, for sure,’ in terms of what we were ready to build and would match our abilities at the time.”

Of course StarCraft wasn’t Blizzard’s first real-time strategy game, but it was a step into more complex territory. It bumped up the Warcraft standard of two races to three. Characters within those races were different from what players had seen before, with each race having its own sort of strategy and play style. It was something new and bold for the company.

Unfortunately, fans didn’t exactly see it that way at first.

StarCraft signaled Blizzard’s move away from Warcraft’s fantasy world. Following the launch of Warcraft 2, the studio had a choice to make. It could continue on to Warcraft 3, as many expected, or it could try something different within the realm of RTS games.

In StarCraft’s first life, however, Blizzard used the same engine it used for the Warcraft games with different art. When the team packed up an early version of the game to take to E3 in 1996, fans weren’t impressed, recalls Blizzard CEO and Co-Founder Mike Morhaime.

“We showed this game, and everyone looked at it and said, ‘Oh, that’s like orcs in space.’ It sort of wasn’t the reaction we were hoping for.”

With bruised egos, Blizzard went back to planning. The game’s engine needed work, enhancements, and the team needed to rethink what a space epic RTS would look like. A Warcraft facelift wasn’t going to cut it.

The StarCraft series has since become defined by the relationship between leads Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, but in the beginning, that dynamic just didn’t exist. Chris Metzen originally envisioned Raynor as a space cowboy that was “more space than cowboy.” Kerrigan’s backstory is famously on the lighter side. Blizzard named her for figure skater Nancy Kerrigan in a nod to her rival, Tonya Harding — the athlete notorious for hiring her husband to break Kerrigan’s leg. In this case, however, the joke was against competitor Command & Conquer and its character Tanya.

“It sounds ridiculous to say this out loud because it’s so uncool,” Metzen says of the explanation.

“At the time it was the big figure-skating to-do with Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. So we’ll just name ours Kerrigan, after the girl who gets her knee beat in. We thought, aw, that’s so funny! It’s so stupid.”

Kerrigan became the covert, psychic warrior to Raynor’s space cowboy. As Metzen played with the dynamic between the two, he began to dig out the early bones that would help structure the series.

“It’s funny all these years later, especially given the breadth of StarCraft 2, that their relationship, that dynamic between them, really defined a lot of it for me over time,” Metzen says. “The heart of StarCraft, really. But it wasn’t necessarily a first big idea. We found it along the highway. Which I would say is often really true about ideas that come to define these games and their narratives. You find it along the way. You don’t always start with the big idea. It shapes over time as the game shapes over time.”

The big ideas, like Kerrigan’s evolution into the Queen of Blades, came later.

“I grew up reading a lot of Thor — which has a Shakespearean component to the language — back from those Stan Lee days, or the Walt Simonson days, my favorite,” Metzen says. “I gave the Zerg campaign a Shakespeare meets Old Testament kind of vibe. But I needed that that human-like character down the line, and it was toward the end of the Terran campaign like, whoa, what if she becomes — again, we stumbled on those connector points.”

StarCraft finally launched in 1998, following much impatience from fans. A group within the StarCraft community began writing fan fiction about waiting for the game, coupled with wild ideas on the state of the game.

“They came up with these conspiracy theories about how the game was really done,” Morhaime says, “but me and some other people were holding on to the game just because we had these sinister plans or whatever. They called themselves [Operation] Can’t Wait Any Longer. They kinda staked out our building and started taking pictures of how many cars were in the parking lot at night, coming up with theories.”

Morhaime, in recalling these antics, seems surprisingly chill about fans creeping on the company lot. The story is told with affection, which perhaps explains Blizzard’s decision to make “operation cwal” a cheat code in the original StarCraft. But Blizzard, by then, had already earned a reputation for taking its time. If Warcraft put the company on the map, then it was Diablo that established Blizzard as one that emphasized polish — which remains part of the developer’s DNA even today.

When StarCraft launched, its contribution to the company manifested in a different way. It was the title that took Blizzard global, and it was Blizzard’s first esport. The game took off in Korea.

“At its peak, in Korea, where esports grew and led the world, there were three cable channels broadcasting StarCraft 24/7,” says Morhaime. “That was both awesome and something that we hadn’t necessarily predicted, forecast.

“Today StarCraft: Brood War, [essentially] the original version of StarCraft, is still one of the most popular, most played games in Korea. It was a huge wake-up call to us, just how much interest there was globally in playing Blizzard games. Every game after StarCraft we’ve localized into Korean.”

One of Blizzard’s core goals today is to think globally — to think about treating players around the world “like first-class Blizzard citizens,” Morhaime says.

Korean fans, who helped ignite that push, learned this lesson firsthand in 2007.

EARLY STRUGGLES

In 2012, former VP of R&D Patrick Wyatt — who would later leave the company to found ArenaNet, creator of Guild Wars — posted a series of blog posts detailing road bumps in developing StarCraft 1.

In an interview with Polygon, he talked about the company’s early direction with StarCraft: a game he says was initially envisioned as a year-long project. The team was instructed to prepare something for E3 in 1996, he says. The result “wasn’t that impressive.” Although Blizzard didn’t get “slammed” for their game, thanks to a lack of social media, he says, internally, the team was rattled. He pins some of this uneasiness on a competitor’s game: Ion Storm’s Dominion: Storm over Gift 3.

“[Dominion Storm] was doing so many more ambitious things than our game,” he says. “We’d made our reputation in doing games that were groundbreaking … in our space, we were making really ambitious games.

“And here was this StarCraft game we were doing, and it was incredibly pedestrian. It was done because our parent company felt we needed to keep cranking out products, not because we felt this incredible love for the game. It was done for business reasons rather than the reason that a lot of us had joined the industry, because we wanted to make incredible, awesome games.”

Mike Morhaime, in response to Wyatt’s comments for this story, echoes that StarCraft was originally planned for a year-long development cycle, and that it ultimately did take longer. He pushes back, however, against the idea Blizzard conceived StarCraft as a filler project.

“StarCraft has been one of our key pillars since the beginning,” he says. “All of us are huge sci-fi fans and always wanted to create a game built in that genre. … We had realized it was more important to make a great game rather than try to hit a specific release window, so we took our time with StarCraft and really built out the world, the three unique races, and the gameplay until it was at the quality and polish bar we had set for ourselves.”

Blizzard did, in fact, eventually correct its course, but changes to StarCraft wouldn’t come swiftly; first, Blizzard had to ship Diablo. When work resumed on StarCraft, Wyatt says the team was exhausted from a long, intense crunch to finish Diablo. Much of StarCraft had to be redone — Wyatt estimated they would toss 90 to 95 percent of it in favor of replacement systems. The crunch started all over again, and though Wyatt is proud of the work he did at Blizzard, he says in retrospect, “we were just working way too damn hard on this thing.”

“‘Sacrifices are necessary,’” he says of the thinking at the time. “We had all been roped into this idea that we just had to get it done. We were kind of powerless to be more reasonable about the whole process … We felt passionately about building this game. We wanted it to be awesome, but at the same time there was just an enormous amount of pressure that was coming down.”

Wyatt left the company in 2000, and even by then, he says Blizzard had begun to change. The frantic need to ship games was replaced with a desire to take as long as it needed to make it epic.

“It really wasn’t until getting our butts kicked for StarCraft that I think we really internalized that lesson across the whole company,” he says.

“I can’t remember how many years ago it was that we started StarCraft 2,” says Chris Metzen. “Ten years? Good god.”

By the time of StarCraft 2’s announcement in 2007, the landscape was vastly different than the first time around. StarCraft itself was a hit, as was its expansion pack, Brood War. Blizzard’s lineup had grown massively with the addition of Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 2 and its big head-turner, World of Warcraft. This time, when StarCraft reappeared for a sequel at the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in South Korea, the crowds weren’t asking about Warcraft.

The event in Seoul was nothing short of spectacular. When Morhaime took the stage to usher in the announcement, the crowd was already screaming with excitement. A trailer for the game unfolded in the dark, and the yells quieted as Raynor appeared. He spoke, and again the stadium exploded with cheers and whoops, escalating as the words “StarCraft 2″ faded in.

The then and now differences of StarCraft — and Blizzard as a company — extended beyond an excited crowd or a list of released games. Blizzard knew who it was, what it wanted to do and where it wanted to spend its time. It was confident in its ability to design, write, code and create a bigger game.

“Our aspirations were much higher in coming back to StarCraft,” Metzen says. “Instead of the screen with the portraits yelling at each other, I wanted it to be living. I wanted to be in the scene. Some would argue that we took it too far, photographs on the bulletin boards and the jukeboxes and all that stuff. But we were very different developers. … It pushed us to think bigger and be more farsighted about the product we wanted to build.

“StarCraft 2 was a much more robust narrative than anything we had tried before. And so when you ask what had changed — everything. Everything. We wanted to just build the biggest, craziest space opera we could. That’s what we tried to do.”

Fans would soon learn just how robust StarCraft 2 would be. At Blizzcon in 2008, Blizzard revealed that StarCraft 2 would be a trilogy in itself — three parts, each focused on a different race.

StarCraft 2 didn’t start that way. As Blizzard penned out the sprawling narrative, it realized that packing it into a single game had nightmare potential in dramatic delays and clutter. The solution was to split it, Metzen says, and give each race room to breathe.

Players weren’t thrilled about the news, to put it lightly. They grouched on sites like Kotaku and GameSpot with concerns about money, accusations of greed and disappointment at the extended wait.

Chris Sigaty says that StarCraft 2 has worked out the way the team wanted, but at the time, it “definitely” heard that feedback. He points to expectations set by the first game, in which players had every story for every race right away, as part of the cause.

“We did our best to include some of those things, but some people have certainly given us that feedback,” Sigaty says. “I wish it was there all at once. The thing is, we feel like at this point StarCraft 2 would have shipped about now. It could have had all that, but it would have played out differently.”

“In developing these fictions for games, you gotta remember, people just want to feel powerful and effective.”

Whether or not Blizzard would consider a drastic split again is undecided. Sigaty says it would have to be on a case-by-case basis and dependent on what the company hopes to achieve with that game.

“That was a big deal for us,” he says. “It would probably be a big deal to us again — not just rinse and repeat, but ‘what are we trying to achieve with this next product,’ whatever it is?”

Reflecting back on StarCraft 2’s first installment, Wings of Liberty, Metzen views it with a mix of pride and a healthy dose of writer’s self-loathing. To get ready for Legacy of the Void, he popped in Wings of Liberty just a few weeks ago to play the campaign again. The nostalgia trip came with a few bruises.

“I was like, oof, over and over again, oh my God, this sounded so good at the time,” Metzen says. “Oh my God, it’s terrible.”

Among those storylines that didn’t make the cut was a serious “down and out” drinking problem for Raynor. The missions Metzen wanted showed Raynor screwing up in some way, even after players successfully achieved their goal. People would end up hurt, but eventually, Raynor would overcome his personal demons and find redemption.

“At the time, the team was just like, ‘Why? It’s unnecessary,’” Metzen says. “‘I just wanna see things nuked! I want to feel badass right out of the gate.’ That’s perfectly valid. If I were writing a novel about it, it might have been great.

“But in developing these fictions for games, you gotta remember, people just want to feel powerful and effective. If the first X minutes of your gameplay, the first X missions in a narrative wave, if you just feel kinda cruddy and icky and low, you’re not gonna stick with it. You’re not gonna enjoy it or bring out this heroic thing that we were really chasing, for the most part, in the first place.”

Despite whatever clumsiness remains, he says, he’s still happy for the work he put in. Writing for games isn’t easy, and working on your craft requires putting your heart out there again and again.

“It’s just writers, right,” he says. “We’re always like, oh, God, why did that sound like such a good idea at the time? But at the same time, as crude as things can look in hindsight, I’m super proud of it too. … It all started somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. It doesn’t have to be perfect. What is perfect? We want to build these things as best we can.

“You aren’t afforded the ability to be all that precious. You gotta push passionately.”

Wings of Liberty is home to many themes and stories that Metzen felt passionately about when it was made. Sometimes that makes it harder to reflect on.

“Looking back at the writing stuff over time, there’s stuff that I’m super embarrassed by,” Metzen says. “Whether it was just bad writing, or there were ideas that were really important to me at the time — but I look back and I feel exposed, chasing themes or story moments that meant a lot to me at the time. But for every one of those, I’m equally proud of having taken the step, taken a stand, clumsy as it all may have been. It was real. It was pure art at the time.”

When Legacy of the Void launches on Nov. 10, it will complete the three-faction experience that Blizzard has always envisioned for the series. This is the Protoss chapter of StarCraft 2, focusing specifically on Brood War’s favorite, Artanis, as its lead. It’s a resolution to many of the series’ big questions as well as its long, arching story.

“For the Protoss, these themes that will play out in Legacy were always there from the beginning,” Chris Metzen says. “In many ways, it shaped the whole overarching story of StarCraft 2. There is a dark force in the universe that may have manipulated these events long ago, and it’s going to have to be dealt with. Our heroes are going to have to sacrifice a lot to deal with it. That was always the core, even when it was all just one storyline many years ago.”

Metzen was the leading force behind the original StarCraft, but his role in StarCraft 2 has heavily diminished since Wings of Liberty. A shift in his job at the company led to more responsibility, more departments to handle and less time to be the man behind the keyboard.

Much of the groundwork on Wings of Liberty was done, but it was Andy Chambers who finished the title. Director of Story and Creative Development James Waugh served as the lead writer on Legacy of the Void, and Metzen’s influence was more general, only providing the plot beats.

Waugh, who came on as a senior story developer in 2008, never aspired to be a video game writer. He came from the film industry, where he worked for about a decade as a development executive and screenwriter. His relationship to StarCraft, however, can be traced back to his senior year of college, when he picked up a copy of the first game. Waugh went home to play his new game — and then spent the next hour engrossed in the game’s manual, which featured pages upon pages of lore penned by Metzen.

Waugh, during his film days, always harbored a love of games. He was interested in translating properties like StarCraft onto the big screen. Eventually, he landed a job at Blizzard working with several different properties; his first venture into StarCraft development coincided with his job as a writer on Wings of Liberty.

“Did I initially aspire to be a video game writer?” he says. “I didn’t even know it was a plausible career path when I first left graduate school. I think the industry changed in a lot of ways, and video games became a great storytelling vehicle. I ended up going in that direction.”

Waugh, too, is stunned at his path from poring over a video game manual to closing out the epic’s final chapter. Today, he describes himself as a torchbearer of the narrative, a person who leads the charge in crafting the series’ world and characters.

In writing Legacy of the Void, Waugh and Blizzard faced an interesting challenge. In both Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, Raynor and Kerrigan provided a human lens to observe the narrative through. Legacy of the Void is purposefully absent of that human angle, says Waugh, because Blizzard didn’t want to rob players of their Protoss experience.

“It was really finding a fine line of making these characters absolutely relatable to us as humans playing this game,” Waugh says, “and finding the kind of commonalities and metaphors and story arcs that relate to our experience — while not making them feel human. We still had to find ways to speak to the fact that this is an ancient race that is very different than us, but at the end of the day they’re also a metaphor for an aspect of humanity.”

Legacy of the Void’s story is largely about the divide between “rugged individualism” and “overcollectivism,” Waugh says, and a struggle to find the balance between the two. For Artanis, who acts as the game’s lead, Legacy of the Void will be about the burden of leadership.

“It sounds great to be a leader, and it sounds great to be all powerful and unite these various Protoss factions,” Waugh says, “but the reality of dealing with the potential loss and this burden of that is pretty heavy. I think that is completely relatable for humans.”

Artanis has his work cut out for him between guiding his people and dealing with the game’s villain, the terrible and powerful Amon. Amon, who’s been at least hinted at as far back as Brood War, has been part of the plan before StarCraft 2 began, says Waugh.

“It’s very much a Lucifer story on some level,” Waugh says of Amon. “It’s a character that had the opportunity to become a great being, and then realized he didn’t like that; at the end of the day, he was part of this ancient, infinite cycle. He realizes that that’s not what he wants, he wants to shatter that cycle. He wants to break everything. He feels lied to. In his mind, he’s the hero of his own story.”

Amon was a tough villain to craft; after all, all-powerful beings tend to be boring when the most interesting thing about them is their power. In early readings he felt a little like a one-note character, Waugh says. Internally, the team knew what his motivations were. In the game, they weren’t as easily readable.

“I really think that your protagonist is only as good as your antagonist,” Waugh says. “In many ways, Amon is kind of the thematic inverse of Artanis. Where Artanis kind of takes on the burden and realizes that there is a lot of flaws in what is the world, that there’s a way to work with them and improve them, Amon decides to shatter it all.

“I think the real answer there is finding, at the end of the day, the humanity of this dark god. Why he does what he does.”

How successful Blizzard will be at playing out Amon’s role, or even Artanis’, remains to be seen. Blizzard, however, is hardly slowing down. As Legacy of the Void comes to a close, the developer is turning its attention to new opportunities.

Blizzard has echoed its statements many times that Legacy of the Void will bring a resolution to the ongoing story of StarCraft. What it hasn’t said until now, however, is that the game marks new blood for the series, too: story-driven DLC. The first, a set of three-act, three-mission packs, will star Nova, the psychic Terran who was set to star in the canceled StarCraft: Ghost and later appeared in Wings of Liberty.

Blizzard calls it StarCraft 2: Nova Covert Ops. James Waugh is acting as the content’s story director, while Valerie Watrous is on point for writing. Waugh says the goal is to separate Nova from Kerrigan, as fans have always drawn similarities between the two.

“We see [Nova] as a very distinct character and incredibly different,” he says. “With Nova, we always find ourselves in stories about what it means to be a good soldier. … She’s an assassin for the military, and sometimes that gets messy.

“This game is really about choice, which really speaks to the theme of who Nova is, and I think by the time we get through this game, we’re going to put Nova in a more empowered position than where we’ve seen her in the past.”

Despite never getting her own game, Nova has a soft spot in the hearts of fans. In 2013, at BlizzCon, the developer showed off a cinematic for the franchise mashup title Heroes of the Storm that threw heroes like Jim Raynor and Nova against the likes of Kerrigan and Diablo.

“It seemed like a slam dunk to have Nova be in Heroes of the Storm,” Chris Metzen says. “I remember being in the room when that video played and she shows up, and she’s goofing on Kerrigan. The room just went up.”

Metzen has a fondness of his own for Nova, describing adventures she might have one day as “definitely stuff we daydream about.” His sentiments are echoed by Chris Sigaty, who calls Nova a compelling, complex character. Still, the developer warns that players shouldn’t expect Nova’s new story to fill the hole left by StarCraft: Ghost. Blizzard says it pulled nothing from that original story, which would have followed Nova’s adventures.

“We’re focusing on a story that’s a little more intimate, a little darker in tone,” Sigaty says of Nova Covert Ops. “We’ve been so focused on the galactic conflict [in StarCraft] and the galactic story. We’d like to explore something a little bit closer to home.”

But the most important takeaway from Nova Covert Ops isn’t about Nova herself. It’s a message from Blizzard that StarCraft 2 is not done, and the company plans to still explore the franchise in ways it hasn’t before. There’s room to dig into more tales from Nova, or to move to other characters within the StarCraft universe. Internally, Blizzard will continue to keep the StarCraft 2 team at work.

The shift to more frequent content is a big change for Blizzard — “Alien,” says Sigaty. It started with Heroes of the Storm, a game that gets new content every few weeks.

“It’s completely, fundamentally changed how we work,” Sigaty says. “An awareness of how long it takes to get a specific Heroes artwork done, the amount of iteration we tend to do to get a hero in a great place — it’s exactly the same story now hitting StarCraft 2.”

While the team finished up Legacy of the Void, it’s also been working on StarCraft 2’s new content. Part of this new shift involves drawing inspiration from unexpected sources — Hollywood, Sigaty says, and the television world. He name-drops Game of Thrones as one of many shows that deliver great content often.

“It’s sort of luxury, the old way,” Sigaty says of making games. “Now that luxury is gone, I think it makes us better at doing this, ultimately. But it’s a change for us.

“We’re going to be releasing the same amount of content that we would build in a year over a year. We’ll see how that goes, see what that’s like. It puts a different urge on our developers.”

Notably, Blizzard’s previously announced StarCraft novels being penned by sci-fi and fantasy author Timothy Zahn will likely take place after Nova Covert Ops, according to Waugh. The direction of that story isn’t 100 percent planned out, he says, but could offer a look at where the franchise might go.

StarCraft’s future is broader than it’s ever been. With Legacy of the Void launching Nov. 10, Blizzard has the chance to explore the game’s universe in ways outside of the strategy realm — any avenue, any game genre, Sigaty says. It’s the company’s Star Wars, he adds; its sci-fi universe.

By the time Legacy of the Void wraps up, the mythology that’s been at play for years will come full circle. The big, resounding conflict that’s defined the series will find resolution. And as it does, it will create new space for Blizzard to play in once again. Metzen says that, while he’s not close to the project at the moment, there’s a lot of excitement within Blizzard about where StarCraft is heading.

“It’s almost a sense of open highway ahead,” Metzen says. “Honestly, since StarCraft 1, it’s almost like pulling these big idea boxcars behind you, having built such a big idea so long ago. It was going to take a lot of content to tell the full story. And now that it’s done, it’s kind of like, whew. All right. What now?”

For Metzen, StarCraft is a place he eventually hopes to return to. He still thinks about its universe a lot. He thinks about it even more in times like these, when the series prepares to pivot once again.

“It could have a lot of life ahead,” Metzen says, adding that he wants to play around with ideas for the series for years.

“It feels like StarCraft has infinite possibility now.” (source:polygon)