StarCraft will return in 2030… as an open-world shooter
by Stefan L · tsaBlizzard continues to look far off into the future with some of its Blizzcon reveals, announcing that StarCraft will return in 2030. But wait, RTS lovers, don’t celebrate too hard, because it’s an open-world shooter now.
It seems that this game will be just called StarCraft, though the announcement trailer is subtitled Dominion, seemingly in reference to the Terran Dominion. It will, however, see you return to the Koprulu Sector, and the trailer blurb is very, very shouty.
THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE DOMINION ANSWERED THE CALL WHEN MANKIND NEEDED THEM MOST. THEIR COURAGE HELD THE LINE. THEIR SACRIFICE BOUGHT US ANOTHER DAY. NOW THE CALL COMES TO YOU.
CARRY THEIR STRENGTH FORWARD.
NO MATTER THE COST.
JOIN THE DOMINION STARCRAFT.COM
Alright, keep it down, would you? i can hear you all the way from Earth!
So, it will be a good long wait before this game is released, presuming that there aren’t any delays along the way, but the team is being led by former Far Cry lead Dan Hay. He knows a thing or two about open-world shooters, so it checks out.
This isn’t the first time that Blizzard is trying to adapt their sci-fi RTS series into a more action-oriented genre. One of the most infamous cancelled gaming projects of all time is StarCraft: Ghost, which was announced all the way back in 2002 and planned to come to consoles, but jumped between developers, was heavily delayed and eventually put on “indefinite hold” in 2006. It would have been a third person shooter with stealth and espionage elements. Instead, with Blizzard consumed by the success of World of WarCraft, StarCraft lay dormant a little while longer until StarCraft II arrived in 2010, with expansions for this game arriving piecemeal through 2016.
Now it’s been another decade and Blizzard has changed a great deal in that time. Of note, the old ‘Classic Games’ team which managed StarCraft and core strategy games was reportedly disbanded in 2020, and with the Diablo franchise going through its own troubled patch, Vicarious Visions was shunted across from Activision to help out, now going by Blizzard Albany – we can assume they’re now working on Diablo V.
It’s great to see StarCraft return in some form, but it does feel a bit like a monkey’s paw wish to see it morphing into such a different genre. We’ve seen Blizzard’s genre-defining series both leave the RTS behind, merely with the odd remaster to let people relive the classics.
Almost, because there is a new expansion pack coming to WarCraft III Reforged.
Source: Blizzard