As part of our ongoing celebration of all things StarCraft, we're hosting a Starcraft smörgåsbord, with a different theme for each of the days leading up to and the week following SC2's release. This article is a part of the "Everything We Know About StarCraft Day", the first of the bunch, and is an online release of our exclusive announcement of the game's existence way back in our August 2007 issue.
We always knew this day would come: Blizzard's sleeping giant has awakened, and the wait for the first look at the next chapter in the StarCraft universe is finally over.
By Dan Stapleton
In the first of what will certainly be many theater-quality animated cinematics, a still quiet is broken by the unlocking of a heavy metal door that opens to reveal a brutishly muscled man wearing leg irons and puffing on a fat cigar. Without a word, he strides purposefully into a room full of high-tech industrial machinery and steps into snowboard-style boot clips on the floor. The machines spring to life, and with a shower of sparks, several sets of long, thin robotic arms go to work. His shackles are removed, heavy metal armor is attached to ports on his skin and welded into place, and his arms reach into massive robotic gauntlets many times the size of his own hands. A series of images flash on the screen—images of monstrous alien creatures, weapons of war, and bloody battle. As they finish, a computer voice comes over the loudspeaker: “All marines, prepare to launch.” The man, now encased in full Terran marine battle armor and holding a gun as big as his own unarmored body, turns to face us. “Hell,” he says, “It's about time.”
“I hope they get the joke,” remarks Chris Sigaty, StarCraft II's lead producer, who stands behind me as I watch the trailer in his office. It's a few days before the game's May 19 public unveiling in Seoul, South Korea, but we were invited to Blizzard's Irvine, California office to get a private first look at it, along with exclusive information about the Protoss side that wasn't revealed at the launch event.
I assure him that the joke won't be a problem; it's been nine long years—practically an eternity in the still-young games industry—since the release of the world's most famous real-time strategy game, and only now do we catch our very first glimpse of its successor. About damn time, indeed.
