StarCraft Shooter Is Third-Person, Blizzard Wants You to Feel Powerful

Did you catch the StarCraft reveal at BlizzCon and think, "Wait, what exactly is this game?" You're not alone. Blizzard didn't spill many details during the Opening Ceremony, only calling it an open-world shooter. But now we have a bit more to go on, thanks to an interview with Blizzard GM Dan Hay over at GameSpot.

First up: it's a third-person game. That's a big shift for a franchise that's always been real-time strategy with an isometric view. But for Hay, the choice was a no-brainer. "Oh, that's easy," he said when asked about first- versus third-person. "I want to be able to see my armor. First thing we did is we built it, put it on a turntable, and spun it around like, 'Ah, awesome, cool!' I want to be able to see it, so third-person, right?"

He did leave a tiny door open for other perspectives here and there: "That doesn't mean that we don't have the license to, in a couple of spaces, do a little bit different and whatnot, but third-person: You get to see your armor, you get to see the full weight of everything you have, and then you get to see stuff that's in my head that I can't tell you." Cryptic, but okay.

Hay also dove into the fantasy of wearing this armor. When asked about character progression or customization, he got hypothetical: "If I was to get—in theory, hypothetically, purely hypothetically—this is what I would want: I would want to be able to make sure that my armor can be made better, stronger, and different. I would also want to be able to make sure that I could make it feel like mine. I would want it to be a visitation of the legacy of the things that I had done. I would want to show that it looked different from the first moment that I got it to the last moment I got it. So, read into that how much you will hypothetically, but that's what I would want as a player."

Combat is another big focus. "We have to make sure that we're thinking about—and I have to be careful not to talk about this too much—combat has to feel powerful," Hay said. "You're in this armor; you're a living tank. You have to feel powerful. When you hold that Gauss rifle, and the thing weighs something ridiculous, you have to feel like you're just pushing through the Zerg. The Zerg have to feel like those raptorial claws are going to shuck you like an oyster in that thing. So you have to feel the weight of all that."

He knows fans are eager to see actual gameplay. "We take that very seriously. We know that people who are out there are going to be going, 'The teaser was amazing, super cool, the story sounds great, but we want to see that combat. We want to feel those moments. We want to feel the exploration, the sense of discovery, and we also want to feel this notion of disruption—that when I go out into the world, it pushes back in a way that I wasn't expecting, and then I have to figure out a new way to play.' It's how our world works."

Oh, and one more thing: Hay confirmed that StarCraft is a single-player game (or at least single-player is the focus). He also explained why Blizzard decided to reveal it so early, given it won't be out until 2030. So we've got a long wait ahead, but at least now we know what to expect: third-person action, heavy armor, and combat that makes you feel like a tank. What do you think? Are you hyped for a third-person StarCraft shooter, or were you hoping for something else? Let us know in the comments!