StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm – Preview

It is without doubt that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was one of the greatest real-time strategy games to be released, ever. Blizzard Entertainment seems to be aware of the great job they did in making the game, and behaving a lot like themselves, they will be releasing expansion packs for the game.

The StarCraft II will be released fully as a trilogy. The first game was Wings of Liberty, the second is StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and the third is Legacy of the Void. We can almost totally forget about Legacy of the Void for now, since not even Heart of the Swarm is coming out this year.

Knowing how good Blizzard is with foreplay before releasing their games, you’d expect a good amount of eye-catching and ‘I want this right now!’ type of information to be released a good while before the game even has hopes of being released in the market. StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is no stranger to this fact. Though it’s set to be released somewhere in April 2012, a lot of details have already come forth, with a great bit of the story and gaming being revealed.

Heart of the Swarm will continue the story of the intergalactic war between the Terrans, the Protoss, and the Zerg. Out of the three the Zerg are the ones which have seemed to be the most terrible and evil faction, born and bred to consume all life in the universe. However, have you ever wondered what goes on in their seemingly immoral minds? Well that is what Heart of Swarm will give a taste of, as the main protagonist of the expansion will be none other than Sarah Kerrigan.

Hey impression from the previous StarCraft games hasn’t been a good one; she’s lived as a ghost in the Terran military and has also been the Queen of Blades. All that is change after the events of Wings of Liberty, and Sarah is no longer the all-hating, malefic being she is known to be, to an extent.

Though her motives may or may not be necessarily good, her hatred for life in the universe has certainly exhausted to a great deal, except for one man: Arcturus Mengsk.The game’s story will primarily focus on Kerrigan’s approach in the war, and how her memories as the leader of the Zerg slowly come back to her while progressing in the game.

Heart of the Swarm will have a slightly varied form of the hero mechanics seen in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. No, players won’t be able to swap powers scattered in the map during missions; instead they will have static abilities known as Focus Abilities. These are mainly divided into two types: Corruption and SpecOps, and the abilities get upgraded by using the XP earned by completing objectives.