스토리라인 q&a

http://sclegacy.com/feature/106-blizzcon-2010/899-blizzcon-2010-starcraft-ii-lore-panel

 

스토리 덕후를 위한 내용이 나왔내요

 

Hello
Hello BlizzCon
What would you guys like to talk about?

Hey Chris one of the last things Raynor said to Tychus was "Tychus if we can save her, I'm going to take her away from this place." Can you elaborate?

We can’t say too much about HotS I don't think, but it looks like Chris was about to say something and I cut him off.

No I was going to remark that “Oh, Wow we're at the StarCraft Panel”. Brain’s catching up a little bit. Tychus...oh..

I can say, I mean, Jim has spent a lot of time thinking about you know, what ifs and all the possibilities for him that were out there for him and Sarah with the sort of bond that they had from back in the day. It’s certainly true that he spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, "what if I could get her back somehow?", "What if I could save her?". So he won't be entirely making things up as he goes along.

Can you rephrase the question?

It’s a tricky question because I want to handle it delicately.

So do I.

You surprised the hell out of us with how things ended in the first chapter. We all thought we knew how it was going to end. That things were not
going to work out the way they did. But you surprised the hell out of us.

Did you like it?

I loved it!

Yea

I was like...it was amazing. I was like, there's no way, we all know this isn't going to work, we all know it's going to end on a really dark note and Jim just going to be all crushed. But you guys were like "yeah? no, that's not how it's going to happen, and you surprised the hell out of us. So I think we all thought how this was going to go down a certain path, Heart of the Swarm, Kerrigan being a bitch, evil, horrible person. Third chapter, Protoss, Zeratul coming in to saving the day. But you turned everything on its head with how things ended with the first chapter. So, I think, we're all kind of wondering how Kerrigan's really going to play this out now that she's no longer the Queen of Blades?

Right. Well that’s kind of the question, right, obviously, we can’t get too into it or into very specific answers because that's exactly what we're building right now, and we don’t want to spoil the whole story. But it's interesting, like the last number of - I'll riff a little bit - BlizzCons, right, we've been up here and we haven't been able to say anything, right, because the game wasn't out yet. So it's really weird, it's kind of hitting me because at this Blizzcon we can actually talk about StarCraft. Although we don’t want to give a whole lot away relative to HotS at all. I think we can talk thematically about this girl about this guy for sure. So the whole crux of this thing, is what will this girl do now, she has only ever been manipulated by, whether it was the Dominion and then Mengsk and then the Overmind, right. Has she really ever made her own decisions? Has she ever really known who she is and chosen who she wants to be? So essentially HotS is, aptly named, it is exactly about that. What will this girl do? Do these two lonely wonderful people have a chance in hell?

You are who you choose to be.

You are who you choose to be man. But that cuts right to it, so again there's not too much we can say to reveal what's going on in HotS. Aw hell, I forget what the question was.

Other than to say, I hope we keep surprising you that much. [laughs]

Hell yea

That was pretty huge. If you can keep surprising us like that, you guys are just on the top of your game. Thank you guys!

Thanks man.

Hi my name is Irine and I was just wondering if we can look forward to seeing any more of Valerian Mengsk in the HotS?

[laughs] Hmm. I'm sensing a trend here. Everyone wants to talk about HotS. I think it's safe to say that Valerian is a very important part of the Koprulu Sector and everything that's going on there, so yeah...I don’t think he is going to disappear.

Right, right. Valerian definitely has a role to play, uh, in how things shake out. So yes.

Awesome! Thank you so much.

Hello my question is about the Dark Templar, specifically their unit - it is described in the game as using warp blade technology. How would you describe that and in what way does it compare to a Zealot’s psionic blades?

That’s a good one.

Off the top of my head, Psi Blades come from within and Warp Blades are pulled from without.

Basically...

Power of the cosmos baby!

Yeah, I mean, basically, any protoss that is a part of the Khala is going to have an enourmous psionic energy to draw on and can create, you know, obviously, wepons and blades with it. The dark templar, you know, in all of the lore, they, because they chose to go their own way and they don’t have the power of the Khala behind them, but they have the power of enormously strong individual will. It's sort of, I’m giving a long-winded version of the answer that Chris just gave - one is pulling that power from within whereas the dark templar have to take what is around them and from the void and manifest it. It is a completely different philosophy, but both are really cool weapons.

Thank you very much!

Alright, my name is Steven. First of I would like to say hello to Josh and Mandy, who are watching as well from home and this question is from them as well as myself. Simply put WoL, great campaign, loved it, just loved it, especially the ending. There are a few missions such as the colonists mission, and then also the one with New Folsom where you have to make a choice and what you choose to do, which direction you want to take. What I would like to know is though, are you guys ever going to kind of, let us know, which decision you think is going to be the canon direction or is it strictly going to be left up to the players' interpretation based on what they chose. I only ask this just because you know, the things we encountered on those missions obviously will have pretty big implications later on.

Sure I can say that we do say that the A choice that you made, was the canon decision, so in terms of the SC canon, Raynor sided with Tosh and Raynor helped the colonists against Selendis. That said I really would like to not have any player feel like their choice has been invalidated. In general, except for when the implications become overpowering, I think I'm going to try to stay away from going back and examining that stuff except when we really need to, so that you can play the game and really feel like your choices are being carried forward, and we do have the technology to check your save-game by the way.

Thanks alot, I appreciate it.

Hi, first I got a really really simple yes or no question. The official sort of Insurrection/Retribution campaigns from the original StarCraft, are those canon or not?  And then more importantly, what is going on with Samir Duran? Because we didn’t see him at all in WoL, although we did see the fruits of his labors.

So to the first point, I don’t know! My instinct tells me that they should not be canon, but I'd have to look at them again because there's probably good DNA there that might be useful. So relative to Duran...

He is not forgotten. We can certainly say that. Duran is part of a larger story that is still unfolding. You know, there’s hints of it in WoL, there's more hints of it than you might think in the sense that, in a later date, when you have more knowledge, you might go back and play WoL again and see some stuff. So it's certainly not a character that fell by the wayside. He has a part to play in the greater story of the StarCraft universe.

Totally.

Thank you

Thank you

Yes also at the HotS, I'm just wondering if you could give us a chronological ordering of if it takes after WoL, and if so, how long after?

I don’t know that we should do that. You want to do that don't you?

I want to do it all!

[laughs]

Alright if you don’t want to do it I'll side with you.

People: [Do it chris]

I can answer half of it....but not be specific about.

People: [Lawers won't know]

Oh, it's not the lawers, they don’t care. It’s just that.

We're protecting your experience of the product.

Exactly, picture yourself when HotS comes out, sitting in front of your computer playing it, do you really want to feel like “oh I knew that was going to happen!” I saw that on youtube.

OR, do you want to be "oh my god!" You know, so, we want to protect that.

While it's installing you should be saying, “What is the timeline!?”

So ok, Chris has prevailed upon me, against my better instincts, to say that HotS takes place after WoL - unspecified amount of time between the two.

Less than 100 years.

But greater than one hour.

First off gentlement, thank you for creating one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time! [applause] And thank you for being in control of your creative liberty. The question I have is, the Xel’naga, will we ever get to see them, either in a flashback or some way that we can see, why they had planned, or what went wrong, either regarding the Dark Voice, or with the corruption that he did, will we see them physically, in the game?

It's a tough question to answer, because it's a complicated answer. Let’s say this: all things will be revealed, for certain. But whether we...it's a weird question.

I think we can also say that the Xel’Naga are an integral part of the whole thing.

So now whether we see them in their most classical form, you know, what did they look like a million years ago, what did they look like 4 million years ago. That's harder to say because we are still digging alot of that stuff out. What do you perceive, when we really start to throttle up on that thematic? Because it's still kind of inflexed, so I'm not sure how to answer it, but they certainly, at a thematic and practical level, they dominate what is the truest story of StarCraft.

And they're not going to look like gnomes.

Thank you very much gentleman.

Thank you.

Hey Chris I have a question about the UED. Are we ever going to get the backstory of Earth and how the psionic purges turned out, and will we ever see any sign of the UED ever again in the next games?

Off the top of my head, I think it is potentially fertile soil, relative to what StarCraft II is. I can probably spare you all the suspense and tell you that we won't be going to Earth in SC2, but I think there's any number of bitchin stories we could, you know, conjure relative to the era or relative to those eras. It’s not quite on our radar right now, but I think that's really interesting stuff.

Thank you very much. Get those creative juices flowing!

My question is actually a plot clarification that’s nagged at myself and some forumgoers. In StarCraft II, we see Tychus and Raynor take control of the Odin and do as they will with it right under Mengsk’s nose. Later, there’s the revelation concerning Tychus’ connection with Mengsk, so how did this all go down without Mengsk finding out about it and putting a stop to it?

That is a good one. I don’t know that Mengsk always had a direct feed open from Tychus. He’s wandering around the Hyperion, and if his suit is constantly broadcasting every conversation, there’s a good chance that someone onboard would pick up on it. In this game, we usually have to give you bits and pieces of the story, the most relevant ones, and everything else should make sense. But sometimes we need the player to work with us on that. My thinking on Tychus’ suit and how much information Mengsk gets from it was that, periodically there would be a very short, compact, encrypted tightbeam transmission for an eighth of a second that would go out to a specific location. It’s not that Mengsk had a constant knowledge of everything that Raynor’s Raiders were up to. What Mengsk had was a gun to Tychus’ head. And so, he would get regular reports, but the idea was that when the key moment came, when Tychus was able to do what he had to do, Mengsk fully expected Tychus to turn on the broadcast for direct communication. What Mengsk was looking at was a very simple proposition, that, “I’ve got a guy who I can kill at a flip of a switch, and he knows what he has to do, and he’s a pretty experienced combat guy. I can trust that he’s going to do this or he’s going to die, and he knows that I have no trouble killing him.” Because Mengsk is a chess player. He’s a guy who understands that you play the man, not the hand. He understands the motivations involved. So I think he felt it was a pretty safe bet that Tychus would do the right thing at the right time.

First off, I’d just like to say, not only was the gameplay of StarCraft II phenomenal, but the cinematic presentation: just out of this world. Chris, I’m a huge fan. I love how you’ve really been the mastermind behind many of these stories, and I’d love to go deeper. So my question is, what’s coming down the pipe as far as StarCraft II-related novels?

Good question and thank you for the props. Did you like Heaven’s Devils? Well, there’s more to that. That story will continue. So, we’re doing a follow-up to Heaven’s Devils, it is called Devil’s Due. It is written by a girl you may know, named Christie Golden, who actually wrote the hell out of this thing, it’s like a cowboy book. So, where Heaven’s Devils was kind of Jim and Tychus and the army, this is the sequel where it’s kind of like Butch and Sundance, they’re just two outlaws on the run. Robbing trains, kicking butt, it’s kind of their rascal-y years and Christie wrote the hell out of this thing, so I’m very excited for you guys to get to see a little more about Jim and Tychus’ shenanigans over the years. And it definitely gives a little bit more insight about who Jim is and what his arc has been, and what we see him trying to atone for in the present-day. The sins of his past.

Hi. I was just wondering what Mengsk’s actual plan for Tychus was, given what Raynor had to go through just to get to Kerrigan.

Mengsk had been fighting Raynor for years, to a standstill. Different battles, hit-and-run tactics, and he could not make this rebel go away. So he used things like the media to try and paint Jim as a has-been and things like that. Hold on, let me compute. I think you stumbled upon a giant plothole. Let’s talk this through; if Mengsk let Tychus out of prison before the Zerg invasion began… Why would he do that? Well, again, Mengsk is a chess player. He is a mastermind, but not, “Oh, this guy’s a mastermind, he saw all the moves coming, he saw everything.” We’re not saying that. He can’t see the future, and he’s not the source of all the plots in the StarCraft universe, just a lot of them. Jim Raynor was the biggest thorn in his side. Per the press conference at the beginning of Wings of Liberty, he thinks that Jim Raynor is the worst thing that could happen. But he’s smart enough to know he can’t just assassinate the man, that would just turn him into a martyr. So, he needs to “destroy” Jim. And it seems to me, that as soon as he realized he had this guy, Tychus Findlay, in jail, that was a perfect opportunity to put him in the suit, which is the gun to his head, and then unleash him on Jim and see what happens. If the Zerg hadn’t shown up again, if Kerrigan hadn’t rolled on out of Char, there’s a good chance that within six months, Mengsk would have found an opportunity to use Tychus to destroy Jim in some other way. It was a fishing line. It was, “I’m going to throw this hook out there.” There’s only one fish in the pond, and then, all of a sudden, there’s another fish in the pond and it’s like, “Wow, this is great!” It was a very good thing for Mengsk.

Is Tychus actually dead?

Well I guess I’ll say, if I had my way, and I know this would be unpopular, I would say, “Totally.” However, the artists on the dev teams refuse to believe that Tychus is dead. They envision him with tentacles coming out of his face and things like that, so we’ll see who wins that war when we get back home, but you never know. You never know with us. Does anybody ever really die? Right.

Hi. My question is, it’s wonderful for Jim and Sarah that these ancient artifacts magically bring her back to humanity, but is that all just fulfilling the prophecy? That somebody makes these ancient artifacts a million years ago, so that in case a girl gets turned from Terran to Zerg and infested? “Just in case that happens, we’ll leave these artifacts lying around, and somebody can put them all together and assemble them and restore her!” That sounds a little deus ex machina.

That sounds remarkably convenient, doesn’t it? I wonder if it’s occurred to you that the transformation might be a by-product, a side-effect, of something else the artifact is doing? We look forward to showing you. I promise you that there is actually meaning to this. A little more going on than is obvious. And when future expansions are out, come to BlizzCon, and if I’m lying to you right now, call me on it. Assuming I’m not dead.

Hey guys, two questions about the Dominion leadership. Obviously in the bonus mission during the campaign we find out that the Dominion has been experimenting; experiments that have resulted in the creation of a Hybrid, which is a prevalent theme during the Protoss sidemissions. One is, what can you tell us about, did the Dominion know what they were doing with the splicing of the DNA or whatever, and did they know that their experiments would result in the creation of the Hybrids? And also, we see after Media Blitz that there’s rioting going on in Korhal, there’s all kinds of revolts going on in the core worlds. What is the state of the Dominion leadership? What’s kind of going on over there?

You asked, “Did they know what they were doing? What they were getting into? Or was this like a happy accident?” I will say that _somebody_ knew what they were doing. Someone involved with the Dominion knew exactly what they were doing. It was not a happy accident in a lab somewhere. Whether all of the Dominion folk involved in the program necessarily know, that would be a bigger question. The second part was the state of the Dominion government. So, Mengsk is still in charge, but things have gone pretty south on him. Likely the riots and civil unrest will continue, and whole worlds may attempt to cede from the Dominion. While he’s still in charge, things have definitely changed. I think he’s going to be in a far more desperate state to hold things together because now he’s just totally been found out. And people are not altogether pleased at what kind of man that he is.

Hey. That news guy, what’s his name? Donny Vermillion, in the campaign? I was wondering, you know, in Heart of the Swarm, can I have the guy shot?

Yeah that’s… Wow, you really didn’t like Donny, huh? [“Most annoying man ever.”] [laughs] We’ll see what we can do. We’ll definitely try to get him shot if we can. [crowd cheers] What about Kate Lockwell, how did you guys feel about her? [crowd cheers] Wow, some Kate love. You guys want to know something really funny? This is like, the weird trivia stuff that we don’t even know is trivia yet. But, no joke, based on that question, the art guys had designed Donny as a cyborg. And we totally had a scene during all this Korhal stuff where he gets shot and he’s a robot. He’s revealed to be a robot. So, you know, production time, we just decided to kind of cut it. But in fact, if you open the toolset, and you poke around and find Donny’s model, you will find a robot, injured, shot Donny.

Near the end of Brood War, Raynor vowed to kill Kerrigan after she was involved in the death of one of his best friends Fenix. How do you reconcile that with the fact that in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Raynor seems fixated on instead of saving Kerrigan even at great risk to all of his friends and crewmembers and seems to have forgotten who Fenix is.

Oh, I don't think that hes forgotten who Fenix is at all. And I guess the pithy response would be, it ain't over yet. I don't mean anything by that but, I think the context of her changed radically. The events of Brood War and components of the first game, hes under the conclusion that there's nothing in the universe that will save this girl, she is simply the Queen of Blades it's done. And she just proves to be more and more evil over time. And the significant thing that happens in Wings of Liberty you know Valerian tells him "hey, there might be a chance to change her back" its a game changer for him. He never allowed himself hope, he never considered it could be a possibility. It changed his whole sense of thinking. Now, there's still things that'll play out. I am not suggesting he's going to kill Kerrigan. I guess I am not suggesting he won't either. [laughs] I mean, even if they get together relationships are rough, right? Any normal Wednesday night at home she burns the steak...

There is no excuse for domestic abuse.

[pause] I know

And I would add to that, I think the key thing about that moment where Raynor turns left instead of right, is, that you know there was a big question that I think that a lot of people in the Koprulu Sector would have had, which is "so the Queen of Blades, is she like a completely different person? Or is that just a really pissed off Kerrigan with a lot of power and tentacles" you know? And I think that Jim had such a connection with Sarah that he just could not believe, he could certainly hate and want to kill the Queen of Blades. But, when he was confronted with the question of whether or not that was really Sarah Kerrigan or if the real sarah was in there somewhere and could be brought back. There was no way he couldn't take that chance. And try to bring her back.

Hi, you guys got a great game here. I was particularly impressed with the character development and surprised by Tassadar's semi-resurrection as a ghost. My question is, is he going to be a one time deal or is he going to be a ghost dad and stick around a little bit more?

That's a really good question.

Let's handle this delicately. [laughs] Well, we can't remotely begin to speak about things about the Protoss campaign down the line. Let me just say that there's probably some kind of metaphysical tie between the ancient Protoss hero Adun and then through Tassadar that will kind of continue to play out is one of our, like, really flavorful potential plotlines. But, we haven't really made any total calls on it yet in terms of what will actually go into the Protoss campaign. But, theres a lot of rich potential with Tassadar and the nature of him and the nature of the Khala and what he really represents to the Protoss people. But, it would be premature to get into it all at this phase.

I like your response.

[laughs]
Right on

My question is at the end of Brood War we see Kerrigan basically obliberate the UED, the Dominion and most likely the Protoss. So how do we kind of reconcile that with just Raynor in the Hyperion kind of steamrolling her at every meeting. Especially with her on the battlefield.

Well I think that the instances where you see her in Wings of Liberty one of the things that we are trying to imply in that story is that she has forces out looking for all of the parts of the artifact too. And she doesn't necessarily have all of the same knowledge that Raynor has through the Moebius Foundation. So, you know the idea is that her swarm is certainly overpoweringly strong, but it's also spread when they come boiling off Char they go you know 360 degrees. They go everywhere. They're sort of carpet bomb searching, just looking everywhere. Whereas Raynor is targetted and focused. So, even when Kerrigan is on the map Raynor is never facing the entire swarm. Because yes, if he did that battle would be over in about 5 seconds. So, he's really fighting like smaller task forces that she's made. And so, even, you know, when she does appear on the map though, she's scary as all heck. First time I played that mission you know and I saw her on a map, I was actually terrified. So, I mean I hope that we didn't treat her too lightly. I don't think that we did.

Hi, so the Starcraft manga have introduced a lot of esoteric creatures into the lore, and I am wondering how they factor into the future of the series. Specifically, the Phoenix Energy Beast and Gestalt Zero.

We are kind of still discussing how all of those ideas play out. It would be premature to comment, we are still kind of working on those.

Yea, I think that it's safe to say that the Protoss the Terran and the Zerg are the marquee races of the StarCraft universe. They feature prominently and importantly in all of the mainline stories that we are telling. But, that doesn't mean they are the only life forms. They're, you know, space is a very crowded place. And these StarCraft spaces so there's certainly other things going on out there.

Hi! I am a fan of the old StarCraft, as well as the new one. But, I was so impressed that you put the extra story into it. I mean, considering its an RTS game that just blew my socks off. And, what I really enjoyed the best was the character development, I actually played through it twice to fully understand the characters and it was just awesome!

[thank you]

So my question is when's that next book coming out that you were talking about? [laughs]

It's funny, you know we probably weren't supposed to have rolled that out. But, we gotta give you guys something... come on. But I don't exactly know when the publishing date is supposed to be but, I am going to find out.

And my other question is, who if there is any major group of people, who designed Tychus Findlay's character?

I can handle that. Particularly Tychus came about, if I am remembering right, our cinematic director Nick Carpenter and our writer Andy Chambers were sitting and jamming on ideas for just kind of cinematic hooks. So, we love the idea of having just Jim just kind of in the war years right? Just having little kind of short film type animatics. And it seemed necessary to have someone to have him to kind of rip with. Some old war buddy and so Nick had kinda come up with the look for this big tough old buddy of Jims and I think it was Andy who coined the Tychus Findlay name and then very quickly all these little affects followed. You know his big hard hittin irish brother, spent time in the can, all these little details started to fall out. But really, I gotta tell you, the Tychus character was interesting and structurally necessary but it wasn't until we got into that studio and Neil Kaplan kinda hit the voice out of nowhere, right? And he just starts going, and we went, "holy cow how is that sound coming out of that man?" and immediately Tychus just took over. I mean he was a totally secondary you know afterthought character. But once Neil started saying his lines, he was like by far the funnest character to write. He just like took over us as we were writing the game. Because it was just so, you could just hear it in every line [so fun to write].

I lost 9 years in prison on account of you.

[laughs]

Jimmy.

Well, thank you very much for putting so much into the story and Tychus is not dead or have tentacles!

[laughs]

Raynor just winged him a little.

Yea... well. We will see what we can do.

Flesh Wound

Hi, I want to start off saying I love StarCraft II, I love the StarCraft and the WarCraft universes they are my two favorite universes that ive played since I was a kid. And, with that my question involves both games. StarCraft 1 was a really gritty dark game where bad stuff happened and it happened. That was just how it went. And then WarCraft comes along and it's more fantasy, there's more of like the paragon of good and evil. And then, I was just wondering if you guys are gonna, do you guys notice the really close draw between StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft, where Kerrigan kinda became Thrall. She was this evil thing, evil person and then she just suddenly became possibly a very good character. Even if she didn't know it. And then, you have the zerg kinda just got the orc complex where they were bloodthirsty. Then, well maybe they were just corrupted, you don't know.

[laughs]

You know I am just wondering like, are you going to bring StarCraft back to that universe where its like really gritty and there's actually punishment for being evil instead of just suddenly being good and theres consequences to the really good people without them suddenly becoming really evil.

No, we're just gonna do exactly what WarCraft did. That's a complicated question, to answer it in truth would give too much away. Keep in mind Heart of the Swarm is about what this girl is about. And by extension, what are the zerg about. Because it runs a lot deeper than what you've seen so far. That being said, and as a direct answer to your question. Its highly unlikely that we are gonna make a decision to suddenly transform the Zerg into this lawful, good, heroic. The Zerg are the Zerg. No matter what. They are terrifying, they are violent, they are animals. That will not change. That being said, all sorts of things can change. But again, we are curently working on all that stuff and still feeling out the storyline and what we want to do with the Zerg. But the scary component can not be compromised. Relative to the WarCraft thing, I guess sometimes racial concepts there are thresholds right? Did we break Orcs in pop culture, you know, kinda making them a little more noble? Not sure what the threshold is, but the threshold for the Zerg concept is definitely a lot clearer. When are Zerg not Zerg? Well, when they aren't scary, when they aren't animals.

Yea, I think and I agree, I think it's safe to say on that topic, on the StarCraft part of your question. I have actually been really surprised that people have been jumping to this conclusion that we were saying that the Zerg were you know just misunderstood. And would turn out to be these great noble beings. I can understand that there's some fear in the community that that might be the case. And pretty soon you'll see Zerg you know weaving baskets and carrying flowers around. That's not gonna happen. And the Zerg, as I have said, are absolutely the worst thing that can happen to your day so. Yea, there is a lot of stuff in their backstory it's complicated it will all be revealed but have no fear that they will turn out to be misunderstood. And as to the Kerrigan part, I also really think that, I see the parallel that you're kind of talking about, but I don't really think it applies because Thrall was a character who underwent a sort of enlightenment and sort of understood his place in the world better. Kerrigan, well the Queen of Blades, was an evil terrifying creature, sarah Kerrigan was not. Sarah Kerrigan is scary, she's an assassin, right? But, but I don't see it as one character that's just kind of, you know, becoming nicer.

And even on that point, you had some really good parts to your question, specifically to the "is justice possible" right? Justice, or what we would presume justice is for her, and a potential redemption, right? Are you neutering a gritty universe, right? In trying to overtly chase a redemption story. It's a really good point and a really good question. How the hell do I answer it without giving away where we are going?

Trust us

[laughs]

It is a gritty universe, and on a long enough timeline theres so much more going on behind the curtain. It's like Wings of Liberty barely scratches the truth, you know, of kind of what's occuring. So you talk about justice for her. I don't know, it's exactly what we are chasing in terms of the Heart of the Swarm storyline. So, be patient with us, hopefully we will answer all of this directly through the gameplay or through the storyline.

I think that bad things happen to bad people in StarCraft , but bad things happen to good people too, so...

Seemingly more often.

[laughs] Yea.

That's exactly what I was looking for, things to be just more real and gritty where bad things just corrupt bad people or good people even too. Thanks.

StarCraft II reminds me of westerns and Vin Diesel in Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick. Which influences helped inspire the creation of the character Tychus Findlay?

The whole western thematic of StarCraft were there from the first one, so this time around we wanted to embrace it fully. If I could put a cowboy hat on Raynor, in every scene, I would have done so. The first image in my head, of Raynor, was this guy sitting in a bar, with a bottle of whiskey, with a cowboy hat on his head, fretting over a girl.

I was really interested in the character Matt Horner, will we ever be hearing the story revolving him and Mira Han and/or his adventures with Raynor, as they obviously have a lot of story together.

We would love to explore the Mira Han - Matt Horner situation. But right now our focuses are all on the expansions.

In Wings of Liberty Raynor can walk around on the Hyperion and talk to all of his subordinates and interact with them. In the Heart of the Swarm who will Kerrigan talk and interact with?

We can't answer that. Do you have any Wings of Liberty questions?

How do you explain Raynor Raiders fighting the fleet of Executor Selendis and defeating her?

Suspension of disbelief.

Will Kerrigan receive her hair back in Heart of the Swarm?

Unanswerable at this time. But isn't she kind of hot looking with those dreads?

In Wings of Liberty, you introduced the character Dr. Narud, which is spelled Duran backwards, is that intentional?

Who would do THAT? That's crazy talk. *laughs*

Did the Xel'Naga let the Zerg absorb them originally, because in the original plot it says they underestimated them and they breached their world ship and absorbed them. But unlike in the StarCraft II events, where we get a little info into the Xel'Naga lifestyle, that might not be the case.

There is a coherent story there, I promise.

How much freedom do you give the authors of StarCraft novels to expand the universe?

Around 90% of our novels, we outline our stories as a team. If we have the hook beforehand we just kind of walk an author through the story we want to do, but we still do a lot of it as a group.

Have you ever had an author coming with a slamming idea and you respond with "run with it"?

All the time!

Did you ever have an alternative ending to Wings of Liberty that you didn't end up releasing?

Many. But we were never in doubt that it would end the way that it did, with Kerrigan and Raynor.

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