Blizzard Entertainment is lauded for its skill at creating beautiful computer animation massive both in scale and detail. The opening cinematic for its upcoming expansion, StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, stays true to its well earned pedigree, offering a gorgeously rendered, awe-inspiring look at a Zerg invasion.
Zerglings and Ultralisks lay waste to a Terran city, crushing Marines and Siege Tanks in a terrifying battle that ends with Ghost turned Zerg Queen of Blades Sarah Kerrigan overseeing the consequences of her revenge. And then, a minor twist that helps bridge the ending of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty and its soon-to-be-released successor.
In an interview with StarCraft 2 game director Dustin Browder, he explained what Heart of the Swarm's opening cinematic is meant to express.
"If you don't get chills when you see it, you're dead inside."
"One of the things we're trying to convey is this sense of Zerg war," Browder told Polygon. "To give you an idea of what it means to play this game [as the Zerg]. This is the power you will encapsulate. This is the strength and force of destruction you will rain down upon Mengsk and his Dominion.
"We're really trying to capture that emotion, and at the same time set up the core problem of the game which is that Kerrigan does not actually have that power," he explained. "That's the power she aspires to, but not the power she currently has in her hands. It's a dream that she's having of power yet to come. We can show you that fantasy, this is going to, hopefully, match your experience of destroying people with the Zerg.
"But right now, she's in a lab somewhere, she's not free and surrounded by people who don't have a lot of love for her at this point."
StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm will hatch on Windows and Mac PC on March 12, 2013.
