Overall, Starcraft 2 finally feels like a living, breathing world. Blizzard has done this in a wide range of ways, like making the mission briefings dynamic with moving cameras; no longer are you staring at a single screen with talking heads on it. All of the main characters -- Tosh, Tychus, Raynor and so on -- inhabit the ship, and clicking on them often leads to cutscenes that are rich with story points, though unnecessary to complete the game. Missing them would be a shame, because a lot of effort has gone into the look and feel of these. You'll get insight into everyone from Tychus to Zeratul, on an emotional level that wasn't attempted before.

There's a lot of dress-up going on as well throughout the ship. Take the Armory, for instance. It's located in a massive bay, and as you play through, different pieces of actual Terran weaponry and infantry will appear in here. It's a great reference for size: ever wonder what an actual Firebat suit might look like close up? Now you know. It adds absolutely zero to the gameplay, but it fleshes out the backstory and makes everything feel that much more realistic. The Laboratory gets this in spades, although we'll let you discover those fun tidbits on your own. The Cantina also has a live news feed running on a large screen overhead, a jukebox with a wide range of punkabilly electro-twang western tunes, and an (unplayable as of yet) Lost Vikings arcade game.

Blizzard has also added Challenges, which are accessible from the Multiplayer menu right now, but not within the game, although this will most likely change. There are nine different challenges, ranging from basic to expert, and only two were made available to us. Most appear to involve surviving waves of advancing enemies, using only a few units. Think Horde mode, Starcraft-style. You'll be awarded medals based on how many enemies/waves you are able to survive. It's a nice toss-in for people who want more challenging content in the single-player mode, although it doesn't add anything to the story.

"We're not trying to be innovative," says StarCraft II design director Dustin Browder when confronted with criticism that Blizzard's anticipated PC real-time strategy title's multiplayer gameplay has not sufficiently evolved since its predecessor's 1998 release.

"We're not trying to change for change's sake," Browder told Gamasutra as part of a larger forthcoming interview conducted at Blizzard's offices earlier this week. "We're just trying to make quality, and we definitely felt there were some things in the previous game that were high quality, that we weren't super confident we could do much better."
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But he said that attitude has primarily applied to StarCraft II's multiplayer component, which is currently undergoing heavy balance testing in its large-scale closed beta test.

"For the guys who say, 'I just need something new,' we've created a whole solo play experience which we feel really scratches that itch," Browder said. "It's a brand-new experience. ... We have a very high-quality version of a non-linear experience in an RTS game, and we think that's an area where players who are bored of [traditional] RTS will have a lot of fun."