1UP: Since these are "work in progress" HUDs/interfaces, can you talk about what elements of the interface feel like they "work", and also what parts of the interface are still being tuned and why?

DB: We're still putting in a lot of work on the star map, where you select which planets or systems you're traveling to next. The tech purchase screen that we showed at BlizzCon has also been overhauled, so what you saw there is probably not how it's going to look in the final product. Other aspects of the interface, such as the "sets" that you?ll explore in-between missions with Jim Raynor, are also being worked on constantly. These sets include places like the bridge of the Hyperion (Raynor's battlecruiser), and the bar on Mar Sara.



1UP: Do you anticipate the production cycle for the StarCraft 2 trilogy to feel like making three separate games, or more like World of WarCraft and its expansions, where the bulk of the work is on the first installment, and subsequent ones are more about iterating and refining rather than inventing?

DB: Well that's the hope; that a good amount of the hard work of designing gameplay mechanics and systems, as well as the internal tasks of creating tools and protocols to develop all this content, is mostly settled at this point as we get deeper into the creation of the core game. So once we ship the core game of StarCraft 2 and start delving into the expansions, we'll have a great deal of that infrastructure under our belts and be able to concentrate primarily on content creation for the two expansion sets.



That said, we're conscious of making sure we are providing new and compelling content for the expansions. The meta-aspects of the Zerg and Protoss campaigns, for example, will work a lot differently than how we're doing things with the core StarCraft 2 game. It doesn't make sense for Kerrigan to be flying around in a battlecruiser and picking out mercenary missions for cash, which is what you'll be doing with Raynor in the core game's campaign. So we'll be doing something different with Kerrigan to get her to evolve and grow her Zerg army. Meanwhile, Zeratul's Protoss campaign may require you to engage in diplomacy with the different Protoss tribes in order to gain access to different units and technologies.