The Story of Starcraft Part 20: Wings of Liberty: Opening Missions

The first few missions of the Wings of Liberty campaign have a lot of heavy lifting to do. They have to teach you the mechanics of the game - from squad control to base building - while tossing you headfirst into the lore.

They also have to be fun for new players and veterans.

Like with all fiction, the start is critical. The game only gets one first impression.

Mission: Liberation Day

We learned from the intro cutscene that Mengsk is a bad guy and Raynor doesn’t like him. This mission is about taking the fight to a fearful but rebellious planet, inspiring them to rise up against the Dominion.

This is a Search and Destroy mission. Find the Dominion comms centre and shoot it til it falls over. That’ll cripple the Dominion’s ability to respond to the rebellion.

Just from the mission objective alone, we’re seeing good design. Starcraft 1 suffered from the occasional tedious mission where you only won when you destroyed every enemy building. You might have gutted their economy and production in 15 minutes, then have to spend another five scouring the map to burn down some harmless supply depots.

Starcraft 2 avoids this. You rarely have to destroy every enemy building - usually there’s one or a few key structures you need to take out. Whether you crush the enemy or target the objective is up to you.

What’s to stop someone from cheesing a Search and Destroy mission by, say, sneaking a flying unit to slowly whittle down the target? Again, that comes down to good design. Mission-critical targets are usually nestled in the enemy base and given a lot of hitpoints. Sometimes they even fight back. This makes destroying the base the easiest way to take out the objective.

It’s a subtle change but it makes a big difference in how it feels to play.

Anyway, make to Liberation Day…

You’re given a small squad of Marines, plus Jim Raynor - who’s basically a Marine with better stats. That’s it. If you’ve never played an RTS before, you have the chance to practice moving and attacking with your units.

This is a great tutorial. There’s a point to it, story-wise. There’s a challenge to it, gameplay-wise. But it’s simple. You’re given some marines, an objective and no distractions.

On Brutal (the hardest difficulty) you have to micromanage your units to keep them all healthy. On easier difficulties, it’s just a case of getting used to how it feels to move your troops around.

The mission is haunting without delving into horror. You move through an empty city, with Jim wondering where the people are. What few civilians remain are scared. Holograms of Mengsk spout propaganda - you can destroy them if you want. You encounter a few enemy Marines, then a few combat vehicles for variety.

You still only have the marine to worry about. This is still the tutorial.

When you find the civilians, they’re being rounded up by the Dominion. There’s undertones of slave labour and of people disappearing at a “dig site”. One of the civilians tries to run for it and is gunned down by the Dominion.

Mengsk and the Dominion are bad guys. This isn’t Raynor telling you this - you’re seeing it with your own eyes.

Then you rally the civilians who help you destroy the target structure and a civilian thanks you for giving them hope.

Nice, clean, simple and meaningful. You know how to move units and who the bad guys are now.

Also? Starcraft lore is weird. In a setting where psychic cyborg space lizards fight swarms of monsters using energy swords and magic crystals, a human planet rebelling against a human dictatorship is a soft landing for the newcomers.

You can tell how much thought went into this mission alone.

Mission: The Outlaws

Running a rebellion is expensive. Luckily, Tychus’s mysterious partners have come through with a job for you. Raid the Dominion dig site and steal the artefact they’re searching for, and you’ll get paid.

This is win-win. You’re freeing slaves, landing a blow against tyranny and getting paid.

What is the artefact? Something alien, something probably not important…

This is another Search and Destroy mission. It’s one of the few where you have to eliminate all the enemy buildings. This is fine for two reasons: one, it’s teaching you how to smash an enemy base. Do you target the enemy combat units first? What about going after the workers? The supply depots? The production structures? Two, all the buildings are clustered in a small area. You won’t spend any time scouring the map for the last depot.

It’s also a tutorial mission. Yeah, the objective is to destroy the enemy base. It’s also teaching you how to build and manage a base of your own. That means introducing concepts like workers, harvesting, production structures and supply.

This is all standard stuff for an RTS. It doesn’t assume you know any of this, but it doesn’t belabour anything either. A quick voice line tells you what to focus on in each moment.

This mission also introduces the Medic. This is significant for two reasons:

Firstly, the mission is based around the Medic. While it’s possible to crack the enemy’s defences with just Marines, a combo of Marines with Medics to heal them is much better at it.

This isn’t like in Starcraft 1, where you’d unlock new units almost at random. You get the Battlecruiser late in the campaign because it’s a late-tech unit, but there’s no reason to use it in that mission. The story doesn’t justify it and the mission isn’t built around having it.

In Starcraft 2, though, one of the design philosophies is the mission that unlocks a new unit should showcase that unit. This is good design. Give the player a new toy, show them how it works, then step back. Whether they use it or not is up to them.

Secondly, this is a deviation from multiplayer Terran.

If you fire up an online Starcraft 2 competitive match and choose Terran, there’s no Medic unit. There’s a Medivac unit, which is part Medic, part Dropship - a flying transport that heals infantry.

For The Outlaws, you need a healing unit but introducing a flying transport ship so early would mess with the flow of the game.

So they changed it.

The Terran you play as in the campaign isn’t the same Terran you play as in competitive multiplayer. In multiplayer, the Terrans need to be balanced. In the campaign, they need to be fun.

This is other deviation from Starcraft 1, where the campaigns use the same units as the multiplayer.

Moving away from that is smart. We want ridiculous, overpowered and imbalanced nonsense when fighting AI opponents.

This mission also has a nice bit of tension between Raynor and Tychus. When the Dominion troops in this area attack another rebel base, Tychus is relieved - that will keep them off their backs. Raynor shuts him down, saying they’re going to help those other rebels.

There’s a gameplay reward for helping them - their base joins you - so both the story and the gameplay nudge you towards siding with Raynor.

You then smash the Dominion base and steal the artefact - a big, glowy thingy.

Mission: Zero Hour

You have the artefact. Now all you need is to get picked up.

The mission briefing has a nice moment of misdirection here. Horner warns you that the Dominion might be able to track the artefact, so be prepared to defend it.

Maybe they can - but they don’t.

Instead, the Zerg track the artefact, trying to overrun your base and get it back. This is significant - the first incursion of Zerg into Dominion space in four years. Maybe the artefact is more than just a pretty toy, huh?

This is a Timed Defence mission. Your goal is to endure enemy attacks until the timer runs out and your ride appears. You unlock a new structure - the Bunker, which is great for base defence. It also teaches you how the Zerg fight - by spreading creep across the map and sending large waves of enemies at you.

Terran are conceptually simple - man with gun or man in tank, got it. If you’re new to Starcraft, though, then the creepy, bug-like Zerg are new to you. Your introduction to them isn’t a mission where you exterminate them - it’s one where they’ll overrun you eventually.

It establishes them as a threat in gameplay, not just story.

Defence missions can be boring. Once your defences are in place, you just have to wait and occasionally make some repairs. Zero Hour tries to get around it by encouraging you (but not forcing you) to venture onto the map to rescue pinned-down survivors. Proactive players will also choose to venture out, if only to push the creep back.

It’s still not a lot to do, though. Most of your time is spent waiting.

Eventually, Matt Horner shows up and we escape on Raynor’s flagship - the Hyperion. We’ll talk more about that ship next time.