Chris Sigaty interviewed by IgroMir

What’s the reason behind the achievement system in RTS? What influence it might have on the overall game style?
We added the achievement system to help guide players through the content. We thought they would add a lot to StarCraft II as a reward system, and to let you know that you are accomplishing some cool things. As you earn achievements you actually unlock avatars, which you can display on your Battle.net profile, and decals, which will appear on your units in game.

So what we hope it will do for the overall gameplay is that as you go through the campaign, you can use the achievements as a guide to help suggest things that you should go do. For example, after you've finished the campaign, the achievements (and the unlockable rewards) could be a good incentive for you to try the special challenge mode we've added to the game, or play some cooperative skirmish matches. We’re hoping that those achievements can encourage players to try play modes that they might not have tried on their own.

We’ve heard that battles in SC II are more dynamic to compare with SCI. What’s your view on this?
We've said from the beginning that our goal with StarCraft II was to reimagine, not reinvent the original game. So it should be apparent that we have tried to stick with the mechanics of the original StarCraft to some degree. We wanted to capture the essence of what made the original StarCraft great, including the speed of the game, and the balance not only between races, but between the early tech units and later tech units. We feel we've done a good job at maintaining the speed of the game, and StarCraft II may be even faster than the original at the highest setting.

And then on top of that we have put in a lot of effort to try and ensure that all the units are good in various cases. As you’ve seen in some of the battle reports we’ve definitely seen a lot of different units being used. And our hope is that there isn’t a single answer or the best way to play and that all the units have specific roles, and that the game is more dynamic in general. We'll see how everything plays out in beta, and we will adjust balance as necessary.

Will we find out the fate of some other characters apart from the most famous like Raynor in SC II? Any light on Duran perhaps?
Again, I want to be careful not to spoil some of the story elements that we've built into the StarCraft II. I can tell you that there are new characters that are introduced and obviously we play a part in their fate. There are also other characters that we’ve seen in the previous StarCraft games and also books that also make an appearance in Wings of Liberty and beyond.

Any hints regarding system requirements?
We’re still putting the final touches on what they are. We’re working on trying to ensure we hit the widest spectrum of systems out there, so we have a very scalable number of graphics options so everybody can play. But the game does require shader 2.0 or better video cards. And on top of that you should expect to have at least 1 gigabyte of memory to play the game. Those are really the two main things that we are communicating at this point.

Will SC II also be released for Mac OS X?
Yes, and it will be sim-shipped with the PC version.

What interesting SC II features will be offered through Battle.net?
We’ve completely revamped Battle.net for StarCraft II and that’s what we’re hard at work on right now. Our goal with Battle.net and StarCraft II was to completely integrate Battle.net into the game, so effectively you have an always connected experience with StarCraft II and Battle.net. Features like achievements, and being able to communicate with your friends even across games like World of Warcraft, are possible because of the changes to Battle.net.

We've also made improvements to our skill-based matchmaking system compared our previous games. There’s a new league and ladder system that ties right into the automated matchmaking system. This league and ladder system will serve both hardcore and casual players alike, and make sure that you're competing only against players that are close to your skill level.

We’ve also added some things for the players that aren’t interested in the competitive side. So for example, we now can do a co-op skirmish, and you can play through the custom games with friends. We make playing games with friends on your team even easier than ever, with our new party system. With the party feature, you can invite your friends into a party and then jump into custom games or start your own games as a party. As you complete matches, you'll always stay on the same team with the friends you've added to your party. You can also do the same thing for the anonymous match make games where you play 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 and that sort of thing. So overall it’s a much more cohesive experience.

So the most important question! Will Jim Raynor and Kerrigan have children?
That’s not something we would reveal here, because it would be a huge plot-spoiler. But, you know, obviously their fates do play out in Wings of Liberty and I think people should check it out, get the game once it’s released and see what happens.

source