Vice president of the game design Rob Pardo explains that the original Starcraft arose from the team’s desire to create a fast-paced real-time strategy game like Warcraft II, but in a different universe, then describes how Blizzard’s subsequent RTS project, 2002’s Warcraft III, took a very different approach by offering slower-paced gameplay with smaller armies, hero units, and many units with activatable abilities to appeal to “the average gamer.”
Age of Empires III is beautiful to look at. Some games when you play them are choppy, but this game is amazing to look at as you play it. Just look at the gorgeous, shimmering water, the rugged contours of that unexplored landscape. Admire the detailed, brilliantly animated units, the settlers chopping trees, planting crops or hunting deer, the way that buildings splinter and shatter when they receive one cannon ball too many. Zoom in and check out the detail, the jumping fish, the wildlife, the smoke, the vegetation. Watch ships gliding along a channel between two tropical islands.