Blizzard’s classic strategy series is gearing up for its most radical change ever. New StarCraft will abandon the top-down view and strategy genre in favor of a third-person shooter with an open world, and the decision about this matured gradually, through discussions within the development team.
Game general manager Dan Hay told TechRadar Gaming at BlizzCon 2026 how the transition happened. According to him, every time the team drew concept art or discussed a future game, the conversation inevitably returned to one topic:
Every time we drew a picture or talked about it, it was the same thing – feet on the ground.
Discussions gradually expanded and included more and more design elements that continued to push the project towards a shooter. The team started thinking about how the camera and the player’s perspective would work, then moved on to questions about character armor and what could penetrate it in combat.
We talked about the characters, and we realized very quickly that we were not discussing a game shot from above. We are talking about a game where the action takes place on the ground, where you feel every centimeter of what is happening.
Taking action to ground level fits in logically into the story the studio wants to tell players. The developers deliberately decided to abandon the usual view of the map from above and focus on the hero’s personal presence in the world.
In addition to the change in perspective, the team focused on open world elements – exploration and discovering new locations. Hay described how the developers wanted players to notice objects in the distance and wonder if they had seen something similar in the first game in the series, and then go there to check it out.
We wanted to make sure there was room for exploration. Make sure there is room for opening. Seeing something far in the distance and thinking, is that what I saw in the first game? And then go there.
Blizzard confirmed the Protoss in the StarCraft shooter and indicated where to look for them in the trailer
StarCraft was first shown to the public at BlizzCon 2026 via a cinematic trailer. The game’s release is scheduled for 2030, which leaves the developers a few more years to refine the open world concept and transfer the classic universe to a new gameplay format.
