Today, Blizzard Entertainment decided to give some love to the Starcraft universe with the announcement of the Allied Commanders co-op game mode - exclusive to Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void.
In Allied Commander, players will act as one of three heroes from the Starcraft universe, each with special abilities and units that can be used to gain the upper hand in a series of co-op missions. The available commanders include: Jim Raynor, Infested Kerrigan, and Hierarch Artanis. Their special abilities are as follows:
The Blizzard page suggests that there will be multiple commanders for each race, with the possibility of some being announced later on or released with the final version of the game. Terran commanders will be able to summon war machines such as Raynor’s Hyperion, Zerg commanders allow players to take control of heroes such as Kerrigan, and Protoss commanders use powerful area-of-effect abilities using their orbital cannons. Each race will provide a different play style - just like they do in regular multiplayer - while the commanders bring about extra perks unique to their race as well.
However, skills cannot be used wildly. While these abilities seem to be overpowered at first glance, Blizzard has made sure to limit the player’s ability to “spam” skills. Players will have a set number of charges depending on what “Commander Skill” they use.
Considering that the developers have designed this game mode to have greater difficulty than regular single-player campaign missions, it should be safe to say that using up all of your charges too early could lead to disastrous results.
Dragoons appear in the above image, possibly signaling their return in the single player campaign missions as well
What’s more, the missions each have set objectives - like in the single player campaign - meaning that players will need to communicate with each other to decide what enemies to prioritize, and so on.
Supposedly these missions are impossible to complete alone, requiring “effective teamwork and collaboration with your ally” to succeed. Whether or not that is true will be left to the pro Starcraft II players, and speed runners of YouTube.
Considering that Allied Commanders will have customizable difficulty settings, it will be entertaining to see just how “impossible” these missions are.
Playing higher difficulties will increase the challenge, and Blizzard has also made it clear that there will be special incentives to play the higher difficulty modes.
However, Blizzard has not yet made it clear what these rewards will be. It is possible that they are alluding to in-game rewards such as skins or portraits. It could also simply allude to rewards within the Allied Commander mode itself, such as new units, abilities, or commanders. While fan speculation could run rampant it looks like we will just have to wait for further updates to find out.
Allied Commander looks like a promising new feature for the Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void expansion. It is likely to draw in fans who are not so keen on regular multiplayer matches, and could provide exciting new campaigns that tie into the Starcraft II lore. While Legacy of the Void is still a long way’s off from release, it seems to be shaping up to be a great expansion pack with greater amounts of content than Heart of the Swarm. To see the official blog post for yourself, check out the link here.
What are your thoughts on the new Allied Commander mode? What heroes would you like to see as commanders? Do you think that this mode will simply fade away into obscurity after release? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
