I have a dirty, dirty secret readers. I have a long standing man crush on November “Nova” Terra of Starcraft fame. In the early 2000s when Blizzard announced a Starcraft Ghost game I went nuts. Many a weekday evening wasted away for me as I sat at my crappy little Dell playing my Real Time Strategy game about space rednecks versus alien bugs always determined to grab one unit and one unit only to serve out nuclear justice. The Ghost unit. A glass cannon that could cloak themselves and stalk across the battlefied a panther in the night. A badass with a sniper rifle that could turn around the entire course of battle with a single strike of orbital ordinance. My lullaby of Nuclear Launch Detected sung to invite my enemies into sweet slumber. I was engrossed by the story of the psi kids abducted from their homes and given extensive training turning them into little Jason and Jane Bournes of space.
In Starcraft Ghost I would have taken the reins of my fave unit in a third person military action game. With a few stealth elements, it sounded like I was going to be Solid Snake in space. Heck. Yes. Then I saw the first concepts of Nova. This young blondie badass with green eyes and booty for days. (In this post-Overwatch world, it’s clear someone at Blizzard really, really likes the booty). I was instantly enamored by Nova. Her seemingly endless cloaking ability, skulking through vents and catwalks, eliminating her enemies with the violent prejudice I had come to love in my Starcraft games. Plus I could call down my very own nuclear strike. I could finally embody my favorite unit. Or… So I thought. Starcraft Ghost hit development hell. I had faith Blizzard would still do it. I knew it would come out eventually. It would be perfect.
Then the reality slowly set in. Sure Blizzard did their best to keep Nova’s spirit alive. An odd grave marker for her in their MMO World of Warcraft. Her starring roles in the occasional Oliver Twist rip off novel or high school romance manga. But none of that was Starcraft Ghost. Then in 2014 Blizzard announced the title was cancelled. The dream was dead.
Recently upon reinstalling Battle.net to get in some good quality time with Dad 76, Waifu and Cheers Luv! Blizzard began assailing me with notices that Nova was back. Not as a cheap plastic action figure or a hero in a MOBA (shudder). But THE Nova. My Nova. And she was getting an entire set of missions dedicated to her in the form of Starcraft Covert Ops. I told myself aloud “No, I won’t be burned again. Not another sorry Nova story. Not another Blizzard IP undeserving of my cash money.” Then I folded. I plopped down a little more than sixteen bucks and I got ready to confront my ex. Was this the Nova “title” I was waiting for? Or was it another cheap cash grab using a familiar, never quite realized mascot?
So here are my thoughts. The last time we saw Nova she was killing off Specters and trying to coax you into the middle of her argument with her ex-boyfriend. She then tries and fails to assassinate the leader of the space parasites, then disappears completely from Starcraft’s narrative. We pick up some time after the zerg threat has been dealt with, and Nova is a hero. A patriot who saved the Dominion she serves from the zerg threat. But something is wrong. Nova can’t remember any of the details of her last mission, her mind has been completely wiped (something that, if you follow the character, you realize happens to her quite often and you’d think homegirl would take some better precautions), and she has become some sort of wanted criminal. Now she’s on the run from a shadowy organization that wants to hunt her down while simultaneously clearing her name.
The first mission in Covert Ops is dripping with originality… For the Starcraft universe anyway. There’s a large, relatively painless stealth section that explodes into fiery chaos and transforms into an epic escape. You’re then lead into a bike chase across a highway as war planes follow and try to eliminate you. Badass, right? Most definitely. So Starcraft 2’s system doesn’t always quite play nice with some of the ideas Blizzard tries to exercise here. The bike chase feels a little predictable and low-speed. Some of the stealth section feels far too video game-y (spinning flame turrets? Really?) But for the most part it’s nice to see them do something different with an aging engine.
Sadly the originality doesn’t last long. Because the mission right after is your typical “build a base and survive enemy assault” format we’ve played again and again and again and again and again since the original Starcraft came to us on a CD-ROM. Even worse the game drops Nova’s badass stealth and sniping abilities to give her… A jetpack and a shotgun. In fact a lot of upgrades for Nova and her units feel as though they’re all ideas Blizzard was forced to scrap for their core campaign and multi modes, and instead just slapped it all in here so you could see how awesome and cool they would have been. For me personally there was really no reason to send Nova in with a shotgun spread or stimpack dosage or a lightsab… I mean “Monomolecular Blade” when she was better off tapping hard targets with a sniper rifle from a nice, stealthy, one might even say “ghost like” position.
For a woman who has just been accused of galaxy wide treason, it feels a bit odd she suddenly gets to manage an entire base and is placed in charge once again of Dominion security. It’s like Blizzard had all these awesome ideas for the first 20 minutes of gameplay, hit a wall, then referred to their dusty, tattered textbook on “Starcraft for Dummies.” Even missions that sound as though they might require a stealthier touch in the debrief will often demand you build more bases and collect more minerals. Sure you might get one or two unit upgrades that slightly mix up your gameplay experience, but it doesn’t really create a whole lot of replayability. For example, I don’t feel the desire to experiment with how much better a Marauder might behave with “slightly better stimpack” than a Marine. Starcraft 2’s gameplay and AI are just far too predictable for these minute changes to really mix it up. Maybe there’s someone out there who can figure out some really cool unit and item mashups, but I found myself very lukewarm to the new changes.
As for the story the game tries to tell, it does feel a bit Jason Bourne rip-off. It also, sadly, seems to be more or less painting the story Starcraft Ghost was supposed to deliver for us. This rogue soldier gone revolutionary. The reason I say sadly is because nothing states a cool hero is destined for bit parts quite like relegating her to a few optional side missions you may or may not want to purchase to artificially extend the life of your Starcraft 2. I’m not even entirely sure dedicated Starcraft 2 players will get a whole lot out of this. Not with the more or less unpredictable matches of other human players, or the wealth of fun creator designed concepts found in Starcraft’s Arcade mode for free. Nova herself is pretty lackluster. Given her general role in the greater Starcraft universe as a twisted bad girl who tends to fall in with the wrong crowds, Covert Ops re-illustrates her as frustratingly goody two shoes. I know with a character who has bounced between writers and has no cohesive characterization its really easy to implant ones own expectations, but this feels entirely due to Blizzard’s nasty tendency towards black and white writing and general inability to write varied villains and dirty heroes.
So after a decade and change of waiting for November Terra to finally get her starring role, the actual delivery is quite lackluster. And this could be the way her tale ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
