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I don’t expect this to be covered in episode 1, but it was such an important game during the windows 9x era that it can’t possibly be ignored for long!
As can be seen from early alpha builds, Blizzard originally created this game in their Warcraft II engine, presumably imagining it as a ‘warcraft in space’ mod. I doubt it would have had anywhere near the same impact if they had followed through with that. It was a smart decision to pivot to an isometric renderer, a new UI, new pathing system, rally points, and everything else… Looking back you can really see how each RTS game they published was both innovative in design, and managed to improve upon the underlying engine. The game itself stood the test of time, attracting millions of players worldwide for over a decade. It’s one of gaming history’s great success stories.
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