StarCraft is HBO Deadwood in Space

StarCraft general manager and creative director Dan Hay talked to Destin on video. They described StarCraft to him as HBO Deadwood in space. Now, that’s a very weird but promising statement. TCA Awards for Drama, ASTRA Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Peabody Awards, and Primetime Emmy Awards winner, HBO Deadwood launched in 2004 as a western TV series set in the post-Civil War era. A mining town that wasn’t part of any U.S. state, thus a lawless cowboy western territory.

In his StarCraft/HBO Deadwood comparison, Dan Hay said:

“It (Deadwood) felt like a universe in a world, but it was just a cast of a fairly small group of characters, but it felt bigger. And I loved how they all knew each other and they all did not get along, but they all understood they kind of had to rely on each other to survive. And if we were to make something that felt like a Deadwood in Space, (deeply exhales) I think that’s got something.”

If you want to skip the TLDR; summary by Destin, you can start the video interview at 07:35. The interview lasted about 22+ minutes.

Summary of the highlight quotes from Destin’s Dan Hay interview. Note: If you don’t want to read my opinion, don’t read the purple text. Only the black-text quotes.

• Resources are slim, and you need to figure it out because of this larger threat.
• Dan: “We want them to understand that this is a story about a single character who is going through this sort of from-zero-to-hero type of experience. We want them to be able to learn about what it is to be a Marine. We want them to be able to discover other factions. We want them to play a beginning, a middle, and an end. And we want them to put it down and go, “That was fantastic.”
• When asked if the game has room to continue after [that end], Dan was cryptic as he thought deeply and stopped himself from tiptoeing around the question with a smile: “But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other characters in this universe that we’ll be talking about later.” Whether that means expansions, sequels, DLCs, or an ongoing service. Or you can interpret the quote as more characters other than the Marine that haven’t been announced yet. After all, there’s the Medic, the Firebat, the Sniper, the SCV, the Reaper, and other units that aren’t vehicles. I guess we’ll have to wait to learn what that answer meant.
• Destin asked a sneaky question that got Dan tripping over himself when he realized what he was answering. Will StarCraft be first-person or will it be third-person? Dan replied: “Oh, I want to see my armor. I want to see it moving around. It’s my first car. I want to see it, I want to build it, I want to be able to turn around and look at it. (umm, comma not going to finish that sentence) /laughs” — so what the heck was that all about? Am I bonkers, or will players be able to switch perspective?
• Dan: “If I’m playing a StarCraft game and I get to have my own suit of armor, there’s things I’d wanna do with that. There’s things that I’d wanna get to build it up. There’s things that I’m going to want to do to go out into the world and find things that make it stronger.” This is a quote that made me think “Survival” — but it leans toward the Far Cry need to search for ammo and upgrades, too. I think this game is a single-player story with survival aspects where you go out to search for minerals and materials to build, upgrade, and/or fix your armor.
• “And then people will start to see the things that you’ve done with it, and they’ll start to respond to it. And that’s super interesting.” — That sounds like a multiplayer or co-op aspect to the game where others can see modifications made to your armor? If we take the ARG into consideration, it made reference to the James Waugh story: “Changeling,” a 5-man squad.
• “Step out into the open world and explore and discover things. Look out and explore all the things you can do. Go in any direction you want to go.”
• Destin: “Everything is all good at the end of StarCraft 2. So what happened? Something seems to have gone wrong.” — Dan: “It’s a great question. Ask us [in a year]. — Wait… did Dan mean it? Next year is 2027. The game ships in 2030. Will there be a: A) Blogpost, B) StarCraft-only showcase stream, C) GamesCom showcase, or D) BlizzCon, in Q3-Q4 2027?
• That quote on the StarCraft website, post-announcement, roleplaying a call to join the Dominion, that’s a direct quote from an in-game character.
• Destin was building up toward a question at 20:20, “You are playing one character. So we’re not playing as Protoss or Zerg, but I imagine–,” and curiously Dan interrupted him before Destin even asked a question with a cryptic: “Our story is about one character. (chuckles) I’m being super careful. (smiles devilishly)” — That was seriously intriguing. Could it be possible that this is a single-player story, like the Diablo IV campaign, but once you complete it, you join a Co-Op where players can choose Human, Zerg, or Protoss characters? Well, if he didn’t mean that, damn…
• At the end of the interview, Destin asks Dan if there is something he wants to say about the game before they wrap up the interview. Dan goes: “–every once in a while somebody goes, Oh, you know, we didn’t see Protoss in the teaser. And the answer is, yeah, you did. Maybe not individual Protoss, but if you look at a couple of frames, you can absolutely see Protoss architecture in the background.”

TechRadar Gaming

TechRadar Gaming at BlizzCon 2026.

The developer says that “tension” was crucial to the development of StarCraft in a first-person shooter setting. StarCraft is a story-driven, open-world first-person shooter.

“The combat has to feel very, very clean and dangerous and mean and dark. I think StarCraft does that well. The mood is dark, but also, in a strange way, hopeful.”

Something Dan Hay said to TechRadar triggered my overthinking, so pardon me in advance, but “you have to figure out how to fix your armor. You have to figure out how to push back against it. Every shot matters. Everything you do matters” gives me a strange vibe.

As you might know, Dan Hay formerly worked on Far Cry 3-6. When he says those words for a StarCraft open-world FPS shooter, I have to look at it through the lens of Far Cry, where don’t have infinite ammo. You have to search buildings and camps for ammo and any tool at your disposal.

Another portion of the interview was posted to a different TechRadar page, where Dan talks about scale. One of the challenges was something as simple as “Doors.” A Marine armor suit is about 10 feet tall and weighs about 1000 pounds. The team had to figure out from this FPS perspective how doors work and how big they can be. Something telling is that the doors are designed to open, keeping in mind whether you are in armor or not.

He wants to adapt the StarCraft music, characters, and lore into the FPS shooter. He wants to bring asymmetry to the game’s world to mimic the asymmetry in the real world. — another TechRadar page.

Han also talked about the parallels between real-world politics and the interstellar StarCraft politics between Terran factions. — yet another TechRadar page (Gee, can’t they settle on one page? lol)

Eurogamer

Eurogamer has several quotes from Dan Hay from their interview.

“You can roam around and explore a rich open world, but our story has a definitive ending. Think of it as purchasing a standalone boxed game, playing it, and experiencing its story. We hope players enjoy it, love it, and return to us later. At the very least, what we are building right now is not a seasonal game.”

My opinion: A boxed game. This is starting to look more and more like Far Cry. Dan Hay worked on Far Cry 3-6. Throughout his work there, each of those games launched within a window of 2/3/4 years apart from each other.

Those were individual box games, but each of them had a co-op component. Blizzard Entertainment has not announced that StarCraft has a multiplayer or co-op component. But from some of the responses listed on this page, it sorta hints maybe.

Far Cry 3, where Dan Hay worked, had a 4-player co-op and a map editor. However, Far Cry 4-6 switched to 2-player co-op, where you couldn’t play through the campaign together, but you could explore the open world and complete objectives. Far Cry 3 had multiplayer supporting up to 12 players.

Far Cry 4 had a Guns for Hire 2-player co-op and a competitive multiplayer with asymmetrical 5v5 matches.

Far Cry 5 allowed players to complete the campaign in 2-player Co-op. Competitive multiplayer supported 6v6 with Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and custom map modes. It also had a map editor.

Far Cry 6 had a 2-player co-op where you could play almost the entire campaign together, but tethered close to each other. But no PvP multiplayer modes.

I’m not saying that’s what StarCraft will have, but keep in mind Dan Hay’s career and experience, and his “box game” comment. Stay alert to future announcements.

“The shooter we are building features a deep story, main missions, side quests, and character progression. While it will be a gritty and challenging game, we aren’t trying to make it overly punishing. We want to present a degree of challenge while letting players experience an adventure within it. In particular, if a certain mission feels too difficult, you can return to the open world and engage in other activities at your own pace.”

“Conversely, in the open world, players can progress at their own speed. If you lack adequate gear, you can head out into the world, scavenge for what you need, deck out your armour, and try again. We chose a narrative-driven game to give players the time and space to experience the world at their own pace. Tackling intense missions, and then, if needed, stepping back out into the free open world to play your own way – that is the game we are making.”

Interesting. It seems the game recognizes your progress. You can choose not to participate in the single player campaign, and instead sorta level up or upgrade your Marine suit by collecting materials found in the open world. When you are tougher, you can try the mission in the single player campaign where you were stuck earlier, and now you can beat it?

IGN

You can read some snippets of the IGN interview here.

“For us, it felt right to put you down on the ground in the middle of people that are fighting and they don’t agree. This feeling of, ‘The enemy of my enemy is a tool to be used.’ We felt like the open world and the opportunity to explore and to discover and of course to disrupt and to use my enemy against another enemy felt really powerful.”

Interesting description here. Dan might be referring to the Dominion using a faction to attack another faction. (i.e. using the Kel-Morian attacking the Umojan Protectorate, or viceversa)… But what if … and this is far-fetched… the UED was posing as the Dominion to get Dominion troops to attack the Kel-Morian and Umojans to trigger a war between those factions against the Dominion, and once the victor surfaces with all its losses and weaknesses, the UED comes in and takes over? The UED was able to control an Overmind in StarCraft: Brood War. With that kind of tech, they could be manipulating factions in the Kropulu Sector from the shadows.

Far-fetched as heck, but why do I mention the UED? Sneaky Blizzard teased us with the StarCraft ARG that mentions a very obscure planet that has never been in a shipped StarCraft game with ties to the UED.

In the StarCraft ARG, one of the planets to be targeted with Changeling infestation is Abaddon, a lava planet that had Dominion, Kropulu Liberation Front (as per the console game demo shown at BlizzCon 2005), and UED remnants (as per StarCraft: Ghost — Spectres). Abaddon was one of the StarCraft: Ghost console game missions and, as far as I know, the only place where Abaddon was ever mentioned in passing beyond the console game was in the StarCraft: Ghost – Spectres novel by Nate Kenyon.

The Abaddon planet was mentioned in the StarCraft ARG — you can visit the fan-made archive that collected the StarCraft ARG seen at the official StarCraft website before BlizzCon 2026.

Gamespot

In a Gamespot interview, it seems Dan Hay says:

“Oh, that’s easy, I want to be able to see my armor. First thing we did is we built it, put it on a turntable, and spun it around like, ‘Ah, awesome, cool!’ I want to be able to see it, so third-person, right? That doesn’t mean that we don’t have the license to, in a couple of spaces, do a little bit different and whatnot, but third-person: You get to see your armor.”

Polygon

Polygon posted a few questions and answers from their interview that touch on the Protoss and the Zerg. I have not seen another interview that talks about the humor in past StarCraft games and how the team is dealing with that aspect of the 2030 game.

It’s super important, because it can’t all just be one note. One of my favorite shows is Deadwood, because I love the fact that there’s a place for humor in that show. It’s dark humor, and there are moments where they’re together [with dramatic storytelling]. One of the things that was great about the original StarCraft was that there were great moments of humor. There are great moments of camaraderie and there’s real emotion.

WCCFTECH

The WCCFTech interview got the Top 5 quotes, imho, to draw us a more focused picture of what the “StarCraft” shooter is. It is looking more and more like the Far Cry 3-6 model by the minute. StarCraft is not a seasonal game, which means it is not following the Diablo IV and Overwatch model.

It’s a “box product.” It is a narrative-driven open-world shooter where players create a character, name them, and follow that character’s story. The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can roam around and explore a rich open world, but our story has a definitive ending. Think of it as purchasing a standalone boxed game, playing it, and experiencing its story. We hope players enjoy it, love it, and return to us later. At the very least, what we are building right now is not a seasonal game.

Variety

Variety got a response from Blizzard Entertainment PR rather than an interview.

“This is just the beginning. Led by Dan Hay, ‘StarCraft’ is early in development, and we’ll have more to share over the coming years, including gameplay reveals, deep dives into the world, and more.”