Nick Carpenter, Blizzard Cinematic Creative Director, made yet the biggest revelations about Starcraft II Cinematic and Storyline development. The characters dialogues will be handled by the 3D game engine to display cut-scenes similar to those in Warcraft III. Tools that map campaign makers and modders will be able to use to narrate their own custom-made stories. Read the Blizzard Insider at the official Starcraft II Site.

Insider: Let’s talk a little bit about how your team and the game design team for StarCraft II work together to create the cinematics. What role does each team play in coming up with ideas, and how are they then transformed into the actual movies?

Nick Carpenter: There’s a great deal of collaboration going on between all the teams that work on StarCraft II. We have a lot of brainstorming sessions where people from my team, the StarCraft design team, and our creative team sit down and throw around story ideas, character ideas, and just general thoughts of what’s going to happen next.

For example, as we were coming up with the concept for the teaser cinematic and fleshing out the details for the marine portrayed in it, that marine evolved over time into a character, named Tychus Findlay, that features prominently in StarCraft II. Ultimately, the creative process involved with working Tychus into a certain role in the plot and fleshing him out helped us give him even more character depth in the cinematic.

Also, one of the big advantages of the cinematics team working directly with the game design team is that the cinematics are completely consistent with the game we’re making, which isn’t always the case when you’re hiring an external company. Since we’re part of the creative process, there’s always a strong sense of consistency and continuity between the actual game and the cinematics.