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The Protoss replace the Zerg as the focus of StarCraft 2's final expansion, Legacy of the Void, and if you're as careless and lazy a StarCraft player as I am in single-player, that means you're going to have to unlearn some very questionable behaviour. I played through most of Heart of the Swarm's campaign leaning on F2 rather heavily: I'd mass my slithering, rupturing, chittering horrors, and then I'd fling them directly at the next objective marker as one. It's a stupid, wasteful approach, and it only really worked on the lower difficulty settings, but it was fun and it felt appropriate. The Zerg are rabid, frenzied, drooling monsters. At least they were when I was in charge.The Protoss are very different: austere and spindly, beneath the golden armour they feel delicate as much as they feel powerful, taut filaments and crystalline structures waiting to snap and shatter. Playing through Whispers of Oblivion, the three prologue chapters that are available now if you pre-order Legacy, they've taken a bit of getting used to. Units and structures warp in rather than being birthed in a gooey pit, and there are pylons and their attendant supply structure to worry about even before your jewelled walkers totter off into battle.
What hasn't changed is Blizzard's approach to single-player RTS design, which could best be described as all gimmick, all the time. I don't mean that in a bad way, as the gimmicks are often brilliant, and the missions here, which follow Zeratul, a heretic seeking to end a galactic disaster before it has fully taken shape, showcase some brilliant ideas that keep things exciting.
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