New StarCraft II trailer delivers monster machinima

Shoulderpads of WAR!

T-minus five days and counting. And to celebrate the OH GOOD GOD IT'S SO CLOSE launch Blizzard have just released a new trailer, featuring many, many cutscenes. There's not even the barest hint of what the game actually looks like. I'm guessing that if you rocked up and bought the game off the back of this trailer, Starcraft's drawing boxes around tiny men might come as a slight shock. But you know what, I don't really care at this point.

Why? Because I'm actually really excited about the interstitial story scenes that are told from the perspective of Jim Raynor. For years now, I've long since missed the animated backdrops and almost role-playing silliness of having an animated briefing room complete with briefing officer, or engineering bay with men in overalls welding spaceships together. Animated backdrops are the heart and soul of PC gaming. Starcraft II, I'm predicting, will have the most ludicrously overproduced backgrounds ever seen.

Here's the trailer. Who here's pre-ordered it, then? And, readers, what was your favourite animated backdrop of all time, eh?