The second chapter in the StarCraft II trilogy, Heart of the Swarm is a science fiction-themed real-time strategy game for PC and Mac. Players take control of the vicious Zerg faction in an interstellar war against the stubborn Terrans and psionic Protoss.
Overview
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is the second chapter in the StarCraft II trilogy. Heart of the Swarm will focus on the bestial, vicious Zergcollective, known as the Swarm. Swarm will chronologically come after StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the Terran chapter, and before StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, the Protoss chapter.
Heart of the Swarm was originally under little-to-no development beyond the concept stage, since Wings of Liberty was the main focus of the initial StarCraft II development team. The StarCraft II "trilogy" was announced at Blizzcon 2008 and was met with some positive feedback, though there was much negative reaction on Internet forums from users who accused Blizzard of merely splitting up the three campaigns so they could charge more money for each than for a single amalgamated product. Blizzard claims that the decision to split the campaign into 3 separate products was to ensure a more complete and epic story, with each of the campaigns being equal in length to the total length of the three campaigns in the original StarCraft. Now that Wings of Liberty has launched, it is expected that Blizzard has moved on to working directly on Heart of the Swarm.
What is known about Heart of the Swarm is that the campaign will centre around Sarah Kerrigan, the self-styled "Queen of Blades". Kerrigan is a former Terran agent, mutated and infested into a powerful Zerg/Human hybrid, who has now become the leader of the Zerg Swarm. The campaign will have you progressing through missions to make Kerrigan's personal power stronger through mutations.
There is currently no release date for Heart of the Swarm. It has been stated that Wings of Liberty, the Terran chapter, is the "core" StarCraft II, and that Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will be equivalent to expansion packs. It has been officially confirmed that it will not be possible to play the Zerg or Protoss campaigns without already having purchased the Terran campaign.