In StarCraft 2 there is a mission designed to be lost at the end, but 14 years after its release, a player has finally outsmarted it.
What kind of mission is this? In StarCraft 2, there is a mission that you are never supposed to complete. It is titled “In Eternal Darkness” and is the fourth and final mission of the Zeratul mini-campaign from the base game.
For the story of StarCraft 2 to work, the mission is designed so that you are defeated at the end. After you achieve your objectives, the game simply spawns more ground and air units until there is nothing left of you. However, 14 years after the release, one person has outsmarted the mission.
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No Defeat is a Victory
What was the strategy of the player? Content creator Davey Gunface recently posted a video on his YouTube channel, in which he explains how he outsmarted the mission in 40 minutes. To achieve his goal, he utilized several mechanics of the game.
To withstand the endless horde of opponents, Gunface quickly realized that he needed to position his units in a place where the enemy’s melee units could not reach. To do this, he teleported Dark Templars using the Vortex ability of the ship “Artanis” to a location inaccessible to enemies.
The Dark Templars can transform into the powerful air defense unit “Archon” at the press of a button. This allows them to protect the remaining air units of the player.
You can watch the video here:
How did he trick the mission? Although the enemies spawn infinitely and thus your own units would have to be defeated in the long run, Davey Gunface managed to trick the game. StarCraft 2 has a unit limit. If there are too many units on the field, no more units will spawn.
If you defeat a unit, however, a new one spawns. Whether the new unit is a ground or air unit is random. The player used this rule and tried to survive as long as possible while only taking out the air units.
In the end, only the army of ground troops remained, which did not have the same teleportation abilities and thus could not harm Gunface. The player’s units were able to withstand the mission unscathed for hours.
Is this a victory? Achieving a victory in the mission is probably not possible. The mission objective is “Defend until the last Protoss falls.” To complete the objective, all allied units must be eliminated.
In the end, it is still impossible to win the mission, but triggering a stalemate and saving one’s troops from certain destruction has now been accomplished for the first time 14 years after the release of the mission. Anyone who wants to play StarCraft 2 can now easily do so: 2 of the best strategy games of all time are now on Game Pass and are still considered relevant titles in e-sports
