After weeks of speculation, Blizzard has finally confirmed what die-hard “StarCraft” players have been asking for all this time — a remaster of the original game and its famous expansion “Blood War.” Over the weekend, the official website for “StarCraft” was updated with the announcement of “StarCraft Remastered” and the revival of its award-winning expansion.

In the official announcement of the remaster, Blizzard revealed that to realize this project the developers had to rework every element of the game, be it the buildings, the audio and other aspects. They have also broadened the supported resolutions of the game to match today’s advanced display technologies. And despite the many changes, Blizzard maintained that the strategy gameplay remains untouched.

Blizzard is also proud to announce that “StarCraft Remastered” comes with breakthrough technologies to bring detailed visuals, stylized briefings and amped audio to players. With these upgrades, players zoom in and zoom out for a more advantageous view of the battlefield, enjoy race-themed comic book interludes and listen to the rejuvenated original soundtrack and dialogue of the 1998 game.

In an interview with Team Liquid, Blizzard VP of Online Technologies Robert Bridenbecker and senior producer Pete Stilwell revealed more details about the upcoming game. Spilling the beans on the process of revamping the graphics of the original “StarCraft,” the two shared that the team aimed for keeping the original unit silhouettes and animations and just fill in the pixels with more details.

Another thing that players will notice with the remaster is how it kept the 4:3 screen ratio. It also supports widescreen HD, and the Blizzard officials stated that players are free to switch between these two on the fly without missing a beat. And since the game is still built around the original graphics and gameplay engine, players can still expect the remaster to be 2D just like the original. “We’ve just amped it up a bit to handle 4K,” the two revealed in the interview.

While the rumors about the remaster only surfaced early this month, the Blizzard officials revealed that they started to work on it around 18 months ago, and it has been a year since active development began. The game is slated for release this summer, but after that Blizzard has no concrete plans on what to do next. “Our focus has been on the community during development, so we’d like to take some time after release to the community react.”

No word on the exact release date of the game yet, but Blizzard promised that fans can expect more details to arrive in the coming weeks.

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