GamesMMOWorld of WarcraftWoW’s released a short cinematic ahead of the War Within’s pre-patch—and I’m just happy these characters are talking like actual people, nowWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesMMOWorld of WarcraftWoW’s released a short cinematic ahead of the War Within’s pre-patch—and I’m just happy these characters are talking like actual people, nowWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)
For context, this isn’t actually a cinematic from the expansion itself—but it is from the expansion’s pre-patch The Dark Heart, which’ll be arriving early next week. It’s going to set a precedent for the game’s storytelling going forward. Watching it, I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind: Holy crap, they’re actually talking likepeople.
There were also, invariably, some stinkers. While I greatly enjoyed the epilogue after the raid on Amirdrassil, the preceding cinematic (which is mostly what players judged as “the ending of Dragonflight”) didn’t, uh, really work.
It’s an example of WoW’s worst storytelling habit writ large: An obsession with slow, dramatic, grandiose reads that attempt to imply weight and significance to the script—leading to dialogue that feels stilted, plodding, and forced. As a lot of fans observed, if you set the YouTube playback to 1.25x speed, the scene scans considerably better.
The cinematics from Dragonflight that worked for me bucked this trend. In fact, one of the most moving moments comes from another post-Amirdrassill quest where Tyrande sprints towards Malfurion andjust, like… kisses him.I only know the broad strokes of their story, but I immediately gained a better understanding of how important their relationship was. I thought it was cool that this hifalutin faction leader immediately dropped her stoic mask and became a high school sweetheart when her love returned—it was a rudimentary example of the old writing mantra “show, not tell”, but sometimes simple things do work.
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That’s not to say that all of this has come out of nowhere. Blizzard’s clearly been trying to step up its story game for a while now—Overwatch hasn’t always had the most cogent narrative, for example, but it’s definitely a step above its predecessors Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. Battle for Azeroth as well, despite stumbling in a lot of areas, had some genuinely good stuff going on betweenAnduin and Saurfang.
All of this to say—and god, I could be wrong, here—World of Warcraft’s messy, convoluted, clunky and wayward story has a real shot at actually being good again. At the very least, it can be a messy plot that’stoldwell, and inside the game you’re actually playing to boot—especially since, as I found out at a recent preview event, WoW will betelling a lot more of its story in-gameas well.
TOPICSBlizzard Entertainment
TOPICS
PRODUCTSWorld of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft: DragonflightWorld of Warcraft: The War Within
PRODUCTS
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