by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Lords of War Episode 1 Thoughts:

Thoughts from the front: from Metzen’s lead-up for the Lords of War, there’s a strong impression that this is going to be an intro sequence for the titular warlords of the expansion. Which for me is funny, since it feels like that’s what the Tanaan Jungle experience is for. However, if we’re meant to take both Lords of War and the Tanaan experience together (Kargath’s slice of that, with the objective of killing 100 orcs in his arena, comes to mind) then it’s just a matter of having a complete narrative, with the animated series acting as a complement to the gameplay.

Post-thoughts: Selling Kargath as Maximus from Gladiator makes plenty of sense. There are a lot of airs of that film in Kargath’s piece of the series, and I think that really works to sell the concept. As well, it plays into echoing the narratives for both Thrall and Varian Wrynn, given that both of them had formative experiences in the gladiator arena. To an extent, I think it’s a credit to CDev that they can take what is essentially the same origin story and have it play out in different ways each time.

The framing narrative is also interesting, for a number of reasons: first, I loved the touch that Maraad walks into Varian’s war room the same way he walked out of the beginning of the Burning Crusade cinematic, Hammer of the Naaru on his shoulder and everything. Second, this sells Maraad as an aggressive draenei, something that’s never really been played up before with more of the narrative focus resting on Prophet Velen’s shoulders. Third, reminding everyone that it was Varian’s dad who fought the First War is important leading into the Warcraft movie.

Lords of War Teaser Trailer Thoughts:

The main thing this tells us is that the Warlords being highlighted here are Kargath, Grommash, Durotan (with a lot of screentime for Draka), and Kilrogg. To me, this says that there was a lot of maintenance to do on the backstories of these guys in particular that they want to put out in front of people prior to the expansion, and that’s something I can get behind. I don’t think it’s super necessary that we get an animated short for all of the warlords, but I’m also interested to see how much of this information actually shows up in-game.

But hey, with all that out of the way, let’s talk about the big show.

Cinematic Thoughts:

This did not go the way I expected it to go. The initial screen caps of the cinematic made me think it was going to showcase the Iron Horde assaulting a draenei city. Instead, we get a sequence that calls back to Thrall and Grom’s climactic fight with Mannoroth at the end of the orc campaign in WC3, all the way down to the shot of Grom standing in front of Mannoroth’s death blast. There are so many instances in the sequence where you can say “HERE is the decisive moment where everything changes” but they’re all equally decisive.

Moreover, the cinematic helps to sell what it is that we’re doing, and many of the elements that are going to be relevant to our work from the start:

• Gul’dan is a prisoner and disagrees with what Grom and Garrosh have done.
• The Dark Portal is the chief objective instead of the draenei genocide. (The genocide still obviously happens, of course.)
• It’s technology (Garrosh and Grom’s use of the Iron Star against Mannoroth) that’s the real gamechanger for the Iron Horde.

Overall, this is exactly the kind of moment you need to start the expansion off with. Killing off Mannoroth feels momentous. The multiple ways you can interpret Garrosh’ line of “times change” is brilliant. That Grom seems hesitant about what to do after toppling Gul’dan adds a certain nuance that his character never possessed before. “We shall never be slaves” as a line that defies the very existence of Thrall, and defies everything about what Thrall wanted the Horde to become.

I don’t mean to go too crazy on the nuances and meaningfulness of all of these things, but this is one of the moments where I suddenly want to take the Warcraft narrative very seriously.

Stay tuned; there’s a lot more coming, and now that we’ve got our release date of November 13th, there’s only so much time to cover it all.