by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Blizzard has unleashed the fourth (and not the last) part of the Lords of War animated lore series, giving us a look into the origins of Kilrogg Deadeye.

There’s a lot to talk about with this piece: to an extent, there’s an echo of the legendary Warcraft 3 cinematic where Arthas kills his father, King Terenas. By providing an orcish mirror of that sequence, it helps to drive home the point for long-time lore fans that the orcs react to patricide very, very differently than humans do.

And while there are some people who might argue that Kilrogg’s vision of his death doesn’t mesh with his canonical death in the novelization of Beyond the Dark Portal, my take is that what we see is an interpretation that can work both ways: regardless of exactly when or where Kilrogg is supposed to die, the bottom line is that he dies in combat with the Alliance and is not surprised by it.

This is really the only way Kilrogg’s key unique quality (that he sacrificed an eye to see a vision of his death) can get presented in a meaningful way: if you show his exact death, it deflates all of his menace in every instance from then on, because you either know “he doesn’t die now, so he’s going to win this contest” or “this is the scene where he dies, let’s get on with it.”

It’s interesting that the arakkoa are identified as the threat that pushed the Bleeding Hollow to the brink of extinction; not only do they never actually show up in the short piece, but when Kilrogg’s vision shows the Bleeding Hollow in combat, they’re killing ogres. It doesn’t quite sound consistent with the presentation of the arakkoa as aloof sun-worshipping mystics to want to harass a bunch of orcs in a dark jungle. But it does at least offer a break from the otherwise consistent throughline that the orcs fight ogres a bunch (when they’re not getting nommed on by big bad wolves).

Given the pattern of release for the past episodes so far, it seems likely that we’ll get the fifth part next week. We’ve covered everyone who was in the preview, so all bets are off in terms of who we’re going to be seeing in the next installment. Keep it locked here, and you’ll know when we know.