Here follows my rant about voice lines for newer hero skins. This isn’t meant to just bash the game, I’m hoping some of these existing hero skins that I paid for will be fixed, and new hero skins will put more thought into how the emotes are used in a game of hearthstone. Until then, I have to start looking up hero skins before I buy them, and reading through all their dialogue to ensure it actually makes sense and doesn’t make me unintentionally come off as rude or something.
So, some of these emotes seem to be trying too hard to fit the hero skin’s theme and/or to be unique and original. I’m fine with hero skins having a distinctive gimmick, but not every single voice line needs to be an expression of that gimmick, and emotes shouldn’t be so gimmicky that you can’t tell what emotion they’re trying to convey.
I click “well played” while playing as Judgment Uther, and he says “You have passed judgment.” Uhhh, what? This feels like those meme videos for various RPGs (dragon age: the veilguard comes to mind) where the dialogue picker shows brief one-liners, you pick one of the options, and then the actual dialogue that comes out is not just completely different from the line you picked, but does not even share the same spirit or purpose. I’m trying to be friendly and say it was a good game, but instead it comes across like something no one would ever say, and I’m sure my opponent is scratching his head too. Unless they’ve used Judgment Uther themselves, they probably don’t even know which emote I clicked.
It’s hard to tell whether Blizzard intends “well played” to mean “good game” or to mean “nice job” (in reference to a particular play the opponent made), and that probably adds to the confusion, since if you’re starting from the prompt “well played, as in the opponent made a nice play,” then you may end up writing some lines that don’t make sense unless the opponent won. Things that wouldn’t make sense if I won the game and am saying “well played” to be polite and sportsmanlike. But in this case, the voice line doesn’t even really make sense as a compliment for the opponent winning. Like, the opponent passed judgment on me? But that doesn’t make sense. Passing judgment isn’t a synonym for winning. Uther wasn’t convicted of a crime or judged for some sort of sin, he just lost a friendly game. He’s the one who’s supposed to do the judgment.
I get that his character theme is about judgment, but that shouldn’t mean every single thing he says is about judgment. I’m judging, you’re judging, we’re all judging, the whole world is judging. Is he wearing judgment-tinted glasses? So when he loses, he thinks he’s being judged, even though he’s literally a saint and the person who beat him is a demonic warlock? The real Uther, when defeated by the forces of darkness, would probably be more begrudging about it. But since it needs to work for any opponent, he should just compliment his opponent’s skill. But honestly I don’t even like that type of ‘well played’ emote, since I want the emote to work even if I win the game. Otherwise, there’s just nothing I can say to say “good game.” Like, look at his emote list, not one of the emotes is appropriate in the situation where I win and I’m being polite. The “greetings” emotes for some holidays are okay, but most of the time it’s “prepare yourself,” which only makes sense at the start of a game.
I also find “prepare yourself” to be a bit… aggressive? It makes sense as like, a before-the-match emote, but it leaves him with no friendly emotes except “thanks.” Doesn’t make sense for his character.
Having played Warcraft III, this is not my Uther lol. There are plenty of voice lines for Uther from Warcraft III. I’m amazed you haven’t used the “I’m getting too old for this” line, at least as far as I can tell. That would be so iconic. But since you’re clearly using a new voice actor for almost every character, why can’t you just record new lines that make sense?
I don’t care that Judgment Uther has a “judgment” theme, that’s cool and all but it shouldn’t be so over the top that it gets in the way of me wanting to play with the skin. Now I’m honestly thinking about playing with some of the vanilla heroes, solely because their emotes are so good. I miss hearing “heh, greetings.”
This is just one example. So many of the heroes have nonsensical emotes. Sanguine Sylvanas’s threaten? “It is so interesting to see what becomes of one’s rivals…” Uhh, what? Is that some kind of inside joke I missed? Compare to the regular Sylvanas Windrunner emotes, they make so much more sense.
Many of the “themed” hero skins have the worst emotes. Sometimes the gimmick is funny, like Naga Sylvanas is pretty solid. But usually it just results in the emotes trying harder to fit the “theme” than they try to fit the actual emotion or article of speech the emote exists to fulfill.
And not all of the newer hero skins have bad emotes. By the gimmick, you might expect Saloon Denathrius to have cringey lines ill-suited for the emotes. But no, his greetings is “tally-ho!” and his well played is “a delightful duel!” And, gasp, his “thanks” emote actually includes the word “thanks”?! Unthinkable!
Leads me to another issue. It seems like they’re trying so hard to be original with these lines that they can’t have the word of the emote appear inside the voice line. Very different approach from the original cast of heroes, who basically just said the name of the emote. “Oops” was “oops,” “greetings” was “greetings,” and “thanks” was “my thanks” or something like that. Trying too hard to be original and highbrow is the main reason behind so much wrong with art, storytelling, and entertainment these days.