I’ve been watching more of Bellular Clips recently since the Anduin raid cinematic was released and the two guys on the channel, Matt and Michael, have been doing a lot of speculation about what might’ve been cut or changed from Shadowlands. One aspect of the expansion they’ve been looking at has been the Jailer, whose character design we know has been changed atleast a couple of times. In one of their recent videos, they talk about inspirations for both the Jailer and the aspect of fate in the expansion, with the former’s finalized look appearing to be taken directly from a character in Forgotten Realms. How the Shadowlands handles the idea of changing fate is taken from the plot of Kingdoms Of Amalur, a game which Danuser himself worked on. I think we should look at Danuser’s previous works so that we know what’s ahead, since it’s obvious now that he’s straight up taking things from other franchises.
Definitely looks like Zovaal, altough his design isn’t that distinct. He always remined me of the Space Jockey/Engineer or whatever they are called from the Alien franchise. A quite human-like appearance, just different enough to make him seem un-human, trying to create a slight discomfort looking at him.
That would be dumb if he did it. Sure, artists iterate on their previous work, but I just hope he’s not straight up copying stuff, but improving.
As a creative type I can confirm that all of us reuse our old ideas from time to time. Either because it’s easier or because we just really love something and want to keep using it.
So it doesn’t really bother me if Danuser, or anyone else, is borrowing from their old works.
Yeah, a lot of things are just “human, but slightly different” to make them seem spooooky or inhuman. The generic devil imagery is just “red human” with some combination of pointed ears, horns, hooves, furred legs, wings, and/or tail depending on the media.
Considering he probably was under pressure to come up with a cosmic ubervillian at top speed, it’s not surprising that he’d turn to some of his older work for inspiration.
I’m not trying to make it a thing but the obession to prove Danuser as flawed or a bad writer is a text book witch hunt. The guy just got a job because his department imploaded. Time will tell if he’s qualified or not.
I remember that game! It was extremely peculiar. It was basically a single player MMO. I recall really being impressed by the art style and world design. It was genuinely gorgeous for its time.
But the story was just so generic that it’s my core memory of the experience. Forgive me if there was some really cool stuff I forgot, I’m running off memories of a decade old game I thought was weapons grade “s’alright”. Sort of thing that would win bronze in a mediocrity contest.
I distinctly remember rolling my eyes at the story. Because it took every standard fantasy trope, ran it through a thesaurus to give it a unique if needlessly complicated name, and just hoped you wouldn’t realize it was the same concept you’d seen not just done before but done better like thirty times.
And that entire statement could also be used to describe Shadowlands.
Even if that is the case, I think people get a bit too worked up about nepotism.
Like yeah it’s a bad thing. But people obviously are going to favor their friends and family. And I don’t think anything will ever change that.
Its why a true meritocracy is an absolute fable. It’ll only ever work until the exact moment a rich and or powerful person has an idiot kid they don’t hate.
Danuser is just… a bad writer and storyteller. And the dude has an ego… Which, if you are on the story team at Blizzard entertainment, you really shouldn’t. The Warcraft story is the laughingstock of modern fantasy.
This man is living in an alternate reality if he thinks the jailer is comparable to likes of sun szu. And it’s no surprise he would just cherry pick main stream authors instead of actual hidden gems of literature.
It’s not surprising he probably didn’t even read the art of war because the art of war is a series of quotes and metaphors. It isn’t a generic story book. Edit: I really need to pick up art of war and pick it up again. Going into philosophy class and I need to be on top of my game
