Does Before the Storm even matter? Sylvanas changed

Lore Story Forum
1

I was rereading before the storm and in the very first few pages of the book we meet Sylvanas and Nathanos in Orgrimmar. Sylvanas is described as being reserved and not showing as much affection as she wants to Nathanos.

Then she talks about not wanting to be warchief.

Now I’m playing BFA. I did the quests on my horde character and have followed along via wowhead for some of the information. But… where is that Sylvanas?

I really enjoyed reading her interaction with Nathanos. It portrayed a woman who doubted herself because of the position she was in. Being warchief in Orgrimmar seemingly made her second guess showing too much affection to Nathanos. I loved that. It made her relatable.

Now she’s of doing typical evil stuff. I’ve never been exposed to that side of her in any quests so far. Does it happen later on? I’m so confused.

7 Likes
2

Strangely it’s the same writer. Golden wrote the book, and is one of the main writers of BFA, on it’s official story team and working out of Blizz HQ.

If you wanted to give Sylv the benefit of the doubt (on this forum? MADNESS!), you could say in game we only see her “public warchief face”. She has to seem self assured all the time and appear to have no doubts. The people depend on her resolve for their morale.

24 Likes
3

Even if she has that vulnerable side to her … she NEVER been the type to show it; and she’s always done “evil” stuff (that element of her character isn’t exactly new). The benefits of a book is that you’re allowed to get access to her internal monologues and thoughts … and when it comes to Sylvie that can be a VERY bad thing as much as it can be good.

6 Likes
4

She is not one of the “main writers in BFA.” She scripts cinematics and has some input but usually does not decide how the main thrust of the story goes. Like, burning Teldrassil wasn’t her choice.

Also missing from the Before the Storm Sylvanas: Anything empathetic. She actually appreciated and cared for the tauren because of what they did for her people. No sign of her appreciation for any of the Horde in-game. She’s just a butthole.

6 Likes
5

BtS Sylvanas, BfL Cinematic Sylvanas and Silverpine Sylvanas are all backstage playing cards with Stonetalon Garrosh, hoping for a cue. The character is there, if Blizzard wants to use her.

10 Likes
6

Cause she doesnt show that side to the public, the book has her POV the game doesnt, cause the game its the players POV

2 Likes
7

I think it’s because she is in the middle of a war and she can’t be seen to show compassion.

Fill me in on that, what happened?

1 Like
8

Silly OP.

Sylvanas is pure unadulterated evil in the book. She doesn’t have a single sympathetic moment. Just a moustache twirling villain from beginning to end.

/s

9

Being the scripter of cinematics gives you a lot of influence on the story. She may not chose the story beats solo (though I’ll bet she has input into them), but she has a huge amount of control over their tone and presentation through her scripting of cinematics.

1 Like
10

It was in Before the Storm. After her infamous comment about bleeding heart tauren, her narration reflected on her appreciation for them and how accepting they were of her people. They were, after all, the race that let them in when Thrall at first denied them. She remembered that in that moment.

3 Likes
11

The BfA Cinematic had the Alliance looking more sinister while the Horde are cornered. And we had Sylvanas rallying the troops when all seemed lost. But we know how the actual Battle for Lordaeron cinematic went and it was nothing like the cinematic. Which seriously blows.

7 Likes
12

BtS seems to exist mostly to make the Alliance noble heroes. Most of the use of the villain bat to turn Sylvanas into a cartoon villains was done in game.

2 Likes
13

Before the Storm matters as a plot because it shows that Sylvanas is no longer concerned about the well-being of the Forsaken like she was in prior story arcs.

The Alliance side is otherwise unimportant. I wasn’t sure what they accomplished except to reaffirm what we already know (i.e. all races generally agree with Stormwind in all things, also Anduin does not seem to be handling his position too well).

2 Likes
14

Sylvanas barely shows up at all. She turn up for like four lines at a time every patch - for the principle agent of the Horde story, she’s shockingly absent. She has no arc or character beyond a laser-trajectory towards atrocity. Saurfang is absent, too. Baine did nothing up until he took himself off the board.

Our touchpoint is meant to be Talanji, but her reach is severely limited when it comes to the plot the Horde actually cares about; Why is Sylvanas behaving like a raving loony? People such as Driote believe she was always this way, but many others are wondering where the Sylvanas who could rally the Horde at Lordaeron with a one-woman-army maneuver went. Where did she go, Blizzard? I came back for this. You have me hooked waiting for the turn, but even I’m not going to put off my disgust forever.

I guess that’s my key frustration with the current story. I very much would have liked a consistent, developed character narrative in the same vein that Jaina got this expansion. The Horde story centers on Sylvanas, but she’s absent to generate dramatic tension. It’s hard to see this as anything but in service to the Alliance’s plot this expansion, with a strong character base facing the twists of a secretive enemy. The problem is that if you’re horde, that secretive enemy is someone who has taken you into their confidence previously and also is the motivation for your entire war.

Just put her on a horse and have her ride around spouting exposition, Blizz. It worked just fine in Silverpine. If you’re going to rehash old stories, at least pick good ones.

12 Likes
15

I am not sure how keeping Sylvanas out of the horde narrative is a service to the Alliance’s plot.

Also Sylvanas is not the same character she was Vanilla-Wrath as she is from Cata-onward. The Arthas/Lich Queen themes began in Cata and have gotten stronger going forward. It reached the Quel’Thalas action this expac. The raising of Summermoon mirrors Sylvanas’ own forced undeath.

The only thing that was surprising about her Warbringers was she didn’t raise Summermoon (she remembered and came back later though).

She kills people, raises them, and sets them against their previous friends. She dreams of slaughtering kingdoms and raising the people into undead forcibly. This is the scourge mentality, through and through.

1 Like
16

Please don’t take that as partisan whining from me, I don’t mean that ‘It pleases the Alliance’ or something. I just mean that Sylvanas being kept in the dark and absent from the Horde’s story is a major part of the Alliance’s core narrative. They think they can end the war by taking out just her, and that is grounded in her villainy and eligibility as a target. If we had any empathy, even if only as basic as a disgusted understanding, that would muddy the strength of that rationale. Hell, if it turns out that she has some actually worthy purpose then it would gut the Alliance story by making them the victims/catspaws as well as unwittingly opposing the Dark Saviour (bleugh).

So when I say that, I mean that the needs for her to serve as a device in the plot mostly serve the Alliance, because the Horde don’t even really have a plot at the second, and the one we should be getting we can’t see because Sylvanas is serving as that device.

Often said, but even in Cata, directly after Edge of Night, she was mourning the dead Forsaken as people, not as tools. She was not just cowering behind her bulwark, she was on the front lines fighting and dying, literally, among them for their own nationalist cause. One that she could have only have adopted through them. Hell, most readings of Edge of Night miss the fact that while she starts the story uncaring of the Forsaken, she is jolted to action and fellow purpose with them. The story is about her transition away from that perspective. The aforementioned scenes from Silverpine are not contrary to EoN, they are the same trajectory - a building, common cause with her tools of vengeance, now her people.

There’s other touches, like how she is working to save them from Garrosh’ meatgrinder strategy that was literally invented to kill Forsaken and how she spared Crowley and the Worgen right before Godfrey shot her, despite having no need to - demonstrating how little she cared about the war Garrosh started, only its efficient end, and displaying a magnanimity that was discarded in later stories about her.

In Legion, Stormheim Sylvanas is many things but cowardly or negligent are not among them. She takes on her mission herself, and seconds her armies to the player to help with securing the Aegis, and tries to secure a future for her people in her trademark brutal style. In the opening scenario of that expansion she is a clear, effective, and practical leader, working with the Alliance and saving the Horde, so much so that fans of Vol’jin rightly decry her as displacing him before she ever took his seat.

And in BtS, and we see this more. She wants to be with them, the people she calls hers. She never wanted to be Warchief. She is psychotic as always, but in her psychosis she cares for the Forsaken and has a sentimentality for them that is often ignored because of the ‘Arrows in her Quiver’ line (Also a misreading, because in life she called her beloved rangers by the same name; She is/was a ranger general - calling someone her arrows is clearly not an insult).

And lastly, the BfA intro cinematic. Her downright heroic rallying of the Horde at the gates of her city, an event that we had every expectation (as did Metzen when he was involved with it) was a valiant defense against an aggressive, but reasonably so, Alliance.

Post-Cata, there is an alternate path for Sylvanas on display. One that runs clearly and consistently counter to the idea that she was always headed for BfA. She was always headed to a confrontation with her dark side, but as the… thing we have in BfA? No. No, there is plenty in the game and on paper that showed a different path.

Where is she? I don’t know. But I want THIS Dark Lady back.

God, when was the last time they played that kind of heroic key over a Horde character? And Saurfang is right into it, and they’re fighting side by side ;_:

How the hell did you mess this up so badly, Blizzard? You can cringe at the following if you must, but I really think I’m a bit heartbroken over this.

Not over Sylvanas, but over the loss of the feeling of HORDENESS that Cinematic gave me. That feeling brought me back after years away. I know that fans of Saurfang want him to bring that back, to give us back the sense of awe and glory watching an Orc leap shirtless at some plate-armored goon while the humie soils himself, but… I think that might be dead. I think Blizzard might have killed it.

16 Likes
17

Before the Storm is a good example of Sylvanas’s greatest weakness. She is at the mercy of who ever writes her and how they perceive her. In game Sylvanas and BtS couldn’t be anymore different.

In the game she is calm and well collected, BtS she is easy to anger and a bit of a racist towards other member of the Horde.

1 Like
18

Even keeping Sylvanas in the dark so to speak, a reveal twist would have the same damage to the Alliance story. I am not even sure if you can justify Teldrassil, regardless of the twist. I would imagine any such twist is going to go over like a screen door on a submarine with Alliance fans, and most particularly Night Elf fans.

Keeping Sylvanas in the dark is damaging to the horde narrative and honestly the impact on the Alliance story won’t matter if some attempt at justifying Teldrassil is done early or late, only if such an attempt is made at all.

Now on the character change, it wasn’t a quick change like a light switch being flipped but a gradual change in slow measures like an hour glass. Even then aside from her starting to raise her own undead by all accounts she is still holding to the free will principle of the forsaken (even if she isn’t considering it before raising them). But that was before getting her brains splattered across the ground by Godfrey.

That had to be traumatic and there is no telling if her noggin was put back together right by the Val’kyr (these are scourge val’kyr btw). That would easily explain the discarded magnanimity and other changed/discarded characteristics.

Stormheim showed the eroding of her commitment to free will by trying to enslave Eyir. People can claim that Eyir shouldn’t matter because she isn’t forsaken, but that just shows the hypocrisy of the entire theme if it only applies to the forsaken. Wasn’t that what the scourge was doing? Enslaving that which wasn’t scourge?

BFA has continued her Journey into becoming Arthas. The meeting in Arathi where she kills her own people, that was her Stratholme. Hope was her plague and she killed her people to keep it from spreading.

Calia was her Terenas, Teldrassil was her Quel’Thalas, and Summermoon was her own version of Sylvanas. Her raising of Derek Proudmoore and outright saying she was going to control him into being an assassin just shows how far she has fallen.

Lastly on the cinematic you linked. When we first watched it we had no context as to how we got there or what was going on. After the Warbringers and the Teldrassil in game event, it is hard to see anything heroic on the horde’s behalf aside from Saurfang and Baine (Lor’themar wasn’t shown but he did come as well) coming to the forsaken civilians’ defense because they shouldn’t be slaughtered by Alliance troops enraged over Teldrassil. But once we do the event for the battle we know that was just her selling her trap that neither Saurfang nor Baine ever knew about. And the forsaken civilians were safe the entire time. They were being played just as much as we were when first watching it. They were just defending large vats of blight and their troops were dying just to fool the Alliance.

And that last heroic key would likely be Saurfang’s son at Wrathgate. Or maybe Thrall and Vol’jin at the start of broken shore event when leaving the ship.

After proof reading, wow did this turn into a wall of text…but everyone can suffer, no TL;DR. :smiling_imp:

2 Likes
19

Except that we know this cinematic was written and well underway before any of those re-contextualizing events were. If this cinematic was meant to form part of a greater narrative that subverts the heroism present, we would probably have seen these events in the game - instead, the whole sequence is missing. The meta-narrative circumstances of how Sylvanas is written is very important to a meta-narrative discussion of roads not taken.

I appreciate and respect the thought given to trying to connect these dots, so please don’t take offense when I say that these are all interpretations. Valid ones, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t an invalidation of the presence of the contrary points I have identified within the narrative, and the potential pathway for Sylvanas they represented. Shift the perspective a fraction, and we don’t see this as a descent into the darkness but the pulling back from the brink that was Edge of Night.

I won’t argue with anything about BfA - it’s pure villainy, hence why we’re crying foul on the Villain Bat. I think the Arthas Teldrassil/Quel’Thalas parallels aren’t as solid as implied but that’s neither here nor there. I’m not saying that BfA carried forward that thread of hope for a positive arc for Sylvanas, in fact that’s my entire complaint. The potential for Sylvanas’ change into a Horde stalwart was, as I said, clear and consistent in the examples given. Her connection to the Forsaken has only grown since Cata, and she is never more aligned with the Horde than the Broken Shore. But they collapsed the possibilities by picking the worst of her person and bloating it so that it eclipsed all the rest.

As I’ve said to Droite - Nobody is arguing which path they took. We can all see that. But I will die on this hill before I discard the fact that there was another way this very legitimately could have gone.

#WhereIsShe ?

3 Likes
20

Sylvanas is an interesting character when regarding her relationship with the Forsaken. She “values” them … immensely, but its often difficult to tell if she values them more as people; or merely as tools in the pursuit of her personal ambitions. This is especially prevalent in “Edge of Night”, when she was about to outright abandon them to destruction until she realized that she still needed them to save her from her own horrific afterlife (her “Bulwark Against the Infinite”). Is “her people” possessive?

A LOT of people point to her behavior in early Cata as a sign that she had begun changing how she perceived her relationship with the Forsaken; but I’ve never really been sure that is the case. She acts benevolently, but always in a public setting; and she did that prior to Cata as well (and we all assumed she truly cared for them up until “Edge of Night” came out; which absolutely changed the perspective on her relationship with her “Mongrel Race of Rotten Corpses”).

As a result, its INCREDIBLY hard to tell how much of her external actions reflect her internal beliefs (and we only get brief windows into her mind in the books). I’m sure she does care for them, but in what way? As her people? As her tools? A mix of both, and to what degree? How much is she willing to sacrifice of herself for THEIR needs? How much does she expect them to sacrifice for hers? For that matter how much does she conflate what’s good for her needs, and whats good for theirs?

Lots of questions…

1 Like