Shame Fortnite is basically just an advertisement simulator with no real story.
So, not interesting to me.
Especially since I don’t play FPS games.
Glad most consider it the greatest thing in the world and I’m happy many enjoy it. Sadly it’s about as tasteful as the Michael Bay Transformers movies for me.
It’s third person. The camera floats behind.
What do we call that? Third person shooter?
you call it a shooter or battle royale
Regardless of what we may agree or disagree on the narrative arcs of the cinematics, the 3 (or 4?) CG cinematics that came along the BfA expansion were anything but “zero effort”.
They are some of the most graphically impressive cinematics I’ve ever seem.
The raids also do not seem low effort at all. Nor the music.
Gameplay is meh, and there is no doubt that it’s the center piece of a videogame, but many teams at Blizzard did give their all in this expansion.
Their all is frankly disappointing.
Maybe the cinematics team deserves a raise, but whoever is writing the zones/quests/characters and overarching narrative should probably be fired.
I think a lot of this angst could just be summarized as losing interest in a property that has existed for fifteen dang years and is gonna feel pretty worn out if you’ve been along for most of that ride. That’s about where I’ve landed with it anyways.
I do think they’ve lost some of the passion for developing the game (again, fifteen years) but if I keep giving them fifteen bucks for bad content at a certain point that’s just on my head.
So we’re part of the problem?
gasp
The lead narrative designer is Steve Danuser, creative director is Alex Afrasiabi.
Actually the storywriting in WoW is the best it has ever been over it’s entire franchise history…
If you actually think about the story, the Storywriting in the older RTS titles, and up to around Cataclysm were very one-dimensional. just Good Guys vs Bad Guys stories. However as time progressed with World of Warcraft, Blizzard has literally hired and brought in novelists to write the overarching storyline giving more depth and dimension to characters and the storylines…
Writers such as Christine Golden has brought a lot of great storywriting and development to World of Warcraft that World of Warcraft has never had prior.
Just step back and think about how complex the BFA storyline is, all the plot points, character developments, and how you know not only of the main characters but many of the background characters have story development and things going on as well, plus the story is carrying over through out the patches, unlike older expansions where plot points or the story come to an abrupt end with each patch.
I mean, WC3 was an entire game that humanized more less every race and gave them relatable heroes and champions?
We also saw some races in WC2 being portrayed as having unique cultures and being more than just good or evil.
The main theme of WC3, or one of the main themes, was subverting fantasy tropes about monstrous races and showing they can be kind/compassionate/considerate and intelligent.
But unless your game is 100% narrative driven, the narrative is second to gameplay or gameplay structure. The story is the coat of paint that makes it look good, but it has to serve whatever objective they have for the game.
For instance, if they want to be done with the war between the factions, they will write whatever story has to be written so that happens.
If they decide Anduin will be a boss, they will write whatever story so that’s the case.
Since WoW’s inception, it’s usually been a matter of time before we end up having to kill Warcraft 3 characters. They even went so low as reviving (via time traveling) every Warcraft 2 Orc character so we would have more bosses available. But I mean, what’s the alternative?
Sure, pulling a Ghuun every now and then is fine. But for the most of it, at least the very final boss in a raid is a character previously stabilished.
For instance, look at Legion: We had Xavius (stabilished), Gul’dan (stabilished), Kil’Jaeden (stabilished) and Argus (not stabilished as a character, but a location we already heard about plenty of times). Even if you don’t count Argus (which makes sense, no one saw the dude), most bosses in the expansion were previously stabilished characters.
As much as I enjoy some fights in the The Eternal Palace raid, they are of little to no narrative value except for Azshara herself and none was previously stabilished except for her, either. I believe this trend (of having a big name boss as last boss of a raid) will continue, and as such, the narrative will be forced to be written in a way to justify we fighting it.
I mean, Alliance had a Jaina last boss last tier.
Introduce new elements or work the story in another direction, I mean, you can write original characters or stories.
Or.
Make an RTS that introduces new characters, establishes them, and gives us further loot morons to kill weekly.
You’d just have to do a timeskip in WoW, which we have done before. Pretty sure a few expansions launched us years ahead canonically? As in they took longer than IRL time did.
I like option two a lot more, as single player games are much better ways to stabilish characters, factions and drama…but at this point, I don’t see RTS as a viable genre to be the extension of WoW. Not anymore.
And not because of any fault of the RTS genre, but only because of it’s popularity.
How is making peace between the two major factors a bad thing? Bear in mind…there are still known threats out there and there are a lot of unknowns out there. All this is is just an ending to something else. Plot holes? Yes. Empty sections left untouched? Yes. But tbh, I play cause there is nothing else really like WoW. FFXIV is a close one and has it’s definite perks but I always seem to come back here. I can still give criticism but love the game.
They could make an RPG… Like, a singleplayer RPG that focuses on narrative elements that furthers the Warcraft story. Then just feed us characters we hate and love through that, to turn into weekly loot pinatas.
I’m a massive sucker for single player RPGs, or more than that, to Turn Based Tactics RPG (Such as FFT and Fire Emblem; Probably gonna buy a switch to play the new one soon).
I think it would be interesting to see Blizzard trying their hand at that, but I don’t know how reasonable it is to expect that from them.
As far as I can remember Blizzard big titles, they are always an attempt at taking over a genre- RTS with Warcraft 3, MMOs with WoW. They even had less sucessive jabs with Hearthstone (cardgames), HotS (MOBAs) and Overwatch (team, class based shooters), with varying degrees of sucess.
Since single player RPGs are not the most popular genre out there, or one they could see taking over, I’m not sure they would even make an attempt there, specially after the failure of their most recent titles (like HotS and SC2).
Everquest. Anarchy Online. Asheron’s Call. Ultima Online.
All like WoW, had living worlds with growing narratives. Most were generic.
They were different in that it wasn’t an existing franchise changing genres and then branching out into multimedia.
As for making peace, it’s fine? It’ll last for an expansion, if that, before some convoluted and played out idiotic reasons makes them go to all out but not lethal war once again. That way the “IT’S WORLD OF WAAAAAAARCRAFT, NOT PEACECRAFT.” Crowd can enjoy their weird fantasy racism and impossible wars, despite both sides having weapons of mass destruction and war constructs.
You’re absolutely right. It would be nice for the peace to last but I don’t see that happening unless Sylvanas really got her own faction. I could definitely see her gaining support from the left over Twilight people…let alone folks like the Defias and the Syndicate who have managed to survive. The reason I can see the Alliance and Horde splitting is from the Night Elves losing their crap over it. I highly doubt Tyrande and Malfurion are just going to roll over and play nice after Teldrassil…
Sighs sadly when he remembers that our Timeline is the worst. In most Garrosh became an extraordinary leader that ushered in a golden age of advancement and peace.
But it’s fine, we can just… Keep repeating the same back and forth war cycle for the rest of time cause GOTTA HAVE TEH PVPS.