This seems to be Blizzard’s answer for wanting both sides to feel justified. Not letting us know what actually happened by making two differing stories.
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the general consensus seems to be that the alliance side dialogue is correct, and that the other side is unreliable narrator.
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Well, it’s not really that hard to make it feel justified - I know it’s a meme, but alliance attacking horde is kinda always pretty justified atm. Alliance want to cripple the horde, and the horde seek revenge on their escape - this episode of unreliable narrator is probs just a bit of nice flavour, which it, IMO, is.
Has Blizzard commented?
The funny thing is the Horde version is most likely what Genn would say before blizz started to white wash him.
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They don’t need to. The alliance side dialogue happens with the player character there - the horde side dialogue is retold by an npc, hence unreliable narrator.
What essentially happens during bosses 4-6 for horde and 7-9 for alliance is that there’s a person there just telling you what happens - it will get embellished.
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And you might find that rationale compelling. Doesn’t necessarily mean it is Blizzard’s intent.
you are right there really isn’t a single line of dialogue changed from the horde characters by the npcs, he just gives some opinion.
so basically, only the horde flashback is unreliable narrator.
The War or Thorns was the last time they did this.
What? We don’t know what Blizz’ intent is for most of the things in the game, we rely on the context to figure it out - thus, I dare say that it is fairly obvious that it is as I (and most others) say: as the alliance dialogue is heard FROM THE SOURCE, it is correct, whereas the dialogue heard from from a person who witnessed it who is very biased, it is very clear that the alliance dialogue is canon.
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I mean… it’s not really a matter of their intent. It’s literally physically being there vs. hearing some guy’s retelling of it. The Alliance side is what happened because you the character actually see it happen.
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This is differing perspectives, not unreliable narrator.
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I don’t mind this sort of thing. It’s far preferable to having characters outright lie to us or reference events that never happened (looking at you, Rexxar) because the writers have failed to give us any real reasons to want to fight.
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Not when Elegy and A Good War comes out and misconstrues the in game events.
“Unreliable narrator” happens in WoW when devs don’t proofread or talk to each other.
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No, that’s not unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is when there is an actual person narrating the story - blizz devs do not count as unreliable narrators, as they are not present ingame. Discrepancies between ingame and books is, as you say, due to silliness.
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ooh I see: you’re making a pun!
While blizzard writters making mistakes or contradictions in their storytelling isn’t technically the “unreliable narrator” narrative device that we’re talking about in this thread, it does make them “unreliable narrators” in the literal sense, because they are narrators who we can’t rely on!
thats a very clever joke haha
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I think actual unreliable narrator is above blizzard’s weight class. It won’t matter or be relevant to future stories or be forgotten about.
I don’t know what you’re confused about. I said you can believe these things if you want. It just doesn’t make them necessarily true.
Except there are instances of things that happen with our characters physically being somewhere that ends up non-canon or of questionable depiction. War of Thorns versus A Good War details. Both sides doing neutral content. Aspects like Sunwell Plateau being attributed to the Alliance.
I think Blizzard’s intent on what is true does matter.
Those are retcons, not split narratives. They’re not exactly comparable to an instance where one side is there, and the other’s not.
The exaggerated monstrous Genn dialogue is purposefully written with the fact that you’re not actually there in mind.
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They are moments lacking clarity on what actually happened with different versions of what is canon. They seem relatively comparable to me.
Maybe, maybe not. Hence why I asked ‘did Blizzard clarify?’