Well, I’m sure things will be handled fine, but I have a distinct feeling it’s going to be that issue that plagues WoW year after year:
It’s how we always wind up with some of these situations to begin with:
- They want to sell a novel
- Said novel contains some pretty damn important info, character/lore development, etc.
- Game fails to address this new info
At best, players are then left scratching their heads trying to figure out what quest chain they missed without realizing that there just ISN’T a quest chain.
At worst, you get people ruthlessly mocking a young man that has spent the last 16 years of his life watching various friends and family constantly die, fighting in multiple wars he didn’t want, and being forced to come to terms with the fact that peace isn’t always an option (in contrast to his father learning that war isn’t the only option) since in their eyes he’s just being a big baby about “being mind controlled for a short time lol!”
To this day, I still say the most egregious case of important lore essentially being stuck behind a paywall is Calia going from being a priest order hall champion, to suddenly being undead in BfA.
I’ve said it many times, and it bears repeating: I won’t begrudge companies that wish to make money, and I recognize that Blizzard clearly has contracts with publishers for comics, novels, etc.
However, if you’re going to put something major into a book, AT LEAST ADDRESS IT WITHIN THE GAME! I’m not saying put 200+ pages of a novel into multiple Kojima length cutscenes that make up 80% of a game with only 2-3 hours of actual gameplay, but at least try to give a Cliff Notes version of the important info that is absolutely need to know inside of a 1-2 minute cutscene of some kind.