So I happened to catch the movie Army of the Dead. It’s an alright zombie movie. If you’re into horror shlock and already have Netflix it’ll certainly pass the time inoffensively enough but it’s not really appointment viewing if you’re not into that sort of thing.
I bring this up though because in the movie (and this ain’t a spoiler because it’s in the trailers) there are variant zombies who are sapient. And they’re accidentally the best live action depiction of the Forsaken I could ever ask for.
Now these fellas are obviously more feral and primitive than everybody’s favorite friendly neighborhood flesh eaters. But the overall appearance is exactly what I would want if there was a live action Warcraft story featuring the Forsaken.
I’ve never really bought the Forsaken as being stiff and decrepit, as they sometimes appear when written less creatively. Because their animations don’t suggest that’s the case even remotely. If anything they seem more agile than their breather cousins.
The male hand to hand and female dagger animations in particular have them bending lower to the ground and swaying before slashing with claws or daggers. It reminds me more of a cat or cobra. These were especially well presented in the cinematic where Thrall and Saurfang fight two deathstalkers.
I think there should always be an inhuman and predatory vibe to the PC race undead. They can still be civil, friendly, even outright kind and caring. But even the nicest one imaginable is still going to have ghostly tendencies. Skittering more than running, screeching more than screaming and just generally having a voracious look in their eye that’s hard not to worry has malicious intent to them.
after all, it is like they have to worry about their anatomy much less its limitations, don’t move through muscles, but literal magic, they should be at least a little freakish when moving
The undead in WoW are more their own fantasy race than a human simply raised by necromancy. It’s clear they were human, but the plague mutated them into something else that just does not operate like a human.
Well, for me, not always. That is one reason I like WoWs Forsaken. The diversity. You have highly civilized Forsaken, as well as some close to feral. You have high minded scientists and philosophers, sadistic assassins, and mighty warriors. You have the eloquent, and you have the almost incoherent.
I think having some that are more Human while Undead is cool, as opposed to all being uniform in such a way.
It’s funny you mention that. I found myself a little offended as I watched the trailer.
I live in Vegas. With the COVID, a lot of the hotels were closed for weeks. It was a ghost town. And we had that mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay which vaguely appears like some of the scenes. Seeing men with guns running around and the city being a ghost town…
I am not saying I am gonna protest - I wasn’t offended in that sense. It offended my sensibilities a bit, though, I guess. I think I was a smidge triggered. I found myself kind of disgusted.
Normally I think I can handle a lot of stuff with a good attitude, but the trailer had me feeling like… “ugh”.
Honestly I haven’t been on in like a month so that might be effecting it. RE8 dropped and it’s not like Blizz has anymore content for me. Now I’m working through that Mass Effect 1-3 re-release. They’re really pushing their luck with these droughts, I tell ya.
To a point I agree. As we see some undead still identify as Lordaeronian and are concerned about their surviving family or possessions / careers from their breather years. Whereas others completely reject their old humanity and have embraced their dark rebirth whole heartedly.
Hence why you get some Forsaken with pretty mundane names like Chadwick Paxton and others changing their surnames to Blightcaller or just calling themselves the Black Bride.
But I think even the ones who are just farmers or w/e should still very distinctly move and behave in a ghoulish way. We see in SL afterall this changes someone’s soul as well as their bodies. So even simple movements should be a bit ghoulish. Twisting to pick up stuff in ways that’d be extremely uncomfortable to humans and the like.
Chadwick Paxton and The Black Bride are two of my favorite Forsaken. They play relatively minor roles - well, most Forsaken other than Sylvanas play minor roles. But these two say alot about themselves and their people with the little they get to say.
I was thinking of Alexi Barov. He not only clings to his old life, he is claiming property and seeking deeds. It is a mix of civil property disputes, zombie apocalypse, and murder hobos that was fun.
I like having at least a sliver of a more “civilized” people among the Forsaken, even if they are a minority.
Oh yeah I certainly wouldn’t want them to be as feral as the ghouls in this movie. Also I wasn’t sure exactly how smart these undead were supposed to be seeing as they just kept charging people with guns. But to be fair to them, the whole plot only makes sense if every character is profoundly stupid.
A lot of the Forsaken are quite civilized. Wizards, clerics, doctors etc. But they seem to be related to ghouls and geists who leap at prey and spiderwalk. Personally I write this character as pretty reasonable and civilized but he has raked people in the face with his claws and bit out jugulars in combat when doing that made sense. Should always be at least a bit monstrous imho.
On a related topic, I do wonder if the Forsaken Symbol (the Icon of Torment) will change? Not only does that represent an ideology that Velonara seemed to imply they weren’t fond miring in (We will no longer be slaves to this torment vs Why must we be slaves to this torment?) … just about everything of this Symbol is representative of Sylvanas. The mask is clearly Sylvanas. The Black Arrows. The Hawk, which has fairly strong associations with the Quel’thalas rangers. Even Sylvie’s current arc seems to revolve her allowing her torment and pain enslave her and turn her into a monster. Its sort of bizarre just how much of their lore and symbolism was her.
I think it will be of a mix of the Icon of Torment and a new symbol being present. Like the UC tabard will remain the same but an update UC would have a new flag to represent the rebirth or new direction of the Forsaken.
I kind of thought the Army of the Dead stunk as a movie (mainly because the least likable character IMO survived.) the idea of a hierarchy of zombies wasn’t bad but also wasn’t new - we’ve seen ‘smart’ zombies in the feral zombie sub-genre before and you’re right to question exactly how smart they are given they behave more like wild animals than anything else.
Not that I have a problem with your ideas on how the Forsaken should move when in combat. Lithe and predatory with a certain almost boneless quality makes sense given (as others have pointed out) they are animated more by death magic than by their rotted muscle and sinew.
But as far as Forsaken behavior is concerned, I think the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to what I would like the Forsaken to be would be the undead as presented by the film The Return of The Living Dead. They’re fast, they’re feral, and they are smart enough to radio for ‘help’ (‘send more paramedics’) and then wait in ambush for them to arrive. They can speak and communicate intelligently but they’re only really lucid shortly after eating live brains as that’s the only thing that gives them a break from the torturous pain of just existing as the living dead. (Of course the Forsaken don’t have it quite as bad when it comes to the level of pain they have to endure, but that is supposed to be part of why they and Death Knights are the way they are.)
Of course I’m a little biased since Tarman and Trash are probably my favorite zombies in all of fiction, but I just like the idea of the Forsaken being perfectly intelligent but occasionally being driven to monstrous and feral behavior by their state of being.
To be honest the Death guard is one of the most boring things in all of Warhammer to me.
Only lesser animated undead in Warcraft, some zombies and skeletons seem to be somewhat more stiff and that’s mostly to the writing. One example are the undead in front of Icecrown during the Shadowlands intro cinematic.
Even ghouls are known to be fast and agile in their movements. The same goes for undead like the Nerubians. Not even the abominations are ever described as slow, or stiff. I think a stiff boring zombie walk doesn’t fit the Forsaken.
Return of the Living Dead is such a gem. I basically enjoyed Army of the Dead. It is thunderingly stupid but I’m a simple man, and will enjoy something if there’s an extended scene of an undead tiger just mangling someone.
I do think they’re more in the reanimated corpse camp though. And what I find interesting about Warcraft’s Plague is it reminds me more of say the viruses from Resident Evil than traditional zombies.
In that while it can create more traditional shambling bitey corpses, it also mutates people into weird monsters who scarcely resemble humans. Ghouls for example remind me of RE’s lickers, in that they’ve been so warped as to be barely recognizable as once human.
Personally it’s my head canon the undead PC race were sort of a ghoul 2.0. Scale back the ferocity a bit so they can still use weapons and think critically. A force that would be able to siege a fort without needing a necromancer present to tell them to not march into obvious traps.
Not to detract from the main thread, but you’re going to get 100 different opinions about 100 different factions and sub factions. Main focus/big big thing is Imperium and Chaos. The constant push and pull between the two. Makes up like 70% of everything.
More holistically, the ‘big’ things I could say;
Space Marines as a whole, and of those maybe 4-6 chapters/founding Legions really get their due. (Ultramarines [love or hate], Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Grey Nights, Imperial Fists)
Various Imperial sub forces. Inquisition, Mechanicum and Belisarius Cawl, Sisters of Silence, Custodes as individual wholes.
Sisters of Battle are getting a resurgence, but we’ll see how long it lasts.
Chaos Space Marines with a focus on Abbadon and his 13th Black Crusade. Some special attention to, again, about 4-6 legions and their subsequent warbands. Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Black Legion, Word Bearers
Eldar and their new Yanari
Imperial Guard as a whole with, again, focuses on 4-6 armies. Kreig, Catachan, Cadia, Armageddon Steel Legion to name some of the better known ones.
Tau as a whole. Some special attention to Farsight Enclaves
Orks and Warlord Ghazghkull
Necrons and a few of their dynasties. Sautekh and the Silent King, Trazyn the Infinite.
Dark Eldar are kinda ignored, but exist.
Tyranids are just a hive mind. Not a lot there, but them as a threat is kinda big.
To the wider thread, Death Guard would be a suitable analogy, if Blizzard knew how to do plaguing right and everyone wouldn’t go up in arms about it being a war crime. We literately cremate people to death and I summon mini earthquakes beneath their feet. Its actually scary but is presented as cartoonish or just fantasy.
Blight is basically just roided up mustard gas. And I get why we the audience find that appalling. Because it does remind us of the horrors of WW1. Chemical weapons were so unspeakably terrible we all unilaterally decided to not use that ish again because good luck getting anyone to fight for their country when the battlefields made of battery acid and and eye melting fog.
But in Azeroth, melting people is actually an extremely common problem solving solution. If your skin is falling off are you going to care how that’s happening?
“Well this is an agonizing way to die. But at least I’m being vaporized by Elune lasers and not Blight. The ladder would be a more mean spirited way of leaving me a pile of bones on the floor”
Don’t forget radiation sickness, blood sacrifices, massive columns of fire to burn entire cities and armies, causing foes to be reduced to ashes, torturing people to death, and poison that causes the target to writhe in pain as they slowly die.
And that’s just the methods used in the backstory of the main factions both Horde and Alliance. There’s far more cruel fates in store if you get captured by some of the NPC factions out there.
And that’s also not mentioning the description of certain abilities that PCs have in their toolkits. (Boil Blood, Immolation, Mindbender, and Devouring Plague just to name some of the nastiest sounding)
Azeroth has barely any rules at all when it comes to conflict and combat.
That’s really a pickle. Because the Icon of Torment is so, well, iconic.
Personally I say keep it. The Orcs kept their symbol despite the general direction shift, and there’s enough death symbology in the Icon to keep it working. The arrows are black and decrepit, the mask (while obviously Sylvie inspired) does sort of resemble a cracked opera mask, and there’s the raven which is often seen as death adjacent.
If we were to do a redesign I could see giving the Lordaeronian one a goth makeover. But Blizz is never going to commit resources to switch up all the Forsaken’s imagery so might as well keep it and reinterpret it.
My favorite are the Forsaken Apothecaries milling around the Armies of Legionfall camps. As I’ve said the Forsaken only get a bad rap because they use spooky armaments against the Alliance.
Damn KotEB sucker punch the Argent Dawn, who are essentially just an armed version of Doctors Without Borders, with a damn zombie army. Try to defile their base with necromancy and are only thwarted by divine intervention.
But nobody has an attitude about Darion and Bolvar being unambiguous heroes a few years later.
