…Sylvanas herself shall be forced to play through Shadowlands!..
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Reminder the soul split stuff is there to absolve Sylvanas of TFT-MoP, not even just the crazy Warchief arc. That’s all the stuff people actually identified with and invested in rationalizing, whether ethically or as a means of bare survival. Danuser and Golden would rather say what amounts to “none of that was her, you never really met her” than try to salvage the character that was once so marketable.
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In the Arthas novel it was still stupid and it also worked differently, but was still just a narrative device for Golden to patheticize a ruthless, fearsome character with uncharacteristic neurosis.
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The cinematic ended with the literal destruction of two souls, but still had more soul than the rest of the expansion. Ironic.
For a lot of people, the problems are the execution, the endless ham-fisted retcons (eg; retconning credit from Sargeras to the Jailer) and plot threads left hanging (eg; no mention of why Thrall’s father is absent - nor any desire to find him - even though he died with Draka and was a similar person to her). Plus, people didn’t know what was coming (eg; before Sylvanas was put under Tyrande’s authority, Sylvanas becoming the new Arbiter was more likely and hated outcome than what we got).
That said, you have a point that.
Not the point of the soul split stuff at all, Sylvanas was forced to realize how far she’s changed since her death (something she doesn’t accept in things like Edge of Night). Her disassociation from her actions as an undead in her coma was explicitly the thing preventing her from waking up.
Like many things with WoW it’s poorly written for the medium but the dialogue is there.
Isn’t this explicitly part of the ‘this is only the defense of the Shadowlands not the entirety of it’ handwave that Blizzard had going from the games announcement?
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Wasn’t Edge of Night where the val’kyr said she was cold in life too?
The full quote was, ‘Still a warrior’s heart? She had grown cold. No, she was the same. In death as in life.’
She is rationalizing to explain it away, since her first thought was how she had changed.
I thought those were the val’kyr’s conversation, not Sylvanas’ thoughts. It’s been years.
Could you clarify what the ‘this is only the defense of the Shadowlands not the entirety of it’ handwave is? I gave that as one example of an issue unaddressed by the plot. Draka mentions Durotan (knowing who Thrall was because he had the same eyes as Durotan), but neither of them wonder where he is or say anything about finding their beloved husband (for Draka)/father (for Thrall).
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Blizzard had a running point that the Shadowlands had an infinite number of realms as a way to explain characters not returning.
Korthia added the lines from Draka but she also doesn’t act like it would be difficult to find him, so it may very well be that she either knows the realm he’s in or can just ask to be sent to him once she no longer wants to be Maldraxxi.
Thrall, similarly likely thinks that Durotan ended up wherever orcs normally go, so his only concern was his mother and father not being in the same place.
I agree with this. Except Draka and Thrall are orcs, so Thrall would either think orcs normally end up in Maldraxxus or he should wonder why Draka’s the only Orc he saw from there.
My main issue here is that neither of them said anything addressing this in the game; Thrall never asked where Durotan was and Draka never said where Durotan was.
Technically the Korthia ‘stay awhile’ was trying to address this, since the question of Durotan had been there ever since the Maldraxxus trailer dropped. It’s just the usual Blizzard thing that they didn’t really ‘create’ a realm for orcs (or really any other part of the Shadowlands)* in actuality so they just tried to sidestep it in what they hoped was an elegant way.
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Well, it certainly wasn’t an elegant or well-written way. They shouldn’t have avoided Durotan at all. In fact, it could’ve been handled with an exchange like this;
Thrall; “By the way, mother, I have to ask. Where is my father? Where is Durotan?”
Draka; “I… don’t know, Go’el. He wasn’t with me when I arrived in Maldraxxus. I’ve searched for him many times. When I joined the House of Eyes, I asked Margrave Akarek and others if they knew anything of him, but found nothing. When I’m not on duty, I often contract agents to find Durotan or search myself. Durotan would definitely be worthy of Maldraxxus.”
Thrall; “Can we find him?”
Draka; “First, let’s focus on saving the Shadowlands. He might appear during the battles. If not, the search can resume after. I will not give up on him.”
It could’ve slotted into one of those ‘stay awhile and listens’ without taking the spotlight of Draka. I’m fine with Draka’s spotlight and development, I just think they didn’t need to discard Durotan to do it.
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Danuser was the one who chose how the scenario played out for the Cinematic.
The Sylvanas Cinematic was written by Christie Golden.
Danuser lets Golden write what she wants to write then writes around it outside of the Cutscenes.
When Tyrande shoots at one of the maw soldier sin the cinematic in 9.5 where she meets Andean in the maw, a little light shows up that is probably an intact soul.
Mawsworn only seem to wipe out Souls completely in Torghast or Zovaal’s Cauldron otherwise they simply break them down into Mawsworn Shades which are the divided Souls that the Mawsworn created by attacking Souls with their Mourneblades(all Mawsworn Blades are Mourneblades).
Each of said Shades are capable of returning to functional capacity with proper aid as shown by the Maldraxxi Assault on the Maw.
In otherwords multiple versions of the Same Soul can be sent to Pelagos by Sylvanas.
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For a long time I’ve been imagininging, if there was a quest line, to revive his soul, and he went to The Arbiter, a griffins could appear and he’d ask “Where will it take me?”. The Arbiter would answer “It will take you…onward.” and then Arthas climbs aboard and is brought through a portal, and then we never see him again. I think that would satisfy everyone.
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Further proof Golden hates the Horde and only cares for her human favorites like Jaina and Anduin. She has sabotaged the Horde writing since MoP.