I don’t want to go so far as saying I agree with Kagehiro whole-cloth but I can’t readily think of a specific difference I have. Meanwhile I also agree with you.
The problem for me is that the Forsaken serve a narrative that has gotten long in the tooth. Should the story explore a fundamental change in the nature of the forsaken relationship with the larger world? Sure. But only if that story intends to experience a climax and a denouement and a resolution. If you tell me the story of the Forsaken and their growth as a people and their struggle with rejection, to explore that shift and eventually have the forsaken reject evil AND for the world to accept them making them no longer forsaken and the namesake ironic, that has to be the part where the sun sets and the zombie protagonist embraces the living damsel and the camera pans up while the words The End scrawl onto the screen in cursive to the sound of a rising orchestral score.
Instead, we’re getting the Rick and Morty episode where they are stuck in a mad max dimension and summer marries one of the post apocalyptic barbarians only to have the world gets totally civilized by an energy revolution and summers barbarian husband and that whole life become way less sexy and way more mundane.
We don’t really want to see the world after the character grows and resolves all their issues.
Tell the story of how their time in the Horde changed them and how what started as an “alliance of convenience” they struck because they were out of options progressively turned into genuine kinship and a renewed sense of belonging. Tell the story of their Hordeness.
That’s long overdue. And the Belves could use some of that too.
And now we are seeing them sitting on the couch, with Summer being all “You guys haven’t moved since I left!” while she juggles a broken paper grocery sack, wondering where the brutal, cannibal deathguard she fell in love with went.
They explored that pretty extensively in BfA. It was the point of the Mok’Gora cinematic. They touched on it throughout AGW and in dialogue in quests throughout BfA. We are never getting a “World of Warcraft: The Complete Integration” expansion. And no one would like it.
The Forsaken are a grimmer, more disturbing version of the Adams Family. Granted, with the Adamses, the point was about immigrants and that the white bread American neighbors were the real monsters, but with something like The Adams family, if you get rid of the absurdism and the social commentary, the comic-strip/show is pointless.
Wednesday is also not the Adams Family. It doesn’t count.
I like the few stories we get of forsaken and horde characters (usually belves) bonding.
If Blizzard was dead set on softening them, I think it should have been through the Horde continuing to have their back post-Sylvanas with Gilneas et al baying for their blood rather than through a disney princess. Actually seeing some forsaken processing that they weren’t abandoned at a convenient point might have made it land better. But that would have taken effort.
i mean honestly i think in some ways one advantage of the forsaken is that they effectively have the same personal problems until the end of time, so in the most general way i totally agree with you, there needs to be a clean and clear narrative arc for the race to generally follow over the course of the game, that really might just mean approaching an asymptotic limit.
to give an example of what i mean, i remember soem dialogue spoken in-game in which a forsaken chef explains that the reason the forsaken love tea so much is because though they lack taste they can still feel the tannins on their tongues. it’s a really fabulous lil note in the margins that i think the forsaken could stand to have more of. like yeah they’re always going to be the walking dead and have cannibalistic impulses and everything, but they also are still just… lol humans with a skin problem
The floating ghost-y banshees don’t look particularly sexy to me, but maybe I’m just a bad judge of what turns other people on.
It’s not like the Forsaken were unique in that sense, though. Using the leaders to tell the stories became the new standard starting around Cataclysm.
I feel like Forsaken identity was always a bit inconsistent—sometimes they were treated as dark comedy and sometimes as serious tragedy—but ironically, that led to them feeling more real because they were not a monolith.
Literally everything ? They, again, never told that story.
No they absolutely didn’t explore that angle extensively in BfA. The most we got was Bannerbae having a reaction at Sylvanas going ‘the Horde is nothing’. Which, if you remember the discussions back then, surprised a lot of people, precisely because there was never any narrative build up for that sort of sentiment coming from the Forsaken lol.
The majority of the Forsaken used to be Humans hailing from the most devout of the 7 kingdoms. Did their new condition affect the way they used to perceive Orcs and Trolls prior to Undeath ? In which ways ? How did becoming part of the Monster Race Club change their worldview ?
What about their relation with the Tauren, who were the ones that largely inducted them into the Horde in the first place ? What about their relation with the Blood Elves ? They should by all means be especially close to them, by virtue of 1) Quel’thalas being the only other (big) Horde nation in the EK, and 2) Forsaken and Belves having a lot in common thematically and narratively (shunned nations that underwent radical shifts in their political alignment in order to survive and started delving into forbidden magics). Besides, a significant portion of the Forsaken society is literally made up of undead Thalassians who could precisely serve as a bridge between the two peoples. So many things to expand upon, yet we never see any of that actually translate into the worldbuilding.
The Forsaken fought alongside the Horde in countless wars every since Vanilla. Did some sort of ‘common culture’ progressively emerge at some point ? Was Sylvanas’ ascension to the Warchief position a turning point in their place within the faction ?
Forsaken stories are always very insular and cut off from the rest of the Horde. It’s a tired trope. We’re in dire need of faction worldbuilding in general but it’s especially the case for races like Forsaken and Belves whose allegiance explicitly started off as a matter of uneasy cooperation. Also applies to the Bilgewater.
A belated response to this. My point was that Calia does look like an established type of undead (death knights), just as Sylvanas did (dark rangers). Neither is the typical Forsaken model, but they both fit within the range of undead to the same degree.
So when people complain that Calia “doesn’t look like a Forsaken,” unless those same people also objected to Sylvanas, I think Calia’s appearance isn’t the real problem. I think they’re responding to other reasons why Calia feels “off” but mistakenly pinning it on her appearance.
The Forsaken, like the Night Elves, were cut off from the rest of the horde.
In Legion they accompanied their queen to Orgrimmar, while she filled the role of warchief. There are plenty of stories that address how they were received.
In BfA they become more accepted, as their queen leads the horde to victory in Darnassus. Then they lose their home and become refugees in Orgrimmar, and they are not rejected or turned away. The horde expedition actually acknowledged that they prefer to be called Forsaken rather than undead.
When the Mok’Gora happens, and Sylvanas says “The Horde is nothing” Tink-tink represents all forsaken in that moment. The conflict on her face is important. The horde is nothing? But I’m horde! We are horde… Oh wow. I’m not forsaken, I’m horde. Saurfang is our hero.
Anything more would just be telling that story again but not as good.
I mean yeah : questlines (MSQ or not) tackling the subjects and answering the questions I mentioned. There aren’t many ways to actually tell stories in WoW, you can do so directly in the game through questlines or through other media, books, cartoons, short stories, whatever.
I will admit that this narrative was obscured maybe a bit too much for the casual observer. Had the development of that not come from the set dressing of AGW and been overshadowed by the War of Thorns; Had it been more like Riko and Kiryn with multiple quests in a chain as opposed to some commentary during a boat ride, and had Voss/Derek been more of a forsaken story than a Lillian Voss story, it might have been more memorable and come across differently.
I shouldn’t say that they told that story well, but they did tell it.
Edit: Also, the forsaken suffer worst than most from the dampening of the faction conflict.
The Forsaken role in the Horde was Undercity. They were a constant reminder to the Alliance that UC and Darnassus were mutually assured destruction. A foothold in the EK as Darnassus is in Kalimdor. In BC they were a bulwark for Silvermoon. You can’t move on Silvermoon without engaging UC and doing so sacrifices Darnassus. The context of these relationships is the faction conflict. Without it all of these relationships are dull.
gaslight (blame someone else like varimathras for your plague and lie all the time)
gatekeep (run the horde with an iron fist and kill people you dont like)
girlboss (horde is a sausage fest)
She brought in the Valkyr, the Maghar, and the Zandalari. She didn’t kill Saurfang despite him being a massive disappointment and a deserter.
Edit: I don’t want to imply she wasn’t an antagonist in BfA (and then SL) but these particular things she isn’t guilty of in any obvious way.
In BfA we were an audience to what could have been a really interesting story about the pressure of leading the horde being too much. we get to watch her slowly unravel and become more and more emotional. Less and less the Ranger General. More and more vulnerable until the dam burst during the Mok’Gora. Instead they made it about Zovaal and it felt like being robbed.
bro it remains tragic that they have not bothered to give the royal apothecary society the scrappy undead dwarf who’s incorrigibly cheerful and really just likes to play in the dirt. any depiction of the forsaken will be incomplete in my heart until this becomes a reality in-game.
edit w/ link, because she’s just too cool: