Been kinda mulling over this for a bit—why an expansion I’ve otherwise enjoyed has felt a little hollow where a well written villain is concerned. What I’ve arrived at is: my problem is that the story isn’t about The Champion (the player). Specifically, Xal’atath doesn’t really have anything to do with us. I hit on this previously with the Arathi/Nerubian war conclusion in the priory, how The Champion simply stops existing in the story when the confrontation occurs, but didn’t really stop to consider that my issue with that cinematic applies to the entire expansion.
Basically, the villain we’re supposed to be chasing throughout the Worldsoul Saga, so far, is spending 100% of her effort and screentime taunting and fighting and tempting Alleria. Which is kinda odd, given how important we’re supposed to be (gestures at N’zoth, BFA, torches to light the way, yada yada) to the Void’s scheming.
During the most recent Metzen interview, he mentioned how the team needed to thread the needle carefully in a way that telling the story of NPCs (like Alleria) didn’t leave the player feeling left out. Not happy to say that mission seems to have failed so far.
As a final note, I will include that I like Xal’atath and most of TWW’s plot. I just feel like this lesson keeps getting forgotten: the NPCs aren’t the main characters—the players are.
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I mean she whispered to me calling me her blade, and how I was a weapon she’d wield to drive my ‘allies’ to the brink.
She’ll also whisper a bunch of different stuff to Priests depending on what they did or didn’t do during BFA Legion. I completed her artifact quests and murdered a dozen or so people in N’Zoth’s name so I get sweet nothings whispered to me from beyond the stars.
She doesn’t say anything to other classes but why would she? Not much of a history there outside proving to be a useful idiot that one time.
But we’ve something special. Or so she thinks at least. She was the side piece to my committed relationship to Light’s Wrath and I wasn’t killing for N’Zoth. I was killing for love of the game.
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She’s kinda meh and we got way too easy of a major victory, she’s gotta do some real antagonist stuff for me to care about her as a trilogy-level antagonist.
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true, she isn’t landing
she just floats there without her feet touching the ground
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Overcoming her will surely be a feet. I’m sure if we put our heads toegether, we can find a way to climb that heel.
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Not to worry, she may be on the back foot now but there’s no telling what Blizzard will do next, besides the hints we’ve been given. As some point, she’ll be putting her foot down and showing us she really means business. Will the final zone of the expansion be her stomping grounds, or will Blizzard save it for Midnight?
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World of Warcraft: Midnight: The Harbinger’s Little Piggies
Probably starring Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Buscemi, Uma Thurman
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I think they overestimated how much we cherished Dalaran.
And furthermore failed to actually make Dalaran feel lost. They should’ve replaced our Dalaran Hearthstones with ones that took us to our faction’s portal rooms. And made the Northrend portals lead to the Argent tournament grounds instead.
You know actually remove it in a way that seeing Dalaran again would require going out of the way. Give a sense of tangible loss.
But nah I’m still commuting through there to get to Orgrimmar constantly.
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She’s so flat as a character it hurts. But that’s nothing new for Blizzard.
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I think Xal is solid overall. Would appreciate if she leaned more into the inscrutable than cliché WoW boss—This changes nothing!/You win this round, but I’ll be back!—when she encounters a setback.
Like, it would have been way more unnerving if the Dark Heart shattered and imploded and Xal’atath just smiled placidly instead of throwing a tantrum.
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But that would just be the standard Blizzard “muahaha all according to plan” response which is done just as much as “This changes nothing!”
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Or after the Dark Heart shatters, we get a brief glimpse of her end game. That was channeling all that magic so a Void Lord could step through and not be sucked back into the void.
Imagine getting a glimpse of a menacing figure before Xal is pulled away
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See I actually liked that part because she screwed it up. Alleria only hits the Dark Heart because Xalatath moved it when she realized that’s what Alleria was aiming for.
She might be 2 steps ahead but she isn’t omnipotent. I think that’s an interesting note. Because frankly it’s obvious she’s not the ultimate villain here, her name is the Harbinger afterall, but I’m not sure if she’ll even be a villain in general come the end of the trilogy.
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And we’ve had people who’ve posted here on how much they resented it. Especially since at the climactic fights it’s the main NPC, the Thrall, the Tirion, etc, who walks in on stage after we’ve done all the slogging and finnishes off the Big Bad.
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That would break the game further. Khadgar already is broken in legion stuff because of tww stuff. He sometimes bugs out now.
I don’t mean that the Dark Heart shouldn’t have been important to her plan, just that I wouldn’t expect eons old ancient Void entity to behave exactly the same as every random lieutenant level dungeon/raid boss we’ve fought for two decades.
It adds up more if you’ve worked with her in the past. She knows a lot and is full of commentary;
But she still wound up as an object you are wielding. Yeah she was around for millenia but as a bug eyed knife. Not exactly Cthulu maddening people from the sleepless city a world away in the darkest depths. More cruel cutlery that maddened people who were willing to pick up and listen to an obviously evil knife.
Although I’ll always love how they made her just genuinely funny and charming. Yeah I’d probably fold if the dark blade had a sultry voice and just constantly smack talked. And I’d definitely fold if said dark blade then turned up as a floating manic looking goth girl who called me her knife.
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There are enough breadcrumbs to suggest she was involved with the fall of K’aresh. Granted, I’m assuming she spent a great deal of time not existing as a piece of void cutlery. IIRC it was our friendly Azerothian neighborhood tentacle-eye-mouth-tumors that bestowed upon her the gift of Yappy Butterknife.
To be fair to Xal, the Old Gods we encounter do the same rote villain monologuing. It is decidedly unalien to see.
"I HAVE PERCEIVED ALL REALITIES AND EXIST IN ALL SIMULTANEOUSLY AND NOT AT ALL AND MY KINGDOM IS DREAMED INTO EXISTENCE AND…
checks mirror, adjusts tie, fixes hair
“YOU ARE TOO LATE, MORTALS! HOW CAN THIS BE!? WAGGGGHHHHGGHHHH!!”
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Well she still hasn’t really caught a L yet. She seemed pretty nonchalant about Princesses Spiderface getting squashed. To the point where I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say she was chewing scenery in Hallowfall to make us think we’d accomplished something.
That’s actually what I like about War Within so far. I don’t know what they’re going to do next and want to see where it goes. Xalatath could vanish from the story and we could have a whole aside about the Harronir only for Xalatath to be revealed as a whole part of it at the end.
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directed by Quentin Tarantino
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