Killed him way too soon to make Talanji queen. The guy just made a pact with Bwonsamdi and dies shortly after. They needed to show what benefit that deal would have for the heirs of the Zandalari Empire would be. Then let Talanji piece matters together till the climax of his death.
I wanted to see more of a dynamic between Talanji and Rastakhan myself, to really see how their relationship really stood. As it appeared; Rastakhan didn’t so much as care for his daughter’s attempt to recruit the Horde’s aid or imprisonment. Even moreso his daughter’s refusal to stand aside when clear problems exist in her empire.
Really; the King should’ve had more in line for Prophet Zul’s actions and how his behavior benefitted the empire in some form. Even if it spelt disaster; he embraced how many tribes returned and swore under Rastakhan’s rule. Expressing his knowledge of Zul’s actions across Azeroth and how it painted the Empire as an enemy to all… which he isn’t entirely against if it meant prosperity and justified fear.
Blizzard made an oopsie. In an attempt to paint Talanji as more competent than him, they accidentally made Rastakhan’s story more compelling than hers.
The thing with Talanji is she doesn’t really have much going for her in terms of growth and development because she was right from the beginning. Rastakhan is the one who actually learns and grows. He started off as arrogant and complacent, was humbled, and then vowed to correct his mistakes. That’s called a character arc, which is something I wish we got to see more of. We rarely get glimpses of internal conflict.
I think Talanji is overall a more on hand ruler, but I don’t think Rastakhan deserved to die for his inaction. He had the literal masterminds of the insurrection manipulating him right up close, and at the end of the day, it didn’t really take a lot of convincing for him to realize there was a problem. Granted, he literally got stabbed in the back, but overall I didn’t get the vibe that Rastakhan was an overtly incompetent ruler. He just had a lapse in judgement that he helped correct.
The writers clearly were in a rush to replace her father regardless of whether or not folks found him more endearing or not, and surprise, surprise; he was absolutely intoxicating.
From the VO, to his appearance, to his characterization, he was easily the most successful debuting of a long-awaited lore character in this games’ history imo. Turalyon pretending to be a Draenei and Alleria wielding the power of edge has nothing on the cordiality and larger-than-life figure that was Rastakhan.
Not only was he a mighty and respected king, but he was also a loving father and caretaker for his people. A symbol for all of troll-kind across the world.
And the writers take that away because they want to aggressively push his super amazing daughter who didn’t exist until now and is just suddenly better than him at everything.
-A better ruler
-A better loa worshipper
-A better politician
-A better strategist
All at the ripe age of 18, because despite doing all of this for 200 years, he’s apparently no match for the power of youth(despite being granted additional longevity and power by his loa).
I’m sorry, everyone might be sold but I’m just not. I haven’t waited 15+ years to meet Rastakhan just so he can get killed off like a complete chump and replaced with a character I’ve never even heard of before. It’s insulting to both me and the others like me who waited with bated breath to meet the great Zandalari God-King we’ve been hearing about since Vanilla.
True, he just needed to ‘wake up’ a bit. Sadly he didn’t notice until it was too late
I didn’t hear about him until MoP, but I was really excited to see what he’d be like as an actual character, rathr than just someone that trolls like to talk about. I probably never will ‘accept’ Talanji as queen, ever.
If the writers hadn’t foolishly killed off Vol’jin, there could’ve been some serious development for both characters as they work together - with Vol’jin mentoring Talanji after Rastakhan’s death. I’m still upset about what a waste that Vol’jin’s death was, considering especially that Sylvanas didn’t even need to be Warchief to do what she did.
Rastakhan was a flawed leader, but that’s what made him interesting. Overall the troll lore we got in BfA was fantastic, especially the introduction of Bwonsamedi.
No, I think the writers took that away because they weren’t going to keep a character with that name in the game. It’s a joke from an earlier era that hasn’t aged well.
You’re not wrong that they did want to sell us on Talanji, but I’m convinced she was a side effect of their decision to kill off Rastakhan, not the cause of it.
We know that Talanji was created to be the Horde counterpart to Jaina in BfA, right? That makes Rastakhan the counterpart to Katherine. Both parents screw up by trusting their advisors and almost losing their nation to traitors. Oh, if only they had listened to their more qualified daughters!
But Katherine gets to live for some reason. Her crimes against Jaina are much more severe than Rastakhan’s against Talanji, but Rastakhan gets punished harder. If we absolutely needed Queen Talanji, why couldn’t Rastakhan just have abdicated the throne? Why can’t Talanji keep her only living relative when Jaina is allowed two siblings and a mom?
The difference is Katherine felt such remorse that she ventured into the deathscape that she damned Jaina to in order to save Jaina from it, the act that is everyone’s favorite word around here: redemption. While in parallel going in the opposite dirction, Rastakhan dies to the very pact with death that he made not only for himself but for his daughter and her children after her and their children after them. As Bwonsamdi said, shame on him.
So Katherine gets to live because she already got her redemption and concluded her story while Rastakhan is denied the chance to earn his? He had so much storytelling potential and they squandered it.
I don’t deny that. But talking about story potential depends on your point of view. As people have brought up above, the way they set up Talanji as his obvious replacement diminished his story potential, and in that way Blizzard set him up to fail, and Blizzard carried that out that failure by the very thing that he needed to redeem himself for was what killed him and ended his story.
I’m sure Blizzard thought his death was poetic, but it’s just another example of how expendable they view Horde characters to be. Katherine gets to live despite fulfilling her role and being superfluous to the story. Jaina and Mekkatorque get to live even though they are encounters in the same raid. Rastakhan has to die because he was marked for death all expansion. He has to die because the plan says so. But why was that the plan to begin with?
Troll fans have been waiting a long time to finally meet him, and the story they decide to give us is one where he sets up his replacement and then dies immediately. Cool. Thanks Blizzard. Don’t know why I’d expect any different. It is Troll content after all. You go right ahead, adventurer. Raid our city and kill our leader. That’s what we’re here for.
The issue with Rasta as alot of players have pointed out that we kept hearing about him in books and the game that built him up. We finally meet him and he has alot of character and people like him.
Then hes killed off so that he can be replaced by his nobody daughter who for some reason was captured in Stormwind for vague reasons, traveling with Zul for Vague reasons.
Talanji is alright but why couldnt they just have both, did they really need to kill him off?
The thing is they couldn’t feasibly do anything further to Jaina or her family and still have her do her already ridiculous 180 back to pacifist mode, It was Already pretty jarring. However if they had killed both Jaina and Katherine it could have worked out better. Have Tandred run Kultiras like his father.
That’s true. Good point. Jaina is a hot mess of a character. But we still ended up with a Talanji that wants to avenge her father while all of her new allies are telling her it’s peacetime now. We could have avoided that, too.
Also doesn’t make the Zandalari look to good in terms of they were fine with the Homicidal Zombie lady in charge. Yet have a problem when its a equal council of reasonable leaders and want to leave again, just cause they won’t go to war again.
the wc2 Named-Troll was Zul’jin