[Spoilers] Shattered legacies (new cinematic)

[Progenitor Aquarius]

He was just controlled by the Void Lords! It wasn't his fault!

Yea, he was manipulated by the Dreadlords and the Jailer. I can now hold on to his tentacles and place them close to my heart and feel very compassionate about him. He’s a victim here, now just look how lonely he has to be somewhere in the Void realm, where it’s so dark and empty.

[Nerovar]

The good Sylvanas had absolutely nothing with what the Banshee Queen was doing. She flat out wasn't there. She's as responsible for what the Banshee Queen was doing as she's responsible for Sargeras' Burning Crusade. Which is zilch. Her feeling responsible is just an expression of her paragon of goodness personality that Blizzard is pushing here despite the few things we knew about live Sylvanas until now being that she was already treating soldiers like tools, was vain and ignored Kael when making Nathanos a Ranger.

This is the most important part because it basically gives us something worse than a Sylvanas who realizes the error of her ways and tries to redeem herself by doing noble deeds of goodness - it gives us a Sylvanas that is so good and pure that she's willing to suffer for the sins of what is effectively another person in order to help the people that are wrongfully judging her. She isn't just redeemed. She's fucking Jesus.

[sighy]

The thing is that I'm not sure they're going for a redemption arc. People thought that was what they were doing for Illidan via Xera's version of events but he ended up owning all his crimes and stayed a hooved bastard.

They'll likely do the same with her, not redeeming her but still giving her an ending she doesn't deserve at this point. If she actually dies or has a final consequence, that's the best outcome.

We'll probably need to buy the book to find out... sigh. Overall speaking i don't believe they would have come up with this split soul stuff, if they didn't seek to offer her, at the very least a partial redemption or a path towards one. This unholy shitshow of a storyline is hardly a fitting final sendoff to a character of her calibur, but it's not like Horde characters ever got any respect in that regard. She has been utterly canibalised to try and set up Zovaal and whatever way they choose to distance her from the version we knew up to this point will inevitably bite the Forsaken in the ass, because they all willfully followed, embraced, if not outright revered her.

From what I've seen it's never addressed instead going straight to the question of countering domination magic, on a short notice.

As for the models, idk. I barely noticed that they looked different from the current ones because both are really cartoony and look like they were made out of clay. The eye thing has been around since wod. Also it's possible the cinematic doesn't have its final polish/ filters.

After looking them over i would say that the thing that struck me as distinctly off about it is largely the textures and wierdly flat lighting. Facial animations were largely on point.

[ro9ue]

I like the facial animations and voice acting. The actual story being told is pretty poor.

[Hctaz]

I for one like the "No, that is you"-part, it prevents complete absolution of what Sylvanas has done even with the "Soul divided"-part, that would be cringiest of all, go the Grom Hellscream "Well, he did one good thing, let's just forgive him for all the bad stuff!"-route, Sylvanas (Or half-Sylvanas, or whatever) has done things that are, even by Warcraft standards, beyond the pale, and that shouldn't just slide off her like water off a duck's back.

Right no I'm not saying the fact that she has to face repercussions is stupid, I'm saying the way they've told this story in general is pretty stupid.

Picture this situation using conventional understanding. Somebody forcibly has their entire person, their "soul", split into two pieces and altered against their will. It was forced upon them. Whatever is left inside of them is clearly evil and twisted and it does some messed up stuff. They become "whole" again due to whatever.
Do you really punish them for that situation? I know people are punished for say... drinking and driving and then causing vehicular manslaughter, but they aren't necessarily punished for the act of vehicular manslaughter so much as they are being punished for choosing to alter their mindset and then make the decision to drive.

If you were to inject me against my will with some mind-altering drug that changed my behavior temporarily, who do you think would face punishment for anything crazy I did?

There's a difference between "I would have never done that stuff sober" and "I would have never done that stuff if somebody didn't forcibly alter my mental state by doing the thing that they did without my consent."

And that's my problem with the line and the story. I'm not upset at the fact that she has to face repercussions, it's the fact that she really SHOULDN'T based on the way they wrote the story. Clearly the Sylvanas who was a Banshee was not the real Sylvanas. We've known that since Warcraft 3. She wasn't the same person before and after being a Banshee, and the Sylvanas who committed all of the crimes was the Banshee version. She's no longer in a forcibly altered mental state. Her eye color changing is also a clear indicator that this is a new character who is different than the one we've seen before.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Living Sylvanas is hot.

[ravenmoon]

From my point of view Sylvanas died in the previous patch.
This "new sylvanas" is another pj. She is the one who comes out alone in W3 before she dies.

Which is good because it confirms my theory that when Sylvanas died she was not going to indulge the Kaldorei's thirst for vengeance in the least.

I agree with Geco here, even if my view may somewhat be a little different.

THe old guity Sylvie is no more, a fused sould sYlvie is a new character, guilty Sylvanas maybe, but this new state Sylvanas is actually not. She is officially a pawn, and the controller and one at fault is Zovaal

[Magnagarde]

I would say that's subjective. I'm an OOC observer of events, and I don't feel as if anything has really changed the context or nature of her prior actions. Basically put, she got her conscience back - but she still did what she did, her actions still stand, and she should be held accountable for them by whatever form that can take. She accepts her own wrongdoing, so what I or anyone else feels is somewhat irrelevant. The real question is whether she'll actually be held to task for what she's done in some demonstrable manner within the story, and that remains to be seen. If she feels the need to atone but isn't made to by other agents within the story itself, then I'd agree she got a redemption (an undeserved one but redemption nonetheless).

While I understand that it is subjective, every other conclusion leads to this weird outcome where she is taking blame for actions that she had no control of. To make matters worse, whenever we argue that she did or didn't have control, we can never be sure as to how much control she truly had. The cinematic showed the good side of her wrestling the conscience of the bad side and Uther clearly approached the good side in order to make her wake up and assist us. The good side of her accepts the wrongdoings of the bad side, which was forced into a dominant position over the good one; isn't the good side of her the victim too? And how do we gauge how much control she had at any point. Who is behind the plaguing of Gilneas? Who is behind the attempt to enslave Eyir? Who is behind the experiments on human subjects in Undercity? We can say that it was her, but to what extent? The cinematic brings up more questions than it answers, largely due to the fact that the writers are being vague about what having a "split soul" means and just how much control which part retained.

My understanding is that the evil part of her remained in control after she was "freed" from the Lich King's control and I'm therefor finding it hard to see why the Sylvanas as a whole - a victim in her own right - has to attone for anything.

I only see two things here; the first being at least partial redemption by removing the agency of her "true self" and putting the blame on outside factors of corruption and the second being the odd case of a victim of the Jailer having to attone for having done something she wrestled against on the inside, but couldn't ultimately overcome. I guess I'm simply disappointed with the vague explanation we got and the implications it has on almost two decades worth of lore surrounding her character and its actions.

- - - Updated - - -

Living Sylvanas is hot.

There's a reason Nathanos went through the effort of becoming a ranger of Quel'thalas.

[Aucald]

While I understand that it is subjective, every other conclusion leads to this weird outcome where she is taking blame for actions that she had no control of. To make matters worse, whenever we argue that she did or didn't have control, we can never be sure as to how much control she truly had. The cinematic showed the good side of her wrestling the conscience of the bad side and Uther clearly approached the good side in order to make her wake up and assist us. The good side of her accepts the wrongdoings of the bad side, which was forced into a dominant position over the good one; isn't the good side of her the victim too?

I only see two things here; the first being at least partial redemption by removing the agency of her "true self" and putting the blame on outside factors of corruption and the second being the odd case of a victim of the Jailer having to attone for having done something she wrestled against on the inside, but couldn't ultimately overcome. I guess I'm simply disappointed with the vague explanation we got and the implications it has on almost two decades worth of lore surrounding her character and its actions.

Ranger-General Sylvanas, the separate entity, is taking the blame for Banshee Sylvanas' actions as part and parcel of the need to unify her currently split selves so as to do as Uther asked and give the heroes the intel on Zovaal's plans. Ranger-General Sylvanas didn't have control over Banshee Sylvanas' actions, but nevertheless she has to accept that part of herself to rejoin the greater whole and wake up from the induced coma Zovaal has caused in his attempt to psychically destroy her. At no point is it revealed that Banshee Sylvanas was under the thumb of anyone save herself, at least insofar as Teldrassil is concerned - she was unburdened by the aspect of conscience/life/whatever that Ranger-General Sylvanas represents, but that's not tantamount to not being in control of her own actions, nor does it relieve her of the responsibility for her actions or absolve her of their ramifications. I know several allusions have been made inebriation or being on drugs of some kind, but I don't really think those comparisons hold up here. Though her essence was definitely altered she was still aware of the difference between good and evil, and her will was her own.

Sylvanas' plight kind of puts me in my of what Paarthurnax says in Skyrim: "What is better: to be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?” Banshee Sylvanas had her nature changed by what Arthas and Frostmourne did to her, but neither thing removed her ability to do or be good despite he trauma she suffered. There are plenty of Forsaken, and other characters who've suffered immensely but nonetheless tried to do good, struggling against trauma and memories all the while. In that sense, I don't feel Sylvanas gets to have the excuse of "oh, I was corrupted by Arthas/Zovaal/Undeath and am now 100% blameless for everything." Reunification with an aspect of herself that isn't guilty of those acts doesn't absolve the aspect of her that did them, and she now seems to both accept that blame and seeks atonement as a result.

[Nraktja]

You know what fucking annoys me the most out of all things about this cinematic? The fact that the writers are damn hypocrites. It was all and good to "stan for the Banshee Queen" and form fan groups of loyalists, in some cases lead writers interacting with them on social media (*cough* Danuser *cough*), throw around the famous Sylvanas liners of "for the Dark Lady", sell statues of the BfA Warchief Sylvanas etc... all the way and through the writing of BfA as a genocidal maniac, people liking her for her personality of snark and monologues that sounded cool all the while she was that unforgivable Banshee Queen..

But when the time comes that they can't kill her either not to piss off her deluded fans or because she is the writer's favourite (fucking you know who again), they go "Shit, we have to write a redemption story for her. Quick, make her be deluded by the Jailer or something, and she shoots an arrow at the Jailer at the end of the raid, after aiding the Jailer wreak unimaginable destruction, aiding in the mind-rape of Anduin etc... she will say 'I will never serve' and it will be epic and shocking and amazing!!!!" and the other guy goes.. "Yes, that sounds amazing, write that in!". I'm out of facepalms at this point seeing every consecutive cutscene of this dumb storyline.

Good job. Really, good fucking job. Now if there are any Sylvanas "fans" who like this direction they're also hypocritical because she is not even Sylvanas anymore, she's been completely replaced by a different character. If you were that edgy person who went "Yeah goth emo queen, death to everything! the tree didn't matter anyway, why y'all mad bro??" guess what, surprise! She is not that person anymore, you were stanning for the Jailer all along! She was a poor, goodie Ranger-General that was trapped in the Jailer's soul crystal, she condemns all that murder and destruction! And if you like this new Sylvanas and the story direction, I hope you'll realize that you don't like Warcraft at all but the bastardization of the people who came in all clueless about the world, who are disrespecting the original universe and characters by replacing it all with their own fanfiction. You can't help what people like I guess, but I wish those people had better taste. Play games with better stories, if that won't give you a better perspective I don't know what will.

[Saltysquidoon]

Obliviating responsibility by inventing a second character and stitching it to your waifu is no redemption arc.

It's worse than a redemption arc, it's a lazy unearned way to con enough people into thinking she no longer deserves to die that you can cop out and leave her alive without being laughed at by even normie media outlets (which pathetically is the only bar deemed unacceptable by blizzards narrative team).

[Accident]

Is The Jailor supposed to be some kind of analogy to Alex Afrasiabi? The new writers deciding he was some great evil in the background controlling everything and manipulating the story to his ends? They want some kind of cathartic break internally, and an attempt at remaking (poorly, imo) the story of the last 20 years?

It wasn't really Sylvanas all along, she was split in two, and controlled by some amorphous great-big-bad guy all along?

[username993720]

Isn't that what they have been hinting at for years now, that being Forsaken doesn't make them evil life hating monsters? Didn't the book try to bring Forsaken back together with living family members?

Then, why play one in the first place?

[Combatbutler]

Still copying Kerrigan I see, I wonder if they have the gall to give her godlike powers in the end though XD

[The Stormbringer]

This is the most important part because it basically gives us something worse than a Sylvanas who realizes the error of her ways and tries to redeem herself by doing noble deeds of goodness - it gives us a Sylvanas that is so good and pure that she's willing to suffer for the sins of what is effectively another person in order to help the people that are wrongfully judging her. She isn't just redeemed. She's fucking Jesus.

Yeah, that's the worst part to me. She died for your sins. Or rather, she'll suffer for the sins of another to help you, even though she has absolutely no responsibility to do so. If this really is a separate entity/persona, which it seems like, then at best she should be horrified someone wearing her face did awful things, but accept it wasn't actually her.

[bagina]

You know what fucking annoys me the most out of all things about this cinematic? The fact that the writers are damn hypocrites. It was all and good to "stan for the Banshee Queen" and form fan groups of loyalists, in some cases lead writers interacting with them on social media (*cough* Danuser *cough*), throw around the famous Sylvanas liners of "for the Dark Lady", sell statues of the BfA Warchief Sylvanas etc... all the way and through the writing of BfA as a genocidal maniac, people liking her for her personality of snark and monologues that sounded cool all the while she was that unforgivable Banshee Queen..

But when the time comes that they can't kill her either not to piss off her deluded fans or because she is the writer's favourite (fucking you know who again), they go "Shit, we have to write a redemption story for her. Quick, make her be deluded by the Jailer or something, and she shoots an arrow at the Jailer at the end of the raid, after aiding the Jailer wreak unimaginable destruction, aiding in the mind-rape of Anduin etc... she will say 'I will never serve' and it will be epic and shocking and amazing!!!!" and the other guy goes.. "Yes, that sounds amazing, write that in!". I'm out of facepalms at this point seeing every consecutive cutscene of this dumb storyline.

Good job. Really, good fucking job. Now if there are any Sylvanas "fans" who like this direction they're also hypocritical because she is not even Sylvanas anymore, she's been completely replaced by a different character. If you were that edgy person who went "Yeah goth emo queen, death to everything! the tree didn't matter anyway, why y'all mad bro??" guess what, surprise! She is not that person anymore, you were stanning for the Jailer all along! She was a poor, goodie Ranger-General that was trapped in the Jailer's soul crystal, she condemns all that murder and destruction! And if you like this new Sylvanas and the story direction, I hope you'll realize that you don't like Warcraft at all but the bastardization of the people who came in all clueless about the world, who are disrespecting the original universe and characters by replacing it all with their own fanfiction. You can't help what people like I guess, but I wish those people had better taste. Play games with better stories, if that won't give you a better perspective I don't know what will.

Very good post.

[Katchii]

You know what fucking annoys me the most out of all things about this cinematic? The fact that the writers are damn hypocrites. It was all and good to "stan for the Banshee Queen" and form fan groups of loyalists, in some cases lead writers interacting with them on social media (*cough* Danuser *cough*), throw around the famous Sylvanas liners of "for the Dark Lady", sell statues of the BfA Warchief Sylvanas etc... all the way and through the writing of BfA as a genocidal maniac, people liking her for her personality of snark and monologues that sounded cool all the while she was that unforgivable Banshee Queen..

But when the time comes that they can't kill her either not to piss off her deluded fans or because she is the writer's favourite (fucking you know who again), they go "Shit, we have to write a redemption story for her. Quick, make her be deluded by the Jailer or something, and she shoots an arrow at the Jailer at the end of the raid, after aiding the Jailer wreak unimaginable destruction, aiding in the mind-rape of Anduin etc... she will say 'I will never serve' and it will be epic and shocking and amazing!!!!" and the other guy goes.. "Yes, that sounds amazing, write that in!". I'm out of facepalms at this point seeing every consecutive cutscene of this dumb storyline.

Good job. Really, good fucking job. Now if there are any Sylvanas "fans" who like this direction they're also hypocritical because she is not even Sylvanas anymore, she's been completely replaced by a different character. If you were that edgy person who went "Yeah goth emo queen, death to everything! the tree didn't matter anyway, why y'all mad bro??" guess what, surprise! She is not that person anymore, you were stanning for the Jailer all along! She was a poor, goodie Ranger-General that was trapped in the Jailer's soul crystal, she condemns all that murder and destruction! And if you like this new Sylvanas and the story direction, I hope you'll realize that you don't like Warcraft at all but the bastardization of the people who came in all clueless about the world, who are disrespecting the original universe and characters by replacing it all with their own fanfiction. You can't help what people like I guess, but I wish those people had better taste. Play games with better stories, if that won't give you a better perspective I don't know what will.

I don't necessarily disagree with your post, however we know from WC3 and even in-game dialogue that the blood thirsty, unscrupulous, warmongering Sylvanas is not how she was as Ranger General. The Blood Elf heritage quest covers alot of this, going over how different the Banshee Queen is from the Ranger General and lamenting the change.

All this cinematic does, for me, is provide reasoning for WHY they are so different. They're both Sylvanas, just a Light version and Dark version if you will. It has a lot of implications for the Forsaken as a whole too: are they all incomplete souls? Accepting that they're two different "characters" and liking both is not hypocritical, it's being able to compartmentalize things and like them for what they are.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who would prefer Sylvanas stay the edgy, dark, snarky Banshee Queen vs the virtuous, light and respectful Ranger General but enjoying the story, or just liking that the story is going somewhere, isn't a sign they don't like Warcraft.

You post is essentially a "No true Scotsman" argument. It's OK for other people to like different things than you.

[Combatbutler]

You know what fucking annoys me the most out of all things about this cinematic? The fact that the writers are damn hypocrites. It was all and good to "stan for the Banshee Queen" and form fan groups of loyalists, in some cases lead writers interacting with them on social media (*cough* Danuser *cough*), throw around the famous Sylvanas liners of "for the Dark Lady", sell statues of the BfA Warchief Sylvanas etc... all the way and through the writing of BfA as a genocidal maniac, people liking her for her personality of snark and monologues that sounded cool all the while she was that unforgivable Banshee Queen..

But when the time comes that they can't kill her either not to piss off her deluded fans or because she is the writer's favourite (fucking you know who again), they go "Shit, we have to write a redemption story for her. Quick, make her be deluded by the Jailer or something, and she shoots an arrow at the Jailer at the end of the raid, after aiding the Jailer wreak unimaginable destruction, aiding in the mind-rape of Anduin etc... she will say 'I will never serve' and it will be epic and shocking and amazing!!!!" and the other guy goes.. "Yes, that sounds amazing, write that in!". I'm out of facepalms at this point seeing every consecutive cutscene of this dumb storyline.

Thats blizz for you, most of their characters are as deep as a puddle, they pretty much reset Sylvanas to almost pre Banshee state.

Good job. Really, good fucking job. Now if there are any Sylvanas "fans" who like this direction they're also hypocritical because she is not even Sylvanas anymore, she's been completely replaced by a different character. If you were that edgy person who went "Yeah goth emo queen, death to everything! the tree didn't matter anyway, why y'all mad bro??" guess what, surprise! She is not that person anymore, you were stanning for the Jailer all along! She was a poor, goodie Ranger-General that was trapped in the Jailer's soul crystal, she condemns all that murder and destruction! And if you like this new Sylvanas and the story direction, I hope you'll realize that you don't like Warcraft at all but the bastardization of the people who came in all clueless about the world, who are disrespecting the original universe and characters by replacing it all with their own fanfiction. You can't help what people like I guess, but I wish those people had better taste. Play games with better stories, if that won't give you a better perspective I don't know what will.

Sylvanas has now reached the redemption point of her original template, Kerrigan. After she got just dezergified at the end of wings of liberty, it remains to be seen if blizz will just walk all those major character plot points again, but considering how lazy they are, I'd say you can still predict a good amount of Sylvanas development, just by looking at the original.

[Mehrunes]

@Mehrunes

Nicely said!

Cheers. It's sad I can't say "nicely" anything to the writers of this mess, except things like "nicely trainwrecked".

This is the most important part because it basically gives us something worse than a Sylvanas who realizes the error of her ways and tries to redeem herself by doing noble deeds of goodness - it gives us a Sylvanas that is so good and pure that she's willing to suffer for the sins of what is effectively another person in order to help the people that are wrongfully judging her. She isn't just redeemed. She's fucking Jesus.

Damn, I didn't even think of it in that specific framing, but it sure fits. At which point I have to wonder if it wasn't just yet another accidental mess or something much more intentional. Kinda like how they were trying to turn Thrall into Moses back in the day, regardless of whether it was actually well received by either his fans or anyone else.

[Nerovar]

Damn, I didn't even think of it in that specific framing, but it sure fits. At which point I have to wonder if it wasn't just yet another accidental mess or something much more intentional. Kinda like how they were trying to turn Thrall into Moses back in the day, regardless of whether it was actually well received by either his fans or anyone else.

I don't know if it's intentional or not. If it is, we might be getting another Xel'naga Kerrigan ending after all. Either way we're in for a rough ride.