Shadowlands, on paper, seems like a darker toned expansion:
- Themes of death and the afterlife
- Themes of one's actions in life and consequences in death
- Results of the Burning of Teldrassil's victims going straight into the Maw, not even having a chance to be judged by this Arbiter character
- Seemingly being able to interact with characters of old, with some of them coming to tragic ends, and seeing what happened to their souls/ghosts
- Stories of zones like Revendreth and the Maw
- Revendreth with punishing the wicked and vile, the Maw just being an abyss of evil
Beat me to it.
Last edited by KOUNTERPARTS; 2019-12-04 at 02:42 PM.
I think the game already incorporates a lot of dark storytelling, but the poor writing makes it hard to get into. Not to mention it's rated T, so they can't show that much. I also think the updated models and artstyles have a somewhat more lighthearted feel to them than they used to.
Yeah and then you look at the reveal cinematic and realize it's only dark on paper, in execution it's the opposite of dark. Some zones look downright cheerful, and no matter how edgy they make the story, if their portrayal in game doesn't fit I can't take it seriously.
I realize this is a me problem but at the end of the day I'm the one playing the game.
And yeah the new art direction for the game really doesn't help if u ask me, textures are too clean, everything is too exaggerated, when compared to the old style from vanilla/tbc. And the character models look like if Pixar made a game(which isn't bad by itself, it just doesn't fit my idea of warcraft).
People talking about the burning of Teldrassil as an argument that WoW is dark... But here is the thing, saying that twenty thousand people burned alive vs seeing a dramatic scene of a son murdering his father is not the same. In favor of the patricide scene being a far darker experience. It's not about what happens, but how it's portrayed. We barely have heavy themes in the game. I wonder what portion of the playerbase are minors so the game is kept at PG-13...
To quote what might or might not have been Stalin saying:
"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."
Last edited by Trumpcat; 2019-12-04 at 03:10 PM.
WoW is dark enough. WoW just have "heroic" theme, opposite to Diablo II (and hopefully IV) bleak, depressing tone.
Btw, that's why I hated Diablo III atmosphere - yeah, it had dark stuff like ton of corpses, etc. - but it was very similar to WoW. Demon in 3rd act (story was so meh I don't even remember his name) sounded like generic #412123 Burning Legion commander.
I don't think it can thematically go darker than "The Underworlds and our World are colliding and if we don't act we all will be fed to some kind of faceless maw."
I don't think grimdark would do the Warcraft universe any favours.
Besides there are plenty of opportunities for darker themes in Shadowlands, Maldraxxus and Revendreth doesn't exactly scream happy fun time.
Last edited by Donald Hellscream; 2019-12-04 at 03:43 PM.
While we're at it, why not up the ESRB to M and tint it with a little "Red light" while we're at it. That would up the Sub numbers.
BFA opened with the near-extinction of a sentient species and featured a power-mad megalomaniac causing a massive, bloody war for the sake of disrupting the balance of power between life and death. How much darker are we talking here, Game of Thrones dark where there's no point getting invested since everyone likable will die or go insane and the unlikable jackasses get the spotlight? 90s Dark Age comic books where everyone is a misshapen, grimacing sociopath? There comes a point where you can only go so dark before the game's nature as an ongoing MMORPG begs the question: if things are so hopeless despite everything the heroes of Azeroth do, why bother? If nothing gets better, it makes the characters' struggle meaningless, and if the characters' struggles are meaningless, there's no point in engaging in the story, and that is the death knell for any RPG, MMO or single-player.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
We just had an expansion where entire cities full of innocents were lit on fire.
The tree has fire for leaves
And skeletons for branches,
And its roots feed only upon
The ashes of the dead.
The winds that sigh through it now are the cries of the dying
And this song,
This lament
For horrors unspeakable,
For cruelty unimaginable,
For the life and the beauty and the grace that once were
And shall never be again.
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/st...ry/elegy#tab=5
People already defend a genocidal maniacs, that's dark
This world don't give us nothing. It be our lot to suffer... and our duty to fight back.