The Storm-Eater’s Fury - Raszageth Confronts Alexstrasza Dragonflight In-game Cinematic
The Storm-Eater’s Fury - Raszageth Confronts Alexstrasza Dragonflight In-game Cinematic
They really just CANNOT make good villains, can they. This is some generic-ass bullshit once again, ticking every trope imaginable. Yawn.
...but the animation is decently done.
...Am I the only one who feels like these newer cutscenes just don't have the same sort of impact as some of the older ones?
Take Wrathgate for example. By the end of that, one character had died, another character's fate was left ambiguous, and the forsaken's betrayal from within was revealed, leading to the Battle for the Undercity event.
Now this. Alexstrasza and Raszageth fought, the former lost, Wrathion showed up, and then Razsageth just... left? What ultimately happened by the end of the cinematic? Nothing of importance, it feels like.
At least she has decent understandable motivations; but proto drakes will always look immeasurably silly, and her visual design isn't doing any favors.
Wrathion still needs to hurry up and get killed off unceremoniously, as he should have been years ago.
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It's because the writers are obsessed with drama for drama's sake: empty platitudes with no weight. It is easy to make plenty of cinematics with characters just talking and being emotional without any actual outcome. It is hard to create something that actually has a tangible impact on the world.
Of course, in this case, the point of this cinematic is really just to introduce the villain for any who did not see her in the evoker starting area. Even so; it perhaps ought have done something more.
So Raszageth beats Wrathion and spares him then later on beats Alexstrasza and spares her. I don't think Raszageth wants to win.
Close your eyes during playback and it's suddenly a Jurassic Park spin-off.
This entire setup is just trope after trope.
-sibling rivalry
-villain defeated, but not killed and only imprisoned
-everyone keeps quiet about it for no reason until it comes back to bite them
-hero seems to be winning, then villain does a Big Boom and floors hero
-hero seems to be losing, "on your left!" ally swoops in
-villain decides to let hero live
-"I want you to watch it all burn!"
Like seriously, it's as if they looked at the WoW story so far and went "you know what, maybe we haven't made our narratives formulaic enough lately!".
Have Dragons canonically used telepathy frequently before now?
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To be fair, it's not the tropes alone—it's how they're played. Something can be chock-full of tropes but still be entertaining or even interesting. The issue is that they're not playing with them or leaning into them enough for it to be really unique and entertaining.
I say that, given the direction of the narrative now, they may honestly have more success just leaning into the cheese excessively and having fun with it instead of the rather dour way every character's expressed themselves and whatnot.
Raszageth looks like a buck-toothed goof with pubes glued to her head... she doesn't even look scary, she just looks stupid.
Not every cutscene needs to kill an important character, reveal a plot twist, and show your favorite character all while having the most epic fight yet.