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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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I think that's actually a good example of the general Blizzard problem, when it comes to storytelling. Blizzard make amazing cutscenes, but it's very obvious that what they do is create a couple of pre-set 'high points' for their stories, the dramatic moments that will have cutscenes, and then fill in everything between those moments - and the fillings are largely nonsense. Even in Warcraft III, all the cutscenes are amazing, but then you play the missions in between them and get to enjoy awful, wooden dialogue and endless plot contrivance. Very little in Warcraft III's story makes sense, and the dialogue is cringeworthy, and it has only gotten worse from there.

Thus with Starcraft II or Diablo III or World of Warcraft - the usual course is a farrago on nonsense leading up to a dramatic, technically excellent four or five minute film, and then back to nonsense, perhaps on the logic that people will only remember the cutscenes.

Let me take a specific example - Battle for Azeroth is widely considered a terrible expansion, with a nonsensical plot that engaged in rampant character assassination, and where entire factions were derailed. Nonetheless, consider a few cutscenes. The BfA trailer is amazing. You need practically zero context for it, but if you enjoy random high fantasy people fighting each other in spectacular ways, wow, that trailer delivers. Now 'Old Soldiers'. That orc and that troll look fantastic, extremely human and emotional, and it's a powerful, quiet moment as they reflect on the loss and sacrifice of war, and it puts the BfA trailer in a new context. Now 'Warbringers: Jaina'. Obviously lower production values than the others, but a genuinely haunting moment, as a character once known for her empathy and pacifism, to the point of once siding with the orcs over her own father out of a desire for peace, realises she was wrong and embraces a militant mindset. This then led up to an in-game cutscene at the battle in the trailer where she appears with the ghost ship and, again, without context it's genuinely cool.

And look, those four cutscenes without much context all string together in a way that might seem excellent, right? The Horde and the Alliance are at war, we've got some complicated emotional journeys on both sides, real ambivalance around the necessity, even glory, but also the horror of war, and so on.

But trust me, if you have played Battle for Azeroth, you will know that all the connective tissue between those moments is horrible. There are potentially interesting moments here, like Jaina's or Saurfang's development, but the game constantly whiffs on the execution, or changes its mind and goes back on what the cutscenes seemed to imply, or even just forgets about what it was doing; and I haven't even mentioned Sylvanas yet.

Blizzard are very good at making "pretty awesome" cutscenes. But cutscenes alone do not a compelling story make.