She did it cause it would look cool as an ingame cutscene. No other reason.
I think Gooden did what she could to reconcile the inconsistencies but there wasn’t a lot of hope (ha!) to tie things up nicely. On the surface large swathes of the story seem to be recontextualised but if you look at the individual scenes that Sylvanas has been in they still don’t jive. She felt bad for killing Liam but laughs at Genn when she does it. Why would she feel bad if she believed she was saving everyone? She really cared too much so she burned Teldrassil but did cruel things like make mock Delaryn and make her watch… and then raised her for more of this “finite suffering”.All of Sylvanas’ cruelty, edgy quips, and taunts don’t add up to the persona being written here compared to the what we see in game.Another big issue is the scale still doesn’t make sense. The Maw was getting all souls from infinite worlds since the end of Legion. How much was burning one city going to contribute to that? Two cities if she got to Stormwind, too.Ultimately, I don’t see why the book was necessary. It shouldn’t have been if they wrote a coherent story. And failing that, why bother after the fact? Her actions can never be forgiven, no matter her “altruistic” motivations or the remorse she feels now. It’s not something that could ever be gotten over by the victims or their survivors. She’s not made any more sympathetic, and we get an explanation on paper of why she did things even if it doesn’t make sense. I think leaving it as she went bad and did bad things would have been enough and then we could move on. Trying to go back and fix things retroactively undermines some of those past scenes. We never got anything like this book for the likes of Benedictus, Staghelm, or worst yet, Malygos.One reason the jailor fell flat was trying to have the him be linked to so much of Azeroth’s history. It’s not clever storytelling if you just say “you didn’t know this but all along X did Y back when”. Worse if it’s obviously a change in direction after the fact.Blizzard likes to tell big over-the-top stories and punctuate those with cool cut scenes. Building a nuanced narrative was never their strong point, and an MMO isn’t the most conducive medium for it. I feel like they should move away from these “shocking twists” and cliffhangers and try and tell more contained stories in a raid tier, or at least, in one expansion.
Nice article, but god damn please its darnassUs not darnassas.:)
The whole plan was in the book "The Good War".The plan was simple and ingenious, the Alliance had already stolen samples of Azerite from Silithus and planned an invasion. Sylvanas spread the rumor of a march on Silithus among Alliance spies.But, of course, the campaign was planned for Teldrassil. Why? This is the Alliance's largest foothold with a port.When it is captured, Sylvanas receives the population as hostages.The Alliance, after the war with the Legion, does not have enough ships to retake Teldrassil from the sea.When attempting to capture the Undercity, the Alliance will be threatened by the population of Teldrassil.The spirit of the Alliance defenders would be broken by the execution of Malfurion.The Horde would gain a new strategic balance and neutralize the threat of invasion on the continent.But it just so happened that an alliance spy got into the plot and rewrote the role of Saurfang, making him a crybaby and a coward who threw an ax at Malfurion's back but immediately doubted the need to finish him off.That's why SHE CAN KILL hope. Hope was in Malfurion, after Malfurion disappeared into the portal, all that was left was to improvise and KILL HOPE with something more overwhelming. Such as the destruction of the capital of the night elves.As usual, the alliance starts a war, failing, but in the cinematics a lazy junior writer inserts his lame twists so that the alliance is not wiped off the face of the earth.
The tree had it coming.
I think it's an alright explanation, but just... It's still baffling that she burned down basically an entire country like that without explaining her motives. I guess she figured we just "wouldn't understand"?
Sylvanas: cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort. Suffocation, no breathing...
Still don't get how Elune even 'sent' the nelf souls to Ardenweald when the souls get sent to the Shadowlands (ignoring wisps) first. Or is Elune the first to sort of 'hold onto' them, and then she sends them on their merry way to the SL? That's the only way I can currently think of to how she has the whole batch of dead Teldrassil souls, and then sent them en masse to the SL.
What Sylvanas did makes sense, if we take in consideration her life and death experiences. Her mistake was not figuring out the Jailer. I am disappointed that she could not see through his deception but all characters need some flaws or they'll be too unrealistic to be believed or followed.I understand perfectly why so many people keep saying that it is bad writing and that the story is bad. The story isn't bad. It is just very hard for most people to accept the meaning of "Greater Good". And the greater good tends to depend on perspective. The players would need to have a very open mind to understand that dying thinking you will see your relatives in the afterlife but then ending up separated from them forever due to a rule system that mandates all shall "serve" a purpose for eternity is less than desirable. It is only natural that those who understand this would try to oppose it.Now, what we got at the end was someone who might start sending souls to the afterlives they deserve or wish. But what about all of the ones that already got separated? All the ones that already lost their memories to serve a purpose greater than their own? Well, that's past. Nothing can be done about it.So the story of Shadowlands is not a bad one. One just needs to understand what it is about:The injustice of having someone else deciding your destiny.The injustice the First Ones caused, the injustice the Jailer caused and the injustice Sylvanas caused. Injustice is everywhere and this expansion was all about it. But it was also about hope. With the Jailer defeated and a new Arbiter, there is hope that those who die will find a better afterlife to face throughout eternity.And with this in mind, I believe The Shadowlands' story was a good one.
The fragmented storytelling getting worse.It was nice when I had some questchain, doing it for a while, there were things happening, action, drama, horror, comedy bits or other stuff, but regardless the content, there was always CLOSING. And when the closing happens, I was always getting satisfaction, i mean, besides gear reward or money or whatever, I had feeling that it's over, I had nice memory about the event, and I think that's one important feature in older games (like W3).But in latest expansions we have only fragments of the story, not very clear (what and why is happening), unfinished pieces, I have to wait long time to see how it will resolve, and when I connect the fragments, I often have more questions than answers.Not to mention that lately i have to put really big efforts to my "willing suspension of disbelief". (And I'm sorry for my possibly bad English writing.) Anyway, the stories need closing. Resolving. Left for good. I don't know why they wanted to exhumate good stories and turn them into mindless zombies.Edit, I don't think the story is bad, but the way the story is delivered is pretty anticlimactic.
wish they just went with Sylvanas being pure evil and winning... instead of this boring same old crap redemption arc weeb thing and it being some zovaal's mind-control trickery...I enjoyed those quests a lot, burning down that tree and outplaying the alliance every step of the way, it felt good being on her side... and it put the WAR right back in WARCRAFT... gets so boring and old, good guys win, bad guys lose, someone didn't know what they were doing but you are forgiven tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. if this isn't some naruwto level garbage then idk.