Aug 22
Wrath’s Cinematic is a Mistake
I’m going to go ahead and weigh in on the new Wrath of the Lich King cinematic as a big mistake on Blizzard’s part. Embedded below the cut are all three of their opening movies. Feel free to go watch them all so you know what I’m talking about; they’re each less than five minutes.
The two earlier movies do a fantastic job of highlighting the central characters of the game: the player races. The original movie is particularly evocative, in fact, because it focuses on the game’s lore and establishing a mood, something the second trailer starts to do but then abandons a bit to show players, essentially, having a bit of fun. The BC trailer is still effective, though, because it conveys the importance of Illidan to the whole Outlands experience. In some ways he’s ‘the reason’ that players are headed out there in the first place, so putting him front and center makes sense.
Now, this is equally (if not moreso) true with Arthas, Northrend, and the Lich King expansion, but they’ve made the new trailer entirely about Arthas. I think this is a pretty clear mistake – that whole bit with the Front Wyrm and the Death Knight army is cool, but they should have included another minute or so of cinema time featuring PCs doing their thing to tie the game back to the most important characters: ours.
We have still not seen anywhere near every race/class combo in the cinematics, which is just weird. They have the perfect opportunity to silence the haters and get some gnomes in a cinematic, and they pass that by. Damn weird. I’m still looking forward to seeing an Undead that’s not a ‘caster in one of those things …
10 comments
10 Comments so far
Totally agree with your post.
The artistic work, as with all Blizz cinematics, is top notch. The details — Arthas himself, the plumes of snow drifting off the cliff edge, the snow being cleared from the ice, the detail in the dragon –were all exceptional.
And it did a nice job presenting Arthas as an superpowerful arch-villan, mashalling an impressive army of evil in the frozen north. You clearly get the sense of overwhelming power and impending doom. As the start of an animated movie, it would have been perfect.
But as the opening of the new expansion, I think it would have been even better to have included at least some brief glimpses of players in conflict, showing off some of the new aspects of the game. Death knights in action would have been obvious. Flying combat, siege engines, hunters with epic pets, etc., etc.
Warhammer Online’s cinematic is a good example of what I’m talking about. It’s been getting a decent amount of attention since release, both for its quality and for how well it showcased various character classes in action (maybe not totally accurately, but, hey, cinematics are about getting people jazzed about playing not slavish reproduction of actual gameplay).
This is why I really love the WAR cinematic. While we didn’t see every class, we saw quite a few and they were all represented in a fun/cool way. Especially that Gobbo.
There are getting you to talk about though, aren’t they. My guess is that this is probably a teaser, and not the real trailer. Just something to get some Blizzard news out there, at a time when WAS has got the spotlight.
My 2 cents!
*They and *WAR
Sorry for the typos. The sinus medication is stronger than I thought! =)
I’d hesitate to call it a “mistake” since it will not hurt sales in the least. It’s still an awesome cinematic and was very impressive. I also missed seeing the players in the world, but as someone else pointed out, I really doubt this is the only one that will be released.
Even if it is the only trailer, the change of theme from the other two could signify a change in direction. This wouldn’t be a totally bad thing considering how many of the older players were disappointed in how things developed in BC.
Just a couple thoughts I had.
It does seem like an odd left turn with respect to the prior two cinematics. I get the feeling this is serving the need to make Arthas a greater menace than Illidan ever was.
I agree that it doesn’t seem to fit with the theme of the trailers and I would rather see something that that involves the players but I won’t deny that is a good cinematic either!
Not as good as WAR’s though.
It’s the opening cinema… which is designed to get players pumped before playing and to show off the companies prowess at making cutscenes. It isn’t designed to sell anything. They have other, real trailers for that.
This could be them trying to get a bit more storytelling into the game. The prior two cinematics were all about players doing stuff. This one is more along the lines of WHY they should do it.
Not sure what I prefer yet :)
I’m glad they went a different direction this time — they already did the WAR trailer twice.