On the Clash of Story and Mechanics
This week we look at where mechanics and story clash and how Blizzard's improvement as storytellers has helped to mitigate that, especially regarding death....
KIDS HAVE BEEN BORN AND BLIZZES HAVE BEEN CONNED AND NICK AND KATIE ARE BACK!!!
Katie has returned from her trip to Blizzcon and she talks about all the awesome people she got to meet up with including several friends of the show (although everyone she met with probably counts as a friend of the show now). Then she recounts her experience getting into the main hall for the Opening Ceremony, and how she wound up sitting at a Diablo IV demo station during the Diablo IV announcement. She and Nick discuss the relative level of gore in the cinematic.
Katie then brings up the Shadowlands cinematic, and the duo go down the rabbit hole. The first talk about Sylvanas’ act of tearing the Helm of Domination while most everyone expected her to put it on. Nick can’t help but start speculating on who we may see in the Shadowlands. They talk about how the Shadowlands fit into the greater WoW cosmos (thank you Chronicle chart, which Nick compares to Lost’s Dharma Initiative) and look at Blizzard’s three expansion long narrative arcs (excluding Warlords of Draenor). Nick keeps bringing up Terran Gregory’s comments at this years Con Before the Storm panel about making the Diablo III Demon Hunter intro cinematic, and compares that to the Shadowloands cinematic. Katie forgets that the owl people are called Stewards. She talks about her chance to play the demo and how she used far sight to see lots of broken, unimplemented content. They can’t wait to see where the story goes next.
Finally, as Nick is wrapping up, they talk briefly about the Overwatch 2 cinematic. Nick enjoyed this one best.
Thank you for listening to The Tauren & the Goblin! Please send any comments or questions to taurengoblin@mashthosebuttons.com or @taurengoblin on twitter. Our next live show is scheduled for 12/11 at 10:30 pm E at twitch.tv/mashthosebuttons. Come join us!
Hosts
Nick Zielenkievicz
Host of WoW! Talk! and The Tauren & The Goblin. Sometimes known as the Video Games Public Defender. Wants to play more Destiny and Marvel Heroes but WoW is all-consuming. Decent F2P Hearthstone player. Sad that he lost the Wii that had Wrecking Crew on it. Would be happy if the only game ever made was M.U.L.E. Gragtharr on Skywall-US. Garresque on Ravencrest-US.
Katie Grace
Katie is a long time gamer who has fallen in love with multiple genres. She started young by playing Nintendo 64, Spyro, and Blizzard games such as Warcraft II with family, then eventually moved into playing games in both my leisure time and as a occupation. She loves being immersed in different universes and exploring the characters that live in them, as well as just playing games for a good time.
