I'm on Act IV of Diablo 3, and I've found that the most difficult enemy by far is having a three-year-old laptop running it. In certain environments, like open desert or dark, rocky caverns, the game runs smoothly and I feel like a total badass, tearing bosses apart like they were no big thing (incidentally, Archon, at least on Normal difficulty, makes me into a freaking god.) However, if we have a change of venue to snowy castle ramparts in the middle of a battle, or... well, a place that would kind of be a spoiler, the game crawls along as if I were running some old DOS machine. I actually kind of wish I could switch it to 16-bit sprite graphics in those moments.
Still, I'm powering through with a combination of the Templar's heals and health regeneration and being higher-level and more geared than I think they expect you to be (or maybe Normal is tuned to be very forgiving, even for a Diablo noob like me.)
Anyway, one of the things that struck me about the game is that, stylistically, it's certainly got some cool ideas (I love the concept of Angels as being incorporeal energy housed in suits of armor - they're like Ethereals, but less interested in profit and more in being bastions of light and goodness (even if some come off a bit anti-human.))
Demons, on the other hand, are handled in a mostly standard way. I guess it's not so much the demons themselves, but the demonic environments are all filled with spiky black metal, fire, and gross, bloody things everywhere. At least what I've seen of them, the demons in Diablo feel very, very similar to Oblivion in Elder Scrolls 4.
Now, admittedly, there's a reason for this. The Fire and Brimstone demons are pretty standard in western culture, and that image of them is clearly derived from figures within the religious cosmology of Christianity. Actually, the Diablo universe is a much more Christian fantasy universe than Warcraft. Despite the absence of, well, Jesus, or even God (though Anu is close,) the universe there is divided neatly between Angels in Heaven above and Demons in Hell below. Despite the stakes being for all of creation, Diablo is kind of a smaller scope than Warcraft - perhaps it is simply because the game isn't as big as WoW, but there's also the fact that there are two sides in an Eternal War that are very clearly marked (even if it turns out that humans are actually more powerful than either side - a device I tend to like) and thus, every conflict in the game ultimately boils down to "are you good or are you evil." Sure, evil fights amongst itself (and this is a fairly important plot point) but from your perspective it's rare to come across any other conflicts that don't turn out to be part of the central one.
And again, part of that is that it's not a sandbox game, but a linear RPG.
Demons in Warcraft, on the other hand, have got a fairly different feel to them. Yes, I think they started out in this style, but as the mythology has expanded, I think they've come up with a much more original take on them. And the weird thing is that a huge part of it is just changing the color of the fire. Yes, Green Fire, the (un)Holy Grail of things Warlocks want, kind of encapsulates how demons and the Burning Legion in Warcraft feel totally different. They're not just in big fiery caves filled with lava (that's where the Fire Elementals go!) Instead, they're products of Hyperspace (in fact, the Twisting Nether very closely resembles the Sci-Fi concept of Hyperspace.) Although one might consider Fel Magic to be Warcraft's "substance" or "source" of evil, you have to remember that there's plenty of evil being done without it (in fact, assuming my theories line up with Blizzard if they ever choose to explain this, the Old Gods - who are definitely evil - don't want to have anything to do with Fel magic.) Warcraft, despite aspects of it fitting into the standard medieval fantasy setting, is really liberated by its comfort with anachronism. Thus, turning demons from being straight-up nightmare creatures dreamed up by someone with some really fucked-up blood and gore fetishes and into a kind of alien army who has conquered or destroyed thousands of worlds - while still being demons and using dark magic - creates something far more original.
Warcraft started with a straight-up binary conflict - Orcs vs Humans - and if I am not mistaken, once had a much simpler mythology where (and I could be wrong) the Orcs were coming out of Hell, and Humans fought in the name of Heaven. However, due to judicious retcons, huge amounts of lore written, and many games expanding the mythology (Warcraft II introduces trolls, ogres, elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, dragons, Outland, Warcraft III introduces the Burning Legion, the Scourge, the Night Elves, the Ancients, the fact that the Orcs aren't just inherently evil, the Tauren, the Draenei (though, more accurately, the Broken and Lost Ones - see "judicious retcon") the Naga, and even the first signs of the Old Gods, and then WoW introduces... oh Jesus, there's no way I could list it all here.)
The fact is that, while there is a general sense of "Good" and "Evil," they're much less tangible subjects. Sure, the Naaru are clearly good, and the Titans at the very least mean well, and the Burning Legion is clearly not nice people while the Old Gods are that Lovecraft-style "these things are like ants to me"-style evil. However, neither good nor evil is a substance. Yogg-Saron is the Old God of Death, but that doesn't mean that he/she/it literally causes or even embodies death - it's more like a title and perhaps a field in which he/she/it has some expertise (it never really came up, but I always had a theory that the Scourge was essentially using Fel magic to steal Yogg-Saron's necromantic power without becoming its pawn - see my earlier posts about why I think the Burning Legion is ultimately more powerful than the Old Gods.)
Anyway, Warcraft kind of takes a Unitarian approach to its mythology. Yes, there is the Light, but there's also the Loa, and the Ancients, and the Titans, and just because Malorne isn't a Naaru doesn't mean he's "impure" and therefore "evil." Warcraft's a world where there's enough room for everyone's gods (well, except Twilight's Hammer's.) The result is a level of diversity that keeps the game fresh. One thing that was kind of missing in Cataclysm (late-game) was the Ulduar - a major side-story that gives us a break from the rest of the expansion. Don't get me wrong, I love the Scourge as villains, and I had a blast tearing through Naxxramas and ICC, but it was nice to get a break from "Skulls, Ooze, Ice, and decay" and get a big Titan instance. In Cataclysm, we got Fiery Dragons and Old Gods, then just Fire, then Old Gods and Fiery Dragons (actually, the Throne of the Four Winds was a pretty nice break, visually, though my guild certainly never spent any real time on it, being a "side instance," and story-wise, it was still part of the overall Deathwing and Elementals plot.)
So what is my point here, exactly? Well, I like WoW's lore. It's got a richness that allows for lots of stories. Perhaps the single strongest aspect of it is that what started as a binary morality has become a far more complex, and thus believable world.
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