On its surface, Warcraft as a franchise is classic fantasy. The original games pitted Warhammer-esque orcs against humans who live in a city that looks like a big fairytale castle all made of white stone.
But as the series evolved, the setting got weirder and weirder. It's honestly, I'd say, more of a science-fantasy game than classic high fantasy, but rather than going into space (though I'd say that our trips to Outland and Argus for sure qualify as straight-up Star Wars-style sci-fan) we mostly remain on a planet that has a little bit of every genre.
Gnomes and Goblins have always been kind of comic relief - even if goblins didn't become a playable race until Cataclysm, they were always kind of positioned as the two "small, silly, weirdly technologically-advanced" races for each faction. Setting aside that the Draenei clearly have far more futuristic technology, these guys - and I think the goblins honestly more than the gnomes - really hit that wonderful sweet spot of a kind of modern/modernish technology level in our world that still has knights and dragons and such.
Cataclysm allowed players to glimpse the island of Kezan, where the goblins are originally from, but only as a prologue (actually a prologue to a prologue, given the Lost Isles) from which we were forced to flee around level 5, never to return. But this was in Bilgewater Harbor, meaning we never got to see the previously-mentioned goblin capital, Undermine.
Until now.
And it does not disappoint.
Undermine is the industrial-pollution-filled capitalist hellscape that we always thought it should be, a kind of vaguely 20s/30s (I guess I should specify the 1920s, given that we're halfway through the subsequent "'20s" decade already... guys, I was born in the 20th century, which is starting to make me seem old) aesthetic coupled with the goblins' signature jury-rigged look and feel, where you get the impression that everything here was made out of junk that the goblins were able to find for cheap.
The music does a massive job in really establishing the tone, giving us hints of noir, though far too silly to be actually noir-ish, perhaps more broadly just kind of classic American crime fiction, with the city operating basically like it's run by the mob, which it sort of is.
Also, after a full fifteen years having to deal with Jastor Gallywix, it looks like that douchebag's number will finally be up when we fight him as the raid's final boss.
Actually...
Boy it feels kind of apt to have this bloated bully who everyone freaking hates somehow return to a position of power after we thought we had finally gotten rid of him, and one whose earlier oafish incompetence is now more closely aligned with a true, profoundly dark evil that could be the end of us all.
I don't know. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Anyway, goblins have been part of Warcraft since WCII, and it's fun to get a moment to really see them in the spotlight, to flesh out how their society works. I never thought I'd find myself allied with members of the Venture Company, but here we are!
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