Not Much Left to Clean Up - Might Be Time to Finish Control Resonant

 While I devoured Alan Wake II in just the weekend it came out (in those innocent days of 2023) that also sort of makes sense for a survival horror game, which tend to be a bit shorter in length (you probably wouldn't want to be in such tension for such an extended time). Control Resonant now game out about a week and a half ago, and I'm sure my hours in the game are far more than they were in my first AWII playthrough (maybe total, actually). In comparison to the first Control, Resonant is for sure bigger, and its open-world design of course extends the length of the gameplay if you are doing lots of side objectives.

The main thing is that I've finished all the Side Stories, the last being the one where you have to find an Altered camera that appears in various locations across the world. There's like, more than ten of these, and you have to piece together where the camera can be found based on photos you find shot from the camera's perspective. The final stage, after finding them all in any order, is to do one last sequence where you have to capture one of several iterations of the camera in an area near the Oldest House one after the other, and if the cameras catch you, you're set back a step (it starts off with like seven of them, but the number diminishes each time you sneak up behind them and close a lid).

Anyway, not a terribly lore-heavy quest (though I really wondered if they were going to tie it to Alice Wake, who literally described photography as a means to "put a cage around the infinite," freezing a moment in time much like these cameras do. Maybe one little Alan Wake easter egg is enough) but fun enough. I should go talk to Langston and see if he has more dialogue about it.

Oh, another late-game side quest involves an experiment by Pope, and in the aftermath of this sort of dubious success, we get a bit of confirmation that while she and Jesse didn't have a relationship beyond a close friendship and professional respect, Pope had feelings for her that presumably went beyond the platonic. I don't know which way Jesse swings, but I know that Monty Zander (creator of the insanely amazing Alan Wake II review "Beyond the Lake" that is honestly a work of art in and of itself) is a... Jemily? Papen? shipper, so he'll be pleased that we've got at least a lean toward this.

I also finally found the last of the "Secret Organization" hideouts across Manhattan, and Dylan calls Zoe to tell her about all these spots. I am about 90% convinced that this is the Blessed Organization, but if we were hoping for more concrete answers about what is going on with Blessed, the game refuses to be explicit. Indeed, we do see Blessed-associated businesses mentioned and find a voicemail that could be Chester Bless himself speaking (if that's not a pseudonym, of course) but these explicit links to Blessed are in a separate sidequest with no explicit connection to these hideouts.

I think if we're seven years on and Remedy doesn't want to get explicit about Blessed, maybe we shouldn't hold our breath for them to become a major factor in the RCU. Still, if memory serves, the Cult of the Tree was hinted at in the Night Springs easter egg in Quantum Break (I never played that, as I've had PlayStation and Nintendo consoles for the past couple generations, but no Xbox) and that certainly played a huge role in Alan Wake II.

Like I often do with games I've really become invested in, getting to the stage where I can finish the main story (and to be fair, maybe there's a lengthy chunk of finale to get through) I find myself hesitating. On the other hand, I'm also really keen to avoid spoilers (which I've done a decent job of so far) so I might want to get in there before a random YouTube video's title or thumbnail gives something away.

Quick spoiler cut:

Alan Wake Sighting!

 With Control, Remedy officially initiated the "Remedy Connected Universe," linking its games to a shared cosmos and allowing crossovers between them. Alan Wake II made some use of this, with the FBC showing up and taking the case off of Saga's hands at a sort of midpoint shift moment (the game doesn't have a strict 3-act structure, but I'd say the attack on the lodge by the Cult of the Tree and the arrival of the FBC sure feels like such a moment in the story).

The first Control had only tiny references to Alan Wake in the base game, but its AWE expansion was all about that link, establishing Alice's status and the history of her coming by the Oldest House (though I seem to be the only one on the internet to think that the "organization" that helped her recover her memories from 2010 was not the FBC, but was instead the Blessed Organization, especially given Barry's connection to it and his growing bond with Alice over the years after Bright Falls). And, of course, it showcased Emil Hartman, or the thing that had been Hartman, warped by both Dark Presence and Hiss (and honestly showing off the physical distortions that would characterize more of Control Resonant's take on the Hiss) as the final boss.

Well, playing through Control Resonant, I've been perhaps a little underwhelmed by the lack of intrusions from the Alan Wake side of things - though it makes sense. Control as a series is kind of on a larger scale, and while the Bright Falls AWEs are among the most momentous in Bureau history, the crisis in America's biggest city doesn't seem to have anything to do with what is going on in the Pacific Northwest (though given Alan is from NYC, I wondered if we might come across the real Parliament Tower, which could have been cool).

I do know that Remedy doesn't want to alienate new players with too many references to other games, which is, honestly, the artistically responsible thing to do. But as a Remedy sicko now, I'm desperate for all my little references and such.

And I've found a big one! (I'm certainly not the first, as I've seen YouTube thumbnails that point to this, but wanted to stumble across it on my own.)

While trying to finish up the Freeze Frame side-story, where you have to track down an Altered Item camera that can freeze reality (to put a cage around the infinite? Is this Alice's camera?) and so you need to find a way to sneak around behind it to put the cover over its lens - the camera zipping around to many different locations across the world - I had to go into an apartment building to come around to the back of the camera in The Park.

In that building, there was an open apartment, mostly bare and smeared with what looked like black paint, as if someone had dipped their hands in paint and rubbed them on the walls. There, a television set was glowing with static, and upon interacting with it, I got...

A video, which thankfully goes in your archive (I watched it again immediately) under the category of The Master of Many Worlds. There, we see a dark scene and two lights - flashlights in the dark. Alan's narration comes in as we see him and Alex Casey (so, Ilkka Villi and Sam Lake) walk into focus. Alan talks about how he has nightmares every night, even when he isn't sleeping, and he's always terrified that "The Scratcher" will come and get him. But the taste of coffee in his mouth tells him it's real.

Something jumps at them, the two open fire on the unseen assailant. We see the two of them doing some kind of dance, and we hear what sounds like a Poe song playing in the background (paraphrasing Six Deep Breaths, with lyrics like "your dream is my nightmare," and "your nightmare can't have my dream.")

Alan says he's working as a night watchman, and has a patch on his jacket that says "AWE," and above it, "All Watchful Eye." (EDIT: actually, it's "A Watchful Eye," which is a bit less menacing and a bit more reasonable as the name of a security company.) Below I think it just says like "Security Company" (though the "Security" part is in shadow so I'm just guessing).

What could it mean?

Well, more than anything else, it's a fun and cheeky reference to Alan Wake, and maybe that's it. But at the same time, we did get stuff even in 2016's Quantum Break that would point to elements of Alan Wake II, like the Cult of the Tree and Saga Andersen, a video that could have been dismissed as a silly easter egg.

The existence of jackets that say "AWE" on them might actually close a hole in the plot when considering the "This House of Dreams" blog that came out a couple years after the first Alan Wake game. There, Samantha Wells (presumably a cheeky reference to Sam Lake, who almost certainly wrote the blog - there was some ambiguity over whether it was a fan project until the Thomas Zane poetry on the blog wound up getting quoted directly by Tom Zane in AWII) talks about I believe dreaming about being visited by people in jackets that say AWE, who came to confiscate some materials at the house there (oh, and the blog was in like 2012, but Samantha is writing about moving into a house in Ordinary, Maine, as part of some deal encouraging people to move into the abandoned town).

Probably what wound up happening is that the Bureau of AWEs was adjusted to be the FBC, but if Alan and maybe Casey (maybe Saga as well, though perhaps she's stayed on with the FBI) have formed their own company to look into the paranatural, this might make sense. Both spent time possessed by the Dark Presences, and Casey's retired from the FBI, so maybe he's willing to do this in his retirement.

It does start to make it feel more plausible that we get an Alan Wake III. While II will be an insanely tough act to follow, it also makes me excited for the extreme experimentation we might get.

Control Resonant has certainly had its big swings, but I'd say that while it feels a little more daring than the first Control, it's not quite as insanely out there as Alan Wake II was. It's probably (almost certainly) more fun to play in the moment-to-moment gameplay, but I don't know that any game has hit atmosphere quite as expertly as AWII.

So, I'm just feeling a buzz of joy from getting to see my boy Alan getting spoopy again. (Also, looks like he got a haircut, but kept the beard.)

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot:

Outside of the apartment where you find this video, there's a light that is blinking in a repeating pattern. I've looked it up online to see what it says in Morse code, but have gotten conflicting responses.

Rating the Resonants

 Remedy is not exactly known for having particularly great boss fights, but I think Control Resonant might change that - the Resonants, each zone's tragically patterned individual who has become a vessel for the dangerous resonance that threatens our reality, are all unique fights with really breathtaking visual design. The fights as well have their own rhythms to them that present unique challenges as Dylan fights to mercy-kill them.

I'll be going into a spoiler cut here. There are other "bosses" in the game that are directly tied to the main plot, and I haven't gotten to the game's final boss either, so it's not included here. Ironically, the Resonants are actually, with the exception of the first one, technically optional, but because each unlocks your combat powers, you'll definitely want to take each of them out. Doing so does respawn all enemies in the zone and also brings back various side objectives on the map, so I think that the optimal path is to "clear out" a zone before you go face them. Doing so isn't too tedious or hard, as there are plenty of objectives and other things in each zone that aren't affected by this respawning. I'm also not sure if clearing a Resonant lets foes endlessly respawn - I don't think so, but my general sense is that you should probably have enough foes to fight and resources to collect that you can unlock just about if not everything in a single playthrough (it's possible that some of the last few talents and Aberrant upgrades might require you to go into NG+, but where I'm at I certainly feel like I'd probably be at the right power level to fight the final boss).

So, let's take a look at these in terms of aesthetic design and then the feel of the fight itself.

Control Resonant's Earthbound Interlude and the Hardest Resonant Yet

 Ok, how to do this without spoilers...

When we played the first Control, we knew that Jesse ultimately tracked down the FBC and entered the Oldest House to rescue her brother, after 17 long years of separation. That was her whole motivation to begin with, not to become the FBC's new director and spend seven years locked inside of the Oldest House battling Hiss.

In the first game, we did slowly start to piece together the siblings' backstory and the events of the AWE that took place in Ordinary, Maine in 2002, but it was all detailed purely in documents and logs that only gave us fragments. I wondered if we would ever be able to see the events themselves.

Well... let's get into spoiler territory:

Drops: Sorrow Knight Fighter

 I think this might be the first time we've gotten a full-on subclass from D&D Beyond Drops, and this one's a fascinating one.

Hey folks, it's October! That means it's spooky season, all leading up to my favorite holiday, Halloweeen. Getting into the spook spirit, D&D Beyond Drops has unleashed a whole bunch of scary monsters, feats, and this subclass.

Sorrow Knight Fighters are attuned to the magic of the Shadowfell, with some tragedy or horror in their past that connected them to this realm of gloom and despair. The Shadowfell is probably my favorite D&D plane, and I love fighting (and running) spooky monsters in shadowy settings.

Broadly, the Sorrow Knight has some similarities with the Battle Master, but let's get specific:

Level 3:

Despairing Strikes:

You have a resource called Despairing Strike Dice, which can be used to enhance your attacks. You begin with 3 of them, which are d8s. At level 10, they become d10s and you get a fourth. At 15, they become d12s and you get a fifth. After expending them, you get them back on a short rest.

    So, this is, I think, a bit fewer dice than a Battle Master, and I think there's less versatility for your options, but it's reasonably comparable.

When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend a DSD and roll it (one die per attack maximum, though no limit on uses per turn), adding psychic damage to the attack equal to the amount rolled, and then get to add one of the following effects:

Abandoned: The target must succeed on an Intelligence saving throw (DC based on your Wisdom) or have the Deafened condition until the end of your next turn. While deafened, the target regards all creatures it can see as enemies until the end of your next turn.

    Hey, so this won't work on a Gulthias Blight, who is immune to being Deafened. Still, while deafened is a pretty weak condition to impose (it does almost nothing to hinder a foe) the "treat everyone as enemies" option is potentially useful. While it won't guaranteed that a foe will attack its allies given that you and your allies are still there to be targeted, it is something you might use on a healer or some other creature that is trying to do things to benefit other creatures. Or, you could use it on an enemy with a big AoE to ensure that they don't avoid hitting allies when going after your friends. Situational, and of course, not very useful against solo monsters, but interesting.

Dread: The target had Disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes before the end of your turn.

    This is pretty broadly useful, either setting up a spellcaster or someone else who has a clutch saving throw ability, or even just setting you up for Abandoned or one of the other options you get later on.

Solemn Gaze:

You gain Darkvision with a range of 60 ft, or if you already have Darkvision, the range increases by 60 feet.

    Nothing huge, but not bad to have.

Also, as a Magic action, you can attempt to search the mind of a creature you can see within 30 feet. They must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (DC based on your Wisdom) or you learn an emotion that looms large in their mind, such as worry, love, hate, etc. If the target can see you, it knows you have read its emotions. You can do this Wis times per long rest (minimum 1).

    The utility of this feature depends a lot on DM interpretation. This isn't detect thoughts - you just get an emotion that looms large in them, not necessarily that they're feeling particularly strongly at the moment. In other words, I think this could add a ton of flavor to NPC interactions, but the degree to which this information is actionable is not obvious. Flavor-wise, though, it's amazing. And this is on top of the other level 3 features we're getting.

Level 7:

Dreaded Appearance:

When you use Tactical Shift, you can teleport 30 feet instead of moving. Immediately afte ryou appear, you can briefly take on the appearance of a creatures' fears, visible only to those creatures. Each creature of your choice within a 10-foot emanation muse make a Wisdom saving throw (DC based on your Wisdom) or take Psychic damage equal to a roll of your DSD (this does not appear to expend it) and is Frightened until the end of your next turn, or on a success, they take half damage only.

Once you take on this appearance, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

    Note that I think the alteration for Tactical Shift is unlimited (other than by, you know, how many times you can do that). The damage here is pretty trivial, but an AoE fear is not a bad thing to have. And we're getting that as a free carry-on with all the other benefits of Tactical Shift, so I think this is pretty good. Obviously, as we've seen a lot of features with DCs based on Wisdom, you're going to want to pump that up as much as possible with this subclass.

Level 10:

Unsettled Strikes:

You have the following new options to use with your Despairing Srikes:

Apathetic: The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have the Incapacitated condition until the start of your next turn. While incapacitated, the target can only give one-word responses when spoken to.

    Damn. I mean, the one-word thing is fine, but incapacitation can be enormous. For one thing, it breaks concentration, but obviously the bigger thing is that it prevents them from taking any actions, bonus actions, or reactions.

Lost: The target makes a Charisma saving throw. On a failure, the target is Blinded and its speed is reduced to 0 until the end of its next turn. On a success, its speed is halved only instead.

    That's not too bad either - Blinded is usually a Con save condition, and so you're probably more likely to succeed with this one. A good way to lock down an enemy and then give everyone advantage on attacks against them.

Weary: The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or gain 1 Exhaustion level. The effect cannot increase the target's Exhaustion above 2, and the levels from this effect are removed at the end of your next turn.

    So, this is... you see Exhaustion and your eyes go wide, but this isn't quite that. That being said, giving a foe a -2 or even a -4 to all d10 tests (and the -4 will be more likely to happen if they're already at -2 to Con saves) isn't bad. But it's only for one turn. Essentially, I wonder if I'd be more enthusiastic about this if I weren't thinking about how insane it would be to have long-term and unlimited exhaustion from this. Don't forget that it also slows a target.

Level 15:

Grim Constitution:

You have resistance to Necrotic and Psychic damage.

    Right off the bat, these aren't bad ones to have, especially if you're in a spooky Shadowfell/Ravenloft game, where you're likely to encounter both damage types a lot.

In addition, when you are subjected to an effect that reduces your HP maximum, you can make a DC 15 Con save, and your HP is not reduced on a success. Each time you make this Con save after the first, the DC increases by 5, but taking a short or long rest resets it to 15.

    Less broadly useful, but it could be good when fighting particularly undead (again, common foes in a Shadowfell/Ravenloft game). I'm surprised this doesn't just give immunity to such things. Eh, this one's not amazing, though the damage resistances are pretty good.

Level 18:

Grieving Mantle:

When you use your Action Surge, you attune yourself to the Shadowfell for 1 minute or until you become incapacitated. For the duration, you have the following:

    Before we get into the specific functions, I do kind of like how this turns Action Surge into the trigger for a "super mode" for Fighters. While this does then kind of discourage using it multiple times per combat, it's an interesting bit of tech.

Shade Form: When you are hit with an attack roll, you can use a reaction to become insubstational for a moment and reduce the attack's total damage to zero.

    Wow! Not halved, not gaining resistance. This just full-on nopes out of an entire attack. Obviously this depends a bit on how many attacks you're taking in a round, but the ability to use this if you get crit by some massive monster is really clutch, and while Action Surge is a limited resource, this means that for a whole combat you're going to be undoing one attack that hits you each round, which is quite nice.

Unwavering Resolve: You have immunity to the Charmed and Frightened conditions, and if you have either when you activate Grieving Mantle, the condition ends for you.

    Naturally if you have a Devotion Paladin in your party, this won't do anything for you, but it's still pretty nice if you don't have those bases covered.

Overall Thoughts:

    I actually think this is a pretty solid subclass. It's doing a lot of things that Fighters can't really do in most cases - indeed, some of these effects are pretty rare even for spellcasters (is "Abandoned" kind of Enemies Abound, a spell from Xanathar's?)

    You will be pretty dependent on getting a high wisdom, because there are a lot of saving throws that enemies will be making against these effects. Fighters can afford a secondary ability score a bit, but if you have a way to somehow attack with Wisdom, that could be very helpful. Taking magic initiate Druid and grabbing Shillelagh could work pretty well here, and maybe Polearm Master to enhance the power of a Quarterstaff (as the cantrip won't let you grab something that works with Great Weapon Master). Multiclassing with Druid or Ranger could also make some sense here, though if the campaign is going high enough, I'd be pretty excited to get Grieving Mantle.

    Yeah, generally I think this is a pretty solid subclass, and it drips with flavor, which is always a big positive.

Warlock Patrons of Azeroth

 The WoW D&D book is going to give a lot of guidance for player to re-create WoW classes and specializations within D&D rules. In some cases, this will be trivial: a Guardian or Feral Druid can just go Circle of the Moon (though I'd freaking love it if they create a scaling template for Bear and Cat forms we could use at any level). But in some cases, namely the Death Knight and Demon Hunter, they'll be doing some unprecedented re-works of existing classes and creating subclasses that are sort of more than subclasses and really extensive re-works of the base classes they're being grafted onto (we've only seen level 1 and 2 features for Ebon Blade Paladins, which replace Lay on Hands and Paladin's Smite - though Rune Strike, which replaced Divine Smite, is basically the same spell except it does Necrotic damage and only gets a bonus die against Celestials).

But while it could be fun to play with restrictions to require players to build characters to fit with WoW's existing classes and specs, I think think it would be more fun to take adventures in Azeroth to places you can't replicate in the MMO.

Let's consider the Warlock.

In D&D, of course, a Warlock is a character who has forged a pact with a powerful magical entity (though 5.5 broadens this a bit to allow you to draw from multiple sources, as long as they're sort of in the same category.

By contrast, Warlocks in World of Warcraft are scholars just like Mages (the Wizard equivalent,) but while Mages study in very socially-acceptable learning institutions (though for a long time, their practices were forbidden among the Night Elves,) Warlocks are scholars of forbidden knowledge, specifically the knowledge of Fel magic, which is the inherently destructive power that suffuses demons.

Warlocks in WoW have three different specializations, like most classes, but all three are still Fel/demonic magic. Affliction is the one that might be easiest to reflavor as instead some kind of necromancy, but the other two, Destruction and Demonology, are both firmly in that Fel/Demon category (Destruction focuses more on blasting foes with demonic fire and raw chaos while Demonologists summon tons of demons to attack their foes).

D&D's Warlocks, thus, have a broader array of options in where they get their magic, and so I figured what I'd do is go through each Warlock subclass and talk about what kinds of patrons you might choose.

    Archfey:

While WoW doesn't have a Fey creature type, they do have some entities that would probably fit with the Fae, most notably the explicitly named Night Fae, who are the caretakers of the realm of Ardenweald, one of the afterlives in the Shadowlands. Here, natural creatures and people dedicated to nature go to take part in the cycle of life, eventually being reborn in a cycle of reincarnation. The Winter Queen is the leader of the Night Fae. But more broadly, the Wild Gods might fit this category - Wild Gods cover a lot of animal spirits worshipped or revered by various cultures across Azeroth. The Night Elves have their Ancients (not to be confused with the giant walking trees also called Ancients, who are... also nature spirits of course, but in a less divine way,) the Trolls have their Loa (which also include some beings that aren't quite as animalistic or even associated with nature) and the Pandaren have their August Celestials. Even the Orcs have animal gods like Lo'gosh (who might actually be the same as the Night Elves' Goldrinn...?) While not necessarily as fickle and tricksy as Fey tend to be, these are probably your best equivalents.

    Celestial:

It's really up in the air which of WoW's creatures would count as Celestials, but the ones that I don't think you could argue against are the Naaru. These are crystalline beings of pure holy light that are particularly important to Draenei culture. While it's supposed to be very rare, in game we often see Naaru go through a horrible cyclical transformation, turning to the Void as Dark Naaru (who are probably more on the Aberration/Great Old One side of things). Other options potentially include, actually, the Titans or their Titanforged creations. While the Titanforged act very much like constructs, beings like Tyr, Odyn, Thorim, Freya, Mimiron, or Ra-Den (the latter of which is dead by the end of Battle for Azeroth, but then, Tyr was dead for a very long time before we brought him back during Dragonflight) I think they'd fit pretty well in this category as well.

    Fiend:

I mean, there's plenty of demons in WoW. Warlocks in World of Warcraft tend to invert the patron relationship, with demonic minions bound to serve Warlocks through contracts that make any Warlock worth their salt the more powerful person in the relationship, but bargaining with power from a powerful demon certainly feels plausible on Azeroth. I think you could play a Fiend Warlock easily enough as a standard WoW warlock (just remember that Fel fire is typically green!) Another possibility is actually Illidan Stormrage. While sort of a half-demon (though he sure looks more demonic than even the Demon Hunters who he's trained) Illidan is WoW's ultimate edgelord antihero, a firm and hard Chaotic Neutral. (Also, Critical Role fans, if you didn't know already for some reason, will be excited to know that he's voiced by Liam O'Brien!) But also a somewhat more benign source of Fel power.

    Great Old One:

Two really great categories here: The most obvious is the Old Gods. While all four of Azeroth's Old Gods are (in theory) dead in the current state of the game, we did have to kill three of them as the final bosses of their respective raids (well, there was an optional extra-hard boss in Ulduar after Yogg-Saron). But these ancient flesh-mountain monstrosities certainly fit the bill. Alternatively, you could go for something less fleshy and more cosmic with the Void Lords. The only one of these we've ever actually seen or had named is Dimensius the All-Devouring (who was the final boss of the last expansion) but I think you could lean into the mystery of what your patron is if you went with an unnamed Void Lord. (The game's current antagonist, Xal'atath, and likely the final boss of the current expansion, is a former mortal turned void-entity that was probably not a true Void Lord, but might fit this, though she'd be an absolute perfect Hexblade patron).

    Undying:

This subclass... is weird because it could just be an undead patron, but it's also explicitly not just undead beings. If you for some reason really wanted to play this not-very-good and conceptually thin subclass, though, there are tons of extremely old beings on Azeroth. Maybe you go with Nozdormu, the Bronze Aspect, leader of the dragons who manage and safeguard the timeline (or his alternate-timeline-self nemesis, Murozond).

    Hexblade:

There are a few sentient weapons, most notable of which was Xal'atath, Blade of the Black Empire, which was the artifact weapon granted to Shadow Priests during the Legion expansion, but whose resident conscious being transferred into the body of a dead elf (that we provided for her) and has now been leading a deadly assault on Azeroth with her void-creature army called the Devouring Host. Two other weapons for Legion had personalities, with Aluneth, a staff that contained a powerful arcane consciousness, and the Skull of the Man'ari, the remains of an Eredar summoner who got into demonology before it was cool on Argus and ironically was arrested by future demon lord Archimonde for dabbling in such magic. Other weapons like Ashbringer, Doomhammer, or Frostmourne might fit here, though it's dubious whether they're actually sentient (technically I guess Frostmourne might be a conduit for the Jailer).

    Genie:

WoW does have genies, but they're a pretty rare category specifically of air elementals. If you wanted to take the idea of a powerful elemental, you could possibly instead go with the Elemental Lords, of which there are conveniently one for each element. The OGs are Ragnaros the Firelord, Al-Akir the Windlord, Neptulon the Tide-Hunter, and Therazane the Stonemother. However, there's been some turnover over the course of WoW. Ragnaros is dead, and was replaced by Smolderon, though we also had to take him down as well (though this was outside of the Firelands, so I actually think he's probably still alive and still the Lord of Fire). We killed Al-Akir as well, though his son Thunderaan I believe remains the Windlord. Basically, depending on when in WoW's timeline you want to set your campaign, you might need to pick alternatives. Note that the elemental lord of Draenor, the Orcish homeland (and sort of adopted Draenei homeland, though they were only there for about a thousand years, which isn't much for a people who seem to naturally live to be tens of thousands of years old) you could pick them.

    Fathomless:

Ok, there are probably some other options here, but I think the best one is Queen Azshara. Once the radiant and beautiful queen of the Night Elves in ancient times, when her capital sank beneath the waves, she struck a deal with the Old God N'zoth to save her people by transforming them into the serpentine Naga. Azshara is one of Azeroth's most dangerous villains, but she's a pragmatic and patient one (while her royal palace in her capital, now called Nazjatar, was a raid with her as the final boss, she survived this attack and we actually wound up rescuing her from N'zoth, a decision that will probably bite us in the ass somewhere down the line).

    Undead:

Boy howdy. So, the obvious options here would be members of the Scourge. The most powerful of which is certainly the Lich King. But if you're playing in a post-Wrath timeframe, the Lich King could be Bolvar Fordragon, a heroic paladin who sacrificed his freedom to try to hold the Scourge on a tight leash, and while Bolvar certainly did some questionable things as Lich King, he was certainly more benevolent than Arthas had been. WoW does have its fair share of Liches and Death Knights. I actually think making the entire Knights of the Ebon Blade a patron could be fun, or perhaps specifically having the Four Horsemen, the Ebon Blade's most elite knights (aside from the Deathlord, the player character, of course) as your patron would allow a DM to play the varying personalities between them (this latter option doesn't totally work if you're doing the Scarlet Monastery dungeon, as I'm confident its final boss will be High Inquisitor Whitemane, who is later raised as a death knight and becomes one of the Four Horsemen, ironically "redeeming" herself by becoming an undead killing machine. Better than a religious fundamentalist!)

    Vestige:

This new subclass from Arcana Unleashed ironically might actually make you play a little more like a WoW Warlock, who generally have a minion fighting alongside them in battle. (I play a Demonology one, who would always have a minion out, but I can't remember if the other two specs even have the option to not play with one). But mechanics aside, I do think there are some options here, even if they're a bit non-obvious. We have a few dead god-like beings, such as the nascent Titan Argus, or the lost (and very much beloved - the fans got up in arms) bear ancient Ursoc. Rezan, the Zandalari Troll Loa of Kings (he's a T-rex!) died to the treachery of the Prophet Zul. It also turns out that the Titans were, actually, for most of WoW's history, already in a state of more or less death - Sargeras slew them right around the time that he founded the Burning Legion, and it wasn't until we liberated their tortured souls at the end of the Legion expansion that they were able to return to their full power.

I think that's all of them? I'm actually quite pleased that there seems to be at least one pretty good option for every subclass, and there are probably more if you go digging.

Ironically, though, I think you could argue that these subclasses almost see representation in other classes in WoW. Shadow Priests, for example, have some abilities based around the Old Gods. And actually, the lore of the Shaman class is that they act essentially a mediators and negotiators between elemental spirits, which I actually think is pretty Warlock-coded (though it seems they'll be represented more by Barbarians - which is surprising on a mechanical level but sort of makes sense as two classes really deeply rooted in ancient/primal powers).

Into the Unknown

 I realize that the title of this post sounds very much like the kind of title for a post about the end of my current gaming fixation, Control Resonant, but I'm not there yet. No, instead I've made it to what I'm pretty certain is the last major area of the game, which is the most disorientingly Escher-esque region so far.

We're in the endgame, but given that we've also just unlocked a new zone, that means that we've got tons of side quests and other optional objectives to sort through, meaning that it's not exactly a race to the finale.

We did get what feels like it might be Control Resonant's big musical moment, though I can't say that it's necessarily the match of, say, the Ashtray Maze or the Dark Ocean Summoning. For one thing, the song isn't by the Old Gods of Asgard, but it's also more or less Dylan's entrance into this final area and while we arrive in the middle of a giant insane battle, it doesn't really conclude with any serious punctuation.

To be fair, the "Take Control" segment in the first game, as beloved and memorable as it is, was also kind of transitionary, acting more as the lead-in to final revelations about Hedron and the false game over. And hell, Dark Ocean Summoning kind of only works in the worst possible way, as triumphant as it feels.

I will say that after Alan Wake II, which had Sam Lake's fingerprints all over it, the relatively small role he played in this game (I'm actually not sure the degree to which he actively worked on it at all, other than being the Creative Lead for Remedy) has left Resonant with... I don't want to say less of a signature style, but I guess one that I'm not quite as attuned to picking up on.

Once again, I want to reiterate that the game's great - it's just that Remedy leapt to among my favorite game studios when I got into them three years ago, and so I'm holding this game to the tightest standards.

Anyway, I'm going to go into a spoiler cut - not that I've advanced the plot much since my last post, or I think two posts ago - but just because I want to get into things that have been revealed so far.