Posted by Spooner | 3 Comments
New Cutscene coming in Patch 3.3
We all loved the Wrathgate right? Well of course there’s going to be a few of you out there that didn’t, whatever, general consensus likes that cutscene in our gaming.
Actually that’s one of the things I really liked about Aion, cutscenes explaining the quest sometimes instead of always having the text. Now there’s a fine line between doing nothing but freaking cutscenes and voice over stuff that slows down the action considerably or the opposite when you’re reading the entire encyclopedia brittanica just to find out how many boars to kill.
Anyway, it looks as if we’re going to get another epic and awesome cinematic when Icecrown ships.
GameInformer: I would agree that the game has gotten much better at showing rather than telling, but Wrath of the Lich King also saw the introduction of cutscenes to the game. It’s obviously much easier to tell the story in that, but you’re also taking the player out of the game. Do you think that those will keep showing up future expansions as well? Is it something you’ll use sparingly?
Jeff Kaplan: Cutscenes will always be something that we use sparingly, yes. We never want to interrupt gameplay too frequently or for too long of a period of time. The Wrathgate cutscene was a big experiment for us. It was our first foray into in-game cutscenes in World of Warcraft. I don’t think we’ve fully refined how we want cutscenes to work with future World of Warcraft content.
We debate like crazy. We debate the length, we debate the frequency, and we have a lot of theories, but Blizzard is a really iterative development house. I think what’s going to have to happen is that you’ll see more cutscenes come into the game for us to really refine our strategy with them. We definitely have an eye toward more cutscenes, but at the same time, we don’t want to become just a cutscene game.
Even before Cataclysm, in patch 3.3, there’s going to be a really exciting cutscene moment that’s going to be our next experiment with that.
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS!*
My bet is that the cutscene is the final confrontation with Athas, and Bolvar Fordragon takes his place as the new Lich King. We know Bolvar has been tortured endlessly by Arthas and he still hasn’t turned (whereas Saurfang Jr. has). So Bolvar is the only candidate for taking Arthas’s place who won’t turn evil.
More speculation here.
It would be cool if hafway through the fight Arthas regains his senses and its Frostmourne and Ner’zhul you end up fighting, but I kind of doubt it, to become the lich king arthas went through en epic lake of shit and inflicted an ungodly amount of evil on the world, he is too far gone now.
I also dont think Bolvar can jsut be magically turned in the nick of time to take on the mantle as the new LK, that wuld be too easy and disappointing, lore-wise. Maybe Bolvar will be the one that gets saved from the whole fiasco, since he has resisted being turned, so far, though it wouldnt surprise me seeing him in the Arthas fight as one of his Lieutenants.
I do believe there will be a definite ending to the LK storyline, and while I doubt Ner’zhul will be completely destroyed, he will possibly end up being vanquished, much like Kiljaeden was at the end of TBC.
As for the cutscene, from what I understood in past comments by bliz, was that unlike wrathgate it would be a proper blizzard style cutscene (unlike the wrathgate, which was made using the WoW engine), and the only moment I can see them using such a cutscene is for the resolution of the death of Arthas. I imagine it msut contain some additional lore info that they dont want the datamines to glean jsut from listening to datamined audiofiles.
@ Dran
In the Halls of Reflection, Jaina and/or Sylvanas attempt to communicate with the souls that Frostmourne claimed and pull up the ghost of Uther. Uther tells them that there must always be a Lich King, because without a master to hold them in check, the Scourge will run rampant and wash over the entire world. He speculates that the last remaining thread of humanity in Arthas is what’s prevented him from launching a full-scale invasion of Azeroth so far.
But he’s pretty clear that whoever takes up the mantle of the Lich King has to be someone pure and incorruptible, and Jaina/Sylvanas wonder out loud who could bear such a burden. So far, the only one who qualifies is Bolvar, the only person who the Lich King hasn’t been able to turn.