I'm genuinely perplexed by this. It reminds me of Garrosh in Cataclysm where some parts of the story seemed to be trying to portray him as a cool badass who got stuff done, while others had him being a crazy and reckless warmonger.
It seems like the beginning of the Horde War of Thorns questline, where you can ask her about her motivations, is trying to explain a rational reason as to why Sylvanas wants to start another war, but as soon as you get into the actual fighting she starts behaving like a villain in a Saturday morning cartoon. This is mostly down to the individual lines of dialogue she has and the way they're directed. All character motivations aside, in her scenes with Malfurion Sylvanas smirks and smarms over the fact that she's destroying the forest and trying to murder him. Are we supposed to think she's being a cool quipster when she's doing this? Because she's talking about murdering a guy we just spent a major part of the last expansion helping and trying to save. So is the intention that we're supposed to think she's a horrible crazy person, then?
If the latter is true then it sets a really weird tone for the beginning of this expansion. It's hard to think of any justification for why the Horde leader would behave like this unless we're doing Pandaria 2.0 and the whole point is to hate her. If Sylvanas is supposed to be morally grey and genuinely believe she's doing the right thing for her people then surely her dialogue should've been sombre and regretful, conveying the sense that she doesn't want to do this, but that it's the only way she sees to preserve the future of the Horde.
If the idea of this expansion is that I'm supposed to be pumped to fight the Alliance as a member of the Horde, then it's torpedoed itself right out the gate. And if we're just doing the Pandaria story where we turn against our Warchief again... I mean, we already did that, didn't we?
Either way, I feel like this has gotten the BfA Horde vs Alliance story off to a really rough start. I want to stay optimistic, but this kind of writing is way too limited to convey the whole morally dubious "us vs them" narrative BfA seems like it's trying to go for.
It seems like the beginning of the Horde War of Thorns questline, where you can ask her about her motivations, is trying to explain a rational reason as to why Sylvanas wants to start another war, but as soon as you get into the actual fighting she starts behaving like a villain in a Saturday morning cartoon. This is mostly down to the individual lines of dialogue she has and the way they're directed. All character motivations aside, in her scenes with Malfurion Sylvanas smirks and smarms over the fact that she's destroying the forest and trying to murder him. Are we supposed to think she's being a cool quipster when she's doing this? Because she's talking about murdering a guy we just spent a major part of the last expansion helping and trying to save. So is the intention that we're supposed to think she's a horrible crazy person, then?
If the latter is true then it sets a really weird tone for the beginning of this expansion. It's hard to think of any justification for why the Horde leader would behave like this unless we're doing Pandaria 2.0 and the whole point is to hate her. If Sylvanas is supposed to be morally grey and genuinely believe she's doing the right thing for her people then surely her dialogue should've been sombre and regretful, conveying the sense that she doesn't want to do this, but that it's the only way she sees to preserve the future of the Horde.
If the idea of this expansion is that I'm supposed to be pumped to fight the Alliance as a member of the Horde, then it's torpedoed itself right out the gate. And if we're just doing the Pandaria story where we turn against our Warchief again... I mean, we already did that, didn't we?
Either way, I feel like this has gotten the BfA Horde vs Alliance story off to a really rough start. I want to stay optimistic, but this kind of writing is way too limited to convey the whole morally dubious "us vs them" narrative BfA seems like it's trying to go for.
