![]() In that same year, 2001, another Warcraft novel named Of Blood and Honour reimagined the orcs in similar ways. Even the name, Thrall, evokes servitude and chains.ĭespite its eventual cancellation 18 months into development, the story of Lord of the Clans would later be retold and canonised in a novel with a much more contemplative tone, released a year before Warcraft 3's release. For the first time in a mainstream fantasy game series, orcs are portrayed as victims, not aggressors. By the time of Lord of The Clans, the orcs have been corralled to reservations, made slaves after their defeat by humans. The first human we meet in the game - Thrall's jailer - is cruel and clumsy, a stark contrast to noble imperialism present in previous depictions of the Alliance. Very different from what we'd eventually see in Warcraft 3, sure, but also much different from any orc in the series before. The ill-fated, darkly comedic project imagined the warchief as a sardonic, wise-cracking Guybrush Threepwood type. The character Thrall was conceived for the adventure game Warcraft: Lord of the Clans. Jarring, even though it had been in the works for a while. Playing the Warcraft strategy trilogy in order today, this change seems sudden. A tone of resolute contemplation, in sharp contrast to the ornery Fozzy Bear gargles that delivered the old game's orcish text scrolls. When he speaks to the prophet Medivh in the following cutscene, his voice is measured. Not somewhere on the spectrum between recently having finished killing humans and planning out which humans to kill next. "Somewhere in the Arathi Highlands, Thrall, the young warchief of the orcish Horde, wakes from his troubling dream." A single line that grants Thrall, and by extension the Horde, more agency than the previous two games combined. The first level of Warcraft 3's prologue starts with a line of text on a loading screen. Backs against the wall, grog held high in the air with one hand, and a long, gnarled, green middle finger on the other. ![]() Sometimes, like Warhammer 40,000's Goff Rockers and Blizzard's mohawked trolls, they're punks. This isn't what makes them endearing, and enduring, though. Just good enough at fighting to make our heroes look cool, but never good enough to pose a real threat. Bad at tactics but too numerous for it to really matter. Generally up for a party but will probably end up killing each other. It was, I thought at the time, even cooler than C.S Lewis. That is, until my Year Five teacher jokingly called a story I'd written a 'Tolkien rip-off' and lent me her personal, faded hardcover of The Hobbit. I didn't have the language for it at the time, but I'd placed orcs in the realm of folklore, a part of our collective storytelling public domain. I'd even controlled orcish warriors and catapults and giant snapping turtles in Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness. I'd defended castles from them in the Dungeons & Dragons board game DragonStrike. I'd fought them in HeroQuest, all protruding lower canines and piercing red eyes, brandishing meat cleavers and falchions above their heads. And just like that, Warcraft's orcs are given something they'd never really had previously:Īs far as I knew at 10 years old, no-one had 'invented' orcs. We can see terror on his face at first, and then. Thrall wakes from his vision and jolts up in bed. ![]() Old triumph is revised as cyclical folly. The morally simplistic battles of old are chronicled in the language of regret. But unlike in the previous two games, there's no glory to it. It's rendered stunningly, this battle, in an early progenitor of Blizzard's now-renowned cinematics. "Like fools, we clung to the old hatreds," a voiceover laments. When we first meet the young orc warchief Thrall in Warcraft 3, he's just woken from a nightmare visions of orc and human armies clashing on a battlefield as the sky burns above them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |