Tuesday, July 25, 2023

What Now, Lucasfilm?

The swirling rumors surrounding Kathleen Kennedy's departure as president of Lucasfilm have coalesced into a tornado of retribution.   Finally, after the failure and desecration of Indiana Jones, Disney has finally gotten tired of losing money and suffering grievous brand damage, and are ready to lock Kennedy out of the office, regardless of the cost.  Part of this rumor storm is the idea that Jon Favreau will be given creative control of Lucasfilm, in her place.  Let's take a minute and suppose that all of this is true.

What can Favreau do to save the colossal shipwreck of the Star Wars intellectual property?  Are there any fans left, and is there any way to win back the fans that have already left?  And even if the fans can be convinced to return, what is left of the narrative that hasn't been permanently tainted by the Woke Years?

Step one, for Favreau, would to put out the very best season of Mandalorian that he possibly could.  Despite its ups and downs, this is the series that has kept the Star Wars universe alive through the dark years; the most recent story that is carrying the brand.  Don't have it revolve around Bo Katan, but return to the adventures of Din Djarin and Grogu as they walk the earth, and attempt to right the wrongs of the collapsing Empire.  Don't try to undo anything from Season 3, but just go on from here, with the politics of Mandalore on the periphery. 

On the other hand, I would plan on re-enforcing the ties with Greef Carga and the New Republic patrols.  And then, about halfway through the season, I would have a guest appearance by Gina Carano and Bill Burr.  If everything is working on this front, I would then leverage this spot into reviving Rangers of the New Republic.

Step Two:  The next move for Favreau is to set in motion an animated series featuring Luke, Leia, and Han.  This should be set immediately after the events of Return of the Jedi.  And it should be the best quality animation and storytelling that Favreau can muster.  I would have Mark Hamill on set as a consultant and involved heavily with its development.  Even if he can't voice his original character, I would develop for him an additional character that would feature in the series on an on-going basis.

This animated series should feature the best material from the expanded universe.  Even going to the extent of bringing on EU authors and creators.  This series should be a homage to the original fans,  in some sense a love letter to the fans, in another way an apology for everything that was said about them, and an olive branch.  

This is not a moment to subvert expectations, or attempt avant-garde storytelling, or bring something new to the universe.  Instead, this series should be everything that fans have been expecting for 20 years about what would happen to the original three heroic characters and their supporting ensemble.  Somehow, we've never been able to tell this story, mostly because of George.  I believe it's time has finally come.

Han and Leia and Luke have led the rebellion that defeated the Empire; what will happen in the aftermath?  From the perspective of Leia the diplomat, Luke the Jedi, and Han the scoundrel with his connection to the underworld.  

This is a chance to tell the true story of Han and Leia's successful life together.  Its Leia's time to take on a more powerful leadership role in the revitalized galactic senate, and for Han to develop a network of traders, smugglers and scoundrels to battle the Hutts and other organized crime figures.

This is a place to develop Luke's deeper understanding of the Force, perhaps by taking on a padawan of his own, and by continuing to interact with Yoda, Ben, and even his father Anakin.  Yes, we need to arc toward the Jedi Academy, but also begin to examine the problems of the old Jedi order that led to their downfall.

Step Three:  We know that the Ahsoka series is coming out in August.  Jon and Dave and all the creatives still left at Disney should take a clear-eyed, unvarnished look at its reception by the fans and learn everything they can from it, completely divorced from The Message.  Yes, it has an abundance of female characters, but each of them is well rounded and solid in their own right.  If Favreau and Filoni can learn the lessons that the fans can teach them, they will be well-equipped to continue that story line.  

This is by far the most controversial of the narratives that are currently under way.  And there are still angry fans who will not be kind or patient with a compromised story.  Listen to them, learn from them, but do not give complete control to their invective.  They are hurt and extremely sensitized to perceived mistreatment of something important to them and are not likely to forgive easily.

And yet if we can manage this series effectively, it does have the potential for immediate and mid-term gain, both creatively and financially.  These are good characters and heroic ones.  Give them a clear moral motivation, heroic efforts, and reinforce teamwork and striving for the common good and their stories can be well received.

Step Four:  Step back from Andor, Dr. Pershing, and all the darker, grittier, unpleasanter sides of Star Wars.  There will be time for them in the future, but that is not now.  Let them live on their own for a bit.


Step Five:  At this moment, say nothing about the sequel trilogy.  Don't do anything to ret-con it, but know that nothing that is happening now will head toward that alternate future.  The future of Star Wars remains unwritten and now is not a time to focus on the mistakes of the past.  Let them sink into the distant past without comment.

Monday, April 17, 2023

The Mandalorian Season 3 Finale predictions

 We need to get some obvious things out of the way.

1.  Episode 7 was titled "the Spies" and a lot of speculation centered around identifying who the spies were that the title referenced.  The easy one was Moff Gideon's spy on Coruscant.  But, the titles have been referring to twin elements, and this title was specifically in the plural.  So there's likely also a spy on the  Mandalorian side as well.

In that episode, both the Armorer and Axe Woves left the planetside contingent of mandalorians and returned to the fleet in orbit over Mandalore.  We also learned that Gideon had launched an attack on the mando fleet using his newly minted TIE interceptors and bombers. Their assault is imminent.  The Armorer had reached the fleet and found it in readiness, and was welcomed back on board

So here's the prediction.  I suspect that Axe will reach the fleet and assume command.  But he will not tell anyone about the problems that the scouting party ran into on the surface.  When Gideon's attack appears, he will attempt to surrender the fleet to Gideon.  In this scenario, Axe Woves is the second 'Spy'.

However, the Armorer will arise to oppose him.  The two of them will engage in a struggle for control of the fleet and the mandos in space will have to choose sides.   This will be a major re cap of Bo katan's theme that the mandalorians can only be defeated when they fight among themselves.  Some of the Night Owls will join Axe, who used to lead them when Bo katan was off pouting.  Others, particularly her own people, will rally to the Armorer's side.

Reality:  Neither of these was a spy.  The "Spies" were the remnant Mandalorians they met on the surface

2.  Din Djarin has been taken prisoner by Gideon, who has transported him to the interrogation room.  There, Gideon will remove Din's helmet and begin questioning him about the location of Grogu.  Gideon is still interested in Grogu as a source of cloning material.  While here, Din begins to seriously question the parts of the  Creed that he has now broken.  

A contrast in being drawn between the fate of Paz Vyzla and Din Djarin.  Paz refused to retreat, refused to follow orders, and was ultimately killed.  Din, instead, was captured and will eventually have his helmet removed, both deep elements of dishonor for a mandalorian.  And yet, neither Din nor the audience can see any way that Din acted ignobly, can't see anything that he could have done differently.  According to the Creed interpretations of the Armorer, Din is a Mandalorian no longer.  This crisis of conscience will weigh deeply on Mando.

Reality:  Din was able to free himself from the Imperial troopers and escape, with the help of Grogu.  His helmet was never removed.

3.  Bo Katan will mount a counter offensive against Gideon's stronghold at the Great Forge.  I suspect that there will be a way to the forge from the Mines, and Bo-Katan will lead the remnant scouts through that way as an attempt to infiltrate Gideon's base.  A fight here will ensue, combining both an unceremonial bathing in the living waters, as well as an appearance of the Mythosaur, facilitated by Grogu calling for its aid.

Reality: Axe Woves was able to reach the Mando fleet using his jetpack and send down the remaining Mandalorians to assist Bo Katan.  They re-entered the base and fought the imperial jetpack troopers.

4.  At some point, the fight in space and the fight in the mines will have ground to a standstill, with Gideon's forces appearing to gain the upper hand.  At this moment, some new element will emerge above Mandalore to enter the fight.  This is probably some Cpt Teva, New Republic Ranger contingent aided by Greef Carga, or it could include elements of Jack Black's droid army.  A deep irony that the mandalorians are now aided by imperial droids, instead of attacking them.

Reality:  There was no last-minute appearance of anyone to assist the assault on Mandalor, other than Grogu emerging as a competent fighter who could assist Din Djarin and Bo Katan Kryze.

5.  Finally, Boba Fett will make an appearance at the end, at some pivotal moment, in conjunction with the mention of Admiral Thrawn's name.  Rather than supporting Gideon, however, Thrawn will instead withdraw support and leave Gideon to the mercy of the now-superior Mandalorian forces.

Reality:  Neither Boba Fett nor Admiral Thrawn either appeared or were mentioned in this final episode.


Monday, February 20, 2023

Stargate SG1: 1.14 Singularity

 Did  Capt Carter Know?

If she has no hope of any kind then she's really suicidal.  And if so, she's weak, not a hero.

The week with Cassandra stirred something in Samantha that shows the same depth of feeling that Daniel had for Sha're or Jack had for his son Charlie, or Teal'c has for his son Ryac.


Stargate SG1: 1.12 Fire and Water

 Here's an episode that seems like it would be good on paper.  But when you actually play it out, it ends up being a tremendous amount of wasting time.  For me it was very frustrating because we spent a lot of storytelling capital on watching, and not much on actually figuring things out.

The summary of the story is this:  The SG1 team returns from a off-world mission, without Daniel.  The rest of the team is all convinced that Daniel died in a fire.  We give him a military burial with full honors, have a wake at Jack's house and then start packing up Daniel's stuff.  This would all be great as far as it goes, but this takes fully half of the episode.  No development, no clues, no plot movement of any kind, nothing to generate any tension.  Coming as it does halfway through the first season of this new series, the audience is pretty sure that Daniel isn't really dead. But without any information to the contrary, we are literally biding our time watching the scenes play out, devoid of any tension because if Daniel isn't dead than nothing is at stake.

Meanwhile, on the alien planet, Daniel wakes up to a rubber suited monster straight out of Doctor Who.  And the alien only says one line, "What Fate Omorroca?"  This maddening line is repeated so often that we are thoroughly sick of it long before we move on to any other dialogue.  Because the line is not interesting, then the alien isn't interesting either.  Daniel actually IS interesting, as he deciphers cuniform writing and places it at 2000 BC, though the text itself means nothing and just when we thought we were going to learn something, we realize that the writing is irrelevant.  Again, we throw up our hands in frustration.

So about this time we learn that Omoroca is Rubber man's mate, in Babylon, 4000 years ago. We are as incredulous as Daniel.  This is part of the failing of this episode:  we don't care about Omoroca, her fate, or Rubber Man.  If there was some intriguing reason why we should find out about her, then we would be more deeply engaged with the story.  The subtext is that this is a parallel of Daniel looking for his own lost love, Sha're.  Daniel, and the audience as well, should be sympathetic with this man's plight.  But at this point, it doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight.

The real hero of this episode is Dr Janet.  She is the one that takes the lead, learning of the altered brain chemistry and seeking for deeper clues.  When she comes on the scene, the story begins heading for a resolution.  Finally with less than 10 minutes left in the show we begin the debriefing that should have happened at the beginning.  We begin to discuss lost time, conditioned responses, uncovering secrets through hypnosis.  All the exciting, mystery-revealing scooby-doo type detective work that should have been the meat of the story, crammed into the last 5 minutes.

In the end, we find out that a goauld murdered Omoroca.  That's it.  No greater story, no deeper meaning.  Just evil goauld being evil. This should have been a great story idea, all of the cool elements are present.  But the execution of the story, the writing of the plot, simply wasn't up to the promise of the premise.


Rating:  2.5 Stars. This wasn't a horrible cringe-inducing nightmare.  In the right hands, this could have been an exciting archaeology expedition worthy of Dr. Jones. However, what we got was less than satisfying.  


This is the only episode of Stargate SG-1 directed by Allan Eastman.

 

C:  We're bringing up the fact that it's an ordinary adventure and we could all die at any random planet.  The writers were trying to make that point.  SG1 team doesn't know that they can't die.

This was an opportunity to reveal that there was a great deal of mutual respect between Jack and Daniel.

 

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Stargate SG1: The Children of the Gods

 This is a rewatch of the old Sci-fi standard, Stargate SG1.  Originally aired in 1997, Stargate was something of a sleeper.  It came on the downslope of the mighty Star Trek juggernaught, which was firmly in the throes of ST: Deep Space Nine (1993-99) and Voyager (1995-2001).  ST: Enterprise (2001-2005) was still on the horizon for Star Trek fans.  Babylon 5 (1993-98) still had another season to run and it was also up against Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and Farscape (1999-2003).  If you were inclined to watch Sci-Fi TV, you had plenty of options to choose from.

In short, Stargate came out in a field crowded with already powerful science fiction properties and some strong new contenders.  It was building on the groundwork laid by James Spader and Kurt Russell in the movie Stargate (1994) but the film had done very little to create a coherent universe, having traveled to a single planet beyond Earth.  As a result, this new series had to capture the feeling of the movie but build an entirely new world in which to place its adventures.

The show bridged several transitions in the TV storytelling medium.  The first seasons were 4:3 boxes of low resolution and weakly saturated color, for example,  while the later seasons were high-res, richly colored widescreen panoramics.  The most important change, though, was the transition from episodic, status-quo episodes to fully written seasons that are now released all at once.  Traditional TV established a status-quo, a steady state of character and world development to which the story always returned before the end of each episode.  The following episode started out in exactly the same place as the one before it.  That gave shows like ST: The Next Generation a comfortable and familiar feel.  

In the nineties, though, shows like the X-Files and especially Babylon 5 began to write metaplot arcs that were visited throughout each season.  Events in earlier episodes were maintained and developed in later episodes in a way that could substantially change the steady state of the universe. SG1, because it had a significant world-building task, used this technique almost from the beginning to develop long reaching story lines and character arcs.  Characters like Samantha Carter and Teal'c were given time to grow with the seasons, and because we saw their origins, we were more closely identified with their victories.

The very first episode of Stargate SG1 attempts to create a bridge to the prior film.  The first scene shows the stargate activated, the serpent-head guards and the face of Apophis.  But it also introduces Teal'c as the leader of Apophis' soldiers and we get a few revealing touches of his character.  For example, when the Jaffa open fire and the US soldiers return fire, Teal'c had ahold of the female soldier.  Rather than subject her to machine gun fire, Teal'c turns around to shelter her behind his metal armor.  I think this reflects his instinct to protect rather than destroy, and even in the opening scene gives us a glimpse into his future character.  

As an aside, in this scene we see Apophis' party come through the gate and watch it disengage behind him.  Then, despite the fact that the US gate has no dialing device, when we next see the Jaffa, they have managed to redial their own homeworld and escape through it.

I love the way we build the team.  We start with Jack O'Neill and establish a relationship with General Hammond.  Both of them go through the process of putting up an abrasive front that harbors something more heroic and caring underneath.  Jack could have kept his secret and let Hammond send the nuclear bomb through the gate, leaving Daniel to his fate.  Instead, he revealed his duplicity and accepted the consequences.  Similarly, Hammond could have proceeded with the bomb, following his orders.  Instead, he chose to preserve the life of  5,000 people on the other side of the gate as well as that of Daniel Jackson.

Before we get to Daniel, however, we take a scene to introduce Captain Carter.  The writers go out of their way to escalate the tension between Jack and Carter.  Initially, we feel like the conflict is because Samantha is a woman, and O'Neill only respects men.  Carter certainly feels that is the case and this allows the writers to introduce her history as both an accomplished pilot (100 hrs over the Gulf War) and as the premier scientist with knowledge of the stargate.  Jack reveals that he is actually more concerned about her status as a scientist, whom he dismisses as "dweebs."  Carter's aggressive self-defense, though, earns Jack's begrudging respect

It reveals another side of Samantha Carter.  It feels like Carter has continually been in a position where she needs to defend her record and capabilities.  She suggests that she should have been on the initial stargate mission but was passed over, possibly unfairly.  And certainly the sentiment in the conference room reflects her fears.  Carter has plenty of self-confidence.  She knows that she knows more than anyone else in the room. But she's worried that once again she won't be given the credibility she deserves.

Next, we go through the gate and find Daniel.  After our heartwarming reunion, and Stargate does that better than anyone, we move into the next scene that has become a classic SG1 storytelling device.  Daniel has discovered a room with a cartouche that unlocks the mystery of stargate navigation.  The cartouche (which in this case is simply a stone tablet with written information on it) gives thousands of gate addresses, revealing that the stargate isn't simply a doorway between two planets, but an entire network of planets, each with its own gate and gate address.  This is a puzzle that Hammond and O'Neill hadn't fully grasped earlier.  They thought that if Apophis came through the gate, it must be from Skarra's world.  With this new information, which Sam and Daniel work out, the gate becomes a doorway to those thousands of planets.  In this one scene, the writers have clearly defined and expanded the Stargate universe, informing not only the current episode but the entire series.

This type of lore drop, the Cartouche scene, occurs throughout the seasons, and they are sometimes hard to pick up on the first time through.  The writers like to obscure the true impact of the scene by interjecting humor or impatience from Jack, or by elevating the tension in the background.  The writers also like to limit their new-found knowledge by destroying the key artifacts before they can be fully studied.

While the SG team is off looking at the cartouche, tragedy befalls the rest of Skarra's people.  The Jaffa visit the planet and abduct both Skarra and Sha're.  In this brief scene, we have given motivation to Daniel and Jack that pulls them through the next several seasons.

 


Monday, January 24, 2022

Blizzard's World of Warcraft State of the Game

 Bellular What's happened to Wow's Lore?  A breakdown of WHY it feels Alienating.

As usual, Bellular is dealing with the large, open question, "What's going wrong with World of Warcraft currently?"  We all can feel that something is not right, but it's hard to identify exactly what the problem is.  Bellular summarizes it in one word:  Alienating.  The world of Azeroth no longer feels like home to its players.

"The writing team has brought us to a 'technical, cosmic place' that feels alien to some."  Bellular opens with the observation that the game in its current iteration feels alien to some players, particularly to long-term players who have seen the lore develop first hand.  And this alienation happens both on a cosmic level, by which he means the deep lore of the game, and also on a technical level where he feels like the technical storytelling tools that Blizzard still uses are left over from 10 years ago, while the narrative style has changed.

Having laid down that thesis, Bellular shifts to ownership and address the question of who owns the WoW storyline. For him, it isn't as simple as saying that the current WoW writing team can do whatever they like.  Instead, they are merely custodians of lore that has existed long before they came upon the scene.

"From our setting emerges a narrative that we've engaged with for decades.  The people who create the narrative, the writing team, are better described as the custodians of Azeroth. Their mandate should be based on our history together as a community, our love of the setting, and our willingness to pay a subscription every month.

"We saw the slow motion car crash of the story in BFA.  I don't think we fully realized how deeply, how fundamentally the writing team failed at their role as custodian of the lore.  That was until the full madness of patch 9.1 was revealed.

It's beginning to feel like the narrative no longer serves the community that is keeping the setting alive.  Blizzard needs to change for the better."

With this opening paragraph, Bellular throws down three unusual claims.  First, that it is the Community that keeps the game going, and that the writing team has a responsibility to the community.  From this perspective, the writing team are merely caretakers of the WoW setting, not arbitrary masters of it.

Second, Bellular flatly asserts that the writing in BFA was a fundamental failure.  The writing team failed in their responsibility to the community.

Third, the writing team could claim that, "No, we are indeed the masters.  You will play our game."  To which, Bellular would point to falling subscriptions, toxic communication from the community, and migration to other games.  If game directors are confused about how those things came about, Bellular is willing to provide an answer.

"Today, we're going to be putting words to that feeling of alienation that a lot of us are feeling with the lore."

Zovaal

I think Bellular makes two main points about Zovaal, the Jailer, that I'm going to consider out of order.  

For the main issue, the most destructive, Bells lays the problem at the feet of Steve Danuser, lead narrative designer for Warcraft.  He thinks that Steve has overwritten the existing lore trajectory involving the Titans and Sargeras, with new lore that focuses on Zovaal.  All the old lore about Sargeras, the rebel Titan who is behind the Burning Legion, happened in narrative that took place before Danuser became head of story.  Accordingly, Steve appears to have no loyalty to it. On the other hand, Zovaal is a new character that Danuser created and now is inserting as the real prime mover behind everything.

"I think what's worse is that for Steve's crew, to put Zovaal at the pinnacle of death they had to overhaul the lore.

"The villain Sargeras, who we've been invested in since the beginning; this is the guy who people thought the whole lore was building up to.  No, actually the Jailer was deeply connected to him as well.  Sargeras was wearing domination rune armor."  So actually, Sargeras was being controlled by the Jailer all along.  "A re -framing so thorough that perhaps it has obliterated the original lore."

Everything that the players have experienced from the first expansion up through Legion and even beyond has all been changed.  Everything we thought we knew may have to be discarded.  All the details and narrative elements that we experienced first hand will have to be re -evaluated in light of this new character, the Jailer.  For long-term players, this is terribly disorienting.

And this transition is made more difficult by the fact that the players know very little about this new character, having only heard about him for a relatively short time.  This is the second of Bellular's Zovaal problems.

"At any point, interrogate who Zovaal is, and you come up with this void of information.  And we're a year into the expansion."  We're being asked to replace years worth of detailed information about Sargeras and the Titans and their struggle with the Old Gods, all of which defined the WoW universe for us up until about five minutes ago.  And the only thing we have to replace it with is a name and an mystery box of who the Jailer is.


The Lore Feels Bad

"The problem is that the lore feels bad right now.  Everything is so wrapped up in mystery, and what we do hear is told to us in intentionally vague ways, so intentionally vague that even if this is the most stellar lore to have ever existed, it feels half-written and bad for the player experience."

The Jailer is a generic bad guy and Blizzard is propping him up by using the clout of Arthas and Sylvannas, and diminishing them in the process.

The problem is that right at the end of the Shadowlands, we're probably going to be given all of Zovaal's intentions.  It will all culminate in a modern Blizzard shock moment  but it won't be satisfying.  Because we didn't even know who this Zovaal guy was a year ago.

The Jailer has been shoe-horned into the lore by connecting to everything that came before to him, but the Jailer doesn't contribute anything back to the lore in return.  In other words: If you remove the Jailer the lore is unchanged, if you remove the lore the Jailer becomes the hollow shell of the character he truly is.

So this is a point that Bellular returns to several times.  We all know that there is this big book of lore in the Blizzard offices where everything has all been worked out.  But the storytelling style that they have adopted is to reveal only microscopic fragments of this lore to the players.  They are hoping that the players can collectively put this together into a discernible narrative without knowing all the pieces, and by doing so that the narrative will feel deeper than it actually is.  But Bells takes it further and says that even the fragments that we are actually given are intentionally made even more vague, are deliberately obfuscated because they don't want players to figure out what is going on until the writers are ready for them to know.  d

So here's the problem.  Its actually impossible for writers, who know everything in the big book of lore, to know how the players, who don't know, will perceive their story.  The writers can't know if the story is coming across as they intend or not.  And it's very likely that what seems obvious to the writers is completely inscrutable to the average group of players.   Now if there is enough time, say several expansions of lore drops and hints, then the story will eventually emerge.  But if there is only something on the scale of a few patches, maybe half an expansion, and the lore drops are hidden in scripts that are 15 words long, it is doubtful that anything like a satisfying understanding is attainable.

 

Lore Speculation

"We've wondered if Lore Speculation is becoming too dominant. If the narrative is now geared toward this mystery box speculation.  Speculation will always be an incredible part of the Warcraft lore."  But that's all it is, a component of a greater narrative whole.  Speculation was based on background lore.  and it takes its place in the background of a larger narrative.

Now it appears that Speculative lore is all there is, and there is very little foreground narrative.  Speculative lore makes the game feel huge, but it was always grounded in the narrative of the game that we knew.  When speculative narrative is all there is, instead of the game feeling huge, it instead feels empty.  It feels less alive.

Blizzard has taken that speculation energy and made it so mysterious that you cannot even speculate on it any more.  Blizzard writers have become so addicted to speculative mystery boxes that we don't have any information about the next patch, let alone the cosmic trajectory of the next expansion.


Elune

This was a breaking point for many in the community in how it was done.  This is a case of not satisfying everyone, obviously, but does this new Elune stuff stand up?  The current trajectory does make me and many others uneasy.  A huge problem is in how the story is actually being told:

I. Teldrassil was burned and we are explicitly told that Elune kind of abandoned her people in the moment of the burning.  Many of the Night Elves believed as much at the time.

II. Then, we're told in patch 9.1 that Elune at least tried to ferry those souls to Ardenweald in the Shadowlands.  Where now we know they essentially turn into cosmic fertilizer, which is a bit grim.  Elune told the Winter Queen that she sent those souls to the Shadowlands. (Instead of what? allowing them to become wisps and reincarnate? instead of intervening and preventing them from dying in the first place? Its all very vague.)  Elune's suggested goal was to provide Ardenweald with extra anima.

III.  But why did Elune think that would be effective?  Could she ensure that these souls even went to Ardenweald? Could she bypass the Arbiter and show special treatment to these souls?  Well, No.  Those souls went to the Maw and therefore had to pass through the regular sorting process of the Arbiter, which was now switched off.  This means that Elune can't bypass the Arbiter and judgement is the role of the Arbiter.  And Elune didn't have enough influence with the Arbiter to even know that it was switched off.  The rules of Blizzard's lore don't even feel consistent.

If you're a Night Elf player, you're just thinking, "What was all of this misery and destruction even for?  How is the lore of the race in WoW that I connect with the most - how has it been pushed forward? How is it interesting?  I don't really think it is."

Then, the justifications and revelations of Elune are given to us piecemeal in cinematics with 15-word scripts.  And while we love mystery, this feels half-written.  It feels like huge pieces are missing.  Where they could write words that will give people a framework for understanding, they always go in the direction of more mystery. 

This lore could be incredible.  I think this Elune-lore could completely do Elune justice. But we actually need to know it.  We don't know all the information that the WoW writers know.  And I think they don't know how it feels to just get the snippets that they give us.  Enough with the mystery.  Either give us enough to do Elune justice, or put Elune back in the box.


Meta Physics

Lore is only fun when it is surrounding a satisfying story.  Story is the thing that matters the most.  

Much of a good story lies in the telling of that story.  And with video games it is more complex.  World of Warcraft is a game, and interaction is important.  And that is where Warcraft is falling behind.

In WoW, NPCs dispense walls of text at you.  And they are often just OK in the writing department.  Quest text is written by quest designers, whereas in FFXIV the quest text is actually written by writers.  When NPCs speak, it is often talking at you.  Take the Thrall/Drakka conversation in Korthia.  It's nice to see those characters chat, but you are barely involved.  And throughout, there's quite a bit of telling rather than showing.  NPCs tend to deliver blocks of exposition and use phrases like "Maw Walker" and other depersonalizing terms.  We are told we are the maw walker but we didn't actually chose that, so it isn't a core part of our fantasy.  

All these things reinforce the idea that you the players are a plot device, not a character.  I've met Jaina many times. And those times have been at her most vulnerable, her most emotionally charged, at some of the lowest points of her life.  I would appreciate it if she just said, "You" and talked to me directly, rather than call me Maw Walker. These are the core problems:  Othering language that breaks immersion, telling rather than showing, big walls of text, and NPCs talking at you. 

Historically, this was not a problem because we were essentially minor adventurers making our way through lots of small stories, in and around these larger than life heroes.  But over time that has changed.  WoW's story is closer to you being the chosen one.  And this requires a change in story telling techniques.  The older ways do not suffice.

Rather than walls of text,   Blizzard should frame quests as dialogue between the character and the NPC. This necessitates a change in how quests are written.   They're probably going to need this stuff to be handled by writers.  Players should click through NPC dialogue.  And that dialogue should be framed as a conversation with the player, not a wall of text.

RP focused dialogue options should be presented, as they let a player better define their character.  this is a problem for Blizzard.  They would never do this in the past because they would want that dialogue choice to matter in terms of game play. They are all about "Gameplay First!" so  they would want these dialogue choices to lead to complex branching storytelling which is difficult.  But giving someone a dialogue choice is really important, because it lets them define who their character is.  

Most dialogue options in Mass Effect do not matter in terms of narrative outcomes.  Of course they matter to the player experience because that's you, talking through your character, defining your take on who Commander Shepherd is.  If Blizzard wants to tell a story where you are a Character, then they need to update their storytelling tools.  Telling a story that outpaces your means for telling it is a recipe for failure.


"The pacing of narrative arcs is a disaster within World of Warcraft.   Battle for Azeroth rocketed through multiple expansions worth of material, doing justice to none of it. This, by the way, betrays player investment in any of those plot points.  If you were a massive fan of Old God lore, you were not happy at the end of BFA.  If you were a massive fan of Queen Azshara lore, you were not happy at the end of BFA.   And in telling this story, they actually required two novellas, a book, and a bunch of other external material for all of that lore to properly make sense."  What we're saying here is that Blizzard has plenty of narrative material to continue to release in minor patches, but they would rather occupy the players' time with meaningless Korthia daily grinds.  This is what has to change.

WoW's emotes were designed to be viewed at a distance,which is why they are exaggerated.  Stylistically, they are very goofy, and they were conceived during Warlords of Draenor, before in-game cut scenes existed in world of warcraft.  In-game animation assets were designed at an earlier time when character animations were intended to be comic.  With the current reliance on cut scenes using those same animations, WoW has a problem delivering serious storytelling moments.


Sylvannas

Sylvannas has been a low-key community favorite for a long time.  Once the courageous Ranger-General turned Banshee Queen, who literally dragged the Forsaken up from their graves.  She has created one of the most powerful militaries on Azeroth. 

She has left such a profound mark on our setting, but one that now feels poisoned by her casual dismissal of the Horde, in the way that it was presented. And abandonment of Azeroth for the Shadowlands.  But Sylvannas' true reasons for joining the Jailer, and the atrocities that ensued, that's not something we've explored in-game.

But it's a betrayal of her character to be betrayed by death again, to be used by the Jailer again, where her whole arc was recovering from the trauma of Arthas, who essentially ended up being himself a pawn of the jailer.  So she's gone through two of these Serve and Rebel arcs with the Jailer.  Now she contrives world wars to feed some cosmic maw in the afterlife just she she can juice up her boss, Zovaal.  And that's a good-faith reading of the material:  that Sylvannas had her own agency and believed that her own best interests were served with the Jailer.  The worst reading is that she has been in an abusive relationship with the Jailer for a long, long time.

At the end of BFA, we had that scene in Windrunner Spire that had people excited:  is she going to be the next expansion's villain, is she going to strike back, will there be a Lich Queen, What will Sylvannas do?   And then all of that worked up emotion pretty much dissipated.  No, in fact Sylvannas was not sympathetic at all, She was just a servant.  At BlizCon, Blizzard told us that Sylvannas was an Ally of Zovaal, not a servant.  But that was clearly a straight up lie, given the end of patch 9.1 when Zovaal flicked away her wild arrow.  

So we are promised that all these questions will be explained in the upcoming Sylvannas novel.  The main selling point of this non-game novel is that we'll get the full picture of Sylvannas, but we should get all the narrative we need of Sylvannas within the the World of Warcraft video game.  That's the thing people are paying for.  That has been one of the central narratives of WoW for the last two expansions or more.  You shouldn't need to buy supplementary material to properly understand the main story content that is in the game.  This Sylvannas novel just underscores the problems facing our narrative.

We do not know Sylvannas' motivations fully even now, despite the fact that she has betrayed Zovaal.  We don't know her journey to the state of mind that saw her signing up with Zovaal.  Her story has not adequately been explained in-game either, through quest text, cinematics or otherwise.  To get a deeper appreciation, we need to read many external sources.  Her arc has been re-framed and re-framed into oblivion and they haven't dealt with the huge philosophical questions that Sylvannas herself posed to us when she said to us things like she would set us all free.  We still don't really know what that means.  

It has all culminated in a deep feeling of alienation from a character once considered to be core to what Warcraft meant.  There's a question of whether foregrounding her story in BFA would have made this story easier to swallow but this ship has sailed.

Shadowlands

Who are the truly memorable characters of this expansion?  Beside a few solid scenes with Denathrius, there are essentially no memorable characters in Shadowlands. And that includes the cast of characters we brought with us from Azeroth.  Tyrande is frozen into an action by a conflicted Goddess; the whole night warrior arc feels like it's done nothing but tease us about Elune.  We've got Baine Bloodhoof just sitting around in Oribos all day doing nothing.  There's Bolvar who did nothing  and finally got around to invading Korthia but now stands around the Respite doing nothing.

Then we have Anduin, who even within the snail's pace story advancement of the patch cycle these days is making these breakneck character changes, from the peace-loving prince, to the war torn king, to the ultimate tool of domination.  But even in this domination arc, Anduin himself has been a passive force in the story.  I think one of the problems here has been passive characters.

Because the narrative machine is broken, all of these great characters with great motivations and huge narrative potential are just stationed in Oribos, staring into the middle distance, not really doing anything.  What about Thassarian and Koltira Deathweaver?  They're both in Oribos and haven't done anything yet.  People care about those characters.  They actually had cool stories in the past.  Were they ever intended to have content in the shadowlands but it was cut?  Why are they there, but not being used?

 Bellular:  I do believe that Steve Denuser and his narrative team have a full conception of everything that is going on right now, that they know where the plot is going and how it's all going to line up.  I do believe that they have it all mapped out and they probably have some incredible looking cork boards around the Blizzard office.  The problem is that the bits of that grand narrative tapestry that we get are not being served up in a satisfying fashion.  We're currently halfway through that process in Shadowlands, and I think it does feel pretty rough.

I think the community needs to rally around constructive ideas about what it means to go home.  Bring it back to Azeroth.  By all means tell your cosmic stuff, but it needs to be grounded in the setting and it needs to have a very solid, well-told story driving it forward.  Not a bunch of walking mystery boxes vaguely talking at us.


Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Character Arcs

"A character's want is the surface level goal driving them.  Their need is the lesson they gradually learn over the course of their story."  (A Closer Look)  "That lesson is almost always to learn how misguided their initial want is."

While I would use different vocabulary to approach this concept, the idea itself is perfect.  A character is a narrative element that has motivation that is driving it.  Rey is looking for a place to belong, Rey is looking for a way to unlock the potential inside her that will allow her to do good and therefore justify her belonging.  Rey has to find her own path to realize that potential rather than relying on some outside force.

Where this breaks down, however, is when we have a character with no motivation.  Fin, for example, is running from a life of  brutality and violence.  Fin is trying to find a new life with the Resistance that is opposing the violent First Order.   Fin likes to follow Rey around.

You see how in this progression, Fin starts out with a motivation and is successful.  But in the second film, Fin begins to falter in his motivation.  By the third story, Fin has no motivation whatsoever, and is merely a presence on screen.


The second vocabulary change is in The Lesson.  Closer's Boseley suggests that the lesson is to learn how misguided the initial want is.  I think about this in terms of a character's Arc.  It's not a straight line, but it is a trajectory, a pathway that takes that person from their initial motivation to a place of resolution.  As suggested, that final resolution may not be what the character initially envisioned.  But in order for an arc to have taken place, the character must resolve the initial tension with which they begin the story.

The Force Awakens - Rey: initial tension:   waiting for someone to return and make her life better but she understands that something is wrong.  Progression:  realizing that the person she's waiting for is not coming back.  Resolution:  Accepting that she can no longer wait on Jakku, and instead will be happier struggling for something larger and better than herself.  Rey follows a classic arc in that she starts with initial tension, undergoes a transition that both brings enlightenment and starts her on a different pathway, finally resolving the tension and placing her in a new and more powerful situation.

Now, how can a character fail?   The obvious situation is that they fail to undergo any of the elements of a character arc. They are the same at the end as at the beginning.

But the failure can be more subtle as well.  For example, a character seems to have an arc and goes through transition, but ultimately ends up where they started.  Similarly a character describes an arc that doesn't end up resolving the central tension that they started with.  Yes they end up in a different place, but the central tension remains.   

So in Rise of Skywalker (RoS), the Emperor offers Rey unlimited power as an inducement to undergo his ritual transformation.  But since Rey has never expressed any interest in unlimited power, the audience doesn't see any tension in this offer:  of course Rey will refuse it.  What he's offering is not even a choice for her; it doesn't offer Rey anything that she wants.  But if this choice is devoid of tension, then the scene is also devoid of tension.  It's merely spectacle.  It's like the Bond villain gloating over his plan, leaving Rey and the audience feeling powerless.

More subtly, the character appears to change over the course of the story, but the audience doesn't understand why the changes are happening:  the changes appear un-earned.  We see the changes but we don't follow the arc that led the character to their new perspective.  


Scenes.  We've discussed that Characters have arcs where the tension of their unresolved wants are slowly resolved.  Scenes also have a similar trajectory.  Scenes exist so that story elements can take place within them.  We sometimes call these story elements "beats.":  Characters can have beats just as scenes can.  A beat is the important thing that is happening in the scene that  leads the narrative toward its final goal.  Beats are often moments of tension that resolve in a particular direction, and through their resolution create a new framework in which the story takes place.

For example:  in SW: ANH, in the scene where Han and Luke are preparing for the impending arrival of the Death Star, Luke is dismayed that Han is running away from the battle.  The tension in this scene is that Luke has higher expectations for Han's character.  The story beat is that Han is simply out for himself and has no allegiance to any greater good or higher calling.  We need to lay down this beat here, so that we can resolve the tension in a later scene where Han returns to the battle to clear Luke for his attack run. 


At the beginning, show how the character is stuck in some way.  The characters are doing something, but it's not a fulfilling existence.


The outer motivation:  the visible goal

the inner journey:   how the character needs to change 


typically a character is caught between these two desires:  the outer, visible, obvious goal, and the inner state of things that is preventing the outer goal from being realized.  They are stuck in this exterior dilemma because of their unwillingness to abandon the safe status quo of their inner state.  this is the Inner Conflict.  Put simply, in order to resolve their outer problem, they need to work through their inner conflict.

Stage 1:  the setup  establishing who the characters are and we see the full realization of the character's inner identity. 

Stage 2:  the opportunity.  this is the chance that the character receives to begin working toward a different state.  Something happens to the character that forces them into Stage 2 is a new situation.  and in stage 2, the primary goal of the character is to figure out what's going on.  In stage 2 the character gets a glimpse of what living in his new inner identity might be like.  He sees a vision of a better world, though he isn't able to grab it yet.  and just as importantly, the audience sees that same vision.

At the end of stage 2, another event happens that drives the character to making a change towards this new vision.  Taking the first steps to achieve it.

Emotion grows out of conflict, so the more difficult the obstacles to overcome, the more invested and more interested the audience will be.   another example is empathy.  We feel sympathy for the obstacles the character has faced in the past.  Putting a character in jeopardy makes us feel empathy for what a character might f ace in the future.


Stage 3 is Progress. where the character formulates a plan and starts going after that goal.  They face obstacles, which start to multiply, but they appear to be "making progress" toward the external goal

On the inside, on the inner journey,  the inner state begins to hinder their progress.  They begin to be confronted by the things about the inner state that have always kept them "stuck" in the past.  Contemplating changing the inner state is terrifying, however.  In this stage, the hero will vacillate between changing to a new inner state, and running back to the old one.  They will advance along their inner journey and then retreat, causing problems for the external goal.  Each advance will take them incrementally further.

At some point in this oscillation, the character will progress the internal transition to a point of no return.  Their interior journey will continue to a new state, where they can no longer retreat back to their original status, and they face a crisis.  something will happen to demand or lead the character to make a deeper commitment to the goal. 

Moments of Dramatic Impasse:   a dramatic moment where two characters are striving against each other but neither can gain the upper hand in the current conflict.  They must find another way to achieve their objective

Moments of Dramatic Synthesis:The moment when characters who were previously at odds find a common goal or common ground, so they are no longer in conflict, at least for the present.  they can move forward together with a better sense of understanding.

Interiority:  the emotional and psychological space that they occupy at the moment.

Spinning Plates:  When the story begins to layer a number of elements of  tension on top of each other.  The danger isn't coming from just one direction, but from multiple threats.  There could be a physical threat, an emotional threat, and a psychological threat.

Out of the Frying Pan...  Escaping one predicament only to land in a greater one.

Stacking the Odds:  Escalating the danger the protagonists are in.


Character Foil:  A character in circumstances similar to the hero, presented with the same moral choices, makes different and less optimal decisions.  Used to demonstrate how badly things could have gone if our hero lacked moral character.

The Ending is Earned:   good payoffs come from good setups.  Action that is foreshadowed, action that is prefigured is always more satisfying.

What's the thing the characters could do at the end of the movie, that they couldn't do at the beginning?


Just because we know the ending does not mean this can't be a good movie, but we have to care about the people.  "We had characters with emotional stakes and different motivations that conflict with each other. What's interesting is having different characters with different motivations that play off each other and show their humanity.  Watching someone go to a place to get a thing that you know they are going to get is not interesting."