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World of Warcraft Shadowlands concludes the story of Zovaal the Jailer in the 9.2 raid Sepulcher of the First Ones. There is a new cinematic showing us his death, but also a snippet of his past and the promise of a new, EVEN BIGGER bad. The raid ending has not gone down well in the community, with many claiming that the lore and history of Warcraft from WC3 through Wrath of the Lich King to now has been butchered in service of a dud. Taliesin embarks on another cinematic deep-dive analysis of the Jailer death cinematic and asks… why does everyone hate the Shadowlands finale?
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You have unlocked part of why I dislike the cinematic, but why didn't you unlock tiersets for me Tali?
So much retcon and so many cool characters such as nerzhul (they did dirty in Wod as well) KelthuZad, Arthas, Sylvannas, Arthas, Nightelves lore with stories that were somehow an stablished lore…so damaged after this shit show.
I think you nailed it. The intro cinematic was fine, I even though the use of the Forge of Souls was pretty cool. The ending though…. ya we should have seen those flashbacks at the beginning, being a player of FFXIV as well I feel this would have been the flashback that the Echo would have given us the first time we heard the Jailer/Zovaal referred to as the Banished One. It gives us a bit of a tease of him being banished while also showing characters we haven't really met yet, but will. It would then give us the drive to actually seek out those characters and learn about the Jailer's motivations and past actions. That way maybe we could start to piece together his goal. We STILL don't know what he wanted to do. What does he mean "remake reality", like remake it to do what? Just so he can rule it? That seems dumb, go conquer it if that is your goal, not remake it. I have to assume that whatever this bigger threat (not a fan of this trope as it is becoming a very bad pattern, but whatever its an MMO and there always has to be something worse to give us a reason to continue, still not a fan) meant that there was some fundamental flaw in the way the First Ones organized the cosmos that made it a threat. So what was the flaw that required such drastic measures? I'd call the Jailer 1-dimensional, but he isn't even that. He is literally just a plot device to give us a boss fight, at least for all we actually learned about him.
haven't watched the video yet, but I think the song "King Nothing" by metallica fits the jailer. Because he is king of nothing.
Sargeras: Gets sucked off.
N'Zoth: Gets blown.
Jailer: Gets drained.
I'm sensing a theme here.
I think the biggest problem of the cinematic hasnt even been mentioned:
Barely anything happened. Sure we got the flashback, but nothing in it is any new information. Nothing about What the covenant leaders are saying is of any substance to the story. The only thing that is doing anything new is the "ohh theres something bigger coming" meme at the end, but that is barely enough to warrant it being a cinematic in the first place. My issue was that it was basically 1:40 of tropes without any substance. I have a hard time explaining it but it just wasnt… enough
so defend blizzard for giving us wod 2.0
Anyone else getting a Marvel's Eternals vibe?
these flashback scenes should have been at the start of the expansion
Really appreciate the take! I went from being annoyed at the "There's always a bigger bad and I'm the good guy" that always happens to being happy with that and having the same feeling you were saying.
23:22 Did you jump ship? What's with the life preserver? Do you think you're gonna drown, dork?
Exhaustion, I think is what most players are feeling.
You can't look at this ending to the raid in just a bubble. The past two years saw WoW drop in the minds of so many, and for multiple reasons.
I think players just wanted 'one cool thing' to show for it all. Something that would really blow everyone's expectations, instead we got more of the same.
While I do try and stay positive about the game, my initial gut reaction to that second cut scene was definitely a big negative. And I've been having a few unhappy days dwelling on it. I was not expecting or wanting another cliffhanger, "the real fight is yet to come" situation. I wanted a definitive ending. Moreso than ever in this case because I just wanted to put the Jailer behind us. They have been doing this roll-over ending thing since MoP, and it's just kind of tiresome.
Tali, your analysis is good. I think i agree with it, and it has actually made me feel a bit more agreeable to the situation. But my initial reaction still looms large. I really do hope the next few weeks regain my enthusiasm for the story in some way.
Tali a few weeks ago: "Anyone who thinks the Jailer is playing 5D chess is wrong and doesn't understand what's going on."
Jailer in the first cutscene: "Oh, I was definitely playing 5D chess and literally everything I did for millennia is coming to fruition in the next 30 minutes…I even used the term 'pawns' to hammer that point home for those who haven't figured it out. Everything was me!"
This is so funny, but World of Warcraft as Shadowland gods or such are Angels/Neutral/Devil, just like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle Gardens with Chaos Chao Types. Chao are so much better.
15:40 – the final insult
Reorigination. Reorigination. WHy is no one focusing on reorigination.
I didn't hate the ending, clickbait thumbnail
Man if the jailer had won it would have been the perfect excuse for a Warcraft 4, I really want another fantasy RTS, pipe dream, I know
I firmly believe Blizz needs to embrace "dramatic irony", and stop trying to keep the audience in the dark. The CHARACTERS can be in the dark, fine. But the AUDIENCE, us, well…this shit needs to stop. 2 years later and we don't know what or why he was trying to accomplish.
Ugh.
The only thing about the cinematic that appealed to me was that the design for the robot version of the Jailer was pretty nifty.
But you see, with your reasoning you can pull the "oh but I did it because an even bigger baddie (that I will never specify) is coming" excuse indefinitely because they will all be talking about the next iteration. I do agree that this animation is not abysmal, its just the catalyst for all the frustration players have felt with this antagonist and the overall state of the lore.
Calling for the jobs of inept or incapable leaders is not a villainous thing for consumers to do. If they repeatedly fail to deliver a satisfactory product to their consumers, if the product itself fails and falters under their leadership, they should absolutely be removed from those leadership positions. Ion might be a nice guy and a swell individual, but WoW has died under his leadership and he needs to be removed as game director. Simple as that. Same with the story leads and creative heads and anyone who is a decision maker in story delivery. Does that mean Steve Danuser should be fired? Maybe. Or Christie Golden? Maybe. Whoever is greenlighting this awful storytelling needs to be replaced with someone more competent. Simple as that. When leadership fails, it must be replaced. And it is the leadership of WoW, the director, the creative leads, and the ones who are allowing this product to be published in this awful state who should be held accountable for their failings.
19:00 isn't that the jailers sigil? A representation of eternity using the infinity symbol?
Yep! It did feel off and you have qualified that correctly. It's also frustrating that we know the narrative team is filled with good people but can't seem to get the right message across…
Hahahahah omg that ending was the cherry on a fantastic cake! Thank you for this 😀
men i'm tired with this copium you have, Praise blizz Praise blizz ,This cinamtic was shit like Whole expansion they fucked up what was best in game LORE , unsubed
As crummy as the story is, it reminds me of Kings and Dictators ya know? How many of them find their peers to be incapable of performing the task needed for the realm, country, state, etc etc and so they wrestle control for themselves and slip into darkness. While we will never see Hitler in a favorable light, people like Napoleon, Attila, Nobunaga and so on have been reevaluated lately. They may the villains we're aware of, but even if we had known the grand design, would we really be able to comprehend a plan on that grand of a scale? I think not.
Looking through the WoW community, it's such an echo chamber of vitriol that it's hard to find level-headed criticisms. I really appreciate this channel for offering that and explanations for those criticisms.
Was that future taliesin trying to warn us about how disapointing the next expansion reveal will be? I got the feeling it was.
I used to feel one good cinematic away from coming back to the game (last week) but now I’d rather the game the just die. I didn’t think I could still yet be disappointed in shadowlands but here we are
Having a Murder She Wrote reference warmed my geriatric millennial heart.
The Icecrown Citadel skybox did not change. Sad to tell you, but i've seen that skybox rip in the skies long before shadowlands. "Edit" They may have updated the textures and made some changes, not sure. But that rip has always been there
Shadowlands did only 2 things for me: more content from T&E and Asmongold. Happy I didnt waste my time on playing it.
I appreciate the deep dive into the cinematic. And you guys do put a different perspective that always makes people think. 25:00 I think this is a really good point that I have felt as well. But honestly with this cinematic it's just so bad and exhausting to hear the same thing and never truly being told what is happening without the why or the who every single time. It just makes it feel like a never ending cliff hanger and a constant failure of a story conclusion. It leads to half of this video being left to speculation. I would think it would be so cool for nzoth and the jailer to be afraid of the same big bad but imagine if both villains name dropped this big bad. Then we could confirm it rather than it being speculation. So when the big bad finally comes there is at least some knowledge of this being, something to connect him in previous lore so he doesn't become another jailer. I think it's bad story writing to have to speculate and guess every aspect of the who, what, where, when, why, and how at every big story moment. Truthfully there is no saving this second cinematic, no light to shine on it l, it's one of the worst most disappointing things they've made and I'm unfortunately not surprised.
I didn't hate it, I just hung my head and was sad at what the end of 20 years came to. I had to have a warcraft junkie explain this whole ending to me. I found out I had to have played warcraft 3 and read some of the trashy books they published. Once I had done that I would have gone OH YA GREAT. My response was, I play world of warcraft, not warcraft 3. I don't read trash. This was just pathetic, trying to paint him as a hero to save all of us from "something else" that is worse. The whole thing was just terrible.
I have to ask, as alliance I spent all this time killing pirates and witches, grinding out stupid things, going to shadowlands which disconnected us completely from bfa including ALL that grinding required gear, more grinding etc… then this where all the stupid grinding is not good anymore but wait MORE meaningless grinding and at the end, I stand there going this is it? really? REALLY?
I think Tali has confused the criticisms. His frustration about the way the flashback is an opening, not a closing, how it promotes the real question is the same frustration as almost all of us had, which is the same "there is another bigger threat coming I was trying to save <Azeroth, World, or Universe> from" trope which we have now seen again and again and again in WoW. If this cinematic had been as the start and we had the extra scenes or information in game where we see the Jailer's motivations and actions more, as you described, then this cinematic lands differently. None of that happened. None of those scenes exist. So we are left with the way it actually played out, which feels like a completely unearned reveal about another looming threat which plays out as just another carrot on the end of another stick. It is frustrating and laughable. This is the main criticism I have seen and what I felt. Tali's take is just a refinement of that same criticism.
Yup, I legit wasn't even that mad until they did the "there is a big bad coming" as the """"final conclusion of a story we've planned since WC3""""
Always appreciate your take even if I don't always agree with it
@13:57 What if an Eternal one cannot be killed by another Eternal one? That would explain why Zoval was imprisoned. and also why the Primus was also empoisoned when defeated by Zoval.
trash story lol
This cinematic is like, if you were to watch a different version of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (a version that sucked throughout instead of being awesome), and, at the end, as Thanos fades away, he reveals that he only wanted to kill half (or later all) of the beings in the universe because he already knew about the celestials or the beyonders or some shit. The only logical response is to ask: then why didn’t you say that? Because clearly they never planned for that to be the case
The annoying thing is that they baited us with this 'mysterious' new threat despite the fact that it's pretty obviously the devourers. Like, we have an infinite army of entropic universe-devouring entities that are constantly attacking the entire afterlife and even the zereth facilities that created all of reality and nobody seems to talk about it or take them seriously…
A very fair and repectful analysis Tali. This is why I always look forward to yours over other emotionally charged "reactions".
Wow is getting way to big of scale that it doesn’t make sense that we keep winning.. the fact that there’s a threat that rivals or is stronger than the titans, shadowlands pantheon, and void lords? Feels un-immersive.