The Queue: Competing for the biggest cynic in the room

I’m not sure whether Matt or I were the most cynical team members reacting to this week’s Overwatch anime, but you should probably ask him next week to see for yourself. For better or worse, to know what I’m talking about you’ll have to read to the end, because I will attempt to answer a few less fraught questions first.

I think it was planned from the start. Every time Blizzard has added a new class to the game, it’s had ties to the story, often with a very significant role in the expansion. Dragonflight has taken that idea to the next level, building the idea of a third specialization into a story thread that’s been hinted at since launch: it’s just taken this long for that story to culminate so we can play the new spec.

If this wasn’t planned from the very start, it was planned far enough out to build a pretty significant narrative around it, and I think it works. It fits into the evolving story of the Dracthyr, which I’ve been enjoying.

And, on a practical note, it did give Blizzard more time to work on the spec. They could see how Dracthyr were being played, make balance adjustments and design choices with data to consider, and fix bugs in the class as a whole. Because Augmentation is a very different type of spec, the extra lead in time works. Give people time to get used to the core class, make sure it’s solid and fix all the bugs. Then roll out this third, more experimental specialization once the dust has settled.

I think it’s going to work out well, but that’s no sign that Blizzard plans to do this for any other spec. As I said, Blizzard has always lavished special attention and story on new classes when they arrive, and I just don’t see old classes getting the same treatment.

I love turning things to ice and smashing them into tiny pieces. It’s just so satisfying, and I think it’s all the more satisfying because I’m doing it on a Necromancer with a build no one else seems to use and everyone I play Diablo with seems to think is mildly insane.

It’s a product of a number of potentially poor life choices, but it works well in combination. It uses a full set of Darkness skills, taking the talent that turns Corpse Explosion into a cloudy puddle of shadow rather than an explosion of blood and the legendary that turns Blood Wave into a Darkness skill (as well as the legendary that makes Blood Wave fire off three times, which is also satisfying). The key is the Bloodless Scream unique Scythe, which makes my Darkness skills also chill (and eventually freeze) enemies, as well as giving me bonus damage against chilled and frozen enemies. Then you double down on freezing by using Cold Mages and double down on that with the legendary power that makes them cast Blizzard practically non-stop. Your enemies become ice cubes and shatter before you, leaving nothing but puddles in your wake.

In an expansion called Wrath of the Lich King, Arthas had to be everywhere. He was pervasive. The Death Knight starting experience was an all-new thing for World of Warcraft, and whether you did or didn’t play a Death Knight, you saw Arthas all the time: in dungeons, in quests. He was all over the place well before Icecrown Citadel opened.

But I think he sort of suffered from over-exposure. Sure, it worked, but his constant appearances didn’t always generate an air of menace. All we saw was Arthas trying and failing to stop us, constantly. Every dungeon we ran was a look at how much time and attention Arthas was spending to barely get in our way. Sometimes less can be more.

Arthas being everywhere also prevented us from really digging into Ulduar, which was such a great raid but felt like the tiniest side quest because it was so disconnected from all of the Arthas stuff. (And also because we had to rush right through it because Trial of the Crusader took us right back to the Arthas story with better gear which meant there was no reason to go back, or, perhaps, even finish Ulduar in the first place.) The focus on Arthas both didn’t serve Arthas and pushed other things to the sidelines.

Wrath is still one of my favorite expansions, but I think we do get a reasonable amount of villain time these days, just in different ways. Think about the Azshara short in Battle for Azeroth. Azshara appeared a few times throughout the expansion, but you felt her presence (and N’Zoth’s presence) even when she wasn’t on screen. That short hit an emotional note that stuck with you and colored your perception of what was happening, even though it was just that: a brief, semi-animated video.

In Shadowlands, we were kept quite up to date on what Sylvanas was up to via cinematics, even though she doesn’t tromp around the Maw or hang out in dungeons waiting for us to appear so she can spring a trap. She didn’t have to be everywhere, and we still got to follow her narrative as well as our own.

And now, in Dragonflight, we similarly saw Razsageth quite a few times in cinematics and quests — she was extremely present while we leveled through the Dragon Isles. Not as much as Arthas in Wrath, but still a lot. She may not be in every dungeon, but her presence is acutely felt.

TLDR: I just don’t think we need to spend that much time with the big bass for them to be big and bad (or for the Warcraft team to tell great stories about them).

You can’t ask me such an easily answered question and not expect me to answer it. (In fairness, I assume Red asked this before he realized how horribly cynical I am.)

The initial episode was… fine. It was perfectly adequate.

That’s really the most complimentary thing I can say about it.

As the first episode of any type of entertainment, I think it suffers very much from being a recap of known story that doesn’t tread any new ground or ask any new questions. If you follow Overwatch lore, you know exactly where this is going. And if you don’t follow Overwatch lore, you still know exactly where this is going because AI taking over and a war resulting is a pretty standard sci-fi trope at this point. Some shows/games/etc have taken this in interesting new directions, but this short makes no attempt to: it is telling the standard AI gone wrong story in a standard anime style.

It is more of a trailer for a future episode than an episode itself, and even in that sense it feels weak. It lacks any kind of hook to interest potential viewers: it shows a predictable story without a hint that it has anything new or novel to present. It does not make you want to stick around for episode 2 next week, by which point you may have forgotten this even existed.

So I don’t think the series is off to a great start. The initial episode suffers from being a short recap, and it’s possible that taken as a whole it will be something deeper, more interesting, that takes us somewhere new in the Overwatch story. It also suffers greatly from previous Overwatch shorts being so damn good. Previous shorts were tightly written, full of surprises and emotional punches. When you watched them you immediately wanted to watch them again.

Genesis doesn’t have that same impact, and it doesn’t seem to be making an effort to. It’s fine. Perfectly fine. For the advertisement it is, telling us all to tune in for the next Overwatch season when we’ll be able to pay $15 to see the end of this story in the upcoming story missions.

I don’t know if that will be the case, but we now know that at least a third of the series is basic scene-setting, culminating in a long look at the Overwatch 2 Invasion logo. That makes me think we’re tuning in to an advertisement more than a piece of entertainment, just the way Saturday morning cartoons exist to make us want to buy toys.

And since the entire point of Overwatch 2, the entire reason for making a “sequel” to the game, is to get us to pay regularly as well as spend time improving engagement metrics with the battle pass grind, tossing out entertainment as an advertisement makes a lot of sense.

It’s fine. It’s just what Overwatch is. I shouldn’t expect more, but the quality of previous content made me greedy, hoping to get more of what the game’s lore once offered. If I was more cynical and watched it expecting a Saturday morning cartoon rather than a piece of media in line with what the Overwatch team has previously produced, I wouldn’t have been disappointed.

And it is with this optimistic note that I leave you. I wish you all well, and hope you have a most excellent Friday. Please pet your dogs or cats for me, and tell them that they’re good girls or boys. They deserve it and you deserve it too.

Have a good weekend and I’ll see you back here next week.