The Real Power Behind Bwonsamdi & What Rastakhan's Deal Means For Us: Horde Cinematics Analysis

hello internets Taliesin here and today we are talking trolls we are talking dinosaurs we are talking the second best lower in the history of all things lower bronze zombie and much against my better judgment we are going to be talking old gods and yes probably for change some Lich King as well because today we are talking the to closing cinematics on the Horde storyline on Xandar la from battle for Azeroth xander laugh forever a storyline full of action and battles city-sized monsters and some pretty questionable deals with kind of the actual devil because I have now maxed out a whole character I have seen it with my own eyes and I am ready internet to embark upon another Taliesin talks and analyze both the cinematics themselves the references imagery themes and purpose they serve in the story but also to talk about what all of those things mean for the future of BFA is expansion and World of Warcraft as a whole because my oh my there are plenty of implications and intriguing possibilities that this story presents us with so as usual if you haven't already seen these two cinematics then this is a terrible way to watch them we're gonna be stopping and starting and talking over bits this is a dissection of what's going on and we kind of assume that you've watched them already before we start and actually I guess this will be the last Taliesin talk cinematic analysis for a while after a huge slew of them all in a row so you know what I'm gonna enjoy it and hopefully you will too so join us as we talk about the ending of the Horde storyline in Xander LA and the two final cinematics Xander laughs forever okay go go go go go go go go so before we jump into the first cinematic witch blizzard rather matter-of-factly calls rustic hands deal with bran Sam be some background of what has happened so far up to this point and how it compares with the Alliance leveling experience because as a player what struck me all the way through playing the two sides of the conflict was how the narratives of the two factions mirrored each other in kind of reverse so Alliance players start the expansion with their fleet getting destroyed then Jaina getting arrested and you thrown in jail and the next ten levels of content are about you as a player building everything back up from ground in a way to be quite triumphant return of Jana her reconciliation with Katherine and the return of the missing courtier and navy the Horde trajectory is pretty much the opposite it starts from a place of triumph you begin the expansion by rescuing Princess to lungi and Zul escaping from Stormwind and also setting storm wind on fire for good measure the Zandalari Navy blowing the chasing Alliance fleet out of the water and everything just generally being all big and gold and awesome but then the next ten levels for horde players is essentially everything going to [ __ ] and ending on a very very different note in nazmi you until angie try and take out the blood trolls and just about manage it despite taking heavy losses and letting main body Madara and Carla escape in volume you totally failed to stop jack rosette from raising the massive and terrifying so Thrax mythrax the unravel ah and that's definitely a problem and worst of all in Zelda's our Zuo betrays King rusty can kills the royal lower Rosanne and is on the verge of destroying the last seal holding thee but we call him an old god but he's only a real old girl in the same way that soylent is real food old god GU hoon captive so then after completing each zones story chapters you are thrown headfirst into a balls-to-the-wall defense of the blood gate against the invading blood trolls and then a full-on assault of desire a law and by the way that means that these three horde cinematics are much much easier to see than the Alliance Jaina ones where you had to do a pretty long quest chain get items from three different dungeons and complete the mythic only siege of Perales dungeon this is just the one quest line and a pretty cool scenario with the cinematic eight the climax of each so we begin at the end of the battle of the Bloods gate we've just hooked up with two longji at the end and even though we won things are looking bleak [Music] so this opening shot after lungi surveying the battlefield is really interesting straightaway because it inverses a theme that has been used quite a lot in the BFA cinematic so far the mist or the fog of war and when we seen it used before it's been to signify the arrival of a good thing save it even Jaina arrived the parting clouds to save the Alliance at the Battle of Lordran the mist parts to reveal the Zandalari fleet who lay some serious smack down and saved to LAN Jie the storm clouds part to reveal the cool tear and flee and foil the invasion of Perales here though the mist is heavy and present and it's not going anywhere we are right in the middle of it and things are bad we could really do with some outside force parting the clouds and saving the day but unlike in the other cinematics that isn't going to happen here and is there a sadder sound in the world than a sad dinosaur sound no there isn't and the fact that tool Angie's mount Xena is a gilded reversal made this especially poignant to me because I don't know about you but the gilded Ravis or mount this exact model was my mount of choice for my first playthrough of the Horde story it quite likely was yours too I saw a lot of them about and actually helped make this an unexpectedly personal moment for me I of course also played through the first time as a troll shaman which you probably didn't in fairness battle Angie says she misses Rosanna the lower of Kings who was killed in the build-up and no [ __ ] she misses him Rosanna is the power that she would call on to help them out of the mess like this and who Rasta can would call on to both the members of the royal family are left essentially powerless in the wake of his death and that helplessness is shown in tell Angie's loneliness here these aren't subjects kneeling as we might expect but the injured tending to their wounds and king rustic hands isolation away from them all without the might of the lower of Kings backing them up there's nothing to separate these two from everyone else aside from their titles and massive hats like really massive hats I love how visually bright all of this opening is by the way which you might not expect from a scene portraying despair and dark times but clearly the team wanted it to contrast were very clearly in tone from what happens next because King Rasta can observes his daughter's sadness with an almost desperation because she's not just his daughter she is his heir if they lose this fight it's not just rustic and that loses the throne it's tell Angie and the rest of his line to and already because of some pretty bad decisions he has taken since we've been there and in his desperation he decides desperate measures must be taken and very quickly something I always find a bit disconcerting about rusty can is his gold plated nose because I get it you know he's a king he's going to have a gold-plated nose because why not I probably would too in the Warcraft RPG he's an alchemist so maybe he made his own gold nose plating out of lead who knows who knows that's all great but to me it always looks at first glance like a comedy band-aid over his nose so to me he always looks he's recovering from a beating which doesn't really make him all that intimidating to be honest luckily he has his very intimidating hat to eat all now and we see him performing a ceremony a lot like the one we see tell Angie performing to someone Roseanne in the opening hoard cinematic but of course whereas that one resulted in a swirly blue magic dinosaur of Awesomeness that awesome magic dinosaur is now dead and so this process involves and like how tell Angie summoning of Rosanna sent her into something for trance-like she wasn't quite there likewise here raster can is transported in mind to the temple of one Sam B now I said before that bond Sam B was the second best lower and he is because obviously the best lower is Craig Hwa the frog lower who is so badass that every time he starts jumping about I'm genuinely scared that the actual game client is going to break but that aside can we please have a moment of appreciation for the awesomeness of one Sam be as a character as a presence in the game and as a vocal performance from Alex desert and yes yes I know his name is almost certainly pronounced desert but to me his voice is just so smooth and yummy and basically makes my heart melt like ice or chocolate pudding so he will always be dessert to me okay there is basically nothing I don't like about once Andy I love that he has different jokes to say two different classes when they die I love that he's a truly chaotic neutral character in a way that we don't often see certainly not in wow I love how Blizz took the charming crudeness of the - lower of death Baron Samedi and just totally ran with it I love the design of his model with its ever so slight nod to ner'zhul the original Lich King but most of all I love how important he is and the intrigue that surrounds something that he says later on because this guy is brilliant but he's bad news and here we see him in a clear position of power over King rustic and towering above him from a high vantage point and sitting in the actual torch that lights the room he is the King's last beacon of hope on some Dee holds all the cards here and knows it which just adds to his cocky bravado in this scene and it's brilliant looking good your majesty as are you Brahma as are you okay so my favorite thing about his model are his whitish blue body markings watch these as the scene goes on because they fade in and out see these whitey blue spirit things flowing through the temple that's what his markings are made of the spirits of the Dead literally flow through his temple and his body and power him anyway and don't forget one is supposedly older than the entire troll race but he looks like a troll he chooses to look like that because he wants trolls to recognize themselves in him a reminder of where they all end up I need quality of movement the way he flops around like Jack Skellington when he's being cheeky but then has a very direct and precise moments to anything serious he's basically like the genie from Aladdin if the genie wanted to kill everything and keep their souls and that's not me being stupid his live movements are a direct contrast to this square stout king who has clearly never missed leg day and whose pride is about to dam him and his line for all eternity because then the deal is made I need more than just your word because this is how lowers work they will help you but they all demand a price to be paid and actually the questing arounds and Allah did a really good job of setting this up with donk and PACU vying for your affections over the other and obviously you know you chose donk because pre coup is so useless that you even choose a lower called donk over her but I digress this isn't really a negotiation Ron Sam B knows why rusty can is here he knows what his price is and rustic and knows it too there is no haggling going on here Ron Sam B is just enjoying himself toying with his food before he eats it but even then he can't help his eyes glowing a little harder when he hears the King offer him exactly what he wants if you do this for me I will bite my bloodline and aspirin Sam B puts out his hand to shake you hear his bones rattle and this extreme upshot of the King makes him already look like a corpse on a slab or a statue a memorial of a king rather than one who is still ruling and as the very essence of the lure of death infuses itself with the king of xander law and I love this transition as rustic and is transported back to himself and as regards his hand and the deal he has made the hand of his daughter slips into his because this isn't just a bad deal for him it's a bad deal for her too and when he says my daughter I have taken care well congratulations because there is your obligatory our first reference the cinematic that ever-present ghost that it feels runs through all of these animations and cutscenes like the writing through a stick of rock is here too because I have taken care of everything is what Arthas famously famously says to his father just before he kills him in Lohr also in that case a child said the words to his father before bestowing death upon him this time it's a father saying the words to his child as he bestows death upon her because he's just promised to serve death but she has just been promised to serve death - that's very clever and I like it and then we have the attack on Tazawa along with the assault on the city in full flow the alliance story ends the defense of a capital a whole dungeon of it in fact and so does the board story which sounds like they're the same doesn't it but actually they're really quite different so our boy roster is fighting although I had to say I saw very little that in the actual scenario I just played and of course overlooking all of this is the most obviously evil character in the history of Wow the Prophet zoom there is no morally grey here if his good good didn't give away in the first cinematic if his big baddie echoing laugh doesn't give it away here then really the biggest warning sign should have been his massive hat my advice to all troll Kings watching this with you okay if you're suspiciously evil seeming advisor is the only other troll in the kingdom who insists on wearing a hat bigger than your massive hat really close eye on them okay because they've got some ambition and Zul calls his secret weapon mythrax who we didn't manage to stop being summoned involved oon quite way my fax has been in the meantime and quite how he got here without anyone noticing is a very good question but let's not think about it too much but please let's appreciate just how big mythrax is me fax is gonna be a boss in the aldia raid pretty much this holes and the last storyline is setting up the events of the all-day raid but honestly don't worry he's not that big in the raid in fact for the longest time on the beta his model was labelled as Catholics in the files who is another massive Seth racks whose body is actually the foundation of the whole city of Zulu man it's that sheer scale of old God related things that we talked about before so yeah these things are big but this this is ridiculous he's here to destroy the final seal and release Cahoon so quick background check zoo thinks that Wrath of Khan is a weak King wants to set up a proper troll Empire he saw how the Jakari trolls in Northrend sacrificed their own lower for power he thought oh that's a good idea what if I sacrifice all our lower to this solvent old God Cahoon he seems pretty powerful I'm sure that will be fine there are three seals in place holding Cahoon captive the first two already down and the actual Palace of desire allure is the third which Matthias is here to sort out and honestly how are you even supposed to stop him what the answer is you don't even try because really the only thing rustic and cares about is his own throne and his main concern is getting rid of the user per zoo so this is where he calls upon the might of Bron sandy we're not a deal Glantz me your power [Music] and we learn that when you are empowered by the law of death you can [Music] chocolatey high cool and not much else because this is frankly a much closer fight than you expect considering one is lower infused Chad king who's room for 20 years survived over 40 assassination attempts including one from his own wife and the other is basically just a fortune-teller with a big hat in fact it isn't until rustic ankles on the lowest strength again to make his own iron fists that he finally gains the upper hand and at this point we're Zul and we to know that he is done we realize he doesn't really matter because and I'll say again it wasn't zou that we need to stop it's this city-sized old god servants this one here in killings all we've achieved absolutely nothing at all because mythrax unleashes this huge volley of void energy which by the way looks alarmingly like the stuff that void elves use because it's the exact same stuff as void elves use because you know what could possibly go wrong with void else to destroy the seal and win Wenzel says he's absolutely right rustic and isn't absolute idiot and azul looks at him with those glowing red eyes like a shara and the naga like golden like Sylvanas he says kingdom is gonna get reduced to ashes he's doing bodytalk but of course we know that this whole royal line is now promised to bran sandy so it has another meaning as well ashes for the death lower and Rasta can knows that he's right his pact with the devil has won him back his throne but it is ultimately hollow because the thing they were trying to stop Cahoon has not been stopped an even pushing Zul off the ledge here is a selfish act born out of pure revenge because again it just hinders us we could have got valuable information on how to stop Cahoon from a living Zoo but instead now we have to fight a super-powered undead zombies all in all dear thanks for that and help me out guys this cool Shore here what's this a reference to let me know and the scene ends with this brilliant line congratulations your majesty the kingdom is ours and the look of horror on the Kings face as he realizes what he's done through his bad decisions he's not listening to his daughter he's trusting the wrong people and ultimately his pride and selfishness he has bound his entire line to the death lower this is fun Sandy's Kingdom now as much as it is his it is literally a kingdom of ash and have a gret on his face here is beautiful and in stark contrast to the maternal pride shown by Katherine proud more in the final Alliance cinematic has a troll king ever looked more like why luigi than rustic and us at this point I'm gonna say no and that's not the only contrast because from a bleak start the alliance story saw us save a parent from their bad decisions defeat the forces rallying against her save her daughter from a realm of death and defend their city whereas from our triumphant start the horde story saw us and they're able to change a parent's bad decisions and lose the main battle in every zone see a daughter promised to a realm of death even though she doesn't know it yet and also defender city but not very well and who knows for how long parallels between the two narratives are obvious and intentional and I suspect that chewing and throwing will continue between the factions throughout this expansion so there are two questions what happens next and what does it mean well obviously step one is the Aldea raid where despite how bad everything looks now because we are invincible badass murder-hobos we do actually manage to defeat Cahoon although there's no telling what the fallout from that will be the end of a raid is usually a kicking off point for another big event so we'll be interesting to see if Blizzard have got any revelations planned for the end of that but maybe the more important question is what next for rustic an upon sandy and tell Angie why is death and death magic and the realms of deaths suddenly so important in the narrative and who is once Sandy's boss because you've probably heard all this but in the revered quest line that I haven't played them yet because come on come here break off and just got to 120 on horde I've been making video so instead his WoW hits footage because we're friends link below and a spoiler free as I can make it we are looking for a certain person's ashes and they turn out to be mysteriously missing probably a person is most likely a lower themselves now but this panic sponsor me and he says so before we tackle those other questions who is one Sam these boss it's a fun question because speculation is fun but it's also an important question because whoever his boss is now has a major grip on the leadership of the entire nation of x' and Alonzo are the main contenders well there's the Lich King because you know dead things so it's definitely not the Lich King because well one one somebody is a few thousand years older than the Lich King but also because they do in two completely different things one sanity is all about actual death the Lich King prefers to keep things Undead each one's work directly opposes the other there's Hellyer which is possible but Helia seems to do the same thing as bon sandy does but in a slightly different way they seem to be on the same sort of level they're the same pay grade I don't think either one is the other's boss there's her car the so-called blood God who loves souls he loves them you can't get enough of them he lives in the shadow lands Blizzard have said in a couple of recent interviews that they won't be touching her car this expansion which could in fairness be a flat-out lie wouldn't be the first time but does make sense but probably little bit bored of him it's certainly not the old gods because I think the way death as a force is building up and the way Silvanus is being built up as a representative of if the way the void seems afraid of death I feel like death and death magic will somehow be the way we end up defeating the old gods and the void Lords in some form all of this does help explain to me why Vol'jin chose Sylvanas as the next war chief though the lower whispered to him as a dark spirit role that lower would have been Ron Sam be who would love the idea of savannas giving him say whole trees cities worth of souls to feast on but note I get the feeling that one Sam these boss is someone new someone we haven't met yet someone who he and Hellyer and maybe Sylvanas two are all in service of I can't wait to find out who that could be and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a post raid cutscene or cinematic that gives us just a hint or maybe just the shadow of a hint like that plant in the cave that spoke to your shadow priest knife ooh at the end of the emerald dream whatever happens though there's bound to be loads more bond Sam B so no one really loses results so with a good solid answer of mine anew let's go back to the first question what about Rasta can and tell Angie how do they get out of this deal with the lower of death well I do like the idea of tell Angie haven't declare up her father's mess just like Jana cleared up her mother's but like Jana I didn't think she'll have to do it alone I think she'll have our help when we make our own deal with one sandy in the nazma storyline he says that in return he expects us to send him 1 million Souls which sounds like his way of saying you're never getting out of this deal but what's interesting is what he says next no need to look sure I'm not going to the axon no need to look shocked you'd be pretty capable of doing this does he know something we don't you know he has some sort of future sighs he knows that Rosanna is about to die before anyone else does now that we've made this deal with him throughout the course of this expansion is it possible that we the player will actually bring him a million souls that will trigger some catastrophic event that sends a million souls once Andy's way either because a million people died or maybe there'll be a future raid and one of the bosses holds like a million souls within him that we release when we kill it fulfill our pact to the death lower and basically get him to back off from the Royals and Allari line freeing tell Angie in the process your speculation obviously but you know speculation is fun and so that's the opening of BFA and I have a few thoughts about the narrative at the first is that Blizzard weren't lying it's better it's more complex it's more meaningful and it's more present than we are used to the storytelling being in WoW especially at this early stage the way they set up the story in each zone the way the events you played through in each zone all fed back into the conclusion of your fashion story the way that the groundwork for aldia and the bosses will find there has been laid out almost as thoughtfully as the night hold which is high praise especially for a first read of an expansion it's great and aside from that I've had really good fun with the war campaigns sneaking around the other faction zones and completing a totally separate story and doing Island expeditions which have made me feel in touch with the faction war element of the expansion - generally it's all been really satisfying and it means that maybe for the first time I actually believe Blizzard when they say how intrinsic that narrative is gonna be throughout BFA which makes me very very excited in just one thing though I mean I love you one I do stay away from Janie okay Mike seriously just don't don't go near her even as a joke it's not our time okay thanks and zappy boy - okay things do you guys think did the cinematix give the initial story of each continent a satisfying conclusion what did you think of how the two stories worked in parallel to each other do you think one was more successful than the other let us know in the comments below and thanks for joining us today if you enjoyed this video don't thank us thank our patrons who give their actual real life money to make them happen and they're also very lovely to chat to in our teeny patreon community as well keeping me company on those long leveling sessions and I appreciate that only 13 more characters to go if you didn't like it down vote the [ __ ] out of it remember my name is Alex desert my name is Taliesin from me and avatar until next time cheerio

Channel: Taliesin & Evitel

Views: 220,966

Keywords: World of Warcraft, Battle For Azeroth, WoW, BfA, best DPS, Raid, Uldir, Mythic+, Bwonsamdi, Zul, G'huun, Mythrax, Talanji, Voljin, ashes, lao, Sylvanas, Nzoth, Old Gods, Lich King, Bolvar, new cinematics, Zandalar, Kul Tiras, Jaina, Proudmore, Rezan, gold, scaling, Helya, Hakkar, boss, mechanics, Taliesin Talks, Evitel, funny, Zandalar Forever, 8.1, 8.2

Id: 8vrc_6YiIyE

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 30 2018