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I suppose I should also be the one to point out that 'tauren' is an anagram of 'nature.' I do unironically like the tauren, despite the issues with their portrayal of indigenous peoples of North America that I don't feel qualified to offer a detailed analysis of, and my initial main in Warcraft was a tauren druid. There's a lot worse things in Warcraft to be than 'good, chill folks who just want to get along with people and protect their way of life.'
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Aug 29, 2023 15:20
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This is why I like the original Forsaken introduction. You start off against mindless undead and then are introduced to, not just one but two, factions that are trying to exterminate you. Cythereal posted:I suppose I should also be the one to point out that 'tauren' is an anagram of 'nature.' are you loving kidding me
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Aug 29, 2023 15:27
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Tauren all the way. I spend many an hour afking in Thunderbluff until trading/AH required me to switch to Org.
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Aug 29, 2023 15:31
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Lord_Magmar posted:To an extent I think the "answer" is that the Orcs should have integrated into Tauren culture (whilst keeping their own traditions/tribes that they rediscover etc) rather than what happened.
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Aug 29, 2023 15:54
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Terrible Opinions posted:To add to this. Given how rare true nomads with absolutely no fixed settlements are, it'd be pretty easy to say Tauren have the sort of waypoint cities and settlements around important resources real life pastoralists do. So it would be somewhere for orcs and trolls to settle closer to what they're comfortable with. They do have these, that's what the "camp x" settlements in WoW more or less are canonically, and Thunder Bluff is explicitly them making a true "large" settlement for the first time in years because they're no longer at threat from the Centaurs specifically. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 15:57
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I had mentioned it before but the Tauren are again a show of Blizzard being able to go "ok but the bar was really low." Are they a GREAT representation of indigenous peoples? Noooooooo. But were they better then, well, just about everything else at the time? ...Yeaaaaaah.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:00
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Cythereal posted:I suppose I should also be the one to point out that 'tauren' is an anagram of 'nature.' 
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Aug 29, 2023 16:07
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Having the orcs come as refugees, and need help from the locals, rather than as the new big fish in the pond who kill or help the locals as they please, would probably help with this whole thing.Cythereal posted:
Cythereal posted:Tauren lore, where they and the elves definitively met Cythereal posted:I suppose I should also be the one to point out that 'tauren' is an anagram of 'nature.'
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Aug 29, 2023 16:21
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Er, Cairne? Aren't you forgetting to tell Thrall something? About an ancient ally of your people who live in the forests surrounding Mount Hyjal who are extremely xenophobic, shoot first and maybe ask questions later if they feel like it, and think there's no such thing as an overreaction?
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Iirc that lore's another retcon WoW made but it's been a long time since I dealt with anything Warcraft.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:24
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Mokinokaro posted:Iirc that lore's another retcon WoW made but it's been a long time since I dealt with anything Warcraft. The night elves? Yeah, that retcon goes back to WoW launch. Druids as they exist in Warcraft 3 - and I'll give them a full lore post at an appropriate moment - are purely a night elf thing. WoW decided to make druids available to the tauren as well, and established that this is because the two races are ancient allies with a very strained relationship in the present day after largely falling out of contact and then making different alliances in the modern day. Lore since has continued to emphasize that the night elves and tauren have a lot in common and have traded whenever they meet, but the night elves stuck to the forests of northern Kalimdor, the tauren to the plains of the south, and the night elves never helped the tauren against the centaurs and whatnot nor did the tauren ever ask the night elves for help, nor did the tauren warn the Horde about the night elves, because that's how WC3 was so shut up. WoW did eventually establish that there are druidic traditions that have nothing to do with the night elves, but by that time this particular bit of narrative damage was already done.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:28
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A small gameplay-related note: You may notice that these are very much not catapults. This is the replacement unit the orcs received in the expansion, apparently for the same reason the Gyrocopter and Siege
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Aug 29, 2023 16:29
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Cythereal posted:this is because the two races are ancient allies with a very strained relationship in the present day after largely falling out of contact and then making different alliances in the modern day. Tauren: "Absolutely wrong. Grass and the open stepp, that's the best!" Elf : >:| Tauren: >:| And then they didn't speak for 3014 years! (can't just have separately evolved druidic traditions, apparently!)
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Aug 29, 2023 16:36
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I recall somewhere that the modern day Tauren actually haven't had much if any contact with the Night Elves in living memory, to the point that they might not even think they're still alive. Partially because the Tauren themselves have been losing their war with the Centaur for a long time at this point, longer than Cairne has been Chieftain of the Bloodhoofs. It's still pretty awkwardly written to explain how they had this history but the Tauren said nothing about the Night Elves to the Orcs. The other option is Cairne didn't think the Orcs would need telling, he likely can't detect the fel taint the way Night Elves can, and the Night Elves are his friends and so are the Orcs so surely they'll get along. Also the druidism thing is better to explain when it comes up in Warcraft 3 but it is at least a little reasonable in terms of the lore that existed when WoW was being made (and then they made new lore but that took a REALLY LONG TIME, they didn't actually introduce alternative origins for druidic tradition until Cataclysm and even then both of those are tied into Night Elf Druidism Origins and BfA is where they truly created new druidic origins).
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Aug 29, 2023 16:40
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Gun Jam posted:(can't just have separately evolved druidic traditions, apparently!) Nope! There weren't separately evolved druidic traditions until the Cataclysm expansion established that trolls had their own druidic tradition that had nothing to do with the night elves. Gilnean druidism was still ascribed to Gilneas being full of night elf ruins and monuments that the Gilneans studied and learned magic from, though.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:42
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Lord_Magmar posted:It's still pretty awkwardly written to explain how they had this history but the Tauren said nothing about the Night Elves to the Orcs. The other option is Cairne didn't think the Orcs would need telling, he likely can't detect the fel taint the way Night Elves can, and the Night Elves are his friends and so are the Orcs so surely they'll get along. Well, there is also the fact that despite what Cairne says, Stonetalon Peak isn't actually that near Mount Hyjal. You don't have to enter the Night Elves' territory to get there.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:49
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On a Reforged note, the already-noted Demolishers not being Catapults are the only difference here. Worth noting is that the original models of the Catapult, Ballista, Steam Tank, and Gyrocopter, do not actually have Reforged models at all. The only interesting thing is that 1.33, one again, making Hard mode Harder by reducing your starting forces, as well as the size of your reinforcement groups. Hard mode on this map is actually already kind of actually difficult, because attrition even before the 1.33 change really punishes exploring the side-areas; Cairne and his Tauren get pretty worn down over time. The next mission will have at least a bit to discuss though - not so much in Reforged changes, but in 1.33.
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Aug 29, 2023 17:17
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We'll see more of it when we actually get to the Night Elves but for Tauren, part of it is that, similar to Orcs, their religion is a much more vague "spirit worship" that gets passed around a lot when writers with no actual religious studies or experience with other religions try to write "Indigenous beliefs." This ends up being an issue in WoW when the writers decided to put much more emphasis on religious figures existing in-universe, and...well, the Horde doesn't have any religious figures. As of this point of the writing, I don't think the trolls even have the Loa as an idea; they just vaguely talk about "spirits" same as orcs and trolls do.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:33
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There is an extremely unpleasant trope of writers believing that new age mysticism is in any way representative of genuine indigenous religions.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:45
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"Nature spirits" and/or "ancestor spirits" always means you're going to be dealing with a civilization of noble savages that are vaguely respectful of the world around them and don't care much for material possessions. You know, unless the authors did a minimum of actual loving work.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:48
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I do not know enough about these kinds of real-life religious practices, or the cultures being referred to, to offer informed criticism on the subject, unfortunately, so I do welcome more detailed thoughts from anyone with greater knowledge of the subject.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:51
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Terrible Opinions posted:To add to this. Given how rare true nomads with absolutely no fixed settlements are, it'd be pretty easy to say Tauren have the sort of waypoint cities and settlements around important resources real life pastoralists do. So it would be somewhere for orcs and trolls to settle closer to what they're comfortable with. Most of warcraft's world-building is pretty clearly based on pop-history rather than, you know, history. And out of date pop-history to boot! The notion of "WE ARE PURELY NOMADIC, WITH NO CITIES, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CITIES IS A SIGN OF OUR PROGRESS," is pretty par for the course for what most people in the Western world understood at the time. And indeed what a lot still understand now even though academia is much more in the camp that that whole train of thought was wrong and dumb.
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Aug 29, 2023 19:21
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Tenebrais posted:Well, there is also the fact that despite what Cairne says, Stonetalon Peak isn't actually that near Mount Hyjal. You don't have to enter the Night Elves' territory to get there. Yeah, they don't need to warn them about the elves because they're not heading that way. As long as the orcs stay on that path and none of them get sent north for something silly like a little lumber or something, they'll be fine.
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Aug 29, 2023 20:04
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PurpleXVI posted:"Nature spirits" and/or "ancestor spirits" always means you're going to be dealing with a civilization of noble savages that are vaguely respectful of the world around them and don't care much for material possessions. in fairness, "create an entire religious system in a way respectful of real-world beliefs without shamelessly ripping them off" is a tremendous pain in the rear end, explaining why 95% of all fantasy settings' religions are either "christianity but jesus is a dragon or some poo poo" or "some kind of vague animism" wave hello, The Holy Light
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Aug 29, 2023 22:55
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:in fairness, "create an entire religious system in a way respectful of real-world beliefs without shamelessly ripping them off" is a tremendous pain in the rear end, explaining why 95% of all fantasy settings' religions are either "christianity but jesus is a dragon or some poo poo" or "some kind of vague animism" Just copy jRPG's and your only religion is always the Catholic Church and it's a dice roll whether they're generically good or plotting to destroy the world.
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Aug 29, 2023 23:02
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PurpleXVI posted:Just copy jRPG's and your only religion is always the Catholic Church and it's a dice roll whether they're generically good or plotting to destroy the world. on which note one of my favorite weird rear end-pulls in WoW was them deciding in Cataclysm "...I guess the Pope of the Holy Light has been an apocalypse cultist this whole time!" look they named this NPC and made him faction leader level, we should probably do something with him now that it's been vanilla and two straight expansions of him doing precisely gently caress-all. i guess he turns evil for no reason?
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Aug 29, 2023 23:07
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:in fairness, "create an entire religious system in a way respectful of real-world beliefs without shamelessly ripping them off" is a tremendous pain in the rear end, explaining why 95% of all fantasy settings' religions are either "christianity but jesus is a dragon or some poo poo" or "some kind of vague animism" When I bought the new edition of Legend of the Five Rings published by Fantasy Flight, there were copious notes regarding the relative insensitivity regarding the old editions fantasy versions of Shintoism, various Japanese-centric Buddhist sects, and the Japanese caste system, especially the use of certain terminology, but also how they're pretty core to the world building so they didn't want to just dumpster them and instead tried to do a modestly better version. It's almost weird how back in the our youths, literally just cribbing 90% of a non-Christian religion and adding in a few doodads was like, normal for fantasy writing. On the other hand, since they did it for Christianity itself all the time I'm sure none of them thought overly much about the really unfortunate specter of Imperialism and Cultural Erasure they were inadvertently raising. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 23:09
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I'm seldom happy with depictions of religion in video games in general, in large part because I don't map cleanly into traditionally conservative or traditionally liberal stereotypes regarding religion, and it's a subject that I'm sensitive to. I'm deeply religious in a monotheistic way, but also very liberal in my social values. I despise both 'attack and dethrone God' plots and 'Deus Vult!' plots. I've largely given up on seeing religion in video games portrayed in ways that I agree and identify with, but it still stings at times when a game I've otherwise enjoyed swerves into territory I find uncomfortable. Portrayal of religion is one of the factors in me quitting Final Fantasy XIV eventually, to name one example. Just one of those things that's deeply important to my values and how I see the world, but I'm off the beaten path from popular depictions of the subject in both directions.
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Aug 29, 2023 23:26
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:on which note one of my favorite weird rear end-pulls in WoW was them deciding in Cataclysm "...I guess the Pope of the Holy Light has been an apocalypse cultist this whole time!" Even better, after he died in Cata, there's a new npc standing in his place in Stormwind that will tell you that the pope just went on a pilgrimage somewhere and he'll be back eventually, don't you worry. Then in Legion, you find out that the replacement npc is ALSO a cultist that you have to kill in the Priest quests and he gets replaced by another new npc who has to give you another bullshit excuse for why the last new guy also went missing. What I'm saying is that Stormwind has a real bad cult problem.
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Aug 29, 2023 23:30
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Cythereal posted:I'm seldom happy with depictions of religion in video games in general, in large part because I don't map cleanly into traditionally conservative or traditionally liberal stereotypes regarding religion, and it's a subject that I'm sensitive to. I'm deeply religious in a monotheistic way, but also very liberal in my social values. I despise both 'attack and dethrone God' plots and 'Deus Vult!' plots. I think one thing that definitely doesn't help is that most videogames with religions tend to portray the adherents of a given religion as monolithic, rather than as individuals. It's rare to see a videogame or, hell, any piece of media, where two fictional characters interpret a given fictional religious belief differently.
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Aug 29, 2023 23:55
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Cythereal posted:I'm seldom happy with depictions of religion in video games in general, in large part because I don't map cleanly into traditionally conservative or traditionally liberal stereotypes regarding religion, and it's a subject that I'm sensitive to. I'm deeply religious in a monotheistic way, but also very liberal in my social values. I despise both 'attack and dethrone God' plots and 'Deus Vult!' plots. Is there a depiction of religion in a video game that did work, from your opinion?
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Aug 30, 2023 00:03
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SirPhoebos posted:Is there a depiction of religion in a video game that did work, from your opinion? The two examples that come to mind immediately are Ashley from Mass Effect and Suvi from Mass Effect Andromeda. I have significant issues with how both characters were depicted beyond this narrow aspect, but Suvi especially felt like looking into the closest thing I've felt to a mirror to my own beliefs, how her deep interest in science and exploration reinforces her own faith because she's excited to get out there and piece together a little bit more about how the creator of the universe put it all together. Tangent: Mass Effect Andromeda in general had some (SOME) great characters in my opinion who were just stuck in a game I disliked in general. Ashley is much more clumsily handled, especially in Mass Effect 3, but I appreciate how it's an important part of her outlook on the world without dominating her personality. While I have a lot of problems with Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (long story short, the Wall of the Faithless in the tabletop's lore was nothing like how that game depicted it), I adored the special interactions you got in the Fugue Plane if you played a cleric or paladin of Kelemvor and opposed the Crusade and completed the titular Mask to get the good ending. Kelemvor tells you that it is not yet your time to come to his side. Go well ye good and faithful servant, rest and enjoy your life, and when you return here you will have a place of honor at my side. When it comes to fantasy polytheism, that's probably the one depiction I found satisfying, even if I very much dislike that game in general. I also like Sister Miriam in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with regards to her view of religion specifically. I abhor anti-intellectualism and the use of religion to justify aggression and war, but the tabletop RPG adaptation of Alpha Centauri presented a view of Miriam and the Believers that they were far from anti-intellectual, they were just slow to adopt new technology until they felt they were prepared for the inevitable social consequences. They weren't dumb, they were just rightfully afraid of the terrifying things that the march of science in that game will unleash. Miriam is decidedly not my favorite character in that game due to the game portraying her as so aggressive and bordering on going Luddite, but a few of her quotes have stuck with me as expressions of faith and ideas that do resonate strongly with me. I actually modded my own install of SMAC to rework Miriam's AI behavior, speech, and social engineering to something I find more palatable. Or on a darker note, Marianne from Fire Emblem: Three Houses/Hopes. Those who have played those games (especially Houses) know what dominates her faith and her struggles therewith. And it's one that I have historically struggled with myself and relate to very much. I can't think of a single video game example I have played where organized religion as a faction or force is a major story presence and I'm happy with how they're portrayed. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 00:25
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Miriam is also just straight up right about most of the late game techs in the game.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:37
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"We must dissent!" Remains stuck in my head. I feel like the other leaders try to portray her as a luddite, but not that she actually is one. The tech we knows she's opposed to is anything that emulates a human mind, or fucks around with the human mind or body and may seem good on the surface but have unexpected consequences, especially if you believe in humans as being more than just thinking meat. I think just about anything she expresses worry about is something I'd also express worry about.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:40
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"Some would ask, why would a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil? They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?" - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri making me as a child think about a question that my father, a Southern Baptist preacher for much of his life, never encountered until seminary.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:44
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Yeah I wish that she wasn't tied to 90's Christian Fundamentalism: The Faction because she wasn't wrong about a lot of things. A lot of people in the US don't realize that there are many forms of Christianity (many of them much more left wing) that isn't white Evangelicalism.
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Aug 30, 2023 01:34
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Feldegast42 posted:Yeah I wish that she wasn't tied to 90's Christian Fundamentalism: The Faction because she wasn't wrong about a lot of things. A lot of people in the US don't realize that there are many forms of Christianity (many of them much more left wing) that isn't white Evangelicalism. That's pretty much the detail that kills it for me. There's no image of Miriam in my head that doesn't include her doing and being responsible for horrific poo poo.
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Aug 30, 2023 01:53
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To be honest, it's kinda what makes all of them work for me, it's the fact that they stoop to horrible poo poo for the sake of expedience while the game itself clearly states that it's a choice, that such use of easy access extremism, violence and baser instincts to enforce compliance is a costly, inefficient thing and that it's not even the optimal path. They deliberately failed morally because it was expedient and appealed to their baser instincts, and it was neither easier nor more expedient, and you (and Pravin Lal, largely, and Deirdre Skye, less largely) don't have to fall in the same trap, and I've seen enough hard men making hard decisions in media to enjoy watching hard men making hard decisions and gently caress things up for themselves and everyone else, it's their natural condition after all. Also civ:be tried making everyone nice and friendly, grasping the same archetypes while ditching their negative sides and that made it pretty funny, in a negative way. I will fully admit that it's a personal taste thing and that personal taste can vary a lot, including inside a single person in the very short term. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 02:02
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Once a goon described SMAC to me as seven forms of mental illness fighting over an alien planet, the game made a lot more sense to me. In any event, I believe the SMAC derail has run its course for this thread. I get that it's a goon favorite game, but if anyone wants to talk about it further in this particular subforum, you're welcome to start your own LP. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 02:05
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A big problem imo with religion in fantasy is how often either the characters or narrative or both demystify it. Like, a key point of religion irl is that you need faith because you can’t just walk up to the divine and ask what’s up. Once you remove that, as fantasy religions love to do, it’s really difficult to be respectful imo. Because the situation just fundamentally isn’t the same thing when divine activity is just possible in the world.
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Aug 30, 2023 02:16
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Fantasy tend to not understand polytheism at all, there may be dozens of deities but everyone just basically picks one to worship in a weird semi-monotheism way. In my former tabletop group someone started the argument that it was actually literarily impossible to play a cleric or priest class because when you entered a village they ALL worshipped a single different god and you would HAVE to convert all of them at which point they would stone you and burn you at a stake. Because that is exactly how it totally works/worked in real life too.
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