This week’s quest is pretty good. I enjoyed it - seeing Uther reconcile the role he played in Arthas’ downfall, seeing an adult man accept responsibility for the consequences of his actions and how his actions led to this huge and traumatizing events.
There’s this one part where Uther talks to Arthas about him becoming a paladin and Arthas shows hesitation. Uther doesn’t listen and chooses to engage Arthas in some good adrenaline pumping.
At the end of the quest, the Archon says “all Kyrian will be offered a choice.” Good. Then she anoints Kleia to be a paragon. Kleia shows hesitation… and the Archon doesn’t listen. Kleia doesn’t want this, so the Archon, who just talked about choice, is not giving Kleia hers. But also… it’s as if the Archon learnt nothing from the preceding story.
Let a Jailer-controlled entity walk up to a Paragon and yoinked her precious without any of the other “Big” characters right next to her notice anything was amiss
Creates a “I will never” waifu
You expect this from GI Joe and He-Man cartoons from the 90s but alas, this is wow in 2021.
This is true. Bastion, The Kyrian, their Path… these all represent one thing - Dogma. Tradition. When Devos tells The Archon “The Path is flawed!” this directly offends The Archon’s view of the world. It’s like telling a deeply religious person God doesn’t exist - not only do you offend them, but you cause them to double down on their belief.
To the Kyrian, there’s only one Path and that Path has always worked, therefore it cannot ever be flawed.
What the Kyrian story is about is how if we constantly look back, if we refuse to change how we live, we will fail. Because to maintain things as they are traditionally requires to not listen to people who have valid criticism against the tradition.
And that’s why I kinda like this quest. I can extrapolate meaning out of it. I could not do any of this with last week’s quest.
I see this more as a problem of cutscenes being criminally under-worded. Like with the Tyrande-Elune-Winter Queen cutscene, where so much is left in the dark that would have needed an explanation, I feel that this is another example where they wanted to show the Archon help Kleia get over her self doubt and grow as a Kyrian, but completely failed to do so.
What bothered me way more than this is that they are now given choice in the first place. Aren’t Kyrians supposed to usher souls to their chosen destiny without prejudice? The reason they got stripped of their former memories was because the memories might interfere with your job. If they can now choose to keep their memories, wouldn’t that mean that they cannot fully perform their duties as Kyrian anymore?
Why would keeping your memories prevent you from ferrying souls, though? Kyrians do not judge, they’re just deliverymen. All it would take to ensure the Kyrians do not have to accept a role imposed on them is for example to have Uther far away from Arthas’ soul.
The Forsworn emerged as a direct result of The Path, the Purpose being deeply flawed. Tradition is rotted and it needs to adapt.
They do seem to have the power to judge and to redirect souls, as seen by Devos casting Arthas into the Maw. And then they’re portrayed as a glorified Uber for newly departed. If everything in the afterlife can be automated - including the sorting and redirection of souls - then Kyrians really are a useless bunch.
Then again, the writing quality overall has taken such a disappointing nosedive that I don’t even know why I expected anything in the first place
If you take a look at the entire Shadowlands, the 4 covenants are especially useless, because The Maw can fulfill all of their purposes. In fact, one of the main reasons why lore speculators were on The Jailer’s side is that it really looks like the covenants are unnatural and the natural place for souls to go is The Maw. The Maw is the only place where the river of souls flows through. This is their natural path.
It’s as if the Covenants exist for a different purpose, and not to sort out the afterlife… I still think when the Jailer talks about The Maker’s Flawed design, he refers to exactly this weird structure of the afterlife. The Covenants do not operate with complete memory - they didn’t know their sigils were the infinity gems. They didn’t know those were the keys to unmaking reality.
And I’m not even sure if they know that now. To them, the sigils were purely symbolic. And maybe that’s why they find it so easy to remake them - because the new ones are just symbols.
It feels like the covenants have been cobbled together by the “rule of cool” rather than actual coherent lore. Each and every one of them feels tailor made to pander to a certain demographic.
Night Fae for Night Elves overall, and the Druidically inclined/nature loving people. Revendreth for the classic old school goths, Bastion for people who like the “beacon of virtue” characters. Also, the ancient Greek/Roman inspirations to its aesthetic are super cool for people who like a bit of historic content. Maldraxxus for people who put Horde stickers on their car IRL.
The covenants themselves don’t really make a lot of sense, with the possible exception of Revendreth, as this plays on the old “purgatory/redemption” concept, where you are thrown into a pre-hell and are tortured until it’s time for your soul to ascend to Heaven.
But even then, some souls seem to not get sent to Revendreth even if they would usually need to be cleansed. Like Lady Vashj. Kael’thas even brings this point up, why he had to go to Revendreth and she went to Maldraxxus, and her answer is basically that he didn’t win enough battles. But that’s a really bad concept for an afterlife I think. Why would the worth of your soul be valued by how successful of a murderer you were in life? For me it would make more sense to have Revendreth as the pre-selection, where souls are tortured until they are pure enough to pass onwards to their destination, be it Ardenweald, Maldraxxus or Bastion.
The whole story is just so bad. And the more I think about it the more I get lost in all those plot holes and weird constellations.
Kleia showing hestitation was merely Kleia showing humility, I’m sure if she was really against it then the Archon wouldn’t have pushed it. Her hestitation was just “What? Me? Really? Am I good enough?” not “What? No, I don’t want to do that!”