The Unreliable Narrator: Where WoW went wrong
Part 1: Cosmically Confusing Chronicles:
If a shady-looking guy in a hood came up to you in a video game and asked for money to donate to a charitable cause, would you do it? In the real-world, you shouldn’t take whatever you read or hear at face value, be it health advice, a poorly told joke, or an historical document. Instead factors need to be considered: What’s the source? What’s the motive? When was the source made? This approach to world-building a fictional universe and its history is known as the Unreliable Narrator.
Some lore writers of out favourite series, such as the Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft (or formerly favourite series for some) have taken to using this technique within their lore and stories through the means of in-game books and characters with personal biases to create histories and storylines.
Lore writers tend to use the unreliable narrator to provide an ‘easy-way-out’ for when they want to make some small changes to the lore in later games', as the previous iterations can easily be swayed aside as in-lore ‘hyperbole’. There’s nothing explicitly good or bad when it comes to using an unreliable narrator; it’s all down to implementation, which is were WoW went wrong.
One of these mistakes in implementation is that it’s only a recent change to the storytelling.
When Blizzard Entertainment announced the World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 1, which released on March 15th 2016, it is described as “the first in a multipart series exploring the history of the Warcraft universe” on the Amazon listing as well as other sites. Key word: “exploring”. When someone uses the word exploring to describe how they are going to approach an idea, such as a story, it means that they are going to look at it from differing perspectives. And in Blizzcon 2019, Steve Danuser - Narrative Lead on World of Warcraft states that Chronicles are from the perspective of the Titans. Hence, the chronicles are an Unreliable Narrator. Despite this, the marketing did not place any emphasis on it being from a perspective.
This was not helped by the preface of the first chronicle, written by Chris Metzen, which stated “This book - this chronicle - is meant to bring it (WoW lore) all together and reinforce the overarching narrative that lies at Warcraft’s heart”. And the final nail in the coffin for Chronicle’s nature; the definition of a chronicle is ‘a factual written account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence’. To make a just as weird and confusing analogy for this situation, it’s like the lore was a blur prior to chronicle, which had made it clear. But the clarity brought by chronicle turned out to be a mirage. I don’t know if that makes sense, but hey, nor does WoW’s narrative.
Before the chronicle series, there was no such unreliable narrator. Lore was given through manuals and in-game text presented in a factual manner, both of which tended to be referencing history that some players may have already been familiar with as it was experienced in earlier games. So, this massive change towards an unreliable narrator was bound to cause confusion. Blizzard really shot themselves in the foot when they failed to explicitly address that fact that Chronicle was not canonical in its marketing as many believed it to be so.
In the story of Shadowlands, the WoW lore has tried to use the unreliable narrator from Chronicles in their story by exploring the nature of the Shadowlands, the Warcraft’s Universe’s afterlife, as well as the other cosmological powers. However, in doing so, they have effectively taken away from both the lore before and after chronicles in the style of the villain’s actions being “oh, it was me all along”. For example, before to chronicles, the Dreadlords (vampiric, winged Demons) were Demons from the Twisting Nether (another dimension being the home of demons), and in Chronicles their origins were not elaborated upon but it did reinforce their status as demons; “Among these greater demons were the Nathrezim, otherwise known as Dreadlords”. But where the unreliable narrator comes along is with the reveal in Shadowlands, that the Dreadlords are actually creatures of Death from the realm Revendreth in the Shadowlands, and they were sired to infiltrate the other cosmic forces to subvert their efforts in a cosmic war. From this, the WoW community have ascertained that the new big bad in the WoW universe was not the Burning Legion (an unstoppable army of Demons) as stated prior to chronicles; not the Void Lords (another ‘unstoppable’ cosmic entity) as stated in Chronicles, but rather Death and the Jailer (the main antagonist of Shadowlands, whom is another upcoming ‘unstoppable’ cosmic entity wanting to kill everyone).
Understandably, this inconsistency can be incredibly tiresome as its taking away from the previous lore to build up the current story. It’s parasitic storytelling.
The icing on the cake lies with Blizzard’s, as of writing unreleased book, ‘Grimoire of the Shadowlands’. This new book, from what we can tell by its marketing, is trying to tell the perspective of the universe and the Shadowlands from the perspective of a mad broker (a denizen of the Shadowlands). At least Blizzard learnt to be more explicit about their unreliable narrator this time.
One of the biggest controversies in this new book is the new cosmology map which differs from that presented in chronicles. Whilst this is merely meant to be a different perspective, and it is presented explicitly as such within book, many are not taking this as a new perspective and instead are interpreting it as a retcon from the original. This shows that their attempts at the unreliable narrator are not appropriately elaborating upon the complexities of the Warcraft Universe, but rather confusing a large portion of the audience.
This could’ve been avoided had WoW been using the unreliable narrator from the beginning. Players paying attention to the story have had it burnt into their mindsets to take information at face value. However, what I believe is most harmful to Blizzard’s attempts at the unreliable narrator is that they have established this narrative in an external source blocked by a pay-wall.
When people are being asked to pay for a book, specifically a chronicle, they are going to expect it to be factually correct. So, when you go tell them that it is not, it’s no surprise that fans are mad. And, when you go and ask them to pay for another book, of which they are aware is not factually correct now, is it really a surprise when many are saying they are not going to pay for it?
These mistakes made by Blizzard however, were not made so much by the writers of the Elder Scrolls Universe, they have been using it since the beginning and including it prominently in all their games in the form of in-game lore books which are prominent throughout their games.
But before, we continue onto the second part, what do you think? Do you like the unreliable narrator in WoW? Do you think that they could’ve implemented an unreliable narrator without these issues? Let me know in the comments.
To find out what Elder Scrolls did to implement a successful Unreliable Narrator, check out Part 2 of this essay, ‘Learning from the Elder (Scrolls)’.