sci-fi | Superior Realities

Opening, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone:

The opening to this year’s BlizzCon was interesting. They began with a retrospective video covering the entire history of the Warcraft franchise, and I have to say I found it thoroughly nerdgasmic. Was like being ten years old again… though it was an odd choice for a convention that seems to have little news on the Warcraft front.

Something else that I thought was very interesting was that Mike Morhaime took some time out of his opening speech to address the great shame of the gaming community, Gamergate, and encourage people to stop being pricks and act like human beings.

Now, I could pick some holes in this action. He didn’t actually name what he was talking about, and overall, his language could have been stronger. But he didn’t have to address it at all, and it raises my estimation of Blizzard somewhat.

They then moved on to some announcements for Heroes of the Storm. The main news is that Thrall and Jaina are on the way (about time), as well as the Lost Vikings and two new battlegrounds: Sky Temple, and Tomb of the Spider Queen.

I’m a bit disappointed in the lack of Sylvanas, as well as the lack of a StarCraft map, but still, this is good news.

Closed beta will begin in January. I’m going to assume they’ll allow you to buy access through founder packs, because otherwise I don’t see the point of a closed beta. That’s pretty much what the technical alpha is already.

They then announced the first Hearthstone expansion, Goblins Versus Gnomes, which will be launching next month(!). It doesn’t seem like it’s adding much other than new cards.

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

This was the most exciting announcement so far for me, even if it was also the least surprising. Legacy of the Void is nearly done, and they showed a truly fantastic trailer for it.

I had such a raging nerdgasm watching this. The Protoss fan in me is just delirious with joy.

The final battle with Amon! Purifying Aiur! Artanis and Selendis! Zeratul and Kerrigan! Death and ruin!

It’s all so epic I can’t even be coherent. All I can tell you is that when the trailer was finished, I threw my arms into the air and shouted, “YES! YEEEES!”

Gameplay details are sketchy at this point, but it sounds like the campaign will feature something like the god powers from Age of Mythology in the form of orbital strikes from your mothership. I can get behind that.

As I predicted, there will be new multiplayer units, though the only one announced at the time of this writing is the lurker.

Overwatch:

But probably the biggest news out of this BlizzCon is the announcement of Blizzard’s first game from a new IP in nearly two decades: Overwatch, introduced with both cinematic and gameplay trailers.

It’s a quirky, sci-fi shooter. Seems somewhat inspired by Team Fortress, but also with some MOBA elements. There seems to be quite a large cast of characters, and it looks like they all have pretty unique abilities and playstyles. So a large twist of RPG in this FPS, it seems.

I can already hear legions of angry nerds howling about Blizzard going to the kids, because Overwatch does seem incredibly “Pixar.”

That said, it seems reasonably well done for what it is. It’s silly, but it’s charming.

Something I found interesting is that the majority of the first few characters they previewed were female, of ethnicities other than Caucasian, or both, and only one of the female characters seemed overtly sexualized. Perhaps I’m reading too much in, but maybe Blizzard is finally getting the message about inclusiveness.

Another surprise is that Overwatch is apparently not years down the road. Beta is planned for 2015, and it’s already playable at BlizzCon.

I’m not sure what I make of this just now. A competitive online shooter is not a genre I’ve ever had any interest in, and I’ve got somewhat mixed feelings on the whole “Pixar does X-Men” vibe of the universe. If they had a single player campaign, I’d be all for it, but this sounds like a purely PvP game. I’d also feel a lot better if they had a third person perspective option, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

That said, it is Blizzard, and they’ve succeeded in getting me interested in genres I didn’t care about before (see: Heroes and MOBAs). The graphics are very cool, and Tracer does look like a pretty fun character to play.

I am gonna sign up for the beta.

If nothing else, I commend Blizzard for trying something new.

* * *

There has been no word of anything related to Eye of Azshara, perhaps not surprisingly. There’s always the remote possibility they might announce it later, but I seriously doubt that.

I am a bit disappointed there’s still no news of any updated versions of old Warcraft games. With all the hype they were doing about this being the twentieth anniversary of Warcraft, I’m kind of surprised there was no news on that front. Feels like a wasted opportunity.

Aside from that, though, this is shaping up to be an interesting BlizzCon. No doubt there will be much more details on Overwatch, Legacy of the Void, the new Heroes content, and more over the coming days. Stay tuned to this blog for further updates and my thoughts.

I mostly use this blog to discuss my current interests — my recent writing projects, the books I’m reading, the shows I’m watching, and so forth. However, my love affair with speculative fiction has been a lifelong thing. I thought it might be interesting* to turn back the clock a bit and look at some of the sci-fi and fantasy I loved as a child, and which started me on the path to become the nerd I am today.

*(By which I mean that I wanted an excuse to look through a bunch of nostalgic YouTube clips.)

Originally, this was just going to be one post, but it got long enough that now I’m thinking I might make a whole series out of it.

Mainframe Entertainment:

When I think about things I loved as a kid, the shows produced by the Canadian company Mainframe Entertainment (now known as Rainmaker Entertainment) jump to mind almost immediately.

It all started with ReBoot. The first ever computer-animated television series, ReBoot was a piece of history, and while I loved it at the time, I think I have an even greater appreciation for ReBoot now that I’m an adult.

ReBoot was, above all else, wildly creative. It was a story set inside a computer, where each character is an anthropomorphized program. For example, one of the main heroes was Bob the Guardian, essentially an anti-virus program.

But what was so clever about ReBoot was that they never actually came out and said, “This is a story about life inside a computer.” They just sort of left you to figure that out on your own. And they created this brilliantly deep and bizarre mythology and cosmology of life inside cyberspace that was just so completely original.

There were of course times when ReBoot devolved into pure, pointless absurdity as kids’ shows tend to, but on the whole, it was remarkably smart for a show aimed at children, and the later seasons wound up being surprisingly dark.

ReBoot also featured one of the greatest characters in human history: Mike the TV.

There’s been talk of a continuation of ReBoot for a long time, but the future remains uncertain. There was supposed to be a feature film trilogy, but I believe it’s been cancelled. Now just recently there’s word that Rainmaker is working on a new TV series called ReBoot: The Guardian Code.

I don’t generally want to be one of those adults who still watches kids’ shows… but I’d probably watch a ReBoot revival.

ReBoot was far from the only Mainframe show I loved, though. There was also Shadow Raiders (AKA War Planets).

Shadow Raiders was, if anything, even more bizarre than ReBoot, featuring a star system of warring elemental worlds forced to band together for survival against an all-consuming void planet.

Like ReBoot, Shadow Raiders had a surprising maturity once you looked past its odd outer trappings. The show went to some dark places, with entire worlds destroyed and civilizations brought to the brink of extinction. It’s not often you see a kids’ show deal with ideas like ingrained racial hatred and genocide.

Shadow Raiders was perhaps my first exposure to one of my favourite themes in fiction: the idea of old enemies banding together for mutual survival. The show repeatedly hammered home both how much the different worlds hated each other, and how utterly doomed they would be if they didn’t work together.

Shadow Raiders was also my first experience of a show I loved being cut down before its time, as it lasted only two seasons and didn’t really have a satisfying conclusion. This would become a regular theme in my life: Star Trek: Enterprise, Stargate: Universe, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles…

But of course, the most famous of Mainframe’s shows, and the one I most loved at the time, was Beast Wars (and its sequel, Beast Machines), a spin-off of the Transformers universe.

Here’s a show to win the heart of any young boy. What’s better than a giant killbot? A giant killbot who turns into a truck. But what’s better than a giant killbot who turns into a truck? A giant killbot who turns into A MOTHER****ING DINOSAUR MOTHER****ER.

To say I was obsessed with this show would be a colossal understatement. I adored it with an almost religious fervour, and I wince to think of how much money my parents wasted getting me the toys.

My favourite characters were Rattrap, because rats and because I always gravitate towards the geeky characters, and Silverbolt, because I like lawful good types. Also, he was a wolf cross-bred with an eagle. Badass.

I especially enjoyed the episodes dealing with the alien Vok, who I found fascinatingly mysterious and creepy. In this, we see the earliest signs of my fascination with the concept of alien and unknowable beings, still present today in my fondness for things such as World of Warcraft’s Old Gods or The Secret World’s Dreamers.

Ironically, while it was my most beloved Mainframe show at the time, Beast Wars is the one I have the least respect for as an adult. It was the most overtly childish, and the need to support the toy line forced the storyline to go in odd and often unnatural directions. It did not have the same wild originality as Shadow Raiders or ReBoot.

Still, it does deserve credit for once again being darker and more mature than one would expect from children’s programming, albeit to a lesser extent than its contemporary shows by the same company.

Something that amuses me to this day is how they were able to get away with putting such hideous acts of violence in a kids’ show simply because robots don’t bleed.

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: sci-fi

BlizzCon 2014: Overwatch and More

Pointless Nostalgia: Mainframe Entertainment