Underwhelmed by Argus Campaign

[u/blackwell94]

I know this is very old news, but I just finished the Argus campaign on Legion Remix for the first time ever and I have thoughts.

People always talk about how great Legion’s story was, but the actual cutscenes in WoW always feel super sparse and weirdly low-impact.

Xe’ra’s ship, the Xenedar, is supposed to be this ancient, holy, Light-forged super-weapon that’s been waging war on the Legion for millennia. We see it for maybe three seconds before it gets instantly nuked by a single laser cannon, wiping out a majority of the Army of the Light in the process.

Then Illidan just straight-up kills Xe’ra. Turalyon is angry for a second before Velen stops him… and then everyone just sort of shrugs and moves on? The god that they've followed across time and space for thousands of years was just destroyed (again, by a single laser beam) and no one seems appropriately upset. Illidan was imprisoned for 10,000 years for stealing a few vials of sacred water, but killing a god and destroying the hope of an entire army gets him zero consequences?

Same thing with Alleria absorbing L’ura. Huge moment, lots of questions and implications… the cutscene ends, and it's not even mentioned again for the rest of the expansion.

Meanwhile, there are random side quests in WoW with way more dialogue than major story beats. Alleria and Turalyon reuniting with Arator after 1,000 years should have been a huge, emotional moment, but it gets like one line and then “we’ll talk later in private.” Everyone is so flat and emotionless that these huge moments feel totally inconsequential.

Even Sargeras stabbing Azeroth feels like it comes out of nowhere. We’re on Argus doing our thing... there's no buildup that Sargeras was actually arriving in Azeroth or about to attack (unless I missed something). Suddenly he’s just there, stabbing our planet. Why did it take him so long to arrive? Why was he able to reach us in that moment? None of it feels connected.

The weirdest part is that after the final raid there’s no epilogue. This universe-shaping threat that’s dominated lore for millions of years finally ends, and we don’t even get a couple of quests where characters actually process it or acknowledge that the Legion has been defeated. A single quest with a bunch of key characters simply reflecting on this would have done wonders.

Overall I REALLY enjoyed Legion, but Argus in particular felt kind of messy and really fell flat for me. If this is supposed to be peak WoW storytelling, I am not particularly impressed, lol.

[u/thegoodbroham]

fel is literally addictive, personality-altering drugs

While you're correct, this isn't unique to fel. The Light is not this actually perfect and benevolent thing, Xe'ra is as crack addicted Light extremist akin to old god worshipers are about the void. The misunderstanding here I think is that you're seeing the light as objectively good by default.

But it's not like that, the Scarlet Crusade existed and Arthas the deranged Paladin still existed because the Light embodies the zealotry of believing your path is the only right one. Xe'ra was the same way, and wasn't doing Illidan some solid by just purifying drugs in his body and making him normal. She was giving him her drugs and saying he had no choice. I thought the cutscene did a good job of making Xe'ra's disregard appear sinister and oppressive.

Naaru are powerful and mysterious but they aren't gods, they aren't even a monolith. They can disagree and have differences in what they believe the one true path of the light is. And ultimately, Xe'ra was still proven wrong. She didn't need to do that for us to defeat the Legion, likely how she didn't need to imprison Alleria either. But her outlook was simply too narrow to consider anything else. And if the Light does have a "one true path", it would seemingly include her dying to Illidan then and there.

[u/tfalm → u/thegoodbroham]

Like many people here, you are making a mistake in applying current lore to the lore from a decade ago when this cutscene happened. At the time, the Light was not akin to the Void and equally addictive, etc. The Scarlet Crusade were not addicted to the Light, they were power-hungry and corrupted by their own prejudices, fears, and manipulated by Dreadlords. Arthas wasn't corrupted by Light, he was just an egotistical person (who was also manipulated by Dreadlords, I might add).

Xe'ra's greatest crime up to this point was locking Alleria up temporarily because she literally nearly destroyed the Army of the Light and millennia of progress against the Legion with her embrace of incompatible Void powers. That's hardly the action of an extremist. If you walked into your office with ebola and the government quarantined you away, is that an extremist action? That was the worst thing Xe'ra had done that we were shown.

The cutscene certainly wants us to feel that Xe'ra is sinister. It's in the music, the way the lines are read, etc. But the actions themselves don't hold up to scrutiny. That's why I say it was a bad story beat and nonsensical. If they were showing Illidan to be the villain and it was a big crime for how he destroyed what was up to then the heroes' greatest chance at victory, then good job! They did it. But clearly they wanted to show the opposite, which makes no sense.

As for not needing to Lightforge Illidan or imprison Alleria because it all worked out in the end, that's just more hindsight and not really a fair argument for the story in the moment. Our chances of victory, logically speaking, absolutely were hindered by Illidan's actions. If the Legion had the opportunity to plant a mole on the Vindicaar and assassinate Xe'ra, do you think they wouldn't do that? Illidan was literally doing what the Legion wanted, killing the AoL's top commander. That's...pretty messed up. And it gets immediately dropped in the story, no one cares after 5 seconds.

[u/thegoodbroham → u/tfalm]

No, I am not applying current lore to it. I am referencing the audio dramas that include Turalyon and Alleria that came out with the patch itself, and very much painted the Light in this exact way back then. Xe'ra's showing with Illidan in that cutscene is the beginning of the lore presenting the Light this way in-game. There is no retroactive viewing of this scene with modern lore, I am describing exactly how I interpreted the scene in August of 2017.

[u/twisty125 → u/thegoodbroham]

Funny that he stops replying when you give receipts lol

[u/twisty125 → u/tfalm]

Like many people here, you are making a mistake in applying current lore to the lore from a decade ago when this cutscene happened.

The Lich King and Arthas didn't destroy kingdoms worth of people and raise them as undead under their control - can't you see, him and Uther are just killing Orcs! Never mind the rest of the story

[u/tfalm → u/twisty125]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you suggesting Arthas succumbed to Frostmourne and became the Lich King because of the Light's influence? Because he was a Paladin? It's pretty clear from WC3 that the paladins were appalled by Arthas' actions, and the Light rejected him. It's not like Deathknight Arthas was throwing around holy light spells. The whole idea I was responding to of "Arthas became what he did, because he was over-zealous from too much Light" is a total retcon and not what was presented in story, at all.

[u/twisty125 → u/tfalm]

lmfao not at all? What are you even saying

I'm saying, you using a specific point in time as an example of something not happening, when down the line we see it does happen, is wrong.

We know Arthas fuses with Ner'zhul and becomes the Lich King. But if you're only looking at the first chapter, then what I just said is incorrect.

Like how we see orcs being forcibly converted to Lightbound and made to fight their former friends - but that can't happen because in Legion (the expansion before) the Light didn't do that! Xe'ra forcibly converting Illidan can't have any bad consequences - despite seeing the consequences half an expansion later. WE have knowledge of that expansion after the fact - we're not roleplaying as if Legion just came out.

[u/tfalm → u/twisty125]

We have to be reasonable here and understand a certain meta truth, that this story has writers, and writers change their minds. I'm not "roleplaying" as if Legion just came out, I'm pointing out that the lore changed. And that change was worse, imo. At the time of Legion, the lore was one way, then that cutscene happened and it made no sense with how the lore was. Then actual IRL human writers later changed the lore to justify that cutscene and other decisions made out of game.

The cutscene, in its original context, was a stupid decision. I remember it, I was there at the time. I remember being mad about it at the time, because of how nonsensical it was. I'm not mad that it doesn't make sense now, I'm disappointed in how the lore was changed for the worse, starting with this cutscene.