Ultimate Quest: Chapter One - Tirisfal Glades

It's time to begin our Ultimate Quest, with a roll of the dice, as an undead warlock named Ammiel, just starting his career in that most inauspicious of plague-ridden lands: Tirisfal Glades.

I find myself laying out on the grass beneath a Val’kyr, the Warcraft-version of the Norse valkyrie. I have been raised to undeath, it seems, with the express purpose of serving the Banshee Queen, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. But the val’kyr leaves me with a reassuring note, “You are free to follow whatever path you choose from here.”

This kicks off what will become an increasingly disconcerting and disappointing theme through Tirisfal Glades: the illusion of choice. Disconcerting, because essentially none of the Forsaken you encounter in the area (including, possibly, yourself) consented to be what they now are. Disappointing, because all-too often, the game will completely opt out of commenting on the moral quandary this all represents.

A strong start, though, for as troubled as your character might feel at being raised from the dead, there are others around you facing their new reality and rejecting it. In fact, a good majority of the introductory sequence of quests in Tirisfal Glades revolves around this concept. Some Forsaken reject their undeath, becoming mindless zombies that you must destroy. Others simply flee, refusing to accept what they have become.

A memorable early moment has you speaking with recently-raised undead who are struggling to accept their fate. In a particularly horrifying moment, one such victim remarks to you, “I died. It was an orc. He cut off my hands and left me to die. <Valdred looks down at his hands.> These aren’t my hands! THESE AREN’T MY HANDS!”

All of this establishes what should be a wonderfully dark tale, and to Tirisfal Glades’ credit, it will continue that theme throughout the climax of the zone.

Yet as much as Tirisfal Glades establishes this wonderful gothic horror story, it’s also weirdly atonal. One quest has you slaughtering farmers - actual farmers - that even the quest giver acknowledges is innocent. For a race of people who are struggling against being murdered just for who they are, the Forsaken are surprisingly willing to perpetrate the same crimes on others.

It could be that this hypocrisy is very much the point. The quests beg players to ask some questions about who they really are in the world and whether or not they really are any different from their enemies. (I wonder if this theme will be revisited in Battle for Azeroth). And of course, the Forsaken have always been the edgiest of the edgy-but-mostly-good Horde side of World of Warcraft.

There is a history behind this too - of a people hunted for being what they are instead of being welcomed with open arms. Their old friends tried to kill them, instead of showing them pity or compassion. But this history comes from past games and novels. Consider what you know within the context of this zone: you are raised from the dead against your will to supply the Forsaken with more bodies (a sad fact of procreation for the undead that is again not commented on), and then asked to murder civilians. The fact that no character in this zone even thinks twice about all this hypocrisy makes it a little more difficult to determine if the hypocrisy is designed, or inherent to the designer him or herself.

Yet, regardless of intent, Tirisfal Glades is steeped in questions about the nature of the self, the nature of consent, the horrors of its absence, and the cycle of trauma and violence perpetuated by victims of trauma and violence.

The most successful example of this is an ongoing character introduced in the opening questline in the zone: the undeath of Lillian Voss, daughter of a Scarlet Crusade commander. You first meet her in Deathknell, where you attempt to convince her to face her situation several times without avail. (In a fairly loud metaphor, you even show her a mirror at one point.) This continues with a surprise encounter in a Scarlet Crusade encampment that hints at her past (a rather limp-wristed scripted encounter) and culminates in a clever bit of foreshadowing when you discover a series of corpses in another Scarlet Crusade camp down the road.

Of all of this builds to Lillian finally accepting who she is, or at least the power she now has, just in time to confront her father. You “help” her with this, but in a nice bit of power play, she does most of the heavy-lifting, leaving you on the sideline while she slaughters crusaders. It’s fun, particularly because the game opts not to leave her power as background scenery.

Tragically, though, the actual climax to all of this lacks any real emotional punch, and her character shows little of the anguish we know she must feel. She seems to kill her father easily, and a perfect opportunity to comment on the horror of all of this - even a single throwaway questioning what she has done, who she is, or what this all means - is just dropped.

If there is anything the various Tirisfal Glade storylines have in common, it is this: establish an incredibly intriguing premise, work in that premise, then completely pass by any kind of payoff.

The introduction to the Scourge, for example has little punch, when it should be this ominous thematic tie-in. The Scourge are the other side of the undead coin to these characters; undead, but mostly mindless, and those that can think are enslaved to the Lich King, even know. (Thanks, Bolvar!) Encountering the Scourge should be a terrifying, ominous moment for a Forsaken. So what is our first encounter with this deadly, terrible Scourge like?

It’s mostly wandering around a too-big field full of lookalike windmills, killing skeletons with swords.

It does lead to an interesting bit at the end where they try to free the soul of a Scourge victim, but - you guessed it - this also falls flat. The man remembers himself, and then signs himself off to serve the Scourge. And the Forsaken priest who orchestrated this event says nothing. There is no recognition of the futility of her act, or the horror of the hopelessness of freeing a soul from the Scourge. She simply tells you to talk to the next quest giver to see where you should go next.

Worse, the Glades are packed with standard collect-a-thon quests that have nothing to do with anything. You’ll clean up spiders out of mine, gather fur for an old woman to make a blanket, pick weeds for an alchemist - in other words, things you would and could do in a dozen other zones in this game.

Aside from the Lillian Voss, the zone ends flat. This New Plague that will become so important in Silverpine is remarked upon, but no one even suggests what it is for. It appears to kill victims (another bit of gothic horror and hypocritical killing), but the horror of biological warfare seems completely lost on everyone involved, including, from what I can tell, the level designers.

Overall, not an inauspicious start. Tirisfal Glades has amazing atmosphere, themes worth consideration that ask deep questions about consent, the Other, hate, bigotry, hypocrisy - but ultimately the story stumbles to make good on any of this promise.

This will be good to remember later, because, for now, for lack of anything better or worse:

Tirisfal Glades is the best World of Warcraft zone.

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