There's a feeling of electricity in the air that means only one thing: a new World of Warcraft expansion has launched. World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is finally out and seemingly packs a punch, to the point where other MMORPG developers are taking notice.
There's a lot for players to sink their teeth into when it comes to World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. The expansion's setting is the never before seen afterlife of Warcraft, giving souls an eternal resting place instead of using them as a power source. The five regions of the Shadowlands are not entirely pleasant, however, even the best of them. This brings things around to, supposedly, the closest thing Azeroth has to paradise: Bastion.
Players new to Shadowlands will quickly find out what exactly Bastion is: it is the ultimate stronghold of justice, where the souls of the good go to fight against darkness forever. They do this by becoming a Kyrian: angelic beings with immense power. The process for becoming a Kyrian is where things start to get icky. In order to become a Kyrian, a being must erase their own memories, good and bad, by battling them. Essentially, they must give up everything that made them an individual, everything that made them them.
On the surface, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It's an idea based on many interpretations of the afterlife where individual desires and delusions are cast aside, freeing a soul from worldly woes forever. But it's problematic in Shadowlands for a few reasons. For one thing, World of Warcraft is a game that celebrates diversity in its races, and is getting more diverse still. The idea of every being of every race being reduced to a cookie cutter angel, all their edges and horns and quirks smoothed away, is odd. Also, many afterlives that focus on shedding mortal identity portray it as an opening of the true self, shedding their limitations. In Bastion, it very much feels like the characters are being reduced rather than expanded, losing what makes them real.
This is not something the game leaves unexplored either. Part of the questline of Shadowlands involves a rebellion by Kyrians called the Forsworn who reject the practice of Ascension, but players can, at a certain point, choose to ally with them instead. Players must decide if it is better to give everything to Bastion's order and harmony, or to retain what makes the characters themselves.
This expansion breaks new ground for World of Warcraft in many ways, and is set up in such a way that players cannot ignore Shadowlands' story. This time players must make decisions not just regarding the material, but the spiritual. Perhaps the best way to make the decision is to ask: what would my character want, should they reach Bastion after death?
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is available for PC.
Source: Kotaku