June 2022 – Self Similar

With the recent reveal of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight I started thinking about how much I missed WoW. As many MMOs as I’ve played, I still love the high standard of polish that, until relatively recently, I associated with Blizzard games, I still love how buttery smooth the game feels, and most of all, I still love the core lore of the Warcraft franchise.

“Raining hell with Gallywix’s G.M.O.D.”

Against my better judgment, I hopped back into “retail” restarting an unfortunate cycle that I’ve been stuck on for quite a few years now. That is, when a new expansion is announced I get hyped up for it, reactivate my account, and try to catch up on the previous expansion’s content until I get burnt out again, usually just before (or just after) the new expansion actually launches. Case in point, I logged in to discover my “main” still where I left him when I got burnt out at the end of the Battle for Azeroth Alliance campaign, and my new Horde “alt” that I created when Shadowlands was announced that I had created to familiarize myself with the changes to the game before diving back in with my main, left in the middle of a zone less than half way through the Battle for Azeroth Horde campaign. Doh.

This time would be different though. This time I had a goal: allied races. Allied races are a feature that was added to the game with the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Essentially, Blizzard added what would eventually become 5 new races per faction. Most of these new races were more or less reskins of existing races, but alas, as someone who likes to stand out in my online games, I was very interested. Unfortunately these races needed to be individually unlocked through achievements which almost all included lengthy quest lines and/or reputation grinds. Still, I figured I could focus on a few of the ones I was most interested in. That never happened.

With Shadowlands, the reputation grinds were removed and the option was added to simply skip quests that required dungeon content. Nice! I decided I would make it my goal with this return to Azeroth to not unlock one, but all of the allied races.

I wish I had kept a more detailed journal of my progress, as it occurs to me now that this could actually be pretty helpful to a lot of people. I can at least recount the journey in general. First, one small tip. The addon BtWQuests can be extremely useful for keeping track of the multiple questlines required to unlock each races. Even using it, things still got a little confusing for certain quest lines and achievements, so I can’t recommend it enough. You’ll need both the Battle for Azeroth and Legion versions. Anyway, here’s how it went…

“All allied races unlocked! A Mag’har Shaman on display.”

First I returned to my main Horde alt. I picked a Hunter for this class specifically because of how easy yet capable they are to play, so this character was the logical selection for getting re-reacquainted with the game without rolling yet another new character. First, I realized that I was already eligible to unlock the Highmountain Tauren due to questing in that zone in Legion with my main. Next I finished off my questing in Nazmir and then headed to Vuldun and more or less finished off the base Horde campaign. The Vulpera were unlocked from that alone. Then I finished the base Horde war campaign plus some of the later war campaigns to complete Tides of Vengeance, and then completed the final Zuldazar quests, unlocking the Zandalari Trolls. I’d already completed Ready for War on my main, and finishing it off for my Horde character meant I also unlocked the Mag’har Orcs.

Finally, the most grueling part of this was heading back to the Broken Isles from Legion to unlock the Nightborne. I had never played through Suramar back when Legion was current, nor had this character ever set foot in the Broken Isles, so I had to essentially start from the beginning and go through innumerable quests with sometimes little to no “breadcrumbing” to follow. I did encounter one reputation gate, which was with the quest “Uniting the Isles” which requires you to get to friendly with all of the major factions of the Legion campaign. Luckily with flying unlocked, it was quite quick to head to each zone and grind quests for just long enough to hit friendly, with only Stormheim giving me any issues. Despite how much effort the “Insurrection” achievement took, I actually really enjoyed the lore behind the Suramar questlines, never mind the unique city itself.

Victorious, I headed back to my old main and went with a similar strategy. I’d go ahead and finish off the base Alliance campaign by completing the last little bits of Stormsong Valley. I’d already earned Ready for War on this character, so the Dark Iron Dwarves were available without any real work. I then finished off the war campaign and portions of the later war campaigns for Tides of Vengeance, then completed the final Tiragarde Sound quest lines to at last unlock the Kul Tiran Humans. Next I learned I needed to play through a good part of Nazjatar in order to unlock the quest to get me to Mechagon Island. I’d never seen either of these zones when originally playing Battle for Azeroth so this was an interesting diversion and I’m tempted to return to finish both zone’s quests, but it didn’t take too long before I had Mechagnomes unlocked.

“The Kul Tiran druid forms are some of the coolest.”

As with the Nightborne, I now had to head back to Dalaran to start the Legion Argus quest lines. At least this time between having played much of Legion previously on this character and having just completed some related quests on my Horde alt, I was able to head to Argus without too much effort. I hadn’t been to Argus before now, and always being intrigued by the Draenei, the Naaru, and the Light in general, I was looking forward to this, but found myself rushing to grind through these quests without too much investment in the story, unfortunately. Finally, completing most of this story granted the You Are Now Prepared! Achievement, unlocking both the Lightforged Draenei and the Void Elves.

Once you meet the requirements to unlock an allied race, you still need to do a questline associated with each one kicked off in the embassy in the capital cities of each faction. In some cases these are quite quick, while in some others they’re fairly involved, but none are difficult. Some, like the Vulpera’s for example, were quite fun, while others will be essential for lore nerds. Once completed you’ll unlock the race, their associated achievement, and be given their race specific mount. With that…

Success! So, what will I actually do with my new found power? Well, more alts of course! I actually had vague plans to play through some old campaigns a second time with some variety of Mag’har Orc, and a Lightforged or Dark Iron Paladin could be fun, but my immediate plans were for a Kul Tiran Druid and a Mechagnome Monk. In fact, I already started my Kul Tiran Druid and headed into the Legion campaign so I could jump right into the Druid class hall, which I’ve been enjoying immensely so far. When it comes to my Monk, I’ll likely bring him through the classic Catalyst zones since that particular ridiculous race and class combination seems hilariously incongruous there.

One thing is for sure, over a year and a half later and I still haven’t even stepped foot into Shadowlands yet. Maybe I’ll keep up with tradition and wait until just before Dragonflight is released. *shrug*

Released as a bonus for pack-in for the limited edition of Halo 5: Guardians and later on disc and streaming services, Halo: The Fall of Reach is a three act animated movie based on Eric Nylund’s novel of the same name. Personally, having not followed the release of Halo 5, I had no idea this was even a thing until I started my research for Halo Fest 2020, but it seemed significant enough for me to cover here, and, surprisingly, I’m actually glad I did.

“John and his friends having some teenage fun.”

Halo: The Fall of Reach is reasonably faithful to the book its based on while also taking elements from the 2012 Marvel Comics adaptation with a handful of other changes along the way. Oddly, this new adaptation only covers the first half or so of the book, leaving out the titular, you know, falling of Reach part. Actually, it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of these changes were intended to focus more on the members of Blue Team as featured in Halo 5 itself, allowing the movie to serve as their introduction and contextualizing their relationship with Master Chief for players who hadn’t read the novels. For me, it also helps explain why so many fans of the novel were disappointed with the otherwise excellent Halo: Reach.

Since we’re already on the subject, and this is backstory told out of chronological order anyway, let’s get into the plot synopsis. While this is fairly vague, it absolutely contains spoilers. Skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid that sort of thing.

The Story: Dr. Catherine Halsey is searching colonies for child candidates for the SPARTAN-II program, a secret initiative to create super soldiers that could turn the tide against an ongoing insurrectionist movement. On Eridanus II she meets a child named John and quickly recognizes his potential. ONI agents abduct John and 74 other children, replacing them with barely functional “flash clones” to cover their kidnappings. At a UNSC academy on the colony planet Reach, the children are run through exhaustive training covering military theory, tactics, and history, along with physical and team building exercises. John, designated John-117, stands out from his peers and is soon promoted to squad leader. Years later, the SPARTAN-II cadets undergo a series of physical augmentations and chemical treatments to improve their senses, reflexes, musculature, and physical growth. A staggering 36% of the cadets do not survive the process. Later, John and four of his classmates are sent on a clandestine mission to kidnap an insurrectionist leader, with their success serving to help justify the existence of the program. Not long after, first contact is made with a hostile alien force known as the Covenant who seem intent on wiping out humanity. Dr. Halsey and the Spartans are transported to Chi Ceti IV aboard the UNSC Commonwealth when the ship is intercepted by a Covenant vessel. With the Commonwealth barely fending it off, the Spartans make it to the surface where the new Mjolnir power armor is tested on them for the first time. A success, the Spartans are assigned their armor and begin training with it. With the Covenant ship returning to face the Commonwealth a second time, John-117 concocts a plan to get behind the ship’s shields, board it, and detonate a nuclear warhead from within. The team fights its way inside and successfully plants the warhead, though one of its members, Sam-034, sustains heavy damage to his armor and volunteers to stay behind to buy his teammates time to exfiltrate. Flashing forward a number of years, the members of John’s original fireteam meet at the site of the academy on Reach, now in ruins after the planet was “glassed” by the Covenant, in memorial to their fallen teammate.

“Dr. Halsey reaping what she’s sown.”

Having never read the novel, I knew a lot of the generalities of what was covered here but not many of the details. Actually seeing the child abductions, training and augmentation deaths, and even the gruesome way that Mjolnir armor testing was depicted was much more effective than I would have expected. It was also interesting to see the (somewhat) original way Dr. Halsey was depicted versus how she was presented in Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 5: Guardians. You also have the remember that the original novel was very much written to be the backstory for Halo: Combat Evolved, so it’s chock-full of a lot of the context that is, well, frankly just missing entirely from the game: who Master Chief is and why he’s so exceptional, both as an individual, and as a Spartan, and where humanity is at this point in its war with the Covenant, for instance. As a long time Halo fan, it’s pretty cool to go back and geek out over this stuff all these years later.

As for this particular production, it’s… eh, decent. Visually, I think I could describe it best as looking a lot like a motion comic that has been upgraded to have an actual animation budget. This isn’t too surprising given that the studio who made it, Sequence, also helped make most of the motion comic-like cutscenes in other Halo games, like those from the terminals in Halo: CE Anniversary and Halo 4, as well as the cutscenes in the Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike games. This doesn’t sound like the strongest praise, and it definitely isn’t, but it’s better than it sounds and I think it works well enough for me. On the audio front, Steve Downs plays older Master Chief and Jen Taylor plays Dr. Halsey, giving the whole thing a much needed direct connection to the games. We also have Tom Salta returning from his work on Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike to compose the soundtrack. Not bad all around.

“SCPO. Mendez sits the kids down for story time.”

As a whole, I was surprised with just how much I enjoyed Halo: The Fall of Reach and turned around and bought a copy of the audiobook almost immediately after finishing it. While I’m sure I’ll end up enjoying the book much more, I’m going to have to rank this one up with Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn as an actual half-way decent attempt at a Halo movie. Interestingly, a lot of Halo fans seem to think this is the story to make a big budget adaption of, so even if the new Halo series seems to have veered off in an entirely different direction, it seems possible we may return to the Fall of Reach again at some point in the future.

Next up, as we finally near the end of this series, we return to the UNSC Spirit of Fire with Halo Wars 2. I’m looking forward to it!

Monthly Archives: June 2022

Allied Races

Halo Fest 2020 – The Fall of Reach