Since Shadowlands, I’ve decided to stop getting so emotionally invested in the story. It’s just not worth being disappointed with a story and worrying about how the developers at Blizzard could have done it better or what might have been illogical in the progression of the story.
So in Dragonflight I refrained from evaluating the story, cinematics, etc. However, there was always something strange about the Dragonflight videos. Something was wrong with the cutscenes. Were the characters too cheesy? Are the conversations too superficial? In any case, it was the way the characters spoke. But somehow I never found out what it was. Until recently I saw more and more posts about how the cutscenes in Dragonflight play too slow. And here, of course, the obligatory spoiler warning. This is 10.2 contents.
Have Dragonflight videos been slowed to 0.75x speed?
I first watched the clip above. The excerpt from WoW streamer Asmongold’s stream deals with the fact that the pace of the story has continued to slow down or become too smooth. According to Redditor, characters who speak slowly are detrimental to the narrative.
The over-the-top clip was, of course, sped up or edited together in the back, making it look as if the WoW scenes used to be some kind of action movie. This led to the discussion that WoW needs more tough guys and war again. But I don’t want to comment on that. The clip reminded me once again that Dragonflight characters like Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, Vyranoth and company speak strangely. Too slow in any way?
And then I saw the following post on the WoW Reddit forum.
“1.25x speed cinematics sound much better.” The post shows an in-game cutscene with Tyrande from patch 10.2. At normal speed the same slow flow of speech is noticeable.
However, if you set YouTube to 1.25x speed (small gear at bottom right), most of the dialogue sounds normal. So cutscenes were previously running at 0.75x speed?
And yes, saying things more slowly sometimes has added value.
Slower = more epic? Only sometimes
Major events in WoW history (buy now ) Of course, they are always somewhat epic, sometimes performed more slowly and somewhat longer to emphasize the theatricality. Something said slowly gives more meaning to the situation.
But that doesn’t really appear at the end of Dragonflight. As you can see from the community memes, the opposite is actually true. But I’ll leave it at that. Rather, I want to point out another thing that shows that the playback speed of Dragonflight videos may have been slowed down intentionally.
Do the animations suddenly look better too?
The Dragonflight videos always seemed strange to me because the characters moved like they had extra weights hanging from their limbs.
When Alexstrasza moved her arms, it seemed as if she were pushing water away from the pool. But at 1.25x speed, animations suddenly look much smoother. Would that mean that video sequences in WoW intentionally play slower than intended? There could be a logical explanation for this.
It may be easier to dub properly in different languages if scenes play more slowly. Of course, getting the character’s mouth to move to match what’s being said is always a challenge with WoW animations. What do you think? Are the videos in WoW Dragonflight generally slower than other expansions, or is it just me?