While there are visual effects that help tell the story (like a giant shadow descending on the board, plucking a minion card up in its talons, and taking it away), one of the biggest pros Hearthstone has going for it is the fact that it’s so open in terms of format. They touch and agree on some things, but disagree on others. The story is a callback to the days of Warcraft and Warcraft 2 players have access to two very different campaigns, with different perspectives. “We make sure we know who you’re playing, what their deck is, who you’re facing and what their deck is, and that allows us to write the dialogue and give more story moments and beats,” says Collins.Īs for the end, it’s ambiguous. That style also let the team pull out the stops on setting up the board to tell a story. The Awakening style is more specific it’s more of a guided walk down a nice path than traversing a maze. The roguelike-esque format, which Blizzard internally calls bagel (a loose portmanteau of Build As You Go), allows for a wider combo platter of characters and scenarios. There’s pros and cons to each approach for telling a story. Whereas the previous two campaigns were based on building up increasingly powerful decks to mow down an array of tough bosses, Galakrond’s Awakening is all about making the use of a predetermined set of tools to overcome a specific encounter. The final chapter of the campaign returns to an earlier adventure format, where players are assigned a character and a deck for each boss. Image: Blizzard Entertainment Fancy formats The powerful archmage Khadgar gets advice from his own disembodied head. It’s storytelling that feels like the old RTS days, with characters going down maps and encountering isolated, tricky objectives.Ĭharacters banter, kidnap each other, and pop up in the corners to lend their input. If World of Warcraft is a tirelessly explained and fleshed out fantasy epic, then Hearthstone is a madcap victory lap around the same setting. That premise may sound silly, but compared to the increasing stakes arms race of the rest of the Warcraft franchise, it’s nice to be able to go all over the map, from the end of the world to dealing with one creepy forest and back again. The idea is that everything is a story told in a tavern, and the narrator is as unreliable as it takes to keep the crowd going. None of Hearthstone’s campaigns are inherently true. While Hearthstone’s developers are telling a story, it may not be true. “We were like, ‘oh, wow, we’ve pretty much perfected what we think dungeon runs are. “It was pretty tough,” said Ryan Collins, Hearthstone game designer, in an interview with Polygon.
The year was experimental, throwing spaghetti at the wall and testing what would stick. Unlike the competitive side of Hearthstone, which is about quick rounds of back-and-forth card combat, with clever combos and a constantly changing metagame, the single-player side of the game was a puzzle combined with a power fantasy.
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Rise of Shadows and Saviors of Uldum set up a roguelike-style run, where players would encounter a series of bosses and periodically upgrade their deck. Hearthstone’s single-player campaigns in 2019 came with a healthy amount of experimentation. Image: Blizzard Entertainment The latest and greatest The silly, off-beat, and experimental tone is a stark contrast to World of Warcraft’s tale of an endless cycle of war and recovery - and it’s one of the best parts about Blizzard’s arsenal right now. It’s not Ibsen, but that’s OK - Hearthstone has found its feet as an actual vehicle for storytelling in the Warcraft universe.
They’re being pursued by a series of Indiana Jones-esque heroes, and along the way, a massive dragon returns from the dead and begins stirring up trouble. It’s an over-the-top fiasco, where a league of bombastic, villainous characters have stolen a flying magical city. The latest story campaign, Galakrond’s Awakening, is proof of Hearthstone’s progress. Over the last year, Blizzard has built up a fun, madcap storytelling style. In the background, Hearthstone has been trucking along.
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The MMORPG has the task of figuring out how to tell a grand story backed by 15 years of canon, with player choice and elaborate cinematics.
Occasionally, ideas from Hearthstone would cross over and show up in World of Warcraft, like the Tortollan race of ancient turtle people. Lore-wise, it was the Joey to the franchise’s Friends. Hearthstone is a spinoff of the Warcraft franchise, and for most of the game’s history, the stories told within always felt like a “second-tier” sort of canon.
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