"'Rut'? Petrels don't enter rut. That seems to be a thing for some species of Earth mammals like deer and sheep. And it's not like musth like with elephants. Actually, from what I found out, Giant Petrels' breeding season is around Oc-"

Falls over for... reasons.

stretching an arc to last the course of an entire year CAN be done. overwatch/blizzard is showing that it’s possible to keep a playerbase engaged with its own narrative. the way riot goes about it is just not working for them LOL. it is not anyone else’s fault when people get excited when they think something major is going to happen.

when marketing is having the voice actors come in and read out their previously seen emails and getting animators to have their characters sit on unrendered cubes while cinematic clips play in the background, knowing full well that this attention on the lore was only seen at the beginning of the year with that whole viper rollout, riot cannot be surprised by the reaction today. when the quest in discord is saying that viper can show up any day now, and she’s only in the ”””””cinematic””””” for 2 seconds, there had to have been a major disconnect between the narrative team and the marketing team.

and then there’s the whole queerbaiting discussion which is a whole can of worms that ill probably talk about in my next post about this.

the reason why overwatch can score win after win in the narrative department is because they understand 2 things:

1. the value of having their characters say things (consistent stream of voice acted comics, providing new voicelines and interactions to plenty heroes)

2. knowing when to raise the stakes and get people hyped and not overdoing it

overwatch doesn’t need to have a photo of a new map sit in a london stadium and get “vandalized” during the grand final of a esport tournament to get people excited. riot acts like they’re creating the next MCU when that cannot be further from the truth. once again, this is such a pointless shitshow that could’ve been avoided if better choices were made.

wouldn’t it be funny if Henry never came back