#undermine

Aside from being visually amazing, with many elements of both pop culture as well as America in the 20s all the way to the 60s, they had an actual jazz ensemble to perform the soundtrack. It was so good that it ended up as part of the official competition at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards (alongside soundtracks like KPDH's). Every single of the several music pieces perfectly captures the part of the city and the cartel that it was related to, with Gallywix's boss theme sounding like something straight out of a rubber hose cartoons.

On top of that, they brought back a character that has been present in the majority of WoW, and Warcraft before that, yet was never fleshed out as anything other than "the main goblin" - Gazlowe had some of the best glow up, both visually and especially in the writing and voice acting direction. The difference is so stark, you get whiplash going from his quests in Azj-Kahet straight into his quests in Undermine.

Along with this, the anti-capitalist message and the march against Gallywix, tearing down his statue and fighting off his armed guards in the streets, was the kind of contemporary story we need. The kind of story goblins needed to take them away from the antisemitic stereotypes they were chained to for the entire existence of WoW, and give them so much more while still keeping the parts of them inspired by Black and immigrant communities that created and shaped what we recognize as modern American culture.

And then you had the whole main story line that was written so tightly that it flows like a feature movie. Both of the pre-rendered cinematics have so many small elements that I could talk about for hours. Gazlowe's resistance to Undermine comes from a place of trauma and fear, and even then, it's realistic that his acceptance of the role he must do is not linear - he goes back and fourth three times before Renzik dies and gives him the final push. And Renzik’s death isn’t just there to motivate Gazlowe, he dies knowing he couldn’t change Undermine through violence, but he could use it to get the one person who builds and fixes to step up and do it instead.

There’s also this great level of detail where Gazlowe doesn’t use a weapon at all until he’s up against Nikki, and even then it doesn’t work. He’s a builder and a fixer, he represents the kind of healing Undermine actually needs, and he doesn’t do it alone - he does it because his genuine kindness bends the cartels around him, pushes them to be better to their people and to the city itself.