You know, if someone had described this trailer to me, I would have been skeptical. Time flowing backwards, showing events in reverse. The unironic use of a cover of Linkin Park's In the End. And yet, it works.
Perhaps the aspect that makes it work is that the central character is Lilliana Vess, the necromancer planeswalker who represents the color Black. Black is selfish and ruthless, and Lilliana is all of those things. In the Magic community, Black's tagline is "Greatness, at any cost."
Yet Lilliana is still very popular, and is perhaps the character that WotC has done the best job with.
And yet, Lilliana makes the most unselfish move here, turning her back on Bolas and (probably) getting killed in the end, because she saw a young girl and boy killed in the attack. (Most likely reminding herself of her and her brother).
ReplyDeleteRiveting stuff! I only recently started reading the lore. I just thought it was a fun card game :)
You can make the argument that even her betrayal was selfish. She doesn't care about Dack Fayden's death, her former ally/friend Gideon being attacked. She doesn't even rebel when the girl and boy are killed.
DeleteShe rebels when Bolas orders her to raise the children as undead. Even her rebellion is selfish, all about her history, and saving others is entirely incidental.
It's interesting how the same video can produce such different takes on it depending on how you see the characters. Since it replayed it forwards and backwards I took it as she had hard enough - Dack, Gideon, the kids - that's it, I'm going against Bolos now.
ReplyDeleteLooking at it from your perspective I see where you are coming from, however. I don't know Lilliana well (I don't consume any other MTG lore or anything) so perhaps your more intimate knowledge is the difference here.
Magic has lore? OK, I knew that, but I didn't know that it was something that people actually cared about. That's pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteWotC has changed their approach to lore several times over the years. It's actually a pretty interesting topic, especially when you see what they believe has worked for them.
DeleteThe introduction of planeswalker cards in particular was a big shift in how lore was handled.