Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

MVPScheer123r8 t1_iwm3swa wrote

Reply to comment by GamingFly in Dragon age Absolution will be the “Arcane” of 2022 by teutonic_order33

I mean, this is just objectively untrue. Anyone who had been following Riot's work could have probably told you Arcane would be a masterpiece from the get go. Their main game is straight up ass, but EVERYTHING else they do has been quite frankly incredible. I mean just check out any of their animated music videos for all of their bands they have based around LoL characters. It's all top quality stuff. So no, they weren't struggling to put out quality consistently. Far from it. Just nobody other than LoL fans paid attention to any of that. As someone who's never played League, I was blown away when I went back and found the other animated stuff they had released before Arcane. It was clear then that Arcane was always destined to succeed as long as people tuned in for it.

Edit: added some examples of previous work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VTkBuxU4yk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVZpHFXcFJw

The second one specifically shows their level of genius. 8 seconds in you can see the first concept art for Powder. Like two years before anyone even knew who she was supposed to be. Just hidden right there in the background while everyone watching has no clue. Their attention to detail and foreshadowing is honestly crazy.

2

GamingFly t1_iwmg393 wrote

Massive revisionist history. General audiences had zero expectations from "that show based on that game with the awful fanbase".

And the same can be applied to Andor. Anyone who looked at the writing talent on that show; Tony Gilroy, Beau Willimon, would take away that it would've been a surefire hit. But nobody cared about the talent behind the show because "its just another OT-era Star Wars cashgrab and will follow the tone of the last three live-action shows".

Riot had done plenty of amazing animated work before Arcane. None of it long-form storytelling, but still fantastic. I have a ton of respect for them for the way they run their company, which is not something I can say for many other companies.

But WoW had some fantastic cinematics and an awful movie. Lord knows if Overwatch turned its animated shorts into full-length stories, it probably wouldn't end well. Even with a good track record, expectations from general audiences were on the ground for both Arcane and Andor.

3

MVPScheer123r8 t1_iwmkl46 wrote

My point is Andor and Arcane are nowhere near the same with how you're comparing them.

Your point was not about what general audiences viewed it as. Your two points were, "from a franchise that's either (a) struggling to put out quality consistently or (b) has very low expectations when it comes to long-form storytelling." Those are two COMPLETELY different things. They're not similar in the slightest.

If one struggles to be consistent with the quality of its work but puts out a lot of it, and the other could possibly falter with long term storytelling cuz it's never been given the chance to do it before, how exactly are those two things in any way the same or even similar?

Edit: It would be massive revisionist history if I were talking about general audiences, except for I never was. I said anyone who had followed Riot's work. So not people who just play LoL, but people who actually watched their animated content before Arcane. Their first target audience with the show. Those people should have had a pretty damn good idea with how Arcane was going to turn out. Especially by the time the first trailer for it dropped. Again, as someone who's never played LoL and usually waits for reviews to come in before watching new shows, Arcane's trailer convinced me to get on and watch it the exact moment it came out. Same with Andor in that regard. So maybe they're similar because they both had absolutely banger trailers. But that's about it.

3