If you told me this was a student project, I’d stand up and applaud, but compared with Blizzard’s other cinematic work, it’s… not entirely what I would have expected. Then Arthas swings once, there’s a bright line of light, and Illidan collapses into a heap. Of the ~1:21 of new footage, nearly 30 seconds of it is just Arthas and Illidan powering up. The original scene is about a minute long, start to finish. These sorts of shots are a staple of live-action and animated films and TV shows, but you typically don’t show you two lengthy power-ups followed by one character instantly defeating the other. Between the two, I’d say he looks more implicitly dead in the reshoot than the old footage.įurthermore, it makes no sense to extend this particular scene with a lot of power scaling - blue ice creeping up Frostmourne for Arthas, and a shot of Illidan drawing more heavily on his fel-empowered demonic half. In Reforged, he’s absolutely still and shot from the back. In the original, Illidan at least has a few jerky motions on the ground, as blood pools beneath him. You might think that if Blizzard was going to change how the encounter ends, they’d include some kind of shift to make it clear that Illidan wasn’t dead.

I’m referring, specifically, to the fact that Illidan didn’t appear to survive this encounter with Arthas, and it wasn’t clear he had until Blizzard confirmed his presence in World of Warcraft. It’s also entirely unscored, nearly twice as long as the original (to little overall purpose), and changes a critical ending camera angle without fixing the miscommunication said camera angle created.

It shows an updated version of what Illidan and Arthas would have looked like. At first glance, the second video looks like the perfect antidote to the first.

Warcraft 3 wont