You look at Rogue One in isolation. Then the movie has high stakes for everyone involved. Rogue One has high stakes in it. If the good guys fail things go bad. Just because it is a prequel doesn't mean that the stakes in the movie itself aren't high. The story and the characters can't predict the future. To them the stakes are high.
But it's not in isolation, so why would I treat it like it was?
Doing so would be like if I ignored the Chandra comic and spent the War of the Spark spoiler season worrying whether or not she and Tibalt would survive or being concerned that Bolas would succeed. At least with the Chandra comic I was left with the possibility that characters not known to be in it could die, but we knew anybody of importance in Rogue One that wasn't in the other movies wasn't going to make it (or if they did we'd be complaining about how their survival created plot holes x, y, and z).
Those of you who have seen some of my other posts know that I get a bit wordy. But whatevs, I will word it up again.
Stakes. Stakes, man.
One thing I really, really liked about Star Wars: Rogue One was the concept of ‘stakes.’ The fate of the universe hinges on this one team pulling off the impossible. And as they start proving successful, we’re feeling good, until, uh oh, one of them dies. Okay, well, that’s just one. And then another main character dies. And then another. And another. Suddenly, you realize this is *for real*. The Good Guys have gone up against the Bad Guys, and you begin to realize there’s a chance the Good Guys don’t make it out. Every moment, every death, has gravitas now, even though we’ve only just met them. Now we see just how powerful and dangerous the Empire is. Now we see why the galaxy is right to fear them. So much death and loss, and then, at the very end . . . Hope.
I can’t remember another movie like that. Maybe the original Magnificent Seven, with Brenner? In LOTR, none of the major characters really died apart from Theoden and Boromir.
Rogue One is arguably on of the worst movies to use as an example of setting the stakes well.
As a prequel, we knew the team would succeed in their mission because we'd already seen the results of their success in a movie that came out long prior to Rogue One. There was never a chance of failure.
You could argue that the deaths raise the stakes, but even that falls through when you put a bit more thought into it:
Who dies? Characters introduced specifically for this movie who we have no prior interest in (a small step above no name background characters since they are our central protagonists for this single movie).
Why do they die? Simple, the Star Wars franchise has experience with prequel-related plot holes. By killing off any and all new 'important' characters introduced in this prequel, they avoid the question of where these 'important' people were during the movies that followed them and why they weren't helping out. And we know this is the case, because they used that same tactic with the Solo movie and killing off characters in it.
With no chance of failure and the no chance for brand new characters to survive, how were the stakes high again?
I mean, would people really be happier with the War of the Spark storyline if instead of what we have we got 5 brand new planeswalkers that worked together to beat Bolas but all/most were killed in the process/
The stakes refer to the character's lives being in jeopardy, not to the success of the mission. Everyone knows the Empire is eventually defeated. What we didn't know going in (I left my future sight at home) was how the plans were delivered to the Alliance, and who was going to live and who was going to die. A bit presumptuous to say that anyone not in the original trilogy but referenced or appearing in previous movies must be dead just because they don't show up in the OT.
Also, and I would think this was obvious, but the Rogue One reference, and the Magnificent Seven reference, and the LOTR reference, are all about stakes as far as lives. Heroes dying at the hands of the bad guys. Facing overwhelming odds and losing people along the way.
Your last paragraph is therefore probably a strawman argument. You're debating with yourself a point I never made.
(Also, for what it's worth, we all had a good idea of how the Bolas story was going to work out in the end, just as we knew, watching Rogue One, that the Empire was eventually going to lose.)
I mean, would people really be happier with the War of the Spark storyline if instead of what we have we got 5 brand new planeswalkers that worked together to beat Bolas but all/most were killed in the process/
Your last paragraph is therefore probably a strawman argument. You're debating with yourself a point I never made.
If Rogue One had good stakes because any of the characters (whom we had no investment in prior to the movie and who are only named main characters in the one movie) could have died, how would that have been any different than introducing a brand new group of planeswalkers/Ravnican citizens to War of the Spark so that they can stop Bolas and suffer heavy casualties? Would such a change have really improved the story?
Or would we just be getting complaints, as we are now, that few or no established characters were killed off?
In War of the Spark, we had 1 well established planeswalker, 2 relatively minor planeswalkers, and an unknown number of civilians and unnamed planeswalkers die.
In Rogue One, we had many characters die, all of whom either weren't established (having been created just for the movie) or were unnamed background characters.
When it comes to killing off characters that 'actually matter' (per the complaints voiced in this thread), War of the Spark managed at least one to Rogue One's zero.
Different Medium. Movies have less time to play with and yet routinely make people care about characters. By your logic no one should ever be affected by the deaths in movies. Which is of course patently absurd. WOTC though uses what short stories and books? They have more time to develop walkers and yet didn't do much of anything with Dack or Domri before hand. Now I suppose you could argue that Domri and Dack will get good development in the actual book but given the number of characters this book juggles and based on Greg Weisman work on YJ S2 and S3...yeah I am going to say he won't pull it off.
Different Medium. Movies have less time to play with and yet routinely make people care about characters. By your logic no one should ever be affected by the deaths in movies. Which is of course patently absurd. WOTC though uses what short stories and books? They have more time to develop walkers and yet didn't do much of anything with Dack or Domri before hand. Now I suppose you could argue that Domri and Dack will get good development in the actual book but given the number of characters this book juggles and based on Greg Weisman work on YJ S2 and S3...yeah I am going to say he won't pull it off.
I'd agree with you if Rogue One were a standalone movie, but it's not. Star Wars is a long-standing franchise, with many movies (and until recently an entire extended universe to draw from). They had the opportunity to kill off established characters (and did upon occasion in other movies) and the opportunity to establish the characters who were going to die. The fact, however, remains that they chose to introduce and kill off entirely new characters in Rogue One, which would be exactly like if an entirely new team was introduced in War of the Spark to beat Bolas and take heavy casualties in the process.
Different Medium. Movies have less time to play with and yet routinely make people care about characters. By your logic no one should ever be affected by the deaths in movies. Which is of course patently absurd. WOTC though uses what short stories and books? They have more time to develop walkers and yet didn't do much of anything with Dack or Domri before hand. Now I suppose you could argue that Domri and Dack will get good development in the actual book but given the number of characters this book juggles and based on Greg Weisman work on YJ S2 and S3...yeah I am going to say he won't pull it off.
I'd agree with you if Rogue One were a standalone movie, but it's not. Star Wars is a long-standing franchise, with many movies (and until recently an entire extended universe to draw from). They had the opportunity to kill off established characters (and did upon occasion in other movies) and the opportunity to establish the characters who were going to die. The fact, however, remains that they chose to introduce and kill off entirely new characters in Rogue One, which would be exactly like if an entirely new team was introduced in War of the Spark to beat Bolas and take heavy casualties in the process.
I mean they couldn't kill off established characters. This is right before the Original Trilogy Starts. I mean I guess they could have killed some minor characters but that be like killing randoms in the background.
Point remains Bolas killed 3 Walkers out of 38 Named Walkers in the story (Tezz had the Buy a Box and Dack is Present with no Card). He killed a Parun/Guild Leader but Niv got rezzed so that doesn't count at all. Though Kaya who was working for him at the time killed the Obzedat. Vraska also kinda took out two in Isperia and Jarad (though Bolas setup the latter). So lets be generous and say Bolas took out 6 Characters of Note out of 48 for 12.5%. He did better then the Eldrazi Titans though who laid a goose egg and killed zero. And yeah Emrakul might of not been trying but that doesn't excuse the other two. These are suppose the biggest bads in the multiverse. The problem is the standard will always be Yawgmoth and these new Major Antagonist are falling woefully short of the standard set by their predecessor. Also I find it especially lame to kill Dack who got no card and had zero connection to Bolas or Ravnica when you got plenty of walkers who meet one or both of those criteria.
I mean they couldn't kill off established characters. This is right before the Original Trilogy Starts. I mean I guess they could have killed some minor characters but that be like killing randoms in the background.
That doesn't stop them from establishing the characters prior to the movie and their demise.
Alien: Covenant did this via the release of several shorts (2 prologues, a series of crew messages, and an advertisement for the crew's synthetic assistant) that introduced us to the characters prior to the movie's release.
Point remains that Rogue One offed a bunch of non-established characters in a scenario where we knew their mission would succeed. I fail to see how that's a case of higher stakes (especially since we knew that no major characters could possibly die since we'd already seen them alive afterwards0 in regards to the major characters of a setting dying than War of the Spark (where we at least get a major character death).
I mean they killed all the characters established in the movie. Also technically Saw was established in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So they did kill a character they established previously.
I am confused you wanted them to establish the main cast of Rogue One in some shorts before killing them? I think Alien established most of those randoms in shorts cause most of that cast did very little before getting killed.
That doesn't mean you need to kill off half the cast. No one is saying "death is bad", but just killing people for no good reason because you feel the stakes aren't enough is emotionally shallow writing.
And Urza's story killing so many people is one of many reasons why I don't think of it as good writing, it just feels needlessly bleak to generate edge.
Lol what? Seriously dude, it was the Phyrexian Invasion, built up for years, a literal Doomsday scenario for Dominaria. Killing off a bunch of characters isn't doing so needlessly to be edgy, it's doing so because that's the sort of situation where lots of people end up dead, especially people on the front lines throwing themselves into danger. There were narrative reasons for why most of the characters who died did so.
Killing off so many characters isn't always necessary, but sometimes it is, and the Phyrexian frickin invasion is such a time. It's an apocalypse on par with the Others invading Westeros, and you can bet if they only kill of like, Tormund Cersei and Bronn this season it'll feel like a massive cop out.
For this story, I feel like Gideon is pretty big, especially how he went out, Dack is at least known, and Domri pretty much had to get offed. I'd have liked to see a couple more, maybe 5 or 6 (or a couple more no names like some of the randos just introduced). Nissa biting it would have been satisfying because she's a major character we're invested in but also super boring and someone whose reason for existing in the story really isn't there anymore. Killing off Vivien would have also been a good move considering the icy reception she got and that her story is basically entirely tied to Bolas (unless they position her as a mono green villain, but they seem to still be pushing her as a genocidal hero). No need to kill off half the pws, but a few more than we actually got would have done better to match the build up and the stakes.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I mean they killed all the characters established in the movie. Also technically Saw was established in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So they did kill a character they established previously.
I am confused you wanted them to establish the main cast of Rogue One in some shorts before killing them? I think Alien established most of those randoms in shorts cause most of that cast did very little before getting killed.
That confused me for a hot minute as I wondered how Jigsaw was connected to the star wars universe
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I mean they killed all the characters established in the movie. Also technically Saw was established in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So they did kill a character they established previously.
I am confused you wanted them to establish the main cast of Rogue One in some shorts before killing them? I think Alien established most of those randoms in shorts cause most of that cast did very little before getting killed.
It was brought up in this thread that Rogue One was a good example of setting the stakes high. I just wanted to point out the contradiction of this with the statements of posters in this thread that the deaths don't 'really matter' if the characters weren't established prior (the Alien Covenant bit was merely addressing the fact that Rogue One's characters could have been established prior to the movie even if they were only meant for the one movie).
To that end I proposed the question as to if people honestly thought that introducing an entirely new cast of characters to fight against, die because of, and stop Bolas would really be an improvement to what we got. I'm sincerely curious as to what people want out the Magic storyline as I get the impression that some people want nothing short of the decimation of the protagonists' numbers prior to their success.
Yes, Yawgmoth killed off more major characters than Bolas. SO WHAT?!? Nobody disputes that Yawgmoth was a bigger threat than Bolas, but that doesn't somehow mean that other antagonists can't be a threat unless they outdo him (especially since the majority of the means and people who managed to put up a defensive against Yawgmoth are now dead, gone, or no longer functional).
Yes, the Eldrazi didn't kill off many major characters. Our major characters are planeswalkers, and the Eldrazi never posed much threat to planeswalkers in the first place (as they are only concerned with consuming planes, all a planeswalker has to do is stay out of their way and/or leave and they'll be safe). The threat of the Eldrazi were always to non-planeswalkers and the planes themselves (which may or may not matter to a given planeswalker). Sorin and Nahiri weren't moved to imprison them out of concern for themselves, but for the safety of their planes and people (and in Nahiri's case, the safety of the people of other planes). The only threat the Eldrazi posed to a planeswalker was if said planeswalker deliberately got in front of one and refused to walk away (and the only one who did that on a regular basis was a practically invulnerable beefcake).
Different Medium. Movies have less time to play with and yet routinely make people care about characters. By your logic no one should ever be affected by the deaths in movies. Which is of course patently absurd. WOTC though uses what short stories and books? They have more time to develop walkers and yet didn't do much of anything with Dack or Domri before hand. Now I suppose you could argue that Domri and Dack will get good development in the actual book but given the number of characters this book juggles and based on Greg Weisman work on YJ S2 and S3...yeah I am going to say he won't pull it off.
I'd agree with you if Rogue One were a standalone movie, but it's not. Star Wars is a long-standing franchise, with many movies (and until recently an entire extended universe to draw from). They had the opportunity to kill off established characters (and did upon occasion in other movies) and the opportunity to establish the characters who were going to die. The fact, however, remains that they chose to introduce and kill off entirely new characters in Rogue One, which would be exactly like if an entirely new team was introduced in War of the Spark to beat Bolas and take heavy casualties in the process.
I mean they couldn't kill off established characters. This is right before the Original Trilogy Starts. I mean I guess they could have killed some minor characters but that be like killing randoms in the background.
Point remains Bolas killed 3 Walkers out of 38 Named Walkers in the story (Tezz had the Buy a Box and Dack is Present with no Card). He killed a Parun/Guild Leader but Niv got rezzed so that doesn't count at all. Though Kaya who was working for him at the time killed the Obzedat. Vraska also kinda took out two in Isperia and Jarad (though Bolas setup the latter). So lets be generous and say Bolas took out 6 Characters of Note out of 48 for 12.5%. He did better then the Eldrazi Titans though who laid a goose egg and killed zero. And yeah Emrakul might of not been trying but that doesn't excuse the other two. These are suppose the biggest bads in the multiverse. The problem is the standard will always be Yawgmoth and these new Major Antagonist are falling woefully short of the standard set by their predecessor. Also I find it especially lame to kill Dack who got no card and had zero connection to Bolas or Ravnica when you got plenty of walkers who meet one or both of those criteria.
Yawgmoth should be the standard for a full on apocalypse. WAR wasn't, so it's not an apt comparison. BFZ was, and it's goose egg for named characters is part of what made it such a laughable ***** pile of a story. Amonkhet was, and it felt like it because Bolas killed 4 God's, in addition to the 3 he killed in the flashback, and destroyed it's civilization. Shadows/Eldritch moon Emrakul took out the lunarch council, Bruna, and Gisela via corruption, and Avacyn got killed. That's pretty huge considering that Emrakul was actively trying not to win.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I mean they couldn't kill off established characters. This is right before the Original Trilogy Starts. I mean I guess they could have killed some minor characters but that be like killing randoms in the background.
That doesn't stop them from establishing the characters prior to the movie and their demise.
Alien: Covenant did this via the release of several shorts (2 prologues, a series of crew messages, and an advertisement for the crew's synthetic assistant) that introduced us to the characters prior to the movie's release.
Point remains that Rogue One offed a bunch of non-established characters in a scenario where we knew their mission would succeed. I fail to see how that's a case of higher stakes (especially since we knew that no major characters could possibly die since we'd already seen them alive afterwards0 in regards to the major characters of a setting dying than War of the Spark (where we at least get a major character death).
This is the first time I've ever seen someone compare Alien:Covenant favorably to Rouge One.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
WotC got the excellent character writer of Gargoyles, Spectacular Spider-Man and Young Justice. Then made him write one more of their *****ty disaster movie plots.
Stop writing "the world is gonna end" stories if you don't have the balls to kill characters.
Man, a bunch of bloodthirsty people who are only satisfied with things like "half the cast dies" to make it "good". Sheesh, people are seriously out of touch with fans and what would make a good story if that's the context they have. It's not like every story kills off all of it's named characters.
And to the person saying "these characters have nowhere to go", that just means they find new meaning in their life, or maybe just go off to not do anything of note. Not everyone has to die once they accomplish something major. Not like Sarkhan dropped dead from a heart attack after time traveling in Tarkir.
I mean they killed all the characters established in the movie. Also technically Saw was established in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So they did kill a character they established previously.
I am confused you wanted them to establish the main cast of Rogue One in some shorts before killing them? I think Alien established most of those randoms in shorts cause most of that cast did very little before getting killed.
It was brought up in this thread that Rogue One was a good example of setting the stakes high. I just wanted to point out the contradiction of this with the statements of posters in this thread that the deaths don't 'really matter' if the characters weren't established prior (the Alien Covenant bit was merely addressing the fact that Rogue One's characters could have been established prior to the movie even if they were only meant for the one movie).
To that end I proposed the question as to if people honestly thought that introducing an entirely new cast of characters to fight against, die because of, and stop Bolas would really be an improvement to what we got. I'm sincerely curious as to what people want out the Magic storyline as I get the impression that some people want nothing short of the decimation of the protagonists' numbers prior to their success.
Yes, Yawgmoth killed off more major characters than Bolas. SO WHAT?!? Nobody disputes that Yawgmoth was a bigger threat than Bolas, but that doesn't somehow mean that other antagonists can't be a threat unless they outdo him (especially since the majority of the means and people who managed to put up a defensive against Yawgmoth are now dead, gone, or no longer functional).
Yes, the Eldrazi didn't kill off many major characters. Our major characters are planeswalkers, and the Eldrazi never posed much threat to planeswalkers in the first place (as they are only concerned with consuming planes, all a planeswalker has to do is stay out of their way and/or leave and they'll be safe). The threat of the Eldrazi were always to non-planeswalkers and the planes themselves (which may or may not matter to a given planeswalker). Sorin and Nahiri weren't moved to imprison them out of concern for themselves, but for the safety of their planes and people (and in Nahiri's case, the safety of the people of other planes). The only threat the Eldrazi posed to a planeswalker was if said planeswalker deliberately got in front of one and refused to walk away (and the only one who did that on a regular basis was a practically invulnerable beefcake).
There is middle ground between "half the cast dies" and "the climactic battle actually leaves us with more characters."
Yes, a couple more planeswalkers that have run out of story could have kicked the bucket. Maybe Gideon still would have been the only Gatewatch member, maybe he'd have been joined by Nissa, but there were plenty of good choices beyond Domri and Dack, who were both good choices, that could have died and made story sense. Viv, Samut (though I think Samut may be needed for return to Amonkhet), Ral, Sarkhan (I forgot he was in the set), Kiora, Jaya (though I like subverting the mentor dies trope). Then maybe one of the noobs, or not. Still, 5 or 6 would have felt more meaningful, like the battle had more consequences, and all the ones I mentioned would have made story sense and had some impact (even Sarkhan, as at least it would wrap up his story quite nicely as the former servant driven mad helps end his master). And of course, the big missing death, BOLAS, who should not have survived this. Yeah, they are probably going to free him to help against some future threat or some bull *****, but this should have been it. Also a problem is the handling of Parun deaths off screen. At least Isperia and the Obzedat got killed on a card, but Jarad? And Niv getting killed was so mishandled that we got Niv resurrected before we knew he was dead, and lots of people assumed he just powered up. They really, really, should have given us more web stories, especially dealing with the deaths of the Paruns. The slice of life stories were great, but we should have had five actual storyline stories in there. Things we missed that are inexcusable: Vraska overthrowing Jarad, Isperia calling the Paruns together and getting killed, Domri uniting the Gruul under his banner, Teysa and Kaya working together to take down the Obzedat, and then, right before spoiler season, the planar bridge opening and Niv fighting Bolas and getting killed.
BFZ absolutely could have had more deaths to make us care more. As it stands, we got the widespread destruction, which is fine, but like the old saw "a death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." We had a few legends on that plane that could have died and had some impact. Noyan Dar and Drana would have had some impact, and I don't even know if Ayli or Kalitas died. Off screen maybe?
What really sticks in my craw is MARO's response that its hard to kill off characters and that some people are upset that their favorite walkers died. That right there is everything that is wrong with magic's story. Its focus grouped, overly cautious, doomed to fail bull*****. Their goal is to avoid making any story moves that may upset anyone, and the result is that they upset almost everyone that cares about the story. Instead of occasionally making a few stans butt hurt, they just churn out unsatisfying crap. It's lame, it's lazy, and it turns people off. Its why so many people post hate about the direction of the story, and why no matter where it looks like its headed people shrug and say it'll suck and nothing will matter, because wizards has proven that no matter the stakes in the end nothing will matter. This was the climax of a decade long story arc, and we got one major character and two side character deaths out of it.
Now I haven't read the novel yet, so I can't call the story crap, merely the plot. The novel might polish this turd of retcons and cop outs by being well written, with its characters well fleshed out. An author can do a lot to salvage a story from the failings of its plot, and the pedigree of this author leads me to believe he will. That might lead to this novel being like Test of Metal, a fun read that ultimately harms the larger story. But rest assured, the failing of the plot should not be laid at the feet of the author.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
People talking about "stakes." Well, here are the stakes: if Bolas had won, the Multiverse would have been his forever, and he would reign over infinite Planes and infinite lives with an iron fist for eternity.
Who lives and who dies on Ravnica are not the stakes. The stakes aren't the number of named Planeswalkers we lose in this battle. The stakes are what happens if Bolas wins.
Now, we can debate whether or not our losses on Ravnica reflected, emotionally, the GRAVITY of those stakes. But the stakes in MTG's story have never been higher. Not even in Apocalypse.
Now, let's compare War of the Spark to other MTG finales.
Mirrodin: No heroes truly died in the final battle with Memnarch. Slobad lived, Raksha lived, Bruenna lived. Main heroine Glissa died briefly but came back. The world ended, but everyone came out okay. Bosh died back in Darksteel, but that was 5 years before the final clash.
Kamigawa: Widely considered to be one of the best blocks story-wise. Toshi, Michiko, Kyodai... All the good guys live. All of them. The only deaths in the finale were baddies; O-Kagachi and Mochi. Big Bad Konda didn't technically die, but I'll include him here anyway because he still got destroyed. But among the good guys, even randos like Pearl-Ear, Riko, and Sharp-Ear -- everyone comes out of the big final battle okay.
Ravnica Block: Kos dies in book 2, but his ghost is back as the main character in Book 3 so it doesn't really count. Feather, Pivlic, Faun, And Jarad all come out at the end. Jarad as a zombie, granted, but he's around. The only serious deaths in the final book are Nephilim and villains like Augustin, Momir, and Lyzolda.
Coldsnap (End of the Ice Age Block): Just the villain and Lovisa Coldeyes, but admittedly Lovisa's kind of hurt. (She went out like a badass, though. )
Time Spiral: Along with Apocalypse and War of the Spark, this is the Big One, with the whole Multiverse at stake and a vast host of heroes arrayed against the big threat. But really, among the heroes, only Freyalise and Jeska die. Windgrace sacrifices his spark.
Alara: Big huge planar war, but if I recall correctly, all the good guys live. Jazal dies, but that's at the beginning, and key to kicking off the actual plot.
Zendikar (Both blocks): No carded characters die save for villains Ulamog and Kozilek.
...I could go on through each and every block, but this post is already stretching long and you all likely get the idea. So let's go back to Apocalypse, the Big One that people love to bring up.
Villains Yawgmoth and Crovax both die. Among the heroes, we lose Urza and Gerrard, who are extremely significant. But after that... Who? Bo Levar and Commander Guff? I guarantee you that more people care about Dack dying than ever cared about those two. Eladmiri and Lin Sivvi go as well, if I recall, but those are legendary creatures, and in War of The Spark we can balance them off with the corruption (and perhaps... destruction?) of other beloved legends like the God-Eternals, esp. Oketra.
More named characters die in Apocalypse than in War of the Spark, certainly. But not by all that much.
----
In the end, War of the Spark delivers the casualty of the hero, which is something that (if my memory is complete) only Apocalypse and Time Spiral Block can claim as well. Gideon, meanwhile, was not just a member of the Gatewatch. He was the leader, and along with Liliana, one of the two heroes of this final story.
Would I have liked to see Nissa, Vivien, Jaya, and Jace bite it as well? Absolutely. But the fact that they don't doesn't ruin the story for me. It would just have made it better if they had.
But in the end, Magic stories have always have a pattern of most of the cast walking out of even the most apocalyptic cataclysms intact.
Well I make the case that one is going struggle making everyone happy when you have so many characters. For instance as a fan of most Oldwalkers I am not happy, why because Teferi, Karn and Jaya haven't got to do anything impressive in Dominaria or Ravnica/War of the Spark. The later two couldnt beat a Frog with backup and all three of them couldn't beat a Shade again with backup. And here Ravnica they once again sit out of final fight last time it was Belzenlok, this time its Bolas. And Teferi technically on the Gatewatch but what is the point if he gets treated like crap and doesn't get to do anything cool. I am not opposed to WOTC want more diversity but I am not going to stand for tokenism where they just put a black guy on the team for brownie points then don't let them do anything. Especially, when he is stronger and more powerful the everyone else on the team except maybe Lili with Chain Veil active but she is getting rid of that.
On the bright side at least Jaya didnt die so maybe one of these days she can get a good walker card probably right before they kill her. Which is more then Dack's Fan can say since he didn't get card at all even if his first card is a Vintage All Star. The only positive thing as a Karn and Teferi fan is the card quality, nothing but winners for their Walker Cards.
If you don't want to kill many characters don't make this (WotS Teaser) video then: https://youtu.be/Zn_0ZjpjntE
Its a very simple and elegant video. 36 stained glass windows as we pan around representing the 36 planeswalkers aside from Tezzeret as we learn he is "off plane" in the form of a buy-a-box promo. The first stained glass window to break is Gideon's. Then we see many candles, all but one gets extinguished, which leads one to believe the last candle is Nicol Bolas, which is then reinforced as the smoke form the horns and the candle his gem of becoming. Then, finally, everything becomes darkness as its presumed the villain has won.
Sure it got people talking, but the backlash is you set up a false expectation on how the audience thought the war would have gone, that anyone could have died, but when the body count is low, then the teaser video in retrospect essentially sets up a bait-and-switch story.
There is also quiet a few story beats missing from the cards that the book has that has left people consistently and outright confused. I have the book, if you want an answer, private message me.
People talking about "stakes." Well, here are the stakes: if Bolas had won, the Multiverse would have been his forever, and he would reign over infinite Planes and infinite lives with an iron fist for eternity.
Who lives and who dies on Ravnica are not the stakes. The stakes aren't the number of named Planeswalkers we lose in this battle. The stakes are what happens if Bolas wins.
Now, we can debate whether or not our losses on Ravnica reflected, emotionally, the GRAVITY of those stakes. But the stakes in MTG's story have never been higher. Not even in Apocalypse.
.
Here's the thing...thats absolutely false.
Those are not real 'stakes' because.../spoilers....it was never going to happen. He was never going to win. So no, the stakes are not higher in that regard.
While not dead Bolas is out of the story for the foreseeable future and if nothing else isn't a planeswalker anymore. I said it in another thread but honesty I like Bolas being trapped rather than dead since 1) for someone wanting all power, him being reduced to a mortal and trapped is much more satisfying to be than death and 2) he has been killed once before and came back so any death permanence to him is already very low. In fact him and Ugin are so far the only magic character I think they have killed off but then brought back. From a design standpoint it also makes some sense to phase him out since he is bit more of challenge being a locked solidly in three colors.
As for other character after this a few things. They meantioned before that Vivien was already a character they had been working on making and they added in the bolas back story to help her fit in M19. This set might have originally been slated for her debut since they originally didn't have core sets when War was being put together and most likely have future storylines for her drafted already. And I said it before but I thought it would be cool for future storylines to have start up because of the war. We seen some with Chandra and Tibalt in the Chandra comics but I think we will see more.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
If you don't want to kill many characters don't make this (WotS Teaser) video then: https://youtu.be/Zn_0ZjpjntE
Its a very simple and elegant video. 36 stained glass windows as we pan around representing the 36 planeswalkers aside from Tezzeret as we learn he is "off plane" in the form of a buy-a-box promo. The first stained glass window to break is Gideon's. Then we see many candles, all but one gets extinguished, which leads one to believe the last candle is Nicol Bolas, which is then reinforced as the smoke form the horns and the candle his gem of becoming. Then, finally, everything becomes darkness as its presumed the villain has won.
Sure it got people talking, but the backlash is you set up a false expectation on how the audience thought the war would have gone, that anyone could have died, but when the body count is low, then the teaser video in retrospect essentially sets up a bait-and-switch story.
There is also quiet a few story beats missing from the cards that the book has that has left people consistently and outright confused. I have the book, if you want an answer, private message me.
Anyone who thought everyone dies except Bolas is... honestly kind of out of touch with reality. They aren't going to kill off 35 characters and let Bolas win. That isn't a good story. "Everyone dies and the villain wins" isn't going to happen here.
Also wow, people are really blood thirsty. Story isn't good unless half the cast dies is pretty dang unreasonable. Someone seems like they accomplished something of note? Better wipe them off. Probably should have had Sarkhan drop dead of a heart attack after Tarkir was finished.
Anyone who thought everyone dies except Bolas is... honestly kind of out of touch with reality. They aren't going to kill off 35 characters and let Bolas win. That isn't a good story. "Everyone dies and the villain wins" isn't going to happen here.
Gideon is the first to fall, most of the sparks are harvested, Nicol Bolas appears to win. Ergo: Even if Nicol Bolas doesn't win and the death toll is lower than what it seemed for named planewalkers, it should still seem like Nicol Bolas would have been more challenging to defeat than actually presented.
Also wow, people are really blood thirsty. Story isn't good unless half the cast dies is pretty dang unreasonable. Someone seems like they accomplished something of note? Better wipe them off. Probably should have had Sarkhan drop dead of a heart attack after Tarkir was finished.
Now you are just being unreasonable. This is a story with 14 whole years of build-up and you claim its unreasonable to expect a higher death toll for the planeswalkers?
Yes, villains appear to win quite often. Doesn't mean that everyone dies. I can name multiple examples where villains do some big bad evil thing and get a power boost and still fail to kill the entire main cast. I would hazard a guess that in most stories this is the case even, because most stories don't end with the main cast killed by the villain.
And I'm not being unreasonable at all. People keep shifting the goal posts when it comes to character death to begin with, and some people have outright said they weren't happy that it didn't result in everyone dying. That I'm being "unreasonable" because I think that a minority of people want an overly bleak and "gritty" story is amusing, but not accurate at all. Most stories don't kill off a ton of named characters, Game of Thrones and Warhammer 40K aren't the only media that exists.
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But it's not in isolation, so why would I treat it like it was?
Doing so would be like if I ignored the Chandra comic and spent the War of the Spark spoiler season worrying whether or not she and Tibalt would survive or being concerned that Bolas would succeed. At least with the Chandra comic I was left with the possibility that characters not known to be in it could die, but we knew anybody of importance in Rogue One that wasn't in the other movies wasn't going to make it (or if they did we'd be complaining about how their survival created plot holes x, y, and z).
The stakes refer to the character's lives being in jeopardy, not to the success of the mission. Everyone knows the Empire is eventually defeated. What we didn't know going in (I left my future sight at home) was how the plans were delivered to the Alliance, and who was going to live and who was going to die. A bit presumptuous to say that anyone not in the original trilogy but referenced or appearing in previous movies must be dead just because they don't show up in the OT.
Also, and I would think this was obvious, but the Rogue One reference, and the Magnificent Seven reference, and the LOTR reference, are all about stakes as far as lives. Heroes dying at the hands of the bad guys. Facing overwhelming odds and losing people along the way.
Your last paragraph is therefore probably a strawman argument. You're debating with yourself a point I never made.
(Also, for what it's worth, we all had a good idea of how the Bolas story was going to work out in the end, just as we knew, watching Rogue One, that the Empire was eventually going to lose.)
If Rogue One had good stakes because any of the characters (whom we had no investment in prior to the movie and who are only named main characters in the one movie) could have died, how would that have been any different than introducing a brand new group of planeswalkers/Ravnican citizens to War of the Spark so that they can stop Bolas and suffer heavy casualties? Would such a change have really improved the story?
Or would we just be getting complaints, as we are now, that few or no established characters were killed off?
In War of the Spark, we had 1 well established planeswalker, 2 relatively minor planeswalkers, and an unknown number of civilians and unnamed planeswalkers die.
In Rogue One, we had many characters die, all of whom either weren't established (having been created just for the movie) or were unnamed background characters.
When it comes to killing off characters that 'actually matter' (per the complaints voiced in this thread), War of the Spark managed at least one to Rogue One's zero.
I'd agree with you if Rogue One were a standalone movie, but it's not. Star Wars is a long-standing franchise, with many movies (and until recently an entire extended universe to draw from). They had the opportunity to kill off established characters (and did upon occasion in other movies) and the opportunity to establish the characters who were going to die. The fact, however, remains that they chose to introduce and kill off entirely new characters in Rogue One, which would be exactly like if an entirely new team was introduced in War of the Spark to beat Bolas and take heavy casualties in the process.
I mean they couldn't kill off established characters. This is right before the Original Trilogy Starts. I mean I guess they could have killed some minor characters but that be like killing randoms in the background.
Point remains Bolas killed 3 Walkers out of 38 Named Walkers in the story (Tezz had the Buy a Box and Dack is Present with no Card). He killed a Parun/Guild Leader but Niv got rezzed so that doesn't count at all. Though Kaya who was working for him at the time killed the Obzedat. Vraska also kinda took out two in Isperia and Jarad (though Bolas setup the latter). So lets be generous and say Bolas took out 6 Characters of Note out of 48 for 12.5%. He did better then the Eldrazi Titans though who laid a goose egg and killed zero. And yeah Emrakul might of not been trying but that doesn't excuse the other two. These are suppose the biggest bads in the multiverse. The problem is the standard will always be Yawgmoth and these new Major Antagonist are falling woefully short of the standard set by their predecessor. Also I find it especially lame to kill Dack who got no card and had zero connection to Bolas or Ravnica when you got plenty of walkers who meet one or both of those criteria.
That doesn't stop them from establishing the characters prior to the movie and their demise.
Alien: Covenant did this via the release of several shorts (2 prologues, a series of crew messages, and an advertisement for the crew's synthetic assistant) that introduced us to the characters prior to the movie's release.
Point remains that Rogue One offed a bunch of non-established characters in a scenario where we knew their mission would succeed. I fail to see how that's a case of higher stakes (especially since we knew that no major characters could possibly die since we'd already seen them alive afterwards0 in regards to the major characters of a setting dying than War of the Spark (where we at least get a major character death).
I am confused you wanted them to establish the main cast of Rogue One in some shorts before killing them? I think Alien established most of those randoms in shorts cause most of that cast did very little before getting killed.
Lol what? Seriously dude, it was the Phyrexian Invasion, built up for years, a literal Doomsday scenario for Dominaria. Killing off a bunch of characters isn't doing so needlessly to be edgy, it's doing so because that's the sort of situation where lots of people end up dead, especially people on the front lines throwing themselves into danger. There were narrative reasons for why most of the characters who died did so.
Killing off so many characters isn't always necessary, but sometimes it is, and the Phyrexian frickin invasion is such a time. It's an apocalypse on par with the Others invading Westeros, and you can bet if they only kill of like, Tormund Cersei and Bronn this season it'll feel like a massive cop out.
For this story, I feel like Gideon is pretty big, especially how he went out, Dack is at least known, and Domri pretty much had to get offed. I'd have liked to see a couple more, maybe 5 or 6 (or a couple more no names like some of the randos just introduced). Nissa biting it would have been satisfying because she's a major character we're invested in but also super boring and someone whose reason for existing in the story really isn't there anymore. Killing off Vivien would have also been a good move considering the icy reception she got and that her story is basically entirely tied to Bolas (unless they position her as a mono green villain, but they seem to still be pushing her as a genocidal hero). No need to kill off half the pws, but a few more than we actually got would have done better to match the build up and the stakes.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
That confused me for a hot minute as I wondered how Jigsaw was connected to the star wars universe
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
It was brought up in this thread that Rogue One was a good example of setting the stakes high. I just wanted to point out the contradiction of this with the statements of posters in this thread that the deaths don't 'really matter' if the characters weren't established prior (the Alien Covenant bit was merely addressing the fact that Rogue One's characters could have been established prior to the movie even if they were only meant for the one movie).
To that end I proposed the question as to if people honestly thought that introducing an entirely new cast of characters to fight against, die because of, and stop Bolas would really be an improvement to what we got. I'm sincerely curious as to what people want out the Magic storyline as I get the impression that some people want nothing short of the decimation of the protagonists' numbers prior to their success.
Yes, Yawgmoth killed off more major characters than Bolas. SO WHAT?!? Nobody disputes that Yawgmoth was a bigger threat than Bolas, but that doesn't somehow mean that other antagonists can't be a threat unless they outdo him (especially since the majority of the means and people who managed to put up a defensive against Yawgmoth are now dead, gone, or no longer functional).
Yes, the Eldrazi didn't kill off many major characters. Our major characters are planeswalkers, and the Eldrazi never posed much threat to planeswalkers in the first place (as they are only concerned with consuming planes, all a planeswalker has to do is stay out of their way and/or leave and they'll be safe). The threat of the Eldrazi were always to non-planeswalkers and the planes themselves (which may or may not matter to a given planeswalker). Sorin and Nahiri weren't moved to imprison them out of concern for themselves, but for the safety of their planes and people (and in Nahiri's case, the safety of the people of other planes). The only threat the Eldrazi posed to a planeswalker was if said planeswalker deliberately got in front of one and refused to walk away (and the only one who did that on a regular basis was a practically invulnerable beefcake).
Yawgmoth should be the standard for a full on apocalypse. WAR wasn't, so it's not an apt comparison. BFZ was, and it's goose egg for named characters is part of what made it such a laughable ***** pile of a story. Amonkhet was, and it felt like it because Bolas killed 4 God's, in addition to the 3 he killed in the flashback, and destroyed it's civilization. Shadows/Eldritch moon Emrakul took out the lunarch council, Bruna, and Gisela via corruption, and Avacyn got killed. That's pretty huge considering that Emrakul was actively trying not to win.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
This is the first time I've ever seen someone compare Alien:Covenant favorably to Rouge One.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Stop writing "the world is gonna end" stories if you don't have the balls to kill characters.
And to the person saying "these characters have nowhere to go", that just means they find new meaning in their life, or maybe just go off to not do anything of note. Not everyone has to die once they accomplish something major. Not like Sarkhan dropped dead from a heart attack after time traveling in Tarkir.
There is middle ground between "half the cast dies" and "the climactic battle actually leaves us with more characters."
Yes, a couple more planeswalkers that have run out of story could have kicked the bucket. Maybe Gideon still would have been the only Gatewatch member, maybe he'd have been joined by Nissa, but there were plenty of good choices beyond Domri and Dack, who were both good choices, that could have died and made story sense. Viv, Samut (though I think Samut may be needed for return to Amonkhet), Ral, Sarkhan (I forgot he was in the set), Kiora, Jaya (though I like subverting the mentor dies trope). Then maybe one of the noobs, or not. Still, 5 or 6 would have felt more meaningful, like the battle had more consequences, and all the ones I mentioned would have made story sense and had some impact (even Sarkhan, as at least it would wrap up his story quite nicely as the former servant driven mad helps end his master). And of course, the big missing death, BOLAS, who should not have survived this. Yeah, they are probably going to free him to help against some future threat or some bull *****, but this should have been it. Also a problem is the handling of Parun deaths off screen. At least Isperia and the Obzedat got killed on a card, but Jarad? And Niv getting killed was so mishandled that we got Niv resurrected before we knew he was dead, and lots of people assumed he just powered up. They really, really, should have given us more web stories, especially dealing with the deaths of the Paruns. The slice of life stories were great, but we should have had five actual storyline stories in there. Things we missed that are inexcusable: Vraska overthrowing Jarad, Isperia calling the Paruns together and getting killed, Domri uniting the Gruul under his banner, Teysa and Kaya working together to take down the Obzedat, and then, right before spoiler season, the planar bridge opening and Niv fighting Bolas and getting killed.
BFZ absolutely could have had more deaths to make us care more. As it stands, we got the widespread destruction, which is fine, but like the old saw "a death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." We had a few legends on that plane that could have died and had some impact. Noyan Dar and Drana would have had some impact, and I don't even know if Ayli or Kalitas died. Off screen maybe?
What really sticks in my craw is MARO's response that its hard to kill off characters and that some people are upset that their favorite walkers died. That right there is everything that is wrong with magic's story. Its focus grouped, overly cautious, doomed to fail bull*****. Their goal is to avoid making any story moves that may upset anyone, and the result is that they upset almost everyone that cares about the story. Instead of occasionally making a few stans butt hurt, they just churn out unsatisfying crap. It's lame, it's lazy, and it turns people off. Its why so many people post hate about the direction of the story, and why no matter where it looks like its headed people shrug and say it'll suck and nothing will matter, because wizards has proven that no matter the stakes in the end nothing will matter. This was the climax of a decade long story arc, and we got one major character and two side character deaths out of it.
Now I haven't read the novel yet, so I can't call the story crap, merely the plot. The novel might polish this turd of retcons and cop outs by being well written, with its characters well fleshed out. An author can do a lot to salvage a story from the failings of its plot, and the pedigree of this author leads me to believe he will. That might lead to this novel being like Test of Metal, a fun read that ultimately harms the larger story. But rest assured, the failing of the plot should not be laid at the feet of the author.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Who lives and who dies on Ravnica are not the stakes. The stakes aren't the number of named Planeswalkers we lose in this battle. The stakes are what happens if Bolas wins.
Now, we can debate whether or not our losses on Ravnica reflected, emotionally, the GRAVITY of those stakes. But the stakes in MTG's story have never been higher. Not even in Apocalypse.
Now, let's compare War of the Spark to other MTG finales.
Mirrodin: No heroes truly died in the final battle with Memnarch. Slobad lived, Raksha lived, Bruenna lived. Main heroine Glissa died briefly but came back. The world ended, but everyone came out okay. Bosh died back in Darksteel, but that was 5 years before the final clash.
Kamigawa: Widely considered to be one of the best blocks story-wise. Toshi, Michiko, Kyodai... All the good guys live. All of them. The only deaths in the finale were baddies; O-Kagachi and Mochi. Big Bad Konda didn't technically die, but I'll include him here anyway because he still got destroyed. But among the good guys, even randos like Pearl-Ear, Riko, and Sharp-Ear -- everyone comes out of the big final battle okay.
Ravnica Block: Kos dies in book 2, but his ghost is back as the main character in Book 3 so it doesn't really count. Feather, Pivlic, Faun, And Jarad all come out at the end. Jarad as a zombie, granted, but he's around. The only serious deaths in the final book are Nephilim and villains like Augustin, Momir, and Lyzolda.
Coldsnap (End of the Ice Age Block): Just the villain and Lovisa Coldeyes, but admittedly Lovisa's kind of hurt. (She went out like a badass, though.
Time Spiral: Along with Apocalypse and War of the Spark, this is the Big One, with the whole Multiverse at stake and a vast host of heroes arrayed against the big threat. But really, among the heroes, only Freyalise and Jeska die. Windgrace sacrifices his spark.
Alara: Big huge planar war, but if I recall correctly, all the good guys live. Jazal dies, but that's at the beginning, and key to kicking off the actual plot.
Zendikar (Both blocks): No carded characters die save for villains Ulamog and Kozilek.
...I could go on through each and every block, but this post is already stretching long and you all likely get the idea. So let's go back to Apocalypse, the Big One that people love to bring up.
Villains Yawgmoth and Crovax both die. Among the heroes, we lose Urza and Gerrard, who are extremely significant. But after that... Who? Bo Levar and Commander Guff? I guarantee you that more people care about Dack dying than ever cared about those two. Eladmiri and Lin Sivvi go as well, if I recall, but those are legendary creatures, and in War of The Spark we can balance them off with the corruption (and perhaps... destruction?) of other beloved legends like the God-Eternals, esp. Oketra.
More named characters die in Apocalypse than in War of the Spark, certainly. But not by all that much.
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In the end, War of the Spark delivers the casualty of the hero, which is something that (if my memory is complete) only Apocalypse and Time Spiral Block can claim as well. Gideon, meanwhile, was not just a member of the Gatewatch. He was the leader, and along with Liliana, one of the two heroes of this final story.
Would I have liked to see Nissa, Vivien, Jaya, and Jace bite it as well? Absolutely. But the fact that they don't doesn't ruin the story for me. It would just have made it better if they had.
But in the end, Magic stories have always have a pattern of most of the cast walking out of even the most apocalyptic cataclysms intact.
On the bright side at least Jaya didnt die so maybe one of these days she can get a good walker card probably right before they kill her. Which is more then Dack's Fan can say since he didn't get card at all even if his first card is a Vintage All Star. The only positive thing as a Karn and Teferi fan is the card quality, nothing but winners for their Walker Cards.
Its a very simple and elegant video. 36 stained glass windows as we pan around representing the 36 planeswalkers aside from Tezzeret as we learn he is "off plane" in the form of a buy-a-box promo. The first stained glass window to break is Gideon's. Then we see many candles, all but one gets extinguished, which leads one to believe the last candle is Nicol Bolas, which is then reinforced as the smoke form the horns and the candle his gem of becoming. Then, finally, everything becomes darkness as its presumed the villain has won.
Sure it got people talking, but the backlash is you set up a false expectation on how the audience thought the war would have gone, that anyone could have died, but when the body count is low, then the teaser video in retrospect essentially sets up a bait-and-switch story.
There is also quiet a few story beats missing from the cards that the book has that has left people consistently and outright confused. I have the book, if you want an answer, private message me.
Here's the thing...thats absolutely false.
Those are not real 'stakes' because.../spoilers....it was never going to happen. He was never going to win. So no, the stakes are not higher in that regard.
Spirits
As for other character after this a few things. They meantioned before that Vivien was already a character they had been working on making and they added in the bolas back story to help her fit in M19. This set might have originally been slated for her debut since they originally didn't have core sets when War was being put together and most likely have future storylines for her drafted already. And I said it before but I thought it would be cool for future storylines to have start up because of the war. We seen some with Chandra and Tibalt in the Chandra comics but I think we will see more.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Anyone who thought everyone dies except Bolas is... honestly kind of out of touch with reality. They aren't going to kill off 35 characters and let Bolas win. That isn't a good story. "Everyone dies and the villain wins" isn't going to happen here.
Also wow, people are really blood thirsty. Story isn't good unless half the cast dies is pretty dang unreasonable. Someone seems like they accomplished something of note? Better wipe them off. Probably should have had Sarkhan drop dead of a heart attack after Tarkir was finished.
Now you are just being unreasonable. This is a story with 14 whole years of build-up and you claim its unreasonable to expect a higher death toll for the planeswalkers?
And I'm not being unreasonable at all. People keep shifting the goal posts when it comes to character death to begin with, and some people have outright said they weren't happy that it didn't result in everyone dying. That I'm being "unreasonable" because I think that a minority of people want an overly bleak and "gritty" story is amusing, but not accurate at all. Most stories don't kill off a ton of named characters, Game of Thrones and Warhammer 40K aren't the only media that exists.