Semi-pertinent question: anyone familiar with Dota 2 lore?
Just as comparison. I'm kinda familiar with old-school Dota (what there was at least, life vs. hell basically), but has anything changed?
9 Comments
A ton has changed. No more Sentinel or Scourge (Radiant and Dire now) and the ancients are now shards of a moon that blew up or something, it gets explained in some rewards you get from the tutorial, I'm sure you could look it up or play it through quickly.
Also lots of name changes so Blizzard won't sue.
So, keeping in mind that I never played the original DotA, and don't even play much of DotA 2 right now, here's my understanding:
Back in the original DotA, there was this big theme of a war between two sides, and even in gameplay you could only have your heroes be on the same team (At least at one point it was like this).
Because of a lot of copyright issues with Blizzard, they had to make up some new lore: As far as I understand, the two 'Ancients' (Same role as the Nexuses in League) are Sapient, God-like entities who REALLY hate each other, and employ heroes to fight on their behalf (Through promise of riches, promise of immortality, and I wouldn't be surprised if straight up mind control was involved).
So basically, the Sentinel and Scourge (What I think they were called, since I never played myself) factions don't exist in DotA 2, and any hero can be apart of the same team regardless on if they're considered 'Radiant' or 'Dire' (The names of the Ancient factions respectively).
And of course, some individual heroes got changed too, mostly due to the copyright issues with Blizzard (I know there was something about Skeleton King having to be remade into Wraith King last year, for example, but changes also had to take place when the game was first being made. And apparently the original Meepo was like an earth Spirit, but in 2 he's a treasure hunter/scavenger that apparently got his soul split or something to make the other Meepos.)
Did that answer your question, or did I just ramble on about a topic I know relatively little about?
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Mad_Moon
Once, the ancient intellects of Radiant and Dire warred with each other endlessly. The two forces, complete opposites in every way, could find no compromise between each other. The Primordials grew tired of their strife and punished the two by fusing them into one object and flinging them into space to drift for eternity. Eventually, this sphere was captured in the orbit of a still cooling world, shining over it as the races came into being. Because of its power, the Mad Moon glowed brightly over the World, competing even with the brightness of the sun.
But the forces inside still fought, and the Mad Moon began to show imperfections. Small weaknesses expanded and eventually the sphere broke apart, raining down material onto the World. The remains of the Mad Moon settled as Radiant Ore and Direstone, pure materials of the two intelligences. The World fell into temporary chaos, though some took advantage of the situation. Abzidian, the Demon Smith, used this time to forge Demon Edge from the raw materials that fell.[2] Post-Destruction
After the Mad Moon was destroyed, the Radiant Ore and Direstone began to emit pure energy that corrupted the races. They became dependent on it and built civilizations around the material, while the rock provided them with energy, Mana, and life. The Radiant Ore gave off the emission of bright color and charm to the area around it, while the Direstone made the earth appear poisonous and decayed. Neither was neutral in its actions. The energies they gave off were incompatible, and interfered with each other. Eventually, the followers of each of the forces became aware of this, and sought to destroy the opposite stone
I'm aware that original DoTA inserted Line Inverse from Slayers, and Kimahri Ronso from FFX, into the roster. Those weren't even proxies, they were full-on inserts. Which was fine because I mean, DoTA was a mod and that was expected and was fun to see them.
Move them into DoTA2 though, and characters like them just have this shadow hanging over them. You know they would fudge some kind of backstory to include them, but nothing will shake-off they were characters from many other franchises originally. This is the same for some characters like Zeus, who is...the mythological Zeus but apparently not.
I don't know, it was just really distracting for me from a story perspective. I couldn't take them seriously if I kept seeing their original characters in my mind's eye.