Lore Watch Podcast

Lore Watch Podcast starts off with a dive into the lore of the Midsummer Fire Festival, particularly since so much was added over the past few years. How has this little event about a melting ice stone grown to reflect the culture of fire and summer in the different races?

Then, we go back to the Shadowlands for the rest of the podcast. We start with actually getting there. If we were the only Maw Walker, why is there a whole portal in our capital cities for any rando to traipse into Oribos? As long as we're in Oribos, let's chat First Ones. What do we know about them, exactly? How has the lore we know about them changed what we used to think we know about Azeroth?

We wrap it up by touching a figurative third rail: what would it take to make it feel like Sylvanas coming back was earned, and not a "somehow, Palapatine returned" cop out?
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Looking back and knowing what we do about Harandar and the deep roots of the World Trees, do we owe Fandral an apology in hindsight? Matt and Joe have a lot of lore to back up their answer, which is like 20 minutes worth of "lol, no." A stopped clock may be right twice a day, but it's still broken, and Fandral Staghelm didn't just ask us humbly for Morrowgrain. All bets are off when you try to re-summon Ragnaros.

But starting off the show is a discussion on Vol'jin and his family, and why we don't really see them in the game. We don't have a ton of Darkspear characters, and that difference is pretty stark in an expansion packed with Amani. So, why might Blizzard not be making Vol'jin's family front and center when they're some of the few other representatives of the canon baseline Trolls?
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In World of Warcraft, we've come across several shattered worlds, in varying degrees of obliteration. From Outland to K'aresh, these worlds have been corrupted with various forces, were shredded into near-oblivion, and some looked as though they may have some kind of shot at redemption against all odds.

But what about their world souls? How does each world soul relate to the creation of these worlds by the Titans? And how worried should we therefore be about the fate that may await Azeroth? This one gets pretty deep into the weeds of tinfoil hat theorizing, pulling elements from several different expansions for reference.

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Lore Watch kicks off with a discussion from Diablo 4 this week, which breaks the seal on the Lord of Hatred spoilers. This question concerns the Chekov's Gun that was Neyrelle's lopped off arm. Matt and Joe discuss the possibility that Neyrelle isn't truly, fully dead, as through the lens of that arm, which apparently washed up on shore in Skovos, despite being cut off in a very different place. Is it really a hint that she may come back, or is this just more residual echoes of hatred?

Then, Eric gets to flex his astrophysicist street cred with the next question, which asks, if we can time travel, where are all the time travelers in Azeroth? Shouldn't we be crisscrossing all over the cosmos, or whatever, running into each other all the time? He posits a pseudo-connection to the Fermi Paradox, which essentially asks the same question, but about non-humans in real life, and where all the spacefaring civilizations are. And yes, contemplating this is truly terrifying.

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The lore of the games from Remedy and how the two series Alan Wake and Control are linked is the topic of this week's Lore Watch Podcast. Both games are about events that shift from what the main characters know to be true, into something which couldn't possibly be true, if what they already knew to be true was real. Both games have a sense of wrongness and eerieness — Alan Wake's is more weird, like Twin Peaks, while Control's veers into horror.

Joe and Matt unpack the plots of both series as individual works, and then delve into the mysteries and themes that connect them.
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