After nearly a decade, I’ve just now finished the WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos singleplayer campaign for the very first time!
Its four campaigns and thirty missions make WarCraft 3 one of the lengthiest RTS games in gaming history. And that, combined with the difficulty of some of the Orc missions on Hard, ensured that I never even made it to the (final) Night Elf campaign in previous runs. But that was a long time ago, and the campaign didn’t prove nearly as challenging this time around (in Hard mode, obviously).
What followed after the final campaign cinematic gave me pause however, as WarCraft 3′s credits proved utterly different from today’s standard. Indeed, the credits alone were worth slogging through the entire campaign for!
Blizzard shows its extreme level of polish even in their credit rolls! No industry-standard black background with portions of the game’s soundtrack running in the background, but in-game cinematics featuring outtakes and even some bonus cutscenes for those who completed the game in Hard mode.
This mechanic ensures that it’s worth playing through the game on the highest difficulty level, even if you’ve played it previously. Furthermore, the credits don’t feel like something to be waited through in case of bonus material (e.g.: Assassin’s Creed), but like a reward in and of themselves.
I can’t recall any recent game I played through that featured credits on par with footmen proclaiming “Uncle Lothar Wants You!” after a drawn out Orc vs Human ‘war scene’, Archimone playing director on the set of take-that-zeppelin-down-already, or an in-engine StarCraft 2 ‘preview’ with Hydralisks, Marines, Firebats and Sheep duking it out. Modern Warfare’s credit roll was utterly sleep-inducing in comparison, or it would’ve been if it weren’t for the atrocious rap music.
It’s a shame that game companies don’t make credit rolls like this anymore. Hopefully at least Blizzard will surprise us with some more fun credit antics in StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3.
Arthas is a rockstar in the credits!
There are a lot of things that can go wrong with firing a catapult
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