Blizzard's old manual art is a real nostalgia trip

Ahh... That's the stuff!

I've gone on record as not being a huge fan of the artstyle choices used in the new Warcraft I & II remasters. It's crisp and readable, sure, but I'm never exactly thrilled to see all the roughness of older sprites completely done away with, especially when I always felt some of that ruggedness was the point. The tendency of remasters to treat every characterful oddity as a blemish is a wider topic than the scope of this article, but one day, Bluepoint will remaster Bloodborne, and the world will feel my pain.

Anyway. Nowadays, I'd say Blizzard - or, World Of Warcraft, at least - is pretty much synomous with a softer, more colorful approach to fantasy worlds. While I don't pine for a return to the more boobily ridiculous elements of Frank Frazetta's style, I do often wish that some of the more expressive, pained, and physically grounded elements of classic Sword And Sorcery art was a bit more common. I'm no art scholar, and there's undoubtedly a bit of tunnel vision of my part to this assertion, but as far as as pop culture goes: I see the Blizzard version of fantasy more than I see the Frazetta version, and I don't exactly love it. Same goes for the older, punkier, less uniform sci-fi art from things like 2000 AD and Warhammer 40,000. Edwin touched on some of this in his excellent Space Marine piece.

Anyway, a valued RPS community member on the Discord shared an older bit of art by Blizzard's Chris Metzen, from the original Starcraft manual. I figured a few of you might enjoy seeing these older pieces, considering how much the overall look of their games has changed over the years.

Here's the piece in question. Shout out to CMaster on the Discord.

Thing is, I've most definetely seen this piece before, because the original Starcraft manual that houses it was primo toilet reading back in the day. But it was still a shock seeing it again, especially considering how different it is to the style I associate Blizzard with currently. Here's a few more for the Zerg and Protos.

The mutalisk, especially, isn't worlds away from some of Starcraft II's art. But things get really interesting when you look at a few bits from Warcraft II's manual.

In contrast, here's a more recent orc from Blizzard's archives. As far as I can tell, it's a concept piece from the 2014 expansion Warlords Of Draenor.

If you prefer this more recent piece, I absolutely get it. While I'm not a fan of the softness and stylisation myself, it's very distinctly a Warcraft orc. This could just be an effect of familiarity, sure, but you could identify that as Blizzard immediately, while the older piece could be from any number of DIY, grungy OSR manuals. Personally, though, that's why I love it.

Here's a human. Sorry about the text. Bloody love their text, humans do.

Anyways, that's it, that's the post! As I said, figured a few of you might get a kick out of seeing the old art, especially if it's your first time. Also, I'm contractually obligated to write 'orc' at least twelve times a week.