I have to admit that I really enjoy ICC, and I really like the Lich King fight. It's still challenging at level 85, espeically if you do heroic. And I think that this fight has some of the best dialogue. I particularly love the starting part. It's right up there with Lady Deathwhisper and far ahead of anything in the unholy wing.
The Lich King yells: So the Light's vaunted justice has finally arrived? Shall I lay down Frostmourne and throw myself at your mercy, Fordring?
Highlord Tirion Fordring yells: We'll grant you a swift death, Arthas. More than can be said for the thousands you've tortured and slain.
The Lich King yells: You'll learn of that first hand. When my work is complete, you will beg for mercy -- and I will deny you. Your anguished cries will be testament to my unbridled power...
Highlord Tirion Fordring yells: So be it. Champions, attack!
The Lich King yells: I'll keep you alive to witness the end, Fordring. I would not want the Light's greatest champion to miss seeing this wretched world remade in my image.
The Lich King yells: I will freeze you from within until all that remains is an icy husk!
The Lich King yells: The end has come!
The Lich King yells: Hope wanes...
The Lich King yells: The end has come!
The Lich King yells: No questions remain unanswered. No doubts linger. You ARE Azeroth's greatest champions. You overcame every challenge I laid before you. My mightiest servants have fallen before you relentless onslaught... your unbridled fury...
The Lich King yells: Is it truly righteousness that drives you? I wonder...
The Lich King yells: You trained them well, Fordring. You delivered the greatest fighting force this world has ever known... right into my hands - exactly as I intended! You shall be rewarded for your unwitting sacrifice.
The Lich King yells: Watch now as I raise them from the dead to become masters of the Scourge. They will shroud this world in chaos and destruction. Azeroth's fall will come at their hands -- and you will be the first to die.
The Lich King yells: I delight in the irony.
Highlord Tirion Fordring yells: LIGHT GRANT ME ONE FINAL BLESSING! GIVE ME THE STRENGTH... TO SHATTER THESE BONDS!
The Lich King yells: Impossible...
Highlord Tirion Fordring yells: No more, Arthas! No more lives will be consumed by your hatred!
Terenas Menethil yells: Free at last! It is over, my son. This is the moment of reckoning.
Terenas Menethil yells: Rise up, champions of the Light!
The Lich King yells: Now I stand, the lion before the lambs... and they do not fear.
The Lich King yells: They cannot fear...
Then there is the cut scene that is still available to see in Dalaran where Fordring almost takes the crown of evil, but Bolvar takes it instead.
And we end up with a new Lich King. Someone who started out "good". Well, if you discount the mind controlled by dragons bit. But, regardless, we have someone who has good and noble intentions sitting on the Frozen Throne. Bolvar will devote his energies to holding back the Scourge.
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It drives DraNgNon nuts, but almost every time we pull Arthas I recite most of the starting lines. Especially the "you will beg for mercy - and I will deny you" part. I've only ever done the LK fight with Mornara and it's always poignant for her when the Lich King is being a bastard.
2 comments:
I'll continue to love that encounter until I'm no longer in charge of my mental faculties and lack the capacity to understand it.
I was unbelievably excited after the weeks of slogging through ICC in my progression guild, preceded by the months of taunting and teasing from the Lich King since the expansion rolled out.
Having played since the RTS days, this was the pinnacle of possibly my favourite storyline in the entire Warcraft canon. I was hoping for some redemption, but ultimately conclusion. No setbacks, no banishing, no false-ending suckerpunch, an end.
And we got it.
First time we finally got him down and the cheers went up over Vent, I just sat stunned for a few moments. That was it, I'd completed this ten year gaming journey to take him down. What now? (Well, we do it all again next week, but...)
Though ICC did seem like it dragged a little until you tipped that gear balance and started to steamroller your way through it, it was beautifully written. Full of cliches, but I wouldn't want it any other way.
Seeing Terenas deliver the final lines Arthas - and he WAS Arthas then - ever hear was almost heartbreaking. A young boy, thrown into an impossible decision, trying to do the very best of his people, constantly striving to be the one who'd protect them forever until he grew disillusioned with his own peoples' failings when the nefarious whispers took over his body, mind and soul.
Thank you for posting this. At a time where it's easy to get disheartened by the game and trivial nonsense, it's easy to forget the journey we've all been on together. For some, it's a Big Bad who drops Shiny Purple. For me, it was the final page of a tale I've been living for most of my adult life.
And now, about that big angry dragon who just destroyed my beloved Auberdine... *applies poisons*
In a sense there was some redemption. Arthas, while not sorry for what he had done, was executed. It was more of a redemption for the rest of us.
Speaking as the character I've played most in ICC, Mornara, I was very pleased to finally kill Arthas, even if I retain significant suspicions about Bolvar as the current Lich King. Though I find Tirion's kill stealing annoying, after the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel it makes sense that he would be there to fight Arthas. In fact, this expansion is about Tirion almost as much as it is about the Lich King.
Speaking as myself the LK fight was an excellent cap to ICC, which, itself was an excellent cap to the whole Wrath expansion.
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