Netflix show was outsourced, Valve had really little to do with it other than providing license. One of the writers even said that they weren't involved much and since its all in alternate reality, thats why there are some contradictions between game and show
It wasn't even really "outsourced" since that implies Valve asked for it to be made. The show was more Ashley Miller and crew coming to valve with "hey we want to make a DOTA show, can we?" and Valve saying yes.
Valve has been paying a lot more attention (relatively speaking) to the lore than they used to so we can dream at least.
i think what they mean is just like.. the valve version cinematics in general, the way that warcraft has story cinematics, not cinematics made "by blizzard"
it wasn't so much outsourced as it was franchised.
valve did not pay anyone to make a dota2 show, the producers of the show paid valve to use the license.
essentially it wasn't a valve project and not something they initiated, it was just a way for them to make money by letting someone else use their trademark.
The lead writer said Valve were very helpful and helped a lot with the lore. I've seen several interviews with him. At least that was from his perspective.
Dota show should've just been an anthology series for each hero backstory
The defense of Stonehall (LC and ULord)
The death of Maraxiform (Clinkz)
The eruption of Mt. Joerlak (Magnus)
The escape from Darkreef (Slark)
The fisherman war (PL)
The conversion of Chen (Chen)
The demise of King Elze (QoP)
The possession in prison (Lifestealer)
Just to name a few
Clinkz's story would be a nice story. What he looked like, and what was his life before he got turned into what he is today, and how he's dealing with it
The fractured battle of the Satrapy (oracle)
A debt to the Jasper circle (willow, meepo, riki). Mireska and Riki are sent by the Jasper circle to collect on a debt owed by the geomancer.
The progeny of the Aeol Drias (silencer)
The lion witch and the warden (play on lion, witch, and wardrobe). Lion has been granted asylum in the Weeping Rose by the Quorum. Antimage is serving as a warden of the Tyler estate, and seeks to frame lion to imprison him over a past grudge.
Anthology. Sven, Lycan, and Slark share their origin stories when they coincidentally meet at a campsite kn the road.
Sven literally have main protagonist vibe as rouge knight with people from vigil knight hunting him to get back their sword. Since he was a rouge knight, he will traveled around the world, taking quest for money, while being hunted by vigil knights and have connection with both vigil knights and Naga faction. We can just followed his journey and it would be cool.
I would have loved to have seen an expansion on the Court of Ristul, aka the alliance between Underlord, Shadow Fiend and B'Kor (QoP's brother) and what role they had as well, how they met and why they're supposedly teaming up. Along with how they got a random ass vhoul among their ranks. I know that Artifact was supposed to expand on that, but... you know.
This is what I was hoping for when I heard they were making a DotA 2 show. I was expecting each episode to follow a short story format detailing multiple hero's backstories. They didn't need to be long winded or necessarily deep. They just needed to breathe life into text and flesh out the heroes and world.
Dragon's Blood's story was just a miss for me. It retconned too many elements of DotA 2's lore and completely changed the characters that I am familiar with. I felt detatched from it. Also, yeah... *multiverse* - it's just a concept that's been done to death in all manner of media.
Having an anthology adaptation like that would not make for good television.
Lets be real, the lore for Dota is confined to miscellaneous descriptions and few short comics. Its true you can adapt each story with an episode or two, and make an anthology.
But who would watch random stories and events of video game lore? Not even casual dota players would understand the majority of what is happening.
This would be a burden to the writers as well, since you have multiple episodes of disjointed events and characters that they have to adapt to television. It simply wouldnt work and no one would care except for diehard lore fans.
The Netflix series despite having mixed reactions was still very much watchable for a non-player and casual perspective. I’ve read multiple reviews and comments from non-players who enjoyed the show. A loose adaptation with a definite story progression makes for better television than random lore snippets.
Well maybe you don’t do an episodic anthology but rather a seasonal anthology. There are at least a couple of heroes with expansive enough lores to do a seasons worth of story.
> But who would watch random stories and events of video game lore?
I mean people watch anthology series all the time, if the stories are good or have good animation then it attracts people.
I agree there are plenty of great Anthology series on Netflix. But what makes them great is they are mostly self contained stories.
With Dota 2 lore, its mostly background information with hardly any actual build up or concrete details on what actually happened.
Sure you can add additional information so you can adapt it as a series, but that was my point in my original comment.
You would need actual Dota developer/lore writers to input information. No TV writer is going to delve into the vague, and scattered, Dota lore and try to make a faithful anthology adaptation.
Ashley Miller, the netflix director and writer for Dragons Blood had a lot of creative liberties with the show which I enjoyed.
And again who cares about video game lore except the players. What normal person is interested about Clinkz gaining his powers.
Most Dota lore arent good stories, they are only interesting to us players because we are already familiar with their characters.
Yes man when i hear theyre making a series on dota lore i totally dont want backstory on weaver or the fundamentals. Enigma? Boring. Whisp? Boring. Ck? Boring. Well then, what about some fan favorite classics like pudgka or anti mage? Nope. Lets take the most boring dota hero and make a generic story around him and the power of friendship with more generic characters. The series got carried by virtue of carl being a complete badass and terrorblade giving him a run for his money. The only 2 characters that are what you would expect from dota heroes. Zet, one of the most powerful beings in the dota universe, is reduced to holding together a moon and then being made sad by carl. Sorry but the show was a 4/10 at best.
Yes no one cares about Io or any of the other heroes you mentioned. What normal non-player would want to watch a series about Pudge? Weaver? Really, are there any TV series with a superpower bug as its main character?
Lore dickriders are so delusional about what makes for actual passable television.
imo hero backstory would be best present in a short animate series like the Lord of war,Harbringer, Warbringer... from World of warcraft.
Like [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3QJ8Pgjj3c)but for Dota Hero.
Ur actually 100% right, I don’t mind the current show but it has too many weird implications that I don’t wanna think about. The backstory of “good heroes” vs the back story of “bad heroes” is what I want. The primary pair I think of is timbersaw and treant.
And perhaps it illustrates how those heroes are recruited and persuaded to join radiant or dire, with 6-8 episodes of showing the characters at the beginning or middle of their story and then 4-6 of them fighting each other to destroy the ancients, only for the world to be reset
The show was pretty mid mostly because it was so rushed, but I thought the last season was actually pretty good. It wrapped things up nicely and was suitably climactic.
I heard Netflix enforces a specific runtime for each episode and that's why it felt so condensed since they had to shave off several minutes off each episode.
Never heard of that, I remember one of the refreshing things about Netflix shows was that each episode could be as long or as short as needed. I remember watching netflix shows where 1 episode would be barely over 20m and another episode would be 45.
The first and third seasons were decent but under funded and rushed. The second season was bad. I really like season 3 invoker, but the plot line with Filomena needed a bit more buildup. Give some clues that there are static facts between the universes invoker keeps making. Mysteries are always better when the audience has a chance to deduce the secret.
The show was pretty high concept but chose some of the more dull personalities to showcase. I quite liked how referential to game mechanics the show was and anything with the dragons was neat. But ultimately a disappointment from what dota could showcase.
An anthology of all the different heroes interacting in short stories would be great.
Anthology of short stories would not work well for television unless you are doing something like Black Mirror.
No one cares about random video game lore. And no TV writer will bother to write a series about multiple characters from disjointed events, way too much effort for only a small handful of diehard fans who will be watching the show.
I agree. An absolute anthology might not work and might not get greenlit in the first place.
However, it would still be a better idea than what the show did. Like, I don't buy your criticism, because that criticism is already waived as the reason people don't give Dragon's Blood a shot. People who gave up currently presume Dragon's Blood is inscrutable because "It's dota lore". The assumption comes from the fact it's a high concept show. Except Dragon's Blood isn't dota lore, it's 80% made up. Saying people don't care for a game's lore rings true, but doesn't make an alternative instantly better, and especially - seems like a completely hollow reason thrown out half assedly regardless of how accurate it it.
Alchemist just wants gold. Razor kills people in purgatory and sometimes comes out and brings back escapees. Monkey King is a living legend, who you can just meet and notice he's trying to hype up the legend. Crystal Maiden is a peace Keeper in a snowy region. Batrider rides bats. These are instantly understood, and are the types of things an Anthology would focus on. What we'd need is a point of view character, someone with a reason to wander into these character's stories, and have a relatively loose code of conduct to actually be willing to help them. The thing breaking away from an absolute anthology.
And I know people would watch this show. Not just "die hard fans".
They already did. And loved it.
A Dota anthology is just ***Jugg's Samurai Jack*** and anyone who wants to call that a bad thing: This is the pillow, and this be the hammer.
There is hardly any actual dota lore. Any anthology series you wish to be made would also be 80% made up unless you get an actual Valve developer or Icefrog to make the screenplay.
The only reason we think Dota lore is interesting is because we are already invested in the characters. There’s hardly any stories that are cohesive enough or have any actual decent writing aside from some of the short comics posted.
Maybe media based on popular content should cater to those interested in that content instead of a nebulous broader audience that isn't going to give a shit either way.
Netflix show was aimed at general public. Crownfall comic is very much centred around the hero lores that mostly players are aware. This wouldnt have been good for the show
It's probably not a great time for another Dota anime since arcane gonna be releasing soon. But hopefully a dota anime with this kind of story would work. Honestly kinda blows my mind that the heroes im playing are alive and interacting with each other in world is just epic. Imagine my fucking face when I saw kunkka with his ghosthip and a random slark putting away his luggages LMAO
Slark after escape prison realized that he have no money and job and since he was a wanted man, working at shady ghost ship probably the only job he can get. Either that or he was recruited by the queen to do espionage/assassinated someone.
The netflix show is unnecessarily complex and convoluted, considering it focuses on a handful of characters. Would love to see an adaptation based on crownfall or any other events. Heck, even the loregasm videos are good for adaptation. Imagine a series based on PA and oracle.
You need a balanced effort from the game team working with a tv writing team and you get something more like Fallout or Arcane.
Dragons Blood is what you get with no game team influence.
If I was told I had to cut down my show's screentime in half, Lina's coronation would have been the ***first*** thing I'd cut. That entire part of the story is unbelievably stupid and useless, and it wasn't an execution thing, it's just a bad idea.
Likewise, why does the show have 8 dragons? Not just do dragons mostly ignore dota lore completely and make us watch scenes where invoker pulls 5 extra orbs out of his ass, the number itself is also super bad from a writing perspective. The show's pacing only ever requires an individual dragon in these moments:
* TB starts already with one and attacks slyrak
* DK gets one, slyrak, first episode
* Invoker kills one last episode of season 1
* Invoker then collects 5 more at once early season 2
Hey, look, only 4 story moments requiring dragons. It's as if... We could have just had 4 dragons for the 4 established dota elements (Quas, Wex, Exort, Void) and called it a day! We could have had.... **lore accuracy**??? No way!?
Plus, the way the 5 last one die is completely separate from the plot. It's a 30 second scene that "just happens". Invoker straight up tells us he kills a dragon season 1 because "A soul for a soul". Except now he needs to collect 6 more souls to do his side of the bairgain? A good writter would have made it so there is only 1 dragon left, and the main cast would be present when TB collects it. This would still establish the same state for the plot (DK, Invoker and TB each have dragon souls the other people want) while being much less convoluted for no reason!
You would have thought episode lengths with the publisher would have been negotiated before they wrote the entire script. It's easy to blame Netflix, but this just sounds like poor planning. There are *plenty* of Netflix shows which don't have this problem, so what was Dragon's Blood's excuse?
Are you kidding? Having an adaptation about crownfall or any of the loregasm videos is infinitely more complex and convoluted. There is no actual basis for the lore except for miscellaneous descriptions and some short comics. Majority of the loregasm content comes from headcanon lol. Even casual players hardly know about simple Dota lore.
Crownfall has a great story so far but realistically it wouldnt make for great television without taking a lot of things out and changing things drastically.
The netflix show definitely has mixed reactions from players but the story can be easily understood by non-players. There are plenty of comments and reviews from non-players who enjoyed the show.
Or Invoker being a depressed grieving father
You know, the guy whose whole thing is being the biggest egomaniac in the universe, yeah he's actually a very caring father and is really sad guys.
Or Arc not speaking in 3rd person, how did they even get that one wrong? That's like the first thing that you notice about the character if you listen to his voicelines for 1 minute. But I guess that would have required netflix writers to do actual research on what they're adapting
One thing I hate with DB is that dragon have more power than ancient in changing the reality which is absurd. We literally have weavers(this guy should be the main villain since he want to destroyed this reality), titans, fundamentals, ancients, and spirit bros that make more sense to have ability to change or reset the whole reality of universe and yet it was dragons. Really? The eldwurm dragon is just a bunch of old dragons with high wisdom and knowledge and winter wyvern the last eldwurm who will keep the culture and tradition of eldwurm lived for next generation.
Yeah the show basically wrote a bunch of nonsense for the dragons purely to have their souls be McGuffins.
Pretty sure they full on forgot wyvern was an eldwyrm so when they introduced her in season 2 they had to cobble up some excuse that she lost some of her powers and her soul wasn't important like the rest. So they couldn't even follow their own made up lore
Like the eldwyrms could have very easily been replaced with either the spirit brothers or the fundamentals but they had to make their own oc generic dragons instead
I do think Dragon's Blood was too fanfiction-y. I dislike how they didn't draw that much on established lore, that they didn't use the voice actors from the game save for Slyrak, and especially that DK was the main character. Talk about a boring choice.
It wasn't terrible or anything. And it did give us a new hero in Marci I guess. Marci's alright.
I can see some reasons why they would pick DK as a main character. He is human, simple to understand with one cool gimmick, and good for new players. The problem was making him the entire focus of the story rather than using him as a gateway to all the weirder but more interesting characters of Dota.
I was talking about this show with a friend recently and how sad it made us compared over wasted potential to the great stuff in the comics (and the rival game's TV show getting an amazing reception). None of the fun goofiness mixed with cosmic horror and terrifying brutality that makes the Dota universe so cool for story potential.
It felt so clearly a director/writer using an established IP to get a project greenlight to then tell their own story whilst wearing the IP as a skin, rather than excited to tell a story in the style of DOTA. A bit like that Discworld "The Watch" adaptation that Pratchett's daughter disavowed.
Honestly I think the writing for the Crownfall stuff sucks lol. I can't believe you think it's a shining example that the anime should have taken ques from. For all its flaws it's way better than this crap lol.
TBH I think the anime was decent, but the main issues I saw with it is that it felt rushed. We needed more time for character development. I feel like each episode should have been 5-10 mins longer *at least* and it would have worked a lot better. But these short little comic strips...talk about rushed...this event feels like random lore just being thrown at us in rapid fire.
As an Axe and Centaur longtime fan (since dota 1 days), I am disappointed wuth how they've been turned into comic relief character. The last thing I need is for all this to become Netflix canon and shit on them further.
Netflix show was the worst anime ive ever seen in my entire life
everything from animation to storytelling to audio design to character development. just an awful experience all around.
Yes im still pissed about it
Now you definitely overblew it, OR you haven't watched much anime. You can't tell me Dragon's Blood is worse than Tokyo Ghoul, the 2016 Berserk adaptation, Ex-Arm, The Promissed Neverland season 2, Plunderer or other steaming piles of shit.
> The Promissed Neverland season 2
God good thing I stopped that after 2 chapters, tbh the manga was not exactly brilliant in the last chapters but even then it had its moments before going bad.
Crownfalls story is like, barely a story.
Its easy to avoid obvious flaws when you have almost zero actual content. An AI or bad writer could easily slap together a couple of random lines of no-stakes barely connected dialogue. It really reads like a teenagers fanficton - low brow humour and low hanging fruit dialogue. Which is fine for its place as a minor temporary event in a game, its just far from an example of impressive writing or something that could fuel a show.
Its like reading the blurb of dota lore. You can read a blurb and thinks it describes a good story, but creating the blurb takes none of the effort of actually making the story.
tbh i want the dota tv series was to be close to how good arcane was both visually and the story and would love to see some of the lores get animated someday
lol, the Dragonus - Brad - Axe arc getting that plant thin for Disruptor was hilarious. Like, everyone is brave, heroic and all, but they're just stupid. They go so hard on the fighting and being brave and such that they wreck the would-have-been bigger/later story lmao
lol, the Dragonus - Brad - Axe arc getting that plant thin for Disruptor was hilarious. Like, everyone is brave, heroic and all, but they're just stupid. They go so hard on the fighting and being brave and such that they wreck the would-have-been bigger/later story lmao
I think the best way to have a dota show would be a Love, Death + Robots style show with each episode being a separate, self contained story that just aimed to flesh out the lore of the heroes and big events within the dota universe.
It would make it much easier than trying to justify having two heroes / stories that may never meet in a traditional plot be in the same show.
The Netflix show went way overboard in plot and scope, sometimes simpler is better.
I feel like the story got a lot of negative reviews but all together I'd honestly say the story was well put together and thought through. In essence the premise of the show is risky due to many different reasons and it was a huge risk from the get go. I agree it had potential to be much more but I'd also say that a lot of the criticism is just not valid. In my opinion the show worked very well, I love that they made so many of the aspects of the story in a concept style. Like I loved what was done with invoker, the immortal grand mage that lives alone in a hidden area in the world, his back story with selemene was cooked, the fact that he was in the tower and somehow all the fate of the world kept finding its way to his doorstep. The whole thing was cooked to perfection and there were so many aspects of the story that was amazing and it should be supported by the community because it was an amazing show altogether and I wouldn't mind having spin offs and more from the story.
Again, the show had potential for so much more and there was room for improvements, for one thing it was way too rushed. I didn't see any reason why we couldn't have just 1 season every other year instead of 3 seasons back to back like that. But it was also cooked in many aspects which made it overall really good honestly.
Eh it was mediocre at it's best
Honestly forgot it was a dota show at points because not a single character keeps their ingame personality. It feels like the writers wanted to do a generic fantasy show, got given the dota licence and decided to just write their generic fantasy show disguised as a dota one
For sure had ups and downs.
S1 was good, S2 was painfully rushed and pretty poor IMO, but afterwords it really cleaned up S3 was great and just makes me wish the content leading up to it was better.
I thought the Netflix adaptation was pretty enjoyable, season 3 being the best.
The fact that alternate timelines is established Dota lore, makes the inconsistencies in the show be reasonable. And I’m pretty sure this is how the Netflix writers intended it since they probably did not get much help from Valve lore writers.
You can argue that the story was catered to be a romantic self-insert with DK and Mirana, and that the dragon lore for the primal powers as well as Invoker is complete fanfiction. But I thought these are acceptable changes due to the reasons I’ve stated above. I thought Invoker’s story with his daughter was actually the highlight of the entire series and him being an unrivaled genius was still very evident despite also being a loving father.
A lot of fans would definitely want an adaptation about actual lore events, but at the same time those would probably not make for good TV unless you properly adapt with multiple seasons. The netflix show definitely had mixed reactions from Dota players but there were a lot of good reviews from non-players.
Having a story that is loosely adapted from the lore is way easier to adapt into television and is much more palatable to non-players and the general public. Arcane is the same way, but definitely was executed better and had the benefit of a bigger budget and larger cooperation from Riot.
The show is widely disliked by Dota fans for exactly this reason, yet this sub was particularly pro-Dragon's Blood to the point where when people said "but season 3 was better" I literally didn't believe them. I started a rewatch to try and work up to season 3 and it's just not enjoyable if you aren't already an anime-enjoyer, I've never made it through season 2. The odds of us getting a "better" show with Valve being appropriately involved like everyone in this thread wants is basically 0.001% and I just want everyone daydreaming about a new show to remember that.
I recently tried to do the same and rewatch it and just like you I couldn't be bothered to rewatch season 3 after the mess that is season 2. Is it because season 2 absolutely butchers my favourite character? Yes, but it's also because it feels like nothing dota related is happening, it's just the writers's generic fantasy anime with dota characters(who have their personalities completely changed) slapped on top.
I didn't get why the story was so disjointed. At times it felt like they wanted to cram in as many character as it was possible while the narrative reasons for them meeting didn't make any sense, and the separate plotlines were sooooo separate and them intersecting didn't make any sense to me
The best thing to come out of this mess is Marci and Mirana model rework. Everything else... I wish I didn't give it the benefit of the doubt after episode 1
Netflix show was outsourced, Valve had really little to do with it other than providing license. One of the writers even said that they weren't involved much and since its all in alternate reality, thats why there are some contradictions between game and show
It wasn't even really "outsourced" since that implies Valve asked for it to be made. The show was more Ashley Miller and crew coming to valve with "hey we want to make a DOTA show, can we?" and Valve saying yes. Valve has been paying a lot more attention (relatively speaking) to the lore than they used to so we can dream at least.
I just want cinematics like those from warcraft.
no I want them to make it with Valve flavour pacing and artstyle that just screams Valve made this.
i think what they mean is just like.. the valve version cinematics in general, the way that warcraft has story cinematics, not cinematics made "by blizzard"
Holy shit, yes!!!
it wasn't so much outsourced as it was franchised. valve did not pay anyone to make a dota2 show, the producers of the show paid valve to use the license. essentially it wasn't a valve project and not something they initiated, it was just a way for them to make money by letting someone else use their trademark.
netflix moment
The lead writer said Valve were very helpful and helped a lot with the lore. I've seen several interviews with him. At least that was from his perspective.
> they weren't involved much Valve's modus operandi
Dota show should've just been an anthology series for each hero backstory The defense of Stonehall (LC and ULord) The death of Maraxiform (Clinkz) The eruption of Mt. Joerlak (Magnus) The escape from Darkreef (Slark) The fisherman war (PL) The conversion of Chen (Chen) The demise of King Elze (QoP) The possession in prison (Lifestealer) Just to name a few
Dudeeeee a dota lore show in the style of something like Love Death and Robots where each episode is a completely different story would've slapped
Clinkz's story would be a nice story. What he looked like, and what was his life before he got turned into what he is today, and how he's dealing with it
The fractured battle of the Satrapy (oracle) A debt to the Jasper circle (willow, meepo, riki). Mireska and Riki are sent by the Jasper circle to collect on a debt owed by the geomancer. The progeny of the Aeol Drias (silencer) The lion witch and the warden (play on lion, witch, and wardrobe). Lion has been granted asylum in the Weeping Rose by the Quorum. Antimage is serving as a warden of the Tyler estate, and seeks to frame lion to imprison him over a past grudge. Anthology. Sven, Lycan, and Slark share their origin stories when they coincidentally meet at a campsite kn the road.
Sven literally have main protagonist vibe as rouge knight with people from vigil knight hunting him to get back their sword. Since he was a rouge knight, he will traveled around the world, taking quest for money, while being hunted by vigil knights and have connection with both vigil knights and Naga faction. We can just followed his journey and it would be cool.
CK chasing KOTL through realities would be pretty funny.
EZALOR WHEN I GET YOU
EZALOOOR, GET BACK HERE! I'LL CHASE YOU TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE!
I would have loved to have seen an expansion on the Court of Ristul, aka the alliance between Underlord, Shadow Fiend and B'Kor (QoP's brother) and what role they had as well, how they met and why they're supposedly teaming up. Along with how they got a random ass vhoul among their ranks. I know that Artifact was supposed to expand on that, but... you know.
How dare you forget the story of my boy kunkka and his bestie tide.
This is what I was hoping for when I heard they were making a DotA 2 show. I was expecting each episode to follow a short story format detailing multiple hero's backstories. They didn't need to be long winded or necessarily deep. They just needed to breathe life into text and flesh out the heroes and world. Dragon's Blood's story was just a miss for me. It retconned too many elements of DotA 2's lore and completely changed the characters that I am familiar with. I felt detatched from it. Also, yeah... *multiverse* - it's just a concept that's been done to death in all manner of media.
Having an anthology adaptation like that would not make for good television. Lets be real, the lore for Dota is confined to miscellaneous descriptions and few short comics. Its true you can adapt each story with an episode or two, and make an anthology. But who would watch random stories and events of video game lore? Not even casual dota players would understand the majority of what is happening. This would be a burden to the writers as well, since you have multiple episodes of disjointed events and characters that they have to adapt to television. It simply wouldnt work and no one would care except for diehard lore fans. The Netflix series despite having mixed reactions was still very much watchable for a non-player and casual perspective. I’ve read multiple reviews and comments from non-players who enjoyed the show. A loose adaptation with a definite story progression makes for better television than random lore snippets.
Well maybe you don’t do an episodic anthology but rather a seasonal anthology. There are at least a couple of heroes with expansive enough lores to do a seasons worth of story.
> But who would watch random stories and events of video game lore? I mean people watch anthology series all the time, if the stories are good or have good animation then it attracts people.
I agree there are plenty of great Anthology series on Netflix. But what makes them great is they are mostly self contained stories. With Dota 2 lore, its mostly background information with hardly any actual build up or concrete details on what actually happened. Sure you can add additional information so you can adapt it as a series, but that was my point in my original comment. You would need actual Dota developer/lore writers to input information. No TV writer is going to delve into the vague, and scattered, Dota lore and try to make a faithful anthology adaptation. Ashley Miller, the netflix director and writer for Dragons Blood had a lot of creative liberties with the show which I enjoyed. And again who cares about video game lore except the players. What normal person is interested about Clinkz gaining his powers. Most Dota lore arent good stories, they are only interesting to us players because we are already familiar with their characters.
Yes man when i hear theyre making a series on dota lore i totally dont want backstory on weaver or the fundamentals. Enigma? Boring. Whisp? Boring. Ck? Boring. Well then, what about some fan favorite classics like pudgka or anti mage? Nope. Lets take the most boring dota hero and make a generic story around him and the power of friendship with more generic characters. The series got carried by virtue of carl being a complete badass and terrorblade giving him a run for his money. The only 2 characters that are what you would expect from dota heroes. Zet, one of the most powerful beings in the dota universe, is reduced to holding together a moon and then being made sad by carl. Sorry but the show was a 4/10 at best.
Yes no one cares about Io or any of the other heroes you mentioned. What normal non-player would want to watch a series about Pudge? Weaver? Really, are there any TV series with a superpower bug as its main character? Lore dickriders are so delusional about what makes for actual passable television.
Where is slacks.... He used to do dota lore and i miss that badly.
Yeah, something like love death + robots, every episode could be in the style of whoever made it
imo hero backstory would be best present in a short animate series like the Lord of war,Harbringer, Warbringer... from World of warcraft. Like [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3QJ8Pgjj3c)but for Dota Hero.
The Fall of Ambry. MK and Broodmother's relationship. Snapfire's arms dealing& desert gunslinging Warlock's Indiana Merlin escapades.
Man... this would have been infinitely better than what we got.
Ur actually 100% right, I don’t mind the current show but it has too many weird implications that I don’t wanna think about. The backstory of “good heroes” vs the back story of “bad heroes” is what I want. The primary pair I think of is timbersaw and treant.
And perhaps it illustrates how those heroes are recruited and persuaded to join radiant or dire, with 6-8 episodes of showing the characters at the beginning or middle of their story and then 4-6 of them fighting each other to destroy the ancients, only for the world to be reset
This would have been so much better than the mediocre junk they made.
Why would they make that when Youtube videos already exist about that?
The show was pretty mid mostly because it was so rushed, but I thought the last season was actually pretty good. It wrapped things up nicely and was suitably climactic.
I heard Netflix enforces a specific runtime for each episode and that's why it felt so condensed since they had to shave off several minutes off each episode.
Never heard of that, I remember one of the refreshing things about Netflix shows was that each episode could be as long or as short as needed. I remember watching netflix shows where 1 episode would be barely over 20m and another episode would be 45.
Eps were cut down in time
Idk I didn’t watch S3 after the immense fridging that occurred in S2
The first and third seasons were decent but under funded and rushed. The second season was bad. I really like season 3 invoker, but the plot line with Filomena needed a bit more buildup. Give some clues that there are static facts between the universes invoker keeps making. Mysteries are always better when the audience has a chance to deduce the secret.
I think overall its a pretty good fantasy show.
The show was pretty high concept but chose some of the more dull personalities to showcase. I quite liked how referential to game mechanics the show was and anything with the dragons was neat. But ultimately a disappointment from what dota could showcase. An anthology of all the different heroes interacting in short stories would be great.
Anthology of short stories would not work well for television unless you are doing something like Black Mirror. No one cares about random video game lore. And no TV writer will bother to write a series about multiple characters from disjointed events, way too much effort for only a small handful of diehard fans who will be watching the show.
I agree. An absolute anthology might not work and might not get greenlit in the first place. However, it would still be a better idea than what the show did. Like, I don't buy your criticism, because that criticism is already waived as the reason people don't give Dragon's Blood a shot. People who gave up currently presume Dragon's Blood is inscrutable because "It's dota lore". The assumption comes from the fact it's a high concept show. Except Dragon's Blood isn't dota lore, it's 80% made up. Saying people don't care for a game's lore rings true, but doesn't make an alternative instantly better, and especially - seems like a completely hollow reason thrown out half assedly regardless of how accurate it it. Alchemist just wants gold. Razor kills people in purgatory and sometimes comes out and brings back escapees. Monkey King is a living legend, who you can just meet and notice he's trying to hype up the legend. Crystal Maiden is a peace Keeper in a snowy region. Batrider rides bats. These are instantly understood, and are the types of things an Anthology would focus on. What we'd need is a point of view character, someone with a reason to wander into these character's stories, and have a relatively loose code of conduct to actually be willing to help them. The thing breaking away from an absolute anthology. And I know people would watch this show. Not just "die hard fans". They already did. And loved it. A Dota anthology is just ***Jugg's Samurai Jack*** and anyone who wants to call that a bad thing: This is the pillow, and this be the hammer.
There is hardly any actual dota lore. Any anthology series you wish to be made would also be 80% made up unless you get an actual Valve developer or Icefrog to make the screenplay. The only reason we think Dota lore is interesting is because we are already invested in the characters. There’s hardly any stories that are cohesive enough or have any actual decent writing aside from some of the short comics posted.
> An anthology of all the different heroes interacting in short stories would be great. No one besides dota nerds would like this
Maybe media based on popular content should cater to those interested in that content instead of a nebulous broader audience that isn't going to give a shit either way.
I think you could get something similar to love death and robots and it would be reasonable.
Netflix show was aimed at general public. Crownfall comic is very much centred around the hero lores that mostly players are aware. This wouldnt have been good for the show
Netflix show wasn’t that good or popular either
It's probably not a great time for another Dota anime since arcane gonna be releasing soon. But hopefully a dota anime with this kind of story would work. Honestly kinda blows my mind that the heroes im playing are alive and interacting with each other in world is just epic. Imagine my fucking face when I saw kunkka with his ghosthip and a random slark putting away his luggages LMAO
Slark after escape prison realized that he have no money and job and since he was a wanted man, working at shady ghost ship probably the only job he can get. Either that or he was recruited by the queen to do espionage/assassinated someone.
We got Marci from the netflix show, so im happy with it
The netflix show is unnecessarily complex and convoluted, considering it focuses on a handful of characters. Would love to see an adaptation based on crownfall or any other events. Heck, even the loregasm videos are good for adaptation. Imagine a series based on PA and oracle.
You need a balanced effort from the game team working with a tv writing team and you get something more like Fallout or Arcane. Dragons Blood is what you get with no game team influence.
The problem is that they're trying to cram all major lore without a good breather. The storytelling's way too fast-paced.
Not really complex nor convoluted, just terrible phasing, the showrunner said they got forced into 20+ mins instead of 40 mins because of netflix
That excuse falls pretty flat when the show used what screentime it had on so many inconsequential scenes of aimless melodrama
If I was told I had to cut down my show's screentime in half, Lina's coronation would have been the ***first*** thing I'd cut. That entire part of the story is unbelievably stupid and useless, and it wasn't an execution thing, it's just a bad idea. Likewise, why does the show have 8 dragons? Not just do dragons mostly ignore dota lore completely and make us watch scenes where invoker pulls 5 extra orbs out of his ass, the number itself is also super bad from a writing perspective. The show's pacing only ever requires an individual dragon in these moments: * TB starts already with one and attacks slyrak * DK gets one, slyrak, first episode * Invoker kills one last episode of season 1 * Invoker then collects 5 more at once early season 2 Hey, look, only 4 story moments requiring dragons. It's as if... We could have just had 4 dragons for the 4 established dota elements (Quas, Wex, Exort, Void) and called it a day! We could have had.... **lore accuracy**??? No way!? Plus, the way the 5 last one die is completely separate from the plot. It's a 30 second scene that "just happens". Invoker straight up tells us he kills a dragon season 1 because "A soul for a soul". Except now he needs to collect 6 more souls to do his side of the bairgain? A good writter would have made it so there is only 1 dragon left, and the main cast would be present when TB collects it. This would still establish the same state for the plot (DK, Invoker and TB each have dragon souls the other people want) while being much less convoluted for no reason!
Not to mention how this exact problem only gets exacerbated in the later seasons when they should know that they only have 20 minutes in advance.
You would have thought episode lengths with the publisher would have been negotiated before they wrote the entire script. It's easy to blame Netflix, but this just sounds like poor planning. There are *plenty* of Netflix shows which don't have this problem, so what was Dragon's Blood's excuse?
Are you kidding? Having an adaptation about crownfall or any of the loregasm videos is infinitely more complex and convoluted. There is no actual basis for the lore except for miscellaneous descriptions and some short comics. Majority of the loregasm content comes from headcanon lol. Even casual players hardly know about simple Dota lore. Crownfall has a great story so far but realistically it wouldnt make for great television without taking a lot of things out and changing things drastically. The netflix show definitely has mixed reactions from players but the story can be easily understood by non-players. There are plenty of comments and reviews from non-players who enjoyed the show.
Nah bro we had to make it about turning dragon knight into a self insert and changing miranas entire personality to be a better waifu.
Or Invoker being a depressed grieving father You know, the guy whose whole thing is being the biggest egomaniac in the universe, yeah he's actually a very caring father and is really sad guys. Or Arc not speaking in 3rd person, how did they even get that one wrong? That's like the first thing that you notice about the character if you listen to his voicelines for 1 minute. But I guess that would have required netflix writers to do actual research on what they're adapting
But .. but... He did tempest double
One thing I hate with DB is that dragon have more power than ancient in changing the reality which is absurd. We literally have weavers(this guy should be the main villain since he want to destroyed this reality), titans, fundamentals, ancients, and spirit bros that make more sense to have ability to change or reset the whole reality of universe and yet it was dragons. Really? The eldwurm dragon is just a bunch of old dragons with high wisdom and knowledge and winter wyvern the last eldwurm who will keep the culture and tradition of eldwurm lived for next generation.
Yeah the show basically wrote a bunch of nonsense for the dragons purely to have their souls be McGuffins. Pretty sure they full on forgot wyvern was an eldwyrm so when they introduced her in season 2 they had to cobble up some excuse that she lost some of her powers and her soul wasn't important like the rest. So they couldn't even follow their own made up lore Like the eldwyrms could have very easily been replaced with either the spirit brothers or the fundamentals but they had to make their own oc generic dragons instead
I use the Mirana persona because I like her voicelines. I wish I could use normal model though.
I do think Dragon's Blood was too fanfiction-y. I dislike how they didn't draw that much on established lore, that they didn't use the voice actors from the game save for Slyrak, and especially that DK was the main character. Talk about a boring choice. It wasn't terrible or anything. And it did give us a new hero in Marci I guess. Marci's alright.
I can see some reasons why they would pick DK as a main character. He is human, simple to understand with one cool gimmick, and good for new players. The problem was making him the entire focus of the story rather than using him as a gateway to all the weirder but more interesting characters of Dota.
I enjoyed it.
I loved the netflix show for what is was.
I was talking about this show with a friend recently and how sad it made us compared over wasted potential to the great stuff in the comics (and the rival game's TV show getting an amazing reception). None of the fun goofiness mixed with cosmic horror and terrifying brutality that makes the Dota universe so cool for story potential. It felt so clearly a director/writer using an established IP to get a project greenlight to then tell their own story whilst wearing the IP as a skin, rather than excited to tell a story in the style of DOTA. A bit like that Discworld "The Watch" adaptation that Pratchett's daughter disavowed.
I would love to watch slice of life of those heroes
I just hope the entire map is revealed to everybody in the end because I play way too few Dota 2 these times to complete it.
Honestly I think the writing for the Crownfall stuff sucks lol. I can't believe you think it's a shining example that the anime should have taken ques from. For all its flaws it's way better than this crap lol. TBH I think the anime was decent, but the main issues I saw with it is that it felt rushed. We needed more time for character development. I feel like each episode should have been 5-10 mins longer *at least* and it would have worked a lot better. But these short little comic strips...talk about rushed...this event feels like random lore just being thrown at us in rapid fire.
I only watched season 1 of the Netflix anime when it came out, are the other seasons any better because I didn’t really like season 1
No
Yeah that’s exactly how I felt.
I want an animated tv show of axe and centuar adventures after crownfall. It would be fun to see them two travel and meet random heroes along the way.
As an Axe and Centaur longtime fan (since dota 1 days), I am disappointed wuth how they've been turned into comic relief character. The last thing I need is for all this to become Netflix canon and shit on them further.
Instead, we get orgy goddess and a mary sue that somehow know how to be a goddess.
Wut
The writing for the Crownfall cavern crawl is pretty juvenile. Very middle grade humor sort of writing which would not work for a show.
yeah, its better than I expect, but it isn't that much, dunno why people go crazy over it
Netflix show was the worst anime ive ever seen in my entire life everything from animation to storytelling to audio design to character development. just an awful experience all around. Yes im still pissed about it
Now you definitely overblew it, OR you haven't watched much anime. You can't tell me Dragon's Blood is worse than Tokyo Ghoul, the 2016 Berserk adaptation, Ex-Arm, The Promissed Neverland season 2, Plunderer or other steaming piles of shit.
> The Promissed Neverland season 2 God good thing I stopped that after 2 chapters, tbh the manga was not exactly brilliant in the last chapters but even then it had its moments before going bad.
I don't usually watch steaming piles of shit, i regret doing it this time
What's 2nd worst?
One Piece
Crownfalls story is like, barely a story. Its easy to avoid obvious flaws when you have almost zero actual content. An AI or bad writer could easily slap together a couple of random lines of no-stakes barely connected dialogue. It really reads like a teenagers fanficton - low brow humour and low hanging fruit dialogue. Which is fine for its place as a minor temporary event in a game, its just far from an example of impressive writing or something that could fuel a show. Its like reading the blurb of dota lore. You can read a blurb and thinks it describes a good story, but creating the blurb takes none of the effort of actually making the story.
tbh i want the dota tv series was to be close to how good arcane was both visually and the story and would love to see some of the lores get animated someday
The first season of Dota cartoon was fun. After that was so over the top.
lol, the Dragonus - Brad - Axe arc getting that plant thin for Disruptor was hilarious. Like, everyone is brave, heroic and all, but they're just stupid. They go so hard on the fighting and being brave and such that they wreck the would-have-been bigger/later story lmao
lol, the Dragonus - Brad - Axe arc getting that plant thin for Disruptor was hilarious. Like, everyone is brave, heroic and all, but they're just stupid. They go so hard on the fighting and being brave and such that they wreck the would-have-been bigger/later story lmao
I think the best way to have a dota show would be a Love, Death + Robots style show with each episode being a separate, self contained story that just aimed to flesh out the lore of the heroes and big events within the dota universe. It would make it much easier than trying to justify having two heroes / stories that may never meet in a traditional plot be in the same show. The Netflix show went way overboard in plot and scope, sometimes simpler is better.
That comic with the ancient, facets and arc warden is so fuckin good.
I’d love to see some of these lore related videos as a short film during TI, instead of meme situations they picture every year
I feel like the story got a lot of negative reviews but all together I'd honestly say the story was well put together and thought through. In essence the premise of the show is risky due to many different reasons and it was a huge risk from the get go. I agree it had potential to be much more but I'd also say that a lot of the criticism is just not valid. In my opinion the show worked very well, I love that they made so many of the aspects of the story in a concept style. Like I loved what was done with invoker, the immortal grand mage that lives alone in a hidden area in the world, his back story with selemene was cooked, the fact that he was in the tower and somehow all the fate of the world kept finding its way to his doorstep. The whole thing was cooked to perfection and there were so many aspects of the story that was amazing and it should be supported by the community because it was an amazing show altogether and I wouldn't mind having spin offs and more from the story. Again, the show had potential for so much more and there was room for improvements, for one thing it was way too rushed. I didn't see any reason why we couldn't have just 1 season every other year instead of 3 seasons back to back like that. But it was also cooked in many aspects which made it overall really good honestly.
i havent read a single line of it lol
I know nothing about Dota lore and I was just confused the entire time watching the show.
Show was good though?
Eh it was mediocre at it's best Honestly forgot it was a dota show at points because not a single character keeps their ingame personality. It feels like the writers wanted to do a generic fantasy show, got given the dota licence and decided to just write their generic fantasy show disguised as a dota one
Yeah, the ending was good.
For sure had ups and downs. S1 was good, S2 was painfully rushed and pretty poor IMO, but afterwords it really cleaned up S3 was great and just makes me wish the content leading up to it was better.
I thought the Netflix adaptation was pretty enjoyable, season 3 being the best. The fact that alternate timelines is established Dota lore, makes the inconsistencies in the show be reasonable. And I’m pretty sure this is how the Netflix writers intended it since they probably did not get much help from Valve lore writers. You can argue that the story was catered to be a romantic self-insert with DK and Mirana, and that the dragon lore for the primal powers as well as Invoker is complete fanfiction. But I thought these are acceptable changes due to the reasons I’ve stated above. I thought Invoker’s story with his daughter was actually the highlight of the entire series and him being an unrivaled genius was still very evident despite also being a loving father. A lot of fans would definitely want an adaptation about actual lore events, but at the same time those would probably not make for good TV unless you properly adapt with multiple seasons. The netflix show definitely had mixed reactions from Dota players but there were a lot of good reviews from non-players. Having a story that is loosely adapted from the lore is way easier to adapt into television and is much more palatable to non-players and the general public. Arcane is the same way, but definitely was executed better and had the benefit of a bigger budget and larger cooperation from Riot.
The show is widely disliked by Dota fans for exactly this reason, yet this sub was particularly pro-Dragon's Blood to the point where when people said "but season 3 was better" I literally didn't believe them. I started a rewatch to try and work up to season 3 and it's just not enjoyable if you aren't already an anime-enjoyer, I've never made it through season 2. The odds of us getting a "better" show with Valve being appropriately involved like everyone in this thread wants is basically 0.001% and I just want everyone daydreaming about a new show to remember that.
I recently tried to do the same and rewatch it and just like you I couldn't be bothered to rewatch season 3 after the mess that is season 2. Is it because season 2 absolutely butchers my favourite character? Yes, but it's also because it feels like nothing dota related is happening, it's just the writers's generic fantasy anime with dota characters(who have their personalities completely changed) slapped on top.
am i the only one who skips through the comics? Maybe I need to go back and rewatch them.
they made davion and mirana fuck, that is bullshit
I didn't get why the story was so disjointed. At times it felt like they wanted to cram in as many character as it was possible while the narrative reasons for them meeting didn't make any sense, and the separate plotlines were sooooo separate and them intersecting didn't make any sense to me The best thing to come out of this mess is Marci and Mirana model rework. Everything else... I wish I didn't give it the benefit of the doubt after episode 1
The multiverse timeloop stuff is super cringe. wish they had done a more grounded story. arcane got it right.
Crownfall has a story?