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.
