“The original Super Nintendo version of the music is not quite horror, not quite adventure it’s meant to support the nightmarish nature of the surroundings and the dark but resolute nature of Kyle Blackthorne and his strange predicament.” “Musically speaking, the hero character is trapped in a nightmare world,” says Stafford. To accent the darkness of the hellscape Kyle Blackthorne was lost in the team needed to compose a fitting soundtrack. Blackthorne was the beginning of the Blizzard art style.” We were making our own worlds and wanted them to stand out against all the others. “Ours would walk the line and be a little darker. “We wanted to make a character that was even cooler and harder than those other games’ leads,” says Didier. Kyle Blackthorne, in particular, was an attempt to push the protagonist status quo at the time of the game’s development. It was exciting because we were getting closer to finishing and releasing Blackthorne, and then had this other cool new fantasy RTS also beginning development.”Īs one of Blizzard’s earliest forays into worldbuilding and narrative wrapped up in side-scrolling platformer gameplay, Blackthorne had roots in games like Flashback, Prince of Persia, and Out of this World. “By the time we started early Warcraft development, Blackthorne was far enough along that I was able to dedicate some time to Warcraft music ideas. Our first orcs were done in Blackthorne.”įor Stafford, composing the score for Blackthorne and, subsequently, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was a creative dream. Luckily, they were all Blizzard games, so they all had similar vibes, like heroic characters and colorful environments. “We had to be able to snap back and forth between the different looks. “We always worked on multiple games at the same time,” says Didier. It was an undertaking that required quick back-and-forth between different intellectual properties, and there’s a clear through-line in all of the games they created during this era: bold colors, musclebound pixel characters, and powerful soundtracks. Senior art director Didier, principal composer Glenn Stafford, and members of the Blizzard community reminisce about orcs, shotguns, and what Kyle Blackthorne taught them.īack in 1994, the handful of individuals that comprised the entirety of Blizzard Entertainment were responsible for the development of multiple games simultaneously. It’s a game that has stuck with developers who are still at Blizzard nearly three decades later.
“Every other game we’ve made since was based on the lessons we learned from some wandering Swedes, muscle cars, rock and roll, and a shotgun,” says senior art director Sam Didier.īlackthorne’s influence can be seen in many contemporary Blizzard games: the orcs of Warcraft, Diablo’s itemization system, the sci-fi frontier and apostrophe-filled names of StarCraft, and the futuristic world of Overwatch.
He’s one of the characters whose story and world helped make Blizzard games what they are today.
While his name isn’t one that strikes immediate fear into the hearts of enemies upon hearing it uttered, Kyle “Blackthorne” Vlaros is, regardless, a memorable protagonist. The birthplace of a crown prince and future badass, shotgun-toting savior of his people: Kyle. Before the future-possible earth of Overwatch and the war-plagued fantasyscape of Azeroth, before the High Heavens and the Burning Hells and the colonization of the Koprulu Sector, there was Tuul.
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