Armies of Exigo is great, actually

WarCraft III’s development was complicated and a lot of ideas were discarded or revised.

Armies of Exigo is a clone of WarCraft III that was released two years later in 2004. From a mechanical perspective, it exhibits a number of innovations. From a story perspective, I think it has a number of improvements. I will focus on the latter here.

As with WarCraft, each side in Exigo is actually a coalition of multiple races. Likewise, the new units are usually introduced in the story itself through side quests rather than just appearing in the build menu. The Empire is composed of conventional pretty humanoid fantasy races such as humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and so on. The Fallen are composed of giant insects, dark elves, and void aliens. The Beast is composed of generic beast men, goblins, ogres, lizardmen, kobolds, and other conventional ugly villainous fantasy races (but strangely orcs are NPC only).

The Empire has more depth than the Alliance

WarCraft III focuses on a small cast of heroes whose actions allegedly drive the plot. The story sacrifices political intrigue in favor of soap operatic melodrama. The focus is on Arthas, his actions, and his feelings, even if it comes at the cost of realism elsewhere. (E.g. the citizens he meets eat raw grain as soon as it arrives in town, when realistically it would take weeks to mill it into flour and bake it into bread.)

By contrast, the Empire campaign is much more political. The main plot is about how a mage rallies the people of the Empire to resist a new war started by the Beasts. Meanwhile, agents of the Fallen have infiltrated the Empire and are trying to destroy them from within. While the main character is a prophesized chosen one who is destined to save the world, his personal drama does not overshadow the Empire.

The protagonist, Alric do Rei, is more akin to Medivh than Arthas. Previously I criticized Medivh for acting like a lunatic in order to force the plot in a certain direction when he could've easily screwed the Legion by giving the Alliance a power point presentation. Alric does not have that problem at all. He actively exploits his oracular powers in order to lead the Empire to victory, outplay his enemies and survive encounters that would otherwise kill him. 

The Fallen have more agency and depth than the Scourge

The beef I have with the Scourge is twofold. Firstly, they serve as patsies to the Legion rather than pursuing their own ambitions. Secondly, they have absolutely no depth, no explanation for why they do what they do beyond being the designated villains. The demons they serve are generic villains who do evil for its own sake.

The Fallen do not have that problem and thus are superior in my opinion. In their campaign they exclusively pursue their own goals and those goals are explained to the audience. The Fallen seek to absorb Exigo into their own world because theirs is dying and requires an infusion of resources. This makes them more sympathetic than if they were generic villains.

The Fallen campaign takes pains to explore how their coalition functions. The founding race are the void aliens, who are summoned from another world. They use their powers to enslave the giant insects of Exigo's underworld, who serve as a work force to gather resources. Some mission objectives involve recapturing escaped insect queens.

Several objectives explore conflict with and between the dark elves. A dark elf queen allies herself with the Fallen in order to secure power among her race and to get revenge on the surface dwellers. When the void aliens absorb Exigo, it will become inhospitable for the surface dwellers whereas the dark elves are already adapted to the new conditions.

The Beast are not shoehorned into a stereotypical heroic role like the Horde

The beef I have with the Horde is that they were introduced in previous games as conquerors but in WarCraft III their characterization was flipped to make them generic good guys so that they could ally with the Alliance at the end to fight the Legion. They received a new retconned backstory explaining that they were tricked and enslaved by the Legion, rather than having any culpability for their actions and needing to pay reparations to the Alliance. (The Scourge and Legion do not receive a similar redeemed backstory, which I think defeats the point of making the Horde into good guys.)

The Beast never allies with the Empire against the Fallen. They continue to fight both the Empire and the Fallen, as well as internal factions, throughout their campaign. The main plot of the campaign is to reunite the scattered tribes and lead a new assault on the Empire like they previously tried and failed to do seventy years prior to the story.

Conclusion

Armies of Exigo, while not a bad game by any stretch, was sadly forgotten in the shuffle of 2000s RTS gaming. I think is a pity, since the campaign story is pretty well done by RTS standards and plays to what I consider the strengths of the format. 

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