OK, final soundtrack time before the headstart. Tomorrow night I’ll be out wining and dining with a few friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays, and when I wake up on Saturday morning the live servers will be open and I’ll be able to leap into action with my new characters.
The final race to provide a soundtrack for are the Asura. I’ve already discussed my thoughts about Tyria’s little guys so I’ll happily repeat and maybe rephrase myself here. The Asura are definitely not, in my opinion, a knock-off of WoW’s gnomes (who were a shameless rip-off of Dragonlance gnomes anyway). They’re a short race in a fantasy world with the trappings of technology, but that’s the end of the similarity. Gnomes are buffoons with impractical steampunk contraptions that you just know are bound to fail in a catastrophic and amusing manner. Asura are snarky, sarcastic geniuses whose tech looks sleek and actually works most of the time. The asura zones themselves have a more advanced magitech theme to them – stuff that looks like sleek science fiction tech but is powered by their mastery of magic as a technology, with golems as robot servants everywhere in Rata Sum and Metrica Province. It has a very Star Wars sort of feel, which combined with the ancient jungle ruins they have converted into labs made them look like the mad scientists of Yavin 4. The Asura are the smartest kids in the class and they know it, the only question for them is WHICH Asura is the smartest kid of all, and they’re equally happy trying to prove it by displaying their brilliant inventions or by putting their rivals down. The Asura racial sport seems to be scoring points off each other in a withering display of sarcastic wit – they’re the Frasier of fantasy races compared to gnomes being the Three Stooges.
Musically – well, I’ve made it this far without picking any tracks from Two Steps From Hell so I’m going to indulge myself… after all, if Bioware can liberally use their tracks in SWTOR videos and the Asura are the Mad Scientists of Yavin 4, it only seems fitting somehow. I’ve picked tracks that reflect the sparkling genius of the Asura, the relentless energy of their golem creations and the beautiful combination of sparkling magitech and ancient stone suspended in impossible configurations that makes up Rata Sum.