Netflix’s New Trailer for Dota Anime Unpacks The Game’s Complex Lore

Even if you’re a fairly seasoned Dota 2 player, chances are high that you’ve missed some details in the strategy game’s extremely complex lore. So, with the new anime series Dota: Dragon’s Blood on the horizon, a crash course on the game would be a blessing.

Enter the cool folks at Netflix.

In the latest trailer of their new animated epic that’s based on the game, the streaming giant enlists the services of three prominent members of the Dota community: Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner, Jorien “Sheever” van der Heijden, and Owen “ODPixel” Davies. In “The World of Dota”, each one dissects a key part of the lore and while the dive isn’t too deep, it’s good enough to get you ready for Dragon’s Blood.

Naturally, the video starts with the origin of the game’s universe: a primordial mind fights with itself and eventually splits into two personalities, Radiant and Dire, that go on to represent the two warring halves of the world.

The trio then talks about how the two personalities take over the psyche of common folk and turn them to their cause and thus, against that of the other. They also highlight how players have only seen the story from a very telescopic view i.e. Battle of the Ancients, the ultimate fight, heroes vs villains and so on. If they were to take a more microscopic view of things, they would see that each of the heroes or villains in battle have their own unique story; stories that were, until now, ignored because of the focus on their allegiances.

Dota: Dragon’s Blood focuses on Davion, The Dragon Knight and his life before he became embroiled in the conflict between the Radiant and the Dire. The anime stars Yuri Lowenthal (Peter Parker and The Prince of Persia himself) in the titular role and will be available to stream on Netflix on March 25.

About DOTA

DOTA is a series of strategy video games by Valve. The series began in 2003 with the release of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a fan-developed multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne.

The original mod features gameplay centered around two teams of up to five players who assume control of individual characters called “heroes”, which must coordinate to destroy the enemy’s central base structure called an “Ancient”, to win the game.