I finally got around to doing the Priory storyline, and I found Sieran’s explanation (or whatever you want to call it) as to why she wanted to stay behind on Claw Island rather weak.
Tybalt went from a desk jockey to a full on field agent and gained confidence with you (player). He wanted to redeem and make a name for himself for failing his warband in the past. Makes sense.
Forgal was a norn, so doing the ‘honorable’ goes without second thought. Plus it’s a great battle for him to go down in since the norn storytelling culture would embellish it and make him a god among heroes. Makes sense.
Sieran went from a happy-go-lucky eternal optimist to a sacrificial pawn with an entire life ahead of her. I just don’t get it. Could someone enlighten me as to what I’m missing?
Discuss.
gixx alludes to it in the next quest “I always wanted her to learn responsibility, but not like this…”
if anything, it’s even more fitting for her than tybalt.
from what gixx mentions, she’s always been impulsive, reckless, and never thinks the consequences of her actions through, and it’s implied she’s been like this a long time and never really learned her lesson.
“I’m to take you to the priory, but let’s have some fun first!”
“I know, let’s desecrate a statue of the god of death, that can’t possibly go wrong!”
“so if it works, we have a perfect containment device, if not we get lost in shadow for eternity… WHEEEEE!”
“hey norn guy, give us the sword or my friend will beat you up!”
then claw island happens, and they are swarmed by undead, once again, not considering the consequences, she sacrifices herself needlessly (as opposed to just shutting the gate and making a run for it)
we as players think “wait what? that was pointless, why did she do that?” but it’s completely in character for someone who just rushes into things, especially one who is also a sylvari, a race that often does stupid things because it seems fun (“I’m just a bit worried about the hylek is all… why don’t we go at night?” “but then we’ll only get to see sleeping hylek, how boring…”)
most likely, her thought process was “I’ll lie to the player to let me go, act as a distraction, then portal or fly away, perfect plan!” she just didn’t anticipate the amount of risen she’d be distracting and it led to her death
as for the thing she told the player, it was probably just her repeating things gixx has yelled at her at some point, you could easily imagine gixx saying something along the lines of "SIERAN YOU <plant based insult involving stupidity>, I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW <negative quality she mentions posessing> YOU ARE, WHEN WILL YOU LEARN SOME <positive quality the player “taught” her>!?!"
(edited by Calcifire.1864)
Sieran’s a leftover relic back from the day where Sylvari didn’t start out perfect, but actually had some difficulty understanding things like emotions, responsability and feelings.
Back when they were first introduced, they weren’t supposed to be the Mary Sues they are today.
most likely, her thought process was “I’ll lie to the player to let me go, act as a distraction, then portal or fly away, perfect plan!” she just didn’t anticipate the amount of risen she’d be distracting and it led to her death
That… makes her death even more tragic. Ugh, these mentor deaths and my feels…
I’m not inclined to believe it was a result of impulsiveness since she had to have had some instinct of self preservation. Children are generally impulsive and they won’t charge at a growling bear.
most likely, her thought process was “I’ll lie to the player to let me go, act as a distraction, then portal or fly away, perfect plan!” she just didn’t anticipate the amount of risen she’d be distracting and it led to her death
^ This makes a bit more sense. Still leaves a bit of a hole since she could’ve just told the player such a plan, and there’s no reason your character would really protest that. If anything, it makes more sense to leave a distraction than to fight to the death, since she would probably get killed much quicker in a head-to-head fight. Just the idea of her accepting that her own death in that battle was the only way out baffled me. Trickery gone wrong would have made much more sense.
I’m not inclined to believe it was a result of impulsiveness since she had to have had some instinct of self preservation. Children are generally impulsive and they won’t charge at a growling bear.
most likely, her thought process was “I’ll lie to the player to let me go, act as a distraction, then portal or fly away, perfect plan!” she just didn’t anticipate the amount of risen she’d be distracting and it led to her death
^ This makes a bit more sense. Still leaves a bit of a hole since she could’ve just told the player such a plan, and there’s no reason your character would really protest that. If anything, it makes more sense to leave a distraction than to fight to the death, since she would probably get killed much quicker in a head-to-head fight. Just the idea of her accepting that her own death in that battle was the only way out baffled me. Trickery gone wrong would have made much more sense.
put simply, it always seemed to me that her main character flaws were recklessness, inability to learn from her mistakes, and never telling the full story until during/after the fact (the last one affects quite a lot of the priory actually)
she was reckless in charging in, was so fast in deciding that she forgot to tell anyone what she was planning, and in the end, she died because one of her defining traits (inability to learn from mistakes) was in full force that day.
the fact is, no matter what she said, she HADN’T learned anything from you, she was blind to the consequences of running in and that got her killed, if she really had learned to overcome her character flaws, she would have thought for a minute and realized that rushing in would get her killed, and tried something else.
for forgal, his death was to end his legend (due to norn having a racial attraction to committing suicide in new and impressive ways)
for tybalt it was that you helped ease his regrets about not helping fight the dragons (and in the end, he goes out, literally fighting a dragon, not bad for a coward, eh?)
for sieran it was that she just never learned and was punished for that (actually, if you think about it, sieran geting punished for not learning is a running theme as well, it’s just played for laughs until claw island)
on a much more meta level perhaps the reason for sieran’s death wasn’t because you helped her learn something, perhaps the reason she died was to teach the player character that innocence and naivety against the dragons will get you killed
in fact, other than forgal, since I haven’t played the vigil line, the mentors seem to go out in an oddly appropriate way, the cowardly spy goes out fighting directly against enemies, and the scholar that just never learned ended up teaching the player a lesson about recklessness
(edited by Calcifire.1864)
for forgal, his death was to end his legend (due to norn having a racial attraction to committing suicide in new and impressive ways)
for tybalt it was that you helped ease his regrets about not helping fight the dragons (and in the end, he goes out, literally fighting a dragon, not bad for a coward, eh?)
for sieran it was that she just never learned and was punished for that (actually, if you think about it, sieran geting punished for not learning is a running theme as well, it’s just played for laughs until claw island).
All of those are really good reasons for why Forgal and Tybalt died (they wanted to die) but insufficient for why Sieren died. It was completely obvious that all that would happen would be that she would die doing something that wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. This wasn’t a matter of being reckless or poor planning on her part, this was simply her suddenly becoming an obvious sacrificial lamb because the authors of the story wanted to elicit some emotion from the player in the only way they knew how. However because it was so unbelieveable it didn’t elicit the correct emotions.
I think another reason for Sieran’s death is that she wasn’t even really afraid of dying that much, after everything she went through with the player. Heck, one of her last quotes was wondering what the Mists would be like, and it would be an adventure to go there.
Calcifire’s first half of the first post, and IceBlink’s explanations
I had some trouble understanding at first too, but upon a second playthrough, it’s a bit clearer. As pointed out, Gixx’s line about learning responsibility is a big clue. She’s supposed to be portrayed as a happy go lucky, I can do whatever I want type of person. I think in a spectrum of duty between the three mentors, we have Forgal at militant, Tybalt at likes to have fun, but gets the job done, and Sieran at party all the time.
With that in mind, her interactions with the PC give her an attachment to the world, and she realizes how much danger she always puts others in. So, as her last act, she decides to save the people she cares for, effectively learning that not everything is fun and games.
Calcifire’s first half of the first post, and IceBlink’s explanations
I had some trouble understanding at first too, but upon a second playthrough, it’s a bit clearer. As pointed out, Gixx’s line about learning responsibility is a big clue. She’s supposed to be portrayed as a happy go lucky, I can do whatever I want type of person. I think in a spectrum of duty between the three mentors, we have Forgal at militant, Tybalt at likes to have fun, but gets the job done, and Sieran at party all the time.
With that in mind, her interactions with the PC give her an attachment to the world, and she realizes how much danger she always puts others in. So, as her last act, she decides to save the people she cares for, effectively learning that not everything is fun and games.
But she doesn’t save the people she cared for as it is perfectly obvious that sacrificing her life wasn’t going to make a difference because of the huge numbers. So either everyone was going to live regardless or die regardless.
I hated Sieran the first time and I hate her now that I’m running Priory for a second time. I can’t wait to get her to Claw Island. Her death is a relief that I don’t have to put up with her anymore.
What you’re saying is that if she just closed the doors, and ran with them, that the outcome would have been the same? In that case, the risen have all the time to knock down the door, instead of fighting off an elementalist. Even postponing their chase for a minute is helping
What you’re saying is that if she just closed the doors, and ran with them, that the outcome would have been the same? In that case, the risen have all the time to knock down the door, instead of fighting off an elementalist. Even postponing their chase for a minute is helping
Because of the numbers, the placement of the enemy, and the terrain the outcome would have been exactly the same.
Presumeably, it really is an island, so there is no where to retreat to. Because of that the undead could have and probably did have the island surrounded. So simply closing the gates to the fort isn’t exactly going to serve the same purpose as the narrow pass at Thermopylae. At best by closing the doors you are only going to cause the enemy in the fort a minute or two to run around to the door in the back before pursuing you, but that isn’t doing anything about the more substantial enemy presence everywhere else on the island. If the only enemy you had to contend with had to come at you from the fort that would have given you a very defensible position because the enemy could not have come at you at once but could only send as many as could fit through the passageway. However on an island you have to contend with the fact that the enemy can surround you on all sides no matter where you are on that island unless you are inside a fort.
But you ran outside the protection of the fort into a less defensible position. Sure the fort was essentially overrun, but was still better than running into the maws of the rest of the army waiting outside the fort. So if you somehow managed to make it back to Lion’s Arch after having the fort overrun on Claw Island it was only because the undead didn’t actually care about you. And they wouldn’t have cared about you regardless of whether or not Sieran was with you, unless they were specifically hunting Sieran down. So the only way that Sieran’s sacrifice could be thought of as protecting you from the undead is if the undead were only interested in making sure Sieran died. Maybe that’s possible but it seems more like grasping for straws. Thus Sieran wasn’t doing you any favors by staying behind because leaving the fort wasn’t providing any protection against the actual undead army and navy from which you would have been better protected inside the walls of the fort.
Notice that the game doesn’t even try to explain how you made it back from Claw Island? It is because there is no plausible explanation other than saying that the undead weren’t interested in killing you, they were only interested in taking Claw Island which they also had no reason in doing since they would have been much better served by simply attacking Lion’s Arch first since they would then have been able to launch a suprise attack. They could have caught Lion’s Arch with its pants down (since their ships were submersibles that couldn’t be seen or detected). There was no tactical advantage to taking Claw Island and there was no need to take it even if they didn’t need it since there wasn’t a sizeable contingent of soldiers who could have turned around and used guerilla tactics to seriously disrupt the Undead’s supply lines later on. The entire questline relating to Claw Island I and Claw Island II were complete bollocks.
As for the amount of time Sieran gave you by sacrificing herself, it is as I said, zero. But even if we assume that somehow the undead were really really stupid and didn’t have the island surrounded (but you actually do see that they have the island surrounded during the quest) and only held the area between one side of the island and the fort such that they would have had to go through the fort to get to you, then Sieran still did you no favors. Because she tried to take on an entire undead army that had already wiped out nearly all of the fort’s guards within 30 seconds, she could have maybe provided a 1 second distraction or 10 seconds if they stopped to eat her. However had she gone through the door with you then she could have used her magic alongside yours to AOE down the enemies inside the confines of the very narrow passageway outside the fort’s entrance. Thus by not locking herself inside the indefensible fort where she couldn’t do bunk to hold off the undead she could have placed herself on your side of the door where she would have been able to hold back the undead for a much longer time by taking advantage of the very narrow passage.
You’re forgetting something. By sacrificing herself at Claw Island she saved the rest of us from having to put up with her for the rest of the game. Had she lived, The Pact would never have made it beyond the Straits of Devastation because she inevitably would have done something stupid. “Oh look! There’s a horde of undead giants coming! Don’t shut the gates! Let’s just go and hug them, see what effect that has!”
Sieran’s a leftover relic back from the day where Sylvari didn’t start out perfect, but actually had some difficulty understanding things like emotions, responsability and feelings.
Back when they were first introduced, they weren’t supposed to be the Mary Sues they are today.
. . . they’re Mary Sues? I thought the Player Character is a Mary Sue. Meets all the hallmarks closest.
Sieran’s a leftover relic back from the day where Sylvari didn’t start out perfect, but actually had some difficulty understanding things like emotions, responsability and feelings.
Back when they were first introduced, they weren’t supposed to be the Mary Sues they are today.
. . . they’re Mary Sues? I thought the Player Character is a Mary Sue. Meets all the hallmarks closest.
yeah, only trahearne and to a lesser extent the player character are mary sues, sylvari as a race are pretty much a race of children thrust into adult bodies, what any other race learns over 18 years or so, a sylvari has to either get given it in the dream, or learn it within about 5 minutes or they get eaten when the termites attack the wardenlight tree again
they never think things through fully (like I mentioned earlier, one wants to go and walk through hostile hylek territory during the day because at night they won’t get to see the hylek)
they have an extreme case of parental abandonment “she has thousands of children now, to the tree you are either firstborn or sylvari”
and their “racial enemy” is a group of BDSM fetishists who like to torture things until they join them (so pretty much planty cenobites) so they can cause enough pain to brainwash the race as a whole
even trahearne doesn’t count as a mary sue, he’s constantly asking for your help, and if you talk to him during the sylvari’s personal story, you can piece together that he is constantly worried about his wyld hunt, and that after all his time in orr, he still has no clue how to complete it (at least ours is, go press 2 at zhaitan) , and that the reason he’s asking you for help so often is that he’s just putting on a brave face for the rest of the pact
the player has a bit of a gameplay excuse in that from the order storyline, the dialog is the same, so they can’t really apply racial or class faults to the character (eg, my charr necro being terrified at the thought of defacing a statue of grenth to get a way of controlling shadows, he should have told sieran to wait up and come back with a chainsaw or something, that’s the sort of stuff he’d be all over)
there’s also that it’s hard for players to be mary sues because if you give them any flaws, it could go completely against how the character could be played, it’s one thing for your character to say he’s afraid of risen, it’s another to have them say it after butchering a horde of them, there’s a good reason silent protagonists are so common, if you give them characterization, it forces either the player to play differently to fit it, or the characterization just makes no sense
Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe all along she was a play-acting spy, working… for them! Maybe as soon as the door shut, she fell over laughing with evil glee at how she’d played us. Like this: “Ba ha. Ba ha ha! Bwahahahahaaaa-teehee! Fools! Fly back to Trahearne and share the sad news! Oh, to see the look on his face! Ba ha! Bwahahaha!”
And her happy go lucky irresponsible nature was really just her not being able to resist put us in situations in which we could have easily met with brutal/horrible ends even though she was only supposed to be spying. And in the next part of the big story when Trahearne is revealed as the true villain of the piece, she will be his sidekick!
I think her death just proves that some people never grow when it count to others.
Tybalt and Fogel, they learned and grew and even Fogel said at one point to the player that he considers them a child of his.
Sieran, though I love her attitude, just didn’t learn that final lesson because she’s an optimist even to the end.
I’m going to die possibly? Wow that sounds like a new exciting thing! When the doors closed she probably thought By the Pale Tree how am I getting out of this one? but unlike her other misadventures there was no way out.
Sometimes the reckless person goes out with the realization of responsibility, while others just die without thinking of that final consequence.
(eg, my charr necro being terrified at the thought of defacing a statue of grenth to get a way of controlling shadows, he should have told sieran to wait up and come back with a chainsaw or something, that’s the sort of stuff he’d be all over)
Honestly, this is my major gripe with the personal storyline. It’s very well done for the first two chapters so far:
- I really enjoyed “The Fall of Falcon Company” since it was apparent there were no good choices to deal with it and the person to blame for the whole thing wasn’t the people of Falcon Company, since they had orders to follow.
- The norn storyline for the first part I’d played two different ones and found them both very fun. I have “Unexpected Visitors” as my current Norn’s second chapter and it is hilarious. The Gear warband is just fun to be around.
- The Blood Legion story was oh so satisfyingly direct, illustrating the charr way in positive and negative aspects in place.
I haven’t really dug into the asura or sylvari . . . I only have so much time, after all.
But after Tobias completed the second chapter, the story moved towards the trouble with Risen. After that, anything which happened before he joined one of the orders seemed to disappear. I know why – it’s far easier to handle the dialogue if you standardize it. As a human from Kryta, though, there’s not much in the first two which would connect to the later bits . . . most of the events take place away from the small pool of people who know “the Hero of Shaemoor”.
Tybalt and Fogel, they learned and grew and even Fogel said at one point to the player that he considers them a child of his.
Forgal has no development either. Nor is there ever any situation which should cause the player to grow fond of Forgal nor Forgal to grow fond of the player.
Forgal is the same from start to finish and keeps the player at an arm’s length until he is about to die.
Honestly, I feel like we’re playing/reading different games. But, to each his own
Tybalt and Fogel, they learned and grew and even Fogel said at one point to the player that he considers them a child of his.
Forgal has no development either. Nor is there ever any situation which should cause the player to grow fond of Forgal nor Forgal to grow fond of the player.
Forgal is the same from start to finish and keeps the player at an arm’s length until he is about to die.
In game he does mention how your character has grown and he considers you like a child of his.
It isn’t in the cutscenes, but rather in the in game dialogue. So at some point Fogel does care about the player character.
Tybalt and Fogel, they learned and grew and even Fogel said at one point to the player that he considers them a child of his.
Forgal has no development either. Nor is there ever any situation which should cause the player to grow fond of Forgal nor Forgal to grow fond of the player.
Forgal is the same from start to finish and keeps the player at an arm’s length until he is about to die.
In game he does mention how your character has grown and he considers you like a child of his.
Yeah, right before he dies. But that isn’t a matter of character development, that is just heavy handed story telling where the writer’s wave their magic wand around and say “it must be so.”
All the growing that my character did and was going to do happened between the time I was level 1 and saw Destiny’s Edge fall apart.
The entire middle section of the personal story devoted to the 3 orders was nothing but unnecessary filler during which absolutely nothing of note happens and nothing gets developed, either your character or the plot.
Yeah, right before he dies. But that isn’t a matter of character development, that is just heavy handed story telling where the writer’s wave their magic wand around and say “it must be so.”
For better accuracy it was the mission before if the wiki is right, but still every character’s actions are the result of a writer’s magical wand,
All the growing that my character did and was going to do happened between the time I was level 1 and saw Destiny’s Edge fall apart.
Which is entirely correct. Arenanet’s structure for the stories were in three parts:
The entire middle section of the personal story devoted to the 3 orders was nothing but unnecessary filler during which absolutely nothing of note happens and nothing gets developed, either your character or the plot.
I’ll agree about the former, but the latter I won’t.
It may be unnecessary filler to you, but all the races had to get their crap together and fight the Dragons. That’s all the second and early parts of the third were for. There needed to be some transition. Was the transition clunky? Sure I’ll vote on that, but was it needed? Yes it was, at least in my eyes.
Peronally I’m more miffed I didn’t get to ride with parts of Destiny’s Edge more than what we got, but I put that all in another thread.
Sieran went from a happy-go-lucky eternal optimist to a sacrificial pawn with an entire life ahead of her. I just don’t get it. Could someone enlighten me as to what I’m missing?
The motivation for the mentor to sacrifice themselves is clear, and also the same across all three of them. They all want to save someone, the PC. And it comes with different reasons: Forgal for heroic, Tybalt for self-redemption, Seiran for friendship.
The questionable part, at least to me, is still the execution. Especially for Seiran.
…But then I turn on WvW and stop thinking such a thing now…
every character’s actions are the result of a writer’s magical wand,
All the growing that my character did and was going to do happened between the time I was level 1 and saw Destiny’s Edge fall apart.
The entire middle section of the personal story devoted to the 3 orders was nothing but unnecessary filler during which absolutely nothing of note happens and nothing gets developed, either your character or the plot.
I’ll agree about the former, but the latter I won’t.
It may be unnecessary filler to you, but all the races had to get their crap together and fight the Dragons. That’s all the second and early parts of the third were for. There needed to be some transition. Was the transition clunky? Sure I’ll vote on that, but was it needed? Yes it was, at least in my eyes.Peronally I’m more miffed I didn’t get to ride with parts of Destiny’s Edge more than what we got, but I put that all in another thread.
I don’t completely agree that every action a character performs is the writer waving their magic wand. I feel that a truly talented writer doesn’t so much write as record by allowing the story to give birth to itself. This is done by following the natural progression of the events. When you have discontinuous and unexplained events then the story becomes artificial. Here the story was artificial with the writer dictating and not recording. Admittedly I am not describing my concept correctly and doubt I will ever be able to do so. But the crux of the matter is that making characters perform actions which cannot be seen as natural progression or development is poor writing.
As far as the orders were concerned, you explained exactly why that section doesnt make sense. We needed to get all the species working together, but that isn’t what you do. You wander aimlessly doing nothing of importance. completely ignoring or forgetting about Zhaitan, forgetting about your mission to bring Destiny’s Edge together (you are not bringing Destiny’s Edge together for the purpose of bringing Destiny’s Edge together but for the purpose of using them as representatives/ambassadors of the species/city-states they belong to). This middle section is too far removed from the story to be anything but pointless filler.
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