Guild Wars 2

It’s quite clear that somehow, at some point during the design and writing process, somebody at ArenaNet decided that the way to make a story “dramatic” or emotionally impactful was to kill likable characters.

Now, used extremely sparingly, I might agree. The unexpected tragic death of a major character, especially a beloved one, can indeed have a huge impact. A good example of this would be the movie Serenity. When Wash is killed, it hits you like a punch in the chest, and you spend the rest of the film truly concerned that all of the characters you love may very well die. It heightens the suspense and sense of danger, and pulls you in to the shared sense of loss.

Here’s the important element that I think ArenaNet writers missed… none of the other characters ended up dying. Alfred Hitchkitten once said that the secret to truly great suspense is that the bomb under the desk can NEVER explode. In other words… to put it simply… you shouldn’t be killing off all our favorite characters in the personal story.

It becomes comical. It loses all impact and emotion. It turns into almost a parody of a dramatic storyline. What little investment we place into a few characters early on is betrayed…and then with each new character introduction and death (with ever-shorter intervals between the two), it all means less and less and becomes a chore. I couldn’t even tell you the names of the three or four characters that are introduced and die in the later stages of the personal story… and I’ve done it three times.

It is entirely possible to create a dramatic, emotionally impactful story where NOBODY DIES.

Please, ArenaNet writers, find some other plot devices to throw into the mix, and the stories will be better for it. Try developing relationships with more depth and find the drama and tragedy somewhere besides death. There’s no point in developing good characters if you’re just going to kill them all…and the current personal stories suffer from exactly this.

How about this… have one of the beloved characters be captured and turned into a risen. The player would then be forced to do battle with this friend, but would discover a way to capture them instead of kill…and then figure out a way to restore their friend to life and save them from Zhaitan’s power.

Or…how about… One of the friend characters gets so frightened when it comes time to battle the risen that they freeze up and run from the field…causing some tragedy or a loss of a battle. Have the player help their friend find their courage and redeem themselves later in the story.

Just two off the top of my head.

Well, to be fair I enjoyed the twist of at least one character’s death: Warmaster Forgal.

That part was very well-written in my opinion. It made sense for Forgal to end his life in that manner.

Note: Spoilers follow

It would be helpful if you listed the people that die. Your Order mentor dies and there are a few others: Howl, from the Charr storyline, Thom or Apaia, depending on your Greatest Fear choice, some long-running enemies in various dungeons, etc. However, the human storyline sister never dies. Demie Beetlestone, higher ranking Order members, new warband recruits and your sparring partner from the Charr storyline, the leader of the racial sympathy group, the person you recruit for your order after losing Claw Island, etc. all survive. My Sylvari killed the one his Dream sent him to help in the Sylvari storyline, but that was a choice on my part (save the village, v. possibly save one person from making a bad personal choice).

I found that ANet has used death sparingly. Maybe 1/4th to 1/3rd of the major characters in your personal story end up dying in a war against a world-destroying enemy.

SPOILER ALERT…

I’m not talking about just the mentor’s death at claw island. After that story step, there are two or three or even four other characters that are introduced and then die. The fact that you don’t seem to remember them doesn’t surprise me. It makes my point.

Again, I’m not saying that death can NEVER be a powerful plot device…I’m just saying it shouldn’t be the only thing you do, especially when you are killing off characters that nobody even cares about. It just ends up seeming artificial… like somebody said, “okay, here we need to add some drama. We’ll kill another character.” If you do that every time…there’s no emotional impact.

I think the idea that people dying is automatically considered “dramatic” even when we have nothing at all invested and said characters have no depth is very much like the childish thinking that adding nudity, cursing, or gratuitous violence to a story makes it “mature”.

There’s a lot more complexity possible in the realm of story telling. I’m just inviting ArenaNet to explore a bit more. Those suggestions were totally off the top of my head in the spur of the moment. I wasn’t intending that they take them verbatim and put them in the game. As a good example…I really liked the charr storyline involving the father being a potential traitor. I thought that was pretty darn good. I wish more of the story had been like that. But again…at the end of that story ArenaNet seems to have felt that someone HAD to die in order for it to be “dramatic”. I think the whole storyline was emotionally impactful, and it didn’t need a death.

Once again, I’m not necessarily talking about main characters. The bomb expert, the guy with the dog, the sylvari who marks the giant-making machine, the norn who guards the door and gets turned to risen… are all only in about one story step each…they are introduced and killed. I felt nothing at all when I was sent to explain to the bomb experts wife…no connection. It just seemed annoying and artificial. I knew he was only added so that he could die… they really serve no purpose and there’s no emotional connection. All the rambling Trahearne does about this or that person and their death meaning something…it just ends up being annoying and repetitive when I never got a chance to know the characters.

Fozzik.1742:

SPOILER ALERT…

Once again, I’m not necessarily talking about main characters. The bomb expert, the guy with the dog, the sylvari who marks the giant-making machine, the norn who guards the door and gets turned to risen… are all only in about one story step each…they are introduced and killed. I felt nothing at all when I was sent to explain to the bomb experts wife…no connection. It just seemed annoying and artificial. I knew he was only added so that he could die… they really serve no purpose and there’s no emotional connection. All the rambling Trahearne does about this or that person and their death meaning something…it just ends up being annoying and repetitive when I never got a chance to know the characters.

I don’t think someone introduced during a battle and dying is dramatic effect. People die in wars, there are ambushes, Zhaitan corrupts… It is like a TV show episode where the story needs deaths, so they intorduce someone in order to not kill a major character. Generals going on about the deaths meaning something is a hallmark of real world history. Ever watched a press conference of a general when he talks about the casualties? Or read any generals’ war memoirs? ANet just has Trahearne acting like real world generals in the face of casualties.

Oh, I mentioned the “bomb expert,” Thom, who was the only named character in that storyline to die. I remember the guy with the dog but note he was the only major character in the story arc to die, and it contained a BUNCH of major characters who were introduced and given names. I did not go through the other stories you are talking about.

Ah…so the literary ideal that we’re aspiring to is “Ensign Smith” from Star Trek.

*facepalm

Introducing a character just to kill them is lazy writing / story telling. When something is clearly a plot device, it’s a bad plot device. It’s entirely meaningless and absolutely does not add to realism or emotional impact. It’s such a common thing that it’s become a punchline in popular culture. ArenaNet should aim a bit higher, or at least I’d like to hold them to a higher standard than that.

There are very few characters in the personal story that are provided with enough development to become likable and create attachment, and those are killed off. If there are no characters we like who survive, it’s a pretty depressing story going forward. I understand that Destiny’s Edge is supposed to fill that roll of being the most developed, having the relationships we care about, etc… I just wish the other “bit parts” were filled in and didn’t all drop dead so quickly.

Not everyone can live forever, just look to the Walking Dead for examples. The only problem I have them people dying in this game is that it seems to be at the end of a quest that they die at. Never in the middle.

I have done all three paths. All three yield striking similiarities yet were different at the sametime. It is up to the PLAYER to decide which path they enjoy more. I enjoy the whisper path because it is hilarious seeing a Charr disguised as a human female. Tybalt had a good personality to him and was seemingly lacking in courage so for him to offer to sacrifice himself to save the main character, us, was a big development for him. Arenanet already knows they can not please EVERYONE but come on now. If it is so bad to ya then do not do it. Find something else to do if do not want the FREE Alpha Siege Golem at the completion of the story. Those that died in the story line did not die in vain. They died so WE could achieve the death of Zhaitan.

OP, Play the mass effect series incorrectly and you’ll look at this game’s death magnitude quite differently.

I’m with skullfaerie on this one it is necessary to have character death, after all this game is a story about war. People die in war, so a lot of people are going to bite the dust. Although, I wish Tybalt was still alive, I miss him Q_Q

To be fair, not everyone dies. The one character you really want to die, that you’d throttle his leafy little neck yourself, doesn’t die. Tis a shame too.

Oh and Alfred Hitchkitten… too funny.

My friend and I started to make a game of guessing who’d die when we reached Orr. It started to become a running gag, and it actually got pretty kitten funny.

Reminds me of Tonn’s death and how hilariously stupid it was. I literally stood there for about 5 minutes waiting to see if they would change their mind about “sacrificing” him. Also the attempt to make me feel sad when talking to his wife was very, very funny just due to the bizarre reaction she had and the voice acting.

I think the only issue with some of the deaths is that there was no real chance to get to know the characters so the death had no impact. I really didn’t get to connect with Tonn at all so when he died I really didn’t care. Same with the norn lady when you go into Kitan’s Manse.

However, with characters like Tegwen, or the holographic announcer asura girls romantic interest (I forget names), I was actually pained to see them lost.

Tonn’s death was gratuitous imo. It wasn’t necessary in the slightest. But is it a wonder that everyone thinks Traehern is the savior and hero? We leave dead bodies of comrades everywhere we go. :P

I agree completely. I only found about 5 characters in the whole game I actually liked and they killed 3 of them. Kill the entire of Destiny’s Edge apart from Caithe and Trahearne next time.

In fact, kill MY character too, because the words put in his mouth for me make him a complete kitten

The Guild Wars novels also took to killing characters, though Snaff has pretty significant meaning.

In this Personal Story? Highly. Highly unnecessary deaths. That I even need to pluralize it is a sign that it was not done in good conscience.

Let me tell you what you did in Guild Wars, ArenaNet. You gave us a band of heroes and great adventurers, great figures that needed little ovation. All along, they were there with us. Gwen. Mhenlo. Devona. Aidan. Cynn. Eve. And a great leader who stood up for his people: Prince Rurik.

Yes, we lost Rurik, and yes it was tragic. But what tugged at our heart strings even more was the final mission and our final duty to our Prince. For Ascalon. For Tyria.

Throughout the entire series we felt we moved on from challenge and adversity of losing good people, but we became stronger because of it. We united closer with those who shared in our loss. But it’s because we still had people, characters we moved on with, that gave us a sense of purpose and meaning to the world. We shared our glory, pain, loss and adventure. We grew with them. Thousands of us could go on about how much we love or revered NPCs, especially when they became heroes for our party.

Didn’t feel any of that in this story.

That’s because Trahearne is the new Prince Rurik.

Who, sadly, does not die I might add.

I didn’t particularly get Tonn’s death. How is he considered an ‘innocent’ when he’s a full fledged member of the pact, enjoys blowing up buildings with explosives, likes hanging around other races such as Charr without any complaints (he even compliments them), invading Inquest labs, etc? He’s pretty much a soldier on the front lines (in fact, even behind enemy lines, haha).

Apatia’s final mission however, really got to me. Even when you ‘free her’, she still doesn’t attack you and just stands there wobbling, and that soft music is playing in the background. Didn’t help that I just played the Walking Dead, haha.

So, while some deaths are a bit naff, such as Tonn (he didn’t even die onscreen, nor is he an innocent), some can be done right. Maybe I’m just influenced by zombie turned deaths, haha.

When zott died in my story I cried Poor Ellie >.< she’s such a great char.. they should’ve ended up together!!! Q_Q

I think the only character I really cared about in the story was Caithe probably in no small part because I spent so much time with her from the time I first stepped into the game since I started as a Sylvari.

Which I think just adds credence to the point already made that continuing to kill off characters left and right creates not emotion but detachment. Killing off characters is a lot like eating a delicacy, that first bite is exquisite but every bite after that becomes less and less enjoyable until by the end you don’t even taste it and are left sitting at your table chewing on this tasteless gray goo in your mouth trying to flag down the waiter so you can pay your bill and rush back home to catch the new episode of 2 Broke Girls. (don’t be hating, I love that show!)

tegwen and carrys were my favorite charackters.
i had them with me since my early story, as carys saved tegwen from the krait, as we found the mirror and made it through orr and back, they helped on clawisland, they joined with their sylvari special-unit to help the pact, they helped again with the mirror for the eye, the pale reavers run with me through half of orr just for tegwens self-sacrifice in the end... carys made it through...
and trahearne doesnt even lost a good word about tegwen as she died... but went to hoelbrak for a ritual for a norn (apatia?) for which i had no sympathy in that short part of a story.

ive have been through all of this with those two in my story and this is why i miss this vegetable more than sieran, but she was unique too.
i wish there would have been a storyquest about saying goodbye to a sylvarifriend.
argh, im so glad that they have not taken away carys in the end …

MidnightX.6294:

tegwen and carrys were my favorite charackters.
i had them with me since my early story, as carys saved tegwen from the krait, as we found the mirror and made it through orr and back, they helped on clawisland, they joined with their sylvari special-unit to help the pact, they helped again with the mirror for the eye, the pale reavers run with me through half of orr just for tegwens self-sacrifice in the end... carys made it through...
and trahearne doesnt even lost a good word about tegwen as she died... but went to hoelbrak for a ritual for a norn (apatia?) for which i had no sympathy in that short part of a story.

ive have been through all of this with those two in my story and this is why i miss this vegetable more than sieran, but she was unique too.
i wish there would have been a storyquest about saying goodbye to a sylvarifriend.
argh, im so glad that they have not taken away carys in the end …

it especially sucks if you choose act with wisdom, for your racial, and the priory for your order because no matter what, someone you know dies

spoilers from this point:

if you choose the vigil plan, tegwen dies, a character you’ve shared a good portion of the adventure with, slightly less than trahearne in fact.

if you choose the priory plan, kekt dies, the asura who helps you in the first priory mission as a sylvari, and appears frequently throught the priory storylines.

finally if you choose the whispers plan, agent zott dies, the asura who you meet when taking claw island back, and the boyfriend of the projectionist who helps you in that line, and also appears as the pit announcer in the whispers sylvari quest to trick waine.

it’s possibly the most sadistic choice (for the player, not the player character) you have to make in ANY sequence of personal story choices possible, no matter who you pick, someone you’ve met and befriended before dies

IceBlink.4317:

I didn’t particularly get Tonn’s death. How is he considered an ‘innocent’ when he’s a full fledged member of the pact, enjoys blowing up buildings with explosives, likes hanging around other races such as Charr without any complaints (he even compliments them), invading Inquest labs, etc? He’s pretty much a soldier on the front lines (in fact, even behind enemy lines, haha).

Unfortunately, this is often the case IRL. Very often times even invaders see themselves as innocents preyed upon by the poor, scattered civilian partisans. A couple of particularly glaring examples:
Caesar wrote that his men were outraged by the deaths of all the innocent Romans in the battle he lost during the Gallic Wars (btw, the Romans committed multiple genocides in this war and the Roman Senate tried to disband the army because of its repeated atrocities).
The dread pirate Roberts (the real one, Bartholomew Roberts) was captured and forced to work aboard a pirate ship. After the captain was captured and executed, Roberts was elected captain and avenged his “innocent” former captain, kidnapper thief and murderer by killing every male civilian in town his crew could catch and burning the town to the ground.

Seeing a soldier fighting in a war and blowing up ships as an “innocent” is perfectly realistic. In this case he was killing people who were already dead, anyway, so it is easy to see how your characters thinks Tonn is innocent.

SPOILER ALERT

When Tybelt died, I flipped my desk. He and I were like bros for life. He loved apples, I loved apples. We just clicked. He deserved a lot more, and he pulled a kitten move by sacrificing his life, and leaving me alone with Trahearne… I would have opted to leave Trahearne behind so I can get sloshed on some apple cider with my good bro after the battle of Claw Island. Hell, I would have prefered to have Deborah (human character's sister, who is actually alive) come and lead The Pact instead of that self-righteous stick...
I mean… Trahearne’s a necromancer… but only uses necromancer skills ONCE as far as I’ve seen (lvl 71 Necromancer, currently). He mentions minions a few times, but, only once he ever uses them. I used mine ever chance I got during the personal story and, hell, they managed to stay up a lot better than his Flesh Golems. He’s as expendable as his fodder.

I think they didn’t kill enough people to really make it clear this fight against Zhaitan is serious and is necessary to keep the Risen from burying the human and sylvari realms. Frankly, I’d take the story a lot more dramatic if we had something like the Culling of Stratholme (Warcraft 3) or an actual settlement being torn apart by Risen where innocent civilians were being turned into Risen rather than warriors of the Lionguard.

What if Claw Island had been more than a fortress and been a small walled town with noncombatants?

Well I was planning on watching Serenity but thank you for the HUGE spoiler.

@MackDoggy:

Having checked out your spoilered bit. that’s only useful for those for whom it would apply. And I’d rather that be untapped. I’d go into details, but it’s so spoileriffic . . . I’d much rather have had a different take, but I think I’ll hang onto that for my own usage another time.

On topic again?

The further I push through Orr the more this is being evident as a way of removing “hanging threads” so there’s not hundreds of open people to show up later in the story. It’s something of a method . . . if you’ve got characters who should be showing up, but you don’t want them, you need a reason they don’t show up. Easiest way is to kill them off, especially in the final act of your story – they become casualties meant to spur the protagonists onward.

That’s the theory anyway. There are some works where the main characters and secondary cast are pretty much immune to dying so when you see them in danger, you just go “oh, they’ll make it out” and it is possible you won’t be fully invested in the suspense. (It’s akin to the A.H. mention above – if you are shown the bomb under the table, but you know the movie is only halfway done then some measure of your mind is thinking “it’s not going to go off”. If that measure is big enough, then the suspense fails.)

Then you have the other side, where you shouldn’t be afraid to kill off your characters. You make it clear nobody is safe, so when danger pops up you do wonder if everyone will make it through. Of course, if this is done too much, then it becomes tiresome to the audience. The balance is harder to maintain, and you also might have to introduce new characters . . . to have to get rid of them later.

Then there’s the balance, where a character is storywise invulnerable but their well-being is not crucial to the story. There’s a story about the team which did “The Blair Witch Project” where the crew told the actors: “Your safety is very important to us. Your comfort is not.” This concept is where your main characters might never be in danger of death but you still hurt them. You stab them and twist the knife, but they aren’t going to die from it. You take away things they care for, you visit torments on them . . . and if done right the audience is less in suspense of death but more “how’s he going to survive this?” . . . because they know he’s getting out. But at what cost? It’s like a show where you know the little girl isn’t going to be killed on screen . . . but you worry about what is going to have to happen to be sure she doesn’t.

Thanks to this thread, I even started work on a deathlist of NPCs who die in GW2, haha.

In the personal story when you invade orr..there was this guy with a dog who got killed and it was supposed to be dramatic. I’m just staring at my screen thinking..okaaaay. I barely knew that guy he lasted less than a mission. Plus where was my character when he was being killed? I mean I was fighting the monster that killed him and one cutscene later I am no where to be seen. It was just a bad written death that left me more confused than anything.

IceBlink.4317:

Thanks to this thread, I even started work on a deathlist of NPCs who die in GW2, haha.

here’s what I’ve got so far:
(sylvari, knight, act with wisdom, priory, skritt)

gairwen’s lover
occam (if you don’t save him)
bercilak
rianoc (sort of)
waine
most of ftokchak’s village
those guys on claw island
sieran
countless named enemies

(charr, iron, reeva, shaman, whispers, skritt)
your warband
howl
a blood legion warband (if you choose cannons)
a bunch of sacrifices
mr cluckers
howl (again)
most of ftokchak’s village
those guys on claw island
tybalt (T_T)
more enemies

Most of the more interesting characters in the personal story, especially once you start messing around with the Orders and are out of your character creation/race selection section of the story, are the ones that get killed off.

Well, that’s not fair; many of the ones I like live, and I guess it’s mostly Trahearne that annoys me. But, still, so many cool NPCs die in the various paths my characters have taken, and some as needlessly as Saidra.

Tegwen’s really bugged me, for example. That didn’t need to happen at all, and to such a fun character!

Alfred Hitchkitten …

He he.

In all seriousness, it’s not the killing of the characters that’s bad. It’s how rhythmic it is, which makes it feel over-orchestrated and ultimately fake. “Oh, I see, that guy had to die because we’re at the end of this part of the story now, and we all have to move on.”

Also, the GW2 engine just doesn’t allow for elegant or realistic deaths, within context. Almost everyone (even skritt) can survive being shot, sliced set on fire multiple times, but then one arrow kills … is it Zott? While your Orders mentor dies behind a close pair of doors with almost no sound effects – very dramatic!

Effectively, with the limitations the writers have to work with, deaths should almost always be off-screen, with news delivered through text, or from multiple injuries as a character lies still – not in cut-scenes. The graphics and animations just aren’t suited to convey things that are sharp and subtle in the way choice words can.

It is ridiculous. It didn’t take very long for me to figure out that after you join an order from that point forward one person you know is going to die in each segment. After I think the third or so time it happened I decided not to emotionally invest in any future characters I may encounter in my personal story. Unfortunately, even that was foiled when I chose the Vigil path in Orr not knowing they were going to kill off Tegwen.

Of course, alts don’t help this process at all, especially if you’re like me and choose options you didn’t do the first time. So, you get to see all new people die that you didn’t know died!

I think A-net writers are advised by George R.R. Martin XD

Thinking of that I really enjoyed Tybalt’s and Forgal’s deaths. Very dramatic, very amazing dialogue… Sieran… I have to restrain myself to kick her through the door :P I really disliked her, all the Priory part of the story, in fact.

And there are other deaths very emotional for me, very well delivered in fact.

I like they choose to show this is a real war and people die, dramatically… and I really thanks the devs to not making my character develop a more deeper relationship with all the characters that died.

Tybalt and Forgal were enough

There are so many characters in the story that decide to die, when they don’t need to die. So many characters that stay behind to get them selves into an early grave, when there is no point in them staying behind what so ever. It is a very poor story device and general bad writing.

Remember this guy?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I think they didn’t kill enough people to really make it clear this fight against Zhaitan is serious and is necessary to keep the Risen from burying the human and sylvari realms. Frankly, I’d take the story a lot more dramatic if we had something like the Culling of Stratholme (Warcraft 3) or an actual settlement being torn apart by Risen where innocent civilians were being turned into Risen rather than warriors of the Lionguard.

What if Claw Island had been more than a fortress and been a small walled town with noncombatants?

Killing people isn’t going to make the fight seem any more serious, it is only going to make the character’s actions, choices and decisions seem more pointless.

The problem with Zhaitain not seeming like much of a threat actually stems from the fact that the story isn’t integrated into the game world at all. The game world is for the most part all sunshine and rainbows but the personal story instance usually has a much darker tone where the undead are presented as an actual threat. But the moment you step outside the personal story instance that threat dissapears and the undead become a laughably titular enemy, consisting of nothing more than a few static mobs on maps where they are present and they aren’t present on most maps. As such you are never made to feel while leveling that this is a huge and rising threat that must be dealt with immediately, if you even feel like it is a threat at all. If anything, the Centaurs seem to pose a much bigger threat to nearly everyone and yet we aren’t raising an army to deal with them, so why bother raising an army to deal with the nonthreat of Zhaitain?

If Anet wanted to make Zhaitan and the undead feel like an actual threat then they needed to make Zhaitain a real presence outside of the personal story instances. This would have been a nearly perfect excuse to use phasing, where the initial area was one that was under Zhaitain’s control and as you did heart quests and personal story instances the map would revert to the actual map that we see now. Of course that might only make the threat feel even smaller because you’d be watching yourself single handedly successfully driving back Zhaitain’s forces.

It’s not necessarily bad if a lot of characters die, but as you said if we don’t have any emotional investment in them, it doesn’t seem to matter. Also most of the deaths were so predictable. I just knew Tonn was going to die the moment he told me he was going out by himself to the bomb.

I really liked Apatia and did feel bad when I had to leave her behind only to find her as a risen – but I can’t help I knew a bit more about her. Too soon are the magical words here.

Don’t forget all those you purposely condemn to death when you shut the gates at the battle of Fort Trinity.

Indeed, the structure is alway the same. They introduce a character, try to make you like him by showing a bit of his personality. (They are mostly the likeable, easy-going, more funny (not comical) characters) And boom…blow them off.

This effect works very well with Tybald but it becomes less and less emotional if everyone around you, who you might like, is going to sacrifice him/herself for you. In fact I was pittying Apatia from the first moment I saw her because it was so obvious that this beautifull young woman was nothing but a sacrificial lamb for the story.

Maybe they should have these npc’s talk about how “they are one day from retirement” first. And have them show you pictures of their family, and how they plan to get married tomorrow… just this one mission. Hahahaha.

I agree that death is too commonplace and because nobody is even emotionally invested in the character at all it has little if any impact. You should get someone with a high emotional intelligence to help write the story.

Focksbot.6798:

In all seriousness, it’s not the killing of the characters that’s bad. It’s how rhythmic it is, which makes it feel over-orchestrated and ultimately fake. “Oh, I see, that guy had to die because we’re at the end of this part of the story now, and we all have to move on.”

Bingo. Killing off characters is not a bad thing by itself. Doing it with such predictability and regularity that it becomes easily predictable is.

Towards the end of the game, it became easy to figure out who was going to die. “Oh, they just introduced this character at the beginning of the arc…I know they’re going to die by the end”. It feels like a forced attempt to add emotion – complete with sad music – but when it’s so predictable, there’s no real impact.

The order mentors – that had impact. That wasn’t necessarily expected and we had grown to love those NPCs over the course of several arcs. But after the Pact is formed, NPCs are introduced than killed off a few missions later with distressing regularity.

When the deaths at Orr started getting predictable, I was laughing my butt off.

“I don’t even remember this guy… he seems nice. Looks like he’s gonna die next. And… yup.”

Elli being the one to survive was an unexpected and welcome twist because I love her.

Yeah, when you are not emotionally attached characters why continue on with the pointless slaughter? It’s just terrible writing in the opinions of many.

I think the problem is they try to kill people off seemingly at random because ‘war manufactures grief’ but plot armour is still in full effect for anyone that actually matters.

I think some of these npc deaths would have been easier to swallow if we had that sad The Hulk music playing in the background.

Meeep, meeep, meeep.

Please stop killing everyone, and kill Trahearne instead

There, fixed your title.