Guild Wars 2

The Sylvari were announced a couple years ago during Guild Wars 2’s early development and joined the Asura and the Charr as ArenaNet’s answer to creating its own unique fantasy race. However, when hopeful players first got a good look at them, they were disappointed to find that the Sylvari were nothing more than generic, green humans. As a result, concerns began to erupt that the Sylvari would be nothing more than an elven-themed, human reskin. Luckily, ArenaNet managed to relieve players’ concerns as it continued to flesh-out both the Sylvari’s design and story, successfully bringing the race into a realm of its own.

Nowhere else could we find walking, talking, humanoid plants that played a crucial role in an MMO’s story. Nowhere else could we find a race’s birth as unique as the Sylvari’s. Nowhere else could we find a society quite like that of the Sylvari.

However, did ArenaNet achieve true uniqueness, or is it too often that the Sylvari fall back on standard racial tropes? Are the Sylvari truly one of a kind?

There are many new, refreshing themes the Sylvari adapt—I don’t deny that. After all, Sylvari are born from a tree, die after an indeterminate amount of time (possibly never), and sing clothing, houses, and even weapons into being from nature. They are literally walking salads that players can ravenously sink their teeth into. However, my question is: are the Sylvari too human? Or was their humanity necessary for the success of their design? Did ArenaNet stop too short?

I’ll attempt to explain myself.

First of all, the Sylvari appear human. From a design perspective, I can understand why the developers would do this. People respond positively to something they can relate to. Turning the Sylvari into something that looks like an Oakheart might create some friction with the other races and skew the Sylvari’s popularity. For example, none of the MMOs off the top of my head use a bestial design instead of humanoid for its playable races. This would be why I would argue that the decision to make Sylvari humanoid was largely one of safety. Were alternatives discussed? Most definitely. But I can see why the developers chose to drop the idea. Quite possibly, they compensated for this by giving the Sylvari a unique biology and image.

Second, the Sylvari are either male or female. In a similar way to the Sylvari’s humanoid design, I can understand why the developers would like to create something players can relate to. Players can choose the gender of their character, just like they can with all the other races. Is it the same gender they are? Is it the other gender? Pick one. Players have the freedom. Again, this gives the player something to relate to. Plants themselves have genders, anyway. And even if they didn’t, the reason behind a Sylvari’s gender is implied well enough in the lore to be believable.

However, the Sylvari can also enter into romantic relationships with each other. Now, this is where I lose track of ArenaNet’s reasoning.

Those who have played the game for a while may start to notice something: all Sylvari are born from the Pale Tree. They call “her” “mother”. They may even call other Sylvari “brothers” or “sisters”. From a human’s perspective, this all makes sense. Creatures who are born from the same mother are generally considered “siblings”. However, Sylvari can also enter into romantic relationships with each other. A little bizarre, “incest” definitely comes to mind (although the normal side effects of incest hardly matter as the Sylvari can’t reproduce). As a result of the confusion, the ArenaNet lore team has released an official clarification of this (then common) misconception about the Sylvari:

“Sylvari don’t breed like humans do, so they can’t inbreed like humans do. When they call the Pale Tree ‘Mother’ it’s more like Mother Earth—we are all ‘children’ of this godlike concept, but calling them such does not make us all related by blood.

‘Incest’ is a very mammalian taboo and one that doesn’t apply to sylvari. Because sylvari don’t reproduce in the same hierarchical manner as mammals, they don’t have to worry about reducing a gene pool to dangerous levels. They don’t have brothers or sisters like humans do, nor do they have true parents. They are brothers and sisters in the same way we are all brothers and sisters within the human race, whether of the same parents or not. The Pale Tree calls the sylvari her ‘children’ because they are born through her, but you can’t compare humans with sylvari in that way and extrapolate that all sylvari are siblings.”

This is a decent enough explanation, right? It covers its bases, addresses player concerns. However, I feel that the overall premise of a “godlike” entity in the form of the Pale Tree is far too contrived.

There are times when this can work effectively in other fantasy settings, but in this case the whole concept is difficult to grasp. How can something that emerges physically from what is basically a leaf womb not be physically related to others born from the same being?

If the Pale Tree were truly “godlike”, then the Sylvari would have been born around the Pale Tree from completely unrelated plants. There would have been no misconception this way. In this alternate universe, perhaps a connection with the Pale Tree could be maintained by the Sylvari “basking” in the Pale Tree’s magics. Or perhaps the connection could be reduced to simple adoration of the Sylvari’s “god”. The biggest problem with ArenaNet’s clarification here is that it should not have been necessary in the first place.

However, even if there was never any contention about the Sylvaris’ incestual habits, I believe it would have been preferable to completely alter the players’ conception about what it truly means to be Sylvari. ArenaNet’s goal was to make the Sylvari a completely unique race, right? Well, why couldn’t they have made the Sylvari into something that completely baffles our human brains?

For example, the Sylvari don’t have romantic relationships. Period.
“Are you two dating?” you ask a Sylvari couple. “What’s dating?” they reply.
In this alternate universe, the Sylvari consider their entire race one literal family. No misconceptions, no awkward, contrived explanations. What race in the entire history of MMOs or even fantasy literature has ever done that? Well, I’m not going to rule it out, but I would hazard a guess that it isn’t very common.

And why stop there? Humans communicate by talking. Bah. Sylvari communicate through touch. All they need to do is to touch a fellow Sylvari in order to talk directly into their mind. Imagine what the first encounter between humans and Sylvari would have been like. (Gameplay problems would include adding the dialogue snippets players can hear in game.)

Humans eat to survive. Boring! Sylvari stand out in the sun to restore energy and store the subsequent nutrients inside their only organ for later. Everything else in their body is designed to transport these nutrients…like some sort of leaf. (Xylem and phloem, anyone?) You invite a Sylvari over for dinner, and he stands outside all evening. “How rude,” we humans would say. But we just don’t understand. (Gameplay problems would include eating food to get buffs in game.)

The Sylvari race was supposed to be something we had never seen before in a fantasy setting. However, what we got was a rather creative, flaky human. The Sylvari are great for their own reasons (as I mentioned earlier), but they could have been so much better. There could have been real reasons why the Sylvari were so bizarre, so difficult to understand. There could have been lessons about learning to accept things that are the polar opposite of us. There could have been humor between two drastically different, yet visually similar, races.

The Sylvari should have looked like a human, should have been based on a human, but on the inside, they should have been much more than a human.

So, what are your thoughts on the Sylvari? Are they too human? Are they clearly not human at all? Or does what humanity they have work for them? Obviously it hardly matters now, but I feel it is an interesting “what if” scenario regardless.

1. It is rumored that the seed Ventari received from the human could have been from the supposedly dead nature dragon. If you compare Zhaitan and his minions to the Pale Tree, this rumor makes sense. Especially, when you know the Sylvari cannot be corrupted by any known dragon. Though we know little about the dragons, it does not appear that one corruption can override another. And then there is the knowledge that most dragons cannot make minions from nothing, save the one from the first game. They must corrupt an entity. A dragon’s minion is also sterile. The only way they can reproduce in such a way is if a dragon corrupts a pregnant entity. We also learn that there are other trees out there, though without the Avatar-esque, knowledge. I’d be willingly to bet that this Pale Tree is likely the will of that dragon.
2. Also, to compare a Slyvari to a human when it comes to eating is silly. There are plants out there that don’t just get nutrients from just standing in the sun. Some actually seduce bugs with smells and eat them with digestive enzymes. They can eat like the rest of us.

I never pictured the Sylvari as a religious group, they are a new race anyway, so they wouldn’t know what a religion actually is. The Pale Tree is just that, a tree. Everything it does is just through natural causes. So, all Sylvari are just brothers and sisters while the tree itself is their mother. The pods that Sylvari come from are actually The Pale Tree’s seeds, the Sylvari are plants and plants come from seeds. Then there are the dreams of the Sylvari, somehow the tree manages to connect them, but after all, new plants means they have unknown properties. But they did base The Dream off of something that’s somewhat true; dreams can be symbolic. They could tell what is wrong with your life, this way you’d know to change your ways (or not). The Sylvari are unique in there own way because they just stand out from other races, and try to be kind as they can be (unlike the hard-headed Charr who think war is everything, and the ego-maniacal Asura who has a horrible inferiority complex, no offense but it’s the truth).

The sylvari as explained by the lore are human like not because the devs wanted it that way but because the pale tree watched them while she was growing and as she grew taller she wanted to communicate with them so she made sylvari. The design for the sylvari was so that they could talk to the humans without them freaking out and be able to see each other on common ground. Sylvari don’t have the same romantic relationships humans have, they actually tend to just love someone there is never really any dating as far as I have seen.