Guild Wars 2

I have just moments ago played the story mode for Arah. I cleared the dungeon, and beat all the bosses presented to me. What I witnessed was not a boss fight. There was no epic conclusion, there was no ultimate battle, there was no satisfaction whatsoever. Zhaitan is one of the elder dragons, god like beings that players are told are near indestructible.

I will describe the fight against Zhaitan now, in a way to avoid spoilers. In this fight, undead mobs spawn, and you kill them. They are the same mobs you can fight just outside of the dungeon itself. Once all of them die, more spawn. Then after all of them are killed, 3 eyes of Zhaitan spawn. After they are killed, you see a cutscene of lasers hitting Zhaitan. Zhaitan then clings to a building and you control a turret as you proceed to shoot at him. This turret requites no aiming and only has one skill, to fire. Zhaitan’s only resistance to this is to occasionally place an aoe on the turret, which can kill you. Then after firing the turret enough times, Zhaitan is slain and the dungeon is over.

What I have just described is one of the most unsatisfying boss fights I have ever played.

This is an enemy the whole game has built up. This is an elder dragon, a being so powerful that it leaves destruction and corruption simply with its presence. Characters question if the dragons are even capable of being defeated.

In World of Warcraft, the questing was repetitive and boring, the grinding was terrible, and the pvp did not interest me. The only payoff for me in World of Warcraft were the boss fights, and that alone had me playing for years.

Now that I have seen the climax of the story and fought one of the game’s main antagonists and one of the most powerful beings in the entire story of Guild Wars, I now question if I will ever boot the game up again knowing that this is what ArenaNet deemed worthy of a final boss fight against such a well built up enemy.

I am disappointed, bewildered, and saddened by this experience.

Yeah people have been saying how amazingly awful it is since launch and nothing has been done. Maybe this is why we’ve just been doing extremely unrelated living story nonsense for the past 9 months or so.

I think they were possibly rushed to get it finished. It does seem that everyone agrees that it is pretty awful though.

They obviously put a lot of effort into creating a great visual experience and I think they succeeded at it. On the other hand they forgot the most important aspect of a final battle, players actually want to fight that giant dragon flying around the ship using our own abilities. A simple detail like that ruin the whole experience.

I have this strange deja vu with this thread.

Not the first time a thread like this has come up and I understand why most people are disappointed with the Zhaitan fight. Because they think in terms of boss fights. Mostly people who play games after a certain point in time have more problems with it than people who grew up playing earlier games…because the entire premise of gaming has changed. I don’t think in terms of boss fights. I even hate the term boss. It takes the world away and puts it into game mode.

To me, I’d been fighting Zhaitan since the moment I entered Orr…around level 70. We’d partially blinded him, killed part of his food source, took away his ability to make more undead….we beat him back until he was trapped in Arah. We took the fight too him. Everything we did in the personal story was part of beating Zhaitan.

Then there’s the mega-laser that actually crippled Zhaitan, an invention of Professor Gorr. Unfortunately if you didn’t do that Asuran story line you don’t realize the significance of that weapon.

The Zhaitan fight is more of an epilogue than an actual boss fight. If you go expecting a boss fight, you’re going to be seriously disappointed. If you go in expected the last chapter of a story, maybe not so much.

Kurodius.7463:

What I have just described is one of the most unsatisfying boss fights I have ever played.

I am pretty sure its THE worst FINAL boss fight I ever played in any game. Strangely the rest of story dungeon modes bosses are not that bad, in fact they are (mostly) much more interesting than the explorer mode ones.

Anet can make it up to us by retconning the death of Zhaitan into a serious injury instead and throw in a Japanese game inspired final encounter. I mean the SAB designers were so inspired by the games of their youth I am pretty sure they understand what makes an epic fight in a video game, instead of throwing together a few 16 bit levels.

I am sure that the story will be reworked. When is very much up in the air, could be this year or next. It could be done when they introduce a new personal story line. I hope that it is reworked since I did not like much of the story after claw island.

I think the fight looks really awesome, it has great music, it’s visually impressive and it is exciting. The fact that you are not stood about avoiding AOE red markers, spamming 2,3,4,5 with auto attack on doesn’t detract from the awesome. You do indeed fight him, just not conventionally. Also, what did you expect? he is an elder dragon afterall, did you think that you and your 4 buddies could stand there toe to toe with Zhaitan? that’s a bit mental.

Kurodius.7463:

Now that I have seen the climax of the story and fought one of the game’s main antagonists and one of the most powerful beings in the entire story of Guild Wars,

Technically that is Abaddon from GW1: Nightfall.

Despite the common belief Elder Dragons are stronger than gods, Abaddon’s powers were vastly more far-reaching than Zhaitan. To put this in perspective, Abaddon was able to twist the world into nightfall while still locked inside the Realm of Torment AND sealed by chains inside the Heart of Abaddon. Whereas all Zhaitan did was raise a Orr. (The risen do most of the dirty work for him, as Zhaitan has little influence other than being the object of their obsession.)

When I did it, it was glitchy as hell. No sound (effects, music, voices, etc.), or it would cut in and out. Half my party eventually got knocked into the middle of the ship that was using cannons and I pretty much stood the rest of the fight defending their bodies while they shot cannons like that. Totally broken. lol

Least the cutscenes worked, and that was pretty cool. Sadly I wish I had sound and stuff at the time. >.<

It could of been a lot more combat wise. Sadly it feels rushed. I have nothing against using the cannons, etc. As it makes perfect sense as that was what we were working up to all that time. Just that alone feels kinda bland. Maybe it just felt kind of out of because of all the sound issues I had during the battle. No epic music can really hurt a fight.

They talked about “fixing” it or adding to it or something, but it seems to be forgotten or very far on the backburner. I guess there is nothing officially wrong with it, as it doable. Its just kinda funny cause the bosses up to Zhaitan could even be considered way harder then him. Heck, my party wiped on the 3rd boss like two times and no one died on Zhaitan. :/

Living story is more important.

Vayne.8563:

Not the first time a thread like this has come up and I understand why most people are disappointed with the Zhaitan fight. Because they think in terms of boss fights. Mostly people who play games after a certain point in time have more problems with it than people who grew up playing earlier games…because the entire premise of gaming has changed. I don’t think in terms of boss fights. I even hate the term boss. It takes the world away and puts it into game mode.

To me, I’d been fighting Zhaitan since the moment I entered Orr…around level 70. We’d partially blinded him, killed part of his food source, took away his ability to make more undead….we beat him back until he was trapped in Arah. We took the fight too him. Everything we did in the personal story was part of beating Zhaitan.

Then there’s the mega-laser that actually crippled Zhaitan, an invention of Professor Gorr. Unfortunately if you didn’t do that Asuran story line you don’t realize the significance of that weapon.

The Zhaitan fight is more of an epilogue than an actual boss fight. If you go expecting a boss fight, you’re going to be seriously disappointed. If you go in expected the last chapter of a story, maybe not so much.

I’m really glad you brought this up. Seeing the posts that come after yours I’m pretty sure most people either didn’t read what you wrote or are in complete denial after reading it. There are a lot of great games out there that don’t have any boss fights at all and yet they are still incredible. Good examples include Halo and The Last of Us.

As far as I know Zhaitan also summons these tentacle things in addition to the AOE while you’re firing your cannons. It’s true that you can’t use your own abilities to attack Zhaitan but I think that’s the point. Zhaitan is desperately clinging to life while you are desperately trying to hold back his last defenses and taking him down at the same time.

Maybe ANet could have done something similar to what the God of War games do with their epic multi-phase boss fights but they were on a limited budget. Plus, how often do people run story mode dungeons anyway? Most of the epic content that is already in the game goes untouched most of the time. Who knows about the iron forgeman at the end of SE story or Kudu’s Monster from COE story?

Vayne.8563:

Not the first time a thread like this has come up and I understand why most people are disappointed with the Zhaitan fight. Because they think in terms of boss fights. Mostly people who play games after a certain point in time have more problems with it than people who grew up playing earlier games…because the entire premise of gaming has changed. I don’t think in terms of boss fights. I even hate the term boss. It takes the world away and puts it into game mode.

To me, I’d been fighting Zhaitan since the moment I entered Orr…around level 70. We’d partially blinded him, killed part of his food source, took away his ability to make more undead….we beat him back until he was trapped in Arah. We took the fight too him. Everything we did in the personal story was part of beating Zhaitan.

Then there’s the mega-laser that actually crippled Zhaitan, an invention of Professor Gorr. Unfortunately if you didn’t do that Asuran story line you don’t realize the significance of that weapon.

The Zhaitan fight is more of an epilogue than an actual boss fight. If you go expecting a boss fight, you’re going to be seriously disappointed. If you go in expected the last chapter of a story, maybe not so much.

There are a few things I would like to address about this response.

The portions of the personal story you’re talking about are more directed at fighting Zhaitan’s forces. The only thing the player has done that directly effects the dragon is to take out his food source. Even after that, Zhaitan himself should still be at relatively full strength. All he does in the fight is drop minions, roar, and spray some black sludge. At no point does Zhaitan do anything in the fight to suggest that he’s any smarter or more powerful than a random giant monster. The most he personally does in the fight is bash into the ship a couple of times, meaning the build up of his power is unfulfilled.

Regarding your comments about looking at games in terms of boss fights, games are not the only storytelling medium that uses the concept of a “final boss.” In countless movies, books, and tv series a main antagonist is identified, and the climax is often the clash between the protagonist and the antagonist. The method in which we defeat Zhaitan is similar to having the antagonist simply die off-screen or the antagonist falling immediately in the climax with little effort by the protagonist.

Imagine if in “The Dark Night” the Joker is defeated in one punch the first time Batman meets him with no other plans to trick up his sleeves and is simply imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Imagine if in “Django Unchained” the slave owner of Djano’s wife had a heart attack when Django showed up at his door.

Imagine if in “Star Wars” Darth Vader lost to Luke in one swing.

I hope that illustrates to you that this fight did not just disappoint me from a gameplay or gamer perspective, but also disappointed me in the narrative itself.

And finally, I would like to address the last comment you made. If the Zhaitan fight is an epilogue, then this story has no climax.

P.S.: One other thing I would like to point out is that Zhaitan wasn’t defeated in any sort of a clever way. The entire method in defeating him was “shoot him a lot.” We apparently just needed every faction shooting.

Even old Hogger had a more complex and superb fight than most bosses in this game. The greatest boss fight in this game is most likely the High Orrian Wizard with ten people. Now that I think about it, I haven’t enjoyed any of the boss fights in this game.

That boss fight is a decent indicator what the rest of your endgame will be like.

They should’ve just made it so the canons are fired by the npc’s while you watch the light show, that would’ve fixed everything. You survived everything so far, you defended zojja, defeated the eyes of zhaitan and fought countless undead, now just gaze at your victory as the canons are fired.
The fact that you have to spam click to to kill a boss is boring, unecessary and even insulting to a certain extent.

If I recall correctly they acknowledged the issue and stated there were plans about revamping it… haven’t heard about that for the longest time.

Anyways, Borderlands final boss fight was worse because it failed even on a graphics/scenery level.