Guild Wars 2

Based on what I have been reading about the meaning of the word Revenant I really don’t suppose I will ever create a playable character as such .. No matter how cool it may be to some .. Playing an undead just isn’t my cup of tea .. While a Zombie or a Vampire which needs to consume the living to satiate hunger and prolong an unnatural existence,
a Revenant is a soul or soulless creature that has come back from the dead to right a wrong or perceived wrong done to them or by their own hand. Still as an undead, the Revenant may have powers from the grave .. Does the mean Warmaster Forgal and Tybalt Leftpaw could also become Revenants, or Apatia? What kind or type of demonic evil exists that would reanimate a long since deceased to return and plague the world? You thought finding out that Sylvari were minions of Mordremoth was bad, the Revenant corpse of worms is a scourge on all that is Holy .. Dwayna save us …
I wonder if the demi-god Kormir had something to it? ..

world of Warcraft

deathknight playable class = undead

forsaken playable race = basically a zombie that is smart and able to think like a humanoid.

moving on

ArenaNet often use their own definitions for words. Revenants are not undead.

Oh Whoops of Warcraft .. Well there’s an original idea !!

Yea.. A dead class for Tyria too ..

Oh yeah, That’s right, Gandalf must have become a benevolent (ha) Revenant too

The definition of revenant is, “one that returns after death or a long absence”.

While it is generally used to describe the someone of the undead variety, especially in fantasy works and old folklore, it could be used to describe anyone who came back after being gone/missing for a long period of time. In GW2’s case, that person being Rytlock (and his shiny new profession).

Just to clearify what is the newly translated version of the definition of Revenant?

A character who summons spirits from the mists .. Not quite dead yet .. Sounds vaguely similar to the mechanics of a Ritualist but that “name is already taken” …

Shiny eh not so much

jia li ng.8415:

A character who summons spirits from the mists .. Not quite dead yet .. Sounds vaguely similar to the mechanics of a Ritualist but that “name is already taken” …

Shiny eh not so much

The devs have seemingly going to great lengths to not say spirits when describing the Rev’s skills, instead using “Legends”. So the revenants aren’t actually summoning spirits from the Mists, but I would probably describe it more like a manifestation of a legendary figure and his/her/its deeds in which the Rev draws strength from.

I kinda think of it as the Rev summoning the Mists’ copy of the cliff notes version of that person/legend, but like most Mists related thing in GW though, it a bit hard to describe.

He’s only mostly dead.

So you change word in here and there .. Put in some really cool glamors and its “new”
Let’s see … Two seconds to summon .. Forty second cool down .. Oh but wait you have to attune first .. Ok the minor change is what makes it “new” ..

The whole thing around the Revenenant remembers me basically being inspired/stolen from the Anime Fate Stay Night/ Fate Zero, where summoned manifestations of legendary heroes battle against each other.

the most famous known main role summon there is called Saber and is a manifestation of the legendary “King Arthur”.
You can’t deny the similarities between that Anime and the GW2 revenant Concept, just with the only difference being the story naturally and the context for why these things get summoned.

In the anime, they get simply summoned, because 7 persons with their “legends” fioght for the purpose of gettign their hands on the “holy grail”
In GW2 the legends get simply summoned only without a purpose, there the purpose is simply only to defend yourself with the help of the stolen powers from the mists to survive that way

But the basic concept behind it is exactly the same, lending yourself the powers of a legend from the past… but the concept of the Anime was just better thought out imo, because there the summons have at last all their OWN PERSONALITY… in the game GW2 we won’t have that, you won’t see differences in any kind of personality when changing your stances..its all just about stealign powers from the legend you summon, because of Revenants seem to have self otherwise no own skills at all.

What exactly are the intentions of this thread?

Just trying to understand why the use of Revenant as the ooo ah word … and too trying to grasp what the Developers were thinking when they came up with an undead player character ..
So I guess your not an undead, but utilize the Revenant legends of by gone lore to aid you .. Like summoning a spirit of pain, but with a lot cooler graphics .. you can still fight with weapons but using the glamors will make you look so much more elite than you actually are .. It’s the bling thing .. Same mechanics warmed over with a twist and tweak ..

“I get it now”

It’s the use of calling a player a Revenant that was throwing me .. a Ritualist brought back from the dead

Maybe we will see Togo again

Orpheal.8263:

The whole thing around the Revenenant remembers me basically being inspired/stolen from the Anime Fate Stay Night/ Fate Zero, where summoned manifestations of legendary heroes battle against each other.

The idea of calling upon spirits/legends of the past to give one strength in battle is hardly new. Literally using the spirits or legends in a supernatural battle isn’t new either. Heck, I kinda thought they took the general premise of Shaman King and just ran in a different direction with it when I first saw Fate Stay Night/ Fate Zero, and I’m sure Shaman King took the idea from somewhere else as well.

But I guess Mark Twain said it best…

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

Erukk.1408:

But I guess Mark Twain said it best…

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

Not really, I doubt that neanderthals dreamed about electricity. So at some point there are new ideas. If it comes to fictional characters this might be true though.

I don’t get where anyone would think a revenant must be undead. If you die, your soul goes into the Mists, but your body remains behind. Revenants, however, have not died but have gone into the Mists as living beings, taking their body with them and returning with it. Rytlock didn’t die. He took a portal into the Mists, just as we did several times in GW1 (Underworld, FoW, Realm of Torment) and do regularly in WvW. We are ALL living “revenants” (strict definition) in that we have visited the land of death and returned, but we aren’t “Revenants” (profession name) because we haven’t learned the skills that Rytlock learned.

BrettM.9062:

I don’t get where anyone would think a revenant must be undead. If you die, your soul goes into the Mists, but your body remains behind. Revenants, however, have not died but have gone into the Mists as living beings, taking their body with them and returning with it. Rytlock didn’t die. He took a portal into the Mists, just as we did several times in GW1 (Underworld, FoW, Realm of Torment) and do regularly in WvW. We are ALL living “revenants” (strict definition) in that we have visited the land of death and returned, but we aren’t “Revenants” (profession name) because we haven’t learned the skills that Rytlock learned.

Yup, that’s what I was going to say.

What if I’m not quite dead yet….and I feel happy?

I think the name “revenant” should be interpreted in a metaphorical sense. They embody long-gone legends and bring them back from the “death”. That doesn’t mean the revenant himself is someone who returns from the death.

“Dead” can mean many more things than the end of a life. For example the phrase “punk is not dead” or “Latin is a dead language”. We’re all smart enough to understand that Latin is a language and languages aren’t living beings, so they can’t technically die, but obviously when we say “Latin is a dead language” we’re talking about the fact that Latin isn’t an actively spoken language anymore.

I think that’s how we should look at the GW2 revanants and their abilities to bring back “dead” legends.

Serophous.9085:

What if I’m not quite dead yet….and I feel happy?

You’ll be stone dead in a moment.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

I think the name “revenant” should be interpretation in a metaphorical sense. They embody long-gone legends and bring them back from the “death”. That doesn’t mean the revenant himself is someone who returns from the death.

Or to sum it up in a single quote, “Heroes get remembered but legends never die.”

As someone famous once said,

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

So when in doubt bring pie.

Plus the definitions of words ’round here are often… irrevenant.

/e flees

BrettM.9062:

I don’t get where anyone would think a revenant must be undead. If you die, your soul goes into the Mists, but your body remains behind. Revenants, however, have not died but have gone into the Mists as living beings, taking their body with them and returning with it. Rytlock didn’t die. He took a portal into the Mists, just as we did several times in GW1 (Underworld, FoW, Realm of Torment) and do regularly in WvW. We are ALL living “revenants” (strict definition) in that we have visited the land of death and returned, but we aren’t “Revenants” (profession name) because we haven’t learned the skills that Rytlock learned.

Agreed. Revenants aren’t undead. Just because one common use of the word is for a returned dead person doesn’t mean that’s ANet’s use of it. Saying you don’t want to play the profession because the title makes you think it’s something else is like saying you wouldn’t play an Engineer because you don’t want to work on the Enterprise’s warp engines, how dare they introduce that to Tyria?

revenant
[ ?rev??näN, -n?nt ]
NOUN
a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead. Source the Oxford Dictionary.

The origin of the word is Latin oddly enough ..

It was by Rytlock coveting the stolen human sword Sohothin that he chose to jump to his death into the mists. He wears a Ritualist wrap over his soulless eyes.

It wouldn’t surpise me if the Engineer class would figure out space travel in a year or two ..not out of need but of nessesity, I mean with all the undead running about killing things.

Just like how fat handed claw tip fingered Charr miraculously developed the technology of moving wing flight.

Orpheal.8263:

The whole thing around the Revenenant remembers me basically being inspired/stolen from the Anime Fate Stay Night/ Fate Zero, where summoned manifestations of legendary heroes battle against each other.

As mentioned, FSN certainly isn’t the first to come up with the idea and has been used in many areas of media. Other examples of it being used could be Kamen Rider Decade, who uses the powers of previous Kamen Riders or even Ryuko Orsono from the 2000 run of Teen Titans whose weapons were imbued with the spirits of his ancestry and would guide him. Hell, you could even argue Korra/Aang from Avatar or even Samuel Vimes from Discworld, as well. There are many instances of it.

jia li ng.8415:

revenant
[ ?rev??näN, -n?nt ]
NOUN
a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead. Source the Oxford Dictionary.

Note how the “especially supposedly from the dead” is part of the definition. The definition is not “a person who has returned from the dead”; it is that a person has returned from an absence, SUPPOSEDLY after being dead. On top of referring to someone coming back after being gone a long time, the word is used in reference to something or someone that is reborn, physically or spiritually. It’s also used to refer to certain types of zombies.

And the word comes from the French word revenir, which means “coming back”.

I dont understand the point of this thread.

You simply assume some garbage on your own and then whine about it?

The revenant is NOT a kittening undead. Just someone who was absent for quite a while, busy in the mists.

ANet isn’t that great about naming things (GW2 ranger doesn’t necessarily “range;” GW2 mesmer has only the name in common with GW1 mesmer). So it shouldn’t surprise us when the name for the new class gives people one impression (undead, death knight, etc), but is based on a relatively obscure (but accurate) definition of that word.

In the end, who cares what the class is called? Even the lore will be immaterial if it’s a fun and balanced class to play (and play alongside or against). If it’s tedious or ineffective, no one will give a skritt about the name or the in-game background.

Characters return from being dead in GW2 all of the time without being undead.

+1 if the title brought you here… “I’m not dead yet!!”

What does it mean to be undead, anyway? Suppose you have a pet rock. It’s not alive. It’s not dead. Is it then, undead? All those free-range rocks out there, wild or tame or feral — are they undead? Are we in the midst of a geologically-paced zombie apocalypse? Why isn’t there a movie?

Tachenon.5270:

What does it mean to be undead, anyway? Suppose you have a pet rock. It’s not alive. It’s not dead. Is it then, undead? All those free-range rocks out there, wild or tame or feral — are they undead? Are we in the midst of a geologically-paced zombie apocalypse? Why isn’t there a movie?

I think my pet rock is dead. I turn it over on its back and it just lies there.

I wonder, if I throw it and the dog brings It back to me, is it then a Revenant rock?

A revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. The word “revenant” is derived from the Latin word, reveniens, “returning” related to French verb “revenir”, meaning “to come back”.

I suppose if you have a Ghost pet rock that your pet Fido keeps retrieving you could call it a Revenant Rock …

“I’m feeling better, I think I’ll go for a walk” ..

Being encouraged to play a recently deceased character who may not have been quite dead yet just makes me happy I won’t have to smell their rotting corpse as I craft items in the Mystic Forge ..

If I wait until it’s a misty morning and I throw my pet rock into the mists and my dog brings it back to me, It will definitely be a Revenant rock then as it fills all the requirements.

I tried it and my dog came back wearing a blindfold. Why is that?

That’s one of my favorite songs!

Main Entry: revenant
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: ghost
Synonyms: apparition, phantom, specter, spirit

Everything I have been able to find pertaining to the meaning and history of the term Revenant leaves me with only one conclusion .. Rytlock died .. and now he’s back with Ritualistic power to summon spirit Legends from the past.

Just saying we will see just how much splash the developers can add to hide the fact it’s the Ritualist warmed over, inspite of the fact you get wear heavy armor and have medium health and spell cast Legends (spirits) ..

One thing I thought was most probably the coolest thing I saw in the brief Rytlock cinematic was his ability to be a Warrior/Assassin using skillsets found/used on Caithe ..

If they (the Developers) were ever actually listening to their followers .. Bringing dual professions would have been a better solution to success than by introducing an undead, which seems rather unoriginal after reading everyone’s input.

Okay, for the last time: Developers, including ArenaNet, use their own definitions for words often. Revenants are not undead. Going into the mists does not necessarily means you died. There is no evidence that Rytlock ever died.

Well, whether the developers (ArenaNet) chose to define a word however they wish I understand that we are stuck with the outcome, they could have called it a Channeler, oh ..but that would be to obvious that it was a modified Ritualist .. and Revenant just sounds so much more awesome inspite of the “true” meaning of the word ..much more cool than calling them Spiritmaster or whatever …

and whether Rytlock died or not is something to consider for another thread .. if following all other available mythos on the subject to arrive in the “Mysts” in corporeal form would be sudden death ..and then through some divine intervention the subject in question is granted a stay and shown the way home .. nevertheless, you arrive and die, and get revived then told to leave immediately ..

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Mists

sPvP is in the mists. WvW is in the mists. FotM are in the mists (obviously by their name). By your logic, everyone is undead.

“The Mists resonate from the worlds around them, forming bits of their own reality – islands of existence that reflect the histories of their worlds”. However, the true nature of the Mists is that as a player character you can only channel into a very small controlled portion of the Mists as a construct. Given this logic everyone who enters a Pvp, WvW, or FotM is not in reality in the Mists but a construct simulating an ethereal plane .. we can travel there through portals that give us a partial glimpse into only a small portion of a history or past reality while not actually the Mists for want of a better term ..
You could call PvP and WvW the “PK” arenas, and since quite a number of players apparently like this form of play why not call it what it is .. my contention is that this created construct is not the Mist in proper .. more like a Holodeck on the Starship Enterprise than the depths of the Mists …

Read it fully. The mists are more than just the afterlife. The mists do not obey the laws of time. You physically enter the mists. You are trying to apply other definitions to it, which will not help your understanding of it at all.

jia li ng.8415:

Oh yeah, That’s right, Gandolf must have become a benevolent (ha) Revenant too

*Gandalf

where the heck is this revenant = undead bs coming from? i dont think its true at all.

the way they have worded it i am not even convinced they are summoning the dead

The very carefully worded release of the Revenant information is to disguise the fact that you will be playing a warmed over Ritualist masked in the heavy armor of a Guardian, with health stats of a Thief, casting spells like a Necromancer, and with a whole new set of glamors and wonderous joy-joys .. and if you care to do any research on the subject matter Revenants are Undead according to any lore you wish to study albeit the Norse call it Draugr translated “again walker” .. it is the same.

As to what they will be casting, their attunements allow for only two legends to be enabled so you have to “chose wisely” .. the Legends summoned will behave as a spectral power on your behalf until they get bored with helping you (or your attunement times out) then you’ll on your own for however long it takes you to charge up your attunement again two or three minutes maybe ..

honestly revenant is not an undead class. it’s a class that channels the echoes of legends and takes on their persona. necromancer is more of an undead class than revenant due to their access to lich form.

This is not World of Warcraft. and no, despite what old world legends say the actual game information does not state it is an undead class. does everyone consider Rytlock to be undead? no, he’s just been traveling the mists and came back with the ability to call upon it. (he’s far too stubborn to let any horror the mists create kill him that easy. )

Let’s see is Rytlock an undead ..

We should restate what we know .. Hmm, did Rytlock use Sohothin in a ritual to rid Ascalon of the cursed spirits, I think so .. At least that’s what I saw
Upon driving Sohothin into the ground did the ground open up a portal to the mists, and did the covetous greed of Rytlock make him jump into the mists to get his stolen sword back .. Again that’s what it looked like to me
.. And did the ground close behind Rytlock burying him alive .. Whoa!, it looked like that to me …
So .. Using the lore of what makes a Revenant .. Rytlock fills every niche

Ok then presume he just floated around like we did after the brain tap in the living story part one on the ley line .. maybe he didn’t die .. Just floating around looking for Sohothin .. by every definition living-dead .. A Revenant ..
While he was drifting around he stopped for tea and crumpets and chatted up a couple heroic legendary spirits and they listened to his story and decided to lend him a hand .. He got Sohothin back and returned with all new skill sets including Assassin and Ritualist skills ..

Do you understand how portals work? Going.to.the.mists.does.not.kill.you

Heck, even in the norn personal story you go into the mists.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Into_the_Mists

Once again, the mists are more than just the afterlife. They house many planes of existence, including each realm of the gods, the place where players do sPvP, where WvW takes place, etc.

Yes, I do recall that quest with my Norn fighting the Sons of Svanir with the help of a Shaman who could only keep the portal open a short while … and I do understand how the portals to the mists work and the reality therein …that is not the point .. The point is Revenant by any definition is an undead .. You can chose to say returning from a long absence after being buried alive doesn’t make you nessarily dead or a reanimated corpse if you want .. You can rationalize the meaning and definition of the word to be whatever you wish, it doesn’t change the fact of the true meaning of the word …

I understand it’s easier to borrow code already written and add splash to it and call it something else than it is to do something fresh, new, and unexpectedly creative, just as the idea of flight will be borrowed from Aion making GuildWars2 seem to be an up"dated" experience … Learning the mastery of skills across your entire account instead of each character you have laboring over each task over and over again, will be nice ..

What was new and fresh … Personality Traits, how you, your character could make choices and how the world used to react to those choices … gone

That being said .. The Revenant will be fun to play .. Just as the Ritualist is still very fun to play (especially the Ritualist/Assassin, one of my personal favorites) .. and as other skillsets and weapons will become available to use the learning curve and experimentation for all the classes will be interesting and challenging.

My most favorite movie is “The Crow” with Brandon Lee.. A True Revenant

jia li ng.8415:

You can chose to say returning from a long absence after being buried alive doesn’t make you nessarily dead or a reanimated corpse if you want .. You can rationalize the meaning and definition of the word to be whatever you wish, it doesn’t change the fact of the true meaning of the word …

There is the true meaning of the word, and then there is how the game describes it.

I’d like you to point out specifically where the description of the Guild wars 2 class ‘Revenant’ says that Revenants are members of the living dead.