Guild Wars 2

Way to tease us to do the story. Who is bringing the popcorn?

I agree with you Op.

I’unno, I kinda figured they would go, with all that’s been buzzing about them since they were introduced.

But at least, they went on their own terms, with their own words and of their own choice while simultaneously giving a final flick of the finger to Mordremoth. If you ask me, it was a pretty good way to go, all things considered.

IMO it was pretty clearly caving to the voice that doesn’t like Trahearne for no reason. Scarlet was one thing, Trahearne dislike is a completely different issue.

Trahearne got even more than he deserved.

I’m glad he’s dead. Now I can hunt the other dragons with a team, not with a Gary Stu.

The only thing I don’t get now, is what happens to the pact? are they just done? What of glints egg and destiny’s edge? all of these were things that should have been touched on at least a little bit before ending the story, to offer some kind of hope for the future. Instead we were left in disarray and nothing seems to have changed at all

i didnt like him, maybe now the pact can break up and the orders can become unique again. while the pact exists it doesnt feel any special that im in the order of whispers, id like to get that feeling back

inquitision.1693:

Major spoilers for the story of Heart of Thorns. Tread carefully!

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Trahearne isn’t popular, I know, but I’m curious as to whether anyone else thinks he deserved a better end than the one he got.

I like him, so I’m definitely biased. But even if the writers did plan to kill him off, I feel like it would have been a more meaningful death if they’d waited.

In the Personal Story, it seemed like they were building him up to be the commander’s partner, rather than mentor or superior. Surviving Claw Island, forming the Pact, cleansing Orr: they did that together. And it was implied at the end of the Personal Story that they’d hunt down the rest of the dragons together, too. Did that come across perfectly? Maybe not. But if they had taken more time to develop and grow his character, his death would have had more weight to it.

(I mean, I’d rather he didn’t have to die at all. But like I said: I’m biased. XD)

As it is now, it’s kind of a “oh, that guy we haven’t really seen for two seasons/three years is dead. Dang.” And that sucks, because I feel like he had the potential to become much more interesting, and all that potential is wasted now.

I don’t know. Does anyone else feel like this?

It’s okay for a story to be done.

Not everything and every one has to go on forever just for the sake of avoiding the alternative.

Sometimes something’s just done, and that’s okay. (Unless it isn’t yet DUN DUN DUNNNNN~)

I thnk he was build up enough. I reacted to it nicely and was suprised as hell. I figured, kitten . Happy ending, saving all of them… But no, we had to kill him. Supriseeee! I loved it as I did not see it coming.

Siphaed.9235:

inquitision.1693:

Major spoilers for the story of Heart of Thorns. Tread carefully!

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Trahearne isn’t popular, I know, but I’m curious as to whether anyone else thinks he deserved a better end than the one he got.

I like him, so I’m definitely biased. But even if the writers did plan to kill him off, I feel like it would have been a more meaningful death if they’d waited.

In the Personal Story, it seemed like they were building him up to be the commander’s partner, rather than mentor or superior. Surviving Claw Island, forming the Pact, cleansing Orr: they did that together. And it was implied at the end of the Personal Story that they’d hunt down the rest of the dragons together, too. Did that come across perfectly? Maybe not. But if they had taken more time to develop and grow his character, his death would have had more weight to it.

(I mean, I’d rather he didn’t have to die at all. But like I said: I’m biased. XD)

As it is now, it’s kind of a “oh, that guy we haven’t really seen for two seasons/three years is dead. Dang.” And that sucks, because I feel like he had the potential to become much more interesting, and all that potential is wasted now.

I don’t know. Does anyone else feel like this?

Major REPLY to spoilers for the story of Heart of Thorns. Tread carefully!

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Of course he deserved to die exactly the way he did. In fact, maybe less ‘sacrificial lamb’ as he went. I’m sick of him being a spotlight stealing glory hog who took credit for Zhaitan, took credit for the Pact grouping, and even too credit for setting up everything in SW after the whole DryTop affair. Heck, I’m sure somewhere down the line he probably tried taking credit for killing Scarlett and saving Lion’s Arch.

If anyone deserved a better death and more honorable ending, it would have ben Eir. She did not deserve to die just scrounging an escape from a prison that she was only in because the Sylvari betrayed everyone in the airship raid. Weakened and caged with the criminal Foulin before a miserable death. Just wrong.

He will come back…
Remember the final cutscene where the leyline lightning strikes the egg & it starts to blink between golden & violet light?

Yes, mordremoth is trying to corrupt it, in order to get a new body, but the last thing trehearne told us is that mordremoth planted the seed of his spirit in trehearnes mind, right after trehearne “corrupted” mordremoths mind to allow us access.
I think trehearne & mordremoth are melted together as 2 souls in one terrible existence, and even tho Mord now tries to corrupt glints egg & is currently the dominant part, it’s not unlikely that we won’t defeat him physically(again), but cleanse his presence from glints egg, and preserve trehearnes existence, which then melts with glints spirit & hatches as a new, unified being.

That would also fulfill the prophecy of the pale tree, since then we’d still take on other dragons side by side. This time trehearne just will be a dragon (or part of a dragon) instead of a tree…
Also, since dragons have no use for swords, it also would make sense to make us into the bearer of caladbolg then (which we’ve technically become already).
Welp, at least that’s how I think the story will continue…

I also never understood all the hate Trahearne gets. I got into his part of the personal story expecting to loathe him after I’d seen all the complaints, but the entire time with him guy not only never tries to be steal the spotlight but was really humble and continuously praises you as the one that gets kitten done.

At the very least I feel his death was well done. Tragic, but he went down on his own terms and making the ultimate sacrifice for the world

Trahearne did a much better job at being Pact leader than us anyway, our character just can’t seem to keep people from dying all over

I’m assuming the thread itself implies spoilers discussed so I won’t do spoiler buttons.

I was a bit surprised they’d just kill him off, but meh. I would’ve been pleased if Logan died… I made all the right storyline choices to set him up for death… but he didn’t die, so alas….

It’s pretty bad though thinking about the replies above that point out that it may be all Trahearne’s fault that everyone crashed to their deaths in the jungle… >.<

I think they killed him off because he was an odd choice for a leader to begin with. He even had dialogue multiple times in the personal story about how he didn’t feel up to the task and didn’t think it was his place. But the story team made him leader anyway for some reason…

PLOT TWIST? Given what I just said, is the real story that the Pale Tree set the Pact and Trahearne up for death by giving Trahearne and our character a vision of him leading the Pact. Ya’ll remember that right? Trahearne saw himself commanding in the Pale Tree’s vision and was like, this doesn’t seem like something I am capable of but I guess it’s what I’m meant to do….

Pale Tree’s dark secrets….

I feel sad about Faolain more than Trahearne.

The moment when Faolain talked about Nightmare Court wanting freedom, I wanted her to be an ally so we can learn more about the Nightmare Court.

Yeah, I was also bummed by Faolain, that was a huge missed opportunity. I wanted the Nightmare Court to become a 5th column in the Mordrem, like the French Resistance.

Ah true, for a split second Faolain had some character depth, then the next she was reduced to a mindless trope-ridden servant of Mordremoth.

Mo Mo.1947:

Ah true, for a split second Faolain had some character depth, then the next she was reduced to a mindless trope-ridden servant of Mordremoth.

I’ve not gotten to the end of the story yet, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone talking about her (new form) death.

If she’s still around, I’d expect her story to continue on in the raids.

After I had beaten Mordremoth, and Trehearne started talking, I was like “owh, he doesn’t die. What a shame.”

Then Mordremoth possesses Trehearne, and the player character shivs him with Caladbolg in the space of what felt like a millisecond. I didn’t really process what happened until Trehearne’s head literally exploded in the cutscene, by which point I was laughing like a maniac at my computer desk.

He didn’t deserve anything better. I stab him in the side with a sword, and his head of all things explodes? What a way to go.

Are you kidding ? I broke open a box of fun and turned him into as salad . What kittened me off was when Eir died. She deserved better and her death was anticlimactic .

It was worth the 50 dollars just to do what I’ve wanted to do ever since claw island. Totally worth it.

To be honest as far as story goes almost nothing in HoT made sense to me. The first sign that something was about to go the wrong way was..

In any case I essentially can’t forgive the writers for leaving such bitter taste after completing HoT. It started off nicely, went over some pretty questionable decisions and ended abruptly when it just started to feel as if the story started to develop.

runeblade.7514:

I feel sad about Faolain more than Trahearne.

The moment when Faolain talked about Nightmare Court wanting freedom, I wanted her to be an ally so we can learn more about the Nightmare Court.

I agree. I think tying the NC into the storyline more (in an uneasy alliance of some sort) would have been pretty interesting.

Plus, Faolain attacking Eir seemed really out of character for her. It was just so colossally stupid. Eir was no threat to her and the immediate danger (the huge kitten vinetooth) was still chasing after both of them…why the heck would she pick a fight with the much larger norn woman who has eight of her friends nearby? That’s just suicide. Faolain’s cunning and manipulative but not stupid evil. She’s the one we see who often hides behind her NC cronies and illusions instead of ever putting her own neck on the line.

They both deserved better. Eir is a fricken Norn, she dragged a massive wurm from who knows where up into that pit above the moot. Even as beat up as she was I have no doubt she could have stopped the tail from piercing her.

Of course she had to die in order for Braham to become a Dragonhunter. He’s a guardian and now he’s helped to kill a dragon, is planning to hunt down the rest of the dragons and he has Eir’s bow.

Trehearne, though, that was 100% to give the complainers everything they thought he took from them. With him gone, we can take over the Pact since we’re second in command, we get all the credit, and no one has to listen to him again. It’s lame.

Kal Spiro.9745:

With him gone, we can take over the Pact since we’re second in command, we get all the credit, and no one has to listen to him again. It’s lame.

That’s what you think. They’re going to need a Marshal in the background, not on the battlefield to deal with the various commanding from afar should things go wrong. A possible person for this job could be Laranthir himself, unless Glint’s child takes the role.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kal Spiro.9745:

With him gone, we can take over the Pact since we’re second in command, we get all the credit, and no one has to listen to him again. It’s lame.

That’s what you think. They’re going to need a Marshal in the background, not on the battlefield to deal with the various commanding from afar should things go wrong. A possible person for this job could be Laranthir himself, unless Glint’s child takes the role.

And enrage the community more than Trehearne already has? Yes, that’s a wonderful idea. Lets remove the leader of the Pact and then randomly appoint some new person to be our new boss. Hell, they even made us the leader of DE 2.0 despite the fact that it was Marjory that brought everyone together, it was Marjory who already had the investigation company, and it was Marjory who had all the detective skills that were needed at the time. Marjory should be the leader, not us, but because the community can’t seem to handle anyone but them being the most important person in the room she suddenly defers to us at the beginning of LS2 as if that had always been the case.

No, we have absolutely zero business being the leader of the Pact, but based on how chain of command works we ARE the leader of the Pact now.

Stabbing Trahearne was the best part of the story and something I’ve dreamt about ever since I’ve met that guy. What a better way for him to die than letting all the players who hated him for years to do it?

stuffystuffs.8360:

runeblade.7514:

I feel sad about Faolain more than Trahearne.

The moment when Faolain talked about Nightmare Court wanting freedom, I wanted her to be an ally so we can learn more about the Nightmare Court.

I agree. I think tying the NC into the storyline more (in an uneasy alliance of some sort) would have been pretty interesting.

Plus, Faolain attacking Eir seemed really out of character for her. It was just so colossally stupid. Eir was no threat to her and the immediate danger (the huge kitten vinetooth) was still chasing after both of them…why the heck would she pick a fight with the much larger norn woman who has eight of her friends nearby? That’s just suicide. Faolain’s cunning and manipulative but not stupid evil. She’s the one we see who often hides behind her NC cronies and illusions instead of ever putting her own neck on the line.

I can see why Faolain did that and it had some logic to it – they were being chased by a giant mordrem and the best way to avoid being eaten was to wound someone and leave them behind for it to snack on. Unfortunately, she miscalculated where it was.

I find it a good bit of writing, actually. For those of us who did like him (or didn’t hate him, at any rate), it’s a fairly hard hitting moment as far as Guild Wars 2 stories go. Maybe he deserved better, maybe he didn’t, but either way the scene had a bit of emotional impact (and that is, after all, what a story should be for).

On the other hand, for those who’ve been complaining about him from the start, they get the satisfaction of making the killing blow themselves. Everybody wins! I do find it funny that in an expansion rife with failure to compromise and please multiple groups (the hardcore vs casual arguments you’ve all no doubt seen swarming the forums, all the people calling for pvp rebalancing, etc.) the story managed to find a way.

Kal Spiro.9745:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kal Spiro.9745:

With him gone, we can take over the Pact since we’re second in command, we get all the credit, and no one has to listen to him again. It’s lame.

That’s what you think. They’re going to need a Marshal in the background, not on the battlefield to deal with the various commanding from afar should things go wrong. A possible person for this job could be Laranthir himself, unless Glint’s child takes the role.

And enrage the community more than Trehearne already has? Yes, that’s a wonderful idea. Lets remove the leader of the Pact and then randomly appoint some new person to be our new boss. Hell, they even made us the leader of DE 2.0 despite the fact that it was Marjory that brought everyone together, it was Marjory who already had the investigation company, and it was Marjory who had all the detective skills that were needed at the time. Marjory should be the leader, not us, but because the community can’t seem to handle anyone but them being the most important person in the room she suddenly defers to us at the beginning of LS2 as if that had always been the case.

No, we have absolutely zero business being the leader of the Pact, but based on how chain of command works we ARE the leader of the Pact now.

This guy gets it.

ArenaNet, please tell the story you want to tell, not what the community wants it to be.

Copestetic.5174:

Kal Spiro.9745:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kal Spiro.9745:

With him gone, we can take over the Pact since we’re second in command, we get all the credit, and no one has to listen to him again. It’s lame.

That’s what you think. They’re going to need a Marshal in the background, not on the battlefield to deal with the various commanding from afar should things go wrong. A possible person for this job could be Laranthir himself, unless Glint’s child takes the role.

And enrage the community more than Trehearne already has? Yes, that’s a wonderful idea. Lets remove the leader of the Pact and then randomly appoint some new person to be our new boss. Hell, they even made us the leader of DE 2.0 despite the fact that it was Marjory that brought everyone together, it was Marjory who already had the investigation company, and it was Marjory who had all the detective skills that were needed at the time. Marjory should be the leader, not us, but because the community can’t seem to handle anyone but them being the most important person in the room she suddenly defers to us at the beginning of LS2 as if that had always been the case.

No, we have absolutely zero business being the leader of the Pact, but based on how chain of command works we ARE the leader of the Pact now.

This guy gets it.

ArenaNet, please tell the story you want to tell, not what the community wants it to be.

This right here.

One character makes a brief, minor appearance since who knows how long, and abruptly dies.

Other character on the other hand, died better than Belinda Delaqua.

I thought the cinematic had great facial expressions.

Not really sure why you guys don’t like Trahearne. I felt like he was a good character.

I think Trahearne’s end was pretty cool and thematic. Eir just bit the dust without any buildup. I think she deserved better.

I’m really glad people are talking about this.

My tl;dr answer is that all of the deaths in this story seemed a bit… off? Even Mordremoth’s.

Also feel free to just ignore me completely here because I just have needed to rant a little about this since I played it but none of my guildies are as unhealthily invested in plot as me. Putting it all under a spoiler because I accidentally wrote a lot. oops.

I feel for Anet because it’s pretty much impossible to make everyone happy. Hopefully this all just leads to better storytelling in the future.

Also salt was rubbed into the wound when I was ported back to Dragon’s Stand and found my unfinished Personal Story pop back up and guess who it was asking me to go and meet…

. . . yeah I called this jokingly to a couple friends.

And it doesn’t make me happy that people think he’s a glory hound when he’s not, and specifically dissembles to allow you spotlight. Not to mention the Pact soldiers respect him but will trust the Commander and follow them to the end of the road (at least as far as Silverwastes), repeatedly offering praise and support.

It’s worse than what happened with Kormir, who had a plot arc easily understood and necessarily set up for similar reasons. And is still hated for it, while Rurik who was doing the actual spotlight stealing for a long time is more fondly regarded.

Yeah, he absolutely deserved better. I enjoyed his partnership in the Zhaitan story and I was looking forward to doing more with him. But nah, let’s take Tyria’s poster child for depression and torture him to the point that he needs to be mercy killed. It was legitimately nauseating and ruined my interest in the story. I’d really like to know why the writers felt he needed to be killed off, because it honestly just seems like pandering to the people who complain about him stealing their glory while ignoring the tons of praise NPCs (including Trahearne) heap on their character.

The problem is that from my observations, Trahearne haters have no idea what they’re talking about. They call him a Mary Sue and a Glory Hog. When he never ever took credit for anything (he was the granter of credit, not taker of it). He is also lacking any of the usual Mary Sue traits.

I mean, sure, I’ll acknowledge that he’s not Forgal, but please, the guy never actually did anything wrong and the haters are just enticing eachother to keep hating without looking at the facts.

Dengar.1785:

I mean, sure, I’ll acknowledge that he’s not Forgal, but please, the guy never actually did anything wrong and the haters are just enticing eachother to keep hating without looking at the facts.

I’ve analyzed this many many times out loud so this is a lot of repeating myself but here goes – It’s not what Trahearne did, or does, or said that has people annoyed. It’s how the story for the Personal Story was handled. For players who did not start as a Sylvari, he comes out of nowhere and is suddenly a major key character on par with Destiny’s Edge and apparently your mentor knows who he is . . . but for such a figure, there’s no open knowledge about him. (Necessarily, if he spent all his time hanging around Orr and studying that place.)

The Personal Story has a ton of instances where characters who are apparently important show up, and then filter out as the Player Character continues – Trahearne on the surface appeared to be that sort of character but then the story threw the curve of not getting rid of him immediately. (Even the racial mentors from Destiny’s Edge filtered away faster than Trahearne did . . .)

So what we have here is a character which, for most people, came out of nowhere and got more exposure than Destiny’s Edge – who were built up to be the biggest badkitties out there as far as adventurers go. It rubbed people the wrong way, and they had to explain why . . . so they seized on the only thing which was apparent: Trahearne was present more than other NPCs. For a lot of old GW1 players, that was Kormir all over again . . . and she was reviled for “stealing” a godhead.

No small surprise everyone decided Trahearne was going to do that, despite it being left obvious that wasn’t going to be his arc. And the saner minds knew once Orr was over, Trahearne was going to have to filter out of the story somehow so the focus could pass off a Sylvari who had completed their Wyld Hunt.

Therefore it was obvious he wasn’t going to be around much longer, so it was a matter of wagering “how does he go, quietly or with a bang?” And he went with a whimper.

Wow, this got more reaction than I thought it would! I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking about this after finishing the story.

A lot of my problems with the HoT story in general stem from the fact that… it came too soon? I don’t know, I feel like we should have tried to tackle Jormag or Kralk before we even knew Mordremoth was a thing.

The discovery that there’s another dragon that basically no one knew about is a huge bomb to drop, especially with Mordremoth’s connection to the Sylvari. I feel like it would have worked better as a later expansion, you know? I’m not sure how they can top “one of the races you’ve been playing was created to be dragon minions” drama-wise. Except for maybe “this NPC who helped you was working for the dragons ALL ALONG,” or something. (Note to Anet: pls don’t do that. XD)

That would solve my issues with how they handled Trahearne, too: he could still die like a hero -or just get stabbed, if you prefer XD- at the end of HoT, but the writers would have had a whole other game’s worth of time to build him into the character they wanted him to be.

Also: unless she comes back as some kind of spirit-Druid (which I would be 100% there for, btw) this means Eir is going to miss out on taking down Jormag/Kralk. If she was going to die anyway, why not die trying to help her people or avenge Snaff? Uggggh I hate character death for shock value.

Anyway. On a different note: Faolain. Don’t even get me started on what happened to Faolain. Someone on the writing team really hates redemption, huh? I was really looking forward to working with her and the Nightmare Court. Like a “you’re pretty awful, but Mordremoth is worse, so let’s team up this one time” type of situation. But nope! Now she’s a spider lady because stabbing is fun!

I hope Living Story 3 takes much more time exploring the fallout of what happened in the jungle, regardless of whether or not Mordremoth is actually dead. The HoT story was basically isolated to whoever was in the Maguuma at the time, and I’m much more interested in seeing how the rest of Tyria responds.

He was mainly disliked by people who try to play MMO’s as a single player RPG.

“Because I deserve the glory.”

Farzo.8410:

He was mainly disliked by people who try to play MMO’s as a single player RPG.

“Because I deserve the glory.”

But… You DID get the glory. Where does this fairy tale come from that Trahearne gets the glory?

kalzana.3192:

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Unashamedly a fangirl rather than a hater. As a Sylvari main, never really understood people’s hatred, and always felt the story a partnership of 2 Wyld Hunts (or 3 with Caithe’s).

I think the worst thing for me wasn’t that he sacrificed himself to kill Mordy, but that you had to do it. That part was what I felt was pandering too much to the hate club.

I know that feel. If it helps, some of us who did it had music playing in our heads. This is what I had playing in mine during the moment.

kikipakiki.9382:

I always liked him and the partnership that was built between him and the player character. Also I’m a sylvari player so he’s my brother from… uh, the same mother. I digress.

Yes, yes, yes. This right here. Everything in both the core personal story and HoT story makes way more sense if the player rolled sylvari. I’m so glad I chose sylvari for my first toon. HoT’s story ended up feeling personal as a result.

Killing him felt so good, I was really glad to get rid of him. Now we just need Logan and Rytolock gone! 1 down 2 to go.

I was one of the Trahearne haters at first. I hated the way it felt like we were pushed aside, and it was Trahearne’s story now instead of ours.

Since then, I’ve played a sylvari, so I got to meet him earlier in the story, and find out a bit more about the sword as well. I’ve played LS Seasons 1 and 2, picking up lore as I can. And I’ve realized something…. I don’t hate Trahearne any more.

I hate the Pale Tree.

The Pale Tree is the one that pushed us aside and forced Trahearne into the lead. When he objects, she basically tells him that if he doesn’t do it, nobody can and everyone will die. She then takes the sword, this artifact level weapon, and gives it to him. Not to the player, who’s the far more effective combatant and with such a power boost would be able to clear huge swaths of Orr all alone, but to her precious Firstborn Trahearne. His knowledge could make him a powerful adviser, but being stuck with the sword means he has to take to the front lines if it’s going to be used (as it must be, at least for his Hunt).

After Orr, when Scarlet arises, the Pale Tree already knows what she’s been in contact with and where this will all possibly lead. But she keeps that secret hidden away, lest someone think less of her and her children. Even when the Pact, with all the sylvari members, heads off to confront Mordremoth directly, she doesn’t warn anyone. (And yes, despite being injured she knew it would happen. The meeting where she was injured was to gather forces to aid the Pact in the attack.) The price of her keeping that a secret is horrific.

It’s been shown that she strongly favors her Firstborns, and can be dismissive if not downright negligent of the latter-born sylvari. The Firstborn were her special children, and Trahearne is her most special of all. That’s why she pushed us aside and forced him into the leading role. She made him the most powerful man in all of Tyria, even if he didn’t really want to be. In Season 2, she kept secrets that could have saved countless lives, just so he could stay in that position instead of stepping down for a non-sylvari to lead the charge.

No wonder Scarlet hated her.