While the Itzel event change was a lot of fun from a gameplay perspective, I found the story rather disturbing, to the point I actually had to give up part way through because I couldn’t really stomach continuing.
So basically there’s another tribe of Hylek trying to convince the Itzel to change to a new religion. Now maybe there’s some context which would explain why this is apparently causing the Pact to have a royal freak out, but it certainly isn’t being presented in the game. In the game we’re running around launching unprovoked attacks of people merely for talking about the “wrong” religion, culminating in us desecrating a church and assassinating a religious figure in the middle of their worship services like The Pact’s suddenly turned into the Tyrian version of ISIL.
From what I remember Anet saying in their blog post about the Itzel and Nuoch is that the red Hylek that are trying to convert your new froggy friends by forcing it upon them.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hylek-in-the-heart-of-thorns/ In here the describe the red Hylek/Zintl fanactics as “These traditional hylek have come to Maguuma to forcibly convert the Itzel and Nuhoch back to worshipping their sun god, Zintl. Led by charismatic demagogues and mounted* on giant beetles, the Zintl fanatics have begun a brutal campaign of terror and manipulation to force the Itzel and the Nuhoch into recanting their faith in Ameyalli in favor of Zintl.”
From what I remember Anet saying in their blog post about the Itzel and Nuoch is that the red Hylek that are trying to convert your new froggy friends by forcing it upon them.
If the Hylek were using force and we were defending the Itzel, the Pact’s actions would make sense, but all I saw in the game is Hylek TALKING to the Itzel about their sun god.
The Zintl fanatics befriend the Itzel before sending the wyverns on them. They then preach how they will help defend against the wyverns in order to trick the Itzel into converting. I think the wyverns were potentially from the eggs the Zintl give as “offerings”
It’s all said in the event. And all in all, the Zintl are pretty evil about it all.
Okay, this is the sort of context I meant. I was out doing the “defend the hunters” mission when the wyvern attack started, and by the time I got back to the village to fight the fire, it seemed like it was just a random wyvern attack with no indication the Hylek were behind it.
If that’s what the story is supposed to be, the Hylek sermons ought to make it more clear they Hylek are offering a “convert or die” deal so that it’s obvious why you’re trying to stop them even if you weren’t there at the beginning.
Well, the Hylek sermons can’t make it more clear… they’re being sneaky. During the fire you do hear lines like “The eggs, are they hatching?” etc.
But it’s a bit much to ask for an event chain to tell you the beginning of the story no matter when you join.
What does happen is that when you are leading the big guy to get eggs he tells the entire story. He talks about exactly what the Hylek are doing in detail. So if you push through that single phase you get everything explained to you even if you weren’t there right at the start.
That being said, when you go to “defend the hunters” if you follow them from the start you walk past Hylek offering eggs. So you should be able to work it out from there.
To put this chain into perspective:
You start by ridding the village of Mordem, after that you feed them and hunt for food.
-While you are leaving to hunt, the Hylik are handing out eggs to passerby.
After the hunting chain is done, the villige is attacked by wyvern, setting the whole place on fire. You put the fire out.
The Hylik use this as a way to pull the Iztel to the side, and convert them to their sun god and away from the village. You remind them that they have work to do (oversimplified) and they go back to the villiage. The Hylik attack you for preventing their conversions.
Then you attack their meeting with rotten food. And fight those who join the sun god.
After this, the Village’s Lore Keeper, who was at the meeting trying to prevent some of this, explains the story to those who missed the first parts of the chain, while getting eggs to burn the Hylik village with wyverns.
This was as far as I saw the chain go
This was my favorite event chain. There is plenty of evidence from the very beginning of the red hylek being violent to the other hylek races if they don’t get their way. The evidence of this is all over the jungle areas (caledon, brisbane, etc). For me, it fit right in with what we already know about them.
For me, I started the event chain from the beginning and followed it through and it was very clear that this was a forcible, violent conversion. I liked this event series much better than the Pact one on the opposite side of the map. The story was richer, the characters were more interesting. I loved it.
The Lore Keeper has you hide the eggs in the Hylek camp then to give them a taste of their own medicine which they deserve.
To be honest, I saw the Hylek being pretty nasty religious freaks throughout the whole thing. You don’t go into another land and try to convert the natives through force and fear and that is what I heard during their ‘sermon’.
~Tarnished Coast Pride~
Forever known as “that slow guardian who can’t jump worth crap”.
I don’t have any problems with this. Maybe because it’s a video game, in which I’m pretty sure I’ve so far committed several genocides and ethnic cleansings.
please remove everything in every game that anyone could possibly perceive as offending, I am looking forward to all computer games being pong and tetris.
Religion is the cause of this kind of stuff on a regular basis throughout history and recent events. Its realistic portrayal. And i dont think its a topic that should be shied away from.
I think the big hint that the OP missed is that those Hylek were red Hylek. The red Hylek are always the aggressive, territorial, and generally up to no good bunch of that race.
If they were the blue, green, or even the yellow or orange Hylek it might have been a different matter, but the “Red=Dead” methodology definitely applies in these sorts of situations.
I personally don’t see problem that hylek chop chop each other. It is game after all. I didn’t fallow story during beta cause i was more concerned about mechanics in game and environment. Story still needs to be polished, and it is normal that anet doesn’t want that we see complete story continue. Today is impossible to find games, or movies or anime that are not related to RL issues or events etc, so it is absurd to make this subject to talk about that. Though my opinion is that this game needs 16+ not 13+ and little more blood (but that is just my opinion). One of reason to make it 16+ are those religious conflicts some of u are talking above.
Perhaps the religious zealotry of the Zintl missionaries will seem sufficiently despicable and unlikeable in the actual release, with fleshed out content. Maybe then we’ll have no problems slaughtering them.
While the Itzel event change was a lot of fun from a gameplay perspective, I found the story rather disturbing, to the point I actually had to give up part way through because I couldn’t really stomach continuing.
So basically there’s another tribe of Hylek trying to convince the Itzel to change to a new religion. Now maybe there’s some context which would explain why this is apparently causing the Pact to have a royal freak out, but it certainly isn’t being presented in the game. In the game we’re running around launching unprovoked attacks of people merely for talking about the "wrong" religion, culminating in us desecrating a church and assassinating a religious figure in the middle of their worship services like The Pact’s suddenly turned into the Tyrian version of ISIL.
So... what’s up with that?
The more I hear, the less I want to play the new content. We have enough people in game insulting others over religious beliefs...we don’t need more reason for it to happen.
Is this not just like in GW1 with the Shining Blade and the factions, you didn’t know who was acting for the best of the people in that instance either. Each side claimed that role (just like in RL).
They’re not insulting him for his religious beliefs, they’re insulting him because he tried to kill them by giving them almost hatched wyvern eggs, which hatched, and tried to burn down their village, simply so he could try to force them to follow his god. There’s a difference.
I actually stopped playing PvE a long time ago for this very reason. A lot of the story/plot content and activities that they have you doing bother me. They don’t make me feel like a hero. They make me feel like a jerk or the bad guy, or worse sometimes.
Not sure where Anet got their writers but they need new ones.
I remember somebody comparing the human char war to the world wars……people have compared us nice master race Asura to the kittens……Oh God and who can forget the April Fools airplane fiasco…..now this…..Everything ingame has something comparable to the real world!! I think we should just accept these things and focus on enjoying the game!
The horrors we are witnessing in the real world can never be represented by nething ingame…there is no comparison.
This is an Mmorpg, you are obliged to accept the Mmo world as reality and ignore the bad real world
PS: Americans don’t even type ISIL…….. LOL I bet they will tap your phones for this
I actually stopped playing PvE a long time ago for this very reason. A lot of the story/plot content and activities that they have you doing bother me. They don’t make me feel like a hero. They make me feel like a jerk or the bad guy, or worse sometimes.
Not sure where Anet got their writers but they need new ones.
I know what you mean. Why would I want to kill Separatists? They’re fighting the good fight. I want to join them and genocide the filthy charr scum like any reasonable person would.
I’m not getting why this bothers people. Maybe it’s because I live near a reservation and know about how missionaries stomped in and forced the natives to convert using fear and brainwashing – and when that didn’t work, violence was acceptable. Anything to get the ‘heathens’ to serve their god. The zealots are scary and disturbing and they SHOULD be. You don’t force your religion on others to use them for your own gain.
This is also a MMO, if someone isn’t on your side then you have to defeat them in classic game fashion. Again, I know in RL there is no talking to a zealot or a ‘separatist’ to get them all to miraculously see the light and change their ways, gaming takes that to a fight to resolve the conflict. And don’t forget – when you foil their plan to convert itzel by talking to the itzel or throwing rotten food (peaceful/non violent), the zealots are the ones who order an attack to stop you.
~Tarnished Coast Pride~
Forever known as “that slow guardian who can’t jump worth crap”.
While the Itzel event change was a lot of fun from a gameplay perspective, I found the story rather disturbing, to the point I actually had to give up part way through because I couldn’t really stomach continuing.
So basically there’s another tribe of Hylek trying to convince the Itzel to change to a new religion. Now maybe there’s some context which would explain why this is apparently causing the Pact to have a royal freak out, but it certainly isn’t being presented in the game. In the game we’re running around launching unprovoked attacks of people merely for talking about the “wrong” religion, culminating in us desecrating a church and assassinating a religious figure in the middle of their worship services like The Pact’s suddenly turned into the Tyrian version of ISIL.
So… what’s up with that?
Well…most heart quests involving grawl revolve around killing them and desacrating their idols because they worship the wrong religion. Sadly, I don’t think this is a new concept for the game.
From what I remember Anet saying in their blog post about the Itzel and Nuoch is that the red Hylek that are trying to convert your new froggy friends by forcing it upon them.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hylek-in-the-heart-of-thorns/ In here the describe the red Hylek/Zintl fanactics as “These traditional hylek have come to Maguuma to forcibly convert the Itzel and Nuhoch back to worshipping their sun god, Zintl. Led by charismatic demagogues and mounted* on giant beetles, the Zintl fanatics have begun a brutal campaign of terror and manipulation to force the Itzel and the Nuhoch into recanting their faith in Ameyalli in favor of Zintl.”
Yeah. That’s propaganda. It works just like that.
Honestly? I got creeped out too. Not as much as the separatist heart in iron marches, tho.
I should add that I then proceeded to push it away from my mind and remind myself that it’s a just a silly game. You shouldn’t feel attacked by anet writers having the finesse of a bag of rocks.
Separatists, and while at it Bandits are slightly different. while yes, many are just misguided or true freedom fighters, etc, who ideally should be left to go off themselves… large amounts of others are full on making real trouble, and can only be called terrorists, killing women, children of both sides.
If it makes you feel better, humans have a clear afterlife, when they die. you are just killing their body. Their souls go off to the mists to be at peace there. Except in the case of ghosts. which is a bit of a 50/50. some ghosts are troubled, others pretty clearly are cool with being ghosts and tied to Tyria. Those ghost pirates in Sparkfly fen for example love being ghosts.
You don’t kill the Grawl because they worship the wrong religion. As far as I understood it you destroy their totems because having them around riles them up and causes them to act violent. Because they frequently go to war with other tribes over differences in religion because the Grawl are zealous about their own religions. (Often made worse because they worship beings of power and often in the GW universe these are forces of violence. Even the grawl who worship Balthazar, whom they call Badazaar, use his status as war god to form up combative groups that attack anything nearby.)
Perhaps the religious zealotry of the Zintl missionaries will seem sufficiently despicable and unlikeable in the actual release, with fleshed out content. Maybe then we’ll have no problems slaughtering them.
I have no problem slaughtering anything that’s not the particular race of the character I happen to be playing at the moment or any of the other 4 playable races.
Wellll… I guess you shouldn’t try Witcher 3 and see Novigrad if you’re that subtle, then.
For me, pretty cool to hear that Arena Net has finally decided to spice up the story. So far most of it was so incredibly mild and clunky that I was comparing it with Dragon Age.
not in beta, but LOVE that they are broaching more adult/realistic subjects.
hope the devs ignore these overly sensitive/PC players. they will look to be offended by anything………and hate actual art, because actual art makes people uncomfortable.
Chaos Organ (Ele), Pistol Opera (Thief), Modular Man (Eng)
MARA (EU) Gunnar’s Hold
Zintl isn’t the ‘wrong’ religion. All of the hylek in vanilla, including all the allied hylek are Zintl worshippers. We also aren’t attacking them unprovoked. These extremists are using terror tactics and threats to try and force the jungle hylek into joining them.
A malevolent dragon mind-controls a huge number of people, turning them against their own friends and causing a slaughter and ultimately devastation to an entire fleet. This is one recent example of terrible events in a world that is no stranger to deceit, death, and tragedy.
That being the case I find your concern, about an isolated tribe reacting with hostility to a preaching outsider, to be a bit out of whack. Or perhaps just a tad over-sensitive to the subject.
Even if the Itzel weren’t justified in their action, I not only find it to be an acceptable inclusion, but an outright good addition to the game. It is, after all, a story. Nothing wrong with portraying evil or negative events. It’s part of a good narrative.
Given the likelihood of hostile behavior being exhibited by isolated tribes towards outsiders, particularly if they are preaching about and trying to convert the tribe to a different way of life, I think it would fit well in that context.
Its a game. Real life ethics and morals do not apply here.
Of course they do. Like in every other fictional work. Otherweise we would not be able to “connect” to a story. And how we perceive a story is based on our own morals and ethics.
While the Itzel event change was a lot of fun from a gameplay perspective, I found the story rather disturbing, to the point I actually had to give up part way through because I couldn’t really stomach continuing.
So basically there’s another tribe of Hylek trying to convince the Itzel to change to a new religion. Now maybe there’s some context which would explain why this is apparently causing the Pact to have a royal freak out, but it certainly isn’t being presented in the game. In the game we’re running around launching unprovoked attacks of people merely for talking about the “wrong” religion, culminating in us desecrating a church and assassinating a religious figure in the middle of their worship services like The Pact’s suddenly turned into the Tyrian version of ISIL.
From what I remember Anet saying in their blog post about the Itzel and Nuoch is that the red Hylek that are trying to convert your new froggy friends by forcing it upon them.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hylek-in-the-heart-of-thorns/ In here the describe the red Hylek/Zintl fanactics as “These traditional hylek have come to Maguuma to forcibly convert the Itzel and Nuhoch back to worshipping their sun god, Zintl. Led by charismatic demagogues and mounted* on giant beetles, the Zintl fanatics have begun a brutal campaign of terror and manipulation to force the Itzel and the Nuhoch into recanting their faith in Ameyalli in favor of Zintl.”
From what I remember Anet saying in their blog post about the Itzel and Nuoch is that the red Hylek that are trying to convert your new froggy friends by forcing it upon them.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hylek-in-the-heart-of-thorns/ In here the describe the red Hylek/Zintl fanactics as “These traditional hylek have come to Maguuma to forcibly convert the Itzel and Nuhoch back to worshipping their sun god, Zintl. Led by charismatic demagogues and mounted* on giant beetles, the Zintl fanatics have begun a brutal campaign of terror and manipulation to force the Itzel and the Nuhoch into recanting their faith in Ameyalli in favor of Zintl.”
MOUNTS?!
DID SOMEBODY SAY “MOUNTS”?!
YES MOUNTS
MOUNTS MOUNTS MOUNTS
This last beta had dinosaur mounts also. Just saying. ^^
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
In a game where you’ve killed 10,000’s if not 100,000 sentient beings/animals I find your false sense of offendidness a little hard to believe… Your character is literally the biggest mass murderer in all of history, killing a few frogs is the least of your worries.
Heck if you’ve completed the ambient killer achievement you’ve killed enough bunnies to have been committed in real life.
OP, if this really really does bother you, you are probably overly touchy person. It is nothing wrong about it. It is how society works, it happens in reality, it happens in books, movies, and yes, in games too. It does not mean it is right, but people should be aware of it. If you want to close out before it, please do, but don’t try to remove this storyline from other players. I personally am not offended by religious remarks at all.
The Itzel were just minding their business when these other Zintl fanatics showed up and started attempting to convert the Itzel. In doing so, they want to erase the Itzel’s own faith and replace it with their own, forcibly. If this doesn’t sound familiar I recommend you take a look at the countless Christian missionaries entering “savage” peoples’ land, often with military forces to back them up. (but not always. then again, we have had forced religious conversion for native american tribes and the associated genocide.) That’s the closest real-world analogy.
The Guild Wars games have used false religion or forced religion as a theme fairly often. The White Mantle worshiped the mursaat and forced any following of the Five Gods away from the mainstream. The Flame Legion used various false gods from the Titans to the destroyers to attempt to keep the other legions in line and to show their own power.
So what I see in this event chain in that context is just a continuance of Anet portraying a group of people who use their religion in a predatory, invasive, and aggressive manner in an attempt to snuff the life out of the religion and culture of another group of people.
