Guild Wars 2

It’s starting to appear clearer that Arenanet is going to have the Revenant playthrough all personal story and living world story without an explanation on how, lore-wise, that could possibly happen. Because, ya know, video games.

At least that’s the impression I get from watching/reading interviews like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Nd4t6XvT8&t=385 (around 5 minute mark).

I don’t understand how they could miss such an oversight like this. You can’t give the Revenant a rich origin story that takes place years after the content that they’re experiencing. Maybe Jon Peters didn’t explain things right (he isn’t the lore guy) and they actually have a plan for this. Thoughts?

ArenaNet doesn’t care. The personal storyline was a failed experiment, under a model that ArenaNet itself said they will not continue. They are not going to rework the game just to fix the inclusion of the revenants in the storyline. Heh, they are definitely taking their time to fix the storyline itself after breaking the order of the chapters.

If Revenant gets any mention in the expansion, I’m sure it’s mostly going to focus on Rytlock’s return/revival and subsequent transformation into a Revenant, rather than the entire profession’s emergence. The story of Heart of Thorns is focuses around Modremoth, not the Revenant.

Rytlock may be the first Revenant to make a splash in the Living World, but I doubt he grandfathered the entire profession. As they’ve said in what few comments they’ve given, the profession may be “new” gameplay wise but there are instances of spirit communes all throughout Tyria’s history. They didn’t need to explicitly explain the emergence of the Guardian or Engineer professions (the two “new” professions at initial release), just slight nods to them through in-game quotes such as saying the Engineer derives from Charr and Asuran tactics or that the Guardian is a concoction of Elonian protection magics, a dash of monk, and an extra helping of heavy armor. We never had a story segment devoted to explaining either class so I don’t see why any segment would be pure focuses on explaining Revenant’s origin (minus Rytlock’s own return).

I serious doubt the Revenant profession as a whole will have a large impact on the Heart of Thorns storyline. We may see a few important faces that just so happen to be Revenants, but it’s more about their character than the Revenant-Wrapper they find themselves in.

If I’m wrong… well, that’ll be disappointing.

As said by Jon Peters in the video you linked (even if he isn’t the lore guy), the Personal Story is very race-based and they’ll probably continue that way. This is true of the original Personal Story the game started with, never once was my Profession brought up in a cutscene or part of an important plot point. Mostly it was my race and those of other races (this is really shown in how the races come together during the Pact arc).

If they had included your profession to be meaningful from the get-go then you’d have a precedent to work off from. It hardly looks like an oversight at all and mostly like a design choice.

EDIT: Races are also shown to be a forefront topic during the Orders arc and when you help out one of the “fledgling” races.

good god, people are still going on about it? the ridiculous part is expecting a profession to dictate your personal story, which would be a first in the franchise. (inb4 people that don’t really understand how GW1 campaigns worked).

Test.8734:

ArenaNet doesn’t care. The personal storyline was a failed experiment, under a model that ArenaNet itself said they will not continue.

really? I thought someone from ANet already said that we really want to have a L80 Sylvari ready for HOT, pointing out to some race specific story lines… this means HOT will most likely bring another personal story just as original game (probably with less or no choices as they said it wasn’t worth the effort, because most people pick only one)

IIvIIozzie.9250:

It’s starting to appear clearer that Arenanet is going to have the Revenant playthrough all personal story and living world story without an explanation on how, lore-wise, that could possibly happen. Because, ya know, video games.

At least that’s the impression I get from watching/reading interviews like <a href=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Nd4t6XvT8&t=385”>this one</a>(around 5 minute mark).

I don’t understand how they could miss such an oversight like this. You can’t give the Revenant a rich origin story that takes place years after the content that they’re experiencing. Maybe Jon Peters didn’t explain things right (he isn’t the lore guy) and they actually have a plan for this. Thoughts?

The personal storyline have always been based on race and faction and not on class. So it doesn’t logically follow that a new class would get some new personal storyline when the races are still the same.

thanks to the nature of the mists where time is a non linear thing, they can place revenants at the beginning of the personal story without breaking the ingame logic. the thinking the revenant gets a complete new experience till lvl 80 in the existing content was just stupid.

it was also already confirmed that Revenants WONT get any specific story line…

MaXi.3642:

it was also already confirmed that Revenants WONT get any specific story line…

Yep, they’ve been pretty upfront about all of this stuff from the moment they started talking about Revenant details, such as Roy’s reply in an old post regarding the possibility of a unique starting zone:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Professions do not have their own starting zones. A character’s starting zone is determined by the race that was selected.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing to say Revenants didn’t exist in the original story. NPCs almost never talk about professions as a thing (that I know of) so it’s not like the story referenced all the other professions and it’d be weird for the Revenant to show up.

The whole Rytlock is the first has never been said ingame thus far, so it isn’t part of the lore. He’s just the first for marketing purposes.

Test.8734:

ArenaNet doesn’t care. The personal storyline was a failed experiment, under a model that ArenaNet itself said they will not continue. They are not going to rework the game just to fix the inclusion of the revenants in the storyline. Heh, they are definitely taking their time to fix the storyline itself after breaking the order of the chapters.

did Anet also break your squeaky duck? Cause the grouchy generalizations you post in each and every thread sure give that impression.

BrunoBRS.5178:

good god, people are still going on about it? the ridiculous part is expecting a profession to dictate your personal story, which would be a first in the franchise. (inb4 people that don’t really understand how GW1 campaigns worked).

But the tutorial in prophecies was catering to my profession, how can you say that it never had any place :p
Certain professions were only available in certain region, dictcating the “canon” story for these characters

Of course I am just janking your chain a bit here ^^

However, yeah, it would be a first, simply because it wasn`t neccessary before.

To be fair, I understand their reasoning, but they should get their PR in order. They openly say that Rythlock ist the World First Revenant on multiple occasions.
As long as they don`t go out and give an explanation for it (since they usually are keen about to tie things into the main plot, that`s the thing the whole living world is build upon), this question will always pop up.

Without a proper explanation why a Revenant is retroactively being introduced into the world of Guild Wars 2 will be misconcived.

ok i’ll put this down one more time.

If we speak about time, real world and the mists are on separate planes…which means time flows differently and you could also travel back in time.

Rytlock, on a linear time stream IS the first revenant, but then he can train new revenants in the mists and when they come back, they can come back before living story.

Hope it is clear.

Edit: typos

If it makes you feel better, pretend your Revenant is something else and ‘turned into/learned’ Revenant after his/her personal story, like Rytlock.

Gaaroth.2567:

ok i’ll put this down one more time.

If we speak about time, real world and the mists are on separate planes…which means time flows differently and you could also travel back in time.

Rytlock, on a linear time stream IS the first revenant, but then he can train new revenants in the mists and when they come back, they can come back before living story.

Hope it is clear.

Edit: typos

Which still needs to be handled in the story at some point.
I don`t mind time travel through the mists, but if they reintroduce Rytlock as the world first Revenant and you and dozens others already are Revenant, than it just doesn`t fit.

TThey would have to show him popping up in the past or tell us that he has done that, to explain the existence of a profession which he is (PR speak of course) the world first of.

Jaken.6801:

Gaaroth.2567:

ok i’ll put this down one more time.

If we speak about time, real world and the mists are on separate planes…which means time flows differently and you could also travel back in time.

Rytlock, on a linear time stream IS the first revenant, but then he can train new revenants in the mists and when they come back, they can come back before living story.

Hope it is clear.

Edit: typos

Which still needs to be handled in the story at some point.
I don`t mind time travel through the mists, but if they reintroduce Rytlock as the world first Revenant and you and dozens others already are Revenant, than it just doesn`t fit.

TThey would have to show him popping up in the past or tell us that he has done that, to explain the existence of a profession which he is (PR speak of course) the world first of.

An easy way to handle this would be the “future” Rytlock telling us revenants to shut up about our training especially with the “past” Rytlock we’ll be going to meet in PS to avoid breaking the future. Just this would patch it ;-)

Also you seems to miss that Rytlock IS the first revenant, just not in the world time stream, but in HIS time stream, you still elaborate all throught the world’s eyes … i know, time travel stuff are really “wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuffs” :-D

I’ve always been under the impression that the segement of the MMORPG population that really cares about this kind of thing, the roleplayers, tends to ignore the game’s story anyway because you can’t have an entire community of the One Savior of the World.

So I’m surprised that this issue has so much traction.

Also, do we have confirmation that Rytlock is the first Revenant, story-wise?

Also, just to repeat, this game is definitely not so tightly scripted and exacting in its magic/tech systems to not support a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey wave of the hand.

Gibson.4036:

…

Also, do we have confirmation that Rytlock is the first Revenant, story-wise?

…

During the first presentation of HOT the devs called him so, dunno if they stepped back then ;-)
If ain’t the case then there’s not issue at all since it would be considered a standard profession like anyone else.