(edited by Simplicity.7208)
Dessa's Lore
Dessa’s boyfriend was employed by the Consortium sometime before Dessa ever became involved with the fractal project. Dessa’s boyfriend was sent into the fractals to study them. The Uncategorized fractal was the first mistlock observatory and the base of the Consortium operations in the fractals. From here the krewe could capture creatures from the mists and keep them held in prison cells to study (like bandits, ettins, and flame legion shamans). Something went horribly wrong though. The first observatory was breached by creatures of the mists and destabilized. The observatory rocked and all of the krewe fell into the abyss of the mists never to be seen again. All except for Dessa’s boyfriend. The Consortium discontinued the project, labelled it hazardous, and buried it in their archives. Dessa lost her boyfriend at this point with no knowledge of what had happened to him.
Dessa, in love with her boyfriend, sought to find him not believing he was dead. She somehow managed acquire knowledge of the fractals project the consortium had abandoned. She took it into her own hands to plunge into the fractals after her boyfriend (and also because she’s an Asura and just naturally curious about things like this). She stayed, she studied, and she established the second fractal observatory. However, over the course of her studying she got entwined in the magical fabric of the mists. An unaware prisoner of its temporal-loop magic.
The consortium learned of her incursion to the mists and her revival of the fractal project. Seeing as someone else had already done all the work for them, they decided to help fund her research. They sent cat golems in to assist her krewe, much like they did with the first fractal observatory (hence why there are cat golems in uncategorized and the mistlock observatory). Dessa just assumed it was assistance from her friends in the Inquest. However, the consortium is still a mercantile corporation seeking profits, so they decided to kill two birds with one stone; sell it as a tourist attraction to make profit and acquire unsuspecting victims to help Dessa further her research at the same time. The consortium has interest in Dessa’s research because in Dessa’s own words the fractals are “the legacy code of Tyria.” Imagine the power the consortium would wield if they could manipulate this code at will.
When new arrivals would come to the observatory, Dessa would persuade them to assist by dealing with the more “hostile” areas of the fractals. Due to our player character constantly keeping these lethal instabilities in check, Dessa’s observatory doesn’t have to worry about being “breached” like the first fractal observatory was.
Then we get to the Uncategorized fractal. Dessa’s readings show that her boyfriend might still be alive, and this is the first confirmation that he’s not actually “lost.” Just trapped in a different, failed consortium observatory. She becomes emotional and is unable to assist the player character. She leaves to desperately search through the readings from the uncategorized fractal for proof that her boyfriend is still alive. She allows you to continue slaughtering your way through the fractal with the hopes that if her boyfriend is still alive, that you’ll make it safe enough to reunite them. When you reach the top, she gets her confirmation. The raving asura is Dessa’s boyfriend. However, the Asura knows that he’s the last one. He knows that everyone is dead. That’s why he confronts the player character as being an impossibility. That’s why he says we can’t be here. Why he was abandoned. And how everyone else died. Dessa either allows you to fight because she knows you cannot harm him (the creatures in fractals exist in a temporal loop, unable to be killed, resetting to life if they die) or because she knows he is lost to madness and beyond saving. In any case, the player character fights and defeats the raving asura. However (and this is important) they do not kill him. He is invulnerable, and he escapes, cackling to himself the whole way.
In this way, ANet can have closure to the whole Dessa story that doesn’t just involve you slaughtering her boyfriend. I like to believe that they’ll get a happy ending eventually. One last thing to consider is that the letter from the raving asura was actually for Dessa. This letter was the last piece that the raving asura wrote before he went insane. A love letter to his lost girlfriend. Upon reading it, Dessa is overcome with sorrow because the loops that Dessa and her boyfriend exist in are never destined to intertwine.
So, what do you think?
The raving asura seems to understand he’s inside a fractal. “You can’t be here!” He knows something is wrong with your existence inside his fractal
I don’t read him as knowing he’s in a fractal. You’re taking his line out of context and, in addition, not even the full line (further taking it out of context). The full dialogue – including an oft-bugged but now fixed dialogue:
Raving Asura: Breach! Broken! Falling! Screaming! Dying!
Raving Asura: I couldn’t save them. I heard them all. Pleading. All gone. All on my watch!
Raving Asura: (manic screaming)
Raving Asura: All of us! Abandoned! You aren’t real. You can’t be here.
Something went wrong. He was in charge of others – perhaps a unit leader – and they all died. And he (and his team) were abandoned.
I don’t think the “you can’t be here” is part of “you can’t be in this fractal” so much as “I’m all alone, there is no one else here, I’m abandoned and no one will come to save me, ever.” Convinced he has been abandoned with no hope of rescue, when someone does come he believes them to be no more than a figment of his imagination.
This is complicated by the fact that Dessa’s observatory is marketed as a consortium “resort” and Dessa genuinely denies any association with the Consortium
The Fractals weren’t marketed as a resort.
During The Lost Shores, the Consortium in LA tried to connect their asura gate to the one on Southsun, however the one on Southsun was never completed due to the expedition team getting almost entirely wiped out (only known survivors are Owain and Canach). This trying-to-link-to-a-non-existing-gate caused an error that redirect the gate to the Fractals. The Consortium was establishing the gate that led to Fractals but was supposed to lead to Southsun as the resort.
Afterwards, the Consortium decided to make best of the situation and portrayed fractals as an adventurer’s chance at getting rich. But it wasn’t a ‘resort’.
Dessa also uses the same cat golems in her observatory as are found inside the Uncategorized fractal as mobs
Given that this is a very recent addition, I wouldn’t look to far into it. ArenaNet realized players love the cat golems, so they added more cat golems. From the fractal hub merchants to the miniatures.
So what do you all think happened to Dessa? Her observatory seems to be a fractal, just like the ones she’s supposedly studying. Stuck forever in a temporal loop. This would explain why mechanically fractals always repeat.
Well we know for a fact that fractals are stuck in a temporal loop – talking to Dessa explains this, actually, and further explains that the so-called ‘instabilities’ are actually just ‘hostiles’. Because fractals are in loops, they eventually ‘reset’ and they have to be ‘re-stabilized’ aka ‘cleared of all hostiles again’.
As for who Dessa is: I don’t think there’s going to be a big story about it unless she is tied to Uncategorized Fractal. As such, figure out Uncategorized and you figure out Dessa’s mystery.
One thing you missed about her knowing folks at Thaumanova: she mentions that her old krewe look different. This means the Dessa we know is not of modern times. Given her lack of knowledge about sylvari, we can say that 20 years have easily passed since the Mistlock Observatory fractal’s creation.
The consortium learned of her incursion to the mists and her revival of the fractal project. Seeing as someone else had already done all the work for them, they decided to help fund her research. They sent cat golems in to assist her krewe, much like they did with the first fractal observatory (hence why there are cat golems in uncategorized and the mistlock observatory). Dessa just assumed it was assistance from her friends in the Inquest.
This part of your theory doesn’t hold up because the Consortium have shown no recognition of the Fractals – either before or after the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch, and the fractal portal is now in the hands of the Mist Warriors in LA.
Dessa also doesn’t seem to acknowledge any outside help, before or after HoT, aside from the PCs.
However, the consortium is still a mercantile corporation seeking profits, so they decided to kill two birds with one stone; sell it as a tourist attraction to make profit and acquire unsuspecting victims to help Dessa further her research at the same time.
Except that they don’t do this.
So, what do you think?
Aside from the aforementioned, it’s a solid theory.
However, I’m having troubles believing the Uncategorized Fractal to “simply” be an earlier Mistlock Observatory. You wouldn’t be the first one to present such a theory – though the older theories put Dessa and the Raving Asura working together, with the asura being lost for xyz reason (an earlier expedition team as it were). But I just don’t think that’s the case – too much mystery being placed around it for it to be so… simple.
My present theory is that the Uncategorized Fractal is of an asura city (once) located in the Woodland Cascades. The asura had an established foothold in that area in GW1, though much smaller than their foothold in the Tarnished Coast, and Rata Sum isn’t the only giant cubical city we know (Rata Novus is one, albeit mostly buried underground). I suspect that Dessa and the Raving Asura comes from this city which was lost during the Great Golem Uprising of 1284 which we know little about but know enough to understand the basics of it – Rata Sum was nearly brought to destruction by it due to the golems rebelling against the asura, but it wasn’t restricted to Rata Sum as it was more widespread, and not all golems acted out violently either (there is dialogue where a golem pinned an asura to a signpost by his ears for asking for directions). This could explain the breach – the breach wasn’t external, but internal. The golems rebelled and killed everyone but the Raving Asura – or so the Raving Asura believes.
Dessa’s role in such depends largely on how old she was 20 years ago – the approximate time she would have gone to Mistlock Observatory – and during the Golem Uprising, 40 years ago. Her tie to the Raving Asura could be more than mere boyfriend – if she was a child during the uprising, the Raving Asura could be her father, for example, with the letter being a last will and good-bye letter to his daughter (we know that asura do care a lot for their family – even dysfunctional ones do).
I theorize that the Raving Asura was someone who was supposed to oversee people getting out on his watch to escape the golem uprising, and the city fell when the golems destroyed its reactor.
I further theorize that Dessa is attempting an indirect ‘resurrect lost love’ by use of fractals. She seems pretty direct with studying the nature of fractals and more importantly the nature of how the Mists creates and how it recreates the past. This has always seem a bit weird to me – the Mists connect all times and places, be it past, present, or future, yet in the Fractals all we see is the past. We know Dessa is studying it and even claims to have created some of the fractals.
I believe she created the Uncategorized Fractal in hopes of bringing back people from her past – mainly the Raving Asura – but it was a partially failed attempt, she didn’t go back far enough into the past in creating that fractal.
This is why not losing access to the fractals is so important to her – it’s not just a mere research opportunity, it’s the only means she knows to achieve her goals of seeing lost loved ones again. But by interacting and studying them for so long, she got stuck in that temporal loop that they are – or perhaps she created a fractal of herself so that she could continuously attempt to perfect her fractal experimentation, but it backfired by resetting her thoughts as well as her age.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
I don’t read him as knowing he’s in a fractal. You’re taking his line out of context and, in addition, not even the full line (further taking it out of context). The full dialogue – including an oft-bugged but now fixed dialogue:
Raving Asura: Breach! Broken! Falling! Screaming! Dying!
Raving Asura: I couldn’t save them. I heard them all. Pleading. All gone. All on my watch!
Raving Asura: (manic screaming)
Raving Asura: All of us! Abandoned! You aren’t real. You can’t be here.Something went wrong. He was in charge of others – perhaps a unit leader – and they all died. And he (and his team) were abandoned.
I don’t think the “you can’t be here” is part of “you can’t be in this fractal” so much as “I’m all alone, there is no one else here, I’m abandoned and no one will come to save me, ever.” Convinced he has been abandoned with no hope of rescue, when someone does come he believes them to be no more than a figment of his imagination.
You’re right, the “you can’t be here” could be that he’s given up hope of rescue. However, it still could be rescue from the failed fractal experiment. Also, he could have been the krewe leader of the first fractal incursion and thus responsible for maintaining the safety of the observatory. Hence why he would say “I couldn’t save them” and “All on my watch”. Lastly, it could been “Breach!” creatures from the mists assault the observatory. “Broken!” They damage the machine that’s solidifying the observatory in place in the mists. “Falling!” Without that machine, the obseravtory teeters and causes almost everyone on the krewe to fall off the observatory into the mists. “Screaming!” What you do when you fall. “Dying!” What you do when you fall into the mists.
I was summarizing the line, not quoting directly, however that might’ve been a little unclear. I just didn’t take the time to look up the full quote because it was late. My bad ^^"
The Fractals weren’t marketed as a resort.
Okay, also my bad. I didn’t remember how the fractals were advertised, I did remember Southsun being marketed as a resort, but I couldn’t remember what the posters for the fractals said. That’s why I put “resort” in quotes, I couldn’t remember the exact way they described them.
During The Lost Shores, the Consortium in LA tried to connect their asura gate to the one on Southsun, however the one on Southsun was never completed due to the expedition team getting almost entirely wiped out (only known survivors are Owain and Canach). This trying-to-link-to-a-non-existing-gate caused an error that redirect the gate to the Fractals. The Consortium was establishing the gate that led to Fractals but was supposed to lead to Southsun as the resort.
Afterwards, the Consortium decided to make best of the situation and portrayed fractals as an adventurer’s chance at getting rich. But it wasn’t a ‘resort’.
Was this really the case? I don’t remember this at all from that patch sad face here. If it’s true, we’d need to adjust the theory a bit, but I think all-in-all it could still work. Perhaps after the first observatory was destroyed the Consortium didn’t scrap the project, they simply lost their connection to the fractals and were unable to reestablish it until it happened as a fluke trying to get to southsun? It would be at this point that they would try to continue their research. It still doesn’t explain how Dessa got involved though since if this were the case the Consortium would’ve had control over the fractal gate and who entered/exited and thus Dessa would’ve been well aware she’d be working with them. However, she doesn’t seem to know that.
Given that this is a very recent addition, I wouldn’t look to far into it. ArenaNet realized players love the cat golems, so they added more cat golems. From the fractal hub merchants to the miniatures.
I guess, but ANet likes to retcon stuff all the time and I figured this could’ve just been another one of those “nah they were there from the beginning” type things. At the same time, you could be right and it could just be a “hey these are cool” plop type of thing. I guess we won’t really know for a while though.
Well we know for a fact that fractals are stuck in a temporal loop – talking to Dessa explains this, actually, and further explains that the so-called ‘instabilities’ are actually just ‘hostiles’. Because fractals are in loops, they eventually ‘reset’ and they have to be ‘re-stabilized’ aka ‘cleared of all hostiles again’.
Unrelated thought, but I wonder why they need to be cleared again? In my theory it’s to prevent another breach. Just for her research then I guess for the other theories (even though they won’t ever make progress being stuck in time themselves).
As for who Dessa is: I don’t think there’s going to be a big story about it unless she is tied to Uncategorized Fractal. As such, figure out Uncategorized and you figure out Dessa’s mystery.
With the raving asura’s letter, Dessa’s sorrow, and Dessa’s obvious emotional reaction to the fractal, I think it’s a safe bet to say Dessa is related to the Uncategorized fractal in some way.
One thing you missed about her knowing folks at Thaumanova: she mentions that her old krewe look different. This means the Dessa we know is not of modern times. Given her lack of knowledge about sylvari, we can say that 20 years have easily passed since the Mistlock Observatory fractal’s creation.
Right, thanks. I’ll add that.
This part of your theory doesn’t hold up because the Consortium have shown no recognition of the Fractals – either before or after the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch, and the fractal portal is now in the hands of the Mist Warriors in LA.
The Consortium PR and Legal Defense TeamThe Consortium invites you to visit our asura gate near Fort Marriner to experience the spectacular scenery and awe-inspiring adventure of its newest attraction: Fractals of the Mists! Re-live the greatest and most exciting moments from Tyria’s past as you test your strength, speed, and skill against some of the most formidable opponents from the annals of history. All this and more is waiting for you in the Fractals of the Mists! (WARNING: some fractals may cause injury, psychic trauma, blindness, or death. By entering this asura gate, you officially waive any and all rights to pursue legal damages against the Consortium. Participate at your own risk.)
The consortium says it’s their asura gate. They pretty clearly laid claim to the fractals of the mist, or at least the only method of entry. Not only that, they’re advertising it (which costs money, advertisement isn’t free) so they have something to gain by having people go into the fractals. Whether that’s benefiting from Dessa’s research, getting the loot the PCs miss inside the fractals shipped out for profit, or simply having a fee associated with using their asura gate, they’re clearly profiteering somehow. This is the consortium after all.
Dessa also doesn’t seem to acknowledge any outside help, before or after HoT, aside from the PCs.
This is true, however she clearly has a krewe and golems. And since there’s not a lot of metal just floating around the fractal observatory the golems were built in Tyria. They clearly came from someone. She does have help even if she doesn’t explicitly state it. Of course she could’ve just built the golems herself before she entered the fractals and then brought them with her. However that doesn’t explain the appearance of new golems with HoT in the observatory. Those clearly came from someone in Tyria and since Dessa can’t leave…..
Except that they don’t do this.
They advertise it as an “adventure club” of sorts. However, they clearly do try to lure unsuspecting people into the fractals.
Aside from the aforementioned, it’s a solid theory.
Thanks!
However, I’m having troubles believing the Uncategorized Fractal to “simply” be an earlier Mistlock Observatory. You wouldn’t be the first one to present such a theory – though the older theories put Dessa and the Raving Asura working together, with the asura being lost for xyz reason (an earlier expedition team as it were). But I just don’t think that’s the case – too much mystery being placed around it for it to be so… simple.
That’s only one piece of the mystery. There’s still so many more things to figure out with Dessa and the fractals other than just what Uncategorized is and who the raving asura is. I’d love to also know how Dessa is involved with the Inquest for example.
My present theory is that the Uncategorized Fractal is of an asura city (once) located in the Woodland Cascades. The asura had an established foothold in that area in GW1, though much smaller than their foothold in the Tarnished Coast, and Rata Sum isn’t the only giant cubical city we know (Rata Novus is one, albeit mostly buried underground). I suspect that Dessa and the Raving Asura comes from this city which was lost during the Great Golem Uprising of 1284 which we know little about but know enough to understand the basics of it – Rata Sum was nearly brought to destruction by it due to the golems rebelling against the asura, but it wasn’t restricted to Rata Sum as it was more widespread, and not all golems acted out violently either (there is dialogue where a golem pinned an asura to a signpost by his ears for asking for directions). This could explain the breach – the breach wasn’t external, but internal. The golems rebelled and killed everyone but the Raving Asura – or so the Raving Asura believes.
It’s also a solid theory, and there’s nothing that can prove/disprove either of us at this point. However, “breach” normally means an incursion through some form of defenses from an outside force. See; silverwastes. Our defenses breached by the mordrem. Furthermore, if it was a golem uprising that wiped out all the asura, why are there no golems other than the five cat golems? Furthermore, why are they not hostile towards the raving asura?
Dessa’s role in such depends largely on how old she was 20 years ago – the approximate time she would have gone to Mistlock Observatory – and during the Golem Uprising, 40 years ago. Her tie to the Raving Asura could be more than mere boyfriend – if she was a child during the uprising, the Raving Asura could be her father, for example, with the letter being a last will and good-bye letter to his daughter (we know that asura do care a lot for their family – even dysfunctional ones do).
It’s possible that the raving asura is Dessa’s father. It didn’t ever really occur to me that he could be significantly older than Dessa. However, at the same time, it seems quite random that the devs would throw out a specific piece of lore about Dessa’s boyfriend if her boyfriend wasn’t significant in some way. However, I grant it could very well just be a tool to establish Dessa’s negative feelings towards the consortium.
I further theorize that Dessa is attempting an indirect ‘resurrect lost love’ by use of fractals. She seems pretty direct with studying the nature of fractals and more importantly the nature of how the Mists creates and how it recreates the past. This has always seem a bit weird to me – the Mists connect all times and places, be it past, present, or future, yet in the Fractals all we see is the past. We know Dessa is studying it and even claims to have created some of the fractals.
I agree.
I believe she created the Uncategorized Fractal in hopes of bringing back people from her past – mainly the Raving Asura – but it was a partially failed attempt, she didn’t go back far enough into the past in creating that fractal.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that all of the other fractals have names based on the historical event they describe. The only fractal that doesn’t follow this pattern is Uncategorized. It’s not named “Harpy incursion” or “Broken city” or “abandoned etc.” It’s named Uncategorized. E.g. this fractal is different in some way to all of the other historical events we experience. If this were a previous observatory, it would make sense that it couldn’t be categorized into some classification of historical event. Why would it be called uncategorized if it were just a historical recreation of a golem uprising?
This is why not losing access to the fractals is so important to her – it’s not just a mere research opportunity, it’s the only means she knows to achieve her goals of seeing lost loved ones again. But by interacting and studying them for so long, she got stuck in that temporal loop that they are – or perhaps she created a fractal of herself so that she could continuously attempt to perfect her fractal experimentation, but it backfired by resetting her thoughts as well as her age.
I agree here as well.
Was this really the case? I don’t remember this at all from that patch sad face here.
ArenaNet has an issue of not making things clear.
I did a lot of digging into lore for everything back then – kind of still do but more out of habit than actual interest.
Some of the information came from objects added with Secret of Southsun, and it was never explicitly stated (as said – they don’t make things clear) but when you add the dots together that’s what you get.
Perhaps after the first observatory was destroyed the Consortium didn’t scrap the project, they simply lost their connection to the fractals and were unable to reestablish it until it happened as a fluke trying to get to southsun? It would be at this point that they would try to continue their research. It still doesn’t explain how Dessa got involved though since if this were the case the Consortium would’ve had control over the fractal gate and who entered/exited and thus Dessa would’ve been well aware she’d be working with them. However, she doesn’t seem to know that.
The Consortium didn’t even know about the Fractals at first, however. So the chances of the Consortium being connected to them at any point prior to The Lost Shores is… extremely slim.
I guess, but ANet likes to retcon stuff all the time and I figured this could’ve just been another one of those “nah they were there from the beginning” type things. At the same time, you could be right and it could just be a “hey these are cool” plop type of thing. I guess we won’t really know for a while though.
Unless it’s Angel’s doing the retcons Anet like to do are cases of “false records” and lies.
Unrelated thought, but I wonder why they need to be cleared again? In my theory it’s to prevent another breach. Just for her research then I guess for the other theories (even though they won’t ever make progress being stuck in time themselves).
Because studying the Mists is a long process, they need more time than the Fractals give before resetting. Talk to Dessa and she says:
PC: Are the fractals safe now?
Dessa: For now. Fractals operate like a loop. They reset and hostile elements return. I haven’t yet cracked how to permanently pacify them.
PC: So, you do this over and over again? Sounds pointless.
Dessa: It certainly isn’t! Every iota of data we gather is one step closer to understanding the Mists. If we stop, that’ll be the true waste.
With the raving asura’s letter, Dessa’s sorrow, and Dessa’s obvious emotional reaction to the fractal, I think it’s a safe bet to say Dessa is related to the Uncategorized fractal in some way.
In your theory, she’s not related to Uncategorized Fractal at all.
All those things show is that she’s related to the Raving Asura, really.
The Consortium PR and Legal Defense Team-snip-
The consortium says it’s their asura gate. They pretty clearly laid claim to the fractals of the mist, or at least the only method of entry. Not only that, they’re advertising it (which costs money, advertisement isn’t free) so they have something to gain by having people go into the fractals. Whether that’s benefiting from Dessa’s research, getting the loot the PCs miss inside the fractals shipped out for profit, or simply having a fee associated with using their asura gate, they’re clearly profiteering somehow. This is the consortium after all.
You do realize that letter is from before LA was destroyed, right?
Even when the asura gate was up in Western Ward, it said near Fort Marriner. It still says near Fort Marriner, not inside it – where it currently is.
So all we know is that it was their asura gate. Something I explicitly stated. Not that it still is.
This is true, however she clearly has a krewe and golems. And since there’s not a lot of metal just floating around the fractal observatory the golems were built in Tyria. They clearly came from someone. She does have help even if she doesn’t explicitly state it. Of course she could’ve just built the golems herself before she entered the fractals and then brought them with her. However that doesn’t explain the appearance of new golems with HoT in the observatory. Those clearly came from someone in Tyria and since Dessa can’t leave…..
Not a lot of metal…
They have access to fractals. That return to a previous state in time – and since we clearly loot the fractals over and over again and that’s considered lore, even things taken out of the fractals recreate itself.
So they could have krewe members go into dredge fractal to gather metal, wait for it to reset, and gather the same metal to build those golems.
Your reasoning is flawed.
They advertise it as an “adventure club” of sorts. However, they clearly do try to lure unsuspecting people into the fractals.
But nothing shows they profited from it.
I’d love to also know how Dessa is involved with the Inquest for example.
She isn’t. Her old krewe members joined the Inquest, she didn’t.
Dessa: Thaumanova? I’ve got friends on that krewe, and from what I understand, it’s not a safe place to visit. Or work.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists_%28story%29
However, “breach” normally means an incursion through some form of defenses from an outside force. See; silverwastes. Our defenses breached by the mordrem.
Think asura and use the full: what can be breached to bring down a giant floating cube?
Power sources.
The generator for the city’s power got breached, causing it to lose its levitation, thus falling.
Furthermore, if it was a golem uprising that wiped out all the asura, why are there no golems other than the five cat golems? Furthermore, why are they not hostile towards the raving asura?
There are many potential explanations. Such as the hostile golems moving on, being wiped out by harpies, or other things.
We know from the ambient dialogue that not all golems were intrisiquely hostile – it wasn’t a Terminator situation – but that they refused to listen to asuran orders and had general free will. It was closer to a slave revolt than a ‘kill all biological beings!’ situation based on the little dialogue we have.
So not all golems would have been hostile to the raving asura.
It’s also possible he built those golems after the uprising, thus they were not part of it.
Lots of possibilities.
It’s possible that the raving asura is Dessa’s father. It didn’t ever really occur to me that he could be significantly older than Dessa. However, at the same time, it seems quite random that the devs would throw out a specific piece of lore about Dessa’s boyfriend if her boyfriend wasn’t significant in some way. However, I grant it could very well just be a tool to establish Dessa’s negative feelings towards the consortium.
I never really put much stock into it since in the very same release, another female asura researcher (Levvi) also mentioned having had a boyfriend who now worked for the Consortium (Blingg).
It felt more like a theme the writers had at the time than anything else – ex boyfriends joining a cheat of a company.
Dessa could be using “lost” in many ways. She could mean that he literally disappeared. She could mean that the Consortium hired assassins to have him killed (like they tried to do to Canach). She could mean that the Consortium drove him into debt which led him to suicide. Or she could mean that the Consortium drew him into a project and slowly changed his personality by putting him into jobs that start morally sound but the deeper you go the more immortal the jobs become (a common trope for law firm stories).
It’s named Uncategorized. E.g. this fractal is different in some way to all of the other historical events we experience. If this were a previous observatory, it would make sense that it couldn’t be categorized into some classification of historical event. Why would it be called uncategorized if it were just a historical recreation of a golem uprising?
Given how she reacted, it’s not something she enjoys working with. She may want to avoid it, or otherwise find it difficult to simply “put a label on it” which would, to the psyche, be the same as objectifying it.
If it is something of importance to her, then labeling it “broken city fractal” would be the same as distancing herself from it, and ignoring all her emotions – and by my theory, her motivation. Effectively, she may see the act of labeling it like the others an act of dehumanizing herself (deasuranizing?).
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Was this really the case? I don’t remember this at all from that patch sad face here.
ArenaNet has an issue of not making things clear.
I did a lot of digging into lore for everything back then – kind of still do but more out of habit than actual interest.
Some of the information came from objects added with Secret of Southsun, and it was never explicitly stated (as said – they don’t make things clear) but when you add the dots together that’s what you get.
ANet really should start doing a better job of conveying the lore. Going on a scavenger hunt to get more detailed lore is fine, but not even being able to easily learn the broader plot points is… well not good storytelling. Reminds me too much of Lost (that show that ended 5 years ago… so not a very recent example) where they kept adding more and more random things into the story (although the problem there might have been how much they were hyping up a rather meh mystery).