Historic Villains & Henchmen
Anyone else feeling nogstalgia for GW1?
I don’t need to since I still play it.
I do feel GW2 could use more humanoid villains. I appreciate the concept of Scarlet but not the execution. I’ve also found I like Scarlet better as a character after her death and learning more about her work with Omadd.
But the idea that she was able to get all the major villain groups to work together just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You’re not telling me Flame legion soldiers and KRAIT look at this small pom-pom headed flower girl and thought she was someone worth listening to.
I feel she had potential to be a decent character but was handled in a very… Mustache twirling villain kind of way with no explanations for how she was doing what she was doing that were satisfactory to me.
The Modrem Commanders seem like they have potential. Any way to have thinking opponents with their own personality to fight is a good step forward.
It was highly disappointing to me that they killed off Gaheron and Kudu so soon. They should have been left alive, like Faolain and Caudecus. And I would have preferred any of those four as villains for Season 1. Kudu or Faolain (or even an alliance between Faolain, Caudecus, and Kudu via Sinister Triad) would have been more than perfect.
I rather disagree with GW1 villains having more depth. Bonfaaz had less depth than Gaheron, for example – as did Hierophant Burntsoul, Duncan the Black, Urgoz, Kanaxai, and until the BMP, Optimus Caliph.
And as for love of heroes/henchmen of GW1 – many actually do have nods and references in GW2. Most Prophecies henchmen (the non-Devona and co. ones) have graves in the Granite Citadel, and Stefan’s ghost is even fought in the charr PS. Many of the EotN heroes get various mentions here and there too (Pyre, Jora, Gwen, and Ogden being more than obvious). Makes sense not to get too many references of NF and Factions henchmen/heroes, since we haven’t visited those lands. I’ll just say that I’ll be highly disappointed if we don’t see Shiro’s jade-frozen corpse if we ever go to Cantha.
I don’t get where you got that “no living being can stay in the brand for a period of time” thing as that’s exactly what the Sentinels do.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Now that you mention it Konig, I would’ve loved to see Gaheron continue on as a major villain. His goal of ascending to godhood was interesting, and his boss fight was one of the more interesting ones. If he had succeeded in ressurecting himself he could have gone on to look for alternative ways to become a god and be a more impressive opponent for the charr to deal with than the now nameless leadership the Flame Legion has now.
Plus the Charr don’t have many villains to their name. Despite being the main antagonist of the early Prophecies levels they never had much personality to stand out.
That was the the big flaw in GW2 I feel. They jumped the gun by killing off enemies like Zhaitan, Kudu, and Gaheron right out the gate instead of saving them for bigger story lines later. At least we have Faolain. I’m really hoping she has a more compelling role in HoT than “Servant of Modremoth”.
Zhaitan I think was placed well but executed poorly the entire way – we needed a persistent champion of Zhaitan to act as a continuous barrier to break through. Imagine if the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan was seen taking Claw Island, killing our mentor, and returned for each assault on the Order HQs, returned for Forging the Pact’s ambush, was the Eye we saw in Temple of the Forgotten God, was the one we thought we were killing when killing the first PS eye, only to see it “looking at us” in the next story step, and then finally returning at the Source of Orr for the final battle. That would have made much better attachment.
And I dislike how one of his champions – the Giganticus Lupicus – was easily the toughest foe in the game pre-Season 1. It really felt off for a minion of Zhaitan to be stronger mechanically than the Elder Dragon.
So yeah, Zhaitan’s time of death was done well, but the journey there and the mechanics weren’t.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
A persistent Champion really would have livened up the story. When you have an immensely powerful background villain you need someone in the front to be the background character’s presence and make you feel like you have a more personal connection to the person you’re fighting. It’d be like Sauron without the Witch King and the Nazgul.
I have noticed that the Dragon Champions in the story seem to be really tough fights. Giganticus Lupicus was a lot of fun and so has been the Shadow of the Dragon fights (Though I find it a little crazy that the PC can now solo Dragon Champions). If Zhaitan had a fight more like the Shadow of the Dragon battles his death may have been better regarded. Though it is hard to do an interesting boss fight against something of that size.
Maybe if after you cut Zhaitan in half and he falls to the ground everyone starts to cheer, only for a dozen undead dragons to swarm the Glory of Tyria to bring it down. Then you fight Zhaitan’s diced up body on the ground with some interesting mechanics as Risen constantly rise up to swarm you. Maybe Zhaitan tries to reform by devouring his own minions and you need to stop him. Just some sort of direct fight between the party and the dragon would have made it far more interesting.
That seems to have been one of the ideas tossed around, going off of concept art. Kekai Kotaki had three concept arts that were of “pieces” of Zhaitan:
The Dragon’s Head
The Left Hand of the Dragon
The Right Hand of the Dragon (technically unnamed but thematically same as the named “The Left Hand of the Dragon” piece)
Seen here with other Zhaitan concepts
Would have been awesome if those were the final three bosses of the PS. But honestly, the original Arah story mode mission was long enough. Though it would have been good enough if they were the shared boss of Arah explorable instead of the G-Lupe (with the G-Lupe elsewhere, such as where we fight the Mouth of Zhaitan in Arah?). Each “piece” of Zhaitan would have been roughly the size of Tequatl and other dragon champions – or at least in height and width.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Dang, I really wish they had kept that as the boss fight. Far more interesting than just shooting him down. Honestly it kind of feels like Zhaitan’s fight was cut short to fit with the release date like some other bits of content that suffered.
Hopefully our fight with Modremoth is similarly branched into parts. I get the feeling, based on Modremoth’s insane reach with his vines, that he’s fairly large compared to the other dragons. At least bigger than Zhaitan. I rather like leaping into the giant Saarlacs in the Silverwastes, so maybe going inside Modremoth to fight him or something.
I believe it was said that the Zhaitan fight was rushed in the end.
I think a lot of the later PS was, given how buggy it was – especially compared to the pre-Claw Island storylines.
I hope we don’t fight Mordremoth from the inside. Not only is that an overly done cliche, but it’s honestly ridiculous when Elder Dragons can corrupt everything around them by consuming its magic – wouldn’t they be capable of instantly corrupting everything inside them (which is in a way already consumed)?
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
That is true, but there’s only so many ways you can fight something of that size without it being ridiculous. The alternative is climbing Modremoth and fighting him that way, which I find equally silly since one would expect him to just roll over or something.
Whatever they do I’m sure Anet will go big with it. They don’t want another underwhelming Elder Dragon fight.